The shore of Lake Ellis {Craven County) circa 1925 



Photo courtesy of GA Nicholl Photo Album. New Bern-Craven County Library 



she fell backward into the water while 

 crossing a swamp on the way to a Quaker 

 meeting in Bladen County. She was frightened 

 by stories that a panther had recently killed a 

 traveler in what was probably the Green 

 Swamp, about 40 miles west of Wilmington. 

 She also was startled by the barking of wolves 

 near her camp. For another half-century, 

 both of those predators still roamed the 

 Green Swamp. 



Phillips traveled to Alamance County, 

 visiting Quaker meetings at New Garden, Eno 

 River and other places, then rode all the way 

 back to Bladen County and Wilmington. 

 Then, on Jan. 20, 1754, she set out for the 

 colony's largest Quaker settlements, which 

 had been founded above Albemarle Sound in 

 the 17th century. She traveled north through 

 the ports of New Bern and Washington. "In 

 this journey we met with considerable 

 hardships," she remembered, "the people 

 amongst whom we were being very poor, 

 their houses cold, and provisions mean." 



Arriving at the Perquimans River on 

 Feb. 6, she preached at the Piney Woods 

 meeting in Perquimans County and the Old 

 Neck meeting in Pasquotank County. She also 

 held prayer services, mainly for non-Quakers, 

 in the villages of Edenton and Bath. Though 



the counties north of Albemarle Sound were at 

 that time the most densely settled in North 

 Carolina, they still had few churches or 

 ministers. In Bath, as in so many places she 

 visited, Phillips found that "the life of religion 

 was scarcely so much as known by many of 

 [the residents]." 



Bath, the colony's oldest town, was the 

 scene of the two most unforgettable incidents 

 in Memories of the Life of Catharine Phillips. 



The first was the death of Rebecca 

 Tombs, a "valuable friend" whom Phillips met 

 at a Quaker meeting near the Perquimans 

 River. Tombs volunteered to accompany 

 Phillips to Bath. They crossed Albemarle 

 Sound on a chilly day when "the frost was so 

 hard, that the water . . . was frozen some 

 distance from the shore." Tombs grew ill in 

 the harsh weather as they rode another 43 

 miles along the edge of the East Dismal 

 Swamp to Bath. 



After preaching at the Bath courthouse, 

 Tombs was "seized with an ague." Phillips 

 "soon became apprehensive of her being 

 removed by death." They headed back to the 

 Perquimans River and sent a messenger ahead 

 to alert Tombs' s husband of her illness, but, in 

 Phillips' words, "the Almighty did not see fit to 

 continue her in pain." Rebecca Tombs died on 



A HISTORIAN'S 



COAST 



the morning of Feb. 20, 1754. Phillips had a 

 coffin built and brought the corpse home to the 

 Perquimans River, where a widower and 

 seven motherless children waited. 



Phillips did not pretend to be unaffected 

 by the long journey across the East Dismal and 

 Albemarle Sound with her new friend's 

 corpse. Her native England was hardly a 

 stranger to morbid illnesses and short lives, but 

 Phillips never grew used to the high incidence 

 of infectious diseases in colonial America and 

 the often quick, fatal results. Faulting herself 

 for allowing Tombs to accompany her to Bath, 

 she confessed that sometimes, "like Jonah, I 

 wished to die." 



The second incident at Bath gives a sense 

 of where the young English evangelist saw the 

 root of evil, if not in longleaf glades or cypress 

 swamps like so many of her countrymen. It 

 was a relatively small affair concerning a slave 

 girl, but it clearly made a lasting impression on 

 Phillips. "One night a poor negro girl fell 

 asleep at the top of the stairs, near our chamber 

 door," she wrote, and the innkeeper, "seeing 

 her there[,] kicked her down them." The 

 innkeeper had "a dark ferocious disposition," 

 she observed. "Indeed, darkness seemed to 

 surround us in this house." 



This incident brings to mind an earlier 

 passage in Phillips's Memories when she was 

 passing through the Green Swamp. Having 

 failed to reach their destination at a remote inn, 

 she and her party were forced to camp in a 

 swampy tract renowned for its wolves, bears, 

 and panthers. The next day, they breakfasted at 

 the inn, where Phillips encountered "a wicked 

 set of company, who had spent the night 

 there." 



Reticent about why she deemed the inn's 

 guests so wicked, Phillips was nonetheless 

 spurred by their behavior to contrast nature and 

 humanity. Here, she turned upside down many 

 preachers' views of the colonial landscape. 

 Considering the inn's guests, she rejoiced that 

 she and her fellow travelers had stayed in the 

 swamp instead of the inn. "It appeared much 

 more comfortable," she wrote, "to be under the 

 open canopy of heaven, and the protection of 

 Providence, though among the wild beasts, 

 than among those of the human race." □ 



COASTWATCH 29 



