To the Sasser-List, This is the story of Lenoir County going back to the start of the Colony of North Carolina. I picked it up at the library in the County of Lenoir. In these pages we hear again the story of the Palatines. This is the area where old Henry was born. Later on in the story we will see land grants to Sasser's. I hope this is not to wordy for the list members if so let me know and I will try to cut it back some. This is directly scanned, you are getting it word for word. This is two pages scanned and I have 25 pages in all. Remember if it is too much just give me the word. Unfortunately what it does not do is give us marriage dates, birth dates, and children. P.S. The first attempt at sending was a failure. I will now try it bit by bit. 1# IN THE BEGINNING ... A GREAT ENIGMA The history of North Carolina seems as great an enigma as that of its first governor, Richard Caswell. Even though North Carolina was the site of England's first attempt at colonization with Sir Walter Raleigh in Roanoke Island in 1585, whose fate remains a mystery to this day, and by 1776 it was the fourth most populous of the colonies, no specialized study of its colony's history has hitherto been published. Due to its dangerous coast it has been described as a fortress, with the barrier reef of the coast line for its wall and the broad sounds behind the wall for its moat. The wall seemed to discourage frontal assault by settlers. From the beginning North Carolina was preoccupied with local problems - conflicts between settlers and Indians, between east and west, between assemblies and governors - combined with geographic and cultural isolation to give North Carolina a uniquely parochial character. North Carolina was from the beginning strikingly different from its southern sisters. It had few slaves, no plantation aristocracy, no center of commerce and culture, and despite the production of naval stores that were highly prized in Britain, was not closely bound to the mother country. Nevertheless, North Carolina was the first state formally to direct its delegates in the Continental Congress to vote for independence. How does one explain this paradox? The authors Hugh T. Lefler and William S. Powell suggest that in 1776 North Carolina was seeking independence not only from the mother country but from Britain's other mainland colonies, a status it did in fact secure a decade or so later by refusing for a year to join the other states in adopting the Federal Constitution. Cordially, Earl Sasser ewsass@writeme.com