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Colonial and State Records of North Carolina
Letter from William Tryon to Benjamin Barons
Tryon, William, 1729-1788
May 03, 1766
Volume 07, Pages 204-205

[From Tryon's Letter Book.]
Letter from Governor Tryon to Benjamin Barons, Esq,

Brunswick 3d May 1766.

I received your letter of the 6th of last month. This contained the first information communicated to me of your proposals to the gentlemen at Wilmington. These gentlemen have paid so little attention to the conveniency I might receive from the express that the messenger has called but once at Brunswick for any dispatches I might have to send on his Majesty's service. The late conduct of the gentlemen at Wilmington affords me at present no reasonable hopes of succeeding in any recommendations I may lay before them. The whole of my subscription to the Wilmington Express

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amounts only to £10 proclam. money. If you can carry your proposition into execution: I will cheerfully subscribe fifty pounds this currency and also pay the full postage of my letters for an express from your office once a fortnight for four months certain from Brunswick to Charles Town; being thoroughly sensible of the great necessity and propriety of such a channel for government correspondence. I hope I have not subjected myself to the penalty of any act of the British legislature or that my conduct will appear at home to have in any ways tended to impede his Majesty's intentions of establishing a General Post thro' this continent untill you had opened the General Post office, and it could not be considered as open, before letters were conveyed by it. I should have been obliged occasionally to have hired an express to send my public letters to South Carolina, must I in this case have sent to Mr Barons for leave to send my dispatches to his Majesty's Packet for Charlestown? I in like manner considered the Wilmington messenger, as a temporary and beneficial expedient, and by no means calculated or intended to prejudice the General Post Office. The subscription will, from the principles of its formation, drop, the moment the General Post office is opened. Mr Palmer or any others concerned in carrying of letters thro' this province last summer are not entitled to any part of the £133. 6. 8. Proc. money voted in May 1765 by resolve of the Legislature, for the support of the General Post office. That Resolve stipulates the application of the above sum to be under the direction of the Post Master General. Mr Palmer must depend on a special Resolve of the General Assembly for his reimbursement; As you inform me you expect soon to embark for England with your family, I shall continue to trouble the Governor of South Carolina with my dispatches, but as they will as long as you stay in Charles Town pass thro' your office, I accept with thanks your offer, of care of them, also for those that may arrive for me. I wish you and family a safe passage home.

I am &c