Bladen County, NC - Bedsole Family History - Part 1

Bedsole Family History
www.thebedsoles.com

© COPYRIGHT: 1996-2009. JD Bedsole. All Rights Reserved. Copying 
this booklet is free for your own use, but copying it, or any part 
of it, for sale, or incorporation into something else for sale, is 
absolutely not permitted.

MY LAST VERSION: JANUARY 1, 2009

AFTER 58 LONG YEARS OF RESEARCH, THIS IS MY LAST VERSION OF THE BEDSOLE 
HISTORY AND LIST OF ANCESTORS AND DESCENDANTS. ACCORDINGLY, ALL PRIOR 
VERSIONS ARE OBSOLETE AND ERRONEOUS AND SHOULD BE DESTROYED.

BEDSOLE HISTORY FROM 1673 WITH DOCUMENTATION
AND LIST OF ANCESTORS, AND DESCENDANTS

RESEARCHED, COMPILED, ANALYZED AND PREPARED IN ITS ENTIRETY, SOLELY BY 
DR. J.D. BEDSOLE, ASME, BSBA, BSVE, MSEA, PhD. 

ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS ABOUT THE EARLIEST BEDSOLES IN THIS COUNTRY, SUCH AS:

1. Where did they come from?. Who were they?. Where did they settle 
here? Did they move around, and if so, where to ?. How did they 
live?.What was it like ? What were they like ? Was life hard for them ?

2. Locations, names, relationships, kinships, and documentation on 
early Bedsoles with records of early Marriages,Census Data,Tax Lists, 
Land Transactions, Cemeteries and etc

3. References for current and future Bedsole Researchers (If any ever 
have the grit to do it).

CONTENTS

PART ONE - Bedsole History And Documentation.

NOTE; In order to save time, if after you have read this, you want to 
email me and tell me how you are now more confused than ever, how 
stupid I really am, did I really talk to some in Germany, and how this 
was all such a huge waste of time, please don’t bother. I have already 
been told those things at least a hundred times by those Bedsoles to 
whom I had freely given a copy. Thanks anyway though, for the thought 
that I am a tee-total Idiot, of the highest order. No need to tell me 
that though, as I am already well aware of that  !!. 

NOTE, this is specifically to call your attention to the Copyright 
notice at the top of this page. Please read it and comply with it.

BEDSOLE HISTORY

As you can see, not being a computer Czar, I cannot control the 
location of the page numbers in this book. When I type it, it’s fine, 
but when I transfer it to a file, it gets all out of whack. Then, when 
I transfer it to you, it will not stay as typed, and the numbers may be 
any place on the page, and names, dates and etc., move around between 
computers and format changes, as they please. I have no idea how to 
keep all that from happening. Apparently, no one else does either and I 
have asked every one I know. Anyway, the numbers are theoretically at 
the bottom of each page. At least we can use the numbers as location 
markers, so we can say "It’s between numbers 156 and 157” or whatever. 
That will prevent having to guess where something is located. Since 
this is my last version and I have been all over the internet asking 
for information from other Bedsoles, and receiving next to nothing, if 
you see something which is wrong or you have additions to make to the 
List in Part Two, please don’t tell me about it. Just make those 
changes to your own copy. Remember, I have now quit.

In the beginning, I just wanted to know where I got this name. But, as 
time went on, and I learned more and more about our ancestors and all 
the unbelievable hardships they endured, I realized that unless I 
researched and wrote this History and the related Ancestor And 
Descendant list, all the current and future Bedsole descendants would 
never know what those ancestors went through and would never know their 
true roots either. But I also knew that if I didn't do it, then it 
would never be done, because I knew that few people have what it takes 
to spend that many years of their lives to produce this kind of 
information on their ancestors and descendants, much less have the grit 
required to do it. Does that make me some kind of super-human, you ask 
and that you should bow down in front of me? …YES INDEED it does, in fact.

I began this project in 1950.This History and List and especially the 
List, represents more than 58 years of the most demanding, expensive, 
time-consuming, frustrating, and maddening work I have ever encountered 
in my life. Now, I give it to all you Bedsoles and relatives most of 
whom I don't even know, for nothing. I hope you truly appreciate what 
went into it, and what it represents. I know how priceless it really 
is, and I hope you do too. Believe me, it becomes more valuable to the 
point of being absolutely priceless, as you get older. So, keep it, 
treasure it, and pass it down to your children. But always remember who 
produced it..ME  and me alone. Although I do greatly appreciate the 
information provided by a precious few who emailed some info to me, 
regarding the List. Many thanks to those few. As you will read further 
on though, with the exception of those precious few, those I wrote and 
called for information, were generally suspicious, rude to the point of 
being hateful, and would tell me nothing useful. To them I say, thanks 
a lot.

In the absence of most-needed documentation and by reading, 
researching, analyzing and documenting what little Bedsole information 
was available, together with all the books, websites, and other 
relevant historical sources I could find, then flying to Germany twice 
and researching there, because my Dad had said Bedsole originated in 
Germany, I have put together my best, educated and informed guesses in 
many cases, at what I feel is very close to the facts back then. Some 
of my conclusions may prove to be wrong in the future, but I invite 
anyone to prove anything I claim to be true, is actually wrong. The 
only acceptable proof from someone that I have something wrong however, 
would be their own documentation and not their best guess. Any best-
guess by anyone else, would not be as accurate, and certainly not more 
accurate than my own and I guarantee that.

This Book Was A Time-Consuming And Expensive Project

Here are only a few reasons why one can spend so much time and money 
looking for the older Bedsole records and never find any. First of all, 
no less than 55 counties in the NC area where the first ones arrived 
(Bath County) from Germany, were created or partially created from 
Bladen County, where, in 1950, I first found the Bedsoles. Just trying 
to find some records on Bath County, NC alone (which became Beaufort 
County) where the first Bedsole appeared, I ran into this: What few 
records do exist for Bath County are scattered in the courthouses of 
some of its early precincts, and in the Archives in Raleigh. No one 
knows what is where, or if in fact, any records at all, do exist. Bath 
County's earliest recorded deeds for example, date from 1700 and are 
included in Beaufort Co. Deed Book One (1701-1729). However, several 
other early Bath County deeds and other documents, some dated before 
1700, were found in the records of Albemarle County and scattered among 
its various precincts, and there are likely some in other unknown 
counties. Most of the earliest records of Craven and Hyde Counties 
(Created from Bath) have not been preserved at all, and they surely had 
many Bath County records too. Beaufort and Hyde Precincts are known to 
have held joint sessions of court, for and including Bath, apparently 
in Beaufort. Eighteen Bath County Wills (1702-1718), mostly for both 
Beaufort and Hyde Precincts, were recorded in Beaufort Precinct and may 
be found in Beaufort County's Land Deed Book (Terrific logic) # 1 and, 
although they are Wills, they are not recorded in the Will Books in the 
Beaufort County Clerk's Office, as you would expect. Also ten of the 
eighteen do not appear (Isn’t that great?) in Grimes' "Abstracts of 
North Carolina Wills 1663-1760" probably because the originals of the 
ten were never sent to the Secretary of State as required by law. In 
fact, over 60 more Beaufort County Wills dated 1720 to 1760 were 
retained in the courthouse and later copied into the Old Will Book and 
thus they also do not appear in Grimes' volume. Only a few of the Wills 
proved before 1700 have survived in the records identified in the NC 
State Archives as "Secretary Of State Wills". A majority of the North 
Carolina counties have transferred all or part of their surviving 
original wills to the State Archives, however, some counties did not do 
that and have kept all or part of them, and looking and researching is 
the only way to determine which county did what or has what, or which 
have nothing at all on file. There is no one and no place you can go 
to, to find out what is where. And by the way, Good luck on finding any 
of them. The only way to be certain though, is to go look for yourself, 
and for that, you need about 20 years and more than a million dollars 
for motels, gas, food and etc.. 

So, just finding out where documents may be located takes an 
unbelievable amount of time and even if you find where they may be, 
they still may either be buried somewhere in the county records but no 
one knows where, may not exist at all, or are physically located in 
some other unknown counties, places, boxes, or categories. 
Additionally, to add to the mess, the Bedsoles until about 1950, went 
by all kinds of surnames and nicknames such as Betsol, Bedsowl, 
Bletsoul, Batsoal and “Cotton”, “Jeter” etc. On top of that, way too 
many of them went by half-names such as “Liz” and/or middle names all 
of which were major and time-consuming problems. How do you determine 
who the Scooter Bedsole in 1768 actually was?. In addition, there were 
many with identical whole names, living at the same times and places. 
Good luck at deciding which one you are looking at, at any given 
instance. At this point, the vast majority of older Bedsole and other 
documents no longer exist at al because they were burned when their 
respective courthouses went up in flames, and those that do exist, may 
be stored helter-skelter in boxes upon boxes of records in dark 
courthouse basements, in no kind of order and with no one there, who 
knows anything about what is where. All that is what I was up against 
in 1950 and did not find it out until I had done many years of very 
difficult and frustrating work, and all that is what you will be up 
against if you decide to research anything for your selves. So when I 
say good luck, its because you will need it. In my case, it was dogged 
determination and not luck.

There has been major loss of both recorded and original wills, land 
records, and etc. from fires, wars, and natural disasters, but by far 
most of all, carelessness. All those problems contributed to the fact 
that I could find next to nothing on any Bedsole by any name, until 
1719, when one then two, then three of them appeared in Russell and 
Spotsylvania counties in Virginia, on land records, as Bledsoes. All 
that should give you a very vague idea what you will be up against in 
Bath County, much less all the other counties in NC and other states 
and counties where the Bedsoles moved to and lived, when you try to 
either prove me wrong, or if you simply want to add to, clarify, or 
expand on what I have said or found. We won't even talk about what you 
will not find in Germany, as you will learn by reading everything I 
have written about that below. 

Country Of Origin For Bedsole, (Betzold) Is The Brandenburg Province Of 
Germany

According to its history, Prussia was a region in central europe, 
extending from the southeastern coast of the Baltic Sea to the Masurian 
Lake District. Today its land makes up parts of Russia, Germany, Poland 
and Lithuania. The Vikings inhabited parts of Prussia at one time. 
Historical books record Prussians as early as the year 1072. Many 
attempts were made over the centuries, by various "Conquerers"  to 
capture and occupy Prussia, without success. By Adalbert of Prague, 
Boleslaw of Prague, and various others during the years  997, 1015, 
1147, 1161, and 1166. Prussia was finally conquered by the Teutonic 
Knights. In 1492, "The Life Of Dorothea Of Montau", became the first 
printed publication in Prussia. The whole country became the Kingdom Of 
Prussia in 1701. In 1871, during the creation of The German Empire and 
the Unification Of Germany, Prussia became part of Germany. But in 
accordance with the Potsdam Conference in 1945, following World War II, 
the Prussian region was divided between Russia and Poland. 

Consequently, the country of Prussia was dissolved and ceased to exist 
in 1947. This provides some historical background for understanding me 
when I tell you that the surname BEDSOLE, by any variations in 
spelling, originated in Prussia, not in Germany, Russia, Ireland, 
England and etc., as is claimed by a variety of superficial 
“researchers” of the Bedsole ancestors. The Kingdom Of Prussia, was a 
German Kingdom from 1701 to 1918, and from 1871 it was the leading 
state of the German Empire, occupying two-thirds of the lands of that 
Empire. The Prime Minister Of Prussia was also the German Chancellor. 
It is important to keep in mind that, with the constant splitting-up of 
Prussia, and its final elimination as a country, there are no 
meaningful written records to research. However, I can tell you that 
those few Prussian records I did come across, as in the History Of 
Germany, I found the same time-consuming research problems with 
misspellings of surnames as I did in Germany and in the U.S. In 
addition, very cute problems like this; When Prussia became part of 
Germany, some parts were not included, the names of towns have been 
changed half a dozen times, geographical landmarks disappeared, and 
were replaced with new ones, and etc., and I did not want to become 
bogged down with that. I needed to find Betzold or some misspelling of 
it in Germany and I did not find a version of it in the few documents I 
did find of Prussian origin. So for our purposes, suffice it to say 
that "Bedsole originated in Prussia, which became Germany, so lets 
concentrate on Germany and the U.S. area", where they initially arrived 
and spread to.

I believed my Dad when he said the first Bedsole came here from 
Germany. It turned out he was absolutely correct. For years and years, 
I tried my best to prove him wrong, because I didn't want them to be 
from Germany, but the more I tried to do that, the more I proved him 
right. Then, in the London, England Genealogy Library, I obtained a 
copy of the Certificate For Country Of Origin for Bedsole. It states 
that Germany is the country of origin. Actually its Prussia, but why 
quibble when at least most of Prussia became Germany ?. I flew to 
Germany twice to research the Betzold name. First, in 1993 and again in 
1994, to see for myself. Parts of Germany were called Prussia and 
Allemandia and perhaps other things prior to becoming Germany and 
without proof, we must assume the Bedsole name actually originated some 
time prior to "Germany". I received the following from cousin Charles 
Bedsole, an attorney in Dallas, Texas, who kindly gave his permission 
to include it in this book. What Charles says is very interesting and 
quite true. In addition, it shows that our roots are in Germany and I'm 
sorry to say that, because I do not admire Germany for the Holocaust, 
among other things. This is what Charles said in response to my 
question about whether "Bedsole" and "Bledsoe" could be related; "One 
thing I find interesting is the early date of the Bletsoe name in the 
year1086 (That really is 1086) in England. According to some of the 
first English Court Cases, apparently a community named "Bledsoe" was 
there before William the Conqueror brought his army from Normandy; and, 
if so, it would make Bletsoe an Anglo-Saxon community. Further, if it 
was Anglo-Saxon, that would give Bletsoe a German connection because 
the Angles and the Saxons both emigrated to England from Germany. It 
was the Angles in fact, who gave us the name "England" ("Angle Land" 
was over time, shortened to England). The Anglo-Saxon folks were 
Germanic, while the people that emigrated when William conquered 
England were former Vikings from Scandinavia who had settled in France. 
They were initially called "Norse Men" (Northmen) and the area of 
France where they settled became "Normandy" (the land of the Northmen). 
However, being from Scandinavia, they spoke a version of German and 
were out of the same tree as the Germanic tribes who settled in what 
became modern day Germany (previously "Allemandia"). The Bletsoe family 
name, in theory, could have been an Anglicanization of an earlier 
Germanic name, e.g., Bletzold or Betzold". Many thanks to Charles for 
that information. At this point I won't even try to define the 
relationship of Bedsole and Bledsoe, further than that. But I do define 
it near the end of this book. In the same email, Charles was kind 
enough to send me the internet address of the first English court 
records. In reviewing several of those cases, I came across one wherein 
Elizabeth Bletsoe was a witness in a rape trial, dated in the year 
1061, in England. I also noted that she lived in a "Bledsoe Community". 
The surname Bledsoe, although claimed by the Bledsoe researchers, to 
have originated in England, actually originated in the same place as 
Bedsole did, and as noted elsewhere, at some time in the past, there is 
no doubt in my mind that we, the Bedsoles, Bedsauls and Bledsoes, et 
al, all share a common ancestor at some time and place in the past. 
That place is most likely to have been Prussia. In researching your 
family name, you learn to arrive at conclusions, based on several 
factors. As the old saying goes, "If it walks like a duck, quacks like 
a duck, looks and acts like a duck, then its most likely a duck". 

Similiarly in looking for the Bedsoles prior to 1950 or so, and you 
find a man with the name, if the man had roughly the right name, was at 
the right place, was there at the right time, and had certain relatives 
and/or dates, then its most likely him. In genealogical research, 
especially in the time prior to 1900 in the U.S., the most likely 
method becomes a method of proof, in the total absence of any 
documentation. As I said elsewhere, the accuracy of the Bedsole List, 
in Part Two, much of which was and is, based on Most Likely, has been 
proven time and time again to be amazingly accurate, with few 
exceptions. That may surprise you, but knowing how I made 
determinations from all the research that went into it, its accuracy 
does not surprise me at all. However, I hasten to add that accurately 
determining who is kin to whom and how they are kin, without birth, 
marriage, death, and other records, no one to ask anything about it, 
and doing it 300 years later, is definitely not easy.

In Germany, the Brandenburg district was Prussian land. It is from that 
district that the Betzolds seemed to originate. Germany is divided into 
States (Länder). These states are subdivided into Landkreise or Rural 
districts, which are made up of municipalities (Gemeinden) and 
Kreisfreie Städte, or free urban districts. In some states 
municipalities are combined into Ämter and Grossgemeinden (larger 
bodies, but the individual municipalities still exist). 

Arrival Of The First Bedsole

The first Bedsole into the U.S. arrived by English ship from Germany, 
at the settlement of Bath, NC, on September 11,1700. He was listed by 
the ships captain William Barrow, as; "Abraham Bessow.....a Pal". The 
abbreviation "Pal" at that time meant Palatine from Germany.The name 
the captain listed was his version of what the reply was from 
"Abraham", when asked his name. In reality, the reply was more likely 
something like "Abramz Betzold". They most likely spoke no english and 
the English captain most likely spoke no German and those few 
handwritten words on that scrap of paper, are the only thing we have to 
go by, take it or leave it. I take "Bessow" to have sounded like Bess-
oh to the Captain, and Germans do pronounce Betzold like we pronounce 
Bedsole. Therefore, I take "Bessow" to mean Betzold, or Bedsole. 
Obviously, he was given his first name by Captain Barrow. Bestowing 
made-up English names upon non-English arrivals in early America, was a 
common practice among ships captains until about 1930. As it turned 
out, I found "Abrahams" last name over the ensuing 30 or so years 
following that landing at Bath, spelled as Abraham Batson, Betson, 
Betsel, Bedsoe, Bedsole, Betso, Bledsoe, Bedsoal, Bedsoul and Bedsowl. 
When you see that name spelled so many different ways, you must 
determine if thats the same man, or an entirely different one without 
any proof whatsoever, and that is true no matter what name you are 
researching. I assume his last name was Betzold, but we will never know 
what his real first name really was. I also know that it was very 
common for all ships captains back then, to bestow english names on 
non-english immigrants as they pleased, with the knowledge that no one 
would ever be the wiser. They had no one to file the passenger list 
with anyway. It was through determination and luck that I found the 
tiny piece of paper with 4 or 5 names on it, including Abrahams, in the 
first place. Also, that I found his name arriving at Bath again, about 
8 months later, on May 1, 1701. That time however, he was dubbed 
"Abraham Batson" and was accompanied by his wife “Rose” and child 
“Elizabeth“, both more than likely made-up English names. However, 
despite all that, I stayed with my belief that he was a Bedsole, and 
traced it as described in this book. Then, I traced it backwards too. 
It still led me to “Abraham Bessow”. So, it’s most likely true that he 
really was our first ancestor in this country. When Abraham and his 
sons William and Isaac acquired land in Virginia (1719-1726), the clerk 
there listed their last names as Bledsoe, he being certain that the 
english name Bledsoe, was really their last name, and they being unable 
to read, write, or spell, or to speak English, couldn’t have cared 
less. However, that allowed the Bledsoe researchers to also claim that 
all 3 were actually Bledsoes, and were their own ancestors from 
England. Therefore, without documented proof, therein lies an endless 
argument between them and us. In any event, there is no doubt in my 
mind, that the Abraham listed above is our first “Bedsole” into the 
United States.

I flew to Germany, England and Ireland in 1993 and again in 1994. I 
tried to research Bledsoe and Bedsaul along with Bedsole, because of 
the similarities in spelling. But as the names Bedsole, Bledsoe and 
Bedsaul are misspelled in their early english spellings in this 
country, they also suffered the same fate in Germany, England and 
Ireland, as there are various misspellings of them over there to the 
point you don't know which name you are looking at or if it is correct 
and which misspelling of the name(s) it is actually related to. In 
other words, you can't be certain the "Betzold" you are looking at is 
actually a Betzold or a Betzall, Betzaul, or really a Bletzoe, along 
with all the misspellings, such as Blettzo, Bettzel, and etc. Running 
into those problems caused me to ignore and forget those spellings, 
because the Translators I had hired at $100 per hour each, were rapidly 
bankrupting me. However, I did satisfy myself that Bedsole absolutely 
did not orginate in Ireland, Austria and other countries as so many 
amateur researchers claim without a smidgeon of proof. I found nothing 
really new in Germany, because so much of its record systems had been 
destroyed in all the fires from the wars that country has been involved 
in, together with the mad-house absorption of Prussia into Germany. But 
the real problem is the huge prohibitive amount of time and expense 
involved in German-to-English Translators at $100 to $200 per hour 
(Translators from Old German to New German had to be employed first, 
then from New German to English). However, I did look up, meet and talk 
to several Betzold descendants, including a Wilhelm Heinrich Betzold 
(William Henry Bedsole), who had in his storeroom, an original 1650 
Betzold Coat Of Arms which I drew by hand, and a copy of which you see 
at the beginning of this book. It is important that you understand that 
anyone back in the old days of Heraldry, could register any number of 
coats of arms for any surname. Contrary to popular American belief, It 
was the design, and not the surname, which was not allowed to be 
duplicated. Therefore, there could be any number of BEDSOLE coats of 
arms. The "Official" coat of arms for a surname however, is described 
in great detail on its Certificate For Country Of Origin for that 
surname. I have the certificate for Bedsole and the coat is described, 
but I dislike the design and colors of that one immensely. So I do not 
claim the "Official" Coat. Instead, I claim the one you see at the top 
of this document and on the Bedsole internet site at; www.thebedsoles.com 

Nevertheless, I am certain there is a common ancestor for Bedsaul, 
Bledsoe, Bedsole and variations and misspellings, somewhere in the 
past. I know that the evidence that there is or is not such an 
ancestor, does not exist in the United States. I believe such an 
ancestor did exist most likely in Prussia. Anyway, back beyond Germany 
as we know it, there is no paper trail. Therefore, conjecture becomes 
meaningless. So, after only 3 weeks in Germany, my total costs had 
exceeded $25,000, so I left. What I did learn was, if you hire a 
translator, have your info ready so you are not paying them by the hour 
to find stuff for you, and to pick out that info you want translated. 
That takes so much time it will quickly bankrupt a very rich man.

In addition to all that, to find out anything about passenger shipping 
records from Germany, England or Ireland, from as far back as I could 
find information up to about 1800, the period I was most interested in, 
one needs to know at least the following: The exact names of 
passenger(s) as listed on ships records, keeping in mind that Scribes 
at the time wrote and spelled the names the best they could guess from 
what was said, because people in general could neither read nor write, 
much less spell. Names of the ships they sailed on (many ships had the 
same name), the owner(s) of the ships, the country of the ships 
registry. Do you have any idea how long that alone would take and how 
much you would spend, finding that out, if you could find it at all?. 
You also need to know the date of departure, port of departure, 
passenger’s destinations, ports of arrival, dates of arrival and etc. 
As if all that were not bad enough, prior to 1900, Germany had 
thousands upon thousands of its citizens who supposedly shipped to the 
United States, and via England. So shipping records in Germany would 
show their destination to be England. Then you have to go to England, 
and hope you can find all the above shipping information from there to 
the U.S. Naturally, thousands of those you would be interested in, 
stayed in England, thousands more changed their minds in England, and 
went back to Germany, and more of them went to countries other than the 
U.S. or England, having left from Germany and/or from England on 
different ships with various names, from various ports, on various 
dates and with various people accompanying them. In other words, they 
could have gone instead to any country.

My conclusion is this; If you already possess all that shipping 
information, you don't need to go over there to find it out. But if you 
do decide to, therein are another million research problems, requiring 
thousands upon hundreds of thousands of dollars and who knows how many 
years, to research. Another overseas research problem is this; Many 
Germans moving to this country, first shipped to England on english 
and/or german ships. In England, they were often kept several weeks in 
"Holding pens", until a full shipload was available, then they boarded 
english and/or german ships for the trip to this country. Several ships 
sunk enroute, drowning all aboard, many became disabled and put into 
the nearest port, where passengers were left to fend for themselves, 
and I have included an article of a court case regarding that fact. So 
be forewarned if you want to go overseas and trace our ancestors.

In our own National Archives, for the Bedsoles, even for immigration 
records, there is nothing in the way of passenger lists prior to about 
1880-90, which was very surprising. Upon his last arrival in this 
country, on May 1, 1701, our Abraham was accompanied by his wife "Rose" 
and young daughter, "Elizabeth". Note that all three were given English 
and not German names, which is the result of the writer at the time 
being english, and the immigrants being German, who could speak no 
english. Knowing all that now does it mean you should bow down and be 
forever grateful to me ? ....YOU BET !.

In the earliest days, prior to 1900, ships captains were not required 
to keep lists of passengers, much less turn them in to someone. Back 
then, people went by the name the Scribe at the time, wrote for them, 
until another Scribe misspelled it another way. So, Captain Barrow 
simply wrote "Abraham", instead of his true first name, which may have 
been Zjuxandyerjzunst, with no english version. Anyway, until I came 
across Abraham, I had never found any Bedsole in this country, 
misspelled or not, prior to 1730. In late 2007, I had found William 
Bedsole who was born about 1727, and who turned out to be a son of 
"Abraham". William ended up in Virginia as William Bledsoe, on land 
records. 

The Lack Of Documentation

Records of births were not even required here until about 1912 and 
marriage, death, and land records were frequently thrown away, or 
deliberately burned along with their respective courthouses, if a 
courthouse existed at the time. The Bladen County Courthouse in 
Elizabethtown, N.C, for example, where many early Bedsoles lived, was 
intentionally burned down 5 times between 1750 and 1893. In 1850 in 
desperation, the Court Clerk, took the records home with him for 
safekeeping, but his house was burned down and again, so were the 
records he tried to save. Apparently, the primary intent of the 
Arsonist(s) was to get rid of legal records in order to avoid lawsuits 
for various crimes, not the least of which were for theft, rustling, 
murder, illegal land dealings, abandonment of family, sharecropper and 
landlord problems and so forth. As for marriage records, for the 
earliest Bedsole's, getting married only required the couple to say 
their "Banns" three times in church. That is, they repeated that they 
accepted each other as husband and wife. Most church records 
disappeared over the years, as their pastors simply left, or died. 
Therefore, older records of marriages, births, deaths, wills, and etc. 
for Bedsoles are practically non-existent, prior to 1850. That leaves 
land records, which provide precious little information to a 
researcher, with zero information about any name other than the buyer 
and seller. In addition, the majority of those made no distinction 
between a Senior, Junior, Second, Third, or anything else, and with 
people naming their children after themselves, their brothers, sisters, 
aunts, uncles, parents, grandparents, and etc., you cannot determine 
with accuracy, which persons land record you are looking at, when those 
with the same name, either both or all, lived at the same time and 
usually in the same place at the same time. In addition, determining 
kinships and relationships were another frustrating and time-consuming 
problem, which you will find in Part Two of this book..

Following the burning of courthouses back then, those landowners and 
others who had kept some kind of records, could take them back to the 
new courthouse and have them re-recorded. In addition, counties were 
supposed to have a record also transferred to the states capitol. 
However, some did not do that. Consequently, many records were never 
recorded in counties or at capitols of some states in the first place. 
In addition, for those courthouses which were repeatedly burned down, 
even when some records were re-recorded, they were repeatedly destroyed 
and over time, fewer and fewer such records survived, and fewer and 
fewer were recorded at state offices. Additionally, the creation of 
several other counties from parts of one or more original counties, 
only added to the confusion and loss of vital records. No one at the 
county or state levels ever audited or corrected any errors which 
existed between the two levels.

The USGENWEB site has a continuing effort and program, to transcribe 
census data and place it on the internet, so perhaps that and other 
data will become more available in the future, provided enough 
dedicated volunteers can be found to do all that hard work. That means 
though, that the data must first be located which I am willing to bet, 
never happens.

The absence, especially of land records, compels me to conclude that, 
although land to them was cheap, even free from the government, the 
vast majority of Bedsoles until about 1950, were share-croppers and 
agricultural workers. That is, they worked primarily for other, more 
affluent landowners and that was one of the major reasons so few land 
records for them were ever found. They never existed in the first 
place. Those that did are few and far between.

As I studied the movements of the early Bedsoles in NC (1700-1850), I 
could see that they moved from Bath, to Dobbs, Bertie, Edgecombe, 
Duplin, Bladen, Johnston, Sampson and finally to Brunswick counties in 
NC, indicating a steady fan-shaped movement south and southwestward 
from Bath, now Beaufort, County. Ending at Brunswick County, near the 
state line with South Carolina, the fan-shaped movement is a familiar 
and predictive one when you are reviewing first settlements of new 
places. Reading about NC in general and Bath County in particular, I 
found that repeated Yellow Fever epidemics and fierce, barbaric, 
antagonistic and warlike indian tribes in and around NC and especially 
Bath back then, were also good reasons for these early arrivals to move 
and to move frequently. However, the fact that original counties were 
subdivided and other counties created from them, also erroneously gives 
the impression people were moving, when the truth is, the subdivisions 
were occurring instead.

As you will see, documentation on Abraham, Elizabeth and Rose, ceased 
to exist after their arrival at Bath in May, 1701 and their arrival in 
Virginia in 1719-1726. That fact created a problem in determining who 
the subsequent children of Abraham and Rose's. Their son William 
appeared on paper in Russell County, Virginia in the form of a 
handwritten land deed in 1719. Abraham and William both appeared the 
next time, in Spotsylvania County, Virginia in 1726, on a land record 
for 1,000 acres. Their last names were written on those land records as 
Bledsoe. The logical reason for that is that all record-keepers were 
English, and they wrote and spelled names they were familiar with, and 
since Bledsoe was in England as far back as the year 1061, they were 
very familiar with that spelling and freely assigned that spelling on 
anyone pronouncing their name even remotely like "Bledsoe" or 
"Bedsole". In Virginia, the trail became very muddled, with the 
appearance of several apparently bonafied Bledsoe's, who became mixed 
with bonafide Bedsoles. Then, due to english Scribes, their last names 
were freely interchanged among them all.

After that, the efforts to keep track and definition of the bonified 
Bedsole's and the bonified Bledsoe's required quadrupling of time, 
efforts, research., study and analyses. All that required quadrupling 
again, after they all had sons whom they named after themselves, each 
other, uncles, parents and grandparents. It all became a royal mess, 
keeping track of who was whom. Through extensive use of the "Most 
Likely" research method, I did decide who was whom, as related to 
Abraham, at least to a point.

THE CONFUSION OF BEDSOLE AND BLEDSOE SURNAMES

From the start, to current times, the North Carolina, Alabama, 
Tennessee, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas Census data repeatedly show 
Bledsoe's and Bedsole's living among each other and when one moved, the 
others either went with them, or shortly afterwards, to the same place. 
That indicates to me that most, or at least many, Bedsoles and Bledsoes 
were either related or were freely using each others last name(s), or 
both. Of course, the spelling of names was always left up to the 
discretion, knowledge and ability of the Scribe at the time. If someone 
told the Scribe their last name was Bedsole, there’s no doubt in my 
mind that the Scribe, being English, decided many times that they were 
actually Bledsoe's and not Bedsole's, and spelled it as Bledsoe. A very 
major problem caused by all that uncertainty, was the inability to 
determine with any degree of certainty in most cases, if the "Bedsole" 
being researched was really a Bedsole or Bledsoe. And that is something 
which one must frequently decide without much or any, additional 
information.

So for example, when a "John Bedsole" is listed on the 1790 Census' for 
Wake, Cumberland and Anson counties. It is likely that one of those 
Johns was the one born about 1730 and the other is the one born in 
1753. Or one or more Johns moved during the Census counts or, that 
third John is either the same guy counted twice, or there was a John 
Jr. or Sr. in one or more, of those counties. It is also possible that 
they counted John Bledsoe in one and John Bedsole in the other, 
misspelling Bedsole or Bledsoe, or both. After all, how would Census 
Takers determine the various county boundaries, as they roamed the 
country side? From studying all this and everything else I've come 
across, it makes me think that the early, and consequently many 
current, Bedsoles and Bledsoes are intermixed to the point of 
impossibility in defining them, with any degree of certainty, beyond 
ones best guess and, some Bedsoles assumed the Bledsoe name and vice-
versa, for various reasons. Currently, there is a separate line of 
Bledsoes, another of Bedsauls and one for Bedsoles. That separate line 
is further strengthened by the fact that many earlier Bledsoe's 
eventually moved to Indiana, but the Bedsole's moved from NC to either 
Tennessee, or southward. The Bedsole's initially moved almost 
simultaneously, from North Carolina to Tennessee, Alabama, Florida, 
Louisiana, Texas and Georgia. Despite that separation, some with the 
Bledsoe name or spelling are also in those same southern states at the 
same time as the Bedsoles, a big problem is, there’s no way to know 
which of those in the north or south were born as Bledsoes and which 
were born as Bedsoles, and worse, even when born, they may not have 
actually been a Bedsole or Bledsoe to begin with. It gets incredibly 
confusing, when you are trying to figure out who is whom, 300 years 
later, with no one to ask for clarification and, as in my own case, 
those you contact will not provide the answers.

When a Scribe back then showed up at some Bedsoles house, after 15-20 
years, for whatever purpose, selling something, land transfers, trades, 
census, legal problems, whatever, who knows what our ancestors answered 
when asked for their last names and ages. On top of that, who knows 
what was written, after he heard their answer, trying to spell it like 
it sounded, when the Scribe was English and the person answering was 
German, who spoke no english. For example, the Scribe somehow asks 
"What is your name ?". The answer the best he can understand it is like 
this: " Vilhelm Bahssow, Bessow, Bhatson, Blitsuh, zumzing like zatt". 
Scribe:." Do you know how to spell it" Answer: "Nein, nein sprechen sie 
englishen". So what do you think the Scribe wrote for the persons name 
?. Now, 300 years later, along comes J.D. Bedsole, trying to figure out 
not only who all these people were, but how they were all related, 
where they lived and when, with no one to ask, and all he has to look 
at to figure all that out is what that Scribe wrote that day and 
nothing else, in too many cases.

How Abraham "Bessow" Got Here

The first Bedsole in this country was "Abraham Bessow", who was born 
about 1673 in Germany and died about 1740 in Virginia. Although I know 
his German name was not Abraham nor Bessow, I'll use that without 
knowing what it really was, and explain why further on. I believe that 
in Germany, the Betzold family were farm laborers who worked on farms 
and in grape vineyards. Agricultural workers. They were probably 
desperately poor and lived in mud-brick huts. Abraham, his parents and 
siblings wore wornout and patched homemade clothes and all of them 
usually went without shoes, the father being far too poor to acquire 
shoes for himself or his family. 

Abraham had heard wonderous stories about a “New Land”, the future 
United States, being advertised by the government of England. It was 
described as “beautiful and a land of plenty”. Over a period of many 
months, they also heard that the English government was giving free and 
cheap land to any and all who went there to settle and to live out 
their lives. Little did he, or anyone else yearning to go, suspect that 
the English merely wanted the settlers to go, clear off and farm the 
land and start producing goods needed by England, such as tobacco, 
cotton and tar so they could receive these products and also 
coincidentally, tax such settlers, thereby fattening their own 
governments coffers. 

Then it was made known that the English government would also allow 
such settlers to leave the new land to their children as entitlements 
from the parents, when the parents died. I'm sure it seemed too good to 
be true and Abraham began to dream of the new land and to make plans to 
go there to live. His parents encouraged him, but also warned that it 
would not be easy, going to a new land with practically nothing except 
the clothes on his back, to travel and live among total strangers, with 
so many inherent dangers and unknowns involved, and the inhuman 
hardships and suffering that were bound to be incurred. He never 
dreamed how the suffering and hardships would be proved without 
question and many times over. So, true to his German ancestry he was 
stubborn, and one day in 1700, he said goodby to his family and 
together with a friend his own age, began the trek to look for some way 
to catch a boat to the big seaport and to leave for the new country. 

Abraham and his friend probably found a small commercial boat working a 
river and convinced the owner to transport them downstream to the 
seagoing port in return for a week of manual labor helping the owner 
load and unload trade goods with which he bartered, bought, sold and 
made a living on the river. At the seaport, when their fare was finally 
paid, they were on their way. At that time, the captains of the large, 
seagoing ships had learned they could transport new settlers to what 
later became America and collect their fares upon arrival, from earlier 
and richer settlers who needed laborers here. (During the period 1700-
1712, there was a huge influx of Palatines from Germany into the U.S).

[Note: Sailing From Germany To "The New Country" A Typical Trip To 
America Went Like This Too Often:.From An Old English Admiralty Court 
Case. I included this to show how they were mistreated back then.]

James Hogg's brother settled in Wilmington, N.C. many years ago and at 
his solicitation James decided to also go settle there. When this was 
learned in Caithness, many people applied to Hogg to freight a vessel 
to carry them all to "The Carolina's". Accordingly, on 24, Aug., 1773, 
Hogg contracted with Inglis to freight the ship, Batchelor of Leith, 
Ramage Alexander, Master, to carry James Hogg of Borland in Caithness, 
his family and servants, and 200 emigrants from Thurso to Wilmington, 
N. C. Hogg agreed to pay for himself, wife, Mrs. Alves (his mother-in-
law) a specified rate, another for his children, a third for his 
servants (the latter being restricted to six in number), a fourth for 
emigrants above the age of eight, and a fifth for emigrants under the 
age of eight (excepting children at the breast for whom there was no 
fare). 
 
The vessel was to be ready to depart Leith, England in July and was to 
proceed from Leith to Thurso Bay on Scrabster Road to load the 
passengers. Hogg arrived in Leith on June 15th and hung on until August 
26, waiting for a full load of passengers. The vessel Batchelor then 
went to Thurso and was boarded by Hogg and his family and servants, and 
204 emigrants (many from the County of Sutherland).They sailed two 
months behind schedule, from Thurso on Sept. 14, but they were soon 
forced to harbor from contrary winds at Stromness in Orkney, where they 
put the passengers ashore for eight days. On October 3, two days after 
leaving Stromness, due to storm damage to the ship, they were obliged 
to put into Vaila Sound in Shetland where the passengers were again put 
ashore. Here the Batchelor was again damaged by a storm from which they 
were sheltering. Hogg, his family, and the 204 emigrants wintered at 
Vaila Sound. The following Spring, April 20, 1774, eight months after 
departing initially boarding, they departed for Leith in order for the 
ship to have the necessary repairs made. At Leith, Inglis declared the 
contract at an end and declared he was entitled to the fares upon 
landing them at Leith as he would have been had he landed them at 
Wilmington, NC. The vessel lay without repairs, and on 28 May, Hogg 
entered a protest against Inglis. Many of the children of the 
emigrants, Hogg claims, died during their winter of hardships in 
Shetland. Now, he says, the emigrants have been turned ashore in Leith, 
200 miles from home, and many of them with no means of returning home 
or of procuring another vessel to carry them to America. Imagine being 
one of those passengers with a spouse and 5 children and no money, or 
anything else for that matter. 

In Admiralty Court, James Inglis alleged damage by stress of weather 
prevented him from continuing on a voyage with emigrants, and suggested 
that the commencement of this action by Hogg has terminated their 
contract. He also stated that he had no concern whatever with the 
emigrants nor were they party-contractors to him; that his contract 
with Hogg was for freight of a certain number of emigrants who were to 
board his vessel as passengers to America, but that he had no concern 
with how they were to be employed, where taken in America, and so 
forth; that to him the passengers stood in the same relationship as 
goods or common freight. Inglis alleges that the real dispute is 
between Hogg and the emigrants. Hogg and his family took another vessel 
sailing from Port of Greenock, but the other poor emigrants dispersed, 
some to seek their way home, and others to endevour to gain their bread 
in the low country, and some of them attempted to procure their passage 
from Greenock. 

Generally, some emigrants died during the voyage before their arrival 
in Shetland and others died after the vessel was stranded.(There are 32 
pages just about that] In the instant case, Inglis alleged that he had 
advised Hogg from the beginning that the vessel Batchelor, then on a 
voyage to Memel (modern Klaipeda in Lithuania), could not be ready 
early, for the voyage to N.C. He says that the date the vessel sailed 
was in fact a good season to set out for North Carolina. He denied that 
public spirit motivated Hogg to arrange for emigration of upward of 200 
Scots, and suggested that Hogg's brother had purchased 12,000 acres of 
land and wanted settlers for it. He said Hogg had been discussing 
"these questions himself in newspapers and periodical publications." He 
also Alleged that 2/3 of the emigrants stayed aboard the vessel at 
Stromness and were provisioned by the master of the Batchelor. He 
further said that the emigrants angrily advanced against Hogg and 
Captain Ramage in the Vice-Admiralty Court of Shetland, and quoted from 
Hogg's defense there, in which Hogg refers back to a 1772 emigration 
from Sutherland that lay two weeks at Stromness without being 
provisioned from the ship's stores. 

He said ships with emigrants had only 9 or 10 weeks provisions, and 
says that several of the passengers aboard the Batchelor saw at 
Stromness from Capt. Ritchie and Capt. Smith's ships that that was the 
case. He stated that deaths of several passengers came from small-pox 
and not neglect. He said he instructed Captain Ramage on January 1, 
1774 to return the emigrants to their home, but that they refused "to a 
man" to disembark at Thurso; that he tried to assist the emigrants at 
Leith, "but cannot help mentioning that they are in general so indolent 
they do not care to work if they can get a subsistence by any other 
means". (Sounds like that attitude continued on for way too many years, 
to this day, in the U.S.) He contended that Hogg, by taking ship for 
America from Greenock, had abandoned prosecution of the action. All 
that is just one example of the horrible hardships and treaments of our 
early ancestors who came here. 
 
Abrahams Trip From Germany 

Now, back to our ancestor, Abraham; So, the ten or eleven-week trip 
across the ocean to what later became Bath, North Carolina began in 
Germany, on a cold day about the first of July, 1700. The ship was 
English, made of wood and powered by sails. It was one hundred two feet 
long, twenty-five feet wide and twenty feet deep and the cracks between 
its many wooden planks were sealed with tar and tar-soaked twine. It 
was a miracle it could even survive such a hazardous trip without 
falling apart, considering the beating it was certain to incur from the 
constantly heaving, frothing, rushing and thrashing water of the open 
ocean for such a long period of time. For this trip, it carried a 
passenger load of 106 settlers and a crew of twelve men.

Think of it; 118 Men, women and children on a vessel that small for ten 
to twelve weeks or longer under such conditions; With almost all 
passengers being sick and some even dying during the trip, no toilet 
facilities except for buckets tied to ropes, no privacy and no 
provisions for taking a bath except for buckets of salt water dipped 
from the ocean. These were accepted hardships and baths were generally 
ignored. These ships were also loaded with trade goods, fresh water 
which always became stagnant after only a few days, food, a few medical 
supplies, and the few pitiful household goods of the passengers. 

Many times the ships captains would steal the best baggage carried by 
the passengers and sell it or load it onto a different ship for a 
price, with the settelers pitiful belongings never seen again by the 
owners. Their baggage usually contained dried fruit, butter which 
turned into a mess during these sailings, other foodstuffs, clothes, 
tools and money which they had planned to use to live, eat, pay for 
their fare and for supplies upon reaching their destination. They were 
not aware that their pitifully small amounts of money would be next to 
useless in the “New Land”, because "Trade" was the most prevalent 
"money" in this country at that time. The fare for the poorer 
passengers was guaranteed by the more affluent settlers already in the 
New Land, and who were in great need of laborers and who would pay the 
Captain upon arrival in what was called "The Bath Settlement" which 
later became Bath, NC, in this case.

Aboard ship, the passengers were crammed into very tight quarters. At 
first, they sat on the top deck sitting on lashed-down household goods, 
boxes and bags of cargo, and personal belongings, as they grew tired, 
sleepy and hungry, they wandered all over the ship, both above and 
below decks . Being powered by sails, such ships usually found 
themselves becalmed for several days and nights during these trips. 
Because such sitting and waiting for the wind to blow may last for two 
days at a time. That was a total nightmare always waiting to happen and 
too often it did. 

Twenty five cannons were also lashed on deck, by the ships crew. They 
were needed to fight off any Spanish ships they were liable to 
encounter on the trip in view of the fact that Spain and England were 
at odds at that time. Leaving port, the ship was heavily loaded, and 
with its sails full of wind, it slowly headed out into the open ocean. 

The next morning about two a.m., no surprise to the crew of course, 
they awoke to find the ship groaning, cracking, popping and creaking as 
it heaved, tossed, pitched, rolled and yawed from side to side wildly, 
with loud crashing sounds, in the opening round of its long battle with 
the heaving, frothing ocean. By the end of the first day and with the 
exception of the experienced crew, all aboard were already deathly 
seasick and were lying below and above decks. They vomited until they 
were just heaving, but with nothing coming up. They were already pale 
in color and listless. Most of the adults were already having second 
thoughts about making this trip. But they were all committed now, as 
the ship thrashed slowly along gaining foot by foot, in its beginning 
fight for and against, the wind. This was a life or death fight they, 
and the ship faced. As they plodded along day after day, the hapless 
passengers did their best to deal with the never-ending heaving, 
pitching, rolling and yawing of the ship. The front end would point 
skyward as it climbed wave after wave, then dive down the other side, 
until the bow was terrifyingly underwater, then it would rear up again, 
pointing skyward, as thousands of gallons of salt water rushed across 
the decks from front to rear, sometimes injuring some of the more 
foolish passengers who ventured out on the heaving deck, by slamming 
them against the rigging, freight, cabin and bulwarks of the ship. 

Practically all the women and children spent most of their time below 
deck with the women tending to the constantly sick children, who would 
vomit as soon as they ate anything at all. Many of them were running a 
fever, from drinking the already-stagnant, untreated and contaminated 
fresh water onboard. They, and many of the adults were lying and 
sitting, staring listlessly, in a brew of vomit and human excrement in 
the ships hold, for days. Some for weeks. The ships captain and crew 
advised the passengers to eat only rice, or bread, but no meat or 
anything greasy for the first 3 days or more. Of course, the passengers 
had no desire whatsoever for anything greasy and the mere thought sent 
most running for the “slop jars” used as commodes and toilets by all on 
board. These usually rolled and fell over, emptying their odorous 
mixture into the hold and on the flooring and all over any nearby 
passengers and their clothing. The stench below deck was indescribable. 

With no way to treat the passengers, everyone on board watched 
helplessly as child after child and adult after adult slowly died, over 
the next 10 weeks. With no other choice in what to do with the dead 
bodies, they were simply dumped overboard and left at sea. The 
suffering, sorrow and heart-wrenching, gut-twisting anguish, of those 
who had to do that with the bodies of their dead relatives, children 
and spouses, can only be imagined, as they watched the bodies bobbing 
and floating slowly away with the waves. 

Six weeks went by and several of the adults were now dead. Some of 
those were husbands, traveling with their families, leaving their 
hapless wives and children on their own in the middle of the ocean, 
among strangers, headed for a totally unknown land and the terrifying, 
unknown, unplanned, and as proved later, disastrous consequences which 
awaited them. 

So it was, that this nightmarish trip finally ended near the end of the 
eleventh week at sea, when the ships Lookout yelled from the “Crows 
Nest” that he had spotted land. At this news, the passengers who were 
still able to move, rushed to the side of the ship to look, with the 
joyful thought that this total nightmare was about to end. Little did 
they know their nightmare was only just beginning. The ship approached 
land cautiously, the captain not being certain of the exact layout of 
the body of land the Lookout had spotted. Searching for the mouth of 
the Pamlico River and a fort with more than a hundred earlier settlers 
already there at Bath, NC, was not easy, with no navigational methods, 
except intuition and memory. He ordered the crew to lower sails and 
drop anchor, to allow an exploratory party on a dinghy to paddle closer 
in to the shallower water and get a look at the land. Suddenly, from 
around a finger of land, sailing towards the English ship, was a 
Spanish Man-O-War ship, bristling with deck cannons. Upon seeing the 
English ship, the Spanish commander, ordered his crew to lower sails, 
come to a halt and drop anchor, perhaps 2,000 feet away, and then 
dispatched two row boats to the English ship for boarding and 
investigation. 

However, the english ships captain indicated his ship was English, in 
free waters, and not subject to any authority of the Spanish king, and 
ordered his crew to fire on the Spanish ship with two of the deck 
cannons. The two shots missed. The fire was answered almost instantly, 
with a volley from the Spanish ship, with one of the shells striking 
the main mast of the English ship, causing it to drop to the deck, 
killing three of the settlers and injuring 3 others, who had gathered 
to watch the confrontation. Working desperately to bring its cannons to 
bear amid all the tied-down household goods on deck, the English ship 
returned fire, but this time with five deck cannons. Two of its shells 
struck the Spanish ship almost midship and severely damaged the vessel. 
With that, the Spanish captain waved the white flag, indicating 
surrender, but the English captain, not wanting to incur the problem of 
having to control the Spanish crew while trying to deliver the settlers 
to land, ordered a hasty departure from the area, picking up his 
exploratory boat and crewmen before doing so. 

Continuing his slow search, for the mouth of the River, the ship 
finally approached the entrance and continued sailing up the river. 
They eventually approached a wooden fort, triangular in shape, 
measuring four hundred feet by four hundred feet by four hundred feet, 
constructed of logs set into the ground with sharpened tops pointing 
skyward and within which there were sixteen small, one-room log cabins 
with dirt floors. 

At each of the 3 points on the forts triangular walls were guard and 
lookout towers for protection against marauding Indians who attacked 
them from time to time. Within the fort, there were perhaps seventy-
five surviving settlers and outside its walls, the remainder, wildly 
cheering, shouting and waving a welcome to the ship and its newcomers, 
in the mistaken belief that the ship carried food, medicine and 
supplies for the forts current occupants. The captain ordered his crew 
to lower the sails and drop anchor, in six fathoms, thirty-six feet, of 
water, about 300 feet from shore. 

The captain ordered the rowboat lowered and again three crewmen were 
sent ashore to determine a satisfactory anchorage location for the ship 
which would allow the passengers to unload. Shortly, the three men 
returned with the news that the anchorage was satisfactory where the 
ship had stopped and its passengers would have to be unloaded a few at 
a time, and carried ashore in the ships two small rowboats, because of 
shallower water near shore. Already with inadequate supplies, 
especially foodstuffs, these additional settlers just meant increased 
suffering and hardship for all concerned, for those already in the fort 
were desperately short of food and clean, fresh water. In addition, 
many among them were seriously sick, with nothing left in the way of 
medicine. 

The paying passengers were unloaded first, with all their belongings. 
The ships Captain, knowing that there were some among those already on 
shore who had money furnished by The London Company, a private english 
business, and that they desperately needed able, manual laborers and 
helpers, offered the remaining passengers and their children to the 
highest bidder on shore, who would pay their fares. 

Upon striking a bargain, the hapless victims of this auction, were 
required to sign a twelve-month contract, to perform free labor in 
return for the highest bidders payment, as the bidder should see fit. 
The “Sheriff” at the fort was also present to enforce the contracts. 
Families of men who had died or were killed during the overseas trip, 
were then offered to the highest bidder as “Servants”. 

Most such families had to be separated and split up, because the 
winning Bidder could not provide and care for another family of a 
mother and children and his own too. Therefore, many families were thus 
destroyed at the fort, as those children and mothers were split up and 
assigned to several different bidders. The heartache of the mothers 
watching their children being divided up among different, unknown and 
unfamiliar families and as learned later, to have them leave the fort 
for parts unknown, never to be seen again by her or each other, must 
have been horrible.

Within the fort, life was a living hell. It was cold at the time and it 
rained just often enough to keep the grounds of the fort and the floors 
of the cabins in a swirl of nasty, sloppy, sticky mud almost knee deep 
from all the activity and people constantly moving about inside the 
fort. Over the next few weeks, sickness from the lack of adequate food 
and nourishment, contaminated water, exposure to the weather and 
contagious diseases, steadily decimated the population. Restful sleep 
was out of the question, due to the constant noise, sickness, misery, 
hunger, cold, Indian attacks and worry. With no medical care, these 
luckless people could only pray for their loved ones and themselves to 
get well, with no hope of a better life in the future. 

By now, they all realized they were helplessly lost in the situation 
and that they had no choice but to go forward and hope for the best. As 
time went on, a few brave men ventured away from the fort and 
settlement, sometimes traveling a few miles and back, looking for a 
route to move their families southward so they could obtain their own 
land as they had heard could be done. They wanted desperately to get 
out of that hellish fort and start their own lives, for they considered 
it certain death to remain there. So, in early spring a few and 
sometimes several in a group would leave the fort and seek their own 
future. 

Later, oxen, mules, carts and wagons would be available to travel, but 
at that time, walking was the only way to travel, so the trip they 
made, looking for their own land, and carrying all they owned on their 
backs was another long and difficult trial, having only animal and 
Indian trails to follow, which lead in the southerly direction desired. 
They traveled in daylight and camped at night, cautiously avoiding all 
contact with the Indians if at all possible. Many Indians were 
murderous and would kill any and all white people on sight, no 
questions asked. When Indian contact could not be avoided, all in the 
settlers groups, held their breaths, never knowing if they were about 
to be killed until it was too late for many. The settlers always tried 
first to trade their way out of any such confrontations, offering 
trinkets, beads, whatever they had brought for the purpose. 

The Indians, having never seen such shiny things, treasured them very 
highly and such trades were frequently successful, allowing the 
settlers to proceed on their journey. As for our ancestor Abraham, he 
was destined to leave shortly. In his opinion to say that was good, was 
a gross understatement. After working for several months, he decided he 
liked the countryside there and he acquired some land as “Squatters 
Rights”, along with several other newcomers. His log house was attacked 
several times by Indians, mostly hunting parties of six to eight men, 
but he managed to get his flintlock rifle and fire a shot at them. A 
few times, he killed an Indian. But it was the noise that drove them 
away, for they didn’t know what else that noisy thing might be able to 
do. Perhaps wipe them all out. Several times, the Indians were drunk on 
whiskey which they had traded for at the fort and in such cases, were 
not as afraid of his gun. 

Travel from place to place, county to county, state to state: Traveling 
with wagons full of their meager supplies, tools and household goods, 
all the men carried muskets, powder and shot and these weapons usually 
saved them from the Indians when a shot was fired. It terrified the 
indians even more when one or two of them were killed by these weapons, 
but it also made the Indians hate the settlers more and made them more 
murderous.

With two men going on ahead of the group to hunt deer and any other 
edible thing they could find along the planned trail, including trading 
with Indians, the group lived from day to day and traveled that way. 
When deer were found, the group could handle four or five, depending on 
the size of the deer, by dividing the meat to be carried among 
themselves. They had to eat the meat within two days, or it would begin 
to rot. They could have preserved it longer than that by smoking it, 
but that would have taken too much time. Also, the smoke and smell of 
the meat would sometimes attract Indians and dangerous wild animals 
such as bears and panthers. 

Early spring squash, corn and other vegetables were traded and acquired 
from the Indians and from a few trading posts, along the trail. They 
also found wild turnips and polk bushes could be cooked like turnip 
greens and eaten, after boiling to remove most of its poisonous juices. 
Ironically, we owe a lot to the indians for helping our early settlers, 
to survive. During the trip, a few streams were flooded and many 
crossings were disastrous at best for the travelers, wagons, animals 
and supplies, even with the wagons loaded, they would easily half-float 
and just as easily overturn during any crossing attempt. Thus, they had 
to be kept upright by ropes tied to them and being stabilized on both 
sides by mules, horses, or oxen and riders, keeping the ropes tight. 
Sometimes people drowned while the wagons were attempting such 
crossings and overturned in the fast-flowing water. Small children and 
especially infants were in the greatest danger during these crossings 
and many of them and some adults also died in the process, being caught 
in, and under, all the freight and household goods on the wagons. 

After 3 days of travel, the advance hunting party had killed six deer 
and hauled them to the trail along which the wagons would soon be 
traveling. While waiting for them, the hunters skinned and butchered 
the fresh meat and made it ready for consumption. Every day a couple of 
hours before dark, the travelers stopped the wagons and formed them in 
a protective circle. Some men set to work gathering feed for the oxen 
and mules and watering the animals, while others cut and stacked enough 
firewood for the night. Meanwhile, the women and older girls prepared 
places to sleep and cooked supper. After supper, the men watered the 
animals again and secured them for the night by tying them with 
“pigging strings” which were wires or ropes strung between two trees, 
or “hobbles” which simply means tying the feet of the animals together, 
to prevent them walking or running off during the night. The hobbles 
also served as a hindrance to any Indians who tried to make off with 
the animals, because the animals could not walk, or even trot. Knowing 
that Indians might steal their livestock, the wagonmaster assigned two 
shifts of night guards for the camp and the livestock for the night. 
Finally, just before midnight, all people not working were asleep and 
the night sounds of crying babies, chirps of crickets and small animal 
sounds were all that could be heard.

A small fire was kept burning all night in order to scare away the 
bigger wild animals. During the night, the mosquitos buzzed incessantly 
around the heads and in the ears of those trying to sleep. Some nights 
it rained all night and everything stayed wet, making the travelers 
more miserable than would otherwise be the case. With muddy trails, 
mosquitos, snakes, cold weather, rain, sick children, overturning 
wagons, lack of trails to follow, indians and things staying wet, the 
increased pain, misery and suffering quickly became a way of life. On 
any typical day, everyone on the wagon train was up at 4 a.m. and 
immediately set to work, repeating the jobs they had done the night 
before; Feeding and watering the animals, and filling all the water 
barrels while the women prepared breakfast, usually consisting of 
hoecakes, fried meat and coffee for everybody. Then the children had to 
be cared for and fed. 

After breakfast, everything had to be repacked, reloaded and lashed 
down on the wagons, the livestock had to be rounded up and kept 
together until the wagons began moving. The hunters went first. By the 
time the group was ready to go, most people were already tired from 
lack of sleep and from all the work that had been done at the beginning 
of the day. The night guards had most of the day to try for some sleep, 
but that was not easy on a loud, bumpy and very uncomfortable wagon. 
Finaly, with the wagon train on the move, the loose livestock were a 
huge problem because of the little control the settlers were able to 
exercise over them. Keeping them on the trail of the wagons required 
constant chasing, steering and caring for them all day. 

Along the way, they passed a few outposts and supply/trading posts 
which were built of logs and occupied usually by previous settlers who 
found living along the route to be a little easier by buying, selling 
and trading goods such as tools, weapons, animal hides and edibles from 
the Indians and other settlers, and the passing wagon trains. In the 
absence of money, the trade of goods was the prevalent way of doing 
business. These outposts also served as sources of information to all 
travelers concerning other settlers, indians, forts, and directions, 
but most importantly, they provided information on Indian troubles and 
trouble spots such as trees down, trail washouts, stream crossings, or 
landslides, or large trees across the trails ahead.

HOW THEY LIVED 

Upon arriving at a new destination, the travelers learned that the 
government would sell frontier land at a low cost per hundred acres, 
with the stipulation that the buyer would clear and plant 3 acres of 
the land every calendar year, for every hundred acres received, up to a 
limit of about 260 acres per family, depending upon the number of 
people in the family. Prior to the establishment of local land offices, 
no limits existed on acreage for new settlers. From earlier settlers in 
the area, they learned that although the land was free, many of them 
worked as share-croppers, or at other work for various periods of time. 
Some worked as carpenters, wagon makers, “coopers” (barrel 
makers/carpenters), seamstresses, tailors, blacksmiths, shoe makers and 
so forth. But most worked as share-croppers and that means performing 
back-breaking, common labor, farming someone else’s land for them, for 
half of whatever is produced, after expenses are subtracted. The 
prevalent crops were corn, peanuts, tobacco, cotton, and tar or pitch, 
but with tobacco and cotton being the principal crops. However, The 
English government wanted lots of tar, which the settlers harvested 
from the abundant pine trees in the area. England would buy this 
production for a pittance, and take trade in payment too. In acquiring 
title to public land being transferred for the first time by the 
Government back then, the buyer received a “Patent”. But when 
transferring ownership of that same land after that, the new buyer 
would receive a “Deed”. Therefore, these first arrivals received 
Patents, sometimes referred to as “Grants”. But Grants were usually 
free land acquired from the government, for some service rendered. The 
acquisition of land, or a job, was the first step in a monstrous, 
lifetime work project for everyone concerned, for the land had to be 
cleared not only of trees, but also of their stumps and many large 
rocks. 

Digging up and moving stumps is a hugely demanding job and I speak from 
personal experience. It takes two strong men about one hour of fast, 
hard work to expose all the roots of the stump of a mature tree. Once 
all the roots are cut loose from the main stump, there is almost always 
a very deep, long and large taproot, which grows straight downward from 
the base of the stump, meaning you cannot get at it to cut it because 
the stump and its upper roots cover it from above and it is so deep 
that much back-breaking digging with shovels, and chopping with axes is 
necessary. Once the stump has been cut loose however, a two-mule team 
was chained to it and if they were strong enough it could usually be 
pulled up. Then it would have to be dragged down into the swamp and 
left there, or stacked in the field to be burned after drying out for 
four or five weeks. One hour for one stump, when there are hundreds, 
usually thousands of them, meant a huge, back-breaking and time-
consuming job which produced no food or any other benefit of any kind 
in the short term.

But, with shelter being the immediate need on a new tract of land, the 
settlers set about working in teams, first clearing their spots for log 
houses. Those rich and fortunate enough to own wagons were lucky, 
because crude Lean-to’s made of sapling trees were the first shelters 
for the less fortunate. Those with wagons could live for a time in the 
wagon and even expand its space by attaching a lean-to to it. 

The location of their log houses was important and they were located as 
close as possible to a source of good drinking water, preferably a 
spring. Having to dig a forty or fifty foot-deep well, was a luxury 
which could be ill-afforded, when they didn’t even have a house to live 
in. They worked together to get the jobs done, handling the big, heavy 
logs, working on first one house, then the other, cutting the trees 
down, trimming them and dragging the resulting logs to the house site. 
The debarking and splitting of the logs and putting up the framework 
and then making hundreds of thousands of handmade wooden shingles for 
the roofs, took several weeks. Dirt floors sufficed at the time. Houses 
were crude and consisted of only one room. Wooden floors and porches 
were luxuries which would have to wait. 

The clearing of land and construction of houses took several of the 
summer months and the settlers were hard-pressed to get the houses done 
and a supply of firewood cut for the 4 to 5 months of winter which lay 
just ahead of them, beginning in November. They also needed lots of 
animal hides, dried and cured, prepared for the winter, by the women 
and children. Teamwork among all concerned was an absolute necessity 
and meant the difference between life and death most of the time. Syrup 
and cornbread for breakfast, turnips or grease/gravy and cornbread for 
lunch/dinner and the same for supper, were their primary foods. 

Meat was a rarity because of the small supply of gunpowder and shot, 
which were expensive and needed for protection from Indians which was a 
priority. That forced them to use traps for wild animals and meat. Meat 
was preserved by smoking it for a week or more, but that required a 
small smokehouse and lots of wood, then someone to attend to the 
smoking process. Vegetables were mostly non-existent most of that first 
summer season. At that time, they had no means of communicating over 
long distances with each other except by runner and in cases of Indian 
attacks, which occurred too frequently, the runner himself would become 
the prime target of the Indians. 

Before long however, those who could afford one, had put a large iron 
bell up on a 30 foot pole at the edge of their yards which were rung by 
pulling a rope. About noon every day, the ringing of these bells meant 
come and eat, to the field workers. With houses so far apart, it was 
clear whose bell was ringing. If the bell rang at any other time, 
especially at night, it meant an emergency had occurred at that 
particular house, and anyone hearing it ran to help. Five peals of the 
bell meant come and eat. Ten meant emergency here, need help. Twenty, 
meant a life or death situation had developed at that house and when an 
emergency occurred some rode their mules at a dead run, whether in 
daytime, or the dead of night. But when the bell rang at night, it 
filled everyone with dread, for it was a sure sign of very serious 
trouble at that house. The house was on fire, someone was dying, they 
were being attacked by Indians, or other disasters were occurring. The 
settlers were collectively hard working people who supported and cared 
for one another. Each depended on the others for help if anything 
happened because the situation could easily reverse tomorrow and 
usually did. 

Women worked themselves to death for their children. Everyone starved 
because of the lack of adequate and nourishing food. Most mothers were 
too starved themselves to feed the babies much and breast milk or cows 
milk were painfully inadequate and usually not available. Cows milk was 
very scarce. Medical care was non-existent and even if they could find 
a doctor, he was either too busy, gone to take care of someone else, or 
they had no money to pay him. Besides he usually only had herbs and/or 
Indian cures for medicine. So people, especially young ones, mothers 
and babies most of all, were sick a lot on top of the miserable lives 
they lived. During childbirth, women were almost always attended by 
other women and many died from excessive loss of blood and infection, 
following childbirth. More died from being undernourished. 

In the absence of adequate medical care, many babies died from all 
types of sicknesses usually brought on by their own malnourishment, 
lack of medical care and unsanitary living conditions. Everybody 
usually went barefooted. Most but not all women, had one pair of shoe's 
called "Sunday go to meeting shoe's", because church services, 
visiting, marriages, or funerals were about the only times they were 
ever worn. 

Although the early settlers had no schools, when one was finally built, 
the children had to walk back and forth to it every day. Sometimes, 
that was a long distance and school was usually considered a waste of 
time. With this country being primarily agricultural then, that 
attitude prevailed until the 1940’s. Very few children went higher than 
the second or third grade because they were needed to work in the 
fields and little knowledge was needed for that. This was a case of 
“strong backs and weak minds”. Consequently, even two hundred years 
after the early Bedsoles arrived here, many still could not read or 
write and for the few who could, they had very little “book learning” 
and usually forgot what little they knew in a short period of time, 
because their primary way of life was farming. So, the vast majority of 
them never went to school at all. 

Those who did had to endure unmerciful hounding and being laughed at by 
all the others, who spent any free time ridiculing and pointing at each 
others bare butts, and falling-apart, ragged, hand me down, faded, 
hand-made pants, shirts, coats, dresses and blouses, which were made 
either of cloth, leather, or canvas-like material, usually held 
together with wire and pegs or nails. Girls, although barefooted like 
all the rest, usually wore dresses made of the lightest cloth available 
at the time. Unfortunately, this was usually also canvas-like, leather, 
or hand made cloth. In the winter, everyone suffered mightily from the 
lack of shoes, socks and winter clothing designed for the purpose. 
Although the soles of their feet were tough from going barefooted, 
their feet almost froze in the winter and when thawed-out, all the 
children cried for hours with the throbbing pain in their feet. 

Back then, winter clothing was very inadequate and the majority of 
earlier settlers made them from deer and bear hides. Covers for their 
beds were also animal hides in the winter. Any such hides not properly 
cured, were infested with bugs and worms and this was a continuing 
problem for them. Imagine having to sleep on a bed made of tree limbs, 
lying on and under animal hides which were infested with these 
parasites, which you had to listen to crawling around in your bed all 
night. Boiling the hides killed these bugs, but made the hides 
extremely stiff and unpliable. 

The women did learn to make shoes from heavy canvas-like cloth by 
triple-layering the cloth and sewing them several times. These were 
usually made only for the men because of all the walking they did in 
the fields and woods. However, such “Shoes” only lasted perhaps 4 
weeks. Later, as softer cloth became available, shirts and dresses were 
made of fertilizer or flour sack material, in addition to “Store 
bought” cloth. The fertilizer sack material was so rough, thick and 
stiff, it was like wearing sandpaper. After turning their heads a few 
times, the necks of wearers would be raw and sore. Consequently, the 
fertilizer bag material was immensely disliked. Almost all clothing was 
hand-made by the women, regardless of how crude such clothing was and 
appeared to be. 

In the fall, several women would get together and make quilts by 
suspending a framework from the ceiling of the house and then sitting 
around this in wooden, straight-back chairs, they sewed together the 
thousands of small pieces of cloth they had collected all year, into a 
bottom sheet. This was then layered with cotton from which they had 
removed the seeds. This was then covered with another piece of cloth 
and Finally the finished quilt was sewed. The problem was, there were 
always small bugs, weevils and mites in the cotton and no way to get 
them out, except by boiling in lye soap, otherwise everyone lived with 
them. At night, they could be heard moving around inside the quilts and 
pillows.

Storing And Preserving Food 

There was no way to store, preserve, or save vegetables except for 
dried peas, onions, corn, beans and potatoes. But even those were eaten 
by pests. Barns were filled to the roof with corn in the fall, but in 
the three months of December, January and February it was just about 
gone. Much of it eaten by the rats and mice. As the Bedsoles acquired 
additional livestock and had more children over time, this problem was 
magnified due to the initial houses, barns and cribs being painfully 
small and no longer capable of holding the increased need for an 
adequate supply of food and feed and the lack of vegetable preservation 
for long periods of winter weather. This of course, necessitated the 
enlargement of existing, and/or construction of new, larger storage 
buildings, all of which added to the already terrible daily workload. 

In short order, with no way to protect their buildings from termites, 
rats and other destructive pests, and due to leaks in the roofs, the 
barns and cribs became ramshackle, falling down, dilapidated buildings, 
sitting close to the ground, full of grub worms, weevils, rats by the 
thousands, snakes, beetles and other bugs coming in through the 
thousands of holes and cracks in the walls, floors and roofs. These 
pests were all eating the corn and other winter food which had been 
saved for the families. Bears quickly learned that the smokehouses 
contained meat and they lost no time in ripping and tearing their way 
into these flimsy structures and eating, scattering, spoiling and 
destroying the contents. This required immediate attention when it 
happened, because meat was a commodity which was widely and highly 
treasured as food and for trade. Many times the protection of the meat 
meant someone had to stay up and guard the smokehouse every night. This 
also meant one less person to work in the fields to produce food. 
Whatever corn could be salvaged for food, had to be taken to a mill or 
hand-ground with rocks into meal for cornbread from time to time. Since 
one-third of the meal had to be given to the miller in payment for the 
grinding, too little was left for the family to last out a long winter 
season. 

Because of all the bugs and rats, when the women started to cook bread, 
they had to spend an hour before that picking the weevils, worms, bugs 
and especially rat excrement out of the meal. Nobody worried much about 
things like rat and mice droppings though, which were too small and 
numerous to pick out of the meal. It was just considered "Flavoring" 
for lack of a better word. 

There was no way to keep green vegetables through the winter months, 
but potato's were stored by digging a hole in the ground about 4 feet 
across and 3 feet deep, lining it with dry pine straw, filling the hole 
with potato's, then covering them with more pine straw. The turpentine 
in the straw would keep out the rats, bugs and worms. Hand made wooden 
shingles were made and stuck in the ground around these holes at an 
angle leaning towards the center so they formed a kind of teepee. The 
shingles were then covered with about a foot of dirt. But the problem 
was, if just one potato started to rot, as they usually did for any 
reason at all, the entire lot was lost within 3 to 5 days. In general, 
the most the farmers could hope for was half of what was stored to last 
long enough to be eaten. That meant they had to produce and store twice 
as much as they needed in order to have enough for the winter months 
after spoilage and pests were taken into consideration. But that meant 
more cleared land, more planting and constant cultivation until harvest 
time. 

The various but increasing needs of these families constantly demanded 
more and more time and labor. Dried Peas and beans could be kept in 
bags but many times those were not available. When they were, the rats 
soon ate holes in the bags and pests of every kind got to them and into 
them too. In the summer, everybody had so much work to do they had 
little time to prepare, plant and take care of a garden. Work in the 
fields was a twelve months a year, seven days a week, fourteen hours a 
day job. Hunting was limited to meat for food, or animal hides, for 
clothes and bed covers. It was generally not done for fun or pleasure. 

Many people could not afford a gun and with so many kids around all the 
time, they were afraid to have one. However, due to the danger from 
Indians and wild animals, almost everyone eventually acquired a gun 
from necessity to acquire food. But with the smaller wild animals such 
as rabbits, possums and raccoons and the inaccuracy of the guns at 
longer distances, sometimes the only choice for getting these small 
animals was traps and animals were usually too smart to fall for traps. 
So meat was a real rarity and a huge treat when acquired. Invariably 
though, all the neighbors came over to share when it was acquired by 
any family, if they didn't live too far away. In due time, a log store 
was built near the Beaverdam settlement and trade became a way of life. 

The settlers and Indians traded with and among the store and themselves 
and of course, the people all traded with the store owner. They traded 
cloth, sugar, salt, grease, eggs, skins, leather, vegetables, fruit, 
lead, gunpowder, clothing, smoked meat, corn, lumber, shoes, farming 
tools and etc. and in a constant stream, more and more such goods made 
their way from the supply ships and ports from England to ports in 
Louisiana, Virginia, North Carolina, New York, Philadelphia and other 
ports in the “New Land” and then to the frontier settlements via wagon 
trains. Marauding Indians quickly learned to rob and steal these 
supplies and many times, to kill the accompanying people. 

The addition of guards to these wagons followed, but this necessitated 
higher prices being paid by the settlers and farmers for the goods 
being transported, due to the cost of the guards to the transporter.

PART TWO - Ancestors And Descendants List
Go to the following link:
http://www.ncgenweb.us/bladen/articles/bedsole.pdf

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http://www.usgwarchives.org/copyright.htm

This file was contributed for use in the USGenWeb Archives by
J.D. Bedsole - jdbedsole@oppcatv.com
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