Acts

North Carolina Office of Archives & History

Department of Cultural Resources

	The Colonial Records Project Jan-Michael Poff, Editor Historical Publications Section 4622 Mail Service Center Raleigh, NC 27699-4622 Phone: (919) 733-7442 Fax: (919) 733-1439	Acts
Last Updated 5/18/04

Acts

The General Assembly of the northern part of the newly established colony of Carolina met for the first time in the spring of 1665, two years after the crown had granted the territory to the eight lords proprietors. Unfortunately, no records from that meeting survive, nor do any of the statutes enacted at that time. Indeed, almost none of the acts passed by the North Carolina assembly during the colony’s first fifty years are extant. Nor is there any way to know even approximately how many were enacted during this period. Enough had been passed by 1672 that the assembly undertook a codification, or “revisal,” that produced at least 54 statutes, none of which survive even by title. However, a handful of the many other laws enacted subsequently by the assembly of the proprietary colony over the next four decades are represented by occasional, fleeting references to them in court cases and elsewhere. The editor plans at some time in the future to include a compilation of these at this site.

In 1715 another revisal resulted in 66 statutes, all of which are extant and most or all of which were reenactments of previous legislation. Fewer than a dozen laws survive of what must have been the many hundreds passed during the period from 1665 to 1715. After the latter year there are relatively few gaps in the statutory record.

Judge Walter Clark, relying on manuscript and printed acts among the records of the General Assembly, edited three volumes of North Carolina acts to 1790. These volumes were published from 1904 to 1906 as volumes 23-25 of The State Records of North Carolina. Omitted, however, were other acts not available to Clark that subsequently surfaced at the Public Record Office in London as part of the search for documents undertaken by the British Records Program of the North Carolina Colonial Records Project during the years 1969 to 1975. Several more came to light in the collections of the New-York Historical Society during the project’s inventory of records at several dozen U.S. repositories during the 1960s. One other was overlooked by Clark in the records of the North Carolina General Assembly. These 42 acts, published here for the first time, deal with a wide range of matters great and small that concerned colonial North Carolinians.

Not included here, however, are parts of acts that for some reason were not printed in the Clark edition of colonial laws. One example would be the sections omitted from the church establishment act of 1774 (State Records, 23:956) that among other things allowed vestries to erect workhouses for the poor, provided for beggars to be placed therein forcibly, and required inmates of the workhouses to wear a cloth badge prominently displayed. This act was effectively repealed with disestablishment of the Church of England by the Constitution of 1776 and the consequent nullification of establishment acts. Nonetheless, the fact that such provisions were enacted and in force for two years—and during such a tumultuous period in the colony’s history—is of considerable interest and importance. The editor hopes eventually to include on this site these missing portions, and those of other acts as well.

Sources cited in references:

New York Historical Society, BV North Carolina, Laws, cited as NYHS.

W.L. Grant and J. Munro, eds., Acts of the Privy Council, Colonial Series, 6 vols. (London: Public Record Office, 1908-1912), cited as Acts of the Privy Council.

Walter Clark, ed., State Records of North Carolina, 20 vols. (Raleigh: Trustees of the Public Libraries, 1895-1911), cited as State Records.

Colonial Office records, Public Record Office, Kew, Surrey, England, cited as CO.

AN ACT for raising corn to Satisfy the Debt due from this Government to the Honorable Charles Craven Esqr. Governor of South Carolina. And for the Subsistance of Such Forces as Shall be raised for the necessary Defence of the Frontiers of this Government (1715)

AN ACT for the Encouragement of the Tanning Leather in this Province (1727)

AN ACT for regulating Towns and Election of Burgesses (1727)

AN ACT to regulate Trade in Bath County (1727)

AN ACT for Encouraging and facilitating Navigation in this Province (1727)

AN ACT to Encourage Destroying of Vermin (1727)

AN ACT for Enlarging and Confirming the Power of the Precint Court and to prevent Actions and Inditements of Small value being brought in the General Court (1727)

AN ACT To Regulate the Act for Appointing Indifferent Jurymen and to Repeal that Part thereof that Referes to Precinct Courts (1729)

AN ACT For the making and Emitting the Summ of Fourty Thousand pounds Publick Bills of Credit of North Carolina (1729)

AN ACT to Repeal the Act Intituled an Act for Encouragement of Tanning Leather in this Province (1729)

AN ADDITIONAL ACT to the Act for the Tryall of Small and mean Causes (1729)

AN ACT for Regulating Vestrys in this Government and for the better Inspecting the Vestrymen and Church Wardens Accounts of Each and Every Parish within this Government (1729)