“Sundry inhabitants of the County of New Hanover” complain about “the almost total distruction of your petitioners Stock.” They point out that “a number of gentlemen” own lands adjacent to theirs, on which the said owners “keep a number of Negroes cultivating the same but the said gentlemen will not fence their fields when cultivated by which means the Cattle & Hoggs of your petitioners range through them and destroy their Crops.” The petitioners charge that their “oppulent neighbours,” being “incensed at the depredations” by the livestock, “supply their negroes with amunition and fire arms with directions to distroy the Cattle & Hoggs of your petitioners.” They therefore pray that “owners of cultivated grounds” be compelled “to keep the same fenced” and that “the pains & penalties on Negroes committing such depredations with fire arms and other instruments of distruction to Cattle” be strengthened.
Result: Order for favorable bill to be drafted.
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Repository: North Carolina Department of Archives and History, Raleigh, North Carolina
