Samuel Houston, 1735 – 1814: 5th Great Grandfather and Revolutionary War Patriot
In the 1760’s, due to the lack of good, affordable land in Pennsylvania and the abundance of such land in the Carolina’s, we see the movement of Robert’s sons, Samuel, Christopher and James, out of Pennsylvania to Rowan County, North Carolina.
Why North Carolina?
“In 1728, seven of the eight Lords Proprietors of Carolina sold their lands to the crown; only John Carteret, Earl of Granville, kept his share, consisting of the country lying south of the Virginia border. On September 17, 1744, just before the Scotch-Irish began swarming down from Pennsylvania, King George II granted Granville the northernmost one-eighth of the whole original Carolina. In 1752, the southern line of that grant became the dividing line between Anson and Rowan Counties. This section of the Granville district lay between the Yadkin and Catawba rivers and consisted of a fertile, well-watered, virtually treeless meadow land.
Land here was plentiful, but not exactly free. The earliest settlers bought their land from the Earl of Granville, until about the end of the French and Indian War (1763), when he died and his heir refused to be bothered with making any more grants. Later settlers bought theirs from the independent state of North Carolina, after a law providing for its sale had been passed in 1777 and an entry officer had been appointed for Rowan County in 1778. During the 15 years between, settlers moved in, squatting on the land, marking off their tracts in hopes that the time would soon come when they could get a title to their holdings. It appears the Houston’s came to the area during this interim period.
The original cost of a Granville grant was not much, usually three shillings, occasionally ten. The catch came in the quitrents. The 640-acre grant to John Oliphant, on which Statesville was later built, called for “paying therefor yearly and every year unto the Earl, his heirs and assigns the yearly rent and sum of twenty-five shillings and seven pence, which is the rate of three shillings sterling or four shillings proclamation for every hundred acres, at or upon the two most usual Feasts of days of payment in the year, that is to say the feast of Annunciation of the blessed Virgin Mary and the feast of St. Michael the archangel, in even and equal portions & to be paid at the Court House of the County of Rowan.”
Just how well those quitrents were paid in Rowan County we do not know. Over his vast tract, Granville’s agents did have trouble collecting them, so much so that in 1764 Granville’s heir gave up granting any more land.
By 1762, at least sixty-two pioneers had settled with their families on the fertile, undulating savannah land along the upper reaches of Third and Fourth Creek in Rowan County. The newcomers were Scottish and Scotch-Irish Presbyterians from Maryland and Pennsylvania.”
(From: Ramsey, Robert W.. Carolina Cradle: Settlement of the Northwest Carolina Frontier, 1747-1762. The University of North Carolina Press. Kindle Edition)
Samuel Houston moved to Rowan County sometime shortly around 1762. He would have been about 27 years old. He married Jane Fleming in 1764, her father, Peter D. Fleming, had been one of the early settlers of the Fourth Creek Settlement, coming from Chester County, PA probably in the 1740’s. Her father died two years before her marriage to Samuel Houston. Here is a 1773 map of the Old Fourth Creek Congregation:
http://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/ref/collection/ncmaps/id/118
Samuel Houston was a farmer in Rowan County. He homesteaded on the banks of the Catawba River, in the Fourth Creek Settlement. He was Presbyterian, as were the majority of folks in this settlement, and he was a member of the Fourth Creek Congregation. Samuel and Jane had ten children: Peter, Martha, James, Elizabeth, Prudence, Sarah, Samuel, John, Robert and Jane. They were married for 50 years.
Below is the earliest land grant document I have found for Samuel where he is given the 350 acres he farmed on the Catawba River. As noted before, early settlers actually squatted on land hoping for title to their properties at a later date, thus this date of 1795, though we know Samuel was in Rowan County in the early 1760’s.
In 1765, Samuel’s brother, Christopher Houston joined a wave of settlers migrating from Pennsylvania to the Carolinas and late in the year arrived at Fort Dobbs in Rowan County. He also settled along the Catawba River by Samuel, and with his brother-in-law and his brother, James, established the first mill in the area at Hunting Creek, north of Fourth Creek and Statesville. [Note: Robert’s son, James, wrote a will in 1776 that left clothing to his father. At that time, James was living close to brothers Christopher and Samuel in Rowan County, NC. It is, thus, reasonable to assume that widower, Robert, had moved to Rowan County by 1776 to be near his sons.]
A 1773 map of the Fourth Creek Settlement shows Samuel’s land as well as that of his brothers Christopher and James. http://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/ref/collection/ncmaps/id/118
Here is a sketch of the Presbyterian Fourth Creek Meeting House where Samuel was a member.
Some other pictures of Rowan County buildings that existed in Samuel Houston’s time:
Michael Braun House, built in Rowan County in 1766-
Archibald Henderson’s law office built in Rowan County in 1796- 
John Steele’s house in Salisbury, Rowan County, 1799- 
1775 brought the beginning of the Revolutionary War. Historical accounts of the Scotch-Irish state they were a religious, brave, and liberty-loving people. Therefore, it is not surprising to find that Samuel Houston and brothers, Christopher and James, all served the cause to liberate the thirteen original colonies from the British. (For specifics on the Revolutionary War in the southern colonies, see the Revolutionary War discussion on this website).
Samuel served as a member of the Salisbury District Militia of North Carolina and had a post in the Commissary Department of the Revolutionary War.
Brother, Christopher Houston, played an active role in the Revolutionary War, both as a civilian and as a soldier. As a civilian, he was responsible for procuring goods for the community from Virginia. As a soldier, he served from 1776 to 1782 in the North Carolina Rangers along with his brother James. Both fought in the Battle of Ramsour’s Mill, near present-day Lincolnton, in which James was killed (I am still seeking documentation on his death). Christopher guarded Tories at the Forks of Yadkin River, North Carolina on day of Battle of King’s Mountain October 17, 1780.
In Rowan County, N.C., Samuel Houston’s family became intimate friends of Squire Boone, father of Daniel. The Boone’s lived a few miles away from Samuel in what is now called Yadkin County, N.C. Daniel Boone was older than Samuel Houston’s sons. Based on Daniel Boone’s reports of his pioneering in Kentucky, Samuel Houston hoped to move there from North Carolina as soon as the Revolutionary War ended. In the fall of 1779, Daniel Boone was determined to move his family from Yadkin NC to Kentucky. Samuel Houston, however, was not at liberty to leave his post with the Commissary, so he sent his eldest three sons, Peter, Robert and James to Daniel Boone with a letter of instruction asking Boone to take the three with him to Kentucky. Boone was to help locate them where they could build a cabin and prepare the land for a crop of corn in the spring. Samuel sent a bull with his sons as a good work animal. Peter and James Houston built Fort Houston on Houston Creek, about one hundred yards northeast of the present site of the Paris courthouse in Bourbon County, KY. They lived there for about three years. Peter lived until he was 90 and died in Monroe County, Indiana. Robert died at 68 years of age in Pike, Missouri. James lived to the age of 84 and died in Bourbon, KY.
For whatever reason, Samuel Houston and the remainder of his family did not move to Kentucky, but stayed in the Fourth Creek area of Rowan County and continued farming. In addition to the 1795 land grant of 350 acres, we see in 1800 and 1808 that Samuel purchased more property, adding 180 acres with those two purchases.
Samuel died in 1814. His wife, Jane, died in 1832.
For some really great reading on life in Rowan County during Samuel and Jane’s lives: https://archive.org/details/oldfourthcreekco00rayn and http://files.usgwarchives.net/nc/rowan/history/rowanhis.txt