|Picture from the 1860s found in an old photo album of the Hicks family of Granville County
see photo analysis
When Europeans first settled on the coast of America the major Indian tribes settled in North Carolina were the Hatteras, Chowanocs, Tuscarora, Catawba, and Cherokee. The colony of Carolina was created in 1663 when King Charles II made a grant to the eight Lords Proprietors. The part of Carolina that become North Carolina was called Albemarle County until 1689, at which time the colony that became what is now considered North Carolina was created. The early residents of Albemarle County and North Carolina were mostly English settlers from neighboring Virginia who lived in the northeast part of the state. On July 25, 1729, the Lords Proprietors sold the colony to the crown and it became a royal colony. One share was not sold to the crown, and this part became the Granville District in the north part of the state in which the Granville grants were located. The land that became Tennessee was originally part of North Carolina until it became a separate state on June 1, 1796.
In 1732 Scottish Highlanders started to settle along the Cape Fear River. By the middle 1700s settlement started in the piedmont of North Carolina. These settlers were English from the coastal areas and German and Scotch-Irish from western Virginia and Pennsylvania. Also, many African-Americans lived in the state before the Civil War. In 1860 the number of free Negroes was 30,463 and number of slaves was 331,059.
I will research from any time period from colonial to the 1900s using the books and census records at the North Carolina Genealogy Library, original records at the North Carolina State Archives, or other resources at any libraries in the area. I started researching my own family in 1989. My current research interests for my own family are in Virginia, Maryland, and England in the 1600s. I published my first genealogy article in The Virginia Genealogist 42[Jan.-March 1998], and my second publication will appear in The Bulletin of The Maryland Genealogical Society. I started professional genealogy in 2003.
1238-A Hamilton Court
Cary, NC 27511