Plat of North Carolina Land Owned by William Byrd II

This plat shows 20,000 acres just south of the Virginia border in North Carolina that belonged to William Byrd II. The piece of land, surveyed in September 1833, measured fifteen miles in length. This map was published in "A Journey to the Land of Eden, A.D. 1733," a section in the posthumous collection of writings by William Byrd that was printed in 1841 by Edmund and Julian C. Ruffin in Petersburg, Virginia. In 1728 and 1729 Byrd led an expedition to establish the boundary between Carolina and Virginia. Having seen some of the fertile territory in North Carolina, Byrd purchased 20,000 acres at the confluence of the Dan and Irvine rivers for a mere 200 pounds, which was just a little more than the amount he'd been paid to lead the expedition.