4# EARLIEST SETTLERS More than fifty years was to pass from the time Harlot wrote of his explorations, before the first known permanent European settler was to come to North Carolina. He was Nathaniel Batts who settled in the Albermarle section about 1645. By 1663 when the Lords Proprietors received from King Charles II their famous charter including the Kinston area, there were about a thousand settlers most of which were in what is now the Perquimans County. The first Europeans to explore the Kinston area were John Lawson and Baron Christopher De Graffenreid. The latter met Lawson the surveyor-general, who was in London seeing about publication of his book, Lawson's Histoiy of North Carolina. The supplementary title was "Containing the Exact Description and Natural History of That Country, Together With the Present State Thereof And a Journal of A Thousand Miles Traveled Through Several Nations of Indians, Giving a Particular Account of Their Customs, Manners, etc. etc." The first edition was published in London in 1709, and it proved to be so popular it is still being used today. Lawson had 'built a house about a mile from an Indian town at the fork of Neuse River, where "I dwelt by myself, excepting a young Indian Fellow, and a Bull Dog that I had along with me." This Indian town, the future site of New Bern, was called Chattooka, and he owned about 600 acres. He was asked by the Lords Proprietors to assist DeGraffenreid in establishing the colony of Palatines and Swiss in North Carolina. Some of these Palatines and many of their descendants, were later to become settlers in the Kinston are. Cordially, Earl Sasser ewsass@writeme.com