Early Visitors to Wendell

For those of us who have spent a good portion of our lives in and around Wendell, the one word we would use to describe the Wendell of today is “changing”. The contrast from a sleepy little farming town of fifty or sixty years ago to the dynamic place it is today is profound. In 2025, Wendell is about as close to a boom town as anywhere in the country.

This is remarkable since Wendell, as the name of a place on the map, is a Johnny- come-lately in the scheme of things. Although it officially only began as the Town of Wendell in 1903, people have called this area home for a lot longer. Stone artifacts and shards of pottery common in most plowed fields hereabouts give solid evidence that native Americans lived and hunted in this area as far back as 8 to 10 thousand years ago. Just like us, they had families, made a living, enjoyed each other’s company, endured the thrills and hardships of life and watched the seasons pass. But unlike us, they experienced little change from generation to generation. They left us no written record but had they, we may have been more astounded with their similarities to us, at least in the things that matter, than the differences.

However, there were minor changes in their lifeways– even progress – over spans of time, but for them, changes from one generation to the next were small to nonexistent. One reason was the very limited nature of their material world with only stone, wood, bone and hides to use for everything they needed. Another reason was the tenuous nature of life for them.

Things that would only be a minor nuisance for us was often deadly to them. Additionally, even when they infrequently appeared, new ideas had difficulty disseminating because of the large number of unintelligible languages. Villages, only a few miles apart, often could not understand each other’s speech.

The Spanish Have the First Go

By the early 1500s, a number of European ships had coasted along the outer banks but there is little evidence that any of them landed. In May 1539, Hernando De Soto left Havana, Cuba leading nine ships, 620 men and over 200 horses plus herds of livestock and landed at the northern end of Tampa Bay for a three-year exploration of southeastern North America. He headed north through present day Florida, Georgia and South Carolina and entered North Carolina about 25 miles southeast of Charlotte near Waxhaw in Union County which is about the same entry point as several later explorers. De Soto then passed up to near the present-day Morganton to the large Indian town of Joara. After a short stay, he moved on over the mountains into present day Tennessee.

Then in 1566, Spanish Captain Juan Pardo and 125 men arrived near present-day Parris Island, South Carolina under orders to claim the land for Spain. To stay close to food sources on their journey, the Spanish traveled northwest from the coast to where there were friendly Indians from whom they could obtain food. The small Spanish force stopped at the Indian village of Otari, near present-day Charlotte, before arriving at Joara in January 1567.

According to the records of the expedition, the explorers built a wooden fort at the north end of Joara and named it Fort San Juan. The fort became the first European settlement in present-day North Carolina, predating the first English colonies of Roanoke Island by 18 years and Jamestown, Virginia by 40 years. In recent years, archaeologists have unearthed Spanish pottery and other European artifacts at the site of Fort San Juan in Burke County.

Jamestown was established in 1607 and became the first permanent English settlement in North America. As English settlers poured into tidewater Virginia by the mid 1600’s, they began to move down into northeastern North Carolina north of the Albemarle Sound. At the same time, English traders from tidewater Virginia began to enter central North Carolina along the famous Indian Trading Path that roughly paralleled I-85 from Petersburg Virginia, through Charlotte to Augusta Georgia.

It is likely they made side trips all along their route and could have possibly passed near what one day would be Wendell. Had they ventured that far off the trading path, the Indians they would have met would have probably heard of the bearded Europeans with their horses, rum and guns even if they had never seen them. In the late 1600s, the people in what is now eastern Wake County lived in many small semi-permanent villages scattered along Marks Creek, Buffalo Creek and Little River. There they grew corn, beans and squash; hunted, gathered acorns and hickory nuts and made pottery and baskets.

They lived in houses made of poles stuck upright in the ground and covered with bark and mats made of split reeds and rushes. They also exchanged their surplus with traveling Indian traders for items not available locally like knappable stone obtained from the Uwharrie Mountains in the present-day Stanly County, seashells from the coast or medicinal herbs. Strings of seashells they called “peak” and tanned deerskins were their preferred forms of money. Politically, they were a part of the large Tuscarora nation with its principal towns to the east along the Pamlico and Neuse rivers. In the winter and early spring, villages often gathered in large temporary “hunting quarters” to trade, communally hunt deer, trap shad and find suitable marriage partners.

It is thought that the Tuscarora migrated to North Carolina from the present upstate New York region more than 2,000 years ago. They were part of the Iroquois Confederacy, which also included the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas. The cultivation of corn arrived in North Carolina from the southwest about the year 1000 AD and thereafter, the Tuscarora became farmers in small settlements in the upper coastal plain where good corn land was abundant. In almost any plowed field in our area, especially those near the major creeks, you are liable to find knapping chips, broken pottery and the occasional flat stones for grinding corn which is a good indication there was once a village nearby.

By the late 1600s, most of the villages in our area had likely been visited by English Traders. Unfortunately, the traders, like the Indians, left scant written records of the Indians or their lifeways. But this was about to change. Other than the sparse accounts written by members of the De Soto and Pardo expeditions, the first account detailing the area we now call North Carolina and its native inhabitants was written by the German physician, John Lederer.

Lederer’s thin “book,” short of significant details, was originally written in Latin, describes three “marches” he made in 1669 and 1670 into the Carolina piedmont and the Appalachian Mountains. He and the members of his party became the first Europeans to crest the Blue Ridge Mountains, to see the Shenandoah Valley and the Allegheny Mountains beyond. Most significantly, he produced a map that later helped explorers have a better understanding of the interior of the region. Lederer never came close to Wendell.

The Voyage of John Lawson

In 1700 London, a well-educated 25-year-old Englishman, named John Lawson, was itching for adventure. With ideas of going to Rome for the pope’s Jubilee, an acquaintance assured him that “Carolina was the best country.” Consequently, Lawson found his way on board a ship bound for Charleston, the largest city and only port in “Carolina.” It was not a good voyage. His ship was blown off course and he wound up in New York City. After a couple of weeks seeing the sights, he caught a ship south to Charleston arriving in late August 1700. It is well documented that a strong hurricane hit Charleston in mid-August 1700. Had Lawson been caught at sea a week or so earlier, we likely would have never known the richness of the Carolina up-country at this time in history. In Charleston, he made contacts and found employment as the “Surveyor General of Carolina.” which offered to pay him to do what he intended to do anyway.

Lawson’s employers were the eight Lord Proprietors who had been given the whole of Carolina by King Charles II. The king had given them this “tract of ground” as an act of gratitude by the great charter of 1663 as a reward for helping him gain the throne of England at the end of the English Civil War. Some of them gave their names to various places in North and South Carolina (Albemarle, Craven, Ashley, Carteret) but only one, Sir William Berkley, ever set foot on Carolina soil.

In the meantime, Lawson ran in with several other adventurous young Englishmen in Charleston who were also anxious for adventure. Lawson’s job was to explore the up country, detail its animals, vegetables and minerals as well as the native inhabitants and report it to the owners.

Additionally, before leaving England, he apparently had promised several of his “natural scientist” acquaintances at the Royal Society to collect samples of plant and animal life to send back to England.

On December 28, 1700, Lawson, his English friends and a handful of Indians took off up the rain swollen Santee River north of Charleston. Their idea was to travel twenty miles or so each day, overnight in an Indian village, get food by bartering trinkets and move on. Turning inland up the Santee, Lawson met the coastal Sewee Indians and a few French Huguenot settlers in the Carolina low country. The intended destination for his English friends was Williamsburg but Lawson wanted to visit the English who had begun settling from Virginia along the north side of the Pamlico Sound in present day Beaufort County, NC. The question has often been asked why he made this trip in midwinter. In addition to the impatience of youth, the short answer is likely, despite the cold, traveling, hunting, mosquitos, and snakes are all less a problem in the winter months.

Lawson crosses the Line

By the last week in January 1701, the Lawson party crossed what one day would be the North Carolina/South Carolina state line near the present town of Waxhaw. (See De Soto and Pardo, above) They then turned northeast toward the Uwharrie Mountains and the future location of Salisbury. All along the way, they visited numerous Native American towns. They also met a host of interesting individuals and observed and recorded native lifeways that were beginning to change because of contact with English traders. Lawson was dismayed by it and commented many times, with righteous indignation and foresight, that the guns, rum and small pox brought by the traders would eventually destroy the Indians.

Lawson and his friends dined on wild turkey until they were cloyed by it. Further on at an Indian town, they dined on barbecued deer, corn bread and a sort of peach cobbler while watching an Indian ball game – undoubtedly the first recorded NC tailgating. All along the way, Lawson noted the plants, animals, soil, rivers and anything else of interest. It is very clear from his writings that John Lawson was ideally suited for his job.

John Lawson was born in England in December 1674, the only son of Dr. John Lawson (1632–1690) and Isabella Love (1643–1680). Both were from London. The family-owned land in Yorkshire where Lawson may have spent his youth because he often compared the size of rivers in Carolina with ones in Yorkshire. He attended lectures at Gresham College, where the Royal Society, the scientists of his day, often met. To posterity’s everlasting benefit, John Lawson possessed three important characteristics. First, he was a well-educated man for his day. He was schooled in botany, zoology, and anthropology with a good working knowledge of medicine, history, religion, and linguistics. Second, he had an insatiable curiosity and was rather fearless. He was a keen observer of things and people and, as he said of himself, was able to make a “nice observation.” Third and most important, he was literate, and he liked to write. Throughout his journey, he kept a detailed daily journal which was the model for later naturalists and explorers like Audubon, Bartram and even Lewis and Clark.

We can easily imagine him sitting nightly by the campfire, recording the events of the day. He states in the beginning of his book that he knows he is not the first to visit Carolina but unlike the travelers before him, he is observant and records what he sees. His love of learning, his intellect and benevolence toward the Indians suggests he was well above the general crowd and far, far ahead of his time. He admitted that the Indians had been debased by the English but despite that, they were often better and more generous to the English than the English were to them.

On into the Carolina Piedmont

By the 2nd of February, Lawson and his party had arrived at Keyauwee, a large Indian town of about 500 people surrounded by a log palisade. It was located on present Caraway Creek about 10 miles west of the present town of Asheboro. There were large corn fields surrounding the town and the inhabitants spoke a form of the Siouan language like the Tuscarora to the east. While there, Lawson stayed in the house of the chief who observed Lawson writing in his notebook and asked to try his hand. The chief proved good at copying Lawson’s words very exactly and drawing various fishhooks of his own design.

On Saturday night, February 7, 1701, with a cold wind howling out of the northwest, Lawson and his party stripped down and waded across the Haw River near the present village of Saxapahaw in today’s Alamance County. Later the next morning, they met a group of English traders coming from Virginia. They all agreed that they had never seen such fabulous land as they were now passing through. At such times, Lawson often imagined what the land would look like in the far future if occupied by hardworking settlers under a benign government. Lawson’s party then headed east for Occaneechi Town, home of the Saponi Indians. The village was located just east of the present town of Hillsborough on the Eno River. Here, Eno Will, an Indian Chief very much disposed to the English, agreed to conduct them down east to where the English were beginning to settle along the Pamlico River. Later that day, they headed on further east to the village of Adshusheer, which was likely in or near the present town of Durham. On further east, they went by an Indian cabin whose owner was not home and stole a rooster for supper. The Indians claimed its owner had intended him as a sacrifice to the devil. Lawson said he was happy to have cheated the devil out of a chicken for supper.

Somewhere along about the confluence where the Eno and Flat Rivers come together to form the Neuse River northeast of the present Durham, Lawson and his party came upon a small Indian village that Lawson described a “parcel of nasty smoky holes” built in a swamp where many people had only one eye and food was scarce. He also noted their arrow heads were clear and surmised they must have been made from glass bottles they obtained from traders. This could have been true but just as likely they could have been from clear quartz found locally. The next day it rained hard so they stayed put. The day after, they continued on the southwest side of the river along where Falls Lake now lies. Lawson inquired of Eno Will where this river went and was told it emptied into the Core Sound. Core Sound was named for the Coree Indians who lived along its shores. Lawson, with a vague knowledge of eastern North Carolina geography, surmised this then must be the Neuse River.

Because of all the rain, the river and creeks flowing into the Neuse were flooding which made travel difficult. On Monday, February 16, 1701, they found themselves at the “Falls of Neuse Creek.” which was tending to flow southward and thus blocking their travel to the east. Here again they stripped and waded into the cold river to get to the northeast side. They marveled at all the large rocks in the river and the great noise the water made. The Indians called this “Wee quo Whom” and is now the site of the large earthen Falls Lake Dam built in the 1970’s. That night around the campfire, Lawson and Eno Will had a conversation about religion and agreed about the existent of life after death, God, Satan, heaven, and hell.  Then Lawson invited Eno Will to become a Christian but Will, despite stating that he thought Lawson’s way was very good, said he was just too old to make a change.

The Lawson Party Heads into what would one day be Eastern Wake County

In the last three hundred plus years, many historians, both professional and amateur, have tried to trace Lawson’s exact route through the Carolina back country from Charleston to Pamlico. It is easy enough to do when he mentions landmarks or Indian villages that remained well after Lawson’s time. Many of these, like Keyauwee and Occaneechi Town have been excavated by archeologists in the twentieth century and are right where Lawson found them. However, once Lawson’s party left the “Falls of Neuse Creek”, heading toward the Pamlico River, he mentions few identifiable Indian villages or landmarks. Some maps of Lawson’s route have them heading more easterly toward the present site of Greenville, roughly along what would later become US 264. Although this route may have been the more direct, there are several reasons this does not square with Lawson’s narrative which will be explained in more detail below.

Other maps put them on a more southeasterly track toward the present southern Wilson/northern Wayne County area which is more justified in Lawson’s Journal.

Over their millennia here, the Indians had established paths leading from one place to another and possessed an exquisite knowledge of area geography and topography. Until agriculture caused them to settle down, they were a moving, shifting people. Even in Lawson’s time, whole villages were liable to pick up and move hundreds of miles. Further, in an entry in Lawson’s journal, he comments that traveling Indians preferred going around an obstacle, instead of over or through it, if possible. As the biggest obstacle to travelling in 1701 was rivers, imagine wading across a river, neck deep in freezing water in February and then having to sleep in the woods in your wet clothes. Lawson mentions this happening several times on his travels, and it was no more fun in 1701 than it would be now. Lawson wanted to go to the Pamlico River, but he did not know the way, so he was relying on Eno Will to guide him in the best way. Having traveled this route many times, Eno Will knew the way that would take him to his destination with the fewest river crossings.

So how is one to travel some distance and yet avoid the frequent dreaded creek and river crossings? Easy, you travel along the ridge lines between watersheds. While at the “Falls of Neuse Creek” they crossed on the rocks there to the northeast side of the river. After crossing the river, they likely cut east from the falls to south of the present day Rolesville. There they had a choice. They could follow the ridge line between Marks Creek on the west and Buffalo Creek on the east. This route could take them all the way from the future Rolesville to the future Smithfield without passing a creek they could not easily leap over. That this same thirty-mile route is now traversed by Rolesville Road, Eagle Rock Road and Buffalo Road in turn tells us something about the staying power of ancient Indian trails. European settlers tended to follow these Indian trails when laying out roads because they were less muddy in rainy seasons, bridges were expensive and difficult to maintain, and they had a profound fear of malaria – “mal air” – from low ground. In many cases, settlements grew up along these trails for the same reason. Note that Knightdale, Eagle Rock, Wendell, Zebulon and many other small towns in our area are situated on the high ground between watersheds.

On Tuesday morning, February 17, 1701, they broke camp at the falls and traveled, Lawson estimated thirty miles, over a “level” country. Twenty miles per day was considered a good journey. Thirty miles per day was extraordinary and strongly suggests no time was wasted crossing rivers or creeks. Also, for the land to appear level to Lawson, his party must have been traveling along the crest between watersheds. He also mentions that the land was “intermixed with some quantities of Marble.” Since there is no marble in eastern Wake County, what Lawson saw were the numerous granite outcrops of the famous Rolesville pluton that underlies most of the county east of the Neuse River. In the afternoon he came upon “slow dead waters of a brown color proceeding from the swamps.”

Eastern Wake County is drained by three creeks, roughly parallel to each other and all flowing southeast. Anyone familiar with these creeks would agree that the only one matching Lawson’s description of slow brown water is Buffalo Creek which starts near Rolesville and passes west of Wendell. Many have observed that Buffalo Creek, with its dark water, seems out of place sandwiched between swifter sandy bottomed Marks Creek on one side and larger Little River on the other. Moreover, with the only native cypress trees in the area, Buffalo Creek would fit in a hundred miles east among the numerous blackwater creeks there. Another more likely route trending eastward for the Lawson party would be to catch the ridge line between the Buffalo Creek and Little River watersheds (not the names they would have known) and likewise, they would not encounter a stream they could not leap over for many miles. Following the level crest of the watershed southeast from Rolesville will take you first toward Riley Hill, hit Wendell Boulevard east of Hephzibah Church (Wendell Middle School is sitting directly on top of the ridge) and east through the middle of town to Selma Road.

Thus if, and it is only an if, John Lawson passed through or near the future site of Wendell, it would have been on that Tuesday afternoon, February
17, 1701.

The ridge between Buffalo Creek and Little River continues south along Selma Road, crosses the county line and then turns toward Corinth Holders
on 231. There Applewhite Road takes it to Covered Bridge Road and then Thanksgiving Church Road takes it to NC 42. There is no way of knowing
where, but at some point, after leaving the future site of Wendell, the Lawson’s party would have turned east and crossed Little River and continued toward the southeast. Thereafter, it would have been dry and flat for many miles.

Lawson had no accurate means to measure distance. What he did have was lots of experience marching along Indian trails through the woods. He knew by his aching moccasin feet, which he often complained about, that a good day’s march was about 20 miles. If he said he had marched 30 miles through a level country, then we have no reason to doubt him. Tracing the route described above from the “Falls of Neuse Creek” about 30 miles southeast would put Lawson’s party somewhere between the present Stancil’s Chapel and Kenly. There they camped for the night.

According to Lawson’s journal, after the marathon the previous day, the next morning they slept in and got started on their way about mid- morning. They had not gone more than a couple of miles before they encountered five hundred Tuscarora Indians in one of their temporary hunting quarters. There they had laid out streets for their bark-covered houses but food, except for corn, was scarce. They moved on and about mid-afternoon, they reached an Indian town with nobody there but an old woman or two. Everybody else was at the hunting quarters. Food, except for corn, was scarce there too. This was very likely the Tuscarora town of Torhunta which was located about 10 miles northeast of Goldsboro. Fortunately, they had a local Tuscarora Indian traveling with the party who lived nearby, and he invited them to spend the night at his place and dine on what he had, which was only some more corn meal.

On Thursday, Lawson complained of passing through “several swamps” and not getting very far. This was very likely Nahunta Swamp, a tributary of
Contentnea Creek located about 2 miles northwest of the Tuscarora stronghold of Nooherooka. They came to the cabin of an Indian who agreed to accompany them to the English on a rum buying trip if they stayed two days. While there, Lawson observed an Indian “doctor” treating a girl troubled by fits and dined on the tail of a beaver. On Saturday Morning, they were ferried over Contentnea Creek in a canoe likely near the present town of Grifton. The next day they marched on, meeting an Indian selling fish and saw the first Spanish moss he had seen since leaving Charleston. That night they slept in the woods under a large oak tree under some bark while there was lightning and thunder accompanying rain and snow. The day after their last dreadful night on the trail, it cleared up and they arrived at the banks of the Pamlico River near the present town of Chocowinity. They were ferried over to the north side of the Pamlico River in a hidden canoe then shortly arrived at the home of Richard Smith, a new local settler. John Lawson liked the area around there very well and decided to stay for a while.

So why was Lawson so intent on getting to the Pamlico River? Obviously, he knew that the English were settling there. It is not known if he knew beforehand Richard Smith, who had previously located on the north shore of the Pamlico River at a place called Bath Creek. Perhaps he soon learned
that Smith intended to lay out a town and needed Lawson’s surveying skills.

However, it may have come as a pleasant surprise that Smith had an eligible daughter, Hannah, who immediately attracted Lawson’s attention. After a rest at Bath Creek, Lawson traveled down to the confluence of the Neuse and Trent Rivers and built a cabin on the banks of a creek that still bears his name.

In the next few years, Lawson was busy laying out and founding Bath and New Bern, the two oldest town in North Carolina. He tried to stay out of politics but his knowledge of the back country and skills as a surveyor kept him involved in colonial administration. He was friends and corresponded
with some of the leading English scientist of his day and often sent plant and animal samples he collected back to them in England. In early 1709, Lawson left for England to attend to the publishing of his journal and notes on Carolina. His book, entitled “A New Voyage to Carolina” was very well received at the time and is now regarded as one of the best sources of early North Carolina colonial history. In over three hundred years, it has seldom been out of print, is a great read and is still widely available.

Although no record exists, it is likely he eventually married Hannah Smith because, according to his will written in August 1708, they had one daughter, Isabella, and possibly another child on the way.

By the summer of 1710, he was back helping the Swiss to settle New Bern. The Tuscarora were not happy with the influx of Europeans to the land they
considered theirs and they blamed Lawson as largely responsible. Unfortunately for Lawson, during a trip up the Neuse River in search of muscadine grapes in the fall of 1711, he ran into a Tuscarora war party intent on destroying the settlers of eastern North Carolina. Despite being a friend to many of the Tuscarora and an advocate for their fair treatment, he was killed by them at the Tuscarora town of Catechna. In the bloody war that followed, the Tuscarora were defeated and all of eastern North Carolina was opened for a flood of settlers from Virginia and elsewhere.

Many of the local family names, still recognized by us today, first came here by the second and third decades of the 1700’s. Likely by then, European
settlers were already laying claim to land that one day would be called Wendell.

The Rich Legacy of John Lawson

John Lawson was an extraordinary individual who has never been widely recognized for the important part he played in the early history of our state. If anyone has a legitimate claim of being the Father of North Carolina, it is John Lawson. He was a visionary and often commented on the beauty of the land as he traveled in Carolina and how he imagined it would be when settled by a free and industrious people. In the opening paragraph to one of the chapters of his book,

Lawson wrote a soaring description of his adopted home that still stirs us today: “When we consider the latitude and convenient situation of Carolina, had we no further confirmation thereof, our reason would inform us, that such a place lay fairly to be a delicious country, being placed in that girdle of the world which affords wine, oil, fruit, grain, and silk, with other rich commodities, besides a sweet air, moderate climate and fertile soil; these are the blessings (under Heaven’s protection) that spin out the tread of life to its utmost extent and crown our days with the sweets of health and plenty, which, when joined with content, renders the possessors the happiest race of men upon earth.”

As mentioned above, John Lawson was far ahead of his time in his attitude toward the Indians. In the last pages of his book, he wrote the following
concerning the Indians: “They are really better to us, than we are to them; they always give us victuals at their quarters and take care we are armed against hunger and thirst. We do not so by them generally speaking but let them walk by our doors hungry and do not often relieve them. We look upon them with scorn and distain and think them little better than beast in human shape, though if well examined, we shall find that for all our religion and
education, we possess more moral deformities and evils than these savages do or are acquainted with.

We reckon them slaves in comparison to us and intruders as oft as they enter our houses or hunt near our dwellings. But if we will admit reason to be out guide, she will inform us that these Indians are the freest people in the world and so far as being intruders upon us, that we have abandoned our own native soil to drive them out and possess theirs. Neither have we any true balance in judging of these poor heathens because we neither give allowance for their natural disposition nor the Sylvian education they lie under and have been trained up to.”

“I believe it will not appear but that all the wars which we have had with these savages were occasioned by the unjust dealings of the Christians towards them. Whilst we make way for a Christian colony through a Field of Blood and defraud and make away with those that one day may be wanted in this world and in the next, appear against us.”