1754-1779

Early court records revealing

It's hard to find the site of Cumberland County's first courthouse these days, but it's not hard to find evidence that local officials got to work soon after the county's founding.

The county's deed-transaction books date from 1754. The first court minutes date from October 1755.

The first courthouse wasn't near present-day Fayetteville. It was in the northern part of the county near Linden, along the Cape Fear River near the Lower Little River.

The courthouse was at a site later referred to as "Choffington" or "Choeffington," or more properly "Chaffering Town" (from the word "chaffer," meaning to bargain, haggle or bandy). The first court sessions are believed to have been held nearby, at the house of Thomas Armstrong.

What kind of business went on in these early sessions?

Minutes from the first recorded meeting of the county's Court of Pleas and Quarter Sessions show that the court recorded six deeds and several cattle brands; set fees for jurors assigned to the Superior Court, which met in Wilmington; appointed road commissioners for two roads and ordered another to be laid out; and allowed "the perishable estate of James McCallam, dcd." to be sold by his executor, William Pugh.

The Chaffering Town site served as the county seat until 1763, after which it was shifted to the new town of Campbellton near the mouth of Cross Creek. The courthouse moved to Cross Creek in 1778.

Hector McNeill, Cumberland's first sheriff, was in charge of collecting taxes. He compiled the first census of the sprawling county, titled "A True List of Taxables in Cumberland County for the Year of our Lord, 1755."

The report listed 302 white males by name, 11 "mulattoes" by family name (mulatto, a colonial reference to mixed-blood black people who usually were legally free citizens), and "63 Negroes" who were not named.

These 376 individuals were the official "taxables" of the county.

Historical demographers estimated that there were actually 1,337 people in Cumberland in 1755; 2,930 in 1762; and 4,357 in 1767, about four times as many whites as were listed as "taxables" and nearly twice as many slaves, since many slaves are believed to have gone unreported.

There are some gaps in Cumberland's early records, but historians say the county is fortunate because many other counties lost their early files in courthouse fires.