urned, no one is able to tell.
Whatever the circumstances of the destruction of this fine old building,
the loss sustained by the county, and by the State, is irreparable.

CHAPTER IX

PASQUOTANK IN COLONIAL WARS

The earliest wars in which the pioneers of North Carolina took part were
those fought between the first comers into the State and the Indians. As
Pasquotank was one of the earliest of the counties to be settled, we
might naturally expect that county to have taken an active part in those
encounters. The fact, however, that the great majority of her early
settlers were Friends, or Quakers, as they are more commonly called,
prevented Pasquotank from sharing as extensively as she otherwise might
have done in the fight for existence that the pioneers in Carolina were
compelled to maintain; for one of the most rigid rules of the Quaker
Church is that its members must not take up arms against their fellow
men, no matter what the provocation may be.

However, a search through the Colonial Records reveals the fact that our
county has given a fair quota of men and money whenever the domestic or
foreign troubles of colony, state or nation, needed her aid.

The first encounter between our sturdy Anglo-Saxon forefathers and the
red man of the forest occurred in 1666, two years after William
Drummond took up the reins of government in Albemarle. After this
trouble little is recorded, nor is Pasquotank nor any of her precincts
mentioned in reference to the Indian War. But as the majority of the
settlers in North Carolina then lived along the shores of Little River
and the Pasquotank, we may feel sure that the men of this county were
prominent in subduing their savage foes, who, as Captain Ashe records,
"were so speedily conquered that the war left no mark upon the infant
settlement."

From then until the terrible days of the Tuscarora Massacre of 1711, the
county, and Albemarle as a whole, rested from serious warfare; but these
years can hardly be termed peaceful ones for the settlers in this
region. The Culpeper Rebellion, the dissatisfaction caused by the
tyrannical and illicit deeds of Seth Sothel, the disturbance caused by
Captain Bibbs, who claimed the office of governor in defiance of
Ludwell, whom the Lords had appointed to rule over Carolina, and the
Cary troubles, all combined to keep the whole Albemarle district in a
state of confusion and disorder for many years.

But all of these quarrelings and b