The first printer active in North Carolina was James Davis, a native
of Virginia, who probably received his training from William Parks at
Williamsburg.[23] Davis settled at New Bern in 1749, and in the same
year he began printing _The Journal of the House of Burgesses_.
The earliest North Carolina imprint in the Library of Congress,
printed by Davis in 1751, is carefully described in its title, _A
Collection of All the Public Acts of Assembly, of the Province of
North-Carolina: Now in Force and Use. Together with the Titles of all
such Laws as are Obsolete, Expired, or Repeal'd. And also, an exact
Table of the Titles of the Acts in Force, Revised by Commissioners
appointed by an Act of the General Assembly of the said Province, for
that Purpose; and Examined with the Records, and Confirmed in full
Assembly_.
This collection is sometimes called "Swann's Revisal" after the
commissioner William Swann, who did a major part of the editing and
wrote the dedication to Governor Gabriel Johnston. One of the acts,
passed on March 7, 1746, begins with the preamble, "Whereas for
Want of the Laws of this Province being Revised and Printed, the
Magistrates are often at a Loss how to discharge their Duty, and the
People transgress many of them through Want of knowing the same...."
These words reflect not only a shortage of copies, but also the need
to rectify discrepancies in the manuscript copies by publishing a
uniform text.
Davis did not complete the volume until about November 15, 1751, when
he advertised it in his newspaper, _The North-Carolina Gazette_. Four
distinct issues of the edition can be identified;[24] and of these,
the Library of Congress owns both the third, in which the laws of 1751
and 1752 (not shown in the table) are added, and the fourth, which is
like the third but with a title page dated 1752 and a new table.
The Library's copy of the third issue bears on the title page the
signature of Michael Payne, a resident of Edenton, N.C., who served
in the State legislature during the 1780's. The Library purchased
it in 1936 from Richard Dillard Dixon of Edenton for $500. The copy
of the fourth issue is signed "Will Cumming" in an early hand, and
it is inscribed to Samuel F. Phillips, who was Solicitor General of
the United States from 1872 to 1885 and who appears to have been the
latest owner of the book before its addition to the Library in 1876.
[Illustration: (_A Collection of All the Public Acts of Assembly, of
the Province of North-Carolina: Now in Force and Use. Together with
the Titles of all such Laws as are Obsolete, Expired, or Repeal'd.
And also, an exact Table of the Titles of the Acts in Force, Revised
by Commissioners appointed by an Act of the General Assembly of the
said Province, for that Purpose; and Examined with the Records, and
Confirmed in full Assembly_. Printed by James Davis in 1751.)]
[Footnote 23: See W. S. Powell's introduction to _The Journal of the
House of Burgesses, of the Province of North-Carolina, 1749_ (Raleigh,
1949), p. vii.]
[Footnote 24: Douglas C. McMurtrie, _Eighteenth Century North Carolina
Imprints_ (Chapel Hill, 1938), p. 50.]