and a successor appointed, who proved the best ruler we had yet had. He held office, too, longer than any, being governor for eighteen years, and he left at the end an honorable name. 1734. This was Gabriel Johnston. He was a welleducated Scotch gentleman, a man of integrity and good sense and well disposed to do his duty. North Carolina under his rule entered upon a career of greater prosperity than had yet been her lot. The population of the State then was about 40,000. Thirty years afterward it had increased to 125,000four-fifths being whites, one-fifth negroes and Indians. 1745. Before Governor Johnston had been here ten years he wrote back to England that new inhabitants flocked into the State daily, and chiefly into the middle part. These came from Pennsylvania mostly, and were of Scotch-Irish descent. Many came directly from Scotland, and landed at the Cape Fear, and settled the country lying all along that river. Many came by way of Charleston, S. C., and moved into the lower valleys of the Yadkin and Catawba. These people were all Protestants. The Scotch-Irish were mostly Presbyterians, but whatever Church they belonged to, they were always a steady, honest, industrious, and religious people, who made excellent citizens. There were many good Germans too, who settled in Rowan county. A great company of Moravians bought one hundred thousand acres of land in what is now Forsyth county and settled the town of Salem. There they have lived in peace 1753. ever since. These all were valuable settlers, and 1765. their descendants still dwell where their fathers first subdued the forests, and resemble them in their best traits of character. Year after year they poured through Virginia in wagons and carts which carried the women and children and their household goods. The men walked or rode on horseback. They brought with them slips of fruit trees, shrubs and flower-roots, which their fathers and grandfathers had brought from Europe across the Atlantic. Many of their articles of domestic convenience are still in use among their descendants in North Carolina. A pear tree is yet bearing fruit in Orange county which was brought in a bundle of fruit-tree switches from Pennsylvania a hundred and twenty years ago. The women brought their flax-wheels and looms. They brought their tall old clocks, their heavy chests full of household linen. Above all, they brought their Bibles and hymn-books. We wonder, when we look at the map and see how long and slow the journey must have been across the great State of Virginia and her wide rivers and mountains, why these people did not stop in some of the beautiful and pleasant Virginia valleys instead of coming on so far. One of the historians of that day says they would not stop in Virginia because the English Church was the State Church there, and they could not be "free and equal" if they settled in Virginia. North Carolina was considered "a free State:" her people had not resisted bad government and stood out for their rights so long for nothing. So here came the long wagon-trains bringing thousands of honest, God-fearing, earnest people who meant that the little red-cheeked boys and girls they brought with them should take root like the seeds and the fruit trees, and grow up in freedom in the new homes they were seeking. It was in these years that the great Methodist preachers, John Wesley and George Whitefield and their friends, came from England to America and traversed the States, preaching with so much devotion and eloquence that great revivals of religion took place in the country. The first foundations of the Methodist Church were laid, and a general reformation in the morals and manners of their converts added greatly to the prosperity of every community where they entered. GOVERNORS OF CAROLINA UNDER THE LORDS PROPRIETORS. Kings of England. 1663. William Drummond, governor. 1667. Samuel Stephens, governor. 1674. George Carteret, president of council. Eastchurch and Miller, president (Culpepper Rebellion). 1677. John Harvey, president; John Jenkins, gov Charles II. 1660-85. 1680. 1681. Henry Wilkinson, governor. 1683. James II., 1685-88. William and Mary, 1688-1703. Anne, 1703-14. ernor. Seth Sothel, governor. 1689. Philip Ludwell, governor. 1693. Alexander Lillington, deputy governor. 1699. Henderson Walker, president. 1704. Robert Daniel, deputy governor. 1705. Thomas Carey, deputy governor (Carey Rebellion). 1709. William Glover, deputy governor. 1714. Charles Eden, governor. There was woman's fearless eye, What sought they thus afar? The wealth of seas? the spoils of war?— Ay, call it holy ground, The soil their feet have trod : They have left unstained what there they found Freedom to worship God. HEMANS. CHAPTER XII. GROWTH UNDER THE NEW GOVERNMENT. 1740. GOVERNOR JOHNSTON and his council must have been kept pretty busy laying off tracts of land and allowing for new counties to accommodate the increasing population. As if there must still remain some of the bad results of the "Lords Proprietary" government, there was a strip of land running through the northern part of North Carolina from east to west that was claimed by the heirs of one of the "Lords," who had refused to sell his share to the king when the rest was sold. This of course gave no end of trouble in surveying lands and collecting rents and taxes. It was not always easy to tell if it was Lord Granville's land or the king's. Many disputes arose in consequence, which were not settled till the good time came when North Carolinians took the law into their own hands and got rid of kings and lords for ever. 1745. It very likely was because we had a Scotchman for our governor that so many of that shrewd and thrifty nation came to our State in those days. Many came from the mountains or Highlands of Scotland in consequence of |