From the Blue Ridges to the Sandhills: The History of 4 North Carolina Families

Strangeman Hutchins, Quaker,
of Surry County, North Carolina

parents of Elizabeth Cox:
Richard Cockes (1678-1734), son of John Cox (1640-1696) & Mary Elam (1645-)
Mary Trent (1682-1735), daughter of Henry Trent, Jr.
(1650-1701) & Elizabeth Sherman (1657-1732)¹

Strangeman Hutchins and Slavery

Strangeman (pronounced Strong-mun) Hutchins was born in 1707 in Henrico County, Virginia. He married Elizabeth Cox in 1731 in Hanover County, Virginia. After their marriage, he and Elizabeth moved to Goochland County. However, Strangeman's name appears frequently in the records of the Cedar Creek Monthly Meeting of Friends in Hanover County, where he was an elder, from 1741-1786.

Strangeman Hutchins was prosperous. He was a planter who owned about 750 acres of land. Early Quakers, like people of other religions, often bought slaves to work their land and raise cash crops like cotton and tobacco. When slavery became a subject of debate in the Friends' meeting houses, Quakers began to free their slaves, with opposition from the states. Both Virginia and North Carolina passed laws against manumission. Strangeman freed twelve slaves in Virginia, in 1782, when the law there was changed. This was accomplished by a deed of manumission, a legal document by which the state allowed a slave-owner to set someone free.

When Strangeman and his wife were in their seventies, they sold their land in Virginia and moved to Forbush Creek in Surry County, (now in Yadkin County) North Carolina about 1786. There, he joined the Deep Creek Friends Meeting.²

Quakers and Slavery

An Englishman named George Fox, born in 1624, founded the Society of Friends. He visited North Carolina briefly in 1672 and started a religious revival of the Protestant variety. Quakerism was the dominant religion for the state's first fifty years.

The Friends, often called Quakers, believed that the Kingdom of Heaven could be established on earth. Social reforms put forward by Fox included freedom for women and disapproval of harsh punishments. Friends thought human freedom important, including freedom from the established church. They believed in one god, Christ as a savior, and God as spirit. They did not interpret the Bible literally. Meetings were for worship in the form of meditation and prayer, with no ritual or singing. Anyone could speak if moved. Though women and men were considered equal, they sat on opposite sides of the room.³

As early as 1688, voices were raised in the Friends' Meetings against slavery. Four Friends in Germantown, Pennsylvania had this to say:

"There is a saying that we shall doe to all men like as we will be done ourselves; making no difference of what generation, descent or colour they are. And those who steal or robb men, and those who buy or purchase them, are they not all alike? Here is liberty of conscience which is right and reasonable; here ought to be liberty of the body, except of evil-doers, which is an other case. But to bring men hither, or to rob and sell them against their will, we stand against."

But the yearly meeting which considered their words was not so bold: "A Paper being here presented by some German Friends Concerning the Lawfulness and Unlawfulness of Buying and keeping Negroes, It was adjusted not to be so proper for this Meeting to give a Positive Judgment in the case, It having so General a Relation to many other Parts, and therefore at present they forbear It."⁴

The church supervised the moral and social conduct of its members. If they were thought guilty of lying, swearing, fighting, or missing church, they would be visited by a committee whose purpose was to bring them back into the fold. They needed the permission of the church to transact any legal business and they were not allowed to do military service or, eventually, to own slaves.⁵ In 1774 the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Society of Friends made buying or selling a slave cause for disowning a member.⁶

Some North Carolina Quakers' beliefs about slavery are illustrated in this anecdote from an article published in an Indianapolis newspaper in 1888, found on the website of Hunting Creek Friends Meeting:

"...Hunting Creek (Friends Meeting was) established in 1799. At this time, John Johnson and Samuel Welch bought two acres of land from John Welch for $4.00. A small one-room log structure was built on this land and used as a meetinghouse...

"...Jane F. Nicholson, granddaughter of Samuel Welch, wrote... "slavery had a bad influence on children, about half of the children in schools were of slave holding families. We were children of Friends who did not approve of slavery. My grandfather was a fearless anti-slavery man. Both he and my father resolved to move to a free state. We drove out of our yard one morning in the autumn of 1814 for the last time. As we went north, people would ask about us. My brother, Webster, would sing out, "Hunting Creek, forks of the Yadkin, Iredell County, North Carolina, going to Ohio!"⁷

Dying Words

Strangeman died February 10, 1792, in Surry County, North Carolina, at the age of eighty-five. His friend Sylvanus Hadley recorded his dying words, stating that Strangeman was taken ill about mid-October 1791 and suffered a good bit during the next few months. The evening before his death, Sylvanus wrote down his prayers for forgiveness and mercy and his expressions of faith, reporting that "He was heard to say that he had been afraid that he had displeased his Creator, that was the cause He continued him here so long in affliction." Strangeman said, "Oh that we might all be prepared so that when we come to lie upon a dying bed and a rolling pillow, we may have nothing to do but die."⁸

His will was proved in Surry County Court in July of that year.⁹ In his will he names his wife, Elizabeth Hutchens, son Benjamin Hutchens, daughter Mary Brooks and her husband Samuel Robert Brooks, from whom she is apparently separated, his granddaughter Elizabeth Stanley, who is the daughter of Mary Brooks, daughter Edieth Stanley, grandson John Hutchens Stanley, sons and daughters John, Nicholis, Thomas and Benjamin Hutchens, Obedience Harding and Jean Barnett. He also names John Stanley, who is apparently the husband of Edieth.

Witnesses include Jonathan Johnson and John Johnson. John Johnson is the husband of Strangeman's daughter, Lydia. John and Lydia's son Jonathan was about 20 years old at his grandfather's death.¹⁰

Elizabeth Cox Hutchins, Centenarian: The Long Life of a Friend

A "Strange" Name to Give Your Baby

In Surry County, Strangeman had a number of descendants named for him. Long after the name went out of fashion, people found it again in old records and began to speculate why parents would name their sons "strange-man." Was it because the children had some peculiar qualities or because they were born at strange times or did some folks just have a weird sense of humor? The answer is revealed when you look back far enough into Hutchins family history and find that his grandmother was Polly Strangeman of England, where the old spelling of the word strong was actually "strange." The original Strangeman, back when people were named for their distinguishing traits, was literally a strong man.

Footnotes:

1. "Ancestors of Elizabeth Hutchins," 19 Jan 2003 (accessed March 5, 2006). Cites The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 52, pages 214-216; and "Ancestors of Strangeman Hutchins," January 19, 2003, http://gen.kaasa.org/subwebs/smith/391.htm (accessed April 1, 2007); and John W. Pritchett, "Virginians.Com," (2001) http://www.virginians.com/redirect.htm?topics&3326 (accessed March 5, 2006). **Hugh Barbour, J. William Frost, The Quakers, (New York: Greenwood Press, 1988) p. 149.

2. Mrs. Gussie W. and Edward C. Crider, editors, Four Generations of the Family of Strangeman Hutchins and his Wife Elizabeth as Known January 10, 1935: An Old Virginia Family along the James River by Marriage Joined to Other Immigrant Families of the Colony (Kokomo, Ind., 1935)

3. Francis Charles Anscombe, I Have Called You Friends: The Story of Quakerism in North Carolina (Boston, The Christopher Publishing House, 1959) pp. 27-36.

4. "First Protest Against Slavery, 1688," June 3, 2004, (Quaker Heritage Press, http://www.qhpress.org/texts/oldqwhp/as-1688.htm)(accessed April 1, 2007)

5. Crider, cited above.

6. Douglas Harper, "Slavery in Pennsylvania," 2003, http://www.slavenorth.com/pennsylvania.htm, (accessed April 1, 2007.

7. Janice Schuyler, "The History of Hunting Creek Friends Meeting," n.d., http://www.piedmontcommunities.us/servlet/go_ProcServ/
dbpage=page&gid=01013011540949623210753246 (accessed April 1, 2007).

8. Crider, cited above.

9. Agnes M. Wells, Surry County NC Court Minutes, Vol. I, (Raleigh: author, 1990) p. 60.

10. Surry County Will Book 3, (Raleigh: North Carolina State Archives) p. 5.

From the Blue Ridges to the Sandhills: The History of 4 NC Families/Strangeman Hutchins, Quaker, of Surry County NC
© 2001 by Glenda Alexander, updated April 2007        Standard copyright restrictions apply.