224 INDIANA HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS 



for a few years past by the present proprietors, Mr. 

 Burgwin, senior, and his sons, T. Pollock Burgwin and 

 Henry K. Burgwin/ 



It was just before sundown, on the 13th of May, when 

 I crossed the ferry, after a long day's drive, which I was 

 prompted to do by the fact that the river and clouds both 

 threatened a flood that might detain me several days, 

 which I proposed to spend beneath the hospitable roof of 

 an intelligent North Carolina planter, rather than in a 

 dull town. So taking such directions as a negro only can 

 give a stranger, I commenced a voyage of discovery 

 through two or three intervening plantations, and was 

 very near becoming entangled with blind roads and back 

 water, already overflowing and cutting off communica- 

 tion, with darkness and a thunder-storm threatening, 

 when I discovered a carriage approaching, which I found 

 to contain a handsome, intelligent-looking gentleman, with 

 piercing black eyes, and black hair just beginning to 

 show a few silvery streaks. No sooner had I inquired if 

 that was Mr. Burgwin, and announced my name, than he 

 leaped from his own, and approached my carriage to wel- 

 come me most heartily as an old acquaintance, though 

 this was our first meeting. Sending forward the carriage 

 upon the errand of mercy that brought him out, which 

 was to carry consolation and mercy to a sick servant, 

 he took a seat with me and drove to the "Cottage," the 

 residence of Mr. T. Pollock Burgwin, whom I had just 

 met, and of his father when not at his place on the Trent. 

 Although I missed the much-loved pleasure of female 

 society, we managed to pass the time rapidly along some- 



' John Fanning Burgwyn (the name was originally Burgwin), a 

 native of Thornbury, Gloucestershire, England, born March 14, 

 1783, died June 18, 1864. Two of his six sons, Thomas Pollock and 

 Henry K. Burgwyn, lived for a time in the North. Upon returning 

 to plantation life in North Carolina, they proposed to manumit their 

 slaves, but experiments with white labor proved so costly that they 

 were apparently reconciled to the slave system. Ashe, Samuel 

 A'Court, Biographical History of North Carolina . . . , 8:58-66, 

 73-80 (Greensboro, 1905) ; Phillips, Ulrich B., Life and Labor in 

 the Old South, 252-53 (Boston, 1929). 



