State of North-Carolina, / Chowan County. / To All Sheriffs and / Constables / Within this State, to whom these Presents shall come. / [followed by two long paragraphs of text]. Signed in type at the end "S. Dickinson. (L.S.)"

Edenton, NC: [Printed by Hodge & Wills?], March 28, 1796. Printed broadside or handbill, 6 3/4 x 8 1/8 inches, employing several sizes and styles of type, including a large bold type for the third and fourth lines in the head; in 1796, Hodge & Wills were operating as state printers in Edenton and were probably responsible for this apparently unrecorded broadside. In this early North Carolina "Hue and Cry" broadside, Samuel Dickinson, a Chowan County Justice of the Peace, here using “L.S.” (for the Latin, locus sigilli, or, the place of the seal), asks that all law enforcement officials be on the lookout for one Cyrus Marsh, a thief who took gold worth $200 from a trunk belonging to one John Peek Case, was apprehended, and then made his escape; "I charge and command you … to search diligently for the said Cyrus Marsh, and to make 'Hue and Cry' after him, from town to town, and from county to county." Not in Evans, Bristol, or Shipton & Mooney. Not in McMurtrie "North Carolina Imprints, 1749-1800." Not in Hummel (which records only one North Carolina broadside dated before 1800). Apparently unrecorded on OCLC. Thoroughly browned, but a lovely untrimmed copy of a rare 18th-century North Carolina broadside, apparently unrecorded. Folded. (#7658). Item #60480

Price: $6,000.00