HISTORICAL SKETCHES

    

CANE CREEK BAPTIST CHURCH                                                                           

 

OUR ORIGINAL TRUSTEES

On August 12, 1789, Thomas Durham sold a one acre tract to Preacher Thomas Cate and eight Trustees so they could build Cane Creek Meeting House. Most of these ten people were bound together by family ties. Six of the ten people involved in this transaction bear the family name Cate. The family traces back to a Robert Cate, a Quaker, who would have been born around 1670 in Virginia.

Robert Cate had six sons, four of whom came to Orange County. Two, Captain Robert Cate, Jr. and Thomas Cate settled along Cane Creek.   Robert's line produced five of our trustees (sons Richard, Thomas, and Joseph, son-in-law John Strother, and grandson Robert, a son of Thomas. Thomas' line produced three trustees, sons Thomas (the preacher) and Bernard, and son-in-law John Workman. To complete the family connections, the grantor, Thomas Durham, was married to Robert's granddaughter, Susannah (daughter of Thomas). Below is what we know about them.

Thomas Cate. Unfortunately, there were many Cates in the early days of Orange County and too many of them were named Thomas. The ones who weren't seem always to have had a son or a father by this name. Keeping all the Thomas Cates straight is quite difficult. This Thomas was the son of Robert, one of the original settlers, and a cousin to the preacher. He had extensive land holdings and therefore must have been a prominent member of the community.

John Strother . He seems to have been a temporary resident of Cane Creek. Because his name also appears as "Struther" and "Stroder" on old deeds it is possible that he was of Pennsylvania Dutch origin. In 1776 he bought a tract of 200 acres from his father-in-law, Robert Cate, located on both sides of Cane Creek just south of where the original meeting house was to be built. He sold this tract to Sackfield Brewer (whose land later descended in the Snipes family) in 1790. His wife was Mary Ann. He obtained a State land grant in 1798 a bit to the east of Cane Creek. Thus John Struther was a brother-in-law of the Thomas Cate above.

Richard Cate . This Richard Cate died in 1794. Apparently he was the builder and owner of a mill on Cane Creek for which no trace remains. It is possible that the mill was never built. If it did exist it was located about half way between the old dam at Cecil Crawford's house and the old dam at Teer. He seems to have married his cousin Emelia Cate. In the 1781 tax evaluation, Richard had the highest valuation of any of the Cates.

John Workman.  His name does not appear on any deeds until 1799 when he bought 130 acres from  brother-in-law, Bernard Cate, along Cane Creek two miles north of the Church. From other sources, we know that he was around earlier and owned land. The absence of his name from the official records is probably due to the loss of the land records in Hillsborough during the Revolution. We know that he staked a land claim in 1778 and is on the tax list of 1782. He was listed as "over 45" in the 1800 census. By 1801 his land holdings were over 500 acres. He may have therefore been a young man in 1789. He married a sister of preacher Thomas Cate,  Workman represented Cane Creek at the Sandy Creek Association meetings of 1807 and 1815.

Bernard Cate. He was a brother to our first preacher, husband to Jane ("Jennie") Sykes, and one of the three large land owners during the early days of Cane Creek (along with Sackfield Brewer and Lewis Kirk), owning well over a thousand acres. The bulk of his holdings were north of the Church and east of Buckhorn Road and extended into the Seven Mile Creek watershed. In 1813, he (or perhaps his son Bernard) built the mill where Ed Johnson lives.)

Joseph Cate. Joseph (and his brother Stephen) were likely the sons of the elusive John Cate who obtained a Granville land grant about 1760 for which all trace has been lost.  It was located east of Buckhorn Road and south of Bradshaw Quarry Road and included about 500 acres.  He was a son of Robert and Elizabeth Cate. He died in 1793.

Robert Cate.  This is the eighth trustee. He was a son of Thomas (of Robert and Elizabeth). Not much is known about this Cate.

Mary Christmas. Not only a woman but also the only trustee to have no known connection to the Cate family. The Christmas clan was an interesting group. The patriarch seems to have been John Christmas, a surveyor, and the man who laid out the town of Raleigh. He obtained a tract on Toms Creek, which already had an interesting history. Lord Granville deeded it. to Mary Day in 1757. Grants were not made to a woman unless she became a widow during the process of obtaining the title. The grant was illegal because the land was already owned by William Strudwick of London. In any event she soon sold the tract to a speculator. A few years later we find that the tract  was sold by Strudwick to Christmas. John Christmas died in the 1780s leaving a widow, presumably Mary, and several sons. Two of his sons, Charles and Nathaniel, also became surveyors and their names appear on some of the local State land grants as the official surveyors. Ironically, throughout their tenure in their vast holdings along Toms Creek, they persisted in referring to it as Cane Creek. By the early 1800's all the Christmases had migrated to the west and south.

Thomas Cate, Preacher We’ve already written about him in Sketch #1.

                                                                                                                                         Ed Johnson