of his times, as well as the most instructive view we have had left us of the civil and political history of the State during its sub-*revolutionary period. He has left us a bright and pleasing picture of the old times in Edenton, when Samuel Johnston, Joseph Hewes, Charles Johnson and Hugh Williamson were its leading men, and, with the other notables of that region,—Blounts, Skinners, Hoskinses and others,—made up a society whose traditions remain and give to Edenton a distinction which time has not entirely destroyed. After it had long ceased to be the seat of government it retained to a considerable extent its prestige in all the northern section of the State, commercially and socially.
Newbern, laid out by Colonel Thomas Pollock on his own lands about the time of the coming of De Graffenreid, was not incorporated until 1723. In 1738, Governor Gabriel Johnston called the Assembly to meet there, and in 1746 the Assembly designated it as the seat of government. With a few exceptions the subsequent sessions of the Assembly were held there during the continuance of the royal authority. Tryon, the first of the royal governors who wholly abandoned residence in the
