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Colonial and State Records of North Carolina
Letter from William Tryon to Wills Hill, Marquis of Downshire
Tryon, William, 1729-1788
April 25, 1769
Volume 08, Pages 31-32

[From Tryon's Letter Book.]
Letter from Governor Tryon to Earl Hillsborough.

Brunswick the 25th April 1769.

It has not been before in my power to transmit to your Lordship the inclosed list of Taxables of this province for 1766 and 1767 [see Vol. VII, pages 228 and 539—Editor] from a neglect of many

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of the clerks of the counties not punctually sending me their respective lists

The County of Pasquotank I observe has returned 554 less Taxables in 1767, than in 1766; this is not owing to a decrease of inhabitants but to an omission in some justices not returning to the county court the taxables in their districts, occasioned I believe from the disputes that arose in the county about the removing their clerk; During the contention the Justices would not hold the Inferior Courts for three terms. This induced me by the advice of the Council to make out a new commission for justices of that county and to leave out all who were refractory, till they should return to a better sense of their duty. This step I have been informed has settled all differences and that business is carried on as usual.

By letters I have lately received from the back country the Sheriff of Orange County as he was going to serve a Capias on two or three of the late insurgents was seized tied up to a tree and received from them a severe flogging. I have however the satisfaction to be informed by other letters that this act of outrage is not countenanced but disapproved by the body of the people who called themselves regulators. These matters I have laid before the Council who have desired to postpone the consideration of them till further intelligence is received from the back country. The Attorney General writes me that James Hunter was brought to tryal at Hillsborough last month but that the jury bringing in an insufficient verdict the Chief Justice awarded a new tryal at the next court, and that everything appeared quiet. Hermon Husbands who was and is still believed to have been at the bottom of the late disturbances took his tryal at the same court and was acquited for the want of proof.

I take the liberty to inclose your Lordship three months observations of the heat of the weather at Hillsborough last summer taken by a thermometer of Adams's. The heat on the sea board of this province has not risen higher than ninety two degrees, the summer of 1765 in the hottest day it was up only at 88½ degrees. The heat of the days in both situations are nearly similar, but the nights in the hilly country are much cooler than those on the sea board which gives the inhabitants in the former a great advantage in point of health.