Early Warrenton

Sketches of Old Warrenton North Carolina Traditions and Reminiscence of the Talented People who Made It    by Lizzie Wilson Montgomery

Edward & Broughton Printing Company Raleigh 1924

Was mentioned in Historical Sketches of Warrenton – “History records that during the American Revolution there were no Tories in Bute, and its patriotic people could not endure the name of Bute, that being the name of a former favorite, friend and Prime Minister of George III.  It 1779 the County of Bute was divided (the line being run by Mr. Christmas) into the counties of Warren and Franklin.  Their patriotism, however, seems no to have been sectional or local, but national, as the name of the two counties indicated.

Warren was named for Dr. Joseph Warren, a patriot and soldier who fell at Bunker Hill, and Franklin for sleek Benjamin Franklin, the Boston patriot, the great philosopher, and America's greatest statesman of the era, the side of a tallow chandler and sold boiler.

Warrenton, the county seat of Warren County, was incorporated in 1779.  A plot and survey of the streets and lots and public squares was made in that year by William Christmas, a resident of Franklin County, and afterwards a state Senator from that County.

The act of the Legislature (1779), appointed Commissioners and trustees, namely, William Johnson, Philemon Hawkins, Edward Jones, John Faulcon, Atkins McLemore, and William Duke for lying out and carrying on the town, provided that they should lay off and set apart, out of the one hundred acres already purchased, a lot or square convenient as sufficient for courthouse, prison and stock; and also to lay out one hundred other lots, each to contain one half acre, with convenient streets and squares, the surplus of land, if any, to remain as a common for the use of the town.  The lots were numbered and sold by subscription and $fifty dollars per lot, no one person to be permitted to subscribe for more than six lots.  The subscribers afterwards drew by lot or chance for the several plots.  There was a stipulation that a forfeiture should be incurred in case any subscriber or purchasers should not build within three years upon his lot a brick, stone, or well framed house, not less than twenty feet long, sixteen feet wide, and at least ten feet pitch, with a brick or stone chimney.  I have no information as to the time of the erection of the courthouse, jail and stocks.  By an act of the Legislature, April 1, 1783, special tax was allowed to be levied on the property of the County for that purpose.  Until the courthouse should be erected the act provided that the court should be held at the home of Thomas Christmas.

 From all that I can learn it is probable that at the time that Warrenton was laid out there was not a single resident house standing on its site.  There was a granary, used for the storage of grain collected from the taxpayers for war purposes, what was known as the grain tax.  There had been a small settlement at the forks of the Shady Grove at Halifax roads, consisting of a storehouse containing groceries, commonplace dry goods, tobacco and liquors, blacksmith and wheelwright shops for repair of vehicles and shoeing the horses of the stage line, and for the convenience of the surrounding country people.”

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