The Waxhaws

By Historian Louise Pettus

A marker in front of Old Waxhaw Presbyterian Church on Riverside Road in upper Lancaster County states that the church, organized by Scotch-Irish settlers, was the first in upcountry South Carolina. The date given on the marker is 1755 for the building of the first church (the present building is the fourth).

The first church was built not long after the first colonists arrived, their date of arrival believed to be about 1751. The area was so beautiful and fruitful that it was long designated the "Garden of the Waxhaws." That designation had two meanings. One is a reference to the Waxhaw Indians who had lived in the area just to the south of the Catawba Indians with whom they lived in peace if not as allies.

The other meaning is the use of Garden to refer to the Garden of Eden. It was a firm belief of many of the first European settlers that in the New World they would find the Garden of Eden--uncorrupted and situated on the same line of latitude as the original Garden. In their minds, the Waxhaws fit the description.

The first wave of Scotch-Irish settlers came down from Pennsylvania or from western Virginia. They were a hardy, high-minded, fearless and restless lot. The second wave, many of whom were kinsman of the first, included the families of men who had enlisted to fight the French and Indians who had struck, burned and pillaged the frontier settlements from 1754 to the conclusion of the war in 1763.

Actually, the Waxhaws designated an indefinite boundary. The present North Carolina-South Carolina boundary line had not been established. The Catawba Indian Land was not agreed upon or marked until 1763 when, by the Treaty of Augusta, it was established as within the province of South Carolina and used the Camden-Salisbury Road as its eastern boundary.. The Waxhaw Indians were not a party to the treaty; they had been wiped out by a smallpox epidemic earlier.

When used in the literature, the Waxhaws generally refers to the area that has the Catawba River as the western boundary, Twelve Mile Creek (the southern border of the Indian Boundary) as the northern boundary, Gills Creek (on the north edge of the town of Lancaster) and, to the west the most indefinite line of all but roughly extending to include the town of Waxhaw, N.C.

The Waxhaws was the homeland of many distinguished men. Foremost is Andrew Jackson whose birthplace is marked at Andrew Jackson State Park. The second most distinguished son was Gen. William Richardson Davie, Revolutionary War hero, governor of North Carolina, founder of the University of North Carolina, special envoy to France, a founder of the South Carolina Agriculture Society and its first president and the commissioner who headed the party of surveyors who established the current North Carolina-South Carolina boundary line.

Another native, Stephen Decatur Miller, governor and U.S. senator, was also the father of Mary Boykin Chesnut the author of the famed "Diary From Dixie." James Blair was in the United States House at the same time that Miller was in the Senate and Jackson was president of the United States. This is the origin of the phrase, "Waxhaws, Cradle of Genius."

To a man, the Waxhaws were Whigs in the Revolution. The church sheltered the wounded. The Revolutionary Plot has seven markers to designate the soldiers who were buried in unmarked graves. With this group is a lovely monument to Elizabeth Hutchison Jackson, the mother of Andrew Jackson, who died of smallpox while nursing her son and nephew in Charleston.

The Old Waxhaw Presbyterian Church was the scene of the Great Revival, or the Great Camp Meeting, of 1803. Perhaps 3,000 participants were involved, A split in the church occurred with part of the congregation forming the Associate Reformed Presbyterian (ARP) Church.

Cotton was the major crop from the early 1800s until the 1840s. But cotton rapidly depletes the soil of its nutrients. A great exodus began in the 1840s and continued for a half century. The descendants of the settlers found new frontiers to conquer. For the most part, they went west toward the Mississippi and beyond leaving a colorful and proud history of accomplishment behind them.