erms as the
people of Virginia. The Lords graciously consented to this petition, and
on the 1st of May, 1668, they issued a paper known to this day as the
Deed of Grant, by which land in Albemarle was directed to be granted on
the same terms as in Virginia. The deed was duly recorded in Albemarle,
and was preserved with scrupulous care.

There is a tradition in the county that the Assembly also took steps for
preparing for an Indian war then threatening, which broke out the
following year, but was soon suppressed.

Doubtless other laws were enacted, such as were necessary for the
settlement, though no record of them is extant. And then, the business
that called them together having been transacted, and the wheels of
government set in motion, these early law-makers returned home, to manor
house and log cabin, to the care of the great plantations, to the plow,
and the wild, free life of the hunter and trapper; and a new government
had been born.

There seems to be no doubt in the minds of such historians as Colonel
Saunders, Captain Ashe, and President D.H. Hill, that the first
Albemarle Assembly did convene in the early spring of 1665. As for the
day and month, tradition alone is our authority. An old almanac of H.D.
Turner's gives the date as February 6th, and in default of any more
certain date, this was inscribed upon the tablet which the Sir Walter
Raleigh Chapter Daughters of the Revolution have erected at Hall's Creek
Church.

As to the statement that the place marked by the tablet was the scene of
the meeting of our first assemblymen, tradition again is responsible.
But such authorities as Captain Ashe, and various members of the State
Historical Commission, accept the tradition as a fact. And all old
residents of Nixonton assert that their fathers and grandfathers handed
the story down to them.

An extract from a letter from Captain Ashe, author of Ashe's History of
North Carolina, to the Regent of the local Chapter Daughters of the
Revolution may be of interest here:

"Yesterday I came across in the library at Washington, this entry, made
by the late Mrs. Frances Hill, widow of Secretary of the State William
Hill: 'I was born in Nixonton March 14, 1789. Nixonton is a small town
one mile from Hall's Creek, and on a little rise of ground from the
bridge stood the big oak, where the first settlers of our county held
their assembly.'"

Other documents in possession of the Regent of our local Chapter
Daught