- Title
- North Carolina historical review [1928 : October]
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-
- Date
- October 1928
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-
- Place
- ["North Carolina, United States"]
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North Carolina historical review [1928 : October]
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TWELVE NORTH CAROLINA COUNTIES
IN 1810-1811
By A. R. Newsome
I.
INTRODUCTION
The North Carolina Historical Commission possesses the Thomas
Henderson Letter Book, 1810-1811, a bound volume of manu¬
script accounts of Ashe, Caswell, Duplin, Edgecombe, Franklin,
Greene, Lenoir, Moore, Rockingham, Surry and Stokes, and
Wayne counties, written in 1810 and 1811 by well-informed indi¬
viduals in the respective counties at the request of Thomas Hen¬
derson & Co., publishers of The Star (Raleigh). These accounts,
dealing chiefly with contemporary or recent events and conditions
of which the authors possessed first-hand knowledge, are at once
the first known descriptive accounts of North Carolina counties
and, perhaps, the most valuable source available for non-political
conditions in North Carolina in the early nineteenth century. The
value of the collection is enhanced by the fact that the counties
described represent the different geographical sections of the State
— coastal plain, piedmont, and mountain.
The Star, a weekly newspaper, whose first number seems to have
appeared on November 3, 1808,1 was unique in North Carolina
journalism of that period. It abstained to a considerable degree
from political discussion and devoted unusual space to literature,
history, science, morality, and religion. For more than six years
the pages of each volume were numbered consecutively and with
each volume was printed a title page and an elaborate classified
table of contents.2 Dr. Calvin Jones and Thomas Henderson, Jr.,
under the name of Jones & Henderson, and later Thomas Hender¬
son & Co., were the publishers from the establishment of the news-
1 The earliest available number is Vol. 1, No. 12, dated Thursday, January 19, 1809. If issued
regularly prior to January 19, as it was subsequent to this date, the first number of The Star appeared
on November 3, 1808. The editors of the North Carolina University Magazine, X, No. 4, 216, give
November 3, 1808, as the date of the first number.
2 The consecutive pagination of each volume was continued through Volume VI, and the first
four numbers of Volume VII. The following topics in the table of contents of Volume 11, arranged
in the order of the number of articles listed instead of alphabetically as in the printed table, indicate
the policy and interests of the editors: Religion and Morals, Intelligence, Agriculture and Rural
Economy, Poetry, Politicks, Literary, Arts and Manufactures, Biography and Characters, State
Papers and Documents, Congressional, Military, State Legislature, Medical, Law Intelligence,
Scientific.
[413]
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