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Show 40 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT were more responsible for the fact that small farms, rather than great plantations, became characteristic of this Colony. In 1729, seven of the eight proprietors surrendered their rights in North Carolina to the Crown for a consideration. Lord Gran-ville retained his, which included nearly half of the Colony and contained the greater part of its population. For the balance of the colonial era, the Granville family owned and administered this huge area as private property. A recent English historian has written: "The proprietorship was an incubus, and at times a festering sore on the body economic and politic of North Carolina. For many years settlers . . . were subject to extortion, exaction, and oppression by Granville's agents who enriched themselves by giving unlawful grants of land for which they exacted ex-horbitant fees . . . ." The record of the Granville administrators is in sharp contrast with the benevolent policy of the Fairfax family on its lands in the Northern Neck of Virginia.23 In addition to the Granville estate, other large tracts were granted. Henry McCulloch and associates received two grants of 132,000 acres and a third of 1,250,000 acres on the upper part of the Pee Dee, Cape Fear, and Neuse Rivers. Of this latter grant, 400,000 acres were acquired by John Selwyn and Arthur Dobbs, later Governor of North Carolina. Settlement of one white person on every 200 acres and a quitrent of 4 shillings per 100 acres after 10 years were required. A steady stream of emigrants was leaving Northern Ireland for America; Dobbs succeeded in directing many of them to his lands, a task which was doubtless furthered by his appointment as Governor in 1753. The biographer of the North Carolina Governor has summarized the results of the disorganized and carelessly maintained land system of the Colony: "Owing to the scramble for colonial grants and the fact that titles were not properly registered, land in the colony had been granted over and over again in different grantees, and much confusion existed regarding boundaries and the fixing of quit-rents; many blank patents were also issued which only added to the confusion."24 We may see something of the results of these land policies from the statistical studies of real and personal property ownership in North Carolina made by two enterprising students on the basis of tax and assessment lists of the various counties for about 1780. Although the records are not complete they are sufficiently extensive to provide a useful picture of landholding as of 1780. The authors found that the average size of holdings ranged from 166 acres in Pasquotank County in the Albemarle Sound area to 933 acres in New Hanover County on the Cape Fear River. Of 13,512 holdings of land in the state, 839 were less than 51 acres; 3,137 were less than 101 acres; 6,430 were less than 201 acres. At the other extreme, 1,002 persons held more than 1,001 acres each; 57 held more than 5,001 acres; and 18 owned more than 10,001 acres. Unfortunately, the total acreage thus held is not available. Nor are like data available for other Colonies with which those of North Carolina could be compared.25 The chief weakness of the North Carolina data lies in the fact that many ownerships were spread over more than one county; the investigators were not able to 23 Albert L. Bramlett, "North Carolina's Western Lands" (Ph.D. dissertation. University of North Carolina, 1928); Desmond Clarke, Arthur Dobbs, Esquire, 1689-1765 (Chapel Hill, N. C, 1957), pp. 155 ff. "Clarke, Arthur Dobbs, pp. 71-73. Harry Roy Merrens in Colonial North Carolina in the Eighteenth Century (Chapel Hill, N. C, 1964), pp. 26 ff., offers some other information on large holdings in the state. Edward Moseley and Thomas Pollock, he finds, left estates containing 25,000 and 50,000 acres respectively in the first half of the 18th century, and the Moore family held 83,000 acres on the Cape Fear River. 25 Francis Grave Morris and Phyllis Mary Morris, "Economic Conditions in North Carolina about 1780, Part 1, Landholding," North Carolina Historical Review, XVI (April 1939), 107 ff. |