Copyright USGenNet Inc., 2014 All Rights Reserved USGenNet Data Repository Please read USGenNet Copyright Statement on this page: Transcribed and submitted by Linda Talbott for the USGenNet Data Repository http://www.us-data.org/ =========================================================================== Formatted by USGenNet Data Repository Chief Archivist, Linda Talbott All of the above information must remain when copied or downloaded. =========================================================================== History of Wake County, North Carolina by Hope Summerell Chamberlain Pub. Edwards & Broughton Printing Co. Raleigh, N.C., 1922 [75 - 78] JOEL LANE JOEL LANE with his two brothers, JOSEPH and JESSE, who were not so well known as himself, also had a great deal to do with the early shaping of Wake County. O. W. HOLMES, in a humorous poem, describing the portrait of his great-grandmother when a young girl, plays with the idea of what might have been the result if that dainty maiden had chosen a dif- ferent suitor, when she answered 'Yes' to her life-mate, and thus had thrown the stream of inheritance into a different channel. He quaintly asks, "Should I be I, or would it be One tenth another and nine tenths me?" In similar fashion we may well wonder what would have been the differing traits in the likeness of the good people of Wake County if busy JOEL LANE and his brothers had chosen another path through the wilderness, and those dozen others whose blood lives today in many a citizen, "solid and stirring in flesh and bone," had settled beside some other river. JOEL LANE, who helped lay out the boundaries of Wake and the streets of our city, land-owner, mine host of Bloomsbury Tavern, Colonel in his father-in-law's Wake County regiment, purveyor of supplies for the Revolutionary Army, Associate Justice at Wake County Court in 1771 and for many years thereafter, delegate to the Provincial Congress at New Berne, member of the Council of Safety for this district, State Senator for Wake for thirteen sessions of the Assembly, planter, speculator in real estate, did not let all these activities exhaust his abundant energy. It would not take many citizens such as he to make a town progressive and lively even in these strenuous days. He seems vividily alive to the mind as he is exhumed from old records dusty with the passing of a century. His nature musth have been kindly, and his disposition sunny, to have made him so univer- sally liked. His house we have all seen, and it looks small and plain enough to us; but it represented to the people of that time what Governor Swain calls "a rare specimen of architectural ele- gance." JOEL lived in this well-known house of his in the sense of the often quoted words, "by the side of the road, to be a friend to man;" and in turning the pages of the records, those dry bones of history, we may note and admire the human attaction of the way people gravitated to his tavern for their various meetings. It must have been pleasant staying there, which speaks well for the character of mine host, although we must wonder where in the world he took care of so many legislators. Probably, after the good old custom, log-cabin "offices" or bachelor quarters flanked the cen- tral dwelling, and in these he put his gentlemen guests. Very few ladies went traveling in those days. JOEL LANE'S two wives were both daughters of COLONEL JOHN HIN- TON, who lived near Neuse River, and they brought him a fine colonial family of six sons and six daughters. JOEL always adhered to the Church of England. The LANES are descended from RALPH LANE who first came to North Carolina with the unlucky colony in 1585, and then sailed back to England in 1586, being succeeded as Gover- nor by JOHN WHITE who left a handful of lonely white settlers to lose themselves in the western wilds, and become one of the myster- ies of fate to this day. The spirit of the old seafaring LANES still drove him "Westward Ho" and RALPH returned after a time. JOEL and his brothers were already the third generation of LANES born in the American Colonies. Their descendants have half popu- lated Wake County, and have sent good citizens to Alabama, Tennes- see, to Missouri, and to far away Oregon. Among them are numbered governors, judges, a general and a vice-presidential candidate, a cabinet officer, too - all men in the public eye, while they have also furnished scores more of excellent folk of the race who, while not so conspicuous, have built up their own communities more quietly for generations. JOEL LANE has been criticised because his sale of land for the locaton of Raleigh seemed a bit of sharp practice at the expense of his father-in-law, COLONEL JOHN HINTON, who also had a square mile of land for sale; it is even hinted the people generally resented this and that it cost him his seat in the Assembly for the next term thereafter. These hundred-year-old rumors are hard to verify. Let us use our imagination in all charity, and think that he knew what a very pleasant home for the State's central government would result from his success. He offered a square mile of land near Cary as a free gift, should it be decided to place the University of North Carolina there, and one wonders why this offer was not accepted. He was one of the first Board of Trustees of the new institution, and had two grandsons in the first graduating class. His friendliness brought him friends and his friends showed him favor, which was surely his desert. He died in 1795, and his grave was plowed over and obli- terated by Mr. PETER BROWN, a Scotchman and a lawyer, who acquired his home by purchase, a few years after JOEL LANE was dead and gone. Mr. BROWN in his turn sold the place to the first Mr. WILLIAM BOYLAN, early in the last century. A tablet to the memory of JOEL LANE was recently placed in the Municipal Building of Raleigh by the Daughters of the Revolution. One of JOEL LANE'S brothers was the progenitor of the LANES of Alabama and the other was the ancestor of those who sought the far west and became prominent there. CAROLINA LANE, his sister, was mother of DAVID L. SWAIN, and lived her whole life in Buncombe County near Asheville. =========================================================================== If you've reached this file through a SEARCH, you can access more of our growing collection of FREE online information by going to the following URL: http://www.us-data.org/ ===========================================================================