proceeded to subscribe to the oath of allegiance to the new sovereign,
as did Tobias Knight, collector of customs, from Currituck, and other
public officers present.

This meeting, with one exception, a Council held in 1717, is the last
recorded as occurring at the Hecklefield home. Edenton, founded in 1715,
became the seat of government for a number of years, and meetings
affecting the affairs of the colony were for the most part held there in
the court-house built soon after.

Captain John Hecklefield's house on Little River now disappears from
history; but though no longer the scene of the public activities of
Albemarle, it doubtless kept up for many years its reputation as the
center of all that was best in the social life of the colony.

CHAPTER V

COLONIAL DAYS IN CHURCH AND SCHOOL ON LITTLE RIVER, PASQUOTANK COUNTY

Among the many wide and beautiful rivers that drain the fertile lands of
ancient Albemarle, none is more full of historic interest than the
lovely stream known as Little River, the boundary set by nature to
divide Pasquotank County on the east from her sister county, Perquimans,
on the west.

On the shores of this stream, "little," as compared with the other
rivers of Albemarle, but of noble proportions when contrasted with some
of the so-called rivers of our western counties, the history of North
Carolina as an organized government had its beginning.

As early as 1659 settlers began moving down into the Albemarle region
from Virginia, among them being George Durant, who spent two years
searching for a suitable spot to locate a plantation, finally deciding
upon a fertile, pleasant land lying between Perquimans River on the
west, and Little River on the east. Following Durant came George
Catchmaid, John Harvey, John Battle, Dr. Thomas Relfe and other
gentlemen, who settled on Pasquotank, Perquimans and Little rivers,
buying their lands from the Indians; and later, when Charles II
included the Albemarle region in the grant to the Lords Proprietors,
taking out patents for their estates from these new owners of the soil,
paying the usual quit-rents for the same.

John Jenkins, Valentine Byrd, and other wealthy men came later into this
newly settled region, and by 1663 the Albemarle region was a settlement
of importance, and Governor Berkeley, of Virginia, one of the Lords
Proprietors, had, with the concurrence of his partners in this new land,
sent William Drummond to govern the colony; a