^{The
Carrigans}

Three members of the family -- Bettie Moore Carrigan, William M. Carrigan and Robert A. Carrigan, kept remarkable diaries. It is from their Journals that most of the incidents are taken.

This story was written in the hope that it would bind together the incidents of the three diaries and prevent their stories from being lost to future generations of the family. There is no fiction here; most of the facts came directly from the diaries, the background information from old clippings, histories and the personal memories of members of the family.

I am indebted to my mother, Lillian Carrigan Routon, who did the arduous "spadework" by copying in longhand most of the three Journals to keep them for her children and thus aroused my interest in them, and to Dr. Pinckney B. Carrigan who graciously loaned me the William M. Carrigan and Bettie Carrigan diaries which now belong to him.

L.R.C.

This is a story about six Marys, four Steves, four Johns, four Williams, and three Alfreds. Two brothers marry two sisters. It's easy to get confused. So every now and then, you'll find a miniature of the family tree on the next page with an indicator showing where you are, for example:

^{Family Tree:
Moores & Carrigans}

^{Family Tree:
Carrigans 1716 - 1900}

^{Family Tree:
Carrigans and Descendents: 1900-1998}

^{Excerpt from
History of the Southwest Trail}

from Washington, Arkansas: History of the Southwest Trail^*

Five young Carrigan brothers arrived in two long journeys from North Carolina. Alfred Carrigan, newly graduated from the University at Chapel Hill, had come first on an exploring trip and purchased acres and acres of land for himself his father, his brothers, his aunts and uncles and cousins.

Sixty thousand dollars in gold came in two big black iron washpots in those nine-week journeys from North Carolina. The gold had been placed in the bottom of the pots, cottonseed tucked over the gold, blankets tucked around the cottonseed, and the little babies of the slaves placed in their cradles of the big black pots as they jounced over the Wilderness Road through the Cumberland Gap and down with Southwest Trail into Washington.

* by Mary Medearis (Etter Printing: Hope, Arkansas, 1984)

^{"Beyond
the Mississippi"}

"Beyond the Mississippi" young William M. Carrigan read aloud to himself the title of the hand-written manuscript on the desk. He was flushed with excitement; this was the oration he had written for his Graduation Declamation, and he had just completed a final polishing of its rolling phrases.

The words before him meant more to William than a speech to fellow graduates and proud parents. They told his hopes and fears for the years that would immediately follow graduation. He wondered what he would actually find in his new home -"beyond the Mississippi" and whether it would be like those dreams on the paper before him.

It was April 1852 and in June William was to receive his degree from the University of North Carolina as his brother Alfred had before him. Then he would be married and set out with his bride on the westward journey that had been in his thoughts every day since Alfred's visit the week before.

William remembered Alfred's visit vividly. He had known for several years that his father was considering, like other neighboring families, the possibilities of selling out his Carolina lands and moving to the newer states along the Mississippi River. But it was Alfred's glowing account of the community to which they were going that set William's mind afire.

Again the picture of Alfred's arrival at the university ran through William's mind. William and his younger brother, Robert, a university freshman, were waiting when the stage brought Alfred into the university town of Chapel Hill. It was only 17 days since Alfred had left Arkansas, and the younger brothers were full of questions about the new farm he had selected and the fast trip he had made from Washington, Ark., back to North Carolina.

When he told them that he had made arrangements for possession of the farm the following fall, they could hardly contain their excitement. Alfred told them of the prosperous community he found at Washington, of the rich farmlands, and of the cultured friendly families he visited -- some of them former neighbors or relations from Carolina.

He had decided that these Arkansas lands would offer a greater future for himself and his four brothers than the area in Texas that his father had first considered. So he had remained four months in Washington and arranged for occupation of the farm before the year was out. Now he was returning to report to his father on the journey.

William and Robert returned regretfully to their classes after Alfred's stopover; they felt that lessons were pretty dull compared with the picture Alfred had painted.

Yet, as William sat in his room with the completed oration before him, he realized that the years he was leaving behind had been good years for him and for his family. The Carrigans had come to America from Ireland in 1755 and his mother's family, the Holts, had arrived even earlier, in 1717, from Germany.

William knew his father's pride in those two families and their early history in America. Many a time as a little boy, he had heard his father and his grandfather William tell of them. He remembered the story now, as the family was planning to leave the old home in North Carolina and pioneer again in a new land.

^{1755, The
Carrigans}^{,
Ireland, the Revolutionary War}

The story of the Carrigans began, as far as William knew it, with his great-grandfather, James Carrigan[1] who came from Monahan County, Ireland, in 1755. James and his wife Isabell[2]landed on Delaware Bay and moved inland to Orange County, N.C., and founded their first home in America there.

James and Isabell Carrigan had six children -- Young William remembered that he had learned to recite their names to his Grandfather -- "Rebekah, Mary, Martha, Sibby, Robert and William" -- this last was Grandfather William himself.

Grandfather William had fought in the Revolutionary War[3]and as an old man, he spent many an hour telling Alfred and William, his grandsons, of those momentous days. Born in 1760, he had joined the Colonial Army at the age of 16 and fought through the long war. After the colonies were independent, he returned home and in 1785 -- on Jan. 25 -- he had married Catherine Adams. Young William remembered his Grandmother Catherine clearly.

As William and Catherine started their family, old James Carrigan's life was drawing to a close and in 1793 he died at the age of 77, after 38 years in America. He was buried in the Coddle Creek churchyard, near the home he had built with his own hands. His wife Isabell died 11 years later at the age of 78.

Youngest of William's and Catherine's family was Willa Adams Carrigan who was born in 1792 and was given his father's name and his mother's family name. This was the father of Young William, and of Alfred, Robert, James and John, and Young William thought of him with sincere pride and respect.

It was William Adams Carrigan, the boy realized, who had made the family name known through North Carolina and beyond. He had made a success of his own farms and those that his wife Nancy inherited. While still a young man, he had increased this success by founding with his wife's brother one of the first cotton factories in the state.

Now, he must be one of the best-known men in North Carolina, William thought.

^{1717, The
Holts, Germany, Black Michael}

Of his mother's family, the Holts, Young William Carrigan had heard a more detailed and more colorful history. Not only had their story been more exciting -- they also kept better family records through letters and diaries and the story remained more alive.

Young William's mother, Nancy Mitchem Holt Carrigan, had died when he was eight years old, so he didn't remember her very well. But he had heard of his Holt ancestors from Father, who was proud of his wife's family, and from Uncle Edwin Holt who was Father's partner in the cotton factory.

With the Holts, Michael was an old family name, and Young William was always proud that he bore the traditional names of both his father's and his mother's families -- William Michael.

The first Michael Holt the family knew anything about came to America from Germany in 1717. Like many of the Protestant colonists, he came for religious freedom and to get out of the devastation that gripped Germany after the Thirty Years' War.[4]

Michael and his wife Elizabeth had high hopes for their life in the New World and were willing to stake several years of their lives. They came with other German Lutherans as indentured servants, pledging to work for anyone who would pay their passage. After they had worked out the amount of the fares, they would be free to make their own future.

They took a few personal belongings, provisions and their treasured Bibles and hymnals on the voyage. When the ship reached England, the captain was held several weeks for debt. The voyage was continued when he was released, but part of the provisions had been used in those weeks of delay.

The ocean crossing must have seemed forever. As the weeks became months, their provisions gave out; hunger grew into starvation. Entire families died for lack of food. Somehow Michael and Elizabeth Holt survived. When the ship neared Pennsylvania, where they planned to join a colony of Germans, a storm blew it far off its course and the colonists were finally set ashore in Virginia.

Of the families who had started the voyage, only 20 remained, a total of about 80 persons.

Soon arrangements were made for Col. Alexander Spotswood, the King's governor of Virginia, to pay their fares, and they became his indentured servants. Colonel Spotswood, a wounded hero of the Battle of Blenheim, was a colonial governor of great foresight and success. But he wasn't an easy master.

The year before Michael Holt came to America, Spotswood had led an expedition to the unexplored country of the Shenandoah Valley and the Blue Ridge Mountains. Into that fertile section he sent the German colonists, settling them on the south bank of the Rapidan River some 20 miles above Fredricksburg.

They named the settlement Germanna. Vineyards were planted. Iron was discovered and crude iron manufacturing shops set up.

On May 6, 1723, Elizabeth Holt had a son whom they named Michael II. He was the first of the Holt family born in America.

The next year, trouble arose between the settlers and Colonel Spotswood. They declared they had worked out the amount of their passage and the governor claimed that more was due him. The case was taken into the Spotsylvania Court and the settlers won. Now they were free, and in 1725, Michael took his wife and son to a rich tract on the Robinson River in Madison County, Va. Others of the German families moved to the same area.

They built homes and then a church. They decided they must have a pastor, and the congregation sent two men back to Germany to select a man, but they were unsuccessful.

On Sept. 28, 1728, Michael Holt walked to the Madison County court and patented his claim to the land on Robinson River, He and his fellow colonists prospered, cleared their land, improved their homes. And they found a pastor, the Rev. John Casper Stover.

But they were not satisfied. In 1734 they sent Pastor Stover, Michael Smith and Michael Holt to Europe to raise funds to enlarge their church and build a school and to hire an assistant pastor.[5]

The delegation sailed for England, went from there to Holland, Germany and finally Danzig. After two years it was decided that Michael Holt should return to Virginia with the new assistant pastor and he sailed in June 1736. Soon Stover and Smith followed.

The European trip brought between $14,000 and $15,000 one-third of which went for expenses. The rest built a new church and school, bought a community farm and paid for slaves to work it.

When Michael II was 12 years old, his father decided to move to North Carolina. The Carolinas had only 5,000 settlers and seemed to offer wider opportunity. By this time there were four younger sons, Peter, William, Nicholas and John.

About 1740 the move was made and Orange County, N.C., was selected as their home. Michael Holt was skilled with the crude machinery of the day and his oldest boy seemed to follow in his footsteps. So Young Michael was sent to learn the blacksmith's trade. He did well, but his first love was for the land. Even as a boy, he saved his earnings to buy land -- well-chosen tracts.

When Young Michael reached his 20's, he owned a thriving blacksmith shop and several farms. He was a stocky fellow, rippling with blacksmith's muscles. His hair was heavy and black and his face so swarthy that his neighbors called him "Black Michael"; the nickname stuck.

He rapidly became a man of importance in his part of North Carolina and was appointed a magistrate for George II, King of England. He also received an honorary commission as captain in the King's Colonial Service.

After Black Michael married Peggy (Margaret) O'Neill, sister of a British colonel, his home also became a center of social activity. His family grew; Peggy bore him three children--Joseph, Margaret and Elizabeth. In 1765 Peggy Holt died, leaving Michael a widower with three small children.

That same year old Michael passed away, 48 years after he had come to America.[6]In those years he had seen his family become leaders in the colonies.

One of the great beauties of North Carolina was Jean Lockhart, daughter of a prominent Scotch family near Hillsboro. In 1767 Black Michael wooed and won her for his bride.

Upon his return home with his new wife, Michael found trouble in Orange County. A group of colonists, who called themselves "the Regulators~ had been rioting and refused to pay taxes to England. Michael didn't agree with them. He held that taxes were legal and the law must be preserved.

On April 8, 1768, after a property-holding Regulator had his horse taken away for non-payment of taxes, the protesting colonists again rioted and the King's Militia was called out.[7]Michael was called to duty under his royal commission captain, and he answered. After a hundred or so Regulators had been defeated and the riots ended, the militia officers returned home.

But Black Michael's home was in the midst of a stronghold of Regulators. The farm buildings were burned and his property pillaged. In 1770 the trouble broke out again. And on Sept. 21 of that year, the rioters invaded the Hillsboro courtroom and dragged Judge Richard Henderson from the bench and whipped him. Richard Henderson was Michael's best friend. The crowd also whipped Alexander Martin, later governor of North Carolina, and Michael Holt and burned several houses.[8]

As the Regulators had damaged his property, Michael hunted forthe site for a new family home. He found it on the Little Alamance Creek, and in 1771 took up 510 acres from the agents of the Earl of Granville

The trace included the present sites of Graham andBurlington, N.C.

Here, on the stage road from Hillsboro to Salisbury, he built his home which he celled "Alamance." His younger Brothers, John and Nicholas, signed the land transfer records as "chain bearers" in the surveying of the trace.[9]

Michael's friend, Mr. Roan of Hillsboro, asked him one day how much he would take for his lands.

"Gold dollars, by ding. Gold dollars enough to cover it and them laid down edgewise," Black Michael roared.

Again in 1771 the trouble with the Regulators flared, and William Tryon, Royal governor of North Carolina, raised an army of colonials to put down the riots. Michael Holt and most of the landowners of Orange County joined Tryon. The actual fighting, known as the Battle of Alamance, took place on May 16, 1771, between Tryon's forces and some 2,000 Regulators and was fought on Michael Holt's farm. After the battle, his home became a temporary hospital for Tryon's wounded.

Black Michael could not compromise with the lawlessness of the Regulators, but he did listen with growing sympathy to the complaints of the American colonists against the King of England. The Regulators had left him with a great fear of mob rule. Besides, he held considerable property and had a sizeable family -- Jane Holt had borne him two daughters, Sara and Mary, known as Polly, end two sons, Joshua and Isaac.

Matters came to a head on Jan. 10, 1776, when Gov. Josiah Martin of North Carolina, representing the King, called on 26 Militia officers to raise troops to fight the rebellion. Michael Holt was one of the 26. He raised a company easily enough, for North Carolina was about equally divided between sympathizers of the rebels and the Tories. Governor martin ordered him to march to Brunswick, about 150miles south, end join General McD6nal~'s British Army at Cape Fear.[10]

Along the march route, Michael heard many reports. He discovered that most of the Regulators, his avowed enemies, had joined the British. On the other hand, he found, most of the landowners who had been with him in Tryon's forces against the Regulators had decided to fight for the colonial cause. Michael's mind was soon made up.

He halted his men and called an assembly. Then he told them of his discoveries and said of the Regulators, "I cannot persuade myself to be so loyal to my king as to consort with this crowd.^"[11]

So Michael turned back to Alamance and most of his men went with him. Several months later, in May 1776, Michael was arrested by the colonials and taken to Halifax. There he was tried and found guilty of "leading forth to war a company of men in the British cause." The following month he was taken to Philadelphia and imprisoned.[12]²While he was a prisoner, his daughter Kitty was born at Alamance.

In September 1776, after he had been in prison for three months, the colonial authority of North Carolina met in Salisbury for a hearing on Michael's petition and a petition from Orange County asking for Michael's release.

The board recorded that it "found many Circumstances in his favor, inasmuch when he was fully acquainted with the intention of the Tories, he did actually return home, and was the means of inducing a number of others to follow his example.[13]

It was agreed to ask the Continental Congress, meeting in Philadelphia, to pardon him.

The Congress promptly released Black Michael, and he returned home to help the Revolutionary cause. Of his now reduced means, he gave liberally to the colonial treasury.

On July 11, 1778, another son was born to Michael and Jean and he was named Michael III. This was the father of Nancy Holt and grandfather of William Carrigan and his four brothers.

The revolutionary struggles continued, the tide swinging one way and then the other. Lord Cornwallis led a successful drive in the Southern colonies in 1781, and Gen. Nathaniel Greene and Gen. Daniel Morgan engaged him in the Battle of Guilford Courthouse at Greensboro, N.C., near Michael Holt's home, on March 15, 1781. The Americans were defeated and their camp was the scene of suffering, Michael Holt sent almost all of his fat cattle to feed the colonial soldiers.[14]

Michael suffered a personal loss early in the war when his younger brother William was killed. He was slain by a British colonel, Hector O'Neill, the brother of Michael's first wife, Peggy.

By this time Michael's children by his first marriage were reaching their 20's. He felt it only fair to give them their share of his property while they were young, and he began dividing the large estate he had founded, giving each child a share when he reached his majority.

In 1799, Black Michael's life drew to a close, he died at 76 and was buried in the Holt family graveyard on his own farm, the grave of Peggy O'Neill on his left.^[15]When Jean Lockhart died 14 years later, in 1813, she was placed on his right.

Michael left a will[16]dated Jan. 23, 1798, distributing the remainder of his property and leaving to each of his l0 children -a Negro man, a Negro woman, one horse, one cow, one calf, one feather bed and furniture."

At his head was placed a plain soapstone slab, reading, "Remember, man, as you pass by, As you are now, so once was I. As I am now, so you must be. Prepare for Death and follow me."

Black Michael's namesake, Michael III, soon became a leader in the community in his own right, and his love for the land was as deep as his father's had been. In 1796 he married Rachael Rainey, daughter of a pastor.

To Michael III and Rachael were born six children --William Rainey, Jane Lockhart, Polly, Alfred, Edwin Michael, and Nancy Mitchem. During the early years of his marriage, in 1804, Michael III was elected state representative from Orange County and served with distinction, leading particularly in agricultural and educational reform measures.

In 1820 Michael was elected to the State Senate and continued his progressive leadership there. His home on the Salisbury to Hillsboro stage road was a center of community life.

^{1827, William
Carrigan marries Nancy}^Holt

And here, thought Young William Carrigan as he reminisced in his college room, the histories of the Carrigan and Holt families merge.

"That is, they merge as far as I'm concerned," he added aloud.

For on May 17, 1827, William Adams Carrigan, aged 35 years old, and Nancy Mitchem Holt, Michael III's youngest child, then 17 years old, were married.

Young William wondered how his father and mother looked as they took their marriage vows in the old Holt home. He was particularly interested in weddings, since he expected his own to be in the near future.

But he couldn't visualize his mother's and father's wedding very clearly. He didn't remember his mother well because she had died so young, and the confident, successful father that he did know couldn't somehow fit in with the description of a young bridegroom.

His father had brought his mother home to a plantation house near the Alamance Creek, not far from her own father's home.There the following year, on April 15, 1828, she bore her first son and named him Alfred Holt Carrigan.

Soon afterward Nancy Holt's brother Edwin, only three years older than Nancy, had married. He and his wife Emily also had a son, whom they named Thomas Michael Holt, on July 15, 1831. Tom and Alfred became playmates.

In 1831 Nancy Carrigan had a second child, a little girl she named Mary Jane,[17]but she died when only a month old.

"Now," Young William said to himself with a smile, "we reach an important point in the family narrative. On Sept. 3,1932, I, William Michael Carrigan, appeared. Three years later Alfred and William had a little brother, Robert Adams Carrigan.[18]

Soon after Robert's birth, the boys' Uncle Edwin Holt came to the Carrigan home to talk to William Adams Carrigan. Uncle Edwin was a successful farmer, but he wasn't satisfied. He had been visiting a small cotton mill in Greensboro run by steam and he decided that a cotton mill built on Alamance Creek would be a very profitable enterprise. Now he wanted his brother-in-law, W.A. Carrigan, to go into the venture as a partner.

Edwin Holt was frank in presenting his case. He said readily that his father, Michael III, didn't agree to the plan and might refuse them the use of the Alamance Creek, since he owned both banks of that stream and used the power to run a grist-mill. But Edwin was sure that a cotton mill would be successful there or elsewhere, and he was anxious that his brother-in-law join him.

W. A. Carrigan wanted time to think the matter and Edwin Holt went on to Philadelphia intent on ordering the necessary machinery. When he returned home, he found that W.A. Carrigan had decided to join him and they became partners.

Edwin was to handle the manufacturing, W.A. Carrigan the office. Finally old Michael Holt gave in to the entreaties of his son, daughter and son-in-law and agreed that the mill could be built on Alamance Creek, with the partners paying a nominal price for use of the waterpower.

So the partnership of Holt and Carrigan was formed and the factory built. Certainly the times were not bright for a new business, for the building was completed during the Panic of 1837. But the machinery was started anyway.

The cotton factory was a success from the very beginning and the young partners gradually expanded. The original machinery included 528 spindles. A few years later 16 looms were added. A little village of neat log houses sprang up around the mill for the white workers that Holt and Carrigan employed instead of slaves.[19]

During the year that the cotton factory was started, Nancy became the mother of a fourth son, John Morehead Carrigan-[20]

As the next few years passed by, Holt and Carrigan's mill swelled with orders. New machinery was bought. Twelve hundred spindles were in operation and 96 looms.[21]At first only coarse cotton cloth for slave clothing was made, but soon beautifully woven bolts were turned out for fine sewing.

Holt and Carrigan prospered, but W. A. Carrigan was not without troubles. His wife Nancy was not well. When her fifth son, James Edwin, was born in 1841. She did not recover and two months later she died.[22]

She was only 31 years old and she left behind five little boys. Alfred, the oldest, was only 13. In the old Holt family graveyard on the farm near Graham, where Black Michael and his two wives were buried, Nancy Carrigan was laid to rest.

^{1841, The
Five Carrigan Boys}

The five Carrigan boys grew up just about the same as other Southern planters' sons, Young William supposed as he thought back on his boyhood. Perhaps in the all-male household, they were allowed a little more time for hunting rabbits, riding horses, and sleighing in winter with Uncle Edwin Holt's boy Tom and the Williamson boys.

But Father certainly hadn't allowed discipline to become slack because the family lacked a mother's hand. He put his boys to work, learning to farm so they could later manage farms, just as Uncle Edwin's sons went into the cotton mill to learn its machinery.

Alfred, William and Robert learned to plow, to plant, to pick cotton. When John and James were old enough, they too went to the fields to watch the slaves and to work themselves.

In addition to his own lands, William Adams Carrigan farmed the lands that his wife had inherited from the Holt estate, farms which had been bought by Black Michael. Many of the slaves who worked on them had also been part of Nancy Carrigan's inheritance. A year following Nancy's death, her father, Michael Holt III, died[23] and part of his estate also went to W. A. Carrigan to be held for Nancy's five sons.

Life went along in the same pleasant fashion for the boys -- lessons at home and work on the farms broken by frequent visits to the many nearby Holt relations and to friends. Tom Holt and the Williamson boys spent many a day at the Carrigan farm, too.

But William Adams Carrigan wanted his sons to have a better education than the small schools and itinerant tutors offered. He hated to breakup his close-knit family of boys, but when Alfred reached his l7th birthday, the decision could be postponed no longer.

Arrangements were made for the three older boys --Alfred, William who was 13 and Robert, 10 -- to enter the Caldwell Institute in Hillsboro, farther east in Orange County. They were to stay in the home of Stephen Moore. In January 1st the boys journeyed to Hillsboro to begin their studies.

As William sat in his college room six years later, remembering that big event in their lives, he recalled how the three brothers were welcomed into the Moore home. The big family literally engulfed the boys. Mr. Moore was a bit younger than their father; Mrs. Moore was the daughter of Gen. Alexander Gray of Randolph County, N.C.

There were eight children in the family and numerous slaves in the household. The oldest child was Ann Eliza who was known as Annie; she was about William's age. Then there were Alek who was 12, Billy who was two months older than Robert Carrigan, Mollie(Mary Frances)who was nine years old; Maria, seven; Little Mollie's name was Mary Frances. Stephen, six; Henry, three, and the Baby Dick.

The Carrigan boys thought they had never seen such a big, happy family, and they immediately became a part of it.

William was Annie's devoted follower, and Alek and Billy were constant companions of the Carrigan brothers.

After several months of preparation at Caldwell Institute, Alfred left for Chapel Hill to enter the University of North Carolinaand William and Robert remained on with the Moore family in Hillsboro. Since Chapel Hill was also in Orange County and only about 15 miles from Hillsboro, the younger brothers still saw Alfred often. Sometimes they went down to the University to visit him and Tom Holt and catch a glimpse of college life.

It was about this time, William Carrigan remembered, that he had started the diary which he still kept. In it he wrote not only a record of his comings and goings; he also copied poems and parts of speeches which pleased him and he practiced the beautiful penmanship which had become his great pride.

Thoughtfully, he reached in his desk and pulled out the ledger in which he kept the diary and thumbed back to the opening pages. The first entries were of his studies at Caldwell --"reading Virgil, and Greek, and Algebra." There were accounts of his first orations, given after he had been elected "declaimer" of the Institute's Adelphian Society. It was a great day when he selected Holmes' eulogy of John Quincy Adams for his declamation, he remembered.

He read down through the pages, telling of Father's trips to court in Hillsboro. Alfred's return to Hillsboro from Chapel Hill for many visits. Of his trip to Chapel Hill in 1848 with John Turrentine. The measles epidemic at Caldwell in April 1848 which caught him and Robert. He smiled at his entry of May 1848 that he had not studied for exams but came off with "no dishonor."

In June 1848 William went back to Chapel Hill with Alfred for Commencement and then returned to the Carrigan farm for a two weeks vacation which was spent working. In July he and Robert returned to Caldwell Institute and this time the next brother, John who was 11 years old, went with them. William was elected president of the Adelphian Society, a great school honor.

In the fall Father came to Hillsboro from the farm to bring the boys their winter clothes. He and Stephen Moore spent many hours talking of the election in which Zachary Taylor had just been named President of the United States.

At Christmastime the boys went to the farm for the holidays and the entire Moore family packed up to attend two weddings in a nearby town. William wished he could spend Christmas with Annie instead of at the farm. During the vacation he decided to ask Father if he could return to Chapel Hill with Alfred and enter the university several months earlier than they had planned.

His father agreed to the plan, and in January 1849 William, Alfred, Robert and John returned to Hillsboro. William stopped off long enough to get a college recommendation from Dr. Wilson of the Institute. Then he went by to bid the Moores, and especially Annie, goodbye, and he and Alfred went on to Chapel Hill.

William was duly enrolled as a freshman in the university and assigned to a room with M. L. Staples of Taylorsville, Va. But before he had been in Chapel Hill a month, he was beck in Hillsboro to spend a day with the Moores and Annie. After that, he and Alfred often walked to Hillsboro one day and beck to Chapel Hill the next.

"Father went to Petersburg, brought us a fine lot of clothes. He brought me a fine Bible," William read in the diary. Then came another account of his freshman studies -- Bible, elocution, Latin, Greek, and math. Then an entry on April 19, 1849, that Orange County had been divided and the portion containing the Carrigan farm set up as Alamance County.

In May 1849 William was chosen freshman competitor in speech, the beginning of a college career in declamation. He chose Webster's reply to Calhoun on the revenue bill for his address and bought a fine coat for the occasion. The following month, school closed and the boys went home for the summer vacation, which William separated into times for reading, walking over the meadows and visiting with the Moores in Hillsboro.

When Alfred and William returned to Chapel Hill in July, William found that his roommate Staples had quit college and he was assigned to a room with John Morehead, whose family were old friends -- in fact William's younger brother John was named for one of the Moreheads. The boys thought college was as big as it could ever be and William wrote in his diary, "College thronged, having 170 students."

Toward the end of the summer, Alfred became very sick and Father came to Chapel Hill to carry him home. He was not able to return to the University for two months.

"Beginning to read the Bible, with Genesis," William read next from the diary. He regularly read the Bible through every few years, a habit that he intended to follow all of his life.

When the boys returned to the farm for the Christmas vacation in 1849, Father had a surprise for them. Alfred and William were moved into "the Office", a small building in the yard. It was recognition from their father that they were now grown young men, and they felt the importance of the occasion.

"Great crowd at Ed's candy stew. Staid nearly all night," the diary said. William remembered that party well. That was the week Father had passed through Chapel Hill on his way to Philadelphia on business.

In June 1850 Alfred graduated from the university and returned to the farm. William remained on at Chapel Hill, but the report that reached Father in September was not entirely encouraging. It said, William remembered: "Tolerable on logic and Math. Respectable on French, very respectable on Latin and Bible. Notwithstanding Mr. Carrigan's entire punctuality and his great amiability of disposition, the faculty deem it their duty to intimate to you that his diligence does justice to neither his capacity nor his opportunities."

In December William returned to the farm for the holidays, but he managed to spend three days, including Christmas, with the Moore family. The family was even larger than when he had lived there, for now there was another little girl, Julia.

"Fourteen inches of snow at Alamance. Had a joyful time sleighing and rabbiting," said the diary entry under January 1851. That was one of the biggest snows William could remember, and whet a time the boys had. He returned on horseback to Chapel Hill, riding through the drifts. When he arrived he had his daguerreotype made as he had promised Annie.

The winter continued so cold that in February classes at Chapel Hill were dismissed and all the students went ice-skating. Robert came up from Hillsboro for a two-day visit, and Tom Holt stopped over on his way to Philadelphia where he had a job.

That same month the students formed the Southern Rights Association to consider intersectional differences between the North and the South, and William was appointed secretary of the group. It was not long after this that the college was in an uproar when caricatures of the faculty were discovered on the belfry and classroom doors.

In March William went to Hillsboro and returned with a daguerreotype in exchange for the one he took Annie. The following month he returned to Hillsboro to do some shopping and bought his commencement suit -- "coat, pants and a fine ballroom vest."

William was a junior and Manager of the Commencement ball. He sent out 50 tickets of invitation. "Commencement large, but not the usual number of pretty young ladies," entered in the diary. "My duties as Manager of the ball laborious, danced three nights in new ballroom. Parted from friends whose loss cannot be replaced."

Annie Moore had come to Chapel Hill for the ball and William was very proud for her to see his importance. Robert Carrigan was there, too, and passed his entrance exams for the university.

When they returned after the short summer vacation, William was a full-fledged senior "excused from morning prayers" and Robert was a freshman. Robert took over Willie's old room and the senior moved to Craig's. Annie Moore had just returned from a trip to AlumSprings, Va., and William lost no time in walking over to Hillsboro to see her.

In September 1851 Alfred came up to Chapel Hill to visit William and Robert and tell them that he was going to Arkansas.

Father had for several years considered moving farther west, to new farmlands beyond the Mississippi River. He had his own slaves and those inherited by his wife, really more than enough to work the Carolina farms. Now he was looking ahead to opportunities for his five sons.

So he decided to send Alfred to locate a good farm in a pleasant community. He first thought of Texas and was still considering it. But several North Carolina families had moved to Hempstead County in South Arkansas and it was there that Alfred was to go first. Billy Moore, Annie's brother, was going to Texas on the same sort of mission for Stephen Moore.

Billy started from Hillsboro on Oct. 1, 1851. Alfred left the Carrigan farm with two friends, Russell and Kirkpatrick, on Oct. 7, carrying their provisions in a two-horse wagon. Soon Alfred wrote back to his father that he had overtaken and passed Billy Moore after only two weeks of travel. In November he arrived in Arkansas. Billy went on to Texas.

Making his own preparations for the move, Father began closing out some of his holdings in North Carolina. In October 1851, he sold his share of the Holt and Carrigan cotton factory to his brother-in-law and partner, Edwin Holt. When the boys went home for the Christmas holidays, every minute was given over to making plans, based on the letters which Alfred was sending full of news from Arkansas.

In two-below-zero weather William and Robert returned to college after the holidays, John going with them as far as Hillsboro. They waited anxiously for Alfred's return from Arkansas so they could ask him scores of questions.

And now, after Alfred had come and had told them all about the opportunities waiting for them, William was more impatient than ever.

William returned to the farm, but spent much of the following two weeks in Hillsboro. On the morning of his wedding day, with Alfred, Robert and Tom Holt, he set out for Hillsboro.

Later he wrote his own account of the wedding in his diary: "At 1/2 after 9 o'clock Ann Eliza Moore and myself were united in marriage by the Rev. S. Milton Frost.[24]My attendants were Messrs. Bob Carrigan, Alek Moore, Tom Williamson and Tom Holt. Bridesmaids were Misses Mollie Moore, Ann Howerton, Henrietta Sweeney and Annette Lindsay.-

"Our company, though small, was quite lively and entertaining. Annie was too sick to dispense with the services of Dr. Strudwick in 5 or 6 days thereafter. But on the 30th I ventured to take her and Sister Mollie to our Alamance home.

In just a month, William was to start for Arkansas with his father, and Annie wanted to pay farewell visits to members of her family in other parts of North Carolina. During July the young couple visited, staying several days with the Robert Gray family and then with Annie's grandfather, Gen. Alexander Gray, in Randolph County.

By Aug. 1, they were back home in Alamance and preparing for the long trip. Early in September William went to Chapel Hill for a farewell visit. He returned by way of Hillsboro to pick up the last of Annie's baggage and Stephen Moore went on to Alamance with him to see them off.

Early in the morning on September 7, the family left Alamance for the journey to Arkansas. Robert stayed behind at the university and John at school in Hillsboro; an aunt promised to look after them during the vacations.

Only as many things as would fit into three wagons and a barouche were taken on the journey, the rest left behind at the farm; the slaves remained at Alamance. The first night they reached Greensboro and before the caravan got started the next morning, General Gray arrived with a little 10-year-o1d Negro, Nancy, as a present for his granddaughter, Annie.

The trip by wagon was slower than Alfred's journey of 17 days by stagecoach. Their route was through Mount Airy, then across the great width of Tennessee, through Abington and Rogersville, Rutledge, Knoxville, Kingston, Bonair Springs, Sparta, McMinnville, Shelbyville, Lewisburg, Lynnville, Savannah, Bolivar, Somerville, Raleigh. Finally they reached the Mississippi River at Memphis.

At Memphis a horse, worth $150, died and that further slowed the speed of the wagons. They crossed the river and entered Arkansas, making their way through 40 miles of river swampland, and then turning southward. They passed through Marion, Little Rock and Benton and at last, on Oct. 30, they reached Washington, their future home, after nearly two months on the road.

The weary travelers went to Cousin Milton T. Holt's home in Washington and were welcomed by these old Carolina neighbors. They were impatient to see the farm Alfred had selected and early the next morning, the men set out on a tour of inspection.

The next fifteen years see brothers marrying sisters, two unrelated women named Mary Moore, and half the men losing their lives in the Civil War. The following page shows the relationships of the major players.

^{Carrigans in
the Civil War}

^{1852, Alfred}^{Settles in Washington}^,
Arkansas

The farm five miles out of Washington, which Alfred had bought from a Mr. Nance, was to be the temporary homestead for all the family, and they were anxious to move to it. It was on a well-traveled highway known as the "Military Road", over which U. S. troops marched to the Mexican War in 1845.

Nance was moving his family to Austin, Texas, and he agreed that the Carrigans could take possession of the farm the next week. In return they agreed to handle for him the ginning and picking of his cotton crop.

Soon after they reached Washington, Annie received a letter from her brother Billy Moore who had started west with Alfred Carrigan the previous spring and had gone on to Freestone County, Texas. She and William were sure that their new farm in Arkansas was finer than Billy's Texas land.

A few days after they moved into the house on the Nance farm, William began planting flowers -- hyacinths and violets. Inside the house, the bustle of unpacking and settling down continued for days.

On Nov. 20, two weeks after they moved to the farm, Annie, William and 11-year-old James drove into Washington to hear Bishop Truman at the Presbyterian Church. It was the first sermon they had heard since Aug. 29, their last Sunday at Alamance.

While they were in Washington that day, Annie went by Brittain's store and bought things for the farm household --plain domestic cloth, a pitcher and wash pan, ribbon, iodine, crackers and candy.

The following day, November 21, 1852, two old friends from North Carolina, Sam Kirkpatrick and John Allen, arrived to make their homes in Arkansas like the Carrigans. Several days later Annie received a letter from her father; Stephen Moore wrote that he too was starting to Arkansas and might decide to bring his own family to Washington.

He planned to leave Hillsboro on Dec. 9 and go to Mobile, then by boat to New Orleans, up the Mississippi and Red Rivers to Shreveport and overland to Washington.

Through December the men worked at picking and ginning the cotton crop that Mr. Nance had made.[25]It amounted to 25 bales, totaling 12,323 pounds.

Their first Christmas in Arkansas was damp and cloudy, and the family held its holiday celebration at home

^{1853, Stephen
Moore}^{Arrives in Washington}

Stephen Moore arrived in Washington on the first day of 1853,and a week later his son Billy rode in from Freestone County, Texas. For several days they visited with Annie and the Carrigans and discussed buying a new home for the Moore family west of the Mississippi.

On Jan. 12 they started back to Billy's home in Texas. William Carrigan learned after they were gone that Mr. Moore had bought a farm near Columbus, about five miles from Washington, before leaving for Texas. It was the Dr. Brunsun place and Stephen Moore paid $6.50 an acre for the 850 acres.

Annie was overjoyed at the prospect of having her family near her again and immediately began a stream of letters to her mother and younger sister Mollie about their approaching. She made many a plan for them and for their Arkansas home.

Later in January William signed a contract[26]to teach a five-months school in Washington. The parents wanted him to begin classes as soon as possible and guaranteed him 20 students and a fee of $250. He agreed to open the school on Jan. 17 and decided to live at the farm and ride back and forth to Washington on Roderick, his pony.

Several weeks after the school opened, Col. Thomas O. Benton, principal of the Dallas Military Academy, proposed to William that they open an Academy in Washington together the following August, and William agreed to consider the plan.

In February Stephen and Billy Moore returned from Texas. They had decided that Billy would move out to the Brunsun place and Stephen would return to North Carolina for the rest of the large Moore family.

During their absence, Stephen Moore's trunk and a bureau and rocking chair of Annie's had arrived from North Carolina. He unpacked the trunk and found several letters for William and Annie and a neck-ribbon which Mollie had sent to Annie.

The same day the Moore men came in from Texas, William returned from Washington full of exciting news. He had seen in town that day 82 Choctaw Indians, being moved from Alexandria, La., to the "Indian Nation." Also, he had heard that the post office in Little Rock burned down the week before, destroying two bags of mail for Washington.

On Feb. 19 Stephen Moore left for Camden on the first lap of his journey back to North Carolina. Several days later Annie and William went over to visit Billy, who lived alone in the Brunsun farmhouse.

The following month Father Carrigan decided that it was time to return to Alamance, sell the remaining family property and bring the slaves to Arkansas. On March 17 he left for Fulton to catch the riverboat. Annie and William filled his pockets with letters to members of the family and friends back in North Carolina.

March 1853was a dreary month with constant rains. The creeks rose alarmingly, and William could not get to Washington to hold school. He, Annie and James were virtually marooned on the farm.

Letters from Father soon arrived. He had reached Alamance on April 3 after 16 days on the road. He found Robert and John well and the farm in good shape after his eight months' absence.

In June William wrote Thomas 0. Benton to ask if he were still interested in opening an Academy in Washington. When Benton decided against the venture, William advertised in the Washington Telegraph that he would open his own school on Aug. 15. Annie thought that she, too, would be a schoolteacher and made plans to hold classes for young ladies in Washington.

They moved from the farm to the home of the Witter family in Washington in August. But only three days after classes opened, William and then Annie became very ill and had to return to the farm, postponing the schools for four weeks.

This was the beginning of long battles with malaria that kept most of the Carrigan family with chills and fever off and on for years. It was the greatest difficulty in adjusting themselves to Arkansas, and it was an obstacle and discomfort of real importance.

In September Father wrote from North Carolina that Uncle Edwin Holt had bought the Carrigan farm at Alamance, 760 acres, for $10 an acre. This was land that had been left by Michael Holt III for the five Carrigan boys, his grandsons.

Father was to leave Alamance on Sept. 5, bringing the family slaves to Arkansas with him. This was the final break from the home of four generations of Carrigans and five generations of Holts. Father had decided to take John out of school in Hillsboro and bring him out to Arkansas, too.

0nlyRobert, at the university in Chapel Hill, was to remain in North Carolina.

Three days after the Carrigan group left Alamance, Stephen Moore started out from Hillsboro for Arkansas with his family and slaves.

By the middle of September William and Annie felt well enough to return to Washington and open their schools again. He had 29 students, Annie 17. The next Sunday William joined the Presbyterian Church in Washington; he had been a member of the German Reformed Church in North Carolina and Annie, like all the Stephen Moore family, was a Methodist.

On Oct. 22, after seven weeks en route, Father and John arrived in Washington. With them were two wagons full of family possessions, l0 slaves and a score of little Negroes, and 10 horses.

The money received for the farm and other family funds had been converted into gold and placed in iron pots in the wagons. Beds for the Negro children had been made up over the pots of gold to hide the treasure.

The Moore family was not far behind. They arrived in Washington on Nov. § and moved out to the Brunsun farm where Billy was waiting for them. The big family immediately began fixing, building, planting a garden, and settling down.

Annie was overjoyed to see her mother, Mollie and the younger children again. William had lived at the Moore home in Hillsboro so many years that he was almost as glad as Annie to see the family in Arkansas. He and Annie drove out from Washington to spend every weekend with the Moores or at the Carrigan farm.

On Christmas Eve the Carrigan boys gathered at the farm to decide on a division of the family Negroes who had been brought out from North Carolina. There were not only the field Negroes, and house servants, but skilled workmen like London who had been trained as a carpenter and was often hired out by the day.

The next day William and Annie drove through the snow to the Moore farm to spend the rest of the holidays.

^{1854, William
Buys a Farm of His Own}

William had been considering buying a farm of his own, and when his school and Annie's neared the end of the term in February 1854, he purchased an 80-acre place from William N. Fuller for $400.

On Feb. 15 they moved from the Witter home in Washington[27]to the Carrigan farm. Two days later, after packing up their belongings, they went to their own new home.

With them went William's slaves -- Peter, Cely and Wilkes. There were Peter and Cely's four little pickaninnies --Henry, Caroline, Jerry and George -- and the Negro girl Nancy that Annie's grandfather had given her when they left Alamance.

William had three horses to begin his farming, his own Roderick, Sam from Father's farm, and Mill from Stephen Moore. He lost no time in getting to work. First he had the slaves clear out a corner of four acres and sow oats. Then he broke 16 acres for corn and began planting.

The next month William broke new ground and planted cotton. Near the house he planted a vegetable garden and flowers. He plowed the corn and worked out the cotton through the spring months. Then the rains began. William thought they would never stop; prospects for his first crops were bad. The rains did stop, but in July an unprecedented drought hit the farms.

During that summer William used his slaves and other hired help to cut enough logs for a new house. He built with his own hands that summer a double corncrib of logs.

Late in July Annie received word that her mother was seriously ill and she immediately went to the Moore farm, Mrs. Moore was expecting her twelfth child the following January, and Annie stayed on with her most of that fall and winter.

William was busy at home, gathering corn and peas, sowing turnips and cutting hay. In September the slaves made baskets and began picking the cotton on his place.[28]The crop made 5,800 pounds of seed.

Alek, the oldest Moore boy who was now a doctor, left home for Philadelphia in September and Stephen Moore went to Texas on business. While Stephen was away, his wife's condition became steadily worse and he returned.

On Jan. 2, 1855, Mrs. Moore gave birth to another son and that same day, about dark, she died. The baby boy was named Robert Gray for her brother.

Now 18-year-old Mollie had to take over the numerous duties of mistress of the house and slaves and "mother" to the big family. In April Alek Moore arrived with six more of the Moore family slaves; he had gone from Philadelphia to Hillsboro before returning to Arkansas.

On William's farm, his new house was started with slave workmen doing most of the construction. London, the slave carpenter, was in charge of the Negroes. The other slaves were used to break more new ground.

^{1855, Alfred}^{and Bettie}^Marry

Alfred Carrigan had returned to North Carolina and in the summer of 1855 he wrote back to Washington that he was to be married soon and would start for Arkansas with his wife immediately after the wedding.

Alfred

by Lenora Routon Cross 1945

1755, The Carrigans, Ireland, the Revolutionary War

1827, William Carrigan marries Nancy Holt

1852, Alfred Settles in Washington, Arkansas

1853, Stephen Moore Arrives in Washington

1855, Alfred and Bettie Marry

^{by Lenora Routon Cross}¹⁹⁴⁵

^{1755, The
Carrigans}^{,
Ireland, the Revolutionary War}

^{1827, William
Carrigan marries Nancy}^Holt

^{1852, Alfred}^{Settles in Washington}^,
Arkansas

^{1853, Stephen
Moore}^{Arrives in Washington}

^{1855, Alfred}^{and Bettie}^Marry