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The Jersey Settlement of Rowan County, North Carolina
Originally in Rowan County, North Carolina. Since 1836, in Davidson County, North Carolina.
https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Category:Jersey_Settlement
The Coxe Affair that contributed to many of the residents from Hopewell, New Jersey abandoning their lands and homes and eventually migrating to North Carolina. Several of those residents hired an agent to find new land for them. That agent found what they were seeking in Henry Eustace McCulloh’s “Tract #9” which lay along the Yadkin River, just above the Trading Ford in the Swearing Creek region. At least one account claims that the land there was “10 square miles of the best wheat land” in the South.
In early 1746, Thomas Smith acquired lands along Swearing Creek. Jonathan Hunt would build a mill there. John Titus and Robert Heaton soon followed, becoming with the others the earliest known settlers of the Jersey Bottoms. Benjamin Merrill would also join them, as would Benjamin Rounsaville. Each of these had been a resident of Hopewell, New Jersey. Each had been displaced by Daniel Coxe’s questionable land practices.
Present day Jersey Church owes its origin and its name to these settlers. The church began as a joint congregation lacking either a building or pastor. It originally served Anglicans, Presbyterians, and Baptists alike… for all were present among the New Jersey immigrants. With the coming of ministers the mixed congregation divided, leaving the old congregation site on the Trading Path to the Baptists.
Origins of the Jersey Settlement of Rowan County, North Carolina
First Families of Jersey Settlement
By Ethel Stroupe 1996
(Reprinted by permission of the author from vol. 11, no. 1, February 1996, Rowan County Register, PO Box 1948, Salisbury, NC 28145))
Extracted at http://www.sonsofdewittcolony.org/mckstmerjersey.htm by SONS OF DEWITT COLONY TEXAS
New Jersey historians wrote of Hopewell and Carolina historians wrote of Jersey Settlement. Nobody wrote about how, when and why North Carolina's Jersey Settlement grew out of (and interacted with) its parent community, Hopewell, New Jersey, nor why so many of old Hopewell's solid citizens fled to North Carolina. To satisfy her curiosity, the author mined facts with the help of librarians, genealogical societies in both places, and other descendants. Eventually, a story emerged of the Settlement's origins: it was older than expected, and its first settlers were Hopewell citizens who migrated after being swindled by Proprietors and royal Governors, especially Dr. Daniel Coxe and his son Col. Daniel Coxe, two powerful and greedily villainous Proprietors, in "The Coxe Affair." What these Jersey men endured in Hopewell directly affected the Yadkin's Revolutionary generation, explaining why Jersey Settlement had reacted so violently against N.C.'s corrupt Gov. William Tryon's sticky-fingered royal officials, John Frohock, Rowan Court Clerk and Edmund Fanning, King's Attorney, whose thievery and injustices caused the 1771 Regulator War (considered by historians the first true battle of the American Revolution), and caused Charles Lord Cornwallis to call central North Carolina "a hornet's nest of rebellion."
The earliest families of Jersey Settlement came from Hopewell Township, Hunterdon County, New Jersey, where some had been members of Pennington's Presbyterian Church, and others were Quakers and Baptists who baptized their children in St. Mary's Episcopal church for practical, political reasons.
The earliest families identified in Jersey Settlement c1745 were those of
- Jonathan Hunt,
- Thomas and Rebecca (Anderson) Smith,
- Robert Heaton, and
- John Titus. (Hunt and Titus were married to Smith's nieces.) Others from Hopewell,
- e.g., Cornelius Anderson, came in this first party or soon followed.
They were founding this settlement so that they (and groups that followed) could recoup losses suffered when New Jersey's Supreme Court invalidated deeds to thousands of acres in Hopewell, land their fathers had purchased as wilderness. To understand this amazing story of invalidated land titles, one must "begin at the beginning" with the founding of West Jersey's Hopewell Township, followed by a slow build up to the surprising events that preceded this migration. …
References
- ”Old Rowan County of Colonial North Carolina”. < link > Old Rowan County was formed from Anson County in 1753. Beginning in 1770, twenty-six counties were spun off from Rowan. Beginning with the western half of Guilford, North Carolina created the counties of Surry, Burke, Iredell, Davidson, and Davie. Those daughter counties later spun off additional counties. You can find an interactive map of North Carolina’s county development at NC Lost Souls Genealogy North Carolina County Formation Maps. < link > The Jersey Settlement, one of the oldest of Old Rowan’s settlements (mid 1700s), and the Moravian Wachovia Tract (1750s) were part of Old Rowan, but are now in nearby Davidson and Forsyth counties.
- “Jersey Church”. < link > The church secretary at Jersey Baptist Church read to the writer from the church history book, which is a bounded published book in its second printing and now has an index. The book tells of about 125 young people who migrated from the congregation of Old School Baptist Church in 1756 to Rowan County North Carolina and formed a settlement called Jersey Settlement. They had a grant of 100,000 acres of land, within the Granville grant, for settling. Their preacher was John Gano. John Gano was not at the time an ordained minister, because the Hopewell Church thought he was too young and too inexperienced to be ordained by them.
- “Linwood and the Jersey Settlement”. < link > Linwood was part of the Jersey Settlement along the east banks of the Yadkin River. The area was settled by former residents of Hopewell, New Jersey around 1745. It appears that the New Jersey settlers were aiming to recoup losses from land that they lost when the New Jersey Supreme Court invalidated numerous deeds on land around Hopewell.
- “Saints and Sinners at Jersey Settlement: The Life Story of Jersey Baptist Church.” By Garlick A. Hendricks (1964). < PDF >