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46 Chronicles of the Cape Fear Rwer

friends to do so. Determined to give it importance, he ordered
that the Council should meet there, and also that the courts
should be held there instead of at Brunswick; and, indeed, as a
sort of advertisement, he made May 13, 1735, a gala day for
the village. On that day he had the land office opened there,
also the Court of Exchequer to meet there, as well as the New
Hanover Court, and, likewise, the Council. Then he sought to
have the village incorporated under the name of Wilmington.
For a brief time the influence of Brunswick prevailed against
him, but he finally succeeded.

The Act of Incorporation,! passed in 1739 by the Assembly,
is as follows:

An Act, for erecting the village called Newton, in New Han-
over County, into a town and township, by the name of Wil-
mington; and regulating and ascertaining the bounds thereof.

Section 1. Whereas, several merchants, tradesmen, artifi-
cers, and other persons of good substance, have settled them-
selves at a village called Newton lying on the east branch of
Cape Fear; and whereas, the said village by reason of its con-
venient situation at the meeting of the two great branches of
Cape Fear River, and likewise, by reason of the depth of water,
capable of receiving vessels of considerable burthen, safety of its
roads beyond any other part of the river, and the secure and
easy access from all parts of the different branches of the said
river, is, upon all those and many other accounts, more proper

for being erected into a town or township, than any other part

of the said river.
Src. 2. Be it therefore enacted by His Excellency Gabriel

Johnston, Esq., Governor, by and with the advice and consent
of His Majesty’s Council and General Assembly of this prov-
ince, and it is hereby enacted, by the authority of the same, that
the village heretofore called Newton, lying on the east side of
the northeast branch of Cape Fear River, in New Hanover
County, shall, from and after the passage of this Act, be a

town and township, and the said village is hereby established -

a town and township by the name of Wilmington, the bounds
whereof shall be and are circumscribed in manner following:
That is to say, to the northeast, by the lands of His Excellency
Gabriel Johnston, Esq.; upwards and below, by the lands of
Michael Dyer; to the westward by the northeast branch of Cape
Fear River; and to the eastward, by a line drawn between the

iSwann’s Collection Public Acts, North Carolina, 1739, Chapter IV.
p. 99.

 

 

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