Manlove Origins, Part 3 - The Great Philadelphia Wagon Road

William L Manlove would have been 53 years old in 1783. That is the year he probably left Delaware heading for North Carolina. But William was not alone; he seems to have traveled with his extended family. His first wife, Hannah Robinson, died in 1765, and he married Elizabeth Newell shortly thereafter. I know of three sons and two daughters that he fathered. George Manlove, his oldest son, was 29 when the group left Delaware. George’s younger half-brothers, William and Jonathan, were not yet in their teens, and he had two children of his own who were under three. William L. Manlove had two older sisters. Margaret was accompanied by her husband, Perez Chipman, and several of their adult children. His other sister, Keziah and her husband, John Wheeler, both died in the mid 1770s. Several of their six children came along too. Its tempting to assume they all traveled together at the same time. That may not have been the case, but all of them eventually ended up in North Carolina.

Their final destination was around the Deep River area in Guilford County, 15 miles east of Salem. If they were making the trip today it would be a six hour drive of 325 miles along super highways laid along much of the route they probably followed. But in 1783, if they made an average of 10 miles a day, their trek would have taken more than a month.

So, how did they get there? They most likely traveled by way of the Great Wagon Road. The map shown in the preceding Wikipedia link was drawn in 1751, and shows the main road systems throughout Colonial America. If you double-click on the map, it will appear full size. Click it again to magnify, and you can see remarkable detail. The map is public domain, so you can download it without fear of breaking the law. It is a large file - prints out at about 39 by 25 inches - which I did (less than $5 at Kinkos). Now I got to find a wall to put it on. If you like old maps this is a great one.

The 1751 map shows a colonial road heading north through Dover. It curves east a ways, and connects with the Great Philadelphia Wagon Road a few miles west of that city. I think William and his group probably followed this route. Much of the southern portion of the road was, at first, no more than a trace through the wilderness. As the east coast filled with English immigrants there was pressure to move west. The Wagon Road was the means by which the North Carolina back country, The Piedmont, was accessed. What started as a trickle in the middle of the Eighteenth Century grew to a relative flood by the time my ancestors set foot on it thirty-five years later. By 1783 a wagon could have probably managed the trip without too much difficulty. That’s not to say it would have been easy. There were no bridges, and dirt roads became quagmires when it rained.

Michael O. and Martha B. Hartley have an excellent article published in the Tar Heel Junior Historian. It provides a brief (five page) description of the immigration into North Carolina. In part it states: “In the 1740s one of the first groups of people to enter backcountry North Carolina was ‘the Bryant settlement.’ The leader, a Quaker named Morgan Bryant, followed a path from Pennsylvania into the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia and first settled there. Later, in 1748, he led a group of people farther south into North Carolina, where they settled on the Yadkin River near a crossing called the Shallow Ford. The path Bryant pioneered would become the Great Philadelphia Wagon Road.”

The Manlove group left the Wagon Road at Salem, just before it crossed Shallow Ford, and headed east to their new home in the Deep River area. Their place lay between the modern day cities of Winston-Salem and Greensboro.

GO TO: Part 4

Manlove Origins, Part 2 - The Chesapeake Bay

Pocomoke lies on the peninsula that forms the Eastern Shore of Chesapeake Bay. It is shaped like a hand in profile with the index finger pointing toward Virginia Beach and Norfolk. The peninsula is divided among three states -Virginia occupies the southern tip (Accomack and Northampton Counties), while Maryland and Delaware share the northern part.
The Chesapeake Bay was a center of early Colonial development. Jamestown, considered the first permanent English settlement (1607), lay just south of Williamsburg and west of Yorktown. The three made up what is called the Historic Triangle. Washington D.C. and Mount Vernon, George Washington’s estate, are on the Potomac River which flows into the bay.

Jamestown was established as a business adventure not forty years before Mark Manlove moved onto the Eastern Shore of Chesapeake Bay. The Virginia Company financed the passage of 144 men and boys to the New World. The area was hostile wilderness, and the settlement nearly failed during its first years. Forty died on the voyage and many more from starvation and disease that winter. More colonists were brought in each year, but life was tough, and the colony’s survival was tenuous for several years. They were on the verge of abandoning the settlement in 1610 when supply ships saved it.

I find it curious that Mark Manlove would bring his whole family over. He was definitely not alone. Migration had been heavy in the years since Jamestown, and the population had grown. He no doubt came over with associates, a group that could share the work. Like most, he was most certainly a farmer. The group probably built small shelters that first year. They cleared fields and planted crops - hoping to survive till the following spring.
Marks’s sons, William and Thomas, moved 90 miles north, settling in Kent County Delaware, near present day Dover. William died there in 1694. The next three generations of Manlove’s were born and died in Kent County. The family was there for nearly a hundred years, and then William L. Manlove, of the 6th generation, and his adult son, George, left sometime after 1782.

They made the move after Cornwallis surrendered to Washington at Yorktown in October of 1781. That was the decisive event of the American Revolution, and hostilities ended by the spring of 1783. George Manlove was 29 years old at the end of the war so he might very well have participated in the Revolution. He was listed as having served in the War of 1812, so he very likely fought in the Revolution too. I’m guessing they left Delaware in the summer of 1783.

I don’t know why they left a place that had been home so long. There seemed to have been only one male child to survive in each of the preceding generations, so George was going to inherit the farm - if they had one. But, for what ever reason, they pulled up stakes and headed south. William L Manlove’s wife, Hannah (Robinson), had died fifteen years before, so there were only five in the family group: William L, his son George, George’s wife Rachel (Dunning), their daughter Hannah (2 or 3 years) and son William (1 or 2 years). It is likely that other families accompanied them. That was common practice in those days - extended families and neighbors migrated together.
GO TO: Part 3