11/25/07 VERSION: BEDSOLE HISTORY FROM 1673 ... - NCGenWeb

night sounds of crying babies, chirps of crickets and small animal sounds were all
that could be heard.
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A small fire was kept burning all night in order to scare away the bigger wild animals.
During the night, the mosquitos buzzed incessantly around the heads and in the
ears of those trying to sleep. Some nights it rained all night and everything stayed
wet, making the travelers more miserable than would otherwise be the case. With
muddy trails, mosquitos, snakes, cold weather, rain, sick children, overturning
wagons, lack of trails to follow, indians and things staying wet, the increased pain,
misery and suffering quickly became a way of life. On any typical day, everyone on
the wagon train was up at 4 a.m. and immediately set to work, repeating the jobs
they had done the night before; Feeding and watering the animals, and filling all the
water barrels while the women prepared breakfast, usually consisting of hoecakes,
fried meat and coffee for everybody. Then the children had to be cared for and fed.
After breakfast, everything had to be repacked, reloaded and lashed down on the
wagons, the livestock had to be rounded up and kept together until the wagons
began moving. The hunters went first. By the time the group was ready to go, most
people were already tired from lack of sleep and from all the work that had been
done at the beginning of the day. The night guards had most of the day to try for
some sleep, but that was not easy on a loud, bumpy and very uncomfortable wagon.
Finaly, with the wagon train on the move, the loose livestock were a huge problem
because of the little control the settlers were able to exercise over them. Keeping
them on the trail of the wagons required constant chasing, steering and caring for
them all day.
Along the way, they passed a few outposts and supply/trading posts which were built
of logs and occupied usually by previous settlers who found living along the route to
be a little easier by buying, selling and trading goods such as tools, weapons, animal
hides and edibles from the Indians and other settlers, and the passing wagon trains.
In the absence of money, the trade of goods was the prevalent way of doing
business. These outposts also served as sources of information to all travelers
concerning other settlers, indians, forts, and directions, but most importantly, they
provided information on Indian troubles and trouble spots such as trees down, trail
washouts, stream crossings, or landslides, or large trees across the trails ahead
HOW THEY
LIVED
Some in the group arrived at Bladen County, Beaverdam, NC, not far from
present-day Fayetteville. By that time, they had learned that the government would
sell frontier land at a low cost per hundred acres, with the stipulation that the buyer
would clear and plant 3 acres of the land every calendar year, for every hundred
acres received, up to a limit of about 200 acres per family, depending upon the
number of people in the family.