THE GRAVE OF CORNELIUS HARNETT  
Fayetteville Observer (Fayetteville, North Carolina), Monday, September 21, 1857
Contact: Myrtle Bridges May 10, 2016

	We before stated the fact, that Harnett sleeps his sleep of death in the north-east corner of the Episcopal burying ground 
in this town. The spot is marked by a red sand-stone about two feet high, on which is sinscribed the following:

"Cornelius Harnett
Died April 20, 1781
Aged 58 years."

	"Slave to no sect, he took no private road, But looked through nature up to Nature's God"
Such is the brief and artless biography written by the men of 1781 of "the Samuel Adams of North Carolina," the first President 
of the Provincial Congress of the State, and the first selected statesman and patriot of the age in which he lived.
	We cannot say his resting-place has been neglected, for the "old red sand-stone" marks the spot of his repose, and points the 
pilgrim to his narrow bed. Two aged China trees wave their arms above him, and two stalwart oaks shade the remains from the eastern 
and the western sun while the flox flower in rich luxuriant soil grows upon his breast.
	In the days of the Revolution, he was true to the mother country. In these latter days the Legislature of the State has honored 
his memory by assigning his name to the county of "Harnett" recently created from the county of Cumberland-a county whose fair 
proportions were … foreshown in making the county of "Moore" which, like the latter, was named after a …  New Hanover.-Wil. Herald.

GRAVE OF CORNELIUS HARNETT  
Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper (New York, New York), Saturday, October 13, 1866

	Among our illustrations this week is a view of the grave of Cornelius Harnett, one of the early and constant patriots of the 
Revolution, at St. James's Church, Wilmington, North Carolina; and as we, as a people, have a somewhat ungrateful habit of forgetting 
those to whome our obligations have been of long continuance, a few words of reminder of the history of Mr. Harnett will not be out 
of place.
	Cornelius Harnett was born in England, of a wealthy and influential family, in April, 1723, but removed to North Carolina at an 
early age, and acquired additional property and distinction there. He was among the earliest and most vigorous declaimers against the 
Stamp Act, and acquired such a reputation in that "rebellious" direction, that when Josiah Quincy, of Massachusetts, passed a night 
at his house, in 1773, he named Harnett "the Samuel Adams of North Carolina." In 1775 he became first President of the Provincial Council 
of North Carolina (really Governor of the Colony), and in that capacity put a resolution before that body instructing the congressional 
delagates from North Carolina to cast their votes for a Declaration of Independence. When the Declaration arrived in Carolina, after its 
signature on the Fourth of July, 1776, Mr. Harnett read it aloud to an immense assemblage, at Halifax, amid the heartie patroitic demonstra-
tions; and so he conducted himself generally, that when Sir Henry Clinton issued his proclamation there in the same year, Mr. Harnett had 
the honor, with Robert Howe, of being excepted from offered pardon. When the British forces took possession of the country around Cape Fear 
River, in 1779 Mr. Harnett fell into their hands, and he died without gaining his liberty-one of the truest and most noted Southern martyrs 
to the great cause. His grave is little known (as is his history), merely presented by upright slabs of brown stone at the head and the foot 
with the simple inscription of the former: "Corneilus Harnett, died 1781, aged 58 years"

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