I have found the article below to be very helpful in trying to understand
the locations of families along the NC/SC border. Hope some of the rest of
you find it interesting also. I will post it in sections so that it will not
be so long.
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HOW OUR LINE GOT THE NOTCH: A remarkable history of bumbling, battling and
confusion is recorded indelibly on the NC-SC boundary.

By: Dave C Harper, THE STATE, Oct. 1979



It seems that every twist and turn in NC's boundary with SC has a story of
its own. Take for instance, the notch that appears below. Mecklenburg
County. One might assume that surveyours running a straight line westward
From Scotland Co to Polk Co might have lost their bearing and drifted
erratically northward before finding their westward orientation again. But
not so. The notch was caused by almost 80 years of politicking.

A survery ending in 1737 had established a boundary from the  Atlantic Ocean
northwestward to where both North and South Carolina believed it intersected
the 35th parallel of lattitude. In a meadow, a cedar stake was set by the
surveyors, and from that stake an imaginary line headed due west that was
declared as the dividing between the two states by the British Board of
Trade.

This line went unsurveyed as settlers from both states pushed westward from
the cost. In 1750, NC established Anson County, just west of the Little Pee
Dee River. At the same time, settlers from SC, with land grants authorized
in Charleston, moved into the region. Some of their grants entitled them to
the same land that NC and signed over to its people.

Trouble was inevitable. In the MNC Colonial Records, a letter written on Feb
8, 1755 by Gov Arthur Dobbs to the British Board of Trade said that,
"...there are perpetual Quarrels among the Settlers near the Line when one
takes out a Patent from the Government anothr goes to South Carolina and
takes a Patent for the same there which is never refused and endeavours by
force to get possession."

Both Gov Dobbs and Gov James Glen of SC accused each other of spawning the
"outrages" that occurred in Anson Co. as a result of the nebulous
boundary.Hugh T Lefler and Albert R Newsome, in their book, North Carolina,
The History of a southern State, said that the land question caused, "ill
feeling, confusion, disorder, loss of revenue to both colonies, and riots."

The area became, "a kind of Sanctuary allowed to Criminals and Vagabonds, "
Dobbs wrote of the violent settlements. An NC sheriff was arrested by South
Carolina for collecting taxes. Surveyors and tax collectors from South
Carolina were called "the invasion force" by Gov Dobbs, who ordered them
repelled. In another letter to the Board of Trade, Dobbs said, according to
Lefler and Newsome,  "there was so much confusion that the bordering
Counties can't be settled."

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