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The Lost
Colony Research Group
Genealogy ~ DNA ~ Archaeology
Newsletter
March 2012
John
Oneall 1716 patent for 440 acres on Tom King’s Creek
- “File No. 1192, John
O’Neal” (October 9, 1716), Land
Office: Land Warrants, Plats of Survey, and Related Records, Secretary
of State Record Group, State Records, Old Book 8:113-14,
Microfilm S.108.451 (Raleigh, N.C.: State of North Carolina)
John
Lawson visited this town circa 1701 and left his record of the Anglicized
Hatteras Indians for all to read in his book:
A New Voyage to Carolina;
Containing the Exact Description and Natural History of That Country:
Together with the Present State Thereof. And A Journal of a Thousand
Miles, Travel'd Thro' Several Nations of Indians. Giving a Particular
Account of Their Customs, Manners, &c., published in
London in 1709.
The
mouth of Tom King’s Creek, also known as “Peter’s Creek”
(allegedly named for Peter Gordon) in the recent past, begins the
boundaries of the later Elks grant of 1759 that was patented for
“William Elks and the Rest of the Hatteras Indians.”
O’Neale probably held this property well before 1716 and his
relationship with the neighboring Indians seems to have been a good one.
It’s not so easy to call them “Indians” because, as Lawson
found, they probably behaved more like Englishmen, shared DNA, dressed,
and worshipped like them, too. Still,
living on a remote island far away from prying eyes in the “country,”
or mainland as Hatteras islanders once called it, made living openly as
something other than “white” far simpler.
[Reference Cecelski’s Waterman’s Song]
John
“O’Neill” appears on a Currituck County tax list for 1718, having
paid his taxes, unlike Henry Davis and Patrick “Kallahan” who later
had a hot dispute (I believe) over land boundaries.
This dispute got Henry Davis killed the next year and Patrick
Callahan, who killed Davis with a sword, lost his Hatteras property, which
just so happened to border both the Mackuen land (which I believe is later
the land of Joseph “McCun” from the 1755 tax list or Joseph
“Maskue” from the 1757 deed for the same location).
See map below:
Readjusted
1716 patents in the area of Trent Woods
– Base map: 1883 Hatteras map (annotated by Baylus C. Brooks). A red line represents the mistaken course of Tom King’s
Creek and the unforeseen extension of Patrick Callahan’s property in the
initial erroneous patents of 1716. The
last frame shows the readjusted property lines as determined from deed and
other records. Mary Davis was
too young in 1720 to inherit, but after she came of age and married Thomas
Robb, the Jacobite “rebel” who was shipped to Carolina in 1716, they
settled in upper Currituck from where they came in 1751 to claim their
land. For about thirty-five
years, the Hatteras Indians did not suffer any serious problems with
European settlers. When the
Robbs arrived in 1751, they determined that the town was on their land.
The Trent Woods town was readjusted again and granted with 200
acres to “William Elks and the Rest of the Hatteras Indians” in 1759.
Source: “File No. 1190, Henry Davis” (September 12, 1716),
“File No. 1196, Patrick Callihan” (October 9, 1716), “File No. 1192,
John O’Neal” (October 9, 1716), Land
Office: Land Warrants, Plats of Survey, and Related Records, Secretary
of State Record Group, State Records, Old Book 8:113-14,
Microfilm S.108.451 (Raleigh, N.C.: State of North Carolina);
United States Coast Survey, “General chart of the coast no. V from Cape
Henry to Cape Lookout” (1883), MC.168.1883ub, North Carolina State
Archives (Raleigh, N.C.: State of North Carolina).
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