Fort Dobbs State Historic Site
Fort Dobbs Gazette
June 2015
Volume XII Issue 2
Wildlife Program at Fort Dobbs
INSIDE THIS
ISSUE:
p. 1
-Wildlife
-Dispatch
p. 2
-Summer Camp
-Living History Update
-Receipt from the Past
p. 3
-Photos from the Frontier
p. 4-5
-Where’s Waddell?
p.6
-Grants
-New Gift Shop Items
p. 7
-Friends of Fort Dobbs
Roll Call
Department of
Cultural Resources
Susan W. Kluttz, Secretary
Office of Archives and History
Dr. Kevin Cherry, Deputy Secretary
Division of State Historic Sites
Keith Hardison, Director
Western Region Supervisor
Jennifer Farley
Fort Dobbs Historic Site
Scott Douglas, Site Manager
Frank McMahon, Historic Interpreter
Wayne Steelman, Maint. Mechanic
Michael Lampart, Site Interpreter
Tom Nicastro, Site Interpreter
On Saturday, August 8th, staff
from Chimney Rock State Park will
present “The Animals of Western North
Carolina.” This family-friendly program,
led by a park naturalist, will include tactile
objects such as turtle shells and animal
skins, as well as live mammal, reptile,
amphibian, and bird of prey animal
ambassadors.
Chimney Rock Education Manager
Emily Walker notes:
Our animal ambassadors bring an element
to the program that you can’t get through
photos. Each of our animals has their own
story to share and become a significant
part of the guest experience. If people
leave our program less afraid and more
aware of how they can coexist with some of
these critters we’re all doing our jobs.”
The animals presented can vary
from program to program, but may include
groundhogs, Virginia Opossums, great
horned owls, and red-tailed hawks, among
others. As Fort Dobbs was constructed in
the newly settled frontier, this program
will give visitors the chance to learn about
the animals that were encountered by early
explorers while gaining an appreciation for
the diverse wildlife that still exists in our
region today.
Grady the Groundhog and some
young fans
Dispatch from the Fort by Scott Douglas, Historic Site Manager
This spring, North
Carolina lost two of her
greatest historians and Fort
Dobbs lost two champions:
William Powell and Dr.
Jerry Cashion.
Although born decades
apart, both men spent much
of their early lives in Statesville, during
which time, both took an active interest in
the story behind a nearly forgotten French
and Indian War fort nearby.
Powell eventually became Professor
Emeritus of History at UNC-Chapel Hill.
His long list of papers and publications are
invaluable for any student of NC history and
Fort Dobbs is indebted for the research he
conducted on the site.
Cashion also taught at UNC and then led
the Research Branch of the Division of
Archives and History before serving more
than a decade as the chairman of the NC
Historical Commission. Dr. Cashion served
on the board of the Friends of Fort Dobbs
and regularly check-in on the site.
We will miss both of these great men.
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FORT DOBBS GAZETTE
Volume XII Issue 2
Summer Camp
Fort Dobbs will offer our second day camp of the summer on July 28-31, entitled “Life on the Carolina Frontier.”
Kids will get to enlist in a North Carolina Provincial Company and learn about the lives of the soldiers who built Fort
Dobbs, the settlers they protected, and the Cherokee warriors they fought.
Hands-on activities like gardening, hiking, 18th century cooking and authentic military drill will bring history to life.
The four-day summer camp culminates with an 18th century inspired water balloon battle giving campers an
opportunity to put their newly acquired soldiering skills to the test!
Ages: 8-12. Times: 9:30am-12:30pm.
Cost: $75 per child. (Price includes sales tax, a snack each day and a t-shirt.)
Reservation deadline: July 6.
Contact us today to reserve a space for your young historian!
Living History Update
First of all, we would like to thank everyone that participate in the “Montcalm’s Cross” re-enactment at Fort
volunteered at War for Empire in April as well as during Ticonderoga.
our Home School living history weekend in June!
With the help of our volunteers we have also been
We have been keeping busy this summer with the able to offer regular living history demonstrations on
introduction of the Fort Dobbs Day Camp. Also the Fort Saturdays. Demonstrations have included gardening,
Dobbs Garrison has participated in several off site events brewing, building a Cherokee summer lodge, baking,
including the Daniel Boone Heritage Festival in
tailoring, cooking, drill, musket firing demonstrations as
Mocksville, National Tourism Day at both I-77 North
well as archaeological site tours.
Carolina Welcome Centers, and the Alamance Battle
Please, contact the site’s historical interpreter Frank
Anniversary at Alamance State Historic Site. The
McMahon for more information on volunteering at Fort
Garrison will be travelling to New York in July to
Dobbs State Historic Site.
A Receipt From The Past
To Pickle Pork:
Salted pork was an important part of a soldiers diet during the French and Indian War the following recipe comes to us
from The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy – 1765
“Bone your pork, cut it into pieces of a size to lye in the tub or pan you design it to lye in, rub your pieces
well with salt petre, then take two parts of common salt and two of bay salt, and rub every piece well; lay
a layer of common salt in the bottom of your vessel cover every piece over with common salt lay them one
upon another as close as you can, filling the hollow places on the sides with salt. As your salt melts on the
top throw on more, lay a coarse cloth over the vessel, a board over that, and a weight on the board to keep
it down. Keep is close covered; it will thus ordered keep the whole year: put a pound of salt petre, and two
pounds of bay-salt to a hog. Coarse sugar mixed with the salt, is a great preservative, and gives the meat
a pleasing shortness when boiled, and prevents it becoming too salt.”
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FORT DOBBS GAZETTE
June 2015
Photos From the Frontier
Photos from War for Empire courtesy Tom Watts, Andrew Shook,
Jennifer Farley, Ken and Retha Reece, and Sarah Barnard
Page 4
FORT DOBBS GAZETTE
Volume XII Issue 2
Where’s Waddell?: North Carolina Forces in the
Anglo-Cherokee War
Daniel J. Tortora
Since the 1980s, the Where’s Waldo series of
children’s books has become a pop culture hit. Where’s
Waldo? Waldo is there, somewhere, but his precise
whereabouts are tough to pinpoint. Readers must find him
amid a dense crowd of colorfully illustrated people. His red
and white bobble hat covers his long brown hair. He has
round black glasses, and wears jeans and a red and white
striped shirt. There’ve been Waldo TV specials, video
games, and apps. I’ve even spotted a student dressed as
Waldo at a college football game, amid a sea of 60,000
cheering fans.
serve on and off for more than a decade.
Visitors to Fort Dobbs are well aware of the
Cherokee attack on that post in February 27, 1760, an attack
that Colonel Waddell brilliantly repulsed. But what role did
Waddell and North Carolina troops play in the three Britishcolonial expeditions against the Cherokee Indians in 1759,
1760, and 1761? Tensions ran high between the Cherokees
and the English. North Carolina faced economic and
political turmoil. Many must have wondered: “where’s
Waddell?” Today, it’s easy to ask the same question.
Waddell, now a colonel, received orders to raise
militiamen from Orange, Anson, and Rowan counties and
to march them to Fort Prince George in the Cherokee
Lower Towns. There they would reinforce an army
invading from South Carolina. Waddell faced a tough
task; no one wanted to serve. In Anson County, for
example, just 91 of 600 men attended the muster. Finally,
by mid-December, Waddell was on the move. He passed
through Salisbury, and on December 20 camped near the
Catawba River. He had merely 100 men—half provincials
and half militia—14 wagons, 100 cattle, and some hogs.
The militiamen “Every Night Deserted Notwithstanding
all my Care” and refused to cross into South Carolina.
Waddell vowed to “Prosecute those Delinquents To the
Rigor of the Law,” but was unable to do so.
1758
By May 1758 he was promoted to major. He led
and commanded the North Carolina provincials raised for
the Forbes Expedition against Fort Duquesne (present-day
Pittsburgh). The undersupplied North Carolinians built
roads and scouted as British and colonial troops advanced
westward across the Pennsylvania frontier. Some say
Waddell’s dog was the first living creature to enter Fort
Duquesne after the French evacuated it in November.
In many ways, Colonel Hugh Waddell, commander When the British took possession of the fort, the North
of Fort Dobbs, was the Waldo of his day; he can sometimes Carolinians returned home.
be difficult to spot in the historical record. He had a
1759
distinctive appearance. He was a “powerful man, of large
As Cherokees—up to that point British allies—
stature, having not only unusual length of limb but great
breadth of chest.” At six feet, he stood several inches taller returned home from the Forbes campaign, they
skirmished with Virginia settlers. Soon, nearly forty
than most men at the time, and he was a muscular 200
pounds. He was courageous, energetic, and admired. Before Cherokees were dead, many of them murdered in cold
he was twenty-five, he commanded North Carolina’s often blood. Cherokees launched revenge attacks on the North
and South Carolina frontiers, striking along the Yadkin,
undersupplied, unarmed and unenthusiastic militia and
Catawba, Broad, and Pacolet rivers.
provincial troops.
Background
The Irish-born Waddell had visited Boston as a
youth, after his father had killed a man in a duel. He
returned to the colonies for good and entered the military
just in time to march north from North Carolina in 1754
when the French and Indian War began—but too late to join
George Washington at Fort Necessity. His courage and
spirit, and his father’s friendship with North Carolina’s new
royal governor, Arthur Dobbs, secured him a promotion
from lieutenant to captain. He oversaw the construction of
Fort Dobbs and assumed command. He served as a
commissioner to Virginia’s treaty with the Cherokee and
Catawba Indians in 1756. By 1757, at just twenty-three, he
was elected to the North Carolina Assembly. He would
South Carolina’s governor, William Henry
Lyttelton, concluded a hasty treaty with the Cherokees on
December 26 then called off Waddell’s march. The North
Carolinians returned home.
1760
Soon after Lyttelton’s treaty, hostilities on the
frontier resumed. Waddell garrisoned Fort Dobbs and put
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FORT DOBBS GAZETTE
June 2015
five hundred militiamen on duty. The fort became a
refuge for fleeing settlers. Cherokees attacked Fort Dobbs
on the evening of February 27; Waddell’s men killed ten
or twelve and lost one killed and two wounded.
signature. Three days later, Waddell completed a troop
return listing just 225 men. By December 1, Stephen
dismissed the North Carolinians and they promptly
returned home.
Simply put, in 1760, North Carolina’s
assemblymen could not get their act together. They met
on June 30 yet did not provide troops to join British
colonel Archibald Montgomery’s 1760 campaign against
the Cherokees. No one knew it yet, but a Cherokee army
had ambushed Montgomery’s army in present-day Macon
County, and Montgomery was already retreating to
Charles Town (Charleston). Six weeks later, Fort
Loudoun surrendered to the Cherokee Indians.
After the War
1761
In early April, the North Carolina Assembly
agreed to raise and fund 500 provincial troops. Waddell
traveled to Charles Town (Charleston) with a letter from
Governor Dobbs. He met with South Carolina’s acting
governor and purchased clothing for the troops. He then
raced back to North Carolina.
The North Carolina forces came together quickly.
Within a month, Waddell marched his men from Fort
Dobbs to join Colonel William Byrd III and the Virginia
Regiment. The Virginians were headed southwest from
Winchester to invade the Overhill Cherokee Towns.
Waddell’s men were gathered at Fort Dobbs by
August 10. Soon they were on the move. Yet many were
lacking arms and ammunition. Passing through Salisbury
on August 26, Waddell had 374 soldiers and 52 Tuscarora
Indian allies, but “had not above 50 Stands of Arms for
the Whole.”
Waddell did not link up with Virginia forces until
October 8. He reached Fort Chiswell—just east of present
day Wytheville, Virginia—with three hundred soldiers
and about fifty Tuscarora Indians. British and South
Carolina troops had already destroyed fifteen Cherokee
towns, and Virginia’s Colonel Byrd had already resigned.
Waddell’s army joined Colonel Adam Stephen in
widening the road leading to the Cherokee Country.
Stephen remarked: “They behave extremely well for the
New rais’d troops, & Col. Waddell & the corps are so
hearty in the service.”
The Virginians stopped at the Long Island of the
Holston River, present Kingsport, Tennessee, and
constructed Fort Robinson. The North Carolinians pushed
further toward the Cherokee villages. This prompted
hundreds of concerned Cherokees to visit. Waddell
escorted the Indians to Fort Robinson, where a treaty was
signed on November 20, 1761. The treaty bears his
When war with the Cherokees was over, Colonel
Waddell remained active in politics. He met his wife,
Mary Haynes, in Wilmington while he was in town for a
session of the assembly. In 1767, he led an expedition of
militiamen charged with establishing North Carolina’s
border with the Cherokees. As a general, he later helped to
put down the Regulator Rebellion of 1771. He died two
years later, just shy of his fortieth birthday.
Waddell marched in British campaigns, oversaw
the construction of Fort Dobbs, and negotiated Indian
treaties. From 1759–1761, we can now answer the
question “where’s Waddell?” In 1759, he was marching
with a pathetic and unwilling army. In 1760, he was facing
attack at Fort Dobbs and was stuck on the frontier. In
1761, he was in Charleston, at Fort Dobbs organizing a
provincial regiment, building roads in the Virginia backcountry, and attending a treaty-signing. All the while he
faced a lack of funds and equipment. The powerfully built,
young, and charismatic Waddell is difficult to spot in the
historical record amid the crowd of characters in the Anglo
-Cherokee War, but he was there, busy doing his best
despite the tough circumstances.
A portrait of Hugh Waddell
etched after a 1768 miniature
Daniel J. Tortora, Ph.D., is assistant professor of history
at Colby College in Waterville, Maine, and is author of
Carolina in Crisis: Cherokees, Colonists, and Slaves in
the American Southeast, 1756-1763 (University of North
Carolina Press, 2015).
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FORT DOBBS GAZETTE
Volume XII Issue 2
Latest Grants
The Friends of Fort Dobbs and Fort Dobbs State Historic Site wish to extend a heartfelt “thank you” to the Statesville
Convention and Visitors Bureau, Iredell County, and the Rotary Club of Statesville for awarding a series of generous
grants this spring:

The Convention and Visitors Bureau awarded a grant of $12,410 to support educational programming and events at
the site over the next year.

The Rotary Club of Statesville awarded a grant for $1,750 which will fund the completion of a south-eastern native
bark covered hunting shelter.

Finally, Iredell County awarded $10,000 directly to the Capital Campaign for the reconstruction of Fort Dobbs.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT!
New T-Shirts
In need of a cool new t-shirt for this summer? Fort Dobbs’ gift shop, The Petit Sutler, now has three new t-shirts in
stock, all designed exclusively for Fort Dobbs State Historic Site!
The shirts all have the Fort Dobbs soldier logo on the left breast and feature one of three images on the back: A line
drawing of the fort, an illustration of the three Cherokee emissaries who travelled to London in 1762, and a very
patriotic Governor Arthur Dobbs.
The 100% cotton shirts are available in sizes “youth large” through “Adult 2X.”
Page 7
FORT DOBBS GAZETTE
June 2015
FRIENDS OF FORT DOBBS ROLL CALL
The Friends of Fort Dobbs supports the mission of Fort Dobbs State Historic Site:
“To preserve and interpret North Carolina’s only French and Indian War fort.”
THANK YOU NEW & RENEWING MEMBERS!
Lieutenant
William Young—Harmony, NC
Phil and Pam Hazel—Statesville, NC
James and Doris Hillhouse—
Recruit and Senior
Memphis, TN
Emmet Allen— Marietta, GA
Dr. and Mrs. Robert Tolle—
Jackson Allen— Marietta, GA
Statesville, NC
Wesley Allen— Marietta, GA
David and Gail Pope—Statesville, NC
Larry and Nancy Babits—
Greenville, NC
Mike and Betsy Yarborough—
Statesville, NC
Sergeant
Gerry and Georgeane Easley—
Statesville, NC
Jim and Suze Caldwell—
Hudson, WI
Dr. Dick Falls— Statesville, NC
Douglas and Laurel Eason—
Statesville, NC
Jane Lentz—Statesville, NC
Kalman and Toby Gordon—
Mark and Lori Marshall—
Taylorsville, NC
M. Neader Management—
Statesville, NC
Sanford and Jane Pope—Hickory, NC
Tom and Parksie Wilson—
Statesville, NC
Ken and Retha Reese—Fairview, NC
Corporal
Bill and Connie Barker—
Terry Mayhew—Reidsville, NC
Greg Mayforth—Statesville, NC
Dean Pentz—Statesville, NC
Robert Phillips— Statesville, NC
Brittany Pope— Cherokee, NC
Elbertus Prol— Stanley NC
Cary Oughterson— Statesville, NC
John Russ— Statesville, NC
Josh Shaver— Statesville, NC
Hurricane, WV
Paul and Laura-Lee Spedding—
Winston-Salem, NC
Pamela Sue Ellis—
Jim Stikeleather—Chapel Hill, NC
Smithfield, NC
Lisa Valdez— Statesville, NC
Andrea Gearhart, Huntersville, VA
William Gearhart, Huntersville, VA
Myrtle Westmoreland—
Statesville, NC
Billie Meeks—Statesville, NC
Eileen Wilkinson— Statesville, NC
Michael and Alexandra Shadroui—
Cleveland, NC
Darryl Veach—Mocksville, NC
Charles Williams—Winston-Salem, NC
Steve Williams—Asheboro, NC
Phil Hazel— Statesville, NC
Statesville Convention and
Visitors Bureau
Memorial Gifts
Dr. Jerry Cashion (from Bill
Pope—Statesville, NC)
William Eli Hickson (from
Phil Hazel— Statesville, NC)
Josh Josey—Statesville, NC
Dean and Treva Lail—
Statesville, NC
Statesville, NC
Education Fund
Capital Campaign Contributions
Saul and Gene Gordon—
Statesville, NC
To Our 2015
Sponsors—
Alarm South
Benfield Sanitation
Courtyard Marriott
Country Legends WAME
Design Detail
Hampton Inn
Iredell County Sheriff’s
Department
Maymead Materials, Inc.
Statesville Record &
Landmark
—and to the
Many Other
Friends of the Fort:
THANK YOU!
JOIN OR RENEW
On-Line at
WWW.FortDobbs.Org!
Visit Fort Dobbs
on Face Book!
Fort Dobbs State Historic Site
438 Fort Dobbs Rd.
Statesville, NC 28625
704/873-5882
The Struggle for America
Thank you to the Friends of Fort
Dobbs for providing funding for
the printing of the Fort Dobbs
Gazette
Support Fort Dobbs through your Friends membership!
Please mail application with your check or credit card information to:
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Friends of Fort Dobbs
PO Box 241
Statesville, NC 28687
The Friends of Fort Dobbs welcomes additional tax-deductible
contributions. For giving memorials, honoraria or matching
gifts from employers, call the Friends of Fort Dobbs, at
704-873-5882 or e-mail at [email protected]
Your membership benefits include:
10% discount in store
□ Recruit (Students and Seniors) $10
Advance notice of events
□ Corporal $50
Quarterly newsletter
□ Sergeant $100
□ Lieutenant $250
And more…...