Location
Type: Hidden History
County: Anson
None
In a copse of trees at the summit of a hilly cornfield, on a peninsula between Buffalo Creek and Blewett Falls Lake on the Pee Dee River, lies the Patriot namesake of Wadesboro. The first Anson County Courthouse was steps away. A mile south, the homesite and grave of a Patriot who held court there are behind the gates (at the coordinates) of the community named for him, Spencer Pointe. This page tells three related stories linked to these sites out of public view.1
Please respect the property rights of the owners protecting them by not trespassing.
Anson County Courthouse
In the decade before the American Revolution, people in what then was the western half of the Province of North Carolina—now the Piedmont and foothills—were protesting corrupt officials, and provincial taxes and court fees they considered unfair. They called themselves the “Regulators.”
An 1894 history of the Regulators explains the problem of the “courthouse ring” in much-larger Anson County: “Samuel Spencer was at once clerk of the county, assemblyman, and colonel of the county militia. Anthony Hutchins had formerly been sheriff, and as such was behind with his accounts, and was charged with having fraudulently conveyed his land to escape payment. He was now a justice of the county court. Charles Medlock had also been sheriff, and was behind with his accounts. He also was a justice. These three men managed the politics of the county. The sheriff, justices, and other officers were all appointed on their recommendation.”2
The Anson County Courthouse where they served was a 1755 log building surrounded by the Mount Pleasant Plantation.3 A ravine to the northeast may have provided visitors an easy route from the Pee Dee River, the highway of its day. By whatever route, Regulators showed up in force to express their complaints in 1768.
