McCulloh, Henry, approximately 1700-1779

Henry McCulloch was a powerful English merchant, landowner, and speculator in North Carolina who lived from 1700-1779. In 1739 he was appointed, "Commissioner for supervising, inspecting, and comptrolling our revenues and grants of land in South and North Carolina." During this period he unsuccessfully petitioned the Privy Council to get rid of the ineffective quitrent system, which was a land tax system paid to the owner of the property during the mid-18th century. McCulloch possessed land grants of well over one million acres in North Carolina. The grants were dependent on protestant settlement and quitrent payments to McCulloch who needed to pay the King and a make a profit on the difference. When neither settlement nor payments materialized by 1765, which was the end of the ten year contract, he lost the grants. During this period most of his other landholdings were sold. He then relinquished control of his other holdings to his son, who managed them until the revolution, at which time they were confiscated. During the early 1760's McCulloch was hired to draft a stamp tax for the colony but instead, a more moderate version of his bill was put into place as the stamp act of 1765. He died in 1779 while residing in Chiswick, Middlesex County, near London, England.