The men and women who made the Revolution were, famously, anti-taxation (at least, "without representation") but here's a public expenditure they might well have cheered: the N.C. Archives has digitized and made available on the Web a collection of very old North Carolina newspapers, dating to colonial times. Up to now, these fish-wrappers/valuable historical documents could be seen only on microfilm at libraries.
So we can call up, say, an N.C. Gazette from 1777 and see how the War of Independence was faring - and how it was viewed here. Fascinating stuff, in the original typeface too.
Sadly, Raleigh and Wake County aren't represented in this batch from the Archives. But, rummaging around online in a Fayetteville Gazette from 1793, Publisher Charles Broadwell of the current-day Fayetteville Observer noted in a recent column that he'd dredged up news of a bridge reportedly being built over New Hope Creek on a route from Raleigh to Chapel Hill.
