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Scotch Hall
US 17 and NC-45, Taylors Store,
NC,
USA
Latitude & Longitude:
36° 2' 3.8796",
-76° 47' 4.9416"
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North Carolina State
Historical Marker |
Marker Text: "Plantation setting for the novel "Bertie" by George R. Throop (1851), tutor in the family of Geo. W. Capehart. House built 1838 is 8 mi. S.E." Cullen Capehart purchased vast tracts of land in Bertie County in the early nineteenth century, eventually owning the entire peninsula between the Albemarle Sound and Salmon Creek. The property on which his son, George Washington Capehart, built his home was acquired about 1818. That property had been owned by William Maule, Surveyor General and a member of the colonial assembly. Maule is credited with having named the property Scots Hall, as it is named in his 1726 will. George Capehart built “Scotch Hall,” overlooking Albemarle Sound, in 1838. Both George and Cullen Capeheart, whose adjoining plantation was known as Avoca, worked the farmland together and eventually operated a fishery at Batchelor’s Bay.
In 1849 George Capehart hired George Higby Throop of New York to tutor his children. Throop lived with the family at “Scotch Hall” for about seven months and later wrote two novels based on his experiences at the Capehart plantation. Throop’s books, Nags Head (1850) and Bertie: or, Life in the Old Field (1851), were published under the pseudonym Capt. Gregory Seaworthy. Throop’s novel Bertie provides a rare and valuable glimpse at nineteenth century “Scotch Hall.”
The Capeharts left their home in the hands of a caretaker during the Civil War. The caretaker and his family, the Smiths, kept Union troops at bay and witnessed the Battle of Batchelor’s Bay while at “Scotch Hall.” Family tradition is that naval ordnance could be found on the property after the war. Remarkably, “Scotch Hall” has remained in the Capehart family.
References:
George Higby Throop, Bertie: or, Life in the Old Field (1851) online at http://docsouth.unc.edu/nc/throopbertie/throop.html
Alan Watson, Bertie County: A Brief History (1982)
Bill Sharpe, A New Geography of North Carolina, IV (1965)
Capehart Family Papers, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
National Register Nomination for “Scotch Hall,” files of the State Historic Preservation Office, Raleigh, NC
(Raleigh) News and Observer, October 30, 1966
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Related Themes: C.S.A., Confederate States of America, Confederacy
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North Carolina Civil War Historical Markers.
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Scotch Hall Historical Marker Location Map, Taylors Store, North Carolina
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