The following provided courtesy of Joyce Hetrick

Tyree Harris

Tyree Harris was an “interesting man” from Caswell County who was connected to the Simpsons. He married Mary Ann Simpson, the daughter of Richard and Mary Kinchloe-Simpson, and received a grant from Captain Richard as a “deed of gift” which Richard had received as a grant in 1761. Tyree was a land speculator, among other things, and bought huge tracts of land from “Colonel” Richard Simpson, his brother-in-law. Tyree’s home was on the headwaters of Country Line and Stoney Creeks, a near neighbor to where AARON would later settle. He was also the infamous High Sheriff of Orange County during the turmoil and turbulence of the Regulator uprising, when “Orange County” embraced all the area comprising the present counties of Alamance, Caswell, Chatham, Durham, Orange, Person, and parts of Guilford, Lee, Randolph, Rockingham, and Wake.

As chief-lieutenant of the Royal Governor Tyron, Sheriff Harris, by his ruthless tax-collection policies, was said by many to have been partially responsible for the Regulator uprisings that culminated in the Battle of Alamance on the 16th of May 1771. As High Sheriff in 1766 and 1768, he crossed wills with the Regulators by seizing their horses and other property for non-payment of taxes, and by levying a penalty for late payment, and adding further to the problems of the cashless farmers.[Caswell County Heritage.]

For years, the public officials, including, and especially, Tyree Harris, had robbed the farmers. The land agents of Granville had charged double, or more, fees for land grants. Fees for all legal works, marriage licenses, etc., were inflated by the corrupt officials. The governor refused to listen to the pleas of the people who eventually arose in arms against the officials, but proclaimed themselves loyal to the king. Six men were hanged for their part in the uprising, the rest were pardoned. On the gallows, one man proclaimed that the blood shed by the Regulators would be “good seed sown in good ground.”

The Regulator uprisings pitted the farmers and planters against the government’s most corrupt and greedy officers. It was quite bloody and some say was the first blood shed in the Revolution. Some men, who were later great patriots of the Revolution, were against the Regulators and persecuted them quite harshly. Richard Caswell, who was later one of the most loyal revolutionaries and a popular general, was quite against the Regulators. [Hunter, Sketches.]

The patriots from the seacoast were looking toward oppression from England and the patriots from the western part of the country were fighting persecution from within the bounds of the colony itself in the form of misrule of the officers of the province. Cyrus L. Hunter says in Sketches of Western North Carolina, on page 12,

Had Ashe, and Waddell and Caswell understood all the circumstances of the case they would have acted like Thomas Person of Granville, and favored the distressed, even though they might have felt under obligations to maintain the peace of the province and due subordination to the laws.

Thomas Person was the business partner of the McGeehee family in Granville. The McGeehees are the author’s ancestors on ARBY GRAY’s side. [See Volume I of the Foundation Stones, Hetrick]

In the days under colonial law, each plantation owner was required to set aside a burying ground, and to fence it in for the interment of his family and his slaves. The burying ground set aside by the hated Harris, in which he was buried in 1789, is located a short distance from his plantation house. Tradition says that several Regulators who were killed in the Battle of Alamance were buried there, and that on dark and foggy nights in the season of the year when the battle was fought, Regulators could be seen with torches held high over the grave of Tyree Harris to make sure that the hated sheriff did not escape his grave.

Book B, Caswell County Records, page 320, dated 1790, “allots to Simpson Harriss his part of Negro from the estate of his father.” At the estate sale of Tyree Harris, held March 8, 1787, Ede Harris, Lydia Harris, Robert Harris, Simpson Harris, and Tyree Harris, Jr., were mentioned. Ede was underage and Tyree Harris, Jr., was the guardian.

The SIMPSON men of our immediate family were not yet living in North Carolina at the time of the Regulator uprising, but we may imagine that Sheriff Harris’s father-in-law, Richard Simpson-3, was not in favor with his neighbors in the Regulator movement.