Herman Husband (1724 to about 1795) acquired more than 10,000 acres in Orange and Rowan counties and settled on Sandy Creek. He was the Regulators' spokesman and pamphleteer and represented Orange County in the Assembly in 1769 and 1770, when he was expelled. After the Battle of Alamance in 1771 he fled the province as a proscribed traitor.
Works in the index that concern this person directly, or were written by them. Each links to the institution that holds or provides it; background reading with wider context sits further down.
The sword of peace : Hermon Husbands and Quaker heritage
Couch, Jack · 1974
Jack Couch's 1974 account of Hermon Husbands, the Quaker associated with the Regulator movement, set against the heritage of Cane Creek Monthly Meeting in what is now Alamance County. The Regulator Insurrection of 1766 to 1771 turned on Hillsborough, then the seat of Orange County, where the Regulators broke up the court. Topics include Alamance County history in the eighteenth century.
Why this is here: Catalog heading in the UNC record: Husbands, Hermon, 1724-1795.
Julia S. White's short piece on a quarrel at the Cane Creek Monthly Meeting of Friends and what followed from it, printed in 1900 as pages 90 to 98 of a larger work. The account includes Herman Husbands, 1724 to 1795, and Rachel Wright, linking the episode to the Regulator Insurrection of 1766 to 1771, centered on Hillsborough when Cane Creek still lay in Orange County.
Why this is here: Catalog heading in the NC Cardinal record: Husbands, Hermon, 1724-1795.
Correspondence of the Earl of Hillsborough and Governor Martin concerning ammunitions at Fort Johnston, the Powder Act of South Carolina, and insurgents approaching New Bern
1771
Letters between the Earl of Hillsborough and Governor Josiah Martin, dated 1771, on the ammunition stored at Fort Johnston, South Carolina's Powder Act, and reports of insurgents moving toward New Bern. A second letter in the file turns to routine state business, Treasury bills and the birth of a royal prince. Herman Husbands is named. Hillsborough town in Orange County carries the Earl's title.
Why this is here: Catalog heading in the Duke record: Husbands, Herman.
Journal of the North Carolina assembly, 5 December 1770 - 26 January 1771
1770
The journal of the North Carolina assembly from 5 December 1770 to 26 January 1771, covering appointments, prices, public revenue, grievances, trade, rebellion and the courts. Herman Husbands, Richard Caswell and John Burgwin are among the names, and the session fell in the Regulator years, when the unrest centred on Hillsborough and the Orange County courts.
Why this is here: Catalog heading in the Duke record: Husbands, Herman.
Letters of the historian George Bancroft, 1845 to 1885, 22 items. Fifteen are transcripts of letters addressed to UNC president David L. Swain about the state's history: the Regulators, the Loyalists, the Mecklenburg Declaration, Tryon and Martin as governors, and Edmund Fanning and Hermon Husbands, both central to the Regulator troubles in Hillsborough.
Why this is here: Catalog heading in the DPLA record: Husbands, Hermon, 1724-1795.
Letter from Governor Martin (no.4) regarding six rebels sentenced to death and the location of Herman Husbands
1771
Governor Josiah Martin's dispatch numbered 4, written in 1771, on six rebels sentenced to death and the whereabouts of Herman Husbands, with Pennsylvania among the places. Six men are mentioned alongside Husbands: William Brown, James Copeland, Herman Cox, James Emerson, Forrester Mercer and James Stewart. Hillsborough is named, with petitions, mercy and capital punishment among the topics. From Colonial Office volume CO 5/329.
Why this is here: Catalog heading in the Duke record: Husbands, Herman.
Letters from William Tryon (Jan-Feb 1771) regarding appointments to Council, legislation and moves towards the restoration of public tranquillity
1771
From January and February 1771, Tryon's letters on appointments to the council, legislation, and moves toward restoring public tranquillity. Herman Husbands and Orange County are mentioned, with sedition, the militia, riot, punishment, currency and petitions listed as topics. Cited to Colonial Office volume CO 5/328, North Carolina letters to the Secretary of State, 1766 to 1771.
Why this is here: Catalog heading in the Duke record: Husbands, Herman.
Letters from William Tryon (Apr 1769) regarding ordnance stores for Fort Johnston, recent unrest in relation to taxes and the acquittal of Herman Husbands
1769
Ordnance stores for Fort Johnston, recent unrest over taxes, and the acquittal of Herman Husbands are the matters William Tryon reported in April 1769. Hillsborough, Brunswick, Wilmington, Charleston and the Cape Fear River appear as places, and topics include artillery, privateering, riot, punishment and rebellion. One online resource in Colonial Office series CO 5/328, North Carolina letters to the secretary of state, 1766 to 1771.
Why this is here: Catalog heading in the Duke record: Husbands, Herman.
Five Orange County court documents from 1769 to 1771, in the Southern Historical Collection at UNC, collection 564-z. The documents concern indictments during the Regulator Insurrection of 1766 to 1771 and Regulator leader Hermon Husbands. The items are the county court's own papers from the years of that conflict.
Why this is here: Catalog heading in the UNC record: Husbands, Hermon, 1724-1795.
Letter from the Earl of Hillsborough to William Tryon regarding a petition to introduce paper money as legal tender
1768
Five letters from the Earl of Hillsborough to Governor William Tryon, dated 1768. They take up a petition to make paper money legal tender, addresses by Parliament against disaffection in the colonies, storm damage and the rebuilding of New Bern, a postal route through the province with a request for a governor's house, and the suppression of insurgents with a general pardon and boundary disputes. Herman Husbands is among the names.
Why this is here: Catalog heading in the NC State record: Husbands, Herman.
Writ at large for arrest of Regulators, writ for arrest and writ for imprisonment of Herman Husband, May 1 - 2, 1768
North Carolina. Office of Archives and History. Division of Archives and Records Management · 1768
Three court writs of 1 and 2 May 1768 from the Regulator troubles: a general writ for the arrest of Regulators, and writs to arrest and to imprison Herman Husband, a leader of the movement. Backcountry settlers had rebelled against royal officials they accused of taking excessive fees, and Orange County was the center of the unrest. Seven images.
NC Digital Collections record courtesy of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.
John Allen (1749-1826) Papers
Unknown · 1756
Papers of the family of John Allen of Alamance County, 1756 to 1877 and 1900 to 1904. They include his father's 1756 Granville grant in Orange County and 1769 will from Chester County, Pennsylvania, grants, plats and a deed for Orange and Chatham tracts from 1789 to 1797, tax receipts and store account books. Quakers and Hermon Husband are among the topics. State Archives of North Carolina, PC.1467.
Why this is here: Catalog heading in the State Archives of NC record: Husband, Hermon.
Books in OCPL’s Rebecca B. Wall Local History Collection whose titles, catalog subjects, or descriptions match this person. The Friends’ recommended starting points are labelled.
Carole Watterson Troxler's history of the Regulator movement in Piedmont North Carolina, from land speculation and backcountry resentment through Herman Husband and the Sandy Creek network to the petitions, court proceedings and rioting in Hillsborough and Salisbury, the Battle of Alamance in 1771 and the movement's afterlife in the Revolution. An appendix compiles names in a Regulator context. Published by the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources in 2011, 221 pages with illustrations, maps and an index.
Life and Orange County connections
Dated events connected with this person: sixteen of 29, the highlights and a sample of the rest spread across the years, in date order. See all 29 dated events in the chronology →
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16 dated events
Herman Husband, the Regulators’ pamphleteer, was born
Life event · Countywide
Herman Husband was born in Cecil County, Maryland, to an Anglican family and later became a Quaker. He settled at Sandy Creek, then in Orange County and now in Randolph County, where he reprinted and circulated political pamphlets and became a leading voice of the protest against county officers.
Meeting in Herman Husband's neighborhood, settlers wrote a second paper and chose William Cox and William Masset to attend the Maddock's Mill meeting on October 10. It asked the county's assemblymen, vestrymen and officers to come and answer their questions.
After the sheriff seized a Regulator's horse for an unpaid levy, about 100 Regulators rode into Hillsborough, took the horse back and fired shots into the roof of Edmund Fanning's house. Officials sought the arrest of William Butler, Peter Craven and Ninian Bell Hamilton as ringleaders.
At the April 30 meeting the Regulators drew up a petition to the governor and council in the name of the inhabitants of Orange County, to be held back unless the officers failed to settle. Herman Husband, not yet a Regulator, was among more than 400 signers.
After the May confrontation at Hillsborough, the county officers sent Husband, through Ralph McNair, a petition of their own drafting in which the Regulators would call their conduct illegal and withdraw their charges. McNair warned that Fanning would report the case to Tryon as treason if it was refused, and the Regulators instead named their own committee to lay their papers before the governor.
On the day set for settling accounts, the former sheriff stayed away and the new sheriff, John Lea, brought a severe letter from Tryon, endorsed by three councillors at Hillsborough. It demanded that twelve leading Regulators meet him at Salisbury by August 25 and give a 1,000 pound bond that no one would try to rescue Butler and Husband at the September court; Tryon left for Salisbury the same day.
In the same superior court term that tried the Regulator leaders, the King's indictment against Edmund Fanning went to a jury on September 27, which found him guilty. The day before, Herman Husband had surrendered William Butler to the court, and both men entered 500 pound bonds to abide its sentence.
With no troops in town, many Regulators came to the March 1769 court to prosecute the officers, with little success. Herman Husband was tried and acquitted, James Hunter's case was continued, and Fanning was tried again on the old fee charge and formally convicted.
Publication, speech or performance · Orange County
His account of the Regulation traced the first disturbances to Orange County while granting that Granville and Halifax had been in the same dispute years earlier.
About 150 Regulators crowded the Hillsborough Superior Court, beat the lawyer John Williams, Edmund Fanning and others, and forced Judge Richard Henderson to adjourn; he fled that night. The next day the crowd tore down Fanning's house and wrote mocking judgments on the court docket.
The House of Assembly resolved that Husband, a principal promoter of the late riots in Orange County and publisher of a seditious letter printed over James Hunter's name, be expelled. The same day the Council unanimously advised his arrest and the Chief Justice issued a warrant; he lay in the New Bern jail until a grand jury found no bill on February 8, 1771.
Regulators from Rowan, Orange and Granville gathered under James Hunter to march on New Bern, where Herman Husband was jailed. They broke up at Haw River on hearing that a grand jury had declined to indict him and he had been released on February 8.
At the March 1771 term the Hillsborough District superior court recorded that the Regulators led by Herman Husband, James Hunter, Rednap Howell, William Butler and Samuel Devinney, who had broken up the September court, were still threatening judges, lawyers and officers, so none attended. The court was continued to September 1771.
Marching back toward Hillsborough, Tryon proclaimed from Bethabara that Herman Husband, James Hunter, Rednap Howell and William Butler stood outlawed and liable to be shot by anyone, and offered one hundred pounds and one thousand acres of land to whoever brought any of them into his or General Waddell's camp.
People named in the same dated entries as Herman Husband, those sharing the most entries first. Each line links one of the shared entries in the chronology, where its source is cited. A shared entry shows these people in the same event, not how well they knew each other.
Searched with the Library of Congress heading Husbands, Hermon, 1724-1795, so the results are about this person and not others with the same name. Each link opens that catalog’s own results in a new tab. The Friends have not reviewed what they return.
NCpedia: Revolutionary History of North Carolina in Three Lectures (public-domain image)NCpedia
This is an image of the title page to the book Revolutionary North Carolina in Three Lecture s, written by Fancis L. Hawks, David L. Swain, and William A. Graham, published in 1853. The publication includes a chapter on the history of the Regulators, the Battle of Alamance and the War…
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