About the author
Edward A. St. Germain created AmericanRevolution.org in 1996. He was an avid historian with a keen interest in the Revolutionary War and American culture and society in the 18th century. On this website, he created and collated a huge collection of articles, images, and other media pertaining to the American Revolution. Edward was also a Vietnam veteran, and his investigative skills led to a career as a private detective in later life.
1. North Carolina was first settled by the British in 1585
Sir Walter Raleigh attempted to create England’s first settlement in the New World – a military outpost on Roanoke Island, located in present-day Dare County, NC, in 1585. The outpost only lasted a year before being evacuated.
In 1587, a second attempt was made to permanently settle on Roanoke Island by a much larger group of colonists. But by 1590, the approximately 120 settlers had vanished without a trace, and their fate is unknown to this day.
2. North Carolina was originally part of the larger Province of Carolina
In 1663, the territory containing Carolina was granted to eight Lords Proprietors who helped King Charles II return to the English throne three years prior.
The Province of Carolina was massive, containing areas of modern-day Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, North and South Carolina, and Tennessee. Later on, these regions would be carved out of Carolina to create independent colonies or states of their own.
3. The initial governance of North Carolina was haphazard and inconsistent
North Carolina’s first settlements were small, and located far apart from one another, meaning that administering these settlements often proved difficult.
This was also made worse by the fact that the Lords Proprietors were absent from the colony – the majority of them never visited North Carolina itself – meaning they failed to effectively resolve issues related to corruption and disputes over authority during the colony’s early history.
4. North Carolina’s first town, Bath, was only incorporated in 1705
Most people in North Carolina lived on scattered homesteads and plantations, meaning the colony did not have any settlements large enough to become a town until the turn of the 18th century.
5. North Carolina split from South Carolina in 1712
As time went on, it became increasingly clear that the north and south of the Province of Carolina required separate governance, in part because of the difficulty in traveling between the two regions.
North Carolina received its own deputy governor in 1691, before the colony was divided in two in 1712.
6. North Carolina struggled with piracy in the early 1700s
In the 1700s, pirates, including the infamous Blackbeard, would pursue ships exporting goods from the North Carolina coast, as well as traders navigating the colony’s waterways.
Due to the local geography of shallow harbors, sounds, and inlets, local traders predominantly used small ships, which were an easier target for piracy.
7. North Carolina was a Quaker safe haven
The founding documents of North Carolina provided for broad religious freedom, though the prescribed religion of the colony was Anglicanism.
As a result, many Quakers moved to North Carolina and became heavily involved in government and broader society – often fleeing much less tolerant colonies that had an official state church of a different denomination, such as Massachusetts Bay.
However, Quaker authority subsided over time as the colony became involved in conflicts with Native American tribes and began to rely more heavily on slavery, both of which the Quakers objected to.
8. The population of North Carolina was estimated at 3,850 in 1670, 30,000 in 1730, and 270,133 in 1780
North Carolina was the third most populous colony after Virginia and Pennsylvania at the end of the Revolutionary War, partly due to the importation of slaves used to power the colony’s economy.
9. By 1790, North Carolina had a population of 100,572 enslaved people out of 393,751 in total
Slave labor was used on plantations to grow tobacco and cotton, as well as to harvest pine trees to create key exports such as turpentine, tar, and pitch (a black substance created from boiling tar, used to fill seams when shipbuilding).
10. By the 1770s, North Carolina produced 70% of the tar and 50% of the turpentine exported from North America
These products were essential to the southern colonial economy, and were crucial for shipbuilding – turpentine was used as a solvent in paint and varnish, and tar was used for waterproofing and sealing ropes.
North Carolina’s exports were sent to colonial shipbuilding hubs in Massachusetts, Philadelphia, and New York, as well as internationally.
