Henry (I feel these many months of lurking and watching you post gives
me that license),

Some of my work had me touch on the Hairstons in Stokes County
recently.  The family still owns land up there and one ancient tract has
a two mile long stretch of wonderfully preserved roadbed on it.  This is
likely to have been a segment of the "Carolina Road".  Though this land
only became associated with the Hairstons in the past hundred or so
years, it is an extension of their considerable presence on the border.

Here's a link to some of the photos taken the day we mapped the old
road. ( http://www.tradingpath.org/gallery/main.php)

The current steward for this old plantation (house deteriorated but
standing) is:
Samuel Hairston
PO Box 694
Chatham, VA  24531
434-432-8963

Tom Magnuson
Trading Path Association


Henry Wiencek wrote:
> In doing research for my book on the Hairstons, I found that during the
> Revolution, in 1780, Patrick Henry made a deal with Joseph Habersham of
> Georgia to hire twenty of Habersham's slaves.  At that time, many planters
> who felt endangered by the British were leasing their slaves to planters
> in interior regions they believed would be safe from British raids.  I
> found the Habersham/Patrick Henry lease in the business papers of Peter
> Hairston, who had land on both sides of the VA/NC line in the region west
> of Danville, mainly in Stokes County, NC, around the present town of
> Walnut Cove.  Perhaps Hairston took over the lease from P. Henry -- the
> document doesn't say.  The lease names all twenty slaves. [The document is
> at the Southern Historical Collection, UNC, in the Hairston and Wilson
> Papers; I got the microfilm on ILL -- reel 1, np, 1780.]
>
> This lease may not have anything to do with Ralph Henry, but it raises the
> possibility that Patrick Henry might have sent some of his Hanover slaves
> to the Piedmont and that escapes might have occurred there or en route.
> All this is speculation on my part.
>
> It is also of interest that the enslaved people of the Piedmont carried a
> strong memory of the British as liberators; a generation after the
> Revolution some of the enslaved in Henry County welcomed the coming of the
> War of 1812 as another opportunity to get their freedom through the
> British.  A small group of Henry County slaves planned an uprising to
> coincide with the expected British invasion.  One planter was murdered but
> the uprising fizzled.
>
> Henry Wiencek
> Charlottesville
>
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--
T. R. Magnuson
Trading Path Association
www.tradingpath.org
919-644-0600

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