* These were Sugar Creek, Steel Creek, Providence, Hopewell, Center, Rocky River, and Poplar Tent.—Foote, p. 190.
** Ibid., p.192
Colonel Polk's Mill. The People of Mecklenburg.—Scheme for a Republican Assembly.—A Convention called
south of Charlotte, and known as Bissell's, was formerly the property of Colonel Thomas Polk, one of the active patriots in that section. Early on Monday morning, I rode down to the mill. Informed that it had been materially altered since the Revolution, I did not stop to sketch the locality. It is an interesting spot, for there a portion of Cornwallis's army was encamped, and the mill was used during the cantonment there, to supply his troops with flour.
Let us glance at the historical events which render Charlotte famous in our annals. While public sentiment in North Carolina and its sister colonies was making rapid strides toward a bold resistance to augmenting oppressions, the people of Mecklenburg and vicinity, between the Yadkin and the Catawba, were neither indifferent nor inactive, notwithstanding their distance from the sea-board. There was no printing-press in the upper country; and as no regular post traversed that region, a newspaper was seldom seen there among the people. They were in the habit of assembling at stated places to hear printed hand-bills from abroad read, or to obtain verbal information of passing events. Charlotte was a central point for these assemblages, and there the leading men in that section often met at Queen's Museum or College, the Faneuil Hall of North Carolina, to discuss the exciting topics of the day. These meetings were at first irregular, and without system. It was finally agreed that Thomas Polk, a large property-holder in the vicinity of Charlotte, colonel of the militia of Mecklenburg, a man of great excellence of character, extensive knowledge of the people around him, and deservedly popular, should be authorized to call a convention of the representatives of the people whenever circumstances should appear to require it. * It was also agreed that such representatives should consist of two from each captain's company, to be chosen by the people of the several militia districts, and that their decisions, when thus legally convened, should be binding upon the people of Mecklenburg. This step was in accordance with the recommendation of the eleventh article of the American Association, adopted by the first Continental Congress (see page 268), and now generally acted upon throughout the colonies.
When Governor Martin made an attempt to prevent the assembling of a Provincial Congress at Newbern,April 1777 the people were much exasperated, for they remembered his arbitrary proceedings in dissolving the last Provincial Legislature, after a session of four days, and before any important business had been transacted. The excitement throughout the province was intense. While the public mind was thus inflamed, Colonel Polk issued a notice to the elected committee-men of the county, to assemble in the courthouse ** at Charlotte toward the close of May. On what precise day they first met, can not now be positively determined. They appointed Abraham Alexander, *** an esteemed citizen,
* Colonel Polk was great uncle to the late President Polk. His brother, Ezekiel Polk, whose name appears quite conspicuous in the annals of Mecklenburg county, was the president's grandfather. "The house in which President Polk is supposed to have been born," says Honorable David L. Swain, in a letter to me of recent date, "is about two hundred yards south of Sugar Creek, and eleven miles south of Charlotte, on the lands of Nathan Orr. The house shown to me is of logs, was never weather-boarded, and is covered with a decaying shingle roof. It is formed by joining two houses together."
*** The court-house was a frame building, about fifty feet square, placed upon brick pillars, ten or twelve feet in height, with a stair-way on the outside. It stood in the center of the town, at the intersection of the two principal streets, now the village green. The lower part was a market-house; the upper part was used for public purposes. Stedman says it was a "large brick building," and Lee says it was of stone. Tradition of undoubted character pronounces it such as I have described. The village at that time contained about twenty houses.
*** Abraham Alexander was a leading magistrate in Meeklenburg county, and represented it in the Colonial Legislature. At the time of the convention, of which he was appointed chairman, he was almost threescore years of age. He died on the twenty-third of April, 1786, at the age of sixty-eight years. He was buried in the old church-yard, near Charlotte, where a plain slab, with an inscription, marks his grave. Elijah Alexander, a relative of the chairman, and who was present when the Mecklenburg Resolutions were read to the people at Charlotte, died at the residence of his son-in-law, James Osborne, Esq., in Cornersville, Tennessee, on the eleventh of November, 1850, at the age of ninety years. He voted for every president of the United States, from Washington to Taylor. His widow, to whom he was married in 1784, was yet living in 1851.
Officers of the Convention.—Speakers on the Occasion.—Preamble and Resolutions