The Barker Ten Mile Community has been the home of the Musselwhites and Mercers since before the American Revolution. The community is aptly named, Barker Ten Mile, for its juxtaposition to Barker Methodist Church and the Ten Mile Swamp which weaves through the community on its way to the Big Swamp and then on to the Lumber River. Lumberton, the county seat of Robeson County, is located in the heart of what was North Carolina tobacco and textile country. If you've ever driven South on Interstate 95 you passed it just before encountering Pedro at South of the Border.
But, don't go looking for the Barker Ten Mile of my childhood. That place now only exists in these stories.
The People - Robeson is a Minority-Majority County. Of the 116,530 residents (2020 census) 38% are American Indian (primarily Lumbee), 32% are of European ancestry, 25% are African-American and 5% are Latinx/Hispanic. To learn a little about the first people to live in this area and the many immigrants who settled the forest and wetlands of this area of southeastern North Carolina, and continue arriving today, keep reading.
Lumbees - The Original Inhabitants: The Lumbees are the largest native American tribe east of the Mississippi River and the ninth largest tribe in the United States. The tribe is recognized by the State of North Carolina but not fully by the U.S. Federal Government. The tribes history is rich and it's origins are the source of some controversy. One popular theory is that the Lumbees are the remnants of the settlers from the the Lost Colony of Roanoke Island and the Croatan Indians who inhabited the region around Roanoke Island. This has been a popular theory but is currently questioned because of anthropological and genealogical research. A more plausible theory proposes that the Lumbees are an amalgamation of several tribes (Tuscarora, Cheraw, Croatan, among others) and some early white settlers and Portuguese indentured servants from the Albemarle region of North Carolina and Southeast Virginia. This dominantly Native Americans amalgamation came to the Robeson County area to escape the land hungry and sometimes hostile early European settlers. Since this area of Southeastern North Carolina was settled by European immigrants later than the surrounding areas more land was available at a lower cost.
We do know that this area was inhabited during the Paleo-Indian, Archaic, and Woodland Periods between 12,000 B.C. and 1700. The uncertainty regarding the Croatan/Lost Colony origin story is reflected in the many names they have been assigned to the Lumbees over the years by the North Carolina General Assembly; Croatan in 1885, Indians of Robeson County in 1911, Cherokee Indians of Robeson County in 1913, Siouian Indians in 1924 and finally Lumbee in 1953. Lumbee is the name selected by the tribe and is now the official name. The name Lumbee is derived from the Lumber River, a beautiful, swampy, moss-covered, black water river that was designated a National Wild and Scenic River by the U. S. Department of the Interior in 1998. For a picture of the Lumbee River visit the Photos section of this website.
European Immigrants: The first English immigrants to North Carolina (and America) arrived on Roanoke Island in 1578. Three years later the settlers had vanished. The first permanent English settlement was at Jamestown, Virginia in 1607. The first permanent settlers in North Carolina immigrated across the Virginia border later in the 1600's and settled in northeastern North Carolina in the Albemarle region Which at the time covered most of Northeastern North Carolina.
Robeson County was slower to attract European immigrants. Most of the early European immigrants to Robeson County came from Scotland and England. The first European settlers in Robeson County arrived in the late 1600's from Tidewater Virginia and the Albemarle region looking for unclaimed land. Early immigrants also came up from Charleston, South Carolina. The early immigrants to Virginia and the Carolinas were primarily English who arrived from Bermuda and Barbados.
Next came the Scotts who settled primarily along the Cape Fear River. The first Scotts were from the Scottish Highlands and arrived in two different migrations in the 1680's and in the 1720's. They were followed by the Scotch-Irish, originally from lowland Scotland and northern English border lands. They arrive primarily via Ulster, Ireland. The Scotch-Irish were Presbyterians in search of religious freedom and economic opportunity. In the mid 1600's they had fled to Ulster (now Northern Ireland) and then in the 1700's to America.
African Roots: Most of the people of African origin in Robeson County are descendants of enslaved people brought from the West Coast of Africa or from the West Indies, primarily Barbados. It was in Barbados that the plantation system based on slave labor, that eventually defined the American South, was first tried and developed. In Barbados the plantation system was based on sugar cane. When sugar cane proved to be an unsuccessful crop in the South, the system shifted to rice and then tobacco.
The enslaved population of North Carolina grew from 800 in 1712 to 331,000 at the time of emancipation in 1865. Some of the very first African immigrants arrived as laborers or indentured servants, as did many of the European settlers. As the plantation system expanded the barbaric African slave trade evolved. The passage from Africa to Barbados and then America was know as the Middle Passage. After slavery was abolished with the 13th Amendment at the end of the War Between the States, African Americans assumed full rights as citizens during the short period know as Reconstruction only to have those rights severely curtailed by the 1880's by Jim Crow policies and groups like the KKK.
From the South—The Newest Arrivals: The newest immigrants to Robeson County are Hispanic/Latinx and come primarily from Mexico (65%), Central America (24%), Puerto Rico (8%) and Cuba (2%). They have arrived in the past thirty to forty years and have been attracted by jobs in farming, chicken processing plants and construction. Currently 24% of Hispanic/Latinx immigrants in Robeson County have U.S. citizenship.