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| Carolina in 1670 |
January 3rd, 1670 - General George Monck, 1st Duke of Albemarle and Lord Proprietor of Carolina dies in London at the age of 61. He is buried in Westminster Abbey. His only son Christopher inherits his titles) and properties.
Christopher Monck, 2nd Duke of
Albemarle, Earl of Torrington (August 14, 1653 - October 6, 1688) - Member of Parliament and Gentleman of the King’s
Chamber, he will die without descendent.
January 25, 1670 - The Council of New York decides to review the case of
Marcus Jacobson, a.k.a. " The Long Finn ", condemned last December for
rebellion by the Court of Delaware. He has
his sentence partly lightened.
He was transferred to prison in
New York on December 20 pending the application of his punishment. Captain
Rousseau was charged to inform him of the governor and council decision to
reduce his sentence retaining only flogging and an obligation to serve during
four years on a plantation in Barbados. His departure was scheduled the next
day and Captain Rousseau accompanied him to the Fort Albany, a ship bound for
the West Indies.
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| Document appointing Peter Carteret governor of Albemarle |
March 10, 1670 - Peter Carteret is appointed as governor of Albemarle.
He succeeds Samuel Stephens died in office.
Peter Carteret (1641- ?) -
Second son of George Carteret, one of the eight Lords Proprietor of Carolina,
he had settled since 1664 in the colony where he had successively served as assistant to
the governor, councillor and secretary of the County.
Nevertheless, his life looked more
like that of a farmer. He had cleared Colleton Island to establish a plantation
but had often come close to starvation. The plagues that struck Albemarle were
worth of those of biblical Egypt and himself did not count the lost crops and
decimated herds. Hardly appointed governor, he could only admit that "it
had pleased God to impose such suffering on the people of the region that they
had never, despite the years, enjoyed the fruits of their labor. "
March 15, 1670 - a group of 44 survivors of the Carolina, a ship left from
Barbados about six months earlier, reaches the shores of Carolina close to Port
Royal. It carries Captain William Sayle, recently appointed governor of the new
colony. Aware of the docking difficulties, captain Joseph West decides to sail
up to the Ashley River's mouth.
According to a passenger report,
being friendly, the Indians showed in bad Spanish the best place to drop
anchor.
Spain considered that Carolina formed
part of its territories especially as St Augustine, the main Spanish city of
North America was not very far. The Edisto Indians were actually hardly pleased
to see the English settle permanently but the leader of the coastal neighboring
Kiawah tribe who lived a little further north invited the newcomers to settle
down among his people, hoping in exchange that they would help him to get rid of
the Spaniards and their Westo Indians allies. The crew accepted the offer and sailed
up to the region called today West Ashlee.
Charles II ascended the throne
of England with the support of the nobility of his country, but lacking
financial resources to show his gratitude, he had especially chosen to offer the
territories listed in the Heath's Carolana Charter, 1629 to eight of his followers. Many
settlers of the Barbados had shown keen interest in the Carolina colonization project,
tired of tropical storms, diseases and moisture. The new Lords Proprietor had praised
this approach by sending a letter of encouragement to those that they had dubbed
the "Barbadian Adventurers".
They would eventually influence the culture of
this new colony, by their European feudal tradition, their experience of rice growing
and their bias towards African slaves' labor. From 1663, they had sent William
Hilton to visit the coasts of Carolina in order to find places to settle down but
he had seen nothing conclusive. They had however succeeded in founding a
short-lived colony near Cape Fear and sent a boat to explore the Port Royal area. Captain Robert Sanford had even met the Edisto Indians with whom he got
friendly, leaving behind Doctor Henry Woodward with the aim of studying the inland
and local tribal languages.
In August, 1669, the three ships Carolina, Port Royal and Albemarle left England for Barbados. The third was wrecked in reaching
the Caribbean while the two others loaded supplies according to the program
planned by the Lord Proprietors. They replaced however the damaged Albemarle by
the Three Brothers. Both ships made their way to Carolina but were dispersed by
a storm. The Port Royal drifted for six weeks before running aground off the Bahamas.
Some of the 44 survivors died before the captain had a new boat built but once completed,
it enabled them to reach New Providence and Bermuda where they purchased
another ship who was to carry them to Carolina. The Three Brothers reached from
her part Virginia on May 23.
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| William Sayle |
He was, however, quickly blamed for his deficiencies.
April, 1670 - John Winthrop, Jr. is reelected governor of Connecticut.
April 13, 1670 - Governor of New York Francis Lovelace purchases all of
Staten Island to the last Indians still living there.
Florence O' Sullivan had certainly glory days on various
battlefields but although recommended by Lord Proprietor Peter Colleton, he
proved very fast not to be up to the task. It was hoped that his military
skills provide to the new colony the way to defend against a Spanish threat but
he was a poor land surveyor and his miscalculations would soon generate
disputes.
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| Richard Bellingham (1592-1672) Governor of Massachusetts |
The Assembly will pass, during
this term, a law providing that the children of slaves are themselves
enslaved.
Massachusetts was not conducive
to large plantations and property owners had only few slaves usually assigned
to housework. They preferred for it the younger, cheaper than grown-ups and more
easily raised to specific works. It was not unusual that a settler loads some
rum on a ship bound to the Indies and gets along with his captain to swap it for
a slave child.
May, 1670 - Nicholas Easton succeeds Dr. John Clarke as lieutenant
governor of Rhode Island.
May 12, 1670 - the town of Wallingford, Connecticut, which has so far
126 households, is incorporated.
It was founded three years earlier by a group of 38 settlers after the
agreement from the provincial General assembly.
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| John Lederer's second journey |
His group went up the James River and reached on June 9 the village of Sapon, on the banks of the Roanoke River. This one belonged to Nahyssan, a tribe which had been in trouble with the "Christians" a decade ago but which reserved a warm welcome for Lederer in exchange for glasswares and trinkets. He collected a lot of information and argued his diplomatic skills to the point that he was offered to marry a young woman of the tribe. He decided, however, to pursue his trip southward along the east side of the mountains in search of a passage to the west. It took him fifteen days to reach Katearas, the capital of Tuscarora. The people immediately showed a strong hostility towards him and he preferred to turn back. He arrived in Jamestown on June 28 after five weeks of exploration.
May 23, 1670 - the Three Brothers reaches the Bay of Charles Town. A dozen
passengers left to get water on St Catherine Island off the coast of current
Georgia, are missing, captured by Indians allies of the Spaniards. Of the
hundreds of migrants left from England and the Barbados, only 148, including
three African slaves, arrive alive at Charles Town.
160 Kiawah Indians lived there, depending on hunting and fishing. The soil was fertile and there were few mosquitoes. As
for the Spaniards, their fortress of St Augustine being more than 250 miles,
they did not pose an immediate danger. The new settlers sent letters to Lord
Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury, one of the eight Lords Proprietors
that his secretary, the philosopher John Locke, grouped under the name of
"Shaftesbury Papers".
May 25, 1670 - after several months of hesitation, Governor of New
Jersey Philip Carteret imposes his project of land tax giving rise to the discontent
of the owners.
The divorce seems consummated between Carteret and the residents of the
colony.
May 29, 1670 - Nathaniel Morton, secretary of the Plymouth colony publishes
the list of all the freemen of the jurisdiction.
June 3rd, 1670 - Thomas Prence is re-elected governor of Plymouth. He is
also appointed commissioner to the United Colonies together with Josiah
Winslow.
A law enacted during his
mandate imposed a fine on all those who refused to work in the service of an
elected councilor, recalling that this one was not only police chief executive,
but had to monitor the affairs of a city including the ethical conduct of its
people and was moreover judicial officer.
Another law from that period
established that a whale or a big fish stranded on the territory of a city and
from which could be extracted oil would be attributed for two thirds to the local
government and the rest to the people who discovered it.
It is also from this time that
the Indian tribes living on the territory of the colony ceased to be regarded
as full nations. They were therefore legally attached to the local government
and subjected to the same laws as the settlers. Thus, they were more and more
Indians to appear before the courts, for all kinds of offences. They would often
suffer from of a real discrimination, given the penalties imposed against them,
much higher than for the English.
August 6, 1670 - a storm strikes the Albemarle colony in Carolina, destroying crops and many houses.
All the local economy suffered
the vagaries of weather. The fact that cetaceans kept off the coastline
compromised in particular the future of Governor Peter Carteret’s company,
specialized in the sale of whale oil.
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| Sunset over the Blue Ridge Mountains (painting by Jeff Pittman) |
Accompanied by colonel Catlet
and five Indian guides, he went up the Rappahanock River to the foothills of the
mountains but had to return hastily because of a spider bite that got
infected.
Lederer concluded from these
experiences that it was unthinkable that Pacific Ocean is only after eight or
ten days of walking.
August, 1670 – The county court jury of Northampton and Accomack, Virginia
considers that, following the death of Anthony Johnson occurred a few months earlier, his property belongs to
England, given that being of African descent, he is thus a foreigner.
Anthony Johnson was part of the
group of twenty Africans sold as slaves in Jamestown in 1619. He had gained his
freedom in 1651 and been granted, at that time, a plot of land he had thrived over the
years. He had however preferred to move, with his wife, to Maryland because of harms
done to black people in Virginia. When he died, only 50 acres remained from the
250 he had purchased and the court decided to deprive his son of this weak
legacy to give it to a “white” farmer.
October, 1670 - The assembly of Virginia passes a law prohibiting
Africans and Indians, although they are free, to use white servants.
Another law states that all non-Christian Africans arriving in the
colony by boat are considered as slaves for life whereas the law that allowed
the vote of freedmen is repealed.
October 26, 1670 - Convicted of the murder of Walter House, Thomas
Flounders is hanged in Kingston, Rhode Island.
He had been sentenced to death on
July 12, 1670 by the Court of Rhode Island after a trial during which he had admitted
having had an argument with House, at a time when many quarrels opposed the settlers
of Connecticut to those of Rhode Island. Flounders ‘property was confiscated but
Kingston residents got together to financially support his wife and child he
left.
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| Charles Calvert Governor of Maryland |
Anxious to find an end to the
divisions that prevailed within the Assembly between Catholics and Protestants,
he decided to give the right to vote only to the planters who owned more than
50 acres or those whose properties amounted to at least to 40 pounds. Only landowners
with at least 1000 acres were also now allowed to access responsibilities. The
latter provision perversely gave powers to incompetent people.
Charles Calvert continued,
since he became governor, to maintain the privileges granted to his family in
the 1631 Royal Charter the almost feudal design of which had not stopped
arousing controversy between him and his subjects. He was certainly concerned
with the well-being of his colony but equated any opposition with an attack
against his personal interests. On the other hand, despite the sharp increase
of the Protestant population, he continued to focus his Catholic friends to
whom he reserved official duties.
Augustine Herman completed at that time the first official map of Maryland
which would be printed in London in 1673.
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| Map of Carolina |
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