ble occasion,
as the legislative hall of the Grand Assembly of Albemarle, not one
stick or stone is left standing to-day. Only a few bricks where the
great chimney once stood now remain, to suggest to the imagination the
hospitable hearth around whose blazing logs the Governor and his
colleagues, the Chief Justice and his associates, and the Speaker of the
Assembly and his fellow representatives used to gather, when the old
home was the scene of the public meetings of the Albemarle Colony.

The Hecklefield home was located on Durant's Neck on the plantation
adjoining the tract of land purchased by George Durant from Kilcokonen,
the great chief of the Yeopims. Though no one now living remembers the
ancient building, yet the residents of Durant's Neck to-day, many of
whom are the descendants of the early settlers in that region,
confidently point out the site of Captain Hecklefield's house, and with
one accord agree to its location, "about three hundred yards to the
north of the main Durant's Neck road, at the foot of the late Calvin
Humphries' Lane."

An old sycamore tree, whose great girth gives evidence of the centuries
it has seen, stands by the side of the road at the entrance to the lane.
Its mottled trunk and wide spreading branches are one of the landmarks
of the region. And beneath its sheltering boughs, Durant and Catchmaid,
Pricklove and Governor Drummond himself, who, tradition claims, was one
of the residents of Durant's Neck, may often have met to talk over the
affairs of the infant settlement. Governor Hyde and Chief Justice Gale
have doubtless often hailed with relief the glistening white branches
and broad green leaves of the old tree, whose outlines had grown
familiar through many a journey to Hecklefield's home on business of
state.

No description of the house is now extant. But that the building must
have been, for those days, large and commodious, is evident from the
fact that so often beneath its roof the leading men of the colony
gathered to transact affairs of public interest. On no less than twenty
occasions did executive, judicial and legislative officers assemble at
Captain Hecklefield's to perform their various duties. That a private
home was chosen as the scene of these gatherings arose from the fact
that for over forty years after the first recorded settlement in North
Carolina, no town had been founded within her borders. Therefore no
public building of any kind, court-house or capitol,