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Judge Benjamin Winborne, motivated by the destruction of most of Hertford County's early official records, collected a lifetime of information of his home county and ultimately published it in 1906. The work itself spans a period of fifteen decades, within which compass it makes a survey of the early settlers, soldiers, churchmen, and politicians and examines with considerable circumspection the early courts and government, in short dwelling on all persons, places, and events instrumental to the growth and development of the county. Nor does it neglect Hertford's participation in various wars, for a great number of colonial, Revolutionary, and Civil War officers and soldiers are identified and permanently memorialized.
The records of Hertford County were destroyed by arson in 1830, and again by Union soldiers during the Civil War. Piecing together what he could from his father's old deeds, various records of other families, and the surviving will and court record books, the author compiled this history to preserve forever the valuable information remaining. The volume begins with a brief overview of U.S. history, then Carolina history, and lists many names of early political figures active before the American Revolution. The book is organized by decade, and works its way through fifteen decades, from 1760-1770 all the way to 1900-1906. All the historical facts that could be found are in this book. Following the history are lists of Hertford County public officials. Finally, there is a sizable list of miscellaneous information, including population, dates of incorporation, and typical climate of North Carolina and its counties; some more general U.S. history; and some useful rules for the farmer and businessman, such as how to keep hams, how to mix a durable whitewash, how to look after young chickens, and more. An every-name index has been added to this work.
Here is a county history that is extraordinarily rich in primary source materials, including abstracts of deeds from 1681 through the Revolutionary War period and, moreover, petitions, divisions of estates, wills, and marriages found in the records of Perquimans and adjacent North Carolina counties. Numbering in the tens of thousands, the records provide the names of all principal parties and related family members, places of residence and migration, descriptions of real and personal property, dates, boundary surveys, names of executors, witnesses, and appraisers, and dates of recording. Altogether, the index contains references to about 35,000 persons! Researchers should note that Perquimans was one of the original North Carolina precincts--with very close ties to the southeastern Virginia counties of Norfolk, Princess Anne, Nansemond, and Isle of Wight--and for many years had fluid boundaries with the North Carolina counties of Chowan, Gates, and Pasquotank.
Before the outbreak of the Civil War, Hertford County had one of the largest populations of free people of color in North Carolina. Although they lived in a rural community, Hertford County's free people of color and their descendants found success in business, education, community development, religious life, and politics. Warren Eugene Milteer, Jr.'s tireless efforts in numerous archives have produced the first full-length study of their lives and contributions from the colonial period into the twentieth century.
In North Carolina’s Free People of Color, 1715–1885, Warren Eugene Milteer Jr. examines the lives of free persons categorized by their communities as “negroes,” “mulattoes,” “mustees,” “Indians,” “mixed-bloods,” or simply “free people of color.” From the colonial period through Reconstruction, lawmakers passed legislation that curbed the rights and privileges of these non-enslaved residents, from prohibiting their testimony against whites to barring them from the ballot box. While such laws suggest that most white North Carolinians desired to limit the freedoms and civil liberties enjoyed by free people of color, Milteer reveals that the two groups often interacted—praying together, working the same land, and occasionally sharing households and starting families. Some free people of color also rose to prominence in their communities, becoming successful businesspeople and winning the respect of their white neighbors. Milteer’s innovative study moves beyond depictions of the American South as a region controlled by a strict racial hierarchy. He contends that although North Carolinians frequently sorted themselves into races imbued with legal and social entitlements—with whites placing themselves above persons of color—those efforts regularly clashed with their concurrent recognition of class, gender, kinship, and occupational distinctions. Whites often determined the position of free nonwhites by designating them as either valuable or expendable members of society. In early North Carolina, free people of color of certain statuses enjoyed access to institutions unavailable even to some whites. Prior to 1835, for instance, some free men of color possessed the right to vote while the law disenfranchised all women, white and nonwhite included. North Carolina’s Free People of Color, 1715–1885 demonstrates that conceptions of race were complex and fluid, defying easy characterization. Despite the reductive labels often assigned to them by whites, free people of color in the state emerged from an array of backgrounds, lived widely varied lives, and created distinct cultures—all of which, Milteer suggests, allowed them to adjust to and counter ever-evolving forms of racial discrimination.