Colonizing "Carolana"

KV-40

Virginia Burgess Francis Yeardley sponsored an expedition to the Albemarle region of present-day North Carolina in 1653. This party returned with several Native Americans including a chief, possibly Kiscutanewh of the Weapemeoc (Yeopim), who lodged for a week at Yeardley’s residence near here. Yeardley agreed to build an English house in the Albemarle for the chief and to foster, educate, and baptize his son. Yeardley also purchased a large tract of land in “Carolana” from the chief and had a house built ca. 1655 near Albemarle Sound for fur trader Nathaniel Batts, North Carolina’s first documented permanent English resident. Other settlers began arriving in the region soon thereafter.

Department of Historic Resources, 2023

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References/Bibliographic Citation:

Francis Yeardley to John Ferrar, May 1654, in Alexander Samuel Salley, ed., Narratives of Early Carolina, 1650-1708 (New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1911). Nicholas Comberford, Map of the South Part of Virginia, 1657 (New York Public Library Digital Gallery). John Frederick Dorman, Adventurers of Purse and Person: Virginia, 1607-1624, vol. 3 (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company, 2007, 4th ed.) Thomas C. Parramore, “Batts House,” NCPedia (https://www.ncpedia.org/batts-house) Michael T. Southern, “Bodnam, Robert (fl. 1650s),” North Carolina Architects and Builders: A Biographical Dictionary, https://ncarchitects.lib.ncsu.edu/people/P000484. Lindley S. Butler, “The Early Settlement of Carolina: Virginia’s Southern Frontier,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, vol. 79, no. 1 (Jan. 1971). Wesley D. Taukchiray and Helen C. Rountree, “Merging in the Other Direction,” in H. C. Rountree, ed., Manteo’s World: Native American Life in Carolina’s Sound Country Before and After the Lost Colony (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2021). Elizabeth Gregory McPherson, “Nathaniell Batts, Landholder on Pasquotank River, 1660,” North Carolina Historical Review, vol. 43, no. 1 (Jan. 1966).