X-LIBRARIES AND LITERATURE IN NORTH CAROLINA IN

THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

A COMPLEMENT AND SUPPLEMENT TO "THE PRESS OF NORTH CAROLINA IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY."

By STEPHEN B. WEEKS, Ph. D.,

OF U. S. BUREAU OF EDUCATION.

LIBRARIES AND LITERATURE IN NORTH CAROLINA IN THE

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

By STEPHEN B. WEEKS, Ph. D.

PART I.-LIBRARIES.

I. INTRODUCTION.

The purpose of this paper is to reconstruct, as clearly and fully as possible, one phase of the intellectual history of early North Carolina. In a former paper on "The press of North Carolina in the eighteenth century" the writer undertook to tell the history of the establishment and growth of "the art preservative of all arts." That paper dealt with the business of printing, and with the issues of the early press. The present paper is intended to be complementary and supplementary to the earlier one. I shall undertake, so far as fragmentary materials will allow me, (1) to give an account of the libraries, both public and private, in North Carolina in the eighteenth century, and (2) to write the history of her domestic literature, so far as she had one, during the same time. I shall first discuss briefly the character and circumstances under which settlements were made, the lack of schools and cities, and the inevitable result on the social and intellectual life of the colony.

When we examine the conditions under which North Carolina was settled, the comparative lateness at which she began to show any degree of intellectual development is easily explained. The first settlers in North Carolina-1650 to 1675-came mainly from Virginia by the overland route. Their motives were almost entirely economic. There were no religious refugees among them. The period of immigration. from political reasons began after the suppression of Bacon's

"rebellion" in Virginia in 1676. Then North Carolina became the "common subterfuge and lurking place" for such "rogues, runaways, and rebels" as could not and would not endure the intolerant and personal government of Sir William Berkeley.

They found the lands in Carolina very fertile. They settled on the water courses, for these furnished the best and only means of transportation and communication. They took up large tracts of land and were soon practically segregated from all the world. Some of the immigrants had slaves, others had white servants, and the tendency among them was to reproduce the rural gentry of England, not her village communities and folkmote assemblies-the types seen in New England. Oldmixon says that in 1663 there were 300 families, or some 1,500 souls in the settlement. In 1675 Chalmers says there were 4,000 inhabitants. In 1677 there were 1,400 tithables, or working hands, of which at least one-third were Indians, negroes, and women. Calculating on one inhabitant in four as a tithable, it will be seen that the estimate of Chalmers is nearly correct. When Drummond was made governor of the colony of Albemarle in 1664, his commission extended over a space of territory 40 miles square, or over 1,600 square miles. The surveyor-general writes, in 1665, that this would not even then include all the settled parts, and urges that the commission be extended. According to the estimate of Oldmixon, then, there was less than one settler to the square mile, and if we were to suppose that the additional settlers between 1663 and 1675 did not extend the bounds of the settled districts, which was not the case, there would still be less than four persons, or less than one family, to each square mile of territory.'

North Carolina is thinly settled to-day. There are only 31 persons to the square mile against 127 in New York, 157 in Connecticut, and 287 in Massachusetts. It is likewise the most distinctively rural State in the Union. With a popula tion in 1890 of 1,617,947 North Carolina had only one city of more than 20,000 inhabitants, only four of more than 10,000, and seven with 5,000 or more. These seven cities contain 70,387 inhabitants. Ninety-five per cent of her population live in the country or in country towns of less than 5,000 people. This lack of centralization is the result of historical causes and of physical disadvantages.

1 Colonial Records of North Carolina, I, p. 260.