rights, established
in the early days of the colony when the counties south of Albemarle
Sound had not been organized, refused to send delegates to this
Assembly; whereupon that body, though a majority of its members were
absent, passed an act reducing the representation from the Albemarle
region to two members from each county. Indignant at this act, which
they considered illegal, the citizens in the northern counties refused
to subscribe to it, and for eight years declined to send any delegates
at all to the Assembly; and the bill for establishing a town in
Perquimans was heard from no more until the trouble between the two
sections was settled.

Finally the people of Albemarle sent a petition to George III, praying
him to restore their rights in the General Assembly, and the King
graciously granted their request. In 1758 an Assembly met at New Bern,
at which delegates from all sections of the colony were present; and in
answer to a petition presented by John Harvey, it passed an act for the
erection of a town at Phelps Point in Perquimans County.

The little village was called Hertford, a word of Saxon origin,
signifying Red Ford. It was named for the Marquis of Hertford, an
English noble who moved for the repeal of the Stamp Act in 1766, and who
was ambassador at Paris in the reign of George III, and Lord Lieutenant
of Ireland.

The settlement at Phelps Point was already an important rendezvous for
the dwellers in the county. The cypress trees under which Fox had stood
and preached to the little band of brethren still stood, as they stand
to-day, bending lovingly over the stream, close to the end of the point.
A little Church of England chapel farther down had since 1709 been the
center of the religious life of its members in the county, and the
court-house on the point since 1722 had been the scene of the political
and judicial gatherings in Perquimans.

The Assembly of 1762, realizing the importance of the little town to the
community, decreed that a public ferry should be established "from
Newby's Point to Phelp's Point where the court-house now stands," and in
1766 Seth Sumner, William Skinner, Francis Nixon, John Harvey and Henry
Clayton were appointed trustees of the ferry; a three-penny tax was laid
on all taxable persons to defray the expenses of the ferry, and "All
persons crossing to attend vestry meetings, elections, military
musters, court martials and sessions of the court" were to be carried
over