The Stubbs Story Chapter II

The Stubbs Story

Chapter II

John Stubbs was born to Thomas and Mary Minor Stubbs on December 27, 1732 in Chester County, Pennsylvania. He the 7th of 9 children. In 1755, John moved to Hillsborough, North Carolina where a Quaker meeting was formed. Family stories tell that he was following his sweetheart, Esther Maddock, daughter of Joseph Maddock who moved to Hillsborough. John told of witnessing General Braddock’s retreat from the disastrous defeat by the French and Indians at Fort Duquesne (near Pittsburgh) during his travel. Joseph Maddock was a Quaker leader in Hillsborough. He build a mill on the Eno River that flows through town. The town was organized in 1754 and Orange County was organized in 1752. The site was a major trading site for Native Americans and the area had hosted native villages for several centuries. It is not known what John’s occupation was at this time, but it is likely that he worked as a miller. In 1759 John married Esther Maddock, daughter of miller and community leader Joseph Maddock. John and Esther had a house in town next door to the somewhat infamous Sheriff Fanning. Early revolutionary rumblings developed in North Carolina as local farmers rebelled against the taxes authorities imposed in what was known as the Regulator movement. The Quakers were not involved for the most part, but because the Quakers did not drink liquor, the Regulators held meetings at Maddock’s Mill and the authorities began to associate the Quaker with the rebellious farmers and mistreated them. Sheriff Fanning took over title to some Quaker properties for his own benefit. The Quakers decided to move and in 1768, Joseph Maddock negotiated a land grant for a Quaker settlement in Georgia which was named Wrightsborough in honor of Governor Wright of that state. The proclamation granting land to the Quakers was signed by the King of England. Stubbs descendant Ada Bernhardt (daughter of Lewis Stubbs) still had the grant and more papers in 1945 when Avery Stubbs visited Richmond, IN. Avery writes, “I came upon sheepskin rolls with original land grants signed by King George 3rd to new land in the Georgia Colony.”. Mrs. Bernhardt died shortly after Avery’s trip and her family offered to sell Avery 30 boxes filled with family records for $30. Unfortunately, money was very scarce and no one could loan Avery $30 to secure the records. The documents were split up and sold to bookstores in Ohio. The boxes had been collected from family members after the Great 1885 Stubbs Reunion with the intention of writing a Stubbs history book. In a “now here’s the rest of the story” twist, Dan Stubbs purchased a ledger notebook from a Huddleston family researcher for $30 that proved to be the family research notes the Bernhardts had been making. The Huddleston researcher had purchased it from a book seller in New York. 150 families eventually settled in Wrightsborough, but the Quakers had difficult time there. The community was attacked by Indians and bandits and roving groups of revolutionaries. The Quakers remained loyal to the king. Some in the community took arms and defended themselves and were subsequently condemned by the Quaker meeting for violating the community’s belief in pacifism. After the Revolution it became harder for the Quakers, who did not own slaves, to compete with the slave labor of their neighbors. John Stubbs died in 1803 in Wrightsborough. In that year a Quaker prophet travelled through the South warning of a terrible “internecine war” that was coming to America because of slavery that would come within the lives of children then living. It was time to move again and by 1809 virtually all of the Quakers had left for the slave free territories of western Ohio and the Whitewater Valley of Indiana.