WAR MAP, 1711-1715.
Of about this time we also find a number of tracts, incentives to and records of German and Swiss emigration.[798] For the Carey rebellion and the Indian war of 1711,[799] Hawks used a transcript from an early copy of Governor Spotswood’s letter-book, which had been in his family and was placed by him in the State Department of North Carolina, where it had apparently originally belonged. In 1882, the Virginia Historical Society published the first volume of the Spotswood letters, and the student finds this material easily accessible now.[800]
In 1715 the General Assembly of North Carolina revised and reënacted the body of statute law then in force,[801] and twelve MS. copies were made, one for each precinct court. About a quarter of a century ago, says Mr. Swain, the State Historical Agent, in his Report of 1857, two of these copies, moth-eaten and mutilated, were discovered, and about 1854 a third copy, likewise imperfect, was found. From these three copies the body of laws was reconstructed for the State Library.
The authorities for the Yamassee war of 1715-16, so far as printed, are the account in the Boston News-Letter (June 13, 1715), reprinted in Carroll (ii. 569), where (ii. 141) as well as in Force’s Tracts (vol. ii.) is one of the chief authorities for this and for that other struggle which shook off the rule of the Proprietors, published in London in 1726, under the title of A narrative of the Proceedings of the People of South Carolina in the year 1719, and of the true causes and motives that induced them to renounce their obedience to the Lords Proprietors, as their governors, and to put themselves under the immediate government of the Crown.[802] Yonge, who professes to write in this tract from original papers, is thus made of importance as an authority, since in 1719 the records of South Carolina seem to have been embezzled, as Rivers infers from an act of February, 1719-20, whose purpose was to recover them “from such as now have the custody thereof,” and they are not known to exist. We get the passions of the period in The liberty and property of British subjects asserted: in a letter from an assembly-man in Carolina to his friend in London. London, 1726.[803] It is signed N., and is dated at Charleston, January 15, 1725, and sustains the discontents, in their criticism of the Proprietary government. The preface, written in London, gives a history of the colony.
In 1729 all of the Proprietors, except Lord Granville, surrendered their title in the soil to the Crown;[804] and in 1744 his eighth part was set off to him,[805] being a region sixty-six miles from north to south, adjoining the southern line of Virginia and running from sea to sea. Lord Granville retained this title down to the Revolution, and after that event he endeavored to reëstablish his claim in the Circuit and Supreme Courts, till his death, during the continuance of the war of 1812, closed proceedings.
Meanwhile some sustained efforts were making to induce a Swiss immigration to South Carolina. Jean Pierre Purry, a leader among them, printed in London in 1724 a tract, which is very rare: Mémoire presenté à sa Gr. Mylord Duc de Newcastle sur l’état présent de la Caroline et sur les moyens de l’ameliorer. Londres, 1724.[806] In 1880 Colonel C. C. Jones, Jr., privately printed an English version of it at Augusta, Georgia, as a Memorial ... upon the present condition of Carolina and the means of its amelioration by Jean Pierre Purry of Neufchâtel, Switzerland.
The Gentleman’s Magazine of August, September, and October, 1732, contained an English rendering of a description of Carolina, drawn up by Purry and others, at Charlestown in September, 1731. This last paper has been included by Carroll in his Historical Collections (vol. ii.), and by Force in his Tracts (vol. ii.).[807] Purry’s tracts were in the interest of immigration, and his and their influence seem to have induced a considerable number of Swiss to proceed to Carolina, where they formed a settlement called Purrysburg on the east side of the Savannah River. Hardships, malaria, and unwonted conditions of life discouraged them, and their settlement was not long continued.[808]