“Accessing North Carolina’s Early Court Records” is a special project funded by the National Historic Publications and Records Commission. Begun in 2019, this effort will reintroduce some of North Carolina’s oldest and forgotten historical records to the public. Colonial Court Records, SR.401, and District Superior Court Records, SR.398, span the years ca. 1665–1823. We’re happy to announce that in mid-2020, the project archivist for the project, Marie Stark, completed work on the Colonial Court Records, providing more detailed description to increase their visibility and, in the process, stabilizing their storage to facilitate preservation for years to come.
The records consist of the state’s earliest court cases, long before North Carolina was a state or had established a stable court system. During the late 17th and early 18th centuries, courts convened at private residences or at the local tavern. At the time, North Carolina was under the ruling thumbs of the Lord Proprietors, some of whom were probably sitting comfortably in their armchairs in front of their fires in jolly old England. By the mid-eighteenth century, under control of the Crown, cases were heard in district courthouses. The bulk of the records include civil and criminal cases, land and estate records, court administrative records such as court costs, minutes and dockets and various subjects such as infrastructure, maritime activities, slavery, Native Americans, and business and trade.
Criminal Action Paper related to an accusation of drunken treason against the Crown. Colonial Court Records, SR.401, box 148, folder 1694, State Archives of North Carolina.
The first part of the project involved rehousing the Colonial Court Records into acid-free, archival-quality boxes and folders, providing an updated and complete description of the collection, developing a new and improved finding aid, and making it available in the State Archives of North Carolina’s online catalog in order for the public to be able to search. Additionally, select documents are to be digitized and made available online as a part of North Carolina’s Digital Collections (https://digital.ncdcr.gov/) and the TranscribeNC crowdsourcing project (https://archives.ncdcr.gov/researchers/ transcribenc). An original finding aid, dating back to the 1960s when the collection was last inspected, can also be found in the digital collection under the Legacy Finding Aids (https://digital.ncdcr.gov/digital/custom/legacy-finding-aids).
In the next phase of the project, Stark will be developing a brand-new finding aid for the District Superior Court Records, dating to the pre-Revolutionary period. These records include not only civil and criminal actions but also estate records that provide copious information on early North Carolina families and events in the lead-up to the Revolution. Stay tuned for more information about this phase.
In our next post, we’ll be interviewing project archivist Marie Stark about her work so far and what she found most interesting about the Colonial Court Records. For more information about the records and how you can access them, please contact our reference staff at archives@ncdcr.gov.
Written by Marie Stark with Kelly Policelli
The G.S. 132 Files 