jurisdiction of the Lord Proprietors of Carolina they took pains to keep
that authority upon a strictly nominal basis. The first comers, about 1660,
and most of those who followed, were and continued to be small farmers; but
in the course of decades a considerable number of plantations arose in the
fertile districts about Albemarle Sound. Nearly everywhere in the lowlands,
however, the land was too barren for any distinct prosperity. The
settlements were quite isolated, the communications very poor, and the
social tone mostly that of the backwoods frontier. An Anglican missionary
when describing his own plight there in 1711 discussed the industrial
régime about him: "Men are generally of all trades and women the like
within their spheres, except some who are the posterity of old planters
and have great numbers of slaves who understand most handicraft. Men are
generally carpenters, joiners, wheelwrights, coopers, butchers, tanners,
shoemakers, tallow-chandlers, watermen and what not; women, soap-makers,
starch-makers, dyers, etc. He or she that cannot do all these things, or
hath not slaves that can, over and above all the common occupations of both
sexes, will have but a bad time of it; for help is not to be had at any
rate, every one having business enough of his own. This makes tradesmen
turn planters, and these become tradesmen. No society one with another, but
all study to live by their own hands, of their own produce; and what they
can spare goes for foreign goods. Nay, many live on a slender diet to buy
rum, sugar and molasses, with other such like necessaries, which are sold
at such a rate that the planter here is but a slave to raise a provision
for other colonies, and dare not allow himself to partake of his own
creatures, except it be the corn of the country in hominy bread."[21] Some
of the farmers and probably all the planters raised tobacco according to
the methods prevalent in Virginia. Some also made tar for sale from the
abounding pine timber; but with most of the families intercourse with
markets must have been at an irreducible minimum.