Cape Fear, June 3d 1754.
My Lords, [of the Board of Trade]
The 4th of April I received your Lordships of the 5th Decr nothing could give me more pleasure than to find my proceedings to that time approved of.
My last of the 19th of March informed your Lordships of the proceedings of last Assembly to which I refer you; I assure your Lordships I have acted the part of a faithfull Servant to His Majesty am afraid from the unhappy divisions in the different Provinces the French will make good their settlements on the Ohio this year; when I wrote last I imagined our People would be maintained in Virginia after their arrival there, but I find every Province are to maintain their own people; as we have but very little silver and gold here this has laid us under great difficultys, we are obliged to lessen the number of our forces to 450 men, I expect 150 of them will sail for Alexandria in Virginia the first fair wind, the rest will begin their march in three or four days.
From the indolence of Mr. Johnston our militia was fallen much to decay. This Province is divided into twenty two Counties; I have
formed a regiment of foot in each of them, I have already form'd nine troops of Horse and intend forming eight more, they will be of great service in case of any sudden attack.I have not been able to get an exact list of the militia yet; by the best computation I can make the amount of the foot is about 15,000, and about 400 Horse now formed, about 1000 exempt from muster as Justices, Lawyers, Millers, Ferrymen &c. only in case of an invasion and about 1500 in the out parts that do not list themselves; by the best computation I can make there is about 10,000 slaves from twelve years old & upwards. Last week I received a letter from several of the Inhabitants of Anson County near the Cattaboes with a Copy of a letter from Mr. Glen Governor of South Carolina to the King and Great men of the nation dated the 8th of April last telling them that he and the Council had given Orders that no white men should settle within thirty miles of their town and that he had ordered all the white men within that distance to remove, there is settled within that bounds at least five hundred familys of white people that have the Kings Patents It is as fine a Country as any in America, the Cattaboes are about three hundred men, the tuskarora Indians are as numerous as the Cattaboes and are very well satisfied with ten thousand acres of land this is upwards of two millions of acres. What power he and his Council has to do this I cannot say last April he gave me an account that he had entered into such an agreement with the Indians I think this is ill timed. Inclosed is the Journals of the Assembly of April 1753. by the death of the clerk of the Upper House and the negligence of the clerk of the Lower House and the Printer I am not able to transmit the Laws and Journals of the last Session but expect to be able to do it in a few days.
Additional Notes for Electronic Version: This letter enclosed one legislative journal - See Related Documents, but a letter from Rowan to the Board of Trade dated October 22, 1754 [csr05-0063] indicates that the lower house journal was not sent at this time.