The Free County of Albemarle

The History of the Americans

In the early 1660s, a motley crew of free-thinkers, republican veterans of Oliver Cromwell’s New Model Army, and Quakers would build the freest place in all the English world, the County of Albemarle in northeastern North Carolina. Protected from the north, and incursions by Virginia royalists, by the Great Dismal Swamp, from the east by the treacherous waters of the Outer Banks, and from Indians by the skilled diplomacy of fur trader Nathaniel Batts, the settlers would prosper as small farmers and free tradesmen. Their leaders would include John Jenkins, veteran of Fendall’s Rebellion in Maryland, and a dissident Virginian planter and sheriff named William Drummond. Together they would resist attempts by the proprietors to exert control over their land and lives, and would extend the franchise to all free Englishmen in the colony. This is their story.

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Selected references for this episode (Commission earned for Amazon purchases through the website)

Noeleen McIlvenna, Early American Rebels: Pursuing Democracy from Maryland to Carolina, 1640-1700

Lindley S. Butler, A History of North Carolina in the Proprietary Era 1629-1729

Albemarle County, North Carolina

Francis Yeardley

Map of Albemarle County in context