FYI....Char ----Original Message Follows---- From: meyerma@webtv.net (Mary Meyer) Subject: PAIN TO THE BEAR Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2000 16:05:28 -0500 (CDT) Thanks, Floyd. Is your John Lawson b 1787 NC a descendent of the author Lawson who wrote HISTORY OF NORTH CAROLINA? In his HISTORY OF NC BAPTISTS, George W. Paschal quotes the 1860 reprint of Lawson's work. I thought you would enjoy reading a couple of these quotes: Paschal p. 49: "And by agents and pamphlets this attraction of Carolina as a land of religious freedom was kept before the people of England. As late as 1709 Lawson mentions it in his HISTORY OF NORTH CAROLINA, many parts of which seem designed to advertise the advantages of the Province." [Paschal's next paragraph is also interesting (p. 50)]: "Without doubt the Proprietors were led to make this parade of Carolina aa a land of religious freedom because of the merciless persecutions of Dissenters both in England and in New England and Viringia from the early years of the Restoration. This persecutuion was partly without sanction of law, and was the result of the reaction that came to the sore restrictions which the Puritans in their few years of power, which ended with the Restoration in 1660, had put upon pleasures and sports of the English people. For the Puritans had hewn down maypoles, dismantled theatres, forbidden rope-dancing, puppet-shows, horse-racing, and bear-baiting, then a very popular sport, but which the 'Puritan hated, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.' (Macaulay.)"] [Paschal pp. 51-52: "Among all the victims of the enforement of these laws the members of no other sect, except the Quakers, suffered more severely than the Baptists. The pages of Crosby's second volume of the HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH BAPTISTS are made up of almost nothing else than accounts of the mob violence and legal persecutions to which Baptists, both ministers and laymen, were subjected at this period. Not only John Bunyan, the author of PILGRIM'S PROGRESS, for twelve years, 'languished in a dungeon for the crime of preaching the gospel to the poor,' (Macaulay), but imprisonment for trhe same offense was the lot of Hanserd Knollys, Vavasor Powel, Mr. Jessey, John Greiffith, Thomas Granthem, and John James, nearly every one of them men of culture and educated at a University, and many other Baptist ministers of lesser fame. Nor did laymen escape...."] [Paschal pp. 63-64: "But evidence is not wanting that in England some of the Dissenters were induced to migrate to Carolina. In the year 1708, was published a HISTORY OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE IN AMERICA. A portion of this work was the HISTORY OF CAROLINA by J. Oldmixon, a reprint of which is found in the second volume of the HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS OF SOUTH CAROLINA, from which I copy the following paragraph: 'The Proprietaries, after they had got their charter, gave due encouragement for persons to settle in this Province, and there being express provision made in it for a toleration, and indulgence to all Christians in the free exercise of their religion, great numbers of Protestants, dissenters from the Chruch of England, retired thither.' The words here quoted refer to the whole privince, North as well as South Carolina, while Mr. Oldmixon makes other statements, which are to be applied to the southern colony alone, telling of the great number of Dissenters who left England at this time in search of religious freedom." (Footnote #23 Paschal p. 64: "Weeks is evidently wrong in his statement that the suppostiion that the early settlers of North Carolina were Dissenters began with the historian Williamson. Oldmixon was a hundred years earlier, and almost a contemporary of the first settlers.")] [Paschal p. 65: "We must, however, beware of supposing that any of the Dissenters, with the exception of the Quakers of whom I shall speak later, were organized into churches, in the period before 1700. The early settlers of North Carolina had not been led hither by ministers of their churches, nor had any ministers followed them and gathered them into churches; they had come as individuals and settled in whatever place they chose. As Chalmers remarks they may have been 'equally destitute of relgiion and clergy.'"] Now (finally) back to Lawson, preceded by Paschal's lead-in: "The colonists never seemed to regard violation of the navigation laws as morally wrong; they rather considered tham an impertinence designed to rob them of the fruits of their labor, as in point of fact they were. But the trade with smugglers was a tremendous economic disadvantage to the planters. The sailors made rates of exchange in the barter which were ruinous to them. The planters needed merchants who could have effected a fair exhange of commodities for them, but importing merchants they had none, and few of any kind. The profound effect of this isotation and unfavorable trade relations is well indicated in these words of Lawson (pp. 146f from 1860 reprint): 'Great plenty is generally the ruin of Industry. Thus our merchants are not many, nor have these few appleid themselves to the European trade. The planter sits contented at home, whilst his oxen thrive and grow fat, and his stocks daily increase; the fatted porklets and poultry [HELLO, CLARENCE!] are easily raised to his table, and his orchard affords him liquor, so that he eats and drinks away the cares of the world, and desires no greater happiness than what he daily enjoys.'" [Paschal p. 80: "We are more interested to know what was the kind of life on the plantations, at this time just on the eve of the rise of Baptist churches in the Province. Several influences were preserving the people from moral degeneration. One was the isolation of the estates in which the moral influence of the fmaily was unhindered. Another was the large and increasing tide of immigrants who did not lose on coming the moral and religious habits which they ahd learned before coming. With the population increasing from 5,000 in 1700 to 10,000 in 1715 and 30,000 in 1730, the new immigrants must have been the predominating influence in the Province....the Quakers [HELLO, * CHARLOTTE!] were exerting all along a wholesome influence. One whishes as much coudl be said for the ministers of the Church of England. As it was, the lack of religious instruction had begun to show in the character of the people.] Mary Alice in TX aka Mary Abernathy Meyer ________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com