1748 - Morgan Bryan’s Family Settles in North Carolina
View of the Shallow Ford on the west side of the Yadkin River looking east. Photo by Robert Alvin Crum - copyright 2018. More images below.
Robert Alvin Crum copyright 9 February 2024
Much has been written about Daniel Boone, whose stories, and even myths, seem to have become a part of the early American experience. The same cannot be said about his wife, Rebecca, and her family. However, my curiosity got the best of me while reading Dr. Robert Ramsey’s book Carolina Cradle: Settlement of the Northwest Carolina Frontier 1747-1762 where he writes, “The most prominent of settlers in northwestern Carolina before 1752 was Morgan Bryan.”
Who was Morgan Bryan? He was a land speculator and the grandfather of Rebecca Bryan and Martha Bryan. They were part of the Bryan migration from the Shenandoah Valley into the Forks of the Yadkin in the autumn of 1748. The questions I began to ask included, “What led them to the North Carolina colonial backcountry, and why was the area they settled known as ‘The Bryan Settlement’?”
Morgan Bryan and Alexander Ross became land speculators in Virginia. In 1730, they presented a proposal to Virginia Governor William Gooch to recruit hard-working Quaker farmers to settle the western frontier of Virginia. The Governor hoped this settlement might stabilize the frontier where Indians were unhappy with hunters and traders invading tribal lands in violation of colonial and Indian law. Bryan and Ross acquired 100,000 acres south of the Potomac River and bounded on two sides by Opequon Creek near present day Winchester, Virginia. In 1734, Bryan also bought and settled on a tract of land on a branch of Opequon Creek that's now located in Berkeley County, West Virginia.
Morgan Bryan (1671-1763) and his wife, Martha Strode Bryan (1697-1762), decided in 1748 to move with their large extended family to North Carolina. Morgan and Martha Bryan along with most of their children and grandchildren left their lands in Virginia in 1748 to settle in the backcountry of North Carolina in the Forks of the Yadkin. Their oldest son, Joseph Bryan (1719-1805), and his second wife, Alice Linville, along with their children, stayed behind in Virginia until 1756, so they could tie up the loose ends of the family’s business. Joseph had two daughters, Martha and Rebecca, by his first wife, who died shortly after the second daughter’s birth. They accompanied their grandparents, Morgan and Martha Bryan, on their first trek into North Carolina. Morgan and Martha also had a daughter, Mary Bryan, who married Thomas Curtis. Since they both died in Virginia before this 1748 migration, their daughter, Mary Curtis, also accompanied her grandparents into North Carolina. It’s believed that Morgan Bryan, Jr. (1728-1804) also stayed in Virginia for a few more years until he settled affairs and later moved south to North Carolina.
The names of Morgan and Martha Bryan’s children whose families also migrated into North Carolina with them in 1748 were Eleanor, Samuel, John, William, James, and Thomas. They migrated out of the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia and headed south. It was a rocky trail through Virginia, and the Bryans had to clear sections as they went. For a short time, this was known as the Bryan Road in Virginia. At one time, it was referred to as the Carolina Road but later became known as the Great Wagon Road.
They followed the road out of Virginia and into North Carolina where it wound through present day Stokes and Forsyth Counties. Before reaching their destination, they could see what the Suara Indians called “Jameokee” which means “Great Guide.” It’s a landmark that we now call Pilot Mountain. The road curved southwest along a ridge above the Yadkin River to the east of the Shallow Ford. They crossed the Yadkin River from the east side to the west at the Shallow Ford and entered this land to be among the first white settlers. The Bryans were wealthy enough to own enslaved people and brought them along when migrating into the North Carolina backcountry. Today, the east side of the Shallow Ford is being preserved as the Shallow Ford State Historic Site. The point where the Bryans entered on the west side of the Yadkin is owned privately.
Author George Raynor also wrote in Patriots and Tories in Piedmont North Carolina that “If the North Carolina frontier of the mid-18th century had leading families, the Bryans were certainly among them.” Mr. Raynor continued by saying that the Bryan family “was later to expand its lands into thousands of acres in scattered tracts known as the ‘Bryan settlements’.”
Morgan Bryan initially bought eleven tracts of land totaling 3,838½ acres, and most were later sold to his children. Eight of these tracts were in the Forks of the Yadkin, but three were on the north side of the Upper Yadkin River at Mulberry Fields and Reddy’s River. These three tracts of land are in what is now Wilkes County in the vicinity of present-day North Wilkesboro. Bryan’s eight original Granville land grants were surveyed in the years 1748, 1749,1750 and 1751. The grants and indentures are dated 1752, and Morgan made the first five sales to his sons in 1753. Most of Morgan’s children began buying more land where they chose to build their homes. The Bryan Settlement encompasses areas around the North Carolina towns of Advance, Farmington, Huntsville, Lewisville and Mocksville and the areas of western Forsyth County, eastern Yadkin County and most of Davie County. The Shallow Ford was in the middle of the Bryan Settlement. Edward Hughes owned the land directly on each side of this ford, which was an important crossing for the Great Wagon Road. In addition to Edward Hughes, the original families who migrated into the Bryan Settlement were headed by Squire Boone, Morgan Bryan, James Carter, Samuel Davis, George Forbush, and William Linville. Many of the children of these men intermarried both in Virginia before arriving and some after arriving in the Bryan Settlement.
In his book Carolina Cradle, Dr. Ramsey also mentions that “Any description of the early Bryan Settlement would hardly be complete without reference to Squire Boone, father of Daniel, who settled near the Yadkin with his family in 1750.” It appears that Squire Boone and his wife Sarah Morgan Boone knew the Bryans when they all lived in Pennsylvania, so it’s not surprising that the Boones followed the Bryans into the Forks of the Yadkin and the area known as the Bryan Settlement. Two of Morgan Bryan's granddaughters who were sisters, Rebecca and Martha, later married Daniel and Edward Boone, respectively, in North Carolina. Daniel Boone’s younger sister, Mary, also married Morgan's son William in 1753.
In 1752, the Moravians led by Bishop Spangenburg were in the Colony of North Carolina in search of land to establish a large community. In his diary he wrote,
“… They have a pleasant situation and a rich soil. Morgan Bryant has taken them up, but no one lives on them. Our land, which is opposite, is not far from the tract we have already taken on the Atkin; Morgan Bryant owns the land lying between, on which Mr. Owens lives. If we could buy this plantation, and the Mulberry Fields, we would have the land for 10 miles on both sides of the Atkin, for we have taken up a piece of the same side of the river with the Mulberry Fields, touching that on which Mr. Owens lives.”
Bishop Spangenburg was unable to purchase some of the land he wanted on the Upper Yadkin River, because Morgan Bryan had already surveyed and acquired it three to four years earlier. As the Moravians moved east in search of additional land, they found the Bryan Settlement on the west side of the Yadkin River. They had to cross the Shallow Ford to acquire land on the east side of the Yadkin River that became known as the Wachovia Tract. Today, this is the location of Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
The Bryan and Boone families moved into North Carolina at a peaceful time with the hopes of farming, hunting, and even earning a livelihood as land speculators. They also were heavily involved in the North Carolina colonial government of Rowan County.
However, things quickly changed in 1755. Conflict began with the French and Indian War in 1755, subsequent wars with the Cherokee, and continued through the end of the American Revolution in 1783. The Boones and Bryans were caught up in all these conflicts. The men in both families fought with the militia, and Bryans served on both sides of the Revolution with one Bryan even being commissioned by the Royal Governor as a Colonel. Family members not fighting tried to avoid all wars by either fleeing to Virginia and Maryland or looking for protection by “forting up” on their land or at such places as Fort Dobbs and Bethabara in the Moravian Settlements. (Also known as the Moravian Tract.)
Many of the families in the Bryan Settlement intermarried and began to raise their children, and those that aged here are also buried here. Morgan Bryan died in Rowan County in 1763, and his wife, Martha, died the previous year in 1762.
Morgan Bryan’s will was filed in Rowan County, and his sons William and John administered his estate. His son Thomas inherited Morgan Bryan’s “Mansion House and Plantation,” which was a 565-acre tract located adjacent to the Yadkin River at a place known as “The Bend.” In 1764, Thomas sold to William 56 acres of this tract as “being part of a Tract of Land Granted…unto Morgan Bryan and by sd Morgan Bryan made over to sd Thomas Bryan and Known by the Name of sd Morgan Bryan’s Mansion Plantation Tract.” In 1772, Thomas sold William another 83 acres, so now William owned 189 acres of the old home place, and Thomas owned 376 acres.
This discussion about the location of the Mansion House may be important in the current disagreement about where Morgan and Martha Bryan were buried, because the headstones were removed from their graves. Some believe they’re probably buried at Morgan Bryan’s 510-acre Deep Creek property, because some believe the Mansion House was at that location. However, this tract was sold to youngest son Thomas in 1758, and I know of no evidence showing it was the location of Morgan Bryan’s Mansion House. In the previous paragraph, I’ve provided evidence that the Mansion House was at “The Bend” along the Yadkin; however, I know of no current evidence that they were buried there. In more recent years, a plaque was installed at the Oak Valley subdivision in Advance, North Carolina claiming that Morgan and Martha Bryan are buried there, but there’s not sufficient evidence to prove this. Therefore, the location of their graves is currently unknown and may never be verified. Martha’s headstone currently rests on a table in one of the historic houses owned by the Rowan Museum in Salisbury, North Carolina, and it would take another article to explain why.
Squire Boone died at his “Dutchman’s Creek” property in 1765. His wife, Sarah, went to live with her daughter Mary Boone Bryan and her husband William Bryan on the 189 acres described above. Sarah Morgan Boone died in 1777. Squire and Sarah’s well-maintained graves are in Joppa Cemetery in Mocksville, North Carolina, and their son Israel is buried beside them.
Within a generation after arriving in the Bryan Settlement, many of the Boones and Bryans embarked on what I would call two “great migrations” out of North Carolina in 1775 and 1779. They were led by Daniel Boone and William Bryan. This became part of America’s first westward expansion into Kentucky and beyond.
Sources:
Anson County Deeds, Anson County Records, Wadesboro, NC.
Bryan, Jr., John K., “Morgan Bryan,” Dictionary of North Carolina Biography, 6 Volumes edited by William S. Powell, The University of North Carolina Press, copyright 1979 – 1996.
Clark, Walter, ed., The State Records of North Carolina, 16 Volumes, Winston, Goldsboro: State of North Carolina, 1895-1907.
Draper, Lyman Copeland, Draper Manuscripts, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison, WI.
Fries, Adelaide Lisetta, Records of the Moravians in North Carolina, 1752-1771, Vol. 1, Publications of the North Carolina Historical Commission, State Department of Archives and History, Raleigh, NC, Reprinted 1968.
Linn, Jo White, Abstracts of the Court of Common Pleas and Quarter Sessions, Rowan County, North Carolina 1753-1762, Salisbury, NC, 1977.
Linn, Jo White, Abstracts of the Court of Common Pleas and Quarter Sessions, Rowan County, North Carolina 1753-1762, Salisbury, NC, 1979.
Linn, Jo White, Abstracts of the Deeds of Rowan County, NC 1753-1785, Salisbury, NC, 1983.
Linn, Jo White, Rowan County Tax Lists 1757-1800, Salisbury, NC 1995.
McMurtry, David C., Seven Sons and Two Daughters of Morgan Bryan (1671-1763):“Irish Immigrant” and Some of Their Descendants, Mil-Mac Publishers, Lexington, KY, 2009.
McMurtry, David C., Bryan, David Randall, and Weiss, Katherine, Morgan Bryan (1671- 1763: A Danish Born “Irish Immigrant” and Some of His Antecedents and Descendants, Mil-Mac Publishers, Lexington, KY, 2007.
Phillips, Marcia D., Historic Shallow Ford in Yadkin Valley: Crossroads Between East and West, The History Press, Charleston, SC, 2022.
Ramsey, Robert W., Carolina Cradle: Settlement of the Northwest Carolina Frontier 1747-1762, The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, NC, 1964.
Raynor, George, Patriots and Tories in Piedmont Carolina, The Salisbury Post, Salisbury, NC, 1990.
Records of Augusta County Virginia, Volumes I – III.
Rowan County Deeds, Rowan County Records, Salisbury, NC.
Rowan County Wills, Rowan County Records, Salisbury, NC.
Saunders, William L., ed., The Colonial Records of North Carolina, 10 Volumes, Printers to the State, Raleigh, NC 1886-1890.
Stimson, R. Kyle, The Great Philadelphia Wagon Road in Forsyth County, N.C. 1750 – 1770: Historic Roads of Forsyth County – Volume One, copyright 1999 by R.C. Kyle Stimson.
Surry County Deeds, Surry County Records, Mt. Airy, NC.
U.S. Quaker Meeting Records 1681-1935.
Weiss, Katherine, Morgan Bryan, Senior’s “Original Eleven” Anson (Rowan) County North Carolina Land Grants, Katherine Weiss, Forbestown, CA, 2006.
