Land, Agriculture

The Granville District and Its Land Records

THORTON W. MITCHELL^*

[Vol. 70 (1993), 103-129]

When King Charles II issued the Carolina charters in 1663 and 1665, he gave to eight Lords Proprietors land that stretched from twenty-nine degrees to thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes north latitude, and from the Atlantic westward as far as the South Seas. In modern terms, the area lay along the Atlantic Ocean from south of Daytona Beach, Florida, to the present Virginia-North Carolina boundary and extended westward to the Pacific Ocean. For sixty-five years, that great expanse was administered with little success by the proprietors and their successors.¹

On March 7, 1727/8, John, Lord Carteret, who had inherited the one-eighth of Carolina originally granted to Sir George Carteret, learned that the other proprietors were willing to surrender their rights and property to the king for what appeared to be modest considerations. On March 15 Carteret declined to join them, and on July 13 the other proprietors formally petitioned the Crown to take over their property. What was described as a valuable colony was given up because of the number of proprietors, disagreements and disputes among them, their inability to settle the matter of quitrents, or annual land use fees, in South Carolina, and their fear that they would lose the colony in case of invasion by Spain.²

In 1729 Parliament approved the purchase of seven undivided parts of Carolina on payment of twenty-five hundred pounds for each part and five thousand pounds for the arrears of quitrents. Carteret’s one-eighth part of the colony was not included, and on July 25, 1729, the transfer was completed. Carteret then petitioned the king for his share of Carolina, noting that the act of Parliament entitled him to an eighth portion of the province and of the arrears of quitrents that were to be paid to the proprietors. On May 23, 1730, after Carteret had proposed to surrender any participation in the government of the colony, the Lords Commissioners of Trade recommended to the Privy Council that his land should be separated from the rest of the province.³

Carteret was an important political figure in eighteenth-century England. He had been ambassador to Sweden, and in 1724 he was appointed lord lieutenant of Ireland. He participated in the struggle against the government headed by Sir Robert Walpole in 1730 and was forced into retirement. It was not until Walpole was defeated in 1742 that Carteret regained his political stature, when he was named secretary of state for the northern provinces and a member of the Privy Council. During that twelve-year hiatus period, no action was taken on his petition for the separation of his share of the proprietary from the remainder of Carolina.⁴ In 1731 Carteret appointed John Hammerton, receiver general of both North and South Carolina, as the receiver of his one-eighth part of quitrents due. Hammerton was dismissed in 1735, and five years elapsed before Edward Moseley was appointed Carteret’s receiver.⁵

Both Governor Alexander Spotswood of Virginia and Moseley recommended to Carteret that his one-eighth part of Carolina be set up as a single district and that the northern boundary be the Virginia-North Carolina line, since that was the only boundary in the entire province that had been fixed. Spotswood felt that the southern line of such a district would be about thirty-five degrees and twenty-eight minutes north latitude. Moseley first proposed running the southern line about sixty-six miles from the Virginia border, and he later suggested that the boundary be drawn south from Currituck Inlet, then west until swamps prevented further measurement. He suggested that the line be run sixty-five miles south of the Virginia line to a point west of the Nottoway River and near the heads of the Alligator and Pungo rivers and other waters emptying into Pamlico Sound.⁶

Finally, on September 15, 1742, King George II and the Privy Council approved Carteret’s petition and the setting off of his one-eighth of Carolina. Commissioners to allot the district, appointed by both sides, were to submit to the Privy Council within eighteen months a plan containing a full and complete description of the lands to be granted.⁷ The task of deciding the area to be awarded to Carteret was given to Samuel Warner, a London surveyor and mathematician, who determined that, of the seven degrees and thirty minutes latitude in Carolina, Carteret was entitled to fifty-six and a quarter minutes. Warner established that the southern border of Carteret’s land would be at thirty-five degrees and thirty-four minutes north latitude, with the north line the Virginia-North Carolina border. In regard to the southern border, a parallel was to be drawn near the north end of Hatteras Island, then near the mouth of the Long Shoal River. The line would be fixed at a point in the road from Bath Town to T. Bell’s ferry about four to five miles north of the town. From there it would run eastward to the great swamp at the head of the Scuppernong and Alligator rivers and at the Pungo River that emptied into Albemarle Sound. The line was then to run west of Bath Town as far as convenient or practicable.⁸

With the decision to place Carteret’s portion of Carolina adjacent to the Virginia-North Carolina border, Governor Gabriel Johnston was instructed to appoint five commissioners to allot a separate district in North Carolina. The commission was to report to the Privy Council with a plan containing an exact description by January 2, 1743/4. Johnston did not, however, appoint commissioners until November 15, 1743, at which time he named Robert Halton, Eleazer Allen, Mathew Rowan, William Forbes, and George Gould to lay off the district. Carteret meanwhile had named Nathaniel Rice, Henry McCulloh, Edward Moseley, Roger Moore, and James Abercrombie as his commissioners.⁹

In the fall of 1743 the commissioners met 6½ miles south of Chickinacomack Inlet.¹⁰ They took a reading of the latitude and drove a cedar stake on the Outer Banks at thirty-five degrees and thirty-four minutes north latitude; the line crossed Hatteras Island 25 feet south of the house where Thomas Wallis lived. The commissioners then moved to Bath, where Edward Moseley took the latitude as thirty-five degrees and thirty minutes by measuring the height of the shadow of the sun over a door. They went north 1,660 poles, where they set two stakes on the road from Bath to Edenton. From that point they ran a course 11 miles west to Bonners Field Plantation. These actions of the commissioners were reported to the Privy Council on December 4, 1743. There was no further measurement until April 1746, when the line was run 103 miles and 217 poles to the west side of the Haw River. In the following September, the line was carried 87 miles and 13 poles farther west to Coldwater Creek of Rocky River, 41 poles west of the Catawba Trading Path. Finally, in 1753, the southern Granville line was again extended westward.¹¹

Almost as soon as the line had been run to Coldwater Creek, the Crown representatives complained that it was not accurate. Robert Halton reported to Carteret that with the line as it had been located the district had gained 77,977 acres from Pamlico Sound to Bath Town and that an additional 107,920 acres had been added in the line to the Haw River. Governor Arthur Dobbs claimed that the line at Coldwater Creek was 13 1/2 miles more southerly than it should have been. Henry McCulloh also complained that the line had been run 160 miles west to include 12 million acres and that a great part of his land was in the district as extended.¹²

The December 4, 1743, report of the commissioners was reviewed by the Privy Council and approved on May 9, 1744. The following September 17 the king by indenture granted Carteret his one-eighth part of Carolina consisting of a separate district in North Carolina. At the same time, Carteret surrendered any claim he might have had on the remaining seven-eighths of Carolina and also gave up his share and interest in the government of the province. A month and a day later, on October 18, 1744, Carteret inherited the title Earl Granville on the death of his mother, and his property in North Carolina came to be known as the Granville District.¹³

Granville thus received his one-eighth of Carolina as a single district in North Carolina, rather than a part of each of the three colonies of North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia that had been created from the original proprietary area. That fact caused problems because the royal government of North Carolina was responsible for governing the entire province but did not get the quitrent revenues from the greater part of it. Eleazer Allen assured James Abercrombie that the division had been to Granville’s advantage. And Governor Gabriel Johnston complained that Granville not only had more than half of the province, but that he had the better half.¹⁴

Granville never saw the district in North Carolina that bore his name. Instead he operated through agents, the first two of whom were Edward Moseley and Robert Halton, who were appointed on September 5, 1746. They served as his attorneys to receive quitrents and to grant land.¹⁵ Although Granville did not issue instructions as to how to transact his business until 1751, Moseley and Halton ordered surveyors in the district to make surveys only from an entry, a copy of which the agents would furnish them. Chain carriers were to be sworn to perform their office faithfully; surveyors were to go around all sides of the land, leaving no part unmarked, except for impassable swamps or water. They were to keep field books of all surveys and return to the Granville office three copies of each survey plat, one to be attached to the grantee’s copy of the deed, one to accompany the counterpart remaining in the office, and one for transmission to Granville.¹⁶

Although the details of the manner in which land could be obtained from the Granville District varied from time to time, the basic procedures remained unchanged. A prospective owner began the process by filing an application, called an entry, that roughly described the land, including the county in which it was located and the number of acres. The entry, signed and dated, was filed with the agents or with subagents and surveyors appointed by the agents in each county. After 1751, when detailed instructions were issued, upon receipt of the entry the agent issued a warrant, which was an order to survey. Agent Frances Corbin was supposed to have exclusive authority to issue warrants, but as the decade progressed they were increasingly issued by the subagents and surveyors on the same date the entry was filed. This was true particularly in the more westerly counties. Upon receipt of the warrant and the payment of fees, the surveyors prepared a plat of the land, which contained a map as well as a written description. The plat was prepared in three copies, which were returned to the agent responsible for land grants. The grant of the land was in fee simple (although annual land use fees had to be paid by the grantee) and became effective when signed by the grantee before witnesses. Much of the business of the proprietary took place at meetings of the county courts of pleas and quarter sessions and at district courts later, after their establishment in 1755. The agents traveled extensively to receive entries and returns (survey plats), to issue warrants, and to collect the annual quitrents. As the western counties were settled, subagents and surveyors, such as John Frohock and William Churton, became increasingly responsible for the business of the district.

Although some surveys were conducted as early as March, 1746/7, the first grants were not made until March 25, 1748.¹⁷ Eighty-four grants were made in the Granville District in 1748, and 252 were made in 1749. Both counterpart copies of those deeds were kept in the district, and none were sent to Granville. In addition, the land entries made prior to the survey were not always retained. Except for the plat attached to the grant document, there is little extant preliminary documentation to support each of the early deeds. On April 15, 1748, Halton died, leaving Moseley the only Granville representative in the district. In 1749 Moseley died in Pasquotank County; as a result no grants were made in 1750.¹⁸

Following the death of Moseley, Granville appointed Thomas Child and Francis Corbin his agents and attorneys on October 10, 1749. Thomas Child was attorney general of North Carolina, a member of the legislature, and, as attorney and adviser to Earl Granville, a participant in the Moravian grants in the district and in negotiations with Henry McCulloh. Francis Corbin, a protégé of Granville, was a member of the Executive Council and of the assembly, a judge of the Admiralty Court, an associate justice of the General Court, and a county justice. On March 2, 1750/1, Granville allowed Child to return to England and appointed James Innes in his stead. Innes held positions as a commander in the Cartegena campaign against Spain, a militia colonel in New Hanover County, a member of the Executive Council, and commander of North Carolina troops in the expedition against the French in the Ohio Valley.¹⁹

After the appointment of Child and Corbin, Governor Gabriel Johnston reported to Granville that the office for granting land had opened in Edenton in the second week of October 1750. Unfortunately, Child soon thereafter was taken ill and was unable to attend court in Edgecombe County. Johnston assured Granville, however, that Corbin had placed the office in order and had brought all books and papers under control. Though neither Moseley nor Halton had fully established the land office, by May 1751 Johnston reported that the office was functioning properly. Granville, however, was concerned because the quitrent rolls were not being perfected, and in November 1751 he ordered Corbin and Innes to stop granting land until he could send them instructions. He also expressed concern about the safety of his papers and records and directed the agents to purchase a lot in Edenton and to build a suitable office for the transaction of his affairs; but such steps were never taken.²⁰

On December 10, 1751, Granville for the first time gave detailed instructions concerning the manner in which the business of the district was to be conducted. Not only did he require an oath from the agents, but he made it clear that his business in North Carolina consisted of two separate parts: the granting of land and the collecting of quitrents. Corbin was to be responsible for the first function and Innes the second. Although Corbin could appoint land surveyors and deputies to take entries, he had sole responsibility for issuing warrants to survey and for receiving returns and all fees. Grants were to be no larger than 640 or 700 acres; petitions for larger tracts were to be referred to Granville himself. Corbin was instructed to send to Granville twice annually a copy of every entry and a counterpart of every deed granted. He was also to send two times each year a statement of all fees received in the land office. Granville not only specified the form for entries and survey warrants but also established time limits to be followed: a survey had to be made within six months of the entry, and the grant was to be issued within twelve months after the survey. Both Corbin and Innes were to attend the General Court at New Bern and the circuit courts at Edenton and Edgecombe County twice annually. Granville also ordered that the entry books, papers, records, and seal were to be kept in the office to be built in Edenton; they were not to be moved except as needed by attendance at court. He also required an annual inventory of the books, papers, and records in the office in order to prevent a repeat of the “Confusion and Dissipation of my Papers” that had occurred after the deaths of Halton and Moseley. Those instructions were repeated virtually unchanged to all subsequent agents and attorneys.²¹

The instructions were issued under seal on January 16, 1751/2. As one result, surveyors were ordered to make land surveys only upon receipt of a warrant from the agents. Three fair copies of the survey plat were to be turned in to the agents within six months of the date of the warrant.²² In addition, files of entries and warrants were retained in the land office and for several years a counterpart copy of each deed was sent to Granville. As the decade progressed, however, that practice was not maintained and both copies of the grants were kept in the district.

Matters appeared to be operating smoothly, but problems soon began to develop. One of the major ones concerned royal land grants made to Henry McCulloh. In December 1752, Granville told Corbin and Innes that they had accepted entries and had granted deeds in McCulloh’s lands contrary to instructions. Granville also told them he had given McCulloh permission to settle his lands as allowed by royal warrant, and he asked for a list of the grants that had been made there.²³

Although Henry McCulloh served as one of Granville’s commissioners in setting out the district, the large grants of land he received in the area allocated to Granville were the source of disagreement between them. On May 19, 1737, while action on Granville’s petition for his one-eighth part of Carolina was pending, King George II in council granted to Murray Crymble and James Huey 1.2 million acres of land on the Pee Dee, Cape Fear, and Neuse rivers on their petition to settle six thousand Swiss in North Carolina. That land was to consist of twelve parcels of 100,000 acres each. In 1740 Crymble and Huey declared that their petition had been made in trust for Henry McCulloh. Because of litigation, the grants were delayed. After McCulloh asked for them, Governor Gabriel Johnston issued them in parcels of 12,500 acres each on March 3, 1745/6.²⁴

Of the total area in the McCulloh tracts, 475,000 acres were in the Granville District. McCulloh claimed that Governor Johnston and Edward Moseley had conspired to run the Granville line westward in order to place part of his land in the district. The dispute between Granville and McCulloh involved principally the payment of quitrents. Finally, in December 1755, the two parties agreed that Granville would accept four hundred pounds proclamation money for each year in the period from March 25, 1751, to March 25, 1760, after which he would receive all quitrents. McCulloh agreed that after March 25, 1760, land not settled at the rate of one person to 200 acres would be surrendered to Granville.²⁵

On April 21, 1759, McCulloh proposed a revision of the 1755 agreement that would permit him to keep a major portion of his lands and would defer surrender of the unsettled tracts until March 25, 1761. After extensive negotiations, during the course of which McCulloh threatened to initiate a legal challenge to that part of the Granville District west of the Pamlico River, the parties reached a new agreement on April 17, 1761. It permitted McCulloh to hold his land for two additional years and to pay twelve hundred pounds to satisfy delinquent quitrents. The difficulties between McCulloh and Granville ended on October 17, 1763, when McCulloh executed a deed of surrender to the trustees under the will of John, Earl Granville for his unoccupied lands.²⁶ Finally, in 1779, the remaining lands and other property of Henry McCulloh and Henry Eustace McCulloh, his son, were specifically confiscated by the state of North Carolina by action of the General Assembly.²⁷

James Innes resigned as a Granville agent in 1753, but not until August 8,1754, was Benjamin Wheatley appointed in his stead. Two years later, Joshua Bodley replaced Wheatley. Before Wheatley’s appointment, Granville issued peremptory orders for the erection of an office in Edenton so that his records would be protected. He was convinced of the necessity of a fixed office, because his papers and books were then in Francis Corbin’s house in Chowan County five miles from the nearest town. “Once for all then I will have such an Office erected forthwith without delay.” Granville repeated the instructions that his agents were to send him twice yearly an account of every entry made, the returns of all surveys, and counterparts of all deeds, and he complained that this had not been done. He also told Corbin and Wheatley that he had received “Great and frequent complaints” from residents of the back (western) counties.²⁸

Complaints from people seeking or holding land in the Granville District were increasing. The North Carolina House Committee on Propositions and Grievances reported that Granville agents were charging exorbitant fees for entries and surveys. Complaints continued into 1758, when inhabitants of the district petitioned both the house and the Executive Council for relief. According to Governor Arthur Dobbs, Francis Corbin and Colonel John Haywood were particular offenders. Dobbs also reported to Thomas Child that regular books of entries, surveys, or quitrents were not kept and that Haywood had died two or three days after the petition against him was filed with the assembly. Riots then occurred in Edgecombe County, and on the night of January 24, 1759, twenty-five men entered Corbin’s house and took him to Enfield, where he was made to promise that he would dismiss the agents and surveyors. He was also forced to give bond described as of the “most unusual nature.”²⁹

After what was referred to in some Granville District documents as the “late Disturbances,” Granville appointed Thomas Child his auditor on April 10,1759. Two weeks later he revoked the commission of Francis Corbin and again appointed Child his agent and attorney. Child was specifically authorized to make grants, and by September he advertised procedures to simplify and regularize the manner in which land could be obtained. He also promised to address all grievances. Joshua Bodley, a Chowan County justice, continued as agent until August 19, 1760, and the following April Robert Jones, Jr., was named agent and receiver of quitrents. Jones was a member of the assembly from Northampton County and attorney general of the province.³⁰

Appointment of new agents helped to resolve the problem of the great lapse of time between the date of a survey and issuance of a deed. Granville had stipulated in his instructions that the grant was to be made within twelve months of the survey, but there were many excessive delays. For example, a deed was issued to David Johnson of Rowan County on March 6, 1761, for land that had been surveyed February 11, 1752. Two Rowan County grants to Marmaduke Kimbrough made March 5, 1761, were based on surveys conducted April 16, 1748. Joshua Haughton’s warrant for land in Johnston County was issued November 26, 1751, but the property was not surveyed until April 30, 1761; there is no evidence that a deed was ever granted. A ten-year lapse between the date of the survey and the date of the deed was common. Child and Jones speeded up the process of issuing grants and approached the goal set by Granville. In 1760 the number of grants increased to 784, with 1,139 deeds completed in the following year and 606 in 1762. In the three years after Corbin’s dismissal more grants were made than in the entire twelve years before 1759.³¹

After Jones’s appointment, Thomas Child moved to Suffolk, Virginia, where he continued to make land grants in the Granville District. Citizens of Halifax County later petitioned the house to confirm those grants, but the legislation was rejected.³² Jones remained in charge of the Granville operations in North Carolina. John, Earl Granville died January 2, 1763; at his death, his affairs were in what was described as an “embarrassed condition.”³³

The land office closed when word of Granville’s death was received in North Carolina. As one result, thirty-seven deeds for land in Johnston County were backdated from April 1 to January 1, 1763. In a few instances, principally in Johnston County, entries were filed, warrants issued, and surveys returned into the middle of the year. In Northampton County, a warrant was issued for John Boykin on May 5, 1763, the land was surveyed on May 10, and an endorsement on the warrant indicated that a deed dated January 1, 1763, was issued to him.³⁴

The will of John, Earl Granville devised his estate, including his land in North Carolina, to William Finch, John Anthony Balaquier, and Lady Louisa Farmer as trustees and executors. It also provided for periodic payments to his daughter, Sophia Carteret, who upon her marriage or when reaching the age of twenty-one was to receive the balance of a bequest totaling eight thousand pounds. Upon that payment, his estate was to go to his heir at law, Robert, Earl Granville. Following the death of John, Earl Granville, there was action in chancery brought by Robert, Earl Granville to set aside his father’s will; as a result, reopening of the land office was delayed.³⁵

With the office closed, it was not possible for settlers to obtain land, a fact that contributed to restlessness in Orange and Rowan counties. Regulator pamphleteer Herman Husband suggested that the inability to acquire land was one of the reasons for the conflicts that developed in 1770. The 1773 assembly reminded Henry Eustace McCulloh, the agent of the colony, that the Granville land office had been closed to the “inconvenience and grievance” of the settlers in the province; McCulloh was asked to use his utmost endeavors to induce the Crown to purchase the district.³⁶

The assembly was not the first to suggest that the Granville District be bought. In 1766 Robert, Earl Granville had indicated his willingness to sell the property to the Crown in order to “disincumber My Affairs.” Governor William Tryon felt that if the Granville lands could be purchased, at least six thousand pounds per year would be added to the quitrents collected. By 1771 there was some belief in North Carolina that the Granville District had already been acquired by the Crown and that the land office would reopen soon. Governor Josiah Martin also recommended that the Crown purchase the district, a recommendation in which Lord Hillsborough, secretary of state for the colonies, concurred. In 1773, when Henry McCulloh returned to England, he offered Robert, Earl Granville sixty thousand pounds for the estate; but by that time plans were under way to reopen the land office.³⁷

After the death of John, Earl Granville in 1763, Thomas Child returned to England, leaving Robert Jones as the only proprietary representative in North Carolina. Jones died June 2, 1766, and by the middle of 1767 some of the Granville records were in the hands of Joseph Montfort, one of the treasurers of the province and a vice-auditor of the proprietary district. Montfort continued to take entries for land, but he authorized no surveys, nor did he make any grants. None of those entries are known to have survived.³⁸

The Granville District remained dormant until early 1773, when Robert, Earl Granville decided to appoint an agent in North Carolina and to resume operations there. Governor Josiah Martin was approached about acting as the Granville agent; he suggested that there should be two principals. Granville concurred and indicated his intention of sending Hugh Finlay to America as coagent. The colonial secretary, the earl of Dartmouth, had no objection to Martin’s serving as the Granville agent providing those activities did not interfere with his duties as governor.³⁹

Martin foresaw that his service as agent could face some problems. He knew that the records of the proprietary were one hundred miles from New Bern in Halifax in the possession of Joseph Montfort. He also knew there was no good survey of the proprietary. Some of the counterparts of deeds seemed to have been lost, and Montfort refused to relinquish the books and papers belonging to the district until the agent met his terms for their surrender. For his services in safely and carefully guarding the records, Montfort asked that deeds to ten or twelve vacant grants of land be given to him. In addition, he seems to have expected payment of two hundred pounds per year from 1763, an amount he claimed Thomas Child had promised him.⁴⁰

By June 4, 1774, Martin had extracted the records and documents of the Granville proprietary from Montfort by agreeing to allow him to claim ten grants. The records were then inventoried in Halifax by clerks employed by Montfort. On June 24, 1774, Robert, Earl Granville, William Clayton, and Lady Louisa Clayton, who was the surviving trustee and executrix under the will of John, Earl Granville, revoked the instructions previously issued to Thomas Child and issued new instructions to Josiah Martin. Although the instructions were substantially the same as those issued to Corbin and Innes in 1751, there were a few differences. A complete survey of the district was required, as was a map of the ungranted land. Martin was not to make a grant of any land suitable for a town or manufacturing establishment without first giving notice to Granville; all grants were to be limited to 650 acres. Twice annually, Martin was to send to Granville a true copy of every entry and was to specify those that had been surveyed. The requirement of sending counterparts of all deeds to England was to be continued. Martin was instructed to keep all entry books, papers, records, the seal, and other materials belonging to the estate in the Granville office at Edenton, and no papers were to be removed from it. Although Martin knew in November 1774 that the instructions had been received in North Carolina, he did not acknowledge them until February 10, 1775.⁴¹

Martin had learned that there was not a Granville office at Edenton, but he made plans to take possession of the records formerly held by Montfort and to begin to make a quitrent roll. The Halifax Committee of Safety, led by Willie Jones, opposed the opening of a Granville land office on the grounds that it would drain the counties of funds. On March 24,1775, despite that opposition, Martin announced his appointment as agent and his authorization to take possession of quitrents as well as all records, books, and papers of the district.⁴²

On February 21, 1775, Martin had appointed John Burnside, a New Bern merchant, as deputy secretary of the Granville land office with responsibility for all records and papers. Burnside went to Halifax, where most of the records were located, and in March 1775 he traveled to Edenton and Suffolk, Virginia, to collect other papers. Martin, meanwhile, had sent the necessary stationery and supplies to Halifax, and Burnside began to compile a list of all grants that had been made. Burnside did not find life in Halifax easy. Destruction of the Granville records was frequently discussed by the committee of safety, which also threatened to tar and feather him. He considered moving the records to Norfolk, but Martin felt they should be taken out of the province only after careful consideration. The governor suggested moving them to Bute County, where he believed they would be more secure under the care of Philemon Hawkins and Thomas Person, both of whom he thought would be glad to protect them.⁴³

At the end of May, with his authority greatly weakened, Martin fled from New Bern to Fort Johnston. From there he told Burnside in July of a plan to place the records with Loyalist Allan MacDonald of Kingsborough, Scotland, who lived on Cheeks Creek in Anson County. If Burnside thought they could be moved from Halifax safely, he was to rent wagons from James Hepburn, a Loyalist merchant and lawyer of Cumberland County. Then he was to obtain a guard of Highlanders from MacDonald if such protection should prove necessary. If the records could not be moved secretly, Burnside was to give out the story that Martin planned to spend the summer in Salisbury and that the papers were to be available there for him to complete necessary arrangements for Granville’s affairs. In September, patriots intercepted letters addressed to Burnside that contained blank commissions for Highlanders in Cumberland County who planned to raise a body of troops to support the royal government and sent them to the Halifax Committee of Safety. Burnside was forced to flee to Virginia to avoid imprisonment, and the Halifax committee took over the Granville records.⁴⁴

Additional instructions were issued to Josiah Martin on August 2, 1775, when Granville approved moving the land office to Bute County. The survey of ungranted land was postponed, and Martin was authorized to make grants up to four thousand acres each. Attendance at courts of New Bern, Edenton, and Edgecombe County was no longer required. Martin did not receive the instructions until September 19, 1776, when he was at Long Island, New York. He hoped, however, soon to resume management of the affairs of the proprietary in North Carolina.⁴⁵

Robert, Earl Granville died February 12, 1776, without issue. He devised the district in North Carolina to George William, earl of Coventry, and to Thomas, Lord Viscount Weymouth, later the marquis of Bath, with a life interest in the proprietary to Henry Frederick Thynne, a son of Lord Weymouth, who later took the name Henry Frederick Carteret. Josiah Martin was aware of the change of ownership of the Granville District, and on September 19, 1776, he wrote Thynne that the records of the proprietorship had been taken over by a mob leader when an effort was made to remove them to a place of safety. Martin believed they were safe, however, because Willie Jones, the person who had taken them, had inherited land in the district from Robert Jones, his father, a former Granville agent.⁴⁶

With the coming of independence, several actions by North Carolina affected the Granville District. On December 17, 1776, the constitutional convention adopted a Declaration of Rights, section 25 of which defined the limits of the state as all territories, seas, waters, and harbors from the line with South Carolina to the southern line of Virginia that were the right and property of the state and that were held in sovereignty. In the General Assembly that met at New Bern in November 1777, provision was made to open land offices and for citizens to make entries and to claim land in any county that had not been granted by the Crown or by any of the proprietors in fee before July 4, 1776. In the same session, lands and property of persons who had attached themselves to enemies of the United States or had been outside the United States at the beginning of the Revolution but had not returned and taken an oath of loyalty were confiscated. Six months later, at the third session of the General Assembly of 1778, provision was made for the sale or other disposition of confiscated properties. Further legislation to implement the confiscation act was passed in the second session of the General Assembly of 1779; in that law, the names of specific persons whose property had been seized were included. The final enactment relating to confiscation occurred in the first session of the General Assembly of 1782, when an act directing the sale of confiscated property was passed. In that act, also, the names were included of specific persons whose property was considered forfeited and directed to be sold. In none of those laws providing for the confiscation of property or for its sale or other disposition were the Granville District or the Granville heirs specifically named.⁴⁷

On December 24, 1777, the House of Commons authorized Willie Jones, Green Hill, and Thomas Person to collect all papers of the Granville land office and to sort and inventory them. A copy of the inventory was to be sent to each county, and copies were to be returned to the next General Assembly.⁴⁸ It is not known whether the records were inventoried as the house directed. Certainly, no record exists to show that copies were submitted to the next General Assembly; nor have copies been found in any of the counties in the Granville District. The records of the Granville land office, however, include undated listings of entries and warrants for eighteen counties. With two exceptions, the earliest document listed was dated 1758, and most were for the period from 1759 to 1763. Detailed analysis shows that of 74 Northampton County entries inventoried, 12 have not survived, and that 52 of 153 warrants listed for that county are no longer extant. Of 29 Pasquotank County entries inventoried, 2 have not survived, and there is no record at all of 36 land transactions in the county for which there had been entries. Eleven of 23 Pasquotank County warrants no longer exist. Of the 185 Johnston County warrants listed, 74 have not survived. Of the warrants that no longer exist, entries for 27 remain in the files. Of 201 Johnston County entries, 81 are missing, although warrants for 38 of the latter remain. There is some slight indication that early records may not have been included in the inventories. The 1754 warrant for Henry Pope in Johnston County, for example, is endorsed on the reverse in different handwriting “Old Warrants &c not Inventoried.”⁴⁹ Although not conclusive, evidence suggests that there have been major losses of records of the Granville land office in the more than two hundred years since it closed.

Following their seizure by the Halifax Committee of Safety, the Granville land office records had been placed with Oroondates Davis, clerk of the committee and later a representative from Halifax County in the General Assembly. In 1778 the papers were still “lodged” with Davis, although Thomas Person was recognized as being in charge of them. Person, in fact, loaned the Moravians what was described as a “mass” of plats, which were later returned with thanks. The Granville books and papers became scattered, however, and in 1783 the General Assembly authorized the secretary of state to assemble and take them into his possession for safekeeping.⁵⁰

The Granville District had, in effect, ended. In 1780, however, Josiah Martin, traveling with the British army, hoped to reestablish the proprietary because of early Cornwallis victories in the South. On November 8, 1780, George William, earl of Coventry, Thomas, Lord Viscount Weymouth, and Henry Frederick Carteret confirmed Martin’s instructions of 1774 and 1775 and his appointment as agent and attorney. Martin was authorized to make land grants and to have custody of the land office papers. Less than a year after that confirmation, the British army surrendered at Yorktown.⁵¹

Although the 1783 Treaty of Paris provided that Congress would recommend that the states restore all confiscated property and that there would be no further confiscations, the Granville land office, which had closed in 1763, never reopened. There was, however, concern in North Carolina that the heirs might attempt to reclaim the district. In 1784 Governor Alexander Martin reported to the General Assembly that he had received a letter from a member of the Continental Congress relating to papers about the Granville District presented to the United States ministers in Paris. Twelve years later, when implementation of the Jay Treaty was debated in the United States House of Representatives, Congressman James Holland claimed that article 9 endangered the Granville proprietary, which the state of North Carolina had acquired. Of the ten North Carolina representatives, only William Barry Grove voted in favor of the treaty. Although Justice James Iredell, then in Philadelphia, believed the fears were groundless, he recognized that there was an apprehension that the treaty supported the rights of the Granville heirs to the district.⁵²

In 1801 the Granville heirs brought suit for ejectment and trespass in the Federal Circuit Court for the District of North Carolina. Josiah Collins, Nathaniel Allen, and Samuel Dickinson in 1788 had received a grant from the state for 3,952 acres of land on the Pungo River in Tyrrell County in what had been the Granville District. The claim of the heirs was based on the grants of King Charles II to the Lords Proprietors, the 1729 act of surrender that reserved one-eighth of Carolina to John, Lord Carteret, and the indenture to him of September 17, 1744. The defendants resisted the claim on the grounds that the Granville title had been extinguished by the Revolution, that the district had been vested in the people of North Carolina by section 25 of the Declaration of Rights, that the land had been confiscated by action of the General Assembly in 1777, that the heirs were aliens and thus incapable of taking and holding land in the state, and, finally, that action was barred by the statute of limitations.⁵³

John Marshall, chief justice of the United States Supreme Court, who presided over the North Carolina circuit, warned circuit court judge Henry Potter in advance that he would have to decide the Granville case alone. Marshall declined to participate because of his involvement in the Fairfax land case in Virginia and because he believed that the Granville land was not included in the confiscation acts.⁵⁴ State treasurer John Haywood felt that Marshall’s mind had been made up on that point for a long time. Potter did not write an opinion on the case, but he gave lengthy instructions to the jury. Potter relied heavily on an opinion of superior court judge Samuel Johnston handed down in the Court of Conference in 1801, in which Johnston ruled that the exceptions in section 25 of the Declaration of Rights applied only to those individuals who were part of the collective body of the people and that the people, collectively, assumed the right to all lands within the boundaries of the state. Potter instructed the jury that Granville had possessed royal immunities under the indenture from George II, and that he therefore had many prerogatives and extraordinary privileges that barred him from the exceptions. The judge declined to rule on whether the Granville ungranted lands had been confiscated.⁵⁵

The jury found the defendants not guilty of trespass on January 3, 1806, and the Granville heirs appealed to the United States Supreme Court in February 1807. William Gaston, attorney and member of the General Assembly, had represented the Granville heirs before the circuit court, but he withdrew from the case upon its appeal; and Philip B. Key was appointed in his stead. In January 1808 John London, the Wilmington merchant and banker who represented the Granville heirs in the United States, recommended, and Key agreed, that the appeal should not be pressed because of the strong antagonism between the United States and England that led to the War of 1812. Governor David Stone, however, expressed concern about the claim of the Granville heirs and recommended that the General Assembly provide a fund to reimburse those persons who had obtained land grants from the state in what had been the Granville District. The fund was not appropriated. Philip B. Key died July 28, 1815, and John London died March 1, 1816. With both principals dead, the Supreme Court appeal was dismissed in February 1817 and the Granville District appeared to have passed from the scene. In 1842 the British consul in Charleston, South Carolina, told Gaston he had recently received an inquiry through the secretary of the navy in London relating to the claim of Lord Carteret to his lands in North Carolina. Gaston’s response is unknown.⁵⁶

As to the question of whether the Granville District had or had not been confiscated, not until 1913 did the North Carolina Supreme Court rule that the Granville lands not granted in 1763 had been confiscated by the acts of 1777 and 1779, even though they were not specifically mentioned in the legislation.⁵⁷

After 1783 most of the records of the Granville land office were in the possession of the secretary of state. By 1788, however, the General Assembly noted that some of the record books of the office were in the custody of other persons, and the secretary of state was authorized to demand and to receive them. In the legislative session of 1800 the secretary was authorized to have transcribed and copied the first thirteen old books, containing records of grants and patents beginning in 1663 and ending in 1767. The legislation implied that the thirteen books were in chronological sequence. Thirteen years later, the secretary was authorized to have copied a book containing grants from 1734 to 1769. That legislation also directed him to obtain any record books belonging to his office that were in the hands of others.⁵⁸

By 1873 the secretary of state reported that the record books in his office had such inadequate indexes that land grants could not be located. He also noted that several books were in poor condition and required copying. Although an appropriation of fifty dollars per month was provided to copy and index records in his office, the next year he repeated his request for additional funds to permit arrangement of the surveys. By 1879 very little progress had been made in indexing the grants, but the secretary was authorized to continue the project.⁵⁹ At some time, the Granville indentures or land grants had been arranged by county and thereunder in rough alphabetical order by name of grantee. They had been abstracted into four record books, and by the time the indexing project was begun in 1873 those volumes were identified and indexed as Land Grant Books Nos. 6, 11, 12, and 14.

By 1909 the existing book indexes had become difficult to use and the secretary was authorized to prepare a card index system, the format of which was prescribed in the enacting legislation. Warrants, plats, and surveys were to be placed in separate envelopes, the format of which was also prescribed; and books that were old and falling apart were to be recopied. That project continued until 1917.⁶⁰ Approximately fifteen hundred of the more than fifty-five hundred Granville entries, warrants, and surveys were indexed and placed in envelopes, commonly identified as “shucks.”

Of the three principal series of Granville District records—the recorded indentures, the counterpart deeds, and the entries, warrants, and surveys—only the recorded copies in four land grant books have been retained by the office of the secretary of state. The original indentures apparently were transferred to the North Carolina Archives with other materials in 1922, and the unindexed entries, warrants, and surveys were received on March 31, 1927. The indentures were arranged and a card index prepared in 1965. In 1985 the fifteen hundred shucks containing Granville entries, warrants, and surveys were transferred from the secretary of state to the archives. The entire group of records, including those transferred in 1927, was then sorted and rearranged by county and thereunder by name of the person seeking the grant. Those records have been indexed in the Manuscript and Archives Retrieval System (MARS) in the state archives. Beginning in July 1986, the individual files containing entries, warrants, and surveys were microfilmed; the original indentures were also microfilmed and are now available for reference use only in that form.⁶¹

There is no certainty about the number of grants made in the Granville District between 1748 and 1763. The Granville heirs in their loyalist claim alleged that 4,363 grants totaling 3,012,487 acres had been made. That count was based on four lists and a record book. List A described 616 counterparts found in the land office in Edenton on February 1, 1761; list B listed 551 grants that had been sent to Earl Granville but for which duplicates were not found in Edenton; list C contained 669 deeds granted by Francis Corbin that were in the Edenton office with duplicates that had not been sent to Granville; a fourth list consisted of nine abstracts; and a “Red Book” kept by Thomas Child in the period 1759-1762 named 2,508 grants. Local historian and genealogist Margaret M. Hofmann in her published abstracts of Granville land grants counted 4,979 deeds; a recent computer count showed 4,993 grants, a number that includes a few documents counted twice because of the manner in which they were microfilmed.⁶²

Comparison of the land grant files of original indentures with the Granville entries, warrants, and surveys indicates that many more grants were made than have survived. Of the 4,993 grant documents, only 2,462 have related entry, warrant, and survey files, meaning that 2,531, or more than 50 percent, have no supporting documentation. Many, but not all, of the grants that are not documented were for the early period of the land office. The figures also show that 3,067 files of entries, warrants, and surveys either did not result in the issuance of a grant or that the grant document no longer exists.

In most cases when a grant resulted, the reverse of the warrant was endorsed to show that a deed had been issued and the date of issuance. Detailed examination of the warrants of three sample counties (Johnston, Northampton, and Pasquotank) for which 684 grants have survived shows that for those counties 180, or 26.3 percent, more grants were made for which no indentures have survived. Projected to the entire district, that would indicate that more than 1,300 grants were issued the indentures of which are not presently in the records of the Granville land office. That number may or may not include the 551 grants not in the Edenton land office that the Granville heirs included in their count.

The evidence indicates that substantial numbers of the records of the Granville land office have been lost. Granville consistently referred to his records as books and papers, and no books are known to have survived. He prescribed a careful records system for the district, but none of his agents followed his instructions. It is also evident that the Granville land office was a term rather than a place. Although Granville seems to have retained title to his one-eighth of Carolina in anticipation of high monetary returns— an expectation that was not fulfilled—the existence of the proprietary presented difficult problems in the administration of the royal colony and adversely affected its development.⁶³ Many prominent political figures served as Granville agents, but the district was not well administered. It is, finally, remarkable that the attempts by the Granville heirs to recover the proprietary did not succeed.

Table 1 (below) includes a “Comparison of Extant Deeds and Entries, Warrants, Surveys in Granville District”; Table 2 (below) contains “Yearly Distribution of Granville Grants”

Footnotes