Number 1: August 2003 www.canecreek.org/ 6901 Orange Grove Rd., Hillsborough, NC 27278
THOMAS CATE:
OUR FIRST PREACHER
This
is the first in a series of historical sketches produced by the
History Committee. We will write about the history of the church
and the community. Each sketch will deal with a single topic and
be short enough to fill not more than a single sheet of paper.
The upper left-hand corner shows a pen and ink sketch of our old
church. If you enjoy reading these sketches, please let us know.
If there is some topic you would like to see us write about, tell
us, and we’ll be glad to share what we know.
Our
first preacher was Thomas Cate. His name, along with those of
our first trustees, appears on a deed dated August 12,1789.
But trying to find something about who this Thomas Cate
was, has been frustrating.
The
records in Hillsborough reveal three Thomas Cates living in the
Cane Creek community. One was married to Martha and died in 1811.
Another was married to Elizabeth and died without a will. The
third was married to Sarah and died in 1814. It was not possible
to learn from reading the wills which one had been our first preacher.
I have looked at the estate
inventories at the Department of History and Archives in Raleigh
hoping to discover a clue, perhaps the possession of a Bible,
that would solve the puzzle. Again, there was nothing in any of
the inventories to suggest which one had been our first preacher.
Sometimes
one finds things in the most unexpected way. One day, when answering
a fire call at the dumpster site on Bradshaw Quarry Road, I chanced
upon a friend, Ken Hardy, who lives near where Caterpillar Creek
flows into the Cane Creek Reservoir. He asked if I were working on Cane Creek Church history
and said that his wife, Nancy, had some information that might
interest me.
When finally I went around to visit her, Nancy told me of a trip she had taken with her father, Charles Snavely, to his boyhood home in Juniata, Nebraska. While there, he had invited several of his old high school friends to visit him at their motel room. At that get-together, one of the visitors turned to Nancy and asked if she had ever heard of Cane Creek. She answered that she practically lived on its banks! The man, Thane Weeks, replied that one of his ancestors was known, through family tradition, to have been the pastor of Cane Creek Church. His name was Thomas Cate. He had no idea where in North Carolina it could have been and despaired of ever finding it. In his words, "I had wondered if that place might be like Camelot -- always off somewhere in the mist."
I could not wait to write to Thane Weeks. The materials he sent indicate that the Thomas Cate that I had been trying to identify was the one married to Sarah, the one who died in 1814. From his information and clues in our local records I am able to put together the following picture of the man. (This has since been verified and added to by Banks Cate of Charlotte.)
Thomas
Cate was born about 1747 and was the son of Thomas and Rebecca
Sykes Cate who had migrated to Orange County from Prince George
County, Virginia where the family had been Quakers. He had brothers
named Barnard, John, and Richard. He married Sarah Estridge about
1767. His wife's last name is in dispute with some thinking that
she was a Shepard. I can find no trace of Shepards in our local
records On the other hand, there is a faint record of an Estridge
family locally (sometimes recorded as Estes). This is mentioned
in grants located to the northeast of Cane Creek. I suspect that
the Estridges were Tories who may have left the community during
the Revolutionary War.
Thomas
Cate's will mentions eleven children: Moses born about 1768 who
married Hannah Bradford; John B. born about 1770 who married Priscilla
Lloyd and who died in Tennessee in 1840; Fanny, born about 1772
who married John Sykes; Martha, birth date unknown, who married
William Moore; Winny [Minny?] birth date unknown, who married
William Roach, Huldah, birth date unknown, who married Elisha
Cates, possibly a cousin; Tabitha, date of birth unknown, who
married William Smith; Elizabeth, possibly born in 1784, whose
marital status is confused; Thomas, born in 1784, who married
Elizabeth Roach, and later Martha Carroll and who died in 1863;
Ephraim, born about 1778, who married Rebecca Lindsey and who
died in Missouri in the 1850's. The name of the eleventh child
is unknown.
From
other sources, we know that Thomas Cate was an assistant preacher
with Haw River Baptist Church (near Bynum) before establishing
our church. He had probably been baptized by the Haw River preacher,
Elnathen Davis, who himself had been baptized by Shubal Stearns
who established the first Baptist church in this part of the state
in 1756. It is a mystery why Cane Creek, established by a Baptist
preacher, did not declare itself a Baptist church until the 18th
year of its existence, in 1806.
In
his will, Thomas left his sons 500 acres. The inventory also mentions
three slaves, smith tools, wagons, horses, two stills, boars,
hogs, sheep, etc, all to be equally divided among the eleven children. The inventory lists property sold, to whom sold, and the
amount paid. The total is $899.66. Another sale that brought in
$1263 was conducted in 1825, following the death of Sarah.
The
inventory suggests that Thomas Cate was a fairly prosperous farmer.
But what can we make of his owning two stills? There was a much
different and more tolerant attitude toward alcohol in the 18th
and early 19th century before the temperance movement
got started. Owning a still was not necessarily associated with
drunkenness and bootleg sales. Instead, alcohol was thought to
be a good and safe drink with medicinal properties. So we shouldn’t
consider the good name of our first preacher to have been tarnished
by his owning stills.
Ed Johnson