Copyright Notice: This page is from The Way We Lived in North Carolina, copyright 2003 by the University of North Carolina Press. Classroom use of the materials on this website is permissible, as is classroom presentation of this website. Linking from another website is permissible. Materials including maps, text, and photographs, may be downloaded, printed, and/or copied for classroom or other educational uses provided that they include attribution to Joe A. Mobley, the University of North Carolina Press, and the North Carolina Office of Archives and History. Any other use including commercial use of these materials are not allowed without the express permission of the rightsholders. For other uses not expressly allowed under the guidelines above, please contact the publishers.

See also: The Way We Lived in North Carolina: Introduction; Part I: Natives and Newcomers, North Carolina before 1770; Part II: An Independent People, North Carolina, 1770-1820; Part III: Close to the Land, North Carolina, 1820-1870; Part IV: The Quest for Progress, North Carolina 1870-1920; Part V: Express Lanes and Country Roads, North Carolina 1920-2001

Part I: Natives and Newcomers, North Carolina before 1770 

A map depicting the coastal region from Jamestown, Virginia southward along the North Carolina coast.
Map created circa 1682 depicting the coastal region from Jamestown, Virginia southward along the North Carolina coast. Image courtesy of The North Carolina Collection at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Natives and Newcomers describes the people of North Carolina's various American Indian tribes and the dramatic changes that occurred when Europeans and enslaved Africans entered their land.

Even before Raleigh's "lost colony," Europeans had explored the coast and the mountains. The first permanent newcomers were English migrants from Virginia, followed after 1715 by planters and enslaved people from South Carolina.

In the next half-century, thousands of German, Scotch-Irish, and Scottish settlers came by boat from Europe and by wagon from the North. Those who established farms in the piedmont had little in common with coastal planters or the backcountry elite of lawyers, judges, and merchants. By the late 1760s, western farmers organized as Regulators to protest unjust taxes, corrupt courts, and threats to private property—issues that would soon reappear as part of the patriotic rhetoric of the American Revolution.

Chapter Contents:

The First Carolinians
Lost Continent to Lost Colony
Virginians in the Albemarle
Early Coastal Towns
The Tuscarora War
The Colonial Cape Fear
Long Journey of the Highland Scots
The Great Wagon Road
The Burgeoning Backcountry 
Resistance Before the Revolution

Keep Reading Part I: The First Carolinians | North Carolina before 1770

Fenn, Elizabeth Anne, and Joe A. Mobley. 2003. The way we lived in North Carolina. Chapel Hill, NC [u.a.]: Published in association with the Office of Archives and History, North Carolina Dept. of Cultural Resources, by the University of North Carolina Press.

Image Credit:

Seller, John. Carolina newly discribed. ca. 1682. Map. North Carolina Collection at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, N.C. https://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/singleitem/collection/ncmaps/id/350/rec/1.

Citation

Anderson, Jean B., Elizabeth A. Fenn, Peter H. Wood, Harry L. Watson, Thomas H. Clayton, Sydney Nathans, and Thomas C. Parramore. "Natives and Newcomers: North Carolina before 1770." NCpedia. The Way We Lived in North Carolina, NC Office of Archives and History and UNC Press. Accessed on December 21st, 2024. https://ncpedia.org/waywelived/natives-and-newcomers.