I am trying to write authentic historical dialogue regarding the Harpe brothers and seeing as they lived from around the 1770s to the 1800s, I would need primary sources from that time period and in the same geographical period, North Carolina. I would also need sources from people in the same socioeconomic class.
Hi there - we're happy to approve your question related to your creative project, and we are happy for people to answer. However, we should warn you that many flairs have become reluctant to answer questions for aspiring novelists and the like, based on past experience: some people working on creative projects have a tendency to try to pump historians for trivia while ignoring the bigger points they were making, while others have a tendency to argue with historians when the historical reality does not line up with what's needed for a particular scene or characterization. Please respect the answers of people who have generously given you their time, even if it's not always what you want to hear.
Additionally, as amazing as our flair panel is, we should also point out that /r/AskHistorians is not a professional historical consultation service. If you're asking a question here because you need vital research for a future commercial product such as a historical novel, you may be better off engaging a historical consultant at a fair hourly rate to answer these questions for you. We don't know what the going rate for consultancy work would be in your locality, but it may be worth looking into that if you have in-depth or highly plot-reliant questions for this project. Some /r/AskHistorians flairs could be receptive to working as a consultant in this way. However, if you wish for a flair here to do this work for you, you will need to organize this with them yourselves.
For more general advice about doing research to inform a creative project, please check out our Monday Methods post on the subject.
Determine if your state has a centralized repository for old newspaper digitization, similar to Texas’ Portal to Texas History. If not, about a half dozen commercial databases or Chronicling America from the Library of Congress would have newspapers — if any survived from this period. Contacting libraries and archives or searching their online catalogues is another way to go, and could help you find diaries, letters, etc. Your state’s larger libraries and archives will likely have persons on staff who, when posed this question, can point you in the right direction—it just might take a while for the request to find the right person in that particular institution.