The North Carolina
Historical Review
Volume XXI July, 1944
Number 3
PUBLIC PRINTING IN NORTH CAROLINA,
1749-1815
By Mary Lindsay Thornton
Need for the preservation and distribution of laws and other
state documents brought about the establishment of the press
in North Carolina. The laws had been revised in 1715 and at
that time the possibility of their being printed had been dis¬
cussed.1 But the revisal remained in manuscript and copies were
distributed to the precinct courts with orders that they be kept
open on the clerk’s table during sitting of the court and that
they be read aloud from beginning to end during the first term
each year.2
Obviously this poor distribution of laws led to inaccuracies
and evasions. In 1730 Governor Burrington3 received as a part
of his instructions the request that “all laws now in force be
revived and considered” and a complete copy of them be sent
to England.4 A copy of the laws as revised in 1715 was sent with
the governor’s observations noted on the margin and with the
general statement that they seemed to him “a body of Laws well
adapted to the place.”5 In a note at the end of the document
he claimed “encouragement for the printing of them . . . never
effected.”6
1 John Urmstone, missionary, wrote to the secretary of the Society for the Propagation
of the Gospel, February 14, 1715: “We have had_ all our Laws revived and amended where
needful it was (and still they are confused and simple enough) and 'tis said they are to be
sent to the proprietors for their approbation and_ then be printed.” The Colonial Records of
North Carolina, II, 220. This revisal was not printed in full until 1904 when it appeared as
a part of The State Records of North Carolina, XXIII, 1-96.
2 Colonial Records, XXIII, 95-96.
a Governor George Burrington (P-1759) arrived in North Carolina in 1731. His adminis¬
tration, which ended in 1734, was a stormy one. He was in conflict with the assembly and
various officials over lands, powers of the courts, fees, and the governor’s rjght to appoint
officials and to create new precincts. The Colonial Records of North Carolina, III, iii-vi.
M. D. Haywood, “George Burrington,” Dictionary of American Biography, III, 327-328.
* Colonial Records, III, 96-97.
5 Colonial Records, III, 146.
• Colonial Records, III, 189. A digest of laws in force in the colonies was published in
London in 1704 under the title: An Abridgement of the Laws in Force and Use in Her Majesty’s
Plantations; (vis) of Virginia, Jamaica, Barbadoes, Maryland, New-England, New-York, Caro¬
lina, &c ....
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