The Granville Grant: A Proprietor Who Kept His Land

When the English Crown bought out seven of the eight Lords Proprietors of Carolina in seventeen twenty-nine, one man refused to sell. John Lord Carteret, later Earl Granville, kept his one-eighth share, which translated into the northern half of modern North Carolina. His strip of land, known as the Granville District, ran roughly sixty-five miles wide from the Atlantic Ocean westward.

Surveyors began running the southern boundary of this grant in seventeen forty-two at Cape Hatteras, and the survey reached this area across the sound in seventeen forty-three. The line was extended westward in stages through seventeen fifty-three. The Granville Grant shaped land ownership in colonial North Carolina for decades, as large numbers of settlers obtained titles from Granville's agents rather than the colonial government.