Another Saturday morning and once again I’m standing in a jungle. In chest-high weeds. I can’t even see my feet. It’s a summer morning and I’m already soaked through with some combination of dew and sweat. The day started hot and humid and it’s getting more so. Magnuson is nowhere to be seen. Or heard for that matter. I can’t see any sign of an old road underneath all this sticky vegetation but twenty minutes ago Magnuson had said to push on across the little creek to the bluffs on the other side. Maybe we’d find the old road bed fording the creek and cutting into the bluffs, he’d said. Then he’d disappeared into the vegetation. And then again, maybe we wouldn’t find the old road, I’d thought, as I moved off on my own. Maybe we’d just wander around in the weeds, swamp and muck, scaring all sorts of venomous snakes from their lairs, getting bitten by sullen, venomous brown recluse spiders, and working up a prodigious thirst. Maybe spending all these weekends looking for the path from Occaneechi to Adshusheer wasn’t such a great idea after all. Maybe I was going to have a hard time even finding my way back to the car in these high weeds. And then, from far, far away, I hear Magnuson’s shout. I can’t make out what he is saying but his voice has that lilting note of … well … success? Victory? Has he found the old roadbed rising out of the bottom land and carving a v-shape ditch into the bluffs above the stream? I think he may have found it! I think we are on our way to Adshusheer.
In February of 1701, a young adventurer, named John Lawson, was somewhere in this same area - on his own way to Adshusheer. Lawson had traveled from Charleston, South Carolina, up the Santee River in a big dugout canoe, into central South Carolina. He then continued north to the area near present day Monroe, in Union County, North Carolina, where he had encountered the Great Indian Trading Path - the well-traveled trail leading north to Virginia from the lands of the Catawba Indians. Lawson followed the Trading Path across the North Carolina Piedmont until he reached the Eno River. He spent the night of February 12, 1701, in a Native American village called Occaneechi on the banks of the Eno near present-day Hillsborough. The next day, February 13, Lawson, with his new friend and guide Eno Will, left the Trading Path and hiked fourteen difficult miles to the east or southeast. That evening Lawson and Will spent the night in the Native American town of Adshusheer - a town that must be in or near present day Durham. Lawson’s book, A New Voyage to Carolina, described the trip as follows:
The next Morning, we set out [from Occaneechi], with
Enoe-Will, towards Adshusheer, leaving the Virginia Path,
and striking more to the Eastward, for Ronoack. Several
Indians were in our Company belonging to Will’s Nation,
who are the Shoccories, mixt with the Enoe-Indians, and
those of the Nation of Adshusheer. Enoe-Will is their chief
Man, and rules as far as the Banks of Reatkin. It was a
sad stony Way to Adshusheer. We went over a small River
by Achonechy, and in this 14 Miles, through several other
Streams, which empty themselves into the Branches of
Cape-Fair. The stony Way made me quite lame; so that I
was an Hour or two behind the rest; but honest Will would
not leave me, but bid me welcome when we came to His
House, feasting us with hot Bread, and Bears-Oil; which
is wholsome Food for Travellers. There runs a pretty
Rivulet by this Town.
From there Lawson and Will continued their trek east, passing by the Falls of the Neuse and probably by present-day Goldsboro, Grifton and Greenville. Lawson ended his 550 mile, 59 day loop through the Carolinas at the plantation of Richard Smith on the Pamlico River on 24 February 1701 - where Lawson and Will parted ways forever. We know all this because Lawson wrote a popular book about his travels - the aforementioned A New Voyage to Carolina. Lawson later helped found two of North Carolina’s oldest towns, Bath and New Bern, and, sadly, became the first victim of the Tuscarora War, when he was ritually executed by the Tuscarora near Contentnea Creek in September 1711. But that’s another story.
As a long-time Durhamite, local history buff, and Eno River wanderer, I was well aware that February 2001 would mark the 300th anniversary of Lawson and Eno Will’s trek through Orange and Durham County. I felt compelled to mark this historic anniversary - both personally and publicly. And it just seemed that the right way to mark it would be with a reenactment of the very trudge itself - the fourteen miles between Hillsborough and Durham. So in the spring of 2000, I put out the word for my fellow would-be reenactors and 300th anniversary celebrants: who would cross those ‘several other Streams’ and walk that entire ‘sad stony Way’ from Occaneechi to Adshusheer in February of 2001? Who would be the Eno Will to my John Lawson - or let me be Eno Will to their Lawson? Who would feast with me on ‘hot Bread, and Bears-Oil’ once we shuffled in to Adshusheer? And where was Adshusheer anyway? Where was that ‘pretty Rivulet’ that ran through the long missing town?
Left to my own resources, I probably would have simply followed the old fishermen’s trails along the banks of the Eno River from Hillsborough to the Eno River State Park and called it close enough to Lawson’s actual trail to count as a reenactment - but the fates had something else in mind for this 300th celebration. There was a late night telephone call. It was Magnuson. He’d heard of my reenactment idea and he had some ideas about the path Lawson may have followed and where Adshusheer could be found. Did I want to go take a look sometime? But of course.
It is quite amazing how many old roadbeds crisscross the woods and fields around Hillsborough and the land northwest of Durham. Interstate 85, Highway 70, Old 86 and Cornwallis Road all have changed the landscape and disguised the old roads and trails - but sometimes running parallel to these new roads and sometimes running off into the woods where the new road curves, those old road beds can still be found. And there is a guy in Hillsborough, Magnuson’s his name, who knows where these old road beds are … or where they were … or where they should be. Like in snake and spider infested jungles covered with chest high weeds.
Tom Magnuson, local adventurer and backwoodsman, is the founder and CEO of the Trading Path Preservation Society. His organization is dedicated to ‘preserve, promote and study the historic Trading Path.’ As a result Magnuson is constantly researching the old road beds, trails, fords and tavern sites that cover the terrain around the oldest towns in North Carolina’s Piedmont. A stickler for observing people’s privacy and property rights, Magnuson always knocks on doors and tries to track down the owners for permission to follow these old roads and paths. The man knows his public relations and he knows most folk are deeply interested to know that hundreds of years of history happened on or near their property. Most folk are happy to have Magnuson investigate these old roads. And many have stories to tell. Magnuson hears about arrowheads and grinding stones found, old fords and fishing weirs, old gravesites and old stone chimneys standing by themselves in the middle of a mature forest. Then Magnuson tries to fit it all together.
Magnuson tells me about his explorations and that he has several ideas about the old path that Lawson may have followed after leaving Occaneechi. He tells me the UNC archaeologists have never been able to definitively locate the site of Adshusheer. He thinks it’s not to the north of Durham but west and maybe even southwest of Durham. He knows the names of all the streams that might qualify as the pretty rivulet that runs by Adshusheer. Adshusheer might be near the intersection of Cornwallis Road and Old Erwin Road - or it might be on the edge of the Duke golf course. I’m entranced and, at least in my mind, Magnuson and I become a team for this reenactment hike business. We’ll find a plausible trail, secure permission from all property owners for the reenactment hike, lead scores of Lawson/ Will enthusiasts on the 300th anniversary hike in the clear winter air of February 2001, and finally we’ll uncover the true location of Adshusheer and be awarded honorary graduate degrees in archaeology from that little college down in Chapel Hill. This would be fun.
So, in the late summer of 2000, Magnuson and I do the legwork part of our little scheme. We meet on most weekends to explore undeveloped areas southeast of Hillsborough where he thinks there should be old roadbeds running southeast/northwest. Sometimes we wander the woods, swamps and streambeds for hours, and find nothing but stickers, bugs, barbed wire, and, afterwards, a numerous assortment of bug bites, scratches and rashes. Once my ankle, with several prominent red spots on it, swells up for two weeks. But we keep going back to the steamy Orange county jungle land, because sometimes we find the old road bed and the wide u-shape ditch that runs down to the stream, fords the stream and runs up the other side. And sometimes that sunken roadbed keeps on through the woods until it is a twenty foot wide roadbed set five or six feet below the level of the surrounding forest. To reach that depth the traffic on these old roads must have been heavy indeed. Then we follow the roadbed to where it disappears because it has been leveled by a modern road or house, barn or parking lot. Then, like hunting dogs, we spread out on the far sides of the modern developments to see if we can pick up the old trail, that is find a continuing remnant of the old roadbed. Sometimes we do and sometimes we don’t.
But by early September it all seems to have come together - we have established an intermittent but almost continuous trail of old roadbeds and fords leading from the Eno River at Hillsborough to Mt. Sinai Road in Durham County. Almost there. The last section Magnuson and I find on one of the first fall-like weekends in September. Where Mt. Sinai Road curves off to the left down a hill, we turn into the woods on the right - with Magnuson guessing that the old roadbed on which Mt. Sinai was built may have gone off to the right instead of to the left. We wander along the edge of the hill, trying to stay level as the old cart way also might have tried. And then we spot a clearly defined ridge of earth running in a line heading southeast. It has to be the edge of an old roadbed. We follow it for 100 yards until it begins to head down the slope of the hill, and immediately it deepens into an eroded ditch about four feet below the level of the surrounding land. This erosion often happens when old roadbeds descend the bluffs surrounding streams. Over bushes and fallen logs we climb down the ditch until the old road flattens out on the small floodplain of Piney Mountain Creek. And there before us is a beautiful little ford of the creek - with the old road clearly rising up the bank on the far side of the stream. We wade the stream and follow the deep cleft of the old road as it runs through the mature forest gradually ascending. We pass a few old home sites and stone foundations and then the old road ditch runs perpendicular into Erwin Road - a hundred yards or so west of Hollow Rock Swim Club. On the far side - the south side - of Erwin Road, the cleft of the old road keeps on going until it merges with the gravel Pickett Road. Adshusheer may just be down this dirt road a ways. It could be, Magnuson, it could be.
But confirming Adshusheer’s true location would have to wait. We had a hike to organize, authorize, publicize, and energize - and only until February to do so. So we got busy. Magnuson got permission from the property owners for our passage along the proposed trail, we organized committees to take charge of the starting point and finishing points of the hike, we got assistant hike leaders and support personnel lined up. And in late January of 2001 we completed the first continuous hike of our educated guess as to Lawson’s actual sad and stony fourteen mile path from Occaneechi to Adshusheer. We forded the Eno just downstream from the Churton Street Bridge and made our way up to Tuscarora Drive, walked briefly on Highway 70, Highway 86 and Old N.C. 10, before turning off into the woods on the old roadbed. We lost our way twice (despite having been over the various segments of the trail several times before) but completed the path in about seven hours. When we emerged from the woods triumphantly on Erwin Road, we unanimously declared that the hike had been just under fourteen miles - supporting our belief that we had found the actual path Lawson and Will took in 1701. That was good enough for us and good enough, we felt, for the reenactors that we expected would join us for the 300th anniversary hike on 17 February 2001.
It poured rain the night of 16 February 2001 but on the morning of 17 February the clouds were scudding and by 8:00 a.m. the sky was clear and bright. After registration and opening remarks in the parking lot near the reconstructed Occaneechi Village on the banks of the Eno in Hillsborough, about 75 hikers started out on Lawson’s ‘sad and stony way’ to West Durham and at least the possibility of Adshusheer. The day was glorious and long, and the hikers spread out along the trail. But all hikers had reached the finish at the Hollow Rock Swim Club parking lot (or were otherwise accounted for) while there was still plenty of light left in the day. And all felt a bit closer to those fellow wanderers who slept well in the village of Adshusheer on the night of 13 February 1701.
Postscript: After the reenactment hike, Magnuson made the following observations about the hike: “First, and most amazing, was the miracle of over 60 property owners granting permission for strangers to trek across their land. Second, and nearly invisible to the hikers, the success of the venture depended entirely on a cadre of selfless volunteers. For the record, the volunteers who made this hike possible were: Diane Magnuson, Holly Reid and Rich Shaw, Bill and Gwen Reid, Tom and Gail Fowler, Steve Rankin, David Southern, Bryan Carey, Gordon Warren, Cindy Shaw, Annette Jurgelski, Walter Rogan, Eric Block, Robin Jacobs, Milo Pyne, Peter Klopfer, Gustavo Ocoro, the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation, and Chris Pope and Kent McKenzie of Orange EMS. Furthermore, the hikers in particular and the community in general owe a special debt to the wonderfully generous but necessarily anonymous landowners who share their piece of the rock with us. Several segments of the hike are in the hands of extremely responsible landowners fully aware of the wondrous treasure they possess. The owners, who weren’t aware before the hike, were afterward, and perhaps that new knowledge will provide a degree of protection for a wonderful artifact in our midst. Thank you all for contributing to a moment of grace none of us will soon forget.” And, of course, thank you Tom Magnuson for all of your crucial work on this hike and your tremendous efforts with the Trading Path Association!
And as for Adshusheer? I have a clipping of an article which appeared in the Durham Morning Herald on Sunday, 3 December 1989. The headline reads: “Durham Site May Yield Sought-After Indian Village.” The article discusses an archaeological site discovered by an amateur archaeologist that had attracted the interest of the university archaeologists. The article described the location of this site only in general terms: “on private property beside a creek within the city limits” to avoid drawing unwanted attention to the site. The article continued: “What is particularly tantalizing about any site in Durham County is the fact that it could prove to be Adshusheer, a village described by English adventurer John Lawson in his book A New Voyage to Carolina, published in 1709. The settlement, inhabited by Eno and Shakori Indians, disappeared from history and has never been found by researchers. ‘Weve been looking for that village for a long time,’ [said one of the university archaeologists].” But despite the great interest of both amateurs and professionals and the discovery of possible sites, no one has announced publicly that they have found Adshusheer. Magnuson stills says Mud Creek (near Cornwallis and Erwin Roads) might be the pretty rivulet. But Eno Will’s Adshusheer still remains buried somewhere in Durham, enduring the centuries and eluding our grasp.
Visit Magnuson’s Trading Path Association web page on the ‘net at www.tradingpath.org