Admiralty to transplant me from one Plantation to another, makes me stay a great while at one place for a passage to another, which is uncertain, difficult and dangerous. I have by the extreme of cold last Winter in Maryland and Pennsylvania, and by my tedious passage in the Winter time from New York to this place, got a great numbness in my right leg and foot. I am in hopes this warm climate will restore me to my health. I have formerly wrote to your Board and the Commiss's of H. M. Customs, the necescity of having a Vessel to transport me from one Plantation to another. I humbly pray Your Lordships favour to direct that the little residence I am to make in these parts of the World, may be in this Province, and that a Vessel well manned may be sent me hither, which may answer all occasion, my intentions being not to lye idle, for when the Hurricane times come in these parts of the World, I can go securely to Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania and New England, without fear of being driven from those Plantations by North West Winds, and when they come I can pass from one Plantation to another without difficulty. INTRODUCTION IN 1703 the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts authorized John Blair to go as a missionary to the settlers of North Carolina, and he was, accordingly, ordained to the ministry for that purpose April 12, 1703. He set out for his mission in October following and on January 14, 1704, landed in Virginia; ten days later he arrived at his destination in North Carolina. He found the people among whom he labored backward in religious matters and little disposed to aid in the support of a minister of the Established Church-if of any at all. After a hard struggle for some months, during which he spent nearly all of the little bounties he had received from Queen Anne and other philanthropic sources, he returned to England and wrote a narrative of his experiences for the information of the Society. It is very indefinite as to the locality of his place of residence while in North Carolina, but from some slight indications given on that point it would appear to have been in the Pamlico settlement on Pamlico Sound. Mr. Blair's narrative is preserved in London in the North Carolina letter book of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. A transcript of it has been printed in The Colonial Records of North Carolina, I. 600-603, which has been followed here. REVEREND JOHN BLAIR'S MISSION TO NORTH CAROLINA, 1704 I WAS ordained, in order to go to the plantations, 12th April, 1703, and then received the queen's bounty of £20, and, soon after, my Lord Weymouth's' bounty of £50; upon which I lived in England till the 1st of October following, which, together with my fitting out for such a voyage and country, consumed the most part of my money. I had likewise £5 sent me by my lord of London to Portsmouth, and when I landed in Virginia I had no more than £25. I landed in Virginia, 14th of January, 1704; and, as soon as I could conveniently travel, I waited upon the governor, and immediately after made the best of my way into the country where I was bound. I arrived amongst the inhabitants, after a tedious and troublesome journey, 24th ditto. I was then obliged to buy a couple of horses, which cost me fourteen pounds, one of which was for a guide, because there is no possibility for a stranger to find his road in that country, for if he once goes astray (it being such a desert country) it is a great hazard if he ever finds his road again. Beside, there are mighty inconveniences in travelling there, for the roads are not only deep and difficult to be found, but there are likewise seven great rivers in the country, over which there is no passing of horses, except two of them, one of which the Quakers have settled a ferry over for their own conveniency, and nobody but themselves have the privilege of it; so that at the passing over the rivers, I was obliged either to borrow or hire horses, which was both troublesome and chargeable, insomuch that 1 Queen Anne's Bounty was instituted in 1704 for the benefit of the poorer clergy, the Queen appropriating to their relief a branch of her income which had originally come to the Crown from the "first-fruits and tenths" of church livings in Henry VIII.'s time. 2 Viscount Weymouth, a benevolent privy-councillor of Queen Anne. |