1790 State Lists of Census Volumes.
Heads of Families 1790.
Note that when viewing the 1790 North Carolina Census, the Counties were listed by Census Districts, which combined several counties into one District. Some Census sites have erroneously indexed the Districts as the Counties or Cities, causing great confusion when viewing Census records. The NC Districts were: Fayette District were the Counties of Anson, Cumberland, Moore, Richmond, Robeson, & Sampson. Hillsborough District were the Counties of Caswell, Chatham, Granville, Orange, Randolph, and Wake. Halifax District were the Counties of Edgecombe, Franklin, Halifax, Martin, Nash, Northampton & Warren. Edenton District consisted of Bertie, Camden, Chowan, Currituck, Gates, Hertford, Pasquotank, Perquimans & Tyrrell. Morgan District consisted of Burke, Lincoln, Rutherford & Wilkes. Newbern District covered Beaufort, Carteret, Craven, Dobbs, Hyde, Johnston, Jones, Pitt & Wayne. Salisbury District was Guilford, Iredell, Mecklenburg, Montgomery, Rockingham, Rowan, Stokes & Surry. Wilmington District covered Bladen, Brunswick, Duplin, New Hanover & Onslow.
Following link to all 1790 U.S. Federal Census Instructions & Lists:

1790 State Lists of Census

Looking for the 1790 North Carolina Census online?
1790 federal census population schedules for 3 North Carolina counties do not survive.
As substitutes for heads of household, taxpayer lists for Caswell and Orange in 1790 and for Granville in 1788 have been published with the rest of the state’s 1790 federal census in The Colonial and State Records of North Carolina. The online version in the CSR transcribes all data from the lists for Granville and Orange but has names only for Caswell County. [Heads of Families: North Carolina and Ancestry census databases list only name and county for these counties and Ancestry reports “image not available.”]
This Memorandum Upon Census of 1790 written in 1905 describes the situation:
The Census of 1790 reported, as will be seen, the names of heads of families only. A copy of the Census for each county was filed at the court house therein, but owing to the destruction of so many court houses by fire and the want of care as to old papers in others, very few could be found. The only resource was to get copies from the originals filed at Washington. To get these the passage of a special act of Congress was necessary. This act, drawn by the writer, was introduced in the Senate by Hon. F. M. Simmons, who secured its passage. In the House of Representatives its passage was secured by the earnest efforts of Hons. T. F. Kluttz and Claude Kitchin.
The foregoing is an officially certified copy of the Census of all except three counties—Caswell, Granville and Orange—whose rolls at Washington had been lost either in the fires of 1800 or 1814 or in some of the many transfers of the Federal archives to new buildings. As a substitute a roll of the Taxpayers, listed in Granville in 1788 and in Caswell and Orange in 1790, has been taken from the tax lists therein and appears on the following pages:—Editor.

View the NC 1790 Census from the Colonial and State Records