Laws and resolutions of the General Assembly of the Colony/State of North Carolina: title varies, 1752–, var. state printers, 1752. (Many of the
early session laws are available only in manuscript format or in edited reprints. Pimsleur’s Checklists of Basic American Legal Publications, in its
listings of identified published session laws for North Carolina, begins with an unenumerated session in the year 1752. However, various legislative
assemblies with law-making power over the area comprising modern North Carolina were functioning at least as far back as 1671; i.e., The Grand Council for
Carolina, 1670-1719, and His Majesty’s Council for Carolina, 1720-1775. The history of the Senate of Carolina dates back to the beginning of local
rule by the Proprietors through the Grand Council in 1671. The House of Representatives dates back to the establishment in 1691 of an advisory body to
the Grand Council consisting of 20 elected members termed the Commons House of Assembly. North Carolina bears the distinction of having hosted the first
English colony in America, the famous “Lost Colony” of Roanoke. This was established in 1585, and then, after quick abandonment, reestablished in
1587. Neither establishment “took.” For the next eight decades prior to the founding of Carolina the area now comprising North Carolina, although mostly
uninhabited, was nominally part of and administered by the Colony of Virginia. In 1663 Charles I of England granted a Charter for the Province of
Carolina, named after the Latin Carolus for himself, to a group of eight “Lords Proprietors.” This group of nobles had helped restore him to the throne in
1660. Initially the Carolina territory nominally comprised an area now occupied by the modern American states of Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi,
North Carolina, and South Carolina. In 1665 the Carolina Charter was further expanded to nominally include Spanish territory to the south as far as St.
Augustine in modern Florida. However the first settlement in the whole vast area, Charles Town {now Charleston, S.C.} was not founded until 1670, and
for many decades most of the area was sparsely populated. The Lords Proprietors administered the small population for roughly five decades through a
body called the Grand Council. In acknowledgment of the difficulty of governing the vast territory, starting in 1691 the Colonial proprietors appointed a
governor resident in Charleston for the whole of Carolina, but regularly appointed either another governor or a deputy to administer the northern
portion of the colony which was taking on settlers from Virginia. During this period Bath, the oldest town in the colony served as a nominal capital from
1702-1722, after which, until 1743, Edenton took on that role. Historical records for the period are very incomplete. For example, there are fewer
than six sets of recorded Minutes of the Executive Council prior to 1711. Therefore, it is often unclear which Carolina executive and legislative acts
during the years 1691-1729 applied to which parts of the sprawling colony. In 1712, North and South Carolina were officially divided into separate
colonies, with South Carolina continuing to nominally administer the dependencies further south. In 1719, in response to the settlers’ dissatisfaction
with proprietary rule, Carolina was effectively made into a crown colony administered by a royal governor and his council. This was made official in
1729 when the Lords Proprietors sold their charter back to the Crown. In that same year, by act of Parliament, the territories roughly comprising modern
Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi were severed off and given a separate Royal Charter as the Colony of Georgia, and both North and South Carolina, now
crown colonies, assumed their modern borders. In that year South Carolina received a royal governor and council. However, the new colony of North
Carolina, with a population of 30,000 in 1730, had no permanent institutions of government until their establishment at New Bern in 1743. North Carolina
became independent from England by means of the Halifax Resolves issued by its Fourth Provincial Congress in Halifax on 12 April 1776. The colony was
a Patriot base during the American Revolution, and officially became the 12th state of the Union on 21 November 1789. After statehood, in 1794, the
capital was moved to Raleigh.) (Digitized from a microfilm copy of titles originally held by the North Carolina Department of Archives and History).
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