Message #109548

[Bianca]

The Founding of Ninety Six, 1730-1760



The Cherokee Path, the most direct route between Charleston and the Cherokee towns (Image 4), had become a major thoroughfare for trappers and traders traveling between the coast and the frontier. The first documented use of the Cherokee Path by the British was recorded by Captain George Chicken, who led a militia detachment to the coast via the trail in 1716. At a point on the Cherokee Path that was said to be 96 miles from the Cherokee town of Keowee, Capt. Chicken and his unit blazed a new trail southwestward to the Savannah River. Ninety Six arose at the junction of these two trails.

The people who first settled in the vicinity of Ninety Six in the 1730s initially had no formal claims to the land. Thomas Brown, a trader who had resided previously at the Congarees, was the first to seek formal title to a tract of land, 250 acres, at Ninety Six. However, his 1736 claim had not been settled by the time of his death in 1737 (Cann 1974:2).

Ten years after Thomas Brown submitted his claim at Ninety Six, agents made a request to the colonial assembly to encourage British subjects to settle near Ninety Six by offering all new immigrants an exemption from all provincial taxes, except those exacted on slaves. At Governor James Glen’s recommendation, the assembly voted to suspend the specified taxes to all northern frontier residents for a period of 15 years.

To preempt any negative reactions that the Cherokee might have to an influx of new settlers into the high country, Governor Glen met with 61 Cherokee headmen at Ninety Six on June 1, 1746, to reaffirm peaceful relations. A few months later, in February of 1747, a transfer of the lands in the Long Canes Creek and Little River drainages was negotiated with the Cherokee in exchange for ammunition valued at ₤975.

With the promise of peace, there came an influx of land speculators to the Ninety Six area. Foremost among them was John Hamilton who in 1749 acquired title to 200,000 acres just south of the Ninety Six area, and commissioned a survey in 1751 in order to subdivide and sell it. The northern line of the survey, commonly known as Hamilton’s Great Survey Line (or the 1751 grant line) which ran in a northeast to southwest direction, is still a visible landmark (National Park Service 1979:9).

Among the first to arrive were Dr. John Murray from Charleston, John Turk from Virginia, James Francis from Saludy Old Town, Andrew Williamson from Scotland, and John Lewis Gervais, a German immigrant. By the summer of 1751, Robert Gouedy had purchased 250 acres at Ninety Six just south of the Great Survey Line and had constructed a trading post along the Cherokee Path (also referred to as Charleston Road) that passed through his property. Gouedy had previously been a trader at Great Tellico, a village of the Overhill Cherokees from whom Gouedy had obtained an Indian wife who later bore him three daughters. When he settled at Ninety Six, Gouedy soon married a white woman, Mary, who also bore him two children, James and Sarah. His trading post prospered, and at Gouedy’s death in 1775, his land holdings had exceeded 1500 acres, his “Ninety Six Plantation” had 34 black slaves, and the trading post had become the center of activity for a large section of the high country. Serving as both commercial center and bank for the backcountry area, 400 settlers and traders had open accounts at Gouedy’s store when he died in 1775 (Holschlag and Rodeffer 1777:21).

The influx of settlers into the South Carolina high country caused the relations between the settlers and the Cherokees to deteriorate, finally breaking down in the spring of 1751 when a theft of 331 deerskins from a Cherokee hunting camp by white raiders went unpunished by the magistrate at Ninety Six (Cann 1974:7). By summer, retaliatory Indian raids became a constant threat, so two militia units were dispatched to patrol the high country. And, at the request of the local populace, the militia built a small military outpost on Gouedy’s property.

Following the deaths of several white settlers along the frontier, peace was restored for a brief period in 1753 when the British agreed to pay for the stolen deerskins and to help protect the Cherokee from their Indian enemies by building Fort Prince George at Keowee. Ninety Six then became a supply station and rest stop for those traveling to the Keowee fort. Construction of another fort, Fort Loudoun, among the Overhill Cherokee in eastern Tennessee was subsequently begun in April of 1757 following negotiations two years earlier in which the Cherokee promised assistance to the British in fighting the French and their Indian allies in their most recently begun military campaign for North American territories¾the French and Indian War (1754-1763).

The previous war, the War of Austrian Succession (known as King George’s War in the American colonies) had begun in 1740 and ended in 1748 with the signing of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, which restored to France all the possessions it had lost in North America. The Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle proved, however, to be little more than an uneasy truce between the vying powers with isolated skirmishes that quickly escalated into full conflict when the French built a series of forts in western Pennsylvania then seized the Forks of the Ohio in 1754. At first the British suffered several military setbacks against the French, but by 1758 the tide had turned and the British enjoyed victory after victory. British military success and the promise to aid in the war against the French, however, did not prevent some Cherokee from accepting overtures from their supposed enemies and switching alliances to attack British settlers in the Carolinas and Georgia in 1759.

To counter the threat of additional Cherokee attacks, William Henry Lyttelton, who had succeeded Glen as Governor of South Carolina in 1757, promptly proceeded with reinforcements of over 1300 men to Fort Prince George. Stopping at Ninety Six along the way, it was decided that a stockade fort and magazine should be built to protect the local citizenry. To expedite the construction, Gouedy’s barn was chosen to function as the fort’s magazine. A stockade measuring ninety feet square was then constructed around the barn with sheds added to one side of it to shelter the garrison troops. The stockade, consisting of upright logs set firmly into an earthen embankment with a facing ditch, was completed on November 27, 1759, having been constructed in less than a week. It included two bastions at diagonally opposite corners, a banquette (firing step), and a gate. This outpost, dubbed Fort Ninety Six, was the scene of several conflicts between the British and Cherokee during what is aptly viewed as a war within the French and Indian War, the Cherokee War (1760-1762).