intrepid leader, the people did call the convention of
1774, elected their delegates to Philadelphia, and openly and boldly
joined and led their sister colonies in the gigantic struggle with the
mother country that now began.

In the time of Boston's need, when her ports were closed by England's
orders, and her people were threatened with starvation, John Harvey and
Joseph Hewes together caused the ship "Penelope" to be loaded with corn
and meal, flour and pork, which they solicited from the generous people
of Albemarle, and sent it with words of cheer and sympathy to their
brethren in the New England town. In 1775 Harvey again braved the anger
of the Royal Governor and called another people's convention, whose
purpose and work was to watch and circumvent the tyrant in his endeavor
to crush the patriots in the State.

"The Father of the Revolution" in Carolina, he was to his native State
what Patrick Henry was to Virginia, in the early days of the Revolution,
and what Hancock and Adams were to Massachusetts. His untimely death,
in 1775, caused by a fall from a horse, was deeply mourned by patriots
throughout the land.

Among other eminent sons of Perquimans during the Revolutionary period
the names of Miles Harvey, Colonel of the regiment from that county;
William Skinner, Lieutenant-Colonel of the same regiment; Thomas Harvey,
Major, and Major Richard Clayton, are recorded in history. Among the
delegates to the People's Convention called by Harvey and Johnston we
find the Harveys, Whedbees, Blounts, Skinners and Moores, men whose
names were prominent then as now in the social and political life of the
State.

As time went on, Phelps Point at the Narrows of the Perquimans River
became so thickly populated that by June, 1746, a petition was presented
to the General Assembly, praying for an act to be passed to lay out 100
acres of land in Perquimans, including Phelps Point, for a town and a
town commons.

But a disturbance arose in the State about that time concerning the
right of the northern counties to send five delegates each to the
Assembly, while the southern counties were allowed to send only two.
Governor Gabriel Johnson sided with the southern section, and ordered
the Assembly to meet at Wilmington in November, 1746, on which occasion
he and the southern delegates proposed to make a strong fight to reduce
the representation from the Albemarle counties.

The northern counties, tenaciously clinging to their