2. Carolina

When Robert Davis arrived, the Waxhaw region had only recently been vacated by its native inhabitants.

 The Waxhaws – sometimes called the Wysacki – lived along the current border between North Carolina and South Carolina, south of where Charlotte stands now. They were a small band, with roots in the ancient Mississippian culture, distinguished by the practice of flattening the foreheads of infants, giving adults a wide-eyed look. European explorers and some other natives called them “flatheads.”  Working from a British survey, historians estimate there were 2,000 Waxhaws living in two villages in 1701, but by 1720 most of them had been wiped out by smallpox and other diseases brought by European settlers.

The Waxhaws got caught up in the shifting alliances of settlers and tribes in the early 1700s. They sided with the North Carolina colony to fight the Tuscarora tribe, incurring the wrath and retaliation of powerful Tuscarora allies, the Mohawks and Seneca. In 1715, they joined other tribes in the Yamasee Confederation – including their neighbors and rivals, the Catawba – to fight the South Carolina colonists and their Indian allies. The confederation won a couple of battles than lost a major engagement. The Catawba signed a treaty with South Carolina and then, according to some accounts, turned on the Waxhaws. According to the Museum of the Waxhaws, the few who survived were absorbed into other tribes and the Waxhaw tribe ceased to exist.

In the decades that followed, Scotch-Irish settlers filled the Waxhaws and other settlements up and down the southeast coast. The Scotch-Irish were mostly subsistence farmers, known for their fierce independence, their combativeness and their love of strong drink. The Davises multiplied, each generation producing six to ten children, intermarrying with families in the community: Pickens, Nisbet and Nelson in particular. In the branch we’re following, Robert Davis and his wife, Ann Pickens, gave birth to (among others) James Davis in 1748, who married Rebecca Pickens. They gave birth to (among others) Israel Pickens Davis in 1748, who grew up and married Sarah Nisbet (great-granddaughter of John “The Martyr” Nisbet). Among their children was Robert Grier Davis, born in 1810, who carried the family west.

Two figures stand out from the years in the Waxhaws, only one of them a direct relation. William Nisbet (1753-1831) was Sarah Nisbet Davis’ father. He started fighting the British in 1775, before the Declaration of Independence was even written, serving in the Snow Campaign, in which colonial militias fought loyalists in the Carolina backcountry. In 1780, Nisbet returned to the battle as British forces, having retaken Charleston and Savannah, advanced through the South. He served under Francis “Swamp Fox” Marion, near Orangeburg and in the battle of Monck’s Corner. Nisbet joined the forces of Patriot Gen. Sumter, fighting in the battles of Rocky Mount, a British victory, and Hanging Rock, a Patriot victory. Then his militia joined with the Continental Army to confront the British Army, led by Gen. Cornwallis, near Camden, SC. In this battle, the Patriots were routed, and William Nisbet went back to the Waxhaws.

Years later, William wrote to the House of Representatives to apply for his pension, providing details of his service. “I was born in the Lancaster District, and lived in it ever since. I am now going on 70 years old. I am on the decline fast,” he wrote. “My Petition, and request is that if as an old Soldier, that has served his Country by night and day, I am entitled to anything for past services, I would still count it an Honor to be among my old Friends. Do what you believe to be right, and while I live I will do my duty to pray for you, and prosperity of my Country.”

The second Waxhaws figure worth noting also fought with the Patriots at Hanging Rock. Andrew Jackson was just 14 years old when he joined the militia fighting Cornwallis’ invasion. He and his brother were captured in 1781 and suffered a brutal imprisonment. Jackson returned to the Waxhaws, but eventually found his way west, to Tennessee, where he traded in land, much of it land that by treaty belonged to the Cherokee and Chickasaw tribes. He built an empire in politics and business, centered on his cotton plantation outside Nashville and built on slave labor. Then he became a war hero, Indian fighter and president.

When we were kids I was told we were related to Andrew Jackson, something I bragged about. When I grew up, studied history and learned that Jackson was a genocidal, narcissistic authoritarian, I decided that was nothing to brag about. Further research by family genealogists determined Jackson wasn’t in fact, a blood relative, just a neighbor. But there’s no doubt the Scots-Irish, in the Waxhaws and up and down the coast, were his people. Like him, they were combative and proud. Like him, they wanted more land, and they intended to find it out west.

By the early 1800s “there was just no land,” Hattie Bell writes. “Time came when all the neighborhood talk was of Andy going out west beyond those mountains, of his fame and success, his empire in the West!” Settlers by the thousands were ready to follow his lead.

Left unmentioned in Hattie Bell’s narrative is the fact that native peoples already occupied the land the settlers had their eyes on. But Andy Jackson had a plan for that. Getting the Indians out of the way of American expansion was his life’s work. In 1813, he and his Tennessee Militia drove the Muscogee out of Alabama and southern Georgia. He coerced treaties forcing the Cherokee and Chickasaw to cede large portions of Tennessee and Kentucky to the U.S. In 1816, he invaded Florida to make war on the Seminoles and the escaped slaves who were sheltering with them. Once elected president in 1828, Jackson’s top priority was signing the Indian Removal Act, authorizing the exile of all the major tribes in the Southeast to what is now Oklahoma, and the seizure of the lands previously theirs by treaty. He enforced the act with a vengeance, driving thousands of Cherokee, Choctaw, Chicasaw, Seminole and Creek west along what became known as the Trail of Tears.

As they left, the Scotch-Irish settlers moved in.