Province of North Carolina

Origins

The northern settlements of the Province of Carolina, around Albemarle Sound, had long been governed separately, and in 1712 the proprietors gave them their own governor, Edward Hyde. The colony was then fighting the Tuscarora War. In 1729 the Crown bought out seven of the eight proprietors, and North Carolina became a royal province.

Rule and society

Without a good deep-water port, the colony grew more slowly than its neighbours, with small farms, tobacco, and naval stores of tar, pitch and turpentine from the longleaf pine forests. Scots-Irish and German settlers filled the backcountry. Governor William Tryon built an expensive palace at New Bern, the capital from the 1760s, and crushed the Regulator movement of backcountry farmers protesting corrupt officials at the Battle of Alamance in 1771.

Decline and legacy

Governor Josiah Martin fled in 1775. In April 1776 the Halifax Resolves made North Carolina the first colony to instruct its delegates to vote for independence, and it became a state of the United States.