he
siege of Charleston, in the long and dreary winter at Valley Forge, on
the fatal field of Camden, and in many other important crises of the
war, the soldiers of Currituck were found in the front ranks of the
American army, lustily shouting the "battle-cry of freedom." And not
until the last British trooper had left our shores did they lay down
their arms and return to their long neglected and deserted fields and
farms.

But though the county gave freely of her sons to the American ranks,
there were some within her borders who deserted the cause, and either
openly or secretly sympathized with the enemy. The most noted of these
Tories was Thomas McKnight, who showed his colors early in the struggle.
McKnight was a prominent citizen of Indian Town. This colonial
settlement was built on land reserved by the Lords Proprietors in 1704
to Yeopim Indians, whose chief town was called by them "Culong." In 1774
these Indians, with permission of the General Assembly, sold their
lands, and with their king, John Durant, left the State. The lands were
bought by Thomas McKnight, Gideon Lamb, Peter Dauge, Major Taylor Jones,
John Humphries, William Ferebee, and Thomas Pool Williams, all
Revolutionary soldiers or members of the legislative bodies before or
after the war.

A white settlement grew up on the site of ancient "Culong," and the name
of the red man's village was changed to Indian Town, in memory of its
former inhabitants.

McKnight represented Currituck at the New Bern Convention of 1775, and
there refusing to sign the document approving the Continental Congress
at Philadelphia, and withdrawing from the Convention, he was accused of
being a Tory by the House and denounced as a traitor to his country.

Though in an open letter to Joseph Jones, of Pasquotank, McKnight
indignantly denied the charges against his loyalty to America, the
Halifax Convention of 1770 ordered his estate to be confiscated and
rented out for benefit of the State, by Isaac Gregory, William Ferebee,
and Abram Harrison. An amusing story is told of how McKnight acquired
one of his plantations in Currituck. John Durant, the Chief of the
Yeopims, had very astutely made it known to his own braves, as well as
to his white neighbors, that the visions that visited him in his
somnolent hours must somehow, somewhere, if within the range of
possibility, materialize into visible, tangible realities, and that
those who could, and did not help in their materializa