Documenting the American South Logo
Colonial and State Records of North Carolina
Memorial from John Rutherford concerning the collection of quit rents
Rutherford, John, 1724-1782
October 22, 1767
Volume 22, Pages 877-888

JOHN RUTHERFORD, 23RD DECEMBER, 1767.

North Carolina—ss.

To His Excellency, William Tryon, Esq., His Majesty’s Captain-General and Governor in Chief in and over the said Province, and to the Members of His Majesty’s Honorable Council.

The answer of John Rutherford, his Majesty’s Receiver-General, sheweth:

That Benjamin Heron, Esq., Deputy Auditor, having by his memorial of the 20th instant, desired permission to lay before your Excellency and Honors one or two volumes of what he calls the Rent Roll, to know if they are in a proper condition to be received into the Auditor’s office as they now are.

Your respondent, in answer to the said memorial, begs leave to inform your Excellency and this Board that the Deputy Auditor mistakes in supposing these ledgers were delivered to him as a complete rent roll, whereas they were delivered to him only as preparatory to a rent roll’s being obtained in the manner as set forth in his memorial to your Excellency in Council, the 24th June, 1766.

Your respondent does not doubt that your Excellency and Honors, upon examining the said fourteen large volumes and two small ones, will find they are completed agreeable to his said memorial of the 24th June, 1766, and adequate to the sum allowed by the Right Honorable the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury for that service, and that the said ledgers will tend great to the advantage of the Crown to facilitate the forming a complete rent roll in a few years, provided a reasonable allowance be annually allowed to a proper person to keep posted up the said ledgers.

Your respondent, therefore, humbly prays your Excellency and Honors to order the Deputy Auditor to continue said fourteen volumes and two stitched on sheets in his custody as Register of Lands

-------------------- page 878 --------------------
in his Majesty’s district of this Province until he receives your Excellency’s further orders on that head, and as in duty bound your memorialist shall ever pray.

JOHN RUTHERFORD,
Receiver-General.

22nd October, 1767.