Historic Wake County

HISTORIC WAKE COUNTY
The Story of of Raleigh & Wake County
by by K. K. Todd Johnson
A publication of Capital Area Preservation, Inc.

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HISTORIC WAKE COUNTY
The Story of Raleigh & Wake County
by K. Todd Johnson
Commissioned by Capital Area Preservation, Inc.
Historical Publishing Network
A division of Lammert Incorporated
San Antonio, Texas

CONTENTS
3 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
4 CHAPTER I exploration to statehood, 1701-1792
14 CHAPTER II from backwoods to public eye, 1792-1840
26 CHAPTER III innovation and impending crisis, 1840-1861
32 CHAPTER IV Civil War and Reconstruction, 1861-1870
40 CHAPTER V gilded age to progressivism: era of many firsts, 1870-1929
66 CHAPTER VI depression, war, and urbanization, 1929-1960
74 CHAPTER VII opening floodgates: Wake County since 1960
80 BIBLIOGRAPHY
81 SHARING THE HERITAGE
125 SPONSORS
126 ABOUT THE AUTHOR
127 ABOUT THE COVER
First Edition
Copyright © 2009 Historical Publishing Network
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, without permission in writing from
the publisher. All inquiries should be addressed to Historical Publishing Network, 11535 Galm Road, Suite 101, San Antonio, Texas, 78254. Phone (800) 749-9790.
ISBN: 9781935377108
Library of Congress Card Catalog Number: 2009939404
Historic Wake County: An Illustrated History
author: K. Todd Johnson
cover artist: Kay Hutchinson
contributing writers for “Sharing the Heritage”: Joe Goodpasture
Historical Publishing Network
president: Ron Lammert
project managers: Barry Black, Larry Sunderland
administration: Donna M. Mata, Melissa G. Quinn, Evelyn Hart
book sales: Dee Steidle
production: Colin Hart, Glenda Tarazon Krouse, Craig Mitchell,
Charles A. Newton, III
HISTORIC WAKE COUNTY
2

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book was created under the auspices of Capital Area Preservation, Inc. (CAP), Wake
County’s only countywide non-profit historic preservation organization. CAP’s mission is to
advocate and invest in the preservation of historic resources as an essential element of Wake
County’s growth. CAP President & CEO Gary G. Roth, staff members Douglas R. Porter, Jr., and
Kristen Hales, and the CAP Board of Directors deserve much praise for their support and
assistance during the course of this project.
I owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to local historian Elizabeth Reid Murray. Her mammothsized
collection, now available to researchers at Olivia Raney Local History Library, and her
definitive writings provided much of the information for this work.
My sincere thanks goes to Karen-Marie Allen and her wonderful staff at Olivia Library Local
History Library for making research visits such a pleasure and to Olivia Raney volunteer Earl
Clayton, who went beyond the call of duty several times in helping with digital imaging.
Thanks also goes to Kim Cumber at the North Carolina State Archives for always being so
accommodating and helpful.
To my wife Donna and my children Abby, Cliff, and Kevin is due a big “Thank You” for
tolerating my preoccupation with this and other projects, and, more importantly, for your
steadfast love and support.
K. Todd Johnson
March 2009
✧
The Cannady-Brogden House, Individually
Listed National Register; Wake
County Landmark.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
3

HISTORIC WAKE COUNTY
4

CHAPTER I
E XPLORATION TO S TATEHOOD, 1701-1792
Miles of virgin forest traversed by footpaths, pristine rivers and streams, bears, panthers, bald
eagles, wild turkeys, and scattered fields of maize—these are only a few of the images that
impressed English explorer John Lawson when he passed through central North Carolina during
the winter of 1700-1701. The more he saw, the more he was convinced this would be a perfect
place for European settlements. There was one primary obstacle: the Tuscarora nation, a fierce and
numerous Iroquoian speaking people were already enjoying the beauty and fruit of the land.
THE FLOWER OF CAROLINA
The Tuscarora nation controlled the region along the Neuse and Pamlico Rivers. Their
geographic position gave them a monopoly on trade with English settlements in North Carolina
and made them middlemen between the English and the Eastern Sioux of the Piedmont. The
English provided guns, axes, pipes, beads, and their most coveted commodity, rum, which the
Tuscarora called “oonaquod.” The Tuscarora furnished the English with Sioux furs in exchange for
as much oonaquod as they could carry. According to Lawson, they often drank up most of it, and
watered down the remainder for their customers.
Lawson’s party made their way across the Eno and down the Neuse. They came to the “Falls of
a large Creek, where lay mighty Rocks, the Water making a strange Noise, as if a great many Water
Mills were going at once.” They spent the night there at the Falls, where Lawson tried without
success to convert his Indian companion Enoe Will to Christianity. Soon the surveyor noticed he
was in “a very level Country” of “Pine Land, yet intermix’d with some Quantities of Marble.” After
crossing the fall line from piedmont to coastal plain, Lawson noticed “slow, dead Waters, of a
brown Colour, proceeding from the Swamps….”
Lawson eventually settled into a cabin at the Trent and Neuse rivers and spent several years
collecting information about the people, flora, and fauna of eastern North Carolina. He was
particularly impressed by the respect the natives showed their elders. He insisted that they were
more well mannered than englishmen. His admiration for the Indian people, however, was
secondary to his high estimation of the rich land they inhabited. “The Savages do, indeed, still
possess the Flower of Carolina,” he wrote, “the English enjoying only the Fag-end of that fine
country.” Lawson returned to England and published his journal in 1709 under the title New
Voyage to Carolina. It became so popular that it was reprinted in 1714 and 1718, with two
additional printings in Germany in 1712 and 1722. Thereafter, the Carolina backcountry was no
longer a well-kept secret.
While in London making arrangements to publish his journal, Lawson convinced a group of
Swiss pilgrims to settle in Craven Precinct. There they founded New Bern in 1709, and North
Carolina’s burgesses created Craven County in 1712. Later generations of these Swiss families
would move further inland to present day Wake County.
Smallpox and other communicable diseases, demon rum, and illegal enslavement had
decimated and weakened the coastal native population by 1710 allowing agents of the Lords
Proprietors to push settlements westward. Even the formidable Tuscarora foresaw their doom
and asked permission to relocate to Pennsylvania. Despite this, Carolina officials refused to
provide the Pennsylvania government with a requested written voucher for the Indians’ past
good behavior. Faced with annihilation, Tuscarora warriors attacked and killed 130 colonists
along the Neuse and Pamlico in 1711 and touched off a brutal war that lasted over three years.
Ironically, John Lawson became the first casualty of the Tuscarora War. The Indians whom Lawson
✧
A man-made elevation near Auburn,
photographed in 1971, thought to be a
prehistoric Native American site.
FROM ELIZABETH REID MURRAY COLLECTION, COURTESY
OF OLIVIA RANEY LOCAL HISTORY LIBRARY, RALEIGH.
CHAPTER I
5

✧
Above: Prehistoric soapstone pipe found in
Wake County in the late 19th century and
photographed by H. H. Brimley.
COURTESY OF NORTH CAROLINA STATE
ARCHIVES, RALEIGH.
Below: Zeagle’s Rock near Falls of Neuse
River, one of the few landscape features of
modern Wake unchanged since the arrival
of Europeans, pictured in 1969.
FROM ELIZABETH REID MURRAY COLLECTION, COURTESY
OF OLIVIA RANEY LOCAL HISTORY LIBRARY, RALEIGH.
had admired and studied
executed him near present
Snow Hill on the eve of
their rampage against Neuse-
Pamlico colonists.
With military support
from South Carolina, the
colonists ultimately defeated
the Tuscarora. Suffering at
least a thousand casualties,
the few survivors who were not taken as
slaves were forced to leave their ancestral
land. They eventually joined the Iroquois
Confederation in New York, where some
of their descendants can still be found
on a reservation near Buffalo. A neutral
band of mixed-race Tuscarora living along
the Roanoke River in northeastern North
Carolina were granted a reservation in Bertie
County and are believed to have descendants
who later settled in Wake County.
CLAIMING AND TAMING
A WILDERNESS
It was nearly three decades after the
Tuscarora’s tragic exodus before European
opportunity-seekers began claiming land in
the upper Neuse River region. The first families
to venture within the present bounds of Wake
County in the 1740s included those with the
surnames Alford, Beddingfield, Benton, Bledsoe,
Giles, Green, Heaton, Higdon, Hinton, House,
Jones, Kilgore, Matthews, McCullers, McIlroy,
Mills, Monk, Myatt, Norris, Pearson, Powers,
Simmons, Smith, Terrell, Whitaker, and
Williams. These and other pioneering families
were mostly English, intermixed with Swiss-
Germans from Craven and Highland Scots
who were flocking to the Cape Fear region to
escape political persecution.
Settlers considered many of the area’s
predatory animals a threat to themselves
HISTORIC WAKE COUNTY
6

and their livestock. These creatures quickly
diminished after county courts offered
bounties for their pelts, but they were
memorialized in the naming of several
local waterways.
In 1746, a new county was created from
western Craven. Named after royal governor,
Gabriel Johnston, it became the center of
trade and legal matters for settlers living
along the Neuse River. Instead of traveling to
New Bern to settle an estate, provide for an
orphan, collect on wolf scalps, serve on a
jury, record a land transaction, or tend to
some other legal matter, Wake-area residents
from 1746 to 1758 journeyed to a site near
present day Goldsboro. In 1752, Orange
County was created taking the western edge
of Johnston due to a large influx of settlers.
The Johnston courthouse was then relocated
to the William Hinton plantation near
present Clayton—no doubt a welcome relief
to the hundred or more families busy with
land-clearing, house-building, crop-growing,
livestock-tending, and child-rearing along
the upper Neuse. The creation of Wake
County in 1771 made the business of local
government even less burdensome to those in
former Johnston’s western reaches.
✧
Members of the Seawell family are shown in
about 1911 at “Panther Rocks” near
Knightdale. The name of the homestead was
inspired by pioneering ancestor Colonel
John Hinton’s close encounter with a mother
panther protecting her cub. A creek and a
township also bear the name of this
predator that terrorized early colonists.
COURTESY OF NORTH CAROLINA STATE
ARCHIVES, RALEIGH.
CHAPTER I
7

✧
Top: Johnson Mill near Fuquay-Varina.
Grist mills such as this one were common in
rural life from earliest settlement to the
early 20th century.
PHOTOGRAPHED BY U.S. FARM SECURITY
ADMINISTRATION PHOTOGRAPHER ARTHUR ROTHSTEIN
IN 1935.
Above: From pioneer days until the
automobile age, a blacksmith was vital to
every village and farm. By the Great
Depression, this shop near Fuquay-Varina
was a rarity.
PHOTOGRAPH MADE IN 1935 BY ARTHUR ROTHSTEIN,
FARM SECURITY ADMINISTRATION, COURTESY OF LIBRARY
OF CONGRESS.
HISTORIC WAKE COUNTY
8
MAKING A LIVING
Tobacco, which put the Virginia tidewater
on the map, was produced in early Wake on
a limited scale due to a lack of shipping
points. Indian corn became a mainstay
throughout the southern colonies because it
would grow practically anywhere and had
several vital uses. It was filling to both
humans and livestock and, as Jamestown
settlers discovered in the 1620s, could also be
enjoyed in liquid form. Industrious farmers
who grew a surplus could haul their barrels
of corn to shipping points at Smithfield,
Fayetteville, or Petersburg.
Stone-ground corn meal and hominy, as
well as wheat, were especially popular, and
settlers wasted no time in damming up
waterways on their property to construct
water-powered grist mills. No money was
exchanged for this service, but the miller
measured out a certain portion of the grain
as toll. From earliest settlement, millponds
provided opportunities for socialization,
recreation, and mischief. By 1770, at least a
dozen operated in Wake, including one Samuel
Pearson constructed on Steephill Creek in
southern Wake in the 1750s. Since the 19th
century, Pearson’s millhouse and pond have
been known as Yates Mill—today one of the
county’s most highly prized historic landmarks.
Hogs, cattle, and sheep were raised in
abundance and often driven to distant markets.
They ranged freely in the forest and were
fattened on corn husks prior to being sold or
butchered. According to the early 20th century
writings of the Reverend R. H. Whitaker, oldtimers
spoke about a crossroads campground
near the State Capitol where stock raisers in
pre-Revolutionary times often stopped on
their drives to and from Petersburg or
Fayetteville. Farmers identified their livestock
by a unique combination of cut marks on the
animal’s ears or by applying their initials or a
special symbol with a branding iron. These
marks were registered with the county court.
In 1771 Samuel Pearson recorded his mark as
a “Swallow fork in the right Ear & half Moon
under it & a Small Nick over it and Smooth
Crop in the left ear.” Joseph Lane’s was much
simpler: “Crop & Slit in each ear & Brand IL.”
“ A NATURAL FONDNESS
FOR SOCIETY”
Pioneer American geographer and
Congregationalist minister Jedidiah Morse
noted in 1791 that temperance and industry
were not considered to be among the virtues
of most early North Carolinians. Common
diversions among men were drinking,
card-playing, dice-rolling, cock-fighting, and
horse-racing. Boxing matches were also popular,
according to Morse, including “gouging”
contests. The object was to be the first to get
one’s forefinger twisted around his opponent’s
ear and “gently” turn his eyes out of their
sockets. The earliest surviving records of
Wake show Averington McKelroy testified
before the county court at the September
1771 session that he had “unluckely” lost part
of his right ear “by Jacob Odem’s biting it of(f)
in a Battle.”
In spite of Morse’s indictment of Carolina
backcountry moral standards, he applauded
the people’s “natural fondness for society”
that made them hospitable to travelers. The
traveling public could always find lodging,
food, and livestock provisions at one of
several plantations where an ordinary was
kept, such as Isaac Hunter’s, John Giles
Thomas’s, or Joel Lane’s.
JOEL LANE:
FATHER OF WAKE COUNTY
A 24-year-old Halifax County planter
named Joseph Lane acquired land along Swift
Creek (between present Apex and Cary)
around 1755. His education and social
standing quickly won him places of influence
in colonial Johnston County. At some point
during visits by family from Halifax, his
younger brother Joel met Martha Hinton, a
member of the area’s most prominent planter
family. The two married in 1762 and Joel
took his bride home to the Lane plantation in
Halifax County, where he served as sheriff and
militia captain. In 1768, perhaps to appease a
homesick wife or to pursue a political career,
he left the established culture and society
of the Roanoke River valley for the sparsely
settled backwoods of Johnston County. Lane’s

family connections, commanding persona,
and financial means helped him to win
election both as justice of the peace and
legislator within a year of his move.
When Lane reported to the General
Assembly in New Bern in 1769, North Carolina
was embroiled in a bitter conflict between
the ruling elite led by Governor William
Tryon in New Bern and independent, anti-tax
backwoods settlers of the piedmont. The westerners
were dubbed “Regulators” because they
wanted to regulate their own affairs. Only a
year earlier, a mob of eighty men entered the
Johnston County Courthouse at Hinton’s
Quarter during a quarterly session and
unseated the justices, albeit for only a few
hours. Joel Lane, though part of the establishment,
was sympathetic to the Regulators. His
voting record showed him to favor their
efforts to end corrupt practices and to make
✧
Above: Joseph Lane’s farmstead is pictured
here in on its original site near Cary’s
Regency Park before being moved to its
present location near William B. Umstead
State Park.
FROM ELIZABETH REID MURRAY COLLECTION, COURTESY
OF OLIVIA RANEY LOCAL HISTORY LIBRARY, RALEIGH.
Below: Joel Lane house, built c. 1760.
DRAWING BY JERRY MILLER. COURTESY OF JOEL LANE
HOUSE, RALEIGH.
CHAPTER I
9

✧
Above: Captain James Jones, Wake’s first
state senator, 1776.
COURTESY OF NORTH CAROLINA STATE
ARCHIVES, RALEIGH.
Below: The legislative act to create Wake
County from Johnston, Cumberland, and
Orange, effective March 12, 1771.
FROM ELIZABETH REID MURRAY COLLECTION, COURTESY
OF OLIVIA RANEY LOCAL HISTORY LIBRARY, RALEIGH.
HISTORIC WAKE COUNTY
10
government officials more accountable.
At the same time, he was careful
to maintain the appearance of being
neutral. As historian Jerry Cross
points out, Lane knew how to play
“the political game of compromise.”
He demonstrated commitments to
fairness in business and gaming
practices by co-sponsoring bills
to institute public inspection of
tobacco in Johnston County, to end
the unsportsmanlike practice of
blinding deer with torches, and to
stop the “untimely” and “unreasonable”
destruction of fish in coastal
waterways. At the same time, he
voted with fellow planters to allow
corn exports despite a drought-induced
shortage that year.
Lane’s most significant action in the 1770
session was introducing a bill to establish a
new county from Johnston, Cumberland, and
Orange. Insuring easy passage and a signature
by the Royal Governor on such bills in the
past had required appealing to the governor’s
vanity in naming the new county. Tryon
had already been taken by a new
western county two years earlier,
so Lane and other supporters of
the bill decided their new county
should be named in honor of the
governor’s wife Margaret Wake
Tryon. It was even proposed that the
required ecclesiastical jurisdiction
of Wake County be called “St.
Margaret’s Parish.” The bill passed
on January 5, 1771, and Governor
Tryon no doubt took great delight in
signing it into law ten days later. A
committee of leading men, including
Lane, from the three affected
counties set the boundaries, and the
courthouse site (certainly by no
coincidence) was located on the
plantation Joel Lane had recently
acquired near Crabtree Creek in the
center of the new county. The first
session of county court was held in
June 1771 before a courthouse
could be erected—reportedly in the
Lane home.
BAPTISTS, ANGLICANS,
METHODISTS, AND
“ NOTHINGARIANS”
The Church of England recognized most of
colonial Wake County as part of St. Stephen’s
Parish (Johnston County) from 1746 until
the new county was designated St. Margaret’s
Parish in 1771. In 1758 the Anglicansponsored
Society for the Propagation of
the Gospel sent the controversial minister
Michael Smith, but within a year he was
dismissed after word of his past immoral
exploits reached the local vestry. Ten years
later, Virginia native Edward Jones, who
had recently moved to Orange County, felt
a calling to preach after seeing “so much
ignorance of the true Religion and great
disaffection to Government” among his
neighbors in Orange. He sold all his property
and, armed with a letter from Governor
William Tryon and his local priest, traveled to
London to be ordained, only to be rejected by
the Lord Bishop. With a body physically
weakened by dysentery and feet bloodied and
sore by walking from Liverpool, Jones found
Governor Tryon’s sister, who gave him money
and intervened to get him an appointment
in St. Stephens Parish in 1769. The length of
his stay is uncertain. With the coming of the
American Revolution, Anglican mission work
in the colonies came to an abrupt end.
The intellect and refinement of most
Anglican preachers was never a good fit
for Wake’s general population. It took the
“Enthusiastical incoherent harangues” of
dissenting “Anabaptist” preachers with their
“dippling” mode of baptism, in the words
of the Reverend Michael Smith, to win the
hearts and minds of North Carolina’s plain
folk. Elder Thomas Tully and others led in
establishing Three Creeks (later known as
Middle Creek Primitive Baptist) Church in
the Panther Branch area in about 1756.
The earliest preachers taught an Armenian
doctrine of “general” salvation by works.
By the late 1750s, Calvinist ministers from
the Philadelphia and Charleston Baptist
Associations swept the southern colonies
with a more appealing message of “particular”
salvation based on divine election. Most of

✧
Left: Raleigh’s Church of the Good
Shepherd, shown here in the 1890s, was one
of two city parishes carrying on the
traditions of the Church of England in the
19th century. This congregation was
particularly known for its role in organizing
benevolence work, including a hospital
for indigents.
COURTESY OF NORTH CAROLINA STATE
ARCHIVES, RALEIGH.
North Carolina’s General Baptist churches,
including Three Creeks, were soon reorganized
as Particular Baptists. They later became
known as Regular Baptists.
A group calling themselves Separate, or
New Light, Baptists migrated from New
England to North Carolina in the 1750s
and eventually organized a church in
northwestern Wake County around
1775. What separated them from other
Baptists was their uncompromising
requirement of personal faith before
baptism—an important tenet of many
evangelical Christian groups today.
Their preachers, greatly influenced
by George Whitefield and the Great
Awakening, were known for emotionally
intense sermons. Perhaps their most
radical departure from ecclesiastical
tradition was allowing women to
preach—a practice that would soon
be abandoned. Separate Baptists and
Regular Baptists joined forces as
United Baptists in 1788. The New Light
presence was so pervasive that a creek,
tax district, and later a township and
post office bore the group’s name.
John Wesley’s Methodist faith was
introduced prior to 1780 when Bishop
Francis Asbury made his first of several
visits, preaching at Pope’s Chapel in the
Bartons Creek vicinity. Methodism’s unlettered
preachers had great appeal among the
uneducated, and the church’s practice of
holding class meetings in members’ homes
to enforce personal accountability won over
a number of isolated farming families.
Below: This 1960s homecoming celebration
took place at Wake Union Baptist Church,
one of Wake’s oldest congregations. Located
near Wake Forest, the church began as an
interdenominational chapel shared by
Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, and
Episcopalians from 1791 until the early
19th century.
COURTESY OF AUDREY PLEASANTS, WAKE UNION BAPTIST
CHURCH, WAKE FOREST.
CHAPTER I
11

✧
Grave marker erected in the Rand family
cemetery near Garner in memory of Wake
Revolutionary War leader John Rand.
COURTESY OF KAYE B. WHALEY.
HISTORIC WAKE COUNTY
12
Even so, as the Reverend Jedidiah Morse
observed, there was a “very numerous body of
people” in 18th century North Carolina who
had not made a profession of Christianity.
To this class, which Morse dubbed
“Nothingarians,” the sabbath was “generally
disregarded” or used as a day to visit neighbors
and family or engage in “noisy diversions.”
FROM REGULATION
TO REVOLUTION
The counties of Guilford, Chatham, and
Surry were created along with Wake in
1771 in hopes that smaller units would
tighten New Bern’s political reins on unruly
backcountry farmers. Yet unrest continued.
Only weeks before Wake’s first court session,
Governor Tryon raised militia troops and
passed through the new county to quell
a rebellion centered in Orange County.
While encamped at the Theophilus Hunter
plantation south of Raleigh, Tryon forcibly
drafted a reluctant local militia company,
commanded by Joel Lane’s father-in-law,
Colonel John Hinton. Fearing a backlash from
the large numbers of suspected “disaffected”
citizens, Tryon ordered Hinton to keep his
men at home to prevent them from organizing
and joining Regulator forces. The governor
and his men proceeded to Alamance, where
they defeated the Regulators and effectively
ended the movement.
Only a few years after the Battle of
Alamance, Wake County men found their
allegiances called into question again. This
time the stakes were much higher. Instead of
challenging a provincial governor, they were
asked to swear opposition to the King of Great
Britain, the most powerful nation in the
world. In the spring of 1775 county justices
sent Colonel John Hinton, Joel Lane,
Theophilus Hunter, John Rand, and Thomas
Hines to New Bern to join other North
Carolinians in making a bold statement to
King George III that they were preparing to
fight. Rand was appointed to represent the
Hillsborough District on a new provincial
ruling body called the Council of Safety.
In April 1776, Hinton, Rand, and Tignal
Jones traveled to Halifax Court House to
cast their votes for what is now known as
the Halifax Resolves. This declared North
Carolina officially independent of Great
Britain and authorized North Carolina’s
delegates to the Continental Congress to vote
for independence with the other American
colonies. The Halifax Resolves predate the
Declaration of Independence by three months.
The Council of Safety met at Joel Lane’s home
in August 1776. A constitutional convention
was hastily called that same year, and a
constitution was adopted in November.
Conflict erupted between neighbors as
men and women were forced to choose a
position—American patriot (“Whig”), British
loyalist (“Tory”), or neutral. One by one,
farmers appeared before justices to swear
allegiance to the new government. Refusing to
do so would mean loss of property. Alexander
Munn was one of the few Wake men, if not
the only one, to refuse to take the oath.
Others, such as Jacob Leavens and Daniel
McDaniel, evaded the military draft and, like
Munn, lost their homes as a result.
Hundreds of local Whigs joined the
Continental Army or participated in shortterm
militia expeditions between 1776 and
1781 at places such as Moore’s Creek, Valley
Forge, Guilford Courthouse, Lindley’s Mill,
Charleston, Camden, Eutaw Springs, Brier

Creek, and Savannah. Wake residents were
spared the trauma of military action on their
soil, although soldiers and local militia
companies rendezvoused at Wake Courthouse,
Middle Creek, and falls of Crabtree Creek.
Wake’s distance from British occupation
forces along the coast made the county an
ideal location for the summer 1781 session of
the North Carolina General Assembly. The
crude log courthouse and nearby Joel Lane
residence hosted these meetings. The
assembly was under heavy guard in case
General Lord Cornwallis should march his
troops inland from Wilmington.
A SEAT OF GOVERNMENT
As the thirteen former colonies transitioned
from a weak confederation to the
United States of America in the 1780s, North
Carolina officials occupied themselves with
settling debts, granting unclaimed lands, and
establishing policies and procedures for the
fledgling government. Heated discussions
ensued in legislative sessions regarding possible
locations for a permanent state capital. In
1787 legislators planning for a July 1788
convention to consider the proposed United
States Constitution finally forced this difficult
decision. Easterners wanted the
capital in New Bern or some
other coastal town, while
others insisted on Fayetteville
or Hillsborough farther inland.
An ordinance was passed fixing
the capital within a tenmile
radius of Isaac Hunter’s
plantation, but opposition by
Fayetteville supporters was so
strong that a final vote to put
the ordinance into effect was
delayed until 1792—three years
after North Carolina ratified the
U.S. Constitution.
Six commissioners from
across the state spent two
weeks visiting seventeen sites
offered by local landowners,
all the while spending their
nights at the Joel Lane house.
They finally narrowed their
choices to two tracts—Lane’s 1,000 acres
near Wake Courthouse and the plantation of
Lane’s brothers-in-law, John and David
Hinton, north of the Neuse River (an area
later known as Milburnie). With a split vote,
the commissioners adjourned for an evening
of rest, refreshment, and unofficial conversation
at the Lane house. The next day, the vote
was 5-1 in favor of the Lane site. The lone
voter for the Hinton tract soon changed his
official vote to make the decision unanimous.
The commissioners paid Lane a generous sum
for his real estate as well as for lodging and
provisions he provided the commissioners.
The new capital city was named in honor
of Sir Walter Raleigh, founder of the first
English settlement in America. Soon dozens
of laborers, both free and slave, were at work
cutting, clearing, and burning to prepare
lots for building North Carolina’s new capital
city. Spirituous liquors were supplied in
abundance to dull workers’ aches and pains.
Streets were named for governors, towns/
court districts, commissioners who chose
the site, commissioners who were appointed
but who did not participate in the selection,
war heroes, legislators, and, lastly, Joel Lane
(the only Wake County personality honored
in the original street naming).
✧
Milburnie, an area under consideration for
the state capital in 1792, was later the site
of a paper factory and grist mill. The
Milburnie dam, photographed in 1983,
provided hydroelectric power to the City of
Raleigh in the early 20th century.
FROM ELIZABETH REID MURRAY COLLECTION, COURTESY
OF OLIVIA RANEY LOCAL HISTORY LIBRARY, RALEIGH.
CHAPTER I
13

HISTORIC WAKE COUNTY
14

CHAPTER II
F ROM B ACKWOODS TO P UBLIC E YE, 1792-1840
North Carolina’s new capital quickly attracted government officials, merchants, artisans,
laborers, attorneys, and tavern and ordinary keepers, but the city’s growth was slow, as was the
state’s as a whole. The county’s population increased from 14,000 to only 21,000 between 1800
and 1840. Enlightened citizens were aware of the county’s Achilles’ heel—a lack of inland river
transportation—and made efforts to overcome this deficiency to no avail until railroad technology
made its way across the Atlantic in the 1820s.
RALEIGH’ S EARLY DEVELOPMENT
The Reverend Jedidiah Morse noted in 1805 that the new capital city by 1800 had “about eighty
houses, scattered over ground that might contain thousands.” He described the new brick
statehouse in the center of the city as a “misshapen pile.” With a cost to the citizens of $30,000,
he noted, the building’s lower floor had already fallen through. Despite its deficiencies, the
building was an important meeting place for public speeches, performances, church services, and
other large gatherings for almost forty years.
Frequent fires plagued the business district because of inadequate water supplies and ineffective
fire-fighting equipment—not to mention the highly combustible heart-pine construction materials.
The worst incident in the city’s early history was a midnight blaze in June 1816 that destroyed
fifty-one buildings on Fayetteville Street within two hours. Several men climbed to the roof of
the statehouse with water buckets and kept sparks and brands from igniting the building’s
wooden shingles.
In 1831 another threat of fire prompted legislators to install a new zinc roof to the statehouse.
By this time, the building’s appearance had been transformed from the “misshapen pile” of 1800
to an elegantly decorated and furnished capitol with a cupola, stucco exterior, and in the center,
the state’s most prized possession, a Canova statue of George Washington brought over from Italy.
Efforts to make the building fireproof actually had the opposite effect. A careless workman
allegedly sparked a fire that destroyed the statehouse and ruined the statue. Disastrous fires in
January 1832 and June 1833 wiped out another eighty structures in the business section, none of
which reportedly were insured. Brick construction soon became the norm for any substantial
building in the capital city.
Arson was suspected in a September 1832 fire that destroyed Register of Deeds Richard Smith’s
store building, along with eighteen record books from the courthouse. A young itinerant
brickmaker, Benjamin F. Seaborn, was hanged in 1834 for the offense. Discussions began
immediately about replacing the wooden courthouse built in 1795 with a brick structure
containing fireproof storage. A new Greek Revival style courthouse was finally completed in 1837,
featuring a Greco-Roman portico similar to that of the 1845 Orange County Courthouse.
✧
The young widower John Haywood of
Edgecombe County was one of the first state
officials to arrive in Raleigh in the 1790s.
He served as State Treasurer from 1787 to
his death in 1827. His home, completed in
1800 for his second wife Elizabeth
Williams, has been maintained by the
Colonial Dames as a historic house museum
since 1977. From Haywood, Sketch of the
Haywood Family in North
Carolina (1956).
COURTESY OF OLIVIA RANEY, LOCAL HISTORY
LIBRARY, RALEIGH.
MOVING THE MAIL
Raleigh had the county’s first and only post office from 1794 to 1823. By 1800 mail arrived in
Raleigh three times weekly via Petersburg and Louisburg to the north and from Charleston and
Fayetteville to the south. Weekly deliveries arrived from New Bern and Hillsborough. In 1803 stage
coaches began carrying passengers and mail to and from the capital. Daily mail stages did not begin
until 1813. Gerard Banks operated the Raleigh to Fayetteville Stage Road from his home in
southern Wake County. His store was a stopping place for travelers and a polling place for voters.
CHAPTER II
15

✧
Above: Early stagecoach as depicted by
Hope Summerel Chamberlain about 1920.
From Chamberlain, History of
Wake County.
Below: Wake Forest, the first community
outside Raleigh to get a post office and home
of the county’s first institution of higher
learning, is pictured here in 1923.
FROM LEWIS P. WATSON PHOTOGRAPH COLLECTION,
COURTESY OF OLIVIA RANEY LOCAL HISTORY
LIBRARY, RALEIGH.
In 1823 U.S. Postmaster General John
McLean began a massive expansion of mail
service into remote areas, particularly those
on the western frontier. It was during this
time that the first post offices were established
in northern and eastern Wake: Wake Forest
in 1823, Rolesville in 1825, Fishdam (now
under Falls Lake) and Wakefield in 1826,
and Eagle Rock in 1827. Southern and
southeastern Wake finally received post
offices at Holly Springs and Busbee’s Store
(later Auburn) in 1833. Western Wake did
not get a post office until Green Level was
established in the late 1840s.
OUTSIDER
INFLUENCES
Perhaps the most propitious events in
the early life of Raleigh were the arrivals of
newspaper editors William Boylan and Joseph
Gales just before the turn of the 19th century.
The two often clashed over politics and
competition for state printing contracts.
At the same time, their newspaper columns,
almanacs, book stores, and personal
involvement in public affairs infused intellect,
literary and political consciousness, and
innovation that otherwise would
have been lacking in the city’s early
development. Both the Boylan and
Gales families remained active in
local life for several generations.
Boylan was a New Jersey native
who relocated his Federalist newspaper,
the Minerva, from Fayetteville
to the capital city in May 1799. By
the time of his death in 1861, he
had amassed one of the largest fortunes
in the state, acquiring four
plantations in North Carolina and
two in Mississippi. His austere
demeanor and political philosophy
of strong centralized government
controlled by the wealthy and educated
placed him at odds with North Carolina’s
Jeffersonian Democratic-Republicans. By virtue
of his socioeconomic stature, however, Boylan
wielded great influence in Wake County, serving
as a justice of the peace from 1804 until
his death and chairman of the county court
beginning in 1815. He made his home at the
historic Joel Lane house in Raleigh’s outskirts
and was also owner of the 18th century grist
mill now known as Yates Mill.
Gales was a British-born journalist and
political activist coming to North Carolina
via Philadelphia. Before emigrating, he had
used the columns of his Sheffield Register in
England from 1787 to 1794 to champion the
interests of artisans and small manufacturers.
Drawing inspiration from Thomas Paine
and other democratic thinkers, he organized
citizens in his town to push for parliamentary
reform, including universal suffrage. He was
soon faced with arrest and fled to Germany,
then to America. At the urging of North
Carolina congressman Nathaniel Macon, he
took his family to Raleigh in 1799 to begin
publishing a Democratic-Republican Party
organ, the Raleigh Register.
HISTORIC WAKE COUNTY
16

From the beginning, Mr. and Mrs. Gales
had a particular affinity for the people of
Raleigh and Wake County. Gales rarely
hesitated to subscribe to any venture that
stood to improve the local quality of life. A
northern acquaintance encouraged him to
start a paper mill in 1808. Though never
profitable, Gales produced rag paper until
1833 at three successive sites near present
Garner, St. Augustine’s College east of town,
and Whitaker Mill to the north. He is
recognized in North Carolina for introducing
shorthand—a skill that allowed him to record
and publish debates of the General Assembly
and other official meetings. His wife, Winifred
Marshall Gales, was North Carolina’s first
resident novelist and was also a poet.
Revolutionary War veteran Colonel William
Polk of Mecklenburg County and his wife
Sarah Hawkins Polk were also among
Raleigh’s most commanding personalities in
the early years. Colonel Polk arrived in 1799
as North Carolina’s Supervisor of Internal
Revenue, later becoming first president of
the State Bank in 1811. According to his
Revolutionary War pension application, he
was one of the city’s first mayors. Though a
boyhood friend of Andrew Jackson, Polk was
a staunch Federalist. He was often called
upon to preside at ceremonial events, to host
dignitaries, and to serve as toastmaster at
banquets. Having fought with the French at
the Battle of Brandywine, he was asked to
give the welcoming speech when the Marquis
de Lafayette visited Raleigh in March 1825.
According to one account, Lafayette greeted
Polk with a kiss on both cheeks. Since
spectators had never seen grown men kiss
each other, they shouted with glee, greatly
embarrassing the colonel. Polk and Lafayette
died only a few months apart in 1834.
Boylan and Gales invested thought, energy,
ink, and financial resources in a number of
internal improvements. Both were instrumental
in establishing the Raleigh Academy (1804-
1855) and a short-lived state agricultural
society (1818-c.1830s). Gales worked, in vain,
to introduce silk production in the 1830s, and
he and son Weston Gales led a group of local
investors in building the state’s first railroad
in 1832—a one-mile experimental tramway
connecting a stone quarry east of town to
Union Square, where a new State Capitol was
to be built. A few years later, Boylan was
among the directors of the pioneering Raleigh
and Gaston Railroad.
Mrs. Polk was a moving force in establishing
a school for poor children in 1822
under the auspices of the Raleigh Female
Benevolent Society. This organization not
only gave food and firewood to the poor but
also helped them find jobs and gain education
for employment. Mrs. Polk was also
remembered for persuading her husband and
✧
Left: Colonel William Polk.
COURTESY OF OLIVIA RANEY LOCAL HISTORY
LIBRARY, RALEIGH.
Right: Sarah Hawkins (Mrs. William) Polk.
COURTESY OF OLIVIA RANEY LOCAL HISTORY
LIBRARY, RALEIGH.
CHAPTER II
17

other Raleigh men to build the
state’s first railroad. She got the
idea from a letter received from son
Leonidas as he traveled through
New England and Canada in
1827. The letter, dated August 22,
described a tramway he had seen
in Massachusetts which was used
to haul stone for the Bunker Hill
Monument. Either by coincidence
or as a result of conversations
with the Polks, UNC President
Joseph Caldwell published a
lengthy proposal for a central
railroad through North Carolina
in 1828. Four years later, Colonel
Polk joined forces with Gales and
his son in their endeavor to build a
railroad. Unfortunately it would
be almost thirty years before
Caldwell’s vision of a longer route
would come to fruition.
burgeoning lower south and the end of the
international slave trade in 1808 sparked
the rise of a domestic slave trade that helped
line a few local pockets. Between 1807 and
1811 Wake’s first banks opened their doors,
enabling buyers to close a deal with mere
paper notes rather than a sack of gold or
silver coins. Anti-federalists’ opposition to a
strong central bank allowed state and
private banks such as Raleigh’s State Bank of
North Carolina ( 1811), the Bank of Cape
Fear (1807), and the Bank of New Bern
(1809) free reign in issuing notes without
adequate specie reserves in their vaults.
When intense inflation in the mid-1830s
forced the Second Bank of the United States
to require greater specie reserves, Raleigh’s
banks came up short and lost their charters.
The State Bank and the Bank of Cape Fear
were soon rechartered.
ANTI- FEDERALISTS AND
ONE- PARTY POLITICS
✧
Above: Andrew Johnson, seventeenth
president of the United States, was one of
numerous young men who left Wake County
in the 1820s for Tennessee. He was a tailor’s
apprentice in Raleigh when he and brother
William ran away from their master James
Selby in 1824.
COURTESY OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.
Right: Dr. Calvin Jones (1775-1846), first
postmaster of Wake Forest, physician,
planter, politician, newspaper man, and
military commander during the War
of 1812.
COURTESY OF NORTH CAROLINA STATE
ARCHIVES, RALEIGH.
HISTORIC WAKE COUNTY
18
Men in Wake and other eastern counties
controlled political affairs in the first half
of the 19th century just as they had
done since colonial times. Despite sectional
rivalries, North Carolinians across the state
embraced Thomas Jefferson’s philosophy
of minimal government and states’ rights
and routinely resisted tax increases of any
kind. This mindset helped North Carolina
gain the odious nickname “Rip Van
Winkle State,” as those in power failed to
follow other states in building extensive
networks of turnpikes, canals, schools,
colleges, factories, and thriving market
centers. The election of Jefferson as
president in 1800 marked the end of twoparty
politics in North Carolina for over
three decades.
CALL OF THE WEST
Unsettled and unclaimed public lands
in Tennessee and other western territories
presented new opportunities for fortuneseekers.
The demand for slave labor in the
Answering the call of the west were many
of the state’s brightest young men and
women. Rockingham County native Thomas
Henderson, Jr., was one of Raleigh’s most
promising young talents in the 1820s. He
moved to the capital in 1808 and joined
Massachusetts-born Dr. Calvin Jones in
starting a newspaper, the Raleigh Star,
devoted to improving agriculture, literature,
and culture. Though a Federalist, Henderson
was fairly neutral as a newspaper editor. He

an a store on the lower floor of his office
on Fayetteville Street, where he stocked
books as well as general merchandise. He
became a local hero as commander of the
Wake Dragoons during the War of 1812. In
1821 Colonel William Polk entrusted
Henderson with the arduous task of
processing all the Tennessee land claims
held by the state university in Chapel Hill,
where he was a trustee. Awarded some
70,000 acres (half the university’s land
claims) for his two-month assignment,
Henderson was suddenly a very wealthy
man. He returned to Raleigh but could not
resist the lure of the west, so he relocated
to Tennessee in 1823.
The well attended dinner held in
Henderson’s honor on the eve of his
departure was a scene often repeated during
that decade, as the city’s population fell
from 2,674 to 1,700. Dr. Calvin Jones—early
proponent of public schools, agricultural
innovator, postmaster, and pioneer in the
use of Edward Jenner’s smallpox vaccine
in North Carolina—abandoned his Wake
Forest plantation for Tennessee in the early
1830s. The list continued to grow longer
with each passing year. Wake County’s
population increased by only 300 between
1820 and 1830. The following decade, it
increased by 700, with just over 21,000
counted in 1840.
WAKE’ S FUTURE
SET IN STONE
When the statehouse burned in 1831,
there was fear in Wake County that
politicians in western North Carolina and
Cumberland County would succeed in
relocating the capital to Fayetteville. In
December 1832, after eighteen months of
uncertainty, Wake Senator Henry Seawell
secured an appropriation of $50,000 to
build a new capitol on the original site.
This time the building would be completely
fireproof and made of stone. Seawell was
appointed to the commission overseeing the
project, along with William Boylan, William
S. Mhoon, and Romulus M. Saunders of
Wake and Duncan Cameron of Orange. In a
bold move, they used the
entire appropriation on the
foundation. After considerable
wrangling with architects,
they presented plans
for an architectural masterpiece
that would establish
Raleigh once and for all as
the permanent capital. Upon
completion of the capitol in
1840, the state’s outlay was
more than ten times the original
appropriation.
While the new capitol was
under construction, leaders
of an emerging Whig Party
called for a constitutional
convention in 1835. The
Whigs were determined to
alter the balance of power
and make fundamental
changes in state government
to cool the exodus fever of
the previous decade. Wake
voters followed their eastern
counterparts in opposing the
convention, but westerners
garnered enough support to override the
eastern elite. Local opposition to proposed
amendments was also overwhelming, though
to no avail.
One of the most controversial changes
was allowing Catholics to hold public
office. Wake delegates Henry Seawell and
Kimbrough Jones were avowed opponents
of the change, but an eloquent speech by
Judge William Gaston, a Catholic, swayed
the majority to insert the word “Christian”
in lieu of “Protestant” as a requirement
for elected officials. Other amendments
included ending the free black vote, allowing
every taxpayer to vote for the House of
Representatives, popular election of the
governor, and removing the ban on active
ministers in the General Assembly. The latter
rule had kept Wake’s Reverend Josiah
Crudup from serving in the General
Assembly in 1820. In 1821 local voters sent
Crudup to the U.S. House of Representatives
for one term, making him the first local man
to serve in Congress.
✧
Judge Henry Seawell, the state senator
credited with keeping the state capital in
Raleigh after the Statehouse burned in
1831. He was less successful in his efforts to
block the political restructuring of the state
during the constitutional convention
in 1835.
COURTESY OF NORTH CAROLINA STATE
ARCHIVES, RALEIGH.
CHAPTER II
19

✧
The “dippling” mode of baptism that was
such a novelty to colonial Anglican
ministers has continued to be an important
rite among many evangelical Protestants,
especially Baptists. Shown here is a
millpond baptism in 1912 for new converts
of Salem Baptist Church near Apex.
FROM SALEM BAPTIST CHURCH HISTORY, COURTESY OF
OLIVIA RANEY LOCAL HISTORY LIBRARY, RALEIGH.
HISTORIC WAKE COUNTY
20
FROM
“ NOTHINGARIANISM”
TO REVIVALISM
There was only nominal interest in
organized religion in the capital county when
renowned Methodist Bishop Francis Asbury
preached to a capacity crowd in the statehouse
in 1811. At that time the city boasted only one
church, an interdenominational chapel called
Bethel. Built in 1808 or 1809, it was shared by
Baptists, Methodists, Christians (formerly
called Republican Methodists), Presbyterians,
and Episcopalians. Baptists, Presbyterians,
Methodists, and Episcopalians had been holding
monthly services for two decades in a small
chapel called Wake Union, built near Wake
Forest in 1791. Traveling preachers espoused
their distinct doctrines and faith in homes and
crude log meeting houses dotting the rural
Wake landscape, as well as in the statehouse
and county courthouse.
The period of loosely organized, ecumenical
religion gradually came to an end after the Great
Revival fervor swept North Carolina between
1801 and 1805. This movement fostered growth
and competition between divergent faiths, some
using open-air camp meetings and emotionally
charged exhortations, while others preferred
preaching indoors to more rational, enlightened
audiences. Revivalism also inspired missionary
work at home and abroad. Regardless of
doctrine or creed, followers were brought out
of their isolation and given new identity and
sense of belonging. By the 1830s the county’s
loosely organized religious groups would
be transformed into strongholds of faith
and practice.
It was by no coincidence that Baptists met
with the greatest success. They were the
first influential group and, more importantly,
held to a belief in congregational autonomy that
had great appeal among small farmers. The
formation of the Raleigh Baptist Association in
1805 paved the way for more effective
communication between churches in Wake and
surrounding counties. Three events in the 1830s
further solidified the denomination’s dominance
in the county: the creation of the Baptist State
Convention in 1830, the establishment of Wake
Forest Institute for boys in 1834, and the
relocation of the denominational newspaper,
the Biblical Recorder, from New Bern to Raleigh
in 1838. By that time an increased emphasis
on fund-raising to educate preachers and
to finance missions had brought a split
in the denomination. Most Wake churches
were led by pastors of the missionary vein
and remained in the Raleigh
Association. A few anti-mission
congregations left the Raleigh
Association and joined Johnston
County dissidents in forming
the Little River Primitive Baptist
Association in the late 1820s.
As North Carolina Methodists
reorganized to accommodate
Great Revival growth, a Raleigh
Circuit was established in 1807
in rural Wake. Itinerant pastors
serving one-year assignments
rode from one preaching place
to another and held classes
in member’s homes. Raleigh’s
Edenton Street Church was
organized in 1811 following
the Asbury visit, and a separate
City Circuit was established. A
bequest from schoolmaster
William Holland was used the

next year to organize a new church on the
Raleigh Circuit in southern Wake on the
Raleigh-to-Fayetteville Stage Road. While not
the first Methodist churches, Edenton Street
and Holland’s were the earliest to survive past
the 19th century.
The Christian denomination made its
appearance about 1802 when Pleasant
Springs (later renamed Catawba Springs)
Church was organized in southern Wake.
Raleigh merchant William Glendinning
was a minister of this faith and provided
for the city’s interdenominational chapel for a
token sum.
By the 1830s, Raleigh was also home to
Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and Catholics.
Joseph and Winifred Gales were devout
Unitarians, but they made no efforts
to organize a church of their faith. The
Reverend William McPheeters led in
constituting the city’s first Presbyterian
congregation in 1816. They met in the
statehouse before completing the county’s first
brick church in 1818. In this church,
the 1835 Constitutional Convention was
held while the Capitol was under construction.
Denominational leaders chose to confine their
efforts to Raleigh until the early 20th century.
The Episcopal Church, like the
Presbyterians, also limited its scope of
influence to the capital city throughout the
19th century. Christ Church Parish was
organized in 1821, with Bishop John Stark
Ravenscroft as first rector. The bishop died
only three months after consecrating a small
frame church building in 1829 and was
interred beneath the chancel. Parishioners
introduced the city’s first organ in 1833 at a
time when instrumental accompaniment was
commonly thought inappropriate for
worship. They also opened a school for boys
on the western edge of Raleigh in 1834, but
financial difficulties forced it to close in
1839. Judge Duncan Cameron, who had
recently built a stately home across from the
school on Hillsborough Street, purchased the
property and leased it to the diocese for St.
Mary’s School for girls in 1842.
Irishmen who came to work on the State
Capitol joined other locals from the Roman
Catholic tradition in organizing the Church
of St. John the Baptist in 1835, three years
after the first mass was celebrated in the
city. It was that same year that the state
constitution was amended to allow Catholics
to hold public office.
WAKING UP MR. VAN
WINKLE— THE 4 R ’ S
Two commonly cited reasons for North
Carolina’s slow growth were a lack of schools
and the absence of navigable inland rivers
for shipping and receiving goods. In
education Wake was a notable exception,
a characteristic that would continue to
distinguish the county from most others.
While some counties struggled to have even
one private academy in the period 1800-
1860, Wake, with its learned elite in and
around the capital, had as many as twelve at
one time.
Raleigh Academy (known as Lovejoy’s
Academy 1842-1855) was the most
longstanding. Prominent men from Raleigh
and eastern Wake joined forces to complete
a classroom building on Burke Square
(later site of the Executive Mansion) in 1804
and recruited well-qualified, college-trained
instructors to provide youth with a sound
English or classical education.
A disagreement between rival newspapermen
William Boylan and Joseph Gales served as a
turning point for the school. A judge ordered
Boylan to pay 100 pounds restitution for
caning Gales in the middle of Fayetteville
Street in 1805, and the proceeds after court
✧
Toward the end of his life William Holland
wrote this prophetic message in a 17th
century religious work, Heaven on Earth,
brought over from England.
FROM THE ELIZABETH REID MURRAY COLLECTION,
COURTESY OF OLIVIA RANEY LOCAL HISTORY
LIBRARY, RALEIGH.
CHAPTER II
21

✧
While the Neuse River was considered of
“no-use” for transportation, it had other
benefits. State Geologist H. H. Brimley and
a companion are shown here in about 1900
as they fished in the Neuse’s shallow waters
with a seine.
COURTESY OF NORTH CAROLINA STATE
ARCHIVES, RALEIGH.
HISTORIC WAKE COUNTY
22
costs were applied to recruit a minister to
serve as “pastor of the city” as well as
principal of the academy. Under this new
leader, the Reverend William Leftwich Turner,
and his successor, Dr. William McPheeters,
the school enjoyed its heyday between 1806
and 1826, as students came from great
distances. Raleigh Academy boasted a Female
Department by 1807 and soon offered music,
drawing, foreign languages, and stenography.
Prior to 1840, scores of short-lived private
schools were sponsored by wealthy families or
by churches. The Reverend John Chavis, a
free black Presbyterian minister, taught both
whites and blacks in northern Wake County
until African American schooling was banned
in the 1830s. Chavis’s students included such
notable figures as Governor Charles Manly
and U.S. Senator Willie Person Mangum.
British native William Holland, described as a
polished and refined gentleman, taught an
English school in the Panther Branch vicinity
prior to his death in 1809.
In spite of Wake’s relative superiority in
private education, schools for poor children
were sorely lacking. While representing
Johnston County in 1802, Dr. Calvin Jones
introduced a bill in the General Assembly to
provide for public schools, but the measure
was voted down on the first reading. The call
for publicly supported schools continued to
fall on deaf ears for over three decades until
$1.4 million in federal surplus funds came
to North Carolina in the late 1830s. Enabling
legislation for counties to approve taxsupported
“common” schools passed in 1839,
and Wake voters immediately approved the
first school tax.
Educating the masses, however, was only
one step toward reversing the county’s general
decline. Travelers, stage operators, farmers,
and merchants constantly complained about
the unreliable, muddy, rutty, often impassable
county roadways built and maintained by
citizen labor. By 1801 local leaders began to
take seriously the idea of clearing the Neuse
River to eliminate the frustrations involved in
shipping goods over land. Plans were made to
dredge the Neuse River and make it navigable
from Smithfield in Johnston County to

Crabtree Creek near the capital city. However,
little progress was made.
Interest was renewed in 1812 when the
General Assembly chartered the Neuse River
Navigation Company and authorized the
corporation to clear the river from a
landing at former Governor David Stone’s
plantation east of Raleigh to Fort Barnwell in
Craven County. Stock subscriptions and a toll
road between Stone’s Landing and the city
would finance the venture. A cargo bateau
actually made it upriver into eastern Wake in
1819, but the Neuse never proved to be a
viable means of commercial transportation
for Raleigh.
Wake’s new era of prosperity was ushered
in by the four “R”s—“readin’, ‘ritin’, ‘rithmetic,”
and railroads. On New Years Day 1833 a
group of local investors led by Joseph Gales
began offering rides on a horse-drawn
experimental railroad from Union Square to
the granite quarry east of town where stone
was to be hauled for constructing the new
State Capitol. Those who paid a quarter that
day for a ride to the quarry could scarcely
have imagined the far-reaching impact this
new technology would have.
A rail line from Weldon, North Carolina,
to Petersburg, Virginia, was completed later
in 1833. Businessmen and farmers soon
began meeting to scheme about ways to build
rails to bring this revolutionary new
technology to the capital. Several groups of
investors went so far as to charter a company
but failed to attract adequate subscriptions.
Wilmington and Raleigh men made plans for
a line to open inland trade between the
capital city and the state’s lone deep-water
port and received a corporate charter in
December 1833. Raleigh support, however,
was not forthcoming, and in 1835 the
Wilmington and Raleigh Railroad Company
altered its route to bypass Raleigh and
connect with Weldon via Goldsboro and
Rocky Mount. “Raleigh” remained in the
company name until 1855.
Wake leaders wasted little time in
organizing a second railroad company, the
Raleigh and Gaston, in 1836. Terminating near
Weldon, the 86-mile road was completed in
March 1840, twelve days after the last spikes
were driven in the 161-mile Wilmington
and Raleigh. Local land values soared, and
citizens watched in amazement as the Raleigh
and Gaston’s steam locomotive Tornado first
blew into the county at a speed of fifteen
miles per hour.
HOMESPUN AND
HIGH FASHION
Wealth and high station set apart many
townspeople from their neighbors in the
countryside by the opening decade of the
nineteenth century. The well-to-do often
donned the latest fashions from northern
cities, while most citizens wore cotton, wool,
and flax clothing made at home. Newcomer
David Swain (later governor and university
president), writing to his parents in 1822,
regretted that homespun trousers would not
allow him to fit in with “decent company” in
such a place as Raleigh. He would need to spend
$18 for tailor-made pantaloons and waistcoat
to give himself a more “genteel appearance.”
Young women were even more fashionconscious,
although following current trends
often invited the scorn of conservative
onlookers. Local teacher Susan Davis Nye
remarked in her diary in 1815 that she hid
her face with a handkerchief at a wedding
party when, “surrounded by the beaux,”
a group of “shameless” young female guests
wore evening dresses with backs and bosoms
exposed. Fashion was not the only indulgence
of the feminine gender. Traveling journalist
Anne Newport Royall in 1830 noted snuff
dipping was practiced by Wake’s young
and old, including “fine women.” The
disapproval of young men, she added, forced
many young ladies to hold their dipping
parties in secret.
Extravagant tastes were evident in dress
and also in the architecture, furnishings,
home accessories, and carriages of the elite.
In 1820 a Raleigh Register correspondent
signing as “Old Farmer,” criticized the
opulence of many local families who chose
northern goods over home products to the
detriment of the local economy. Ties to
northern markets and capital would only
continue to strengthen after railroads came.
✧
Above: Rufus H. Horton was an engineer
for the Raleigh and Gaston Railroad from
1845 to 1901. For thirty-five years he ran
passenger trains between Raleigh and
Portsmouth, Virginia, without a single
injury. He started out on wooden rails,
which were upgraded to iron U-rails in the
1850s and to T-rails in the 1870s. From
Amis, Historical Raleigh (1902).
COURTESY OF OLIVIA RANEY LOCAL HISTORY
LIBRARY, RALEIGH.
Below: Making syrup from sorghum cane
was one of a multitude of jobs farmers and
slaves were responsible for. At the time of
this syrup-making operation near Fuquay-
Varina, Wake farmers were still carrying on
the methods of former generations.
COURTESY OF LIBRARY OF CONGRESS AND U.S. FARM
SECURITY ADMINISTRATION PHOTOGRAPHER, ARTHUR
ROTHSTEIN. C. 1935.
CHAPTER II
23

AFRICAN
AMERICANS
By 1840, enslaved and free African
Americans comprised over two-fifths of Wake
County’s population. While not characterized
by large plantations, Wake was one of North
Carolina’s leading slaveholding counties, with
nearly half of white families owning at least
one slave. Over a thousand free blacks were
scattered across the county by 1840, some
born free, some who purchased their
own freedom, and some emancipated. In
1815 Nathaniel Jones died at his White Plains
plantation near present-day Cary, leaving a
last will and testament which included a
plan for emancipating all his slaves when
they reached the age of 24. Jones cited
basic human rights, personal conscience,
and the “golden rule” as his motives in this
bold move.
Anti-slavery sentiment in the United States
was on the rise during the first half of the
nineteenth century. In 1816, Presbyterian
minister Robert Finley helped organize
the American Colonization Society in
Washington, D.C. The society worked to
encourage free blacks to emigrate to Liberia
on the west coast of Africa. A group from
Raleigh organized a local auxiliary branch of
the American Colonization Society in 1818.
Governor John Branch served as president,
while leading men such as Colonel William
Polk, Presbyterian minister Dr. William
McPheeters, Dr. Calvin Jones, State Treasurer
John Haywood, and editor Joseph Gales
assumed support roles. Gales even served as
treasurer of the national organization until
1839 and often used the columns of his
✧
Left: Joe High, born about 1857, spent
much of his childhood on a plantation near
Zebulon. In a 1937 interview he recalled life
as a slave: “Old women wove cloth on
looms. We made syrup, cane syrup, with a
cane mill. We carried our corn to Foster’s
Mill down on Little River to have it
ground…. I went to church at the Eppsby
[Hepzibah] Church near Buffalo….We sat
in a corner to ourselves.”
FROM FEDERAL WRITERS PROJECT, COURTESY OF LIBRARY
OF CONGRESS.
Right: John Smith, lived near Knightdale on
a plantation owned by John (Haywood)
Smith. In a 1937 interview he estimated
that (Haywood) Smith owned three
plantations and enslaved 300 individuals.
FROM FEDERAL WRITERS PROJECT, COURTESY OF LIBRARY
OF CONGRESS.
HISTORIC WAKE COUNTY
24

Raleigh Register to promote the society’s work.
Local interest in this movement waxed and
waned by the 1830s, and no significant
number of Wake freedmen settled in Liberia.
Among the few repatriated Wake slaves was
Malinda Rex, whose owner John Rex set his
slaves free at his death in 1839 under the
condition they go to Liberia.
Slave rebellions in the 1820s and 1830s
brought a monumental shift in white
Southerners’ feelings toward African
Americans and influenced Southern states to
tighten controls on enslaved and free blacks.
Wake County whites were particularly
troubled by the bloody 1831 insurrection led
by Nat Turner in tidewater Virginia, where
many had family and business connections. A
year earlier the state legislature made it
illegal to teach a slave to read and write.
Another law made it unlawful for a person
of color to preach, although Wake’s highly
respected preacher-teacher John Chavis
found a way to continue his public ministry
by publishing and selling religious tracts.
By the 1830s neither slaves nor free blacks
were allowed to carry a gun without license
and the new North Carolina constitution in
1835 took away the right of free persons of
color to vote.
Former slaves interviewed in the 1930s
spoke candidly about long days of hard work,
plantation whipping posts, food rationing,
hunting without guns, and walking around
shoeless. They also recalled slave auction
blocks in Raleigh, Rolesville, Rosinburg, and
other local towns and villages where families
were often torn apart. Ophelia Whitley, a slave
of Augustus Foster near present Zebulon,
remembered her master’s warnings to stay
away from speculators’ wagons on the
Raleigh-Tarboro stage road to avoid being kidnapped
and sold in some distant place.
Slave owners differed in ways they chose to
manage their farms and plantations. Some
masters monitored, as thoroughly as possible,
the lives of the individuals they enslaved.
Others, such as Raleigh editor Thomas J.
Lemay, allowed their slaves to visit off the
plantation, have prayer meetings, hunt, and
fish after the work was done. Regardless of the
complex relationships between masters and
bondsmen, the institution of slavery was
under attack by the time the Rip Van Winkle
State was aroused from its sleep.
✧
Left: Adora Rienshaw, was born free near
Garner in the late antebellum period. In a
1930s interview she admitted that she didn’t
receive much schooling, but recalled
teaching the “little ones” for several years.
FROM FEDERAL WRITERS PROJECT, COURTESY OF LIBRARY
OF CONGRESS.
Right: Jennylin Dunn, was enslaved by
Betsy Lassiter prior to emancipation. Over
sixty years after the close of the Civil War,
she still remembered watching slave
auctions in front of the courthouse
in Raleigh.
FROM FEDERAL WRITERS PROJECT, COURTESY OF LIBRARY
OF CONGRESS.
CHAPTER II
25

HISTORIC WAKE COUNTY
26

CHAPTER III
I NNOVATION AND I MPENDING C RISIS, 1840-1861
The year 1840 represented a turning point in Raleigh and Wake County. A new State Capitol was
dedicated, finally settling an age-old question of where the state’s permanent seat of government would
be located. A railroad was put in operation connecting Raleigh to Petersburg, Baltimore, Philadelphia,
New York, and Boston, bringing a period of prosperity, at least for those participating in the market
economy. Although they received little fanfare, Wake’s first crudely housed public schools near present
McCullers, Fuquay-Varina, and Apex began the slow process of stamping out illiteracy.
POLITICS NOT AS USUAL
As a two-party system emerged, party leaders were forced to try new approaches to win the support
of the masses. The 1840 campaign was particularly decisive in ushering in a new era of grassroots
politics. To show support for Whig presidential candidate William Henry Harrison, local men, mainly
from the county’s northern and northwestern sections, staged a log cabin parade in Raleigh. In
December 1839, Whigs held the first state nominating convention in Raleigh, followed by a Democratic
convention early in the following year.
Elections were held in August when crops were laid by prior to harvest. Candidates from each party,
as well as independents, agreed on a schedule for traveling to crossroads communities around the
county to make speeches and woo voters with hard cider, ginger cakes, watermelons, and other treats.
During the antebellum period no voter registration was required, and voters could cast their ballots at
any precinct in the county. Under this system, candidates and partisan leaders enticed men from the
country to the capital city with big feasts and marched them en masse and under guard to the polls.
Visits by famous politicians and statesmen attracted large crowds to the capital city and helped to
promote party unity. In 1844 Henry Clay campaigned in Wake for six days in his bid for U.S. president
and drew the largest gathering of people in the county during the antebellum period. Local Whigs set
up campgrounds and offered free firewood for the thousands who poured into Raleigh to meet or catch
a glimpse of the “Great Compromiser.” In 1847 another Whig politician, United States Senator Daniel
Webster of Massachusetts, also visited Wake County, staying at the governor’s residence in Raleigh for
three days. On a separate occasion that same year, President James K. Polk spent two nights in Raleigh
before traveling to Chapel Hill to deliver the commencement address at the University of North
Carolina. While traveling through Wake, Polk stopped at the Nancy Jones House in Cary, which served
as a stagecoach stop. Similarly, President James Buchanan spent a night at General Lawrence O’Bryan
Branch’s home on Hillsborough Street in Raleigh after delivering the commencement address at the
University of North Carolina in May 1859.
Samuel (“Uncle Sam”) Whitaker of the present Garner vicinity was one of several colorful politicians in
the first half of the 19th century. Serving briefly as High Sheriff, he was elected repeatedly to the State
House and then to the Senate between 1822 to 1840 until local Democrats finally snubbed him in 1842.
His nephew R. H. Whitaker remembered him as a man of small stature but robust as a politician and
businessman. He usually traveled on horseback and sprang up and down in the stirrups to keep his horse
at a gallop such that by the time he rode into the city his pants were above his knees. He was said to have
refused to take off his spurs, even while sitting in a legislative session. In 1842 the Democratic Party chose
James B. Shepard for Senate, but Whitaker ran as an independent candidate. During a speech at the
popular Banks stage stop, Shepard made remarks against the incumbent senator, and Whitaker’s son
picked up a stick and hit him. Shepard retaliated by throwing a book at him, creating quite a stir. On that
note Whitaker’s long career in local politics came to an end, but his service is recognized on a plaque in
the Senate Chamber along with that of other senators who shared in the dedication of the Capitol in 1840.
✧
Wake County Whigs staged a log cabin
parade in Raleigh during the William
Henry Harrison presidential campaign in
1840. Similar parades took place across the
country to win the support of undecided
backwoods voters. Whitaker’s
Reminiscences, Incidents, and
Anecdotes (1905).
DRAWING BY LAMAR BAILEY IN WHITAKER.
CHAPTER III
27

✧
Below, left: George E. Badger, congenial
Raleigh attorney and U.S. senator who
reportedly kept a pistol inside his desk in the
Senate Chamber.
COURTESY OF NORTH CAROLINA STATE
ARCHIVES, RALEIGH.
Below, right: This sketch dramatizes a tense
moment in the U.S. Senate in 1850 as
senators debated over admission of
California as a free state. North Carolina
was represented by Willie P. Mangum and
George E. Badger.
SKETCH BY EDWARD WILLIAMS CLAY.
HISTORIC WAKE COUNTY
28
Democrats prevailed at the polls in Wake
County through the 1840s and 1850s, even
though Whigs gained control of the legislature
from 1836 to 1850. Whigs were for the
most part former Federalists and wealthy
elites whose idea of nation-building clashed
with that of Democratic President Andrew
Jackson. Jacksonians demanded low tariffs
and minimal governmental intrusions, whereas
men such as Raleigh attorney George E.
Badger and editors Joseph and Weston Gales
abandoned the Democratic Party because
they envisioned a more highly developed,
commercialized society bolstered by a strong
federal government with a strong tax base.
Badger was a native of New Bern and a Yale
College alumnus who moved his law practice
to Raleigh in 1825. He worked on Jackson’s
campaign in 1828 and was nominated by
fellow North Carolina Democrats for U.S.
Attorney General, although Jackson passed
him over. No doubt an observer of the financial
laxity in New Bern and Raleigh’s state and
private banks, Badger favored a strong national
bank to oversee small institutions and to keep
a stable currency. Jackson’s opposition to the
national bank led Badger to join the Whigs in
the mid-1830s. He soon became recognized as
a key party leader. President William Henry
Harrison appointed him Secretary of the Navy,
but Harrison’s untimely death a month into his
term placed an anti-bank president, John Tyler,
in the White House and led Badger and most of
the Harrison cabinet to resign. Badger returned
to Washington in 1846 as a U.S. Senator,
serving until 1855.
Reverend R. H. Whitaker characterized
Badger as an eloquent speaker and “as genial
and familiar on the streets as an old farmer.”
He was not an early riser and could usually
be seen coming down the street toward his
office between 10 and 11 o’clock. While in
Washington he was reputed to have kept a
pistol in his desk in the U.S. Senate Chamber.
Among the manuscript holdings of Rutgers
University is an unsent letter from Mary Dix
Van Dyke to Badger in about 1850, urging
him to remove it. This was one indicator of
the growing intensity of debates between
northern and southern politicians regarding the
expansion of slavery. It was the same issue that
divided the national Whig Party and brought its
demise in the late 1850s.
RAILROADS
The chartering and financing of railroads
were Whigs’ most significant contributions to
Wake’s economy. By the time the party became
polarized in the 1850s, many Democrats had
come to realize the economic advantages of the
iron horse and threw their political and financial
weight behind railroad-building efforts.
The General Assembly took over the
financially troubled Raleigh and Gaston Railroad
in 1845 and by 1853 made vital improvements
such as replacing flat or strap-iron rails with
U-rails and upgrading locomotives to increase
speed to twenty-five miles per hour. Until
1853 the line terminated at Gaston, requiring
travelers, freight, and mail to be transported
twelve miles by wagon or stage to Weldon. After
the missing link between Gaston and Weldon
was constructed, agents, engineers, and section
masters saw a noticeable increase in traffic.
By 1850 Whig Governor John Motley
Morehead and other state leaders were making
plans for another railroad to link North
Carolina’s key interior towns and foster greater
intrastate trade. There was thunderous applause
and cheering in the Capitol when the bill to
charter the North Carolina Railroad passed with
bipartisan support in 1849. Financed with both
public and private funds, this new venture
found many eager investors in Wake County,
with William Boylan and George W. Mordecai
being the county’s largest shareholders. In 1851
laborers, mostly slaves, began laying tracks, and
trains began running from Goldsboro to Raleigh
by 1854. Joint depot and warehouse facilities for
the North Carolina and the Raleigh and Gaston
were built in Raleigh at the intersection of
Cabarrus and Harrington Streets. A crescent

shaped line from Goldsboro to Charlotte was
finally completed in 1856, with an additional
depot located west of Raleigh at Morrisville.
As coal grew in importance as a source for
heating and fueling locomotive engines, Dr.
Thomas D. Hogg, Sion H. Rogers, and others
incorporated the Chatham Railroad Company
in 1855 to build a line from Raleigh to the
coalfields in Chatham (later Lee) County. The
project failed to materialize until after the
Civil War.
AGRICULTURE
Raleigh’s position as the political center of a
state and county of, by, and for farmers was
clearly evident when noted landscape architect
and travel writer Frederick Law Olmsted
stepped off the train and approached Union
Square in 1853. Admiring the “noble” Capitol
building surrounded by majestic oaks, he was
appalled to see the “square field” around the
city’s architectural centerpiece being used as
a hog pasture. What he found so revolting
was merely one of the county’s two main
agricultural products on display. The other
was corn, which Olmsted saw in abundance at
the city’s eastern gateway. A growing number
of farmers were producing cotton, and some
farmers grew tobacco on a small scale mainly
for locally made plug and pipe tobacco and
snuff. The majority of families produced only
what they needed and little, if any, to sell.
Since colonial times, wearing out land and
then clearing new ground was the common
practice. Farmers abandoned old fields or set
them aside for churches or schools. Some farmers
found fresh land in Tennessee or the Deep
South, while others remained on depleted
soils to eke out a living. Rotating crops and
fertilizing the soil with manure, lime, clover, or
plaster of paris were foreign concepts to most
Wake farmers before the 1860s, as were hillside
ditching and deep plowing. Frederick Law
Olmsted wrote about a “most absurd little
plow” he saw near Raleigh in 1853. The share
was “not more than six inches in depth, and
eight in length on the sole, fastened by a socket
to a stake, to which was fitted a short beam
and stilts. It was drawn by one mule, and its
work among the stumps could only be called
scratching.” Until commercial agriculture
gained a foothold after the Civil War, Wake
families on isolated small farms far removed
from railroads continued scratching with primitive
implements as they tried to maintain their
independence and ties to family and land.
Enlightened businessmen and planters
realized by the 1840s that newer methods could
make farming more profitable. In the next two
decades there were at least four farm journals
published in Raleigh devoted to scientific
farming: the North Carolina Farmer, published
1845-1849 by Thomas J. Lemay; the Farmer’s
Journal, the official organ of a newly reorganized
North Carolina Agricultural Society, edited by
Dr. John F. Tompkins from 1852 to 1854, and its
successor, the Carolina Cultivator, which state
school for the deaf superintendent William D.
Cooke and Benjamin S. Hedrick published from
about 1854 to 1857; the Arator, a later Lemay
publication in the mid-fifties; and the North
Carolina Planter, edited and published 1858-
1861 by James M. Jordan, John W. Woodfin,
S. W. Westbrook, and W. H. Hamilton. Always
ahead of their time, Joseph and Weston Gales
had been using the columns of the Raleigh
Register to promote the cause of improved
farming decades before the idea began to
catch on in Wake. While editor of the Raleigh
Star in the 1840s, Lemay pioneered the use of
“departments,” or special columns devoted to
agriculture, medicine, and literature. He also
was North Carolina’s first editor to feature state
news over national and international news.
Farmers’ almanacs were actually more
widely read than these short-lived journals.
Joseph Gales began publishing one around
1803, followed in ensuing years by William
Boylan and Thomas Henderson. Beginning
in 1837, Henry D. Turner, a New Englander,
✧
Top: The Yarborough House, pictured about
1900, was Raleigh’s premier hotel from the
1850s until the 1920s. Most well-to-do
visitors lodged there, and political lobbyists,
businessmen, and local dignitaries gathered
in the lobby to discuss matters of
importance or to enjoy drinks in
the barroom.
COURTESY OF NORTH CAROLINA STATE
ARCHIVES, RALEIGH.
Above: Auburn was one of several Wake
stopping places on the North Carolina
Railroad by the time of the Civil War. The
depot, shown here in 1971, was relocated in
the late 1980s.
FROM ELIZABETH REID MURRAY COLLECTION, COURTESY
OF OLIVIA RANEY LOCAL HISTORY LIBRARY.
Below: The one-horse plow was still in use
in 1939 when this eastern Wake scene was
captured on camera.
PHOTOGRAPH BY U.S. FARM SECURITY ADMINISTRATION
PHOTOGRAPHER MARION POST WOLCOTT. COURTESY OF
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.
CHAPTER III
29

✧
Above: Birthplace of Baptist missionary
Matthew Tyson Yates near Green Level as it
appeared in the 1890s. This two-room log
house covered with plank siding was typical
of yeoman dwellings from early settlement
to the Civil War. Most had sleeping lofts and
separate kitchen houses. From Taylor, The
Story of Yates the Missionary (1898).
COURTESY OF OLIVIA RANEY LOCAL HISTORY LIBRARY.
Below: Matthew T. Yates in the 1880s in his
37th year as a Baptist missionary in China.
From Taylor, The Story of Yates the
Missionary (1898).
COURTESY OF OLIVIA RANEY LOCAL HISTORY LIBRARY.
HISTORIC WAKE COUNTY
30
distributed the North Carolina Almanac, the
state’s most well-known “farmer’s bible” of the
nineteenth century.
Locals formed a county agricultural society in
early 1852 and led in reorganizing a state society
later that year. They were also instrumental in
instituting a State Fair in 1853 to demonstrate
new methods to a larger number of farmers. For
the fairgrounds the City of Raleigh purchased a
32-acre tract two blocks south of New Bern
Avenue between Hargett and Davie Streets
where Joseph Gales had planted mulberry trees
for his silk experiment in the 1830s. The fair,
however, was more effective in showcasing arts,
crafts, politicians, and providing entertainment
than it was in promoting the gospel of scientific
farming, which largely fell on deaf ears in the
antebellum period.
NEW DEVELOPMENTS IN
TECHNOLOGY, CULTURE,
FAITH, AND LEARNING
The two decades prior to the Civil War
were years of several important “firsts.” In 1841
local stores began offering friction matches.
T. H. Smiley opened the first professional
photography studio at the corner of Fayetteville
and Morgan Streets in 1842. In 1847 Baptist
minister Matthew T. Yates of the Green Level
section became a pioneer missionary in China,
further cementing his denomination’s foothold
in the county. Methodists established the
county’s first all-black congregation in Raleigh
in 1848—the forerunner of St. Paul’s AME
Church. When Drs. Fabius J. Haywood, Richard
Haywood, and W. R. Scott introduced the use of
anesthesia (ether and chloroform) in that same
year, it was a most welcome relief for surgical
and dental patients, as well as for physicians,
dentists, and those forced to restrain friends and
loved ones during an operation. Additionally,
in 1848, telegraph wires connecting Washington
to New Orleans were installed as far as Raleigh,
and the speed of communication between
Raleigh and major American cities suddenly
increased from days to minutes.
The 1850s was the decade when railroads
began to have a more significant impact on the
economy. An unprecedented level of prosperity
was manifested in architectural gems such as
Raleigh’s first-class hotel, the Yarborough
House (1852), Christ Episcopal Church
(1853), designed by Richard Upjohn, and
William Percival’s First Baptist Church (1858).
In 1852 the City of Raleigh reorganized its fire
department, installing cisterns throughout the
city and hiring its first paid chief. In 1857
Raleigh’s city limits were expanded for the first
time since 1792. In 1858 the city dismissed
the citizen guard and employed its first
paid watchmen. That year Dr. Thomas D. Hogg
organized the Raleigh Gas Works and began
offering gas lights in city homes, businesses,
offices, and churches. Three mineral springs
(two discovered in the late 1850s) were
drawing visitors to Raleigh to take the waters
by 1860. It was during this same time that
another spring was discovered on the Stephen
Fuquay property, but it would be several
decades before it gained popular attention.
Two new paper mills were in operation
in rural Wake by 1855—Falls of Neuse
Manufacturing Company, which built a massive
three-story factory of granite in 1854-1855, and
Milburnie Mills, a supplier for the New York
Times. A third paper mill, Raleigh Paper Mill,
started by Joseph Gales in 1808, was by 1850
producing rag paper at the site of the future
Whitaker Mill on Crabtree Creek under the
ownership of Manteo Mills. In addition, James
T. Brown, superintendent of Heron Mining
Company’s “lead mine” west of Raleigh, was
shipping graphite to New York and Baltimore
by the mid 1850s. Dr. Thomas D. Hogg and
partner Robert Haywood built the county’s first
wood planing mill in northwest Raleigh in the
late 1850s, providing weatherboards, flooring,
and trimwork, all formerly planed by hand.
By no means an industrial center, Wake
businessmen were nonetheless making strides
toward a more diversified economy.
Public education gained ground by
the early 1850s when the state appointed its first
Superintendent of Public Instruction. Census
tabulations show that over 2,000 Wake children
were being taught in 64 free schools in
1860. That year a short-lived Wake County
Educational Association formed under the
umbrella of a state organization dating to 1856.
Some of Wake’s wealthier men served on public
school boards and local committees, but families

of greater means customarily sent their children
to private academies where school terms were
longer and qualifications for teachers higher.
Forestville Female Academy, Springfield
Academy near Auburn, Wake Male and Female
Academy near present Garner, and Holly
Springs Academy were among rural Wake’s
leading private schools opened in the 1850s.
Raleigh boasted its Lovejoy Academy (former
Raleigh Academy), as well as the Episcopalians’
St. Mary’s School and a short-lived Raleigh
Methodist Female Seminary. Presbyterians and
Baptists in the city were making plans to open
two additional schools—Peace Institute and
Raleigh Baptist Female Seminary—when the
Civil War delayed their progress.
Wake Forest boasted the only college in the
county before the Civil War. Started as the
Wake Forest Institute in 1834, the school was
rechartered as Wake Forest College in 1838.
Many early students had limited schooling, so
preparatory courses required much of the
school’s resources. Economic prosperity in the
1840s enabled trustees to retire the school’s
debt in 1850. In 1854, 26-year-old alumnus
Washington Manly Wingate took over as
president and recruited faculty and students
with higher credentials. He also began to
build an endowment fund that would insure
the school’s future success.
GROWING
TENSIONS
The engines of progress soon lost their steam
as political conflicts in both state and national
capitals reached boiling points in 1860. On the
eve of the Civil War, a growing antagonism
between non-slaveholders and the slaveholding
elite was seen in the formation of the Wake
County Working Men’s Association in 1858.
By this time, public schools had created a
more literate workforce, so consequently an
1857 free suffrage amendment to the state
constitution removed the property requirement
for voting in senatorial elections. These new
developments empowered groups of local
artisans, railroad machinists, wagonmakers,
day-laborers, and professionals to push for ad
valorem taxation of slaves and force slaveowners
to carry more of the tax burden for schools,
railroads, and other improvements. Though
slaveowners themselves, Wake planters Moses
A. Bledsoe and Sion H. Rogers won seats in
the state senate and house, respectively, on
an ad valorem platform. They were initially
unsuccessful in bringing tax reform, but their
success at the polls was evidence that a rising
middle class was beginning to challenge the
long-standing power of the ruling elite.
More troubling was the threat of war
over the issues of slavery and states’ rights.
Methodists and Baptists from north and south
who had cooperated in mission work broke
ties in the 1840s, resulting in a Methodist-
Episcopal Church, South, in 1844 and
Southern Baptist Convention in 1845. As early
as 1850, William Boylan returned from Yazoo
County, Mississippi, where he owned property,
with a report that many in the Deep South
were already talking about secession. By 1855
Wake had activated three militia units—the
North Carolina Blues, the Independent Guards,
and the Oak City Guards. That year at the
reorganizational muster of the Oak City
Guards, 79-year-old Boylan expressed a fear
that North Carolina was not militarily ready
for the “crisis of impending war” but urged
state leaders to prepare for a fight.
John Brown’s bloody raid in Harper’s Ferry,
Virginia, in 1859 stirred fear across the South.
The fact that one of his accomplices, a free
black named John A. Copeland, Jr., was a native
of Raleigh brought the news particularly close
to home in Wake County. When secession
finally turned from threat into reality in South
Carolina in 1860, Wake County citizens, like
most North Carolinians, were still reluctant to
leave the Union. Planters and businessmen did
not welcome the prospect of severing ties with
friends and associates in northern cities where
they marketed farm products and purchased
merchandise for their stores.
When a state convention was held in May
1861 to make the painful decision on secession,
former U.S. Senator and Wake delegate George
E. Badger proposed that rather than secede
North Carolina should “separate” from the union
based on the constitutional right of revolution.
The convention defeated his separation bill and
voted instead to repeal the state’s ratification of
the United States Constitution and join the
Confederate States of America (C.S.A.).
✧
Above: The Reverend Bennett T. Blake, a
Methodist minister and teacher who settled
in eastern Wake in the 1830s. In 1848 he
led in founding Raleigh’s African mission
chapel, the county’s first all-black
congregation. His home, Oaky Grove, a
Wake County Historic Landmark, and a
Methodist church bearing the same name
are still standing near Shotwell.
COURTESY OF NORTH CAROLINA STATE
ARCHIVES, RALEIGH.
Below: Sion H. Rogers, planter, paper mill
owner, and state senator who championed
ad valorem taxation of slaves, although he
was a slaveowner himself.
COURTESY OF NORTH CAROLINA STATE
ARCHIVES, RALEIGH.
CHAPTER III
31

HISTORIC WAKE COUNTY
32

CHAPTER IV
C IVIL W AR AND R ECONSTRUCTION, 1861-1870
While others celebrated, Senator Badger and a great number of unionists in North Carolina
mourned the news of secession. The Ellis Light Artillery, a Wake militia unit, performed a 100-gun
salute after a handkerchief was dropped from the west balcony of the State Capitol signifying an
affirmative secession vote at 5:30 pm on May 20, 1861. North Carolinians suddenly found themselves
at war against the United States of America. Militiamen were immediately mobilized, while training
camps and hospitals were established in and around Raleigh. Church and school groups, merchants,
and women’s sewing circles organized to provide clothing, food, and other necessities for soldiers.
Wake County was home to five training camps and four hospitals during the war. Camp Ellis,
named in honor of Governor John W. Ellis, was located at the Fairgrounds, where militia units had
already been preparing for combat under Colonel Daniel Harvey Hill. North Carolina’s First Regiment
of Volunteers left Camp Ellis and boarded railroad box cars for the Virginia front on May 21. Camp
Boylan was established at William Montfort Boylan’s former home, Montfort Hall, in west Raleigh.
Camp Mangum, located on the grounds of the present North Carolina State University College of
Veterinary Medicine and the North Carolina Museum of Art, was named in honor of Lt. William P.
Mangum, who was killed at the Battle of Bull Run in July 1861, and his father, former Senator Willie
P. Mangum. Camp Crabtree, also known as Camp Carolina, was located north of Raleigh on the
Kimbrough Jones plantation. Camp Holmes, established in the summer of 1862 near the Raleigh and
Gaston Railroad northeast of the city, was named for General Theophilus Hunter Holmes of Sampson
County, commander of the CSA’s Department of North Carolina.
A state hospital was set up on the Fairgrounds within days of secession, with Dr. Edmund Burke
Haywood in charge. It became CSA General Hospital #7 in 1862 when the Confederate government
took over the facility. Another hospital, CSA #8, opened in 1862 in the partially completed Peace
Institute building and offered 300 beds in eight wards. In its first six weeks, 675 patients were treated.
A third hospital, CSA #13, was built in 1864 at the corner of New Bern Avenue and Tarboro Road. It
was named in memory of General James J. Pettigrew (killed in 1863), and Dr. E. B. Haywood was
placed in charge. After Wake Forest College closed its doors for the duration of the war in 1862, a
fourth Wake hospital was set up in the college’s Main Building in 1864 under the care of surgeon Dr.
J. G. Broadnax. Churches and homes near railroad stations were also pressed into service as hospitals
after wounded soldiers began coming in by train from the battlefields.
Wake was also the location of several war-related factories. In December 1861 George B.
Waterhouse and Michael Bowes, who installed Raleigh’s gas works in 1858, opened a gun powder
mill on House Creek near its confluence with Crabtree Creek. Built with state loans and grants, the
Raleigh Powder Mill was partially destroyed by a deadly explosion in June 1862. Waterhouse and
Bowes moved the operation to Elihu Sater’s paper mill on Crabtree Creek (site of Isaac Hunter’s
colonial grist mill, Joseph Gales’ paper mill, and later Whitaker’s Mill). Joel D. Whitaker called it a
“deadly, dangerous place.” He remembered that workers removed their shoes before entering the
factory lest a nail or tack should spark a fire and blow them up. Despite repeated explosions, the
company supplied most of the state’s rifle, musket, cannon, and blasting powder during the war.
Other industries included a bayonet factory near the Raleigh and Gaston Railroad shops and a
state-owned clothing factory, where expert tailors cut the cloth for women to sew in their homes.
Jewish clothing merchant Moses Grausman supplied uniforms to officers, sending agents to the
training camps to take measurements and orders.
A number of military units were composed largely of Wake men. The North Carolina Grays
(originally called the Cedar Fork Rifles) from western Wake were one of the first to mobilize. On June
1, 1861, the company mustered in front of a large crowd in the yard of the Williamson Page House in
✧
This c. 1900 photo is thought to show
Whitaker Mill, former site of a paper
factory and wartime powder mill.
COURTESY OF NORTH CAROLINA STATE
ARCHIVES, RALEIGH.
CHAPTER IV
33

✧
Above: General Lawrence O’Bryan Branch.
From Whitaker, Whitaker’s
Reminiscences, Incidents, and
Anecdotes (1905).
Below: Old Soldier’s Home, former site of
Pettigrew Hospital (CSA #13), located on
present site of the North Carolina Division
of Motor Vehicles on New Bern Avenue,
Raleigh. Postcard image from c. 1910.
COURTESY OF MICHAEL REID AND OLIVIA RANEY LOCAL
HISTORY LIBRARY, RALEIGH.
Morrisville where they received a grand farewell
before departing for camp. Similar scenes
occurred across the county just before men and
boys boarded trains en route to camp or the
front. Other units from Wake included the Ellis
Light Artillery (also known as Manly’s Battery)
and Oak City Guards from Raleigh; Wake
Regulars from across the county; Wake Light
Infantry from Forestville and Wake Forest;
Neuse River Guards from New Light and
Bartons Creek; Wake Guards from Holly Springs
and southern Wake; and Wake Rangers, a
cavalry unit. Three predominantly Wake
infantry units—the Chalybeate Guards, Auburn
Guards, and Wake Eastern Guards—became
companies of the 31st North Carolina Regiment.
North Carolina’s 47th Regiment, commanded by
Colonel Sion H. Rogers, consisted mostly of
Wake men. Major J. C. Winder of Philadelphia,
along with Samuel A. Ashe and C. B. Denson,
commanded an engineering unit from North
Carolina. Winder was an investor in the Heron
Mining Company, which operated one of Wake’s
graphite mines. After the war he was
superintendent of the Raleigh and Gaston (later
Seaboard Air Line) Railroad.
CASUALTIES
News of dead and wounded soldiers from
Wake County appeared in Raleigh newspapers
following every engagement of General Robert
E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. Telegraph
operators and mail carriers conveyed messages
of even greater numbers of deaths in camps
and hospitals as soldiers succumbed to
dysentery, pneumonia, small pox, typhoid
fever, and other diseases. Rank and file
servicemen were customarily buried in mass
graves or in cemeteries near battlefields and
hospitals. Families of the wealthy, many of
whom were officers, had their loved ones’
bodies shipped home by rail for funerals. The
final rites for Raleigh’s General Lawrence
O’Bryan Branch, who was killed at Sharpsburg,
Maryland (Antietam), in September 1862,
drew the largest local public gathering since
Henry Clay’s visit in 1844. It was no doubt an
opportunity for loved ones of those who served
alongside the general to connect with their
absent soldiers and to bring closure to what
would become known as the bloodiest day in
American history.
By the end of 1864, many local companies
who had trained and marched into battle
together were practically wiped out. Those not
dead from wounds and disease were held in
Union prisons in Maryland, Delaware, New
York, and elsewhere, many recovering from
wounds and illnesses. Some were fortunate
enough to escape prison camps and return
home. One of these was 21-year-old William
Gaston Clements, the uneducated son of a poor
farmer in the Morrisville vicinity. He enlisted in
the Cedar Fork Rifles in April 1861, and when
war was declared a month later his unit was
assigned to the “Bloody Sixth” North Carolina
Regiment. After surviving the battles of First
Manassas and Seven Pines, he had his left arm
shattered above the wrist in September 1862 at
Boonsboro, Maryland. The arm was amputated,
and the following day, according to a
descendant, he began walking home. No longer
fit for military service, he followed the advice of
North Carolina Governor Zebulon B. Vance and
pursued an education, later becoming one of
Wake County’s early school superintendents.
ON THE HOMEFRONT
Hardships and deprivation increased as the
war continued, forcing schools, churches, and
businesses to close due to lack of funding and
personnel. Wake Forest College closed for the
duration in 1862 after a new conscript law
HISTORIC WAKE COUNTY
34

disallowed student exemptions from service.
Professor James H. Foote had already resigned
his post in 1861 to serve as captain of the
Wake Light Infantry, a company assigned
to the First North Carolina Regiment. Foote
later became assistant adjutant general of
North Carolina. Two of his colleagues opened
a temporary female seminary on the Wake
Forest campus during 1863 and 1864. St.
Mary’s remained open during the war. The
school achieved notoriety by having General
Robert E. Lee’s daughter Mildred as a student
and also by having Mrs. Varina Davis, wife of
Confederate President Jefferson Davis, and her
children as temporary residents. Other girls’
schools and some public schools also remained
open. Since northern textbooks were no longer
available, the Raleigh firm of Branson and Farrar
published spelling, geography, and reading
books for North Carolina schools in 1863.
The Davises stayed in Raleigh during the
spring and summer of 1862 while Richmond
was under attack. While quartered in an upper
floor of the Yarborough House with a sick baby,
Mrs. Davis received a telegram from her
husband with news of a Confederate victory in
the Seven Days’ Battles around Richmond. She
later recalled the telegraph office was near her
room and that as the message was recorded
each word was shouted out to listeners gathered
on the streets. The crowds “shouted themselves
hoarse,” Mrs. Davis wrote, although at least one
townsman tried to keep them from scaring
the baby. Mrs. Jonathan M. Heck was another
prominent Raleigh refugee from Virginia.
Lenoir County educator Levi Branson, who
became a prominent Raleigh publisher, and
his family were among hundreds who fled
Kinston, New Bern, and surrounding areas as
Union forces invaded North Carolina’s northern
coastline in March 1862.
Shortages of daily provisions became critical
by 1863, especially for those who were accustomed
to buying instead of growing their own
food. Salt, the all-important preservative, was in
short supply. As early as 1862 the county court
appointed agents to get Wake’s allowance from
the state salt works at Fayetteville and to purchase
additional amounts from Saltville,
Virginia, for indigent families of soldiers and to
sell locally on a rationing basis. Farmers recycled
salt by boiling dirt scooped up from smokehouse
floors after the meat had dripped, and
they also substituted parched corn and other
grains for coffee, another scarce commodity.
One difficulty faced throughout the war
effort was a shortage of shoes for Confederate
foot soldiers. Raleigh merchants Philip Thiem
and A. W. Fraps filled the local demand by
opening the North Carolina Wooden Shoe
Factory in 1861. Their shoes were made of gum
and poplar wood and covered in leather so as to
be impervious to water.
Unscrupulous profiteers bought up scarce
goods and sold them at exorbitant prices such
that by war’s end it took as much as $500 to
buy a barrel of flour and $1700 for an ounce
of the pain-killer quinine. By 1865, the lion’s
share of Wake County tax revenues was spent
on provisions for indigent soldier’s families,
including those whose husbands and fathers
had died in the war. Private individuals also
aided the needy in their neighborhoods.
Soldiers without a stake in the slave
economy examined the horrors of the
battlefield, the boredom of camp life, and
hardships back home and found it increasingly
difficult to justify fighting in what they
perceived as a “rich man’s war.” Some deserted
to help young wives and aging parents with
crops, at the same time always watchful to
avoid capture by state militiamen. Thomas
Ruffin Lawrence of southwestern Wake was
one such deserter. He hid in the woods and
swamps near his farm and only came home to
wife Temperance, or “Tempie,” when his food
supply was gone. A granddaughter recounted a
✧
Above: Joseph T. Broughton (in center,
holding flag), the Reverend Jesse Wheeler
(cousin of President Andrew Johnson), and
several other members of the 31st North
Carolina Regiment, Company D (Auburn
Guards) are identified in this Confederate
veteran’s reunion in the 1890s.
COURTESY OF THE JOHNSTON COUNTY HERITAGE
CENTER, SMITHFIELD.
Below: Mrs. Jonathan M. Heck, war refugee
whose family settled in Raleigh. She and
daughter Fannie E. S. Heck became well
known for their pioneering women’s
missionary work with North Carolina
Baptists in the 1880s. The home built by the
Hecks still stands on Blount Street in
Raleigh. From Yost, And Greater Works:
The Woman’s Missionary Union of the
Raleigh Baptist Association, 1886-1986.
COURTESY OF OLIVIA RANEY LOCAL HISTORY
LIBRARY, RALEIGH.
CHAPTER IV
35

✧
Above: In the 1920s Confederate veteran
George B. Alford erected this monument
(photographed in 1972) next to his home in
Holly Springs to honor his comrades from
Wake and surrounding areas.
FROM ELIZABETH REID MURRAY COLLECTION, COURTESY
OF OLIVIA RANEY LOCAL HISTORY LIBRARY, RALEIGH.
Below: One instance from the Union
invasion is immortalized on the gravestone
of southern Wake housewife Rebecca Jones
Alford. Mrs. Alford, the inscription states,
“whipped Sherman’s Bummers with scalding
water while trying to take her Dinner Pot,
which contained a ham bone being cooked
for her Soldier Boys.”
FROM ELIZABETH REID MURRAY COLLECTION, COURTESY
OF OLIVIA RANEY LOCAL HISTORY LIBRARY, RALEIGH.
HISTORIC WAKE COUNTY
36
visit by members of the Home Guard while the
couple was in the smokehouse cutting meat.
Tempie’s quick thinking to have her husband
conceal himself on an inside ledge over the
doorway saved him from being hanged or sent
back to the army.
WARTIME
POLITICS
The fact that North Carolina provided a
disproportionately large number of fighting
men compared to the rest of the Confederacy
belied the state’s widespread pro-Union
sentiment. Loyalty to the Union was evidenced
in the state’s high number of deserters and also
in the perceptions of invading Federal soldiers
who at war’s end in 1865 observed a distinctly
more courteous reception in Raleigh compared
to that in other southern cities.
North Carolina’s leading anti-secessionist
was William Woods Holden, a Wake native and
editor of the North Carolina Standard, the organ
of the state’s conservative faction in the
Democratic Party. A champion of ad valorem
taxation before the war, Holden was popular
among yeomen and working class voters. He
was pro-secession in the mid-1850s, but he
changed his mind by 1861. A rift with party
leaders resulted in a second Democratic Party
organ, the State Journal, and an end to Holden’s
state printing contract. He devoted the next
four years to attacking secessionists and the
administration of the Confederate government.
By the time of the Confederate defeat
at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, in July 1863,
Holden became convinced that the South
could not win the war. He staged anti-war
meetings across the state to urge legislators to
negotiate an honorable peace and
pull North Carolina out of the
Confederacy. He dubbed the war a
“rich man’s war and a poor man’s
fight,” a theme that was often repeated
in defense of deserters. Military
leaders hated him to the point that a
Georgia brigade passing through
Raleigh ransacked the Standard office
in September 1863. Hundreds of
Holden supporters retaliated by
demolishing the office of the pro-
Confederate Journal. Holden lost a bid
for governor in 1864 after his opponent,
incumbent Zebulon B. Vance, convinced
North Carolinians that an early peace would
have them fighting for Abraham Lincoln
against other Southerners—a proposition that
not even Holden would have stood for.
END OF HOSTILITIES
Holden’s peace movement came on the
heels of a threat of Union invasion from the
coast in early 1863. Governor Vance ordered
earthen breastworks built around Raleigh,
with local slaves pressed into service for
construction. No Union soldiers came,
however, at least for another two years. In the
final week of the war an estimated 85,000
Confederate and Union troops passed through
Wake, leaving an indelible impression on
those who witnessed this dramatic spectacle.
Following a Union victory at the Battle of
Bentonville March 19-21, 1865, Union troops
under General William T. Sherman moved
to Goldsboro to rest and to replenish supplies
before marching on Raleigh. In early April
Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston,
headquartered in Smithfield, learned of
Sherman’s plans to begin marching on April 10,
so he ordered his men into Wake County.
Ragged, dirty, sickly, and mostly barefooted,
Johnston’s soldiers, including a few Wake men
in the 31st North Carolina Regiment, made
their way through western Johnston County
into southeastern Wake, crossing the Neuse
River at Battle’s Bridge.
Johnston soon learned of the fall of
Richmond and of General Robert E. Lee’s
surrender, but on President Davis’s orders the

general continued his retreat to Greensboro.
By April 12, tens of thousands in tattered gray
reached Raleigh. Citizens from Wake and
neighboring counties sent provisions to be
distributed to the soldiers when they reached
the city. Slaves were stationed along Fayetteville
Street to keep baskets filled for the Raleigh
ladies who distributed food to the men as
they passed by. St. Mary’s students stood along
Hillsborough Street with goblets and pitchers
of water. Some exchanged names and addresses
with soldiers.
There was at the same time a frantic
scramble through town and countryside to
conceal anything of value lest it be taken by
advancing Union soldiers. Gold, jewelry, and
silverware had to be buried or hidden in the
least obvious places. Women wore multiple
layers of clothing to keep Union soldiers from
converting their prized garments into sacks for
carrying off meat, corn, or valuables.
Raleigh leaders made a last-ditch effort to
prevent the kind of destruction visited on
South Carolina’s capital by Sherman’s men.
Governor Vance and Mayor William H. Harrison
sent two aging former governors, William A.
Graham and David L. Swain, to the Union
general’s headquarters near Clayton on April
12 to request their protection, which Sherman
granted. When Vance’s emissaries did not return
by nightfall, the governor fled, leaving behind
a letter authorizing Harrison to surrender the
city. The next day the mayor left his sick bed
with eight other city leaders and waited in the
rain at W. H. Holleman’s home (on what was
later called Old Garner Road) with a flag of
truce for the arrival of Union General Judson
Kilpatrick. Attorney Kenneth Rayner, the
spokesman, formally offered unconditional
surrender of the city and was in turn granted
protection of life and property as long as there
was no resistance to Federal occupation.
Rain continued as Kilpatrick and his Union
cavalry rode down Fayetteville Street. General
Joseph Wheeler’s Cavalry, the rear guard of the
Confederates, had disappeared from view on
Hillsborough Street only moments earlier. A
fiery young Texas lieutenant named Walsh
lagged behind near the capitol and took several
shots at the advancing enemy before riding off,
but he was soon captured and hanged at Union
Square. Had Walsh’s bullet killed Kilpatrick or
one of his men, many surmised, Raleigh soon
would have been in flames.
Sherman’s troops came into Wake County
from a variety of directions on their way to
Raleigh—through Moccasin Creek, Eagle
Rock, Milburnie, Battle’s Bridge, Auburn,
Rand’s Mill, Apex, New Hill, Bonsal,
Holleman’s Crossroads, and Holly Springs.
They left by way of Cary, Morrisville, and
Leesville. William Scott, a free African
American living near Raleigh, later
compared Federal soldiers to blue birds that
“covered the face of the earth.” Hardly a
chicken, pig, cow, or bushel of corn was
spared, as they foraged their way through
rural Wake County. They also took horses
and mules from farmers and unearthed
hidden valuables.
Skirmishes took place between advancing
and retreating cavalrymen near Neuse Mills
(Milburnie) and around Raleigh. Kilpatrick’s
men also exchanged fire with Confederates
near Cary, Morrisville, and Leesville. The tensest
moments came when
news of President Abraham
Lincoln’s April 14 assassination
reached Raleigh on the
17th. Many Federal troops
began threatening to burn
the city. Some 2,000 men
with torches set out from
their camps southwest of
Raleigh that evening to carry
out their threat, but Union
General John A. Logan was
dispatched from Morrisville
and threatened to shoot
anyone who did not return
to camp.
In mid-April, Confederate
Captain Rawlins Lowndes
delivered a dispatch to
Kilpatrick’s encampment in
Morrisville stating that
General Johnston was prepared
to meet with General
Sherman to discuss the terms
of surrender. Hostilities finally
ended on April 18 when
Johnston surrendered to
✧
General John A. Logan of Illinois, whose
late night orders kept an angry mob from
burning Raleigh following the assassination
of Abraham Lincoln.
COURTESY OF LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.
CHAPTER IV
37

✧
President Andrew Johnson before the U.S.
Senate at his impeachment trial. From
Harper’s Weekly.
Sherman at the James and Nancy Bennett
farm near Durham. While waiting for official
approval of surrender terms, the Union general
held a grand review of his troops at
Raleigh’s Union Square. Over a four-day period
72,000 men marched with U.S. flags waving
to the majestic sounds of drums and
bands playing. Union commander-inchief
General Ulysses S. Grant paid
a surprise visit to Raleigh on April 24 to
renegotiate the terms of surrender by
disallowing the recognition of state government.
On April 27 the official end of the war
was heralded with loud cheering, guns firing,
bells ringing, and a message spelled out in
military signal language with rocket blasts
from the dome of the Capitol.
FROM A RALEIGH
TAILOR’ S SHOP
TO THE WHITE HOUSE
Following Lincoln’s assassination, Andrew
Johnson of Tennessee ascended to the
presidency. Four decades earlier he had been
a poor orphan working as a tailor’s apprentice
in North Carolina’s capital. His father, Jacob
Johnson, was a local hero after saving
newspaper editor Thomas Henderson and a
Scottish merchant named Callum from
drowning at Theophilus Hunter’s mill pond
on Walnut Creek around 1811. He died soon
after the event when Andrew was three.
Within hours of the presidential inauguration
in 1865, two northern medical officers
stationed in Raleigh rode with Mayor William
H. Harrison to locate the grave of the
president’s father in the City Cemetery.
Finding only a simple marker with initials,
the doctors determined to see a larger, more
suitable monument at the grave.
An obelisk acknowledging the elder
Johnson’s heroism was erected two years
later, and in June 1867 the president was
invited to Raleigh to participate in dedication
exercises. His cousin Nancy Gill, interviewed
in the 1930s, recalled some men came out to
invite Johnson’s poor, illiterate relatives in the
Swift Creek vicinity to call on the president.
Her grandfather Aaron Johnson retorted,
“Dodblast Andy Johnson! If he wants to see
me, he knows where I live.” Neither he nor
any other local Johnsons paid their famous
cousin a visit, according to Gill’s recollection.
“Andy went off to Tennessee to live,” she
reflected, “and he never wrote back to any of
his kinfolks in Wake County. I think Grandpa
was madder about that than he was about
how Andy acted during the war.”
The way he “acted” during the war—his
pro-Union stance—left him at odds with the
South’s former slaveholding elite. He was
nonetheless lenient in dealing with former
Confederates. This brought on attacks by
Radical Republicans in Congress who wanted
to prolong military rule in the South and
delay readmission of former Confederate
states into the Union. Congress passed a
series of Reconstruction Acts over Johnson’s
veto. His reluctance to enforce these
measures soon helped him go down in
history as the first president to be impeached.
On the day following President Johnson’s
departure from Raleigh on June 5, news
headlines announced the beginning of formal
Congressional proceedings against him. At
the conclusion of his Senate trial, just one
vote prevented his removal from office.
&
REBUILDING
REINVENTING
Johnson ordered a provisional government
established in North Carolina immediately
following the surrender and appointed editor
HISTORIC WAKE COUNTY
38

William W. Holden governor. Occupation
forces under General John M. Schofield
commandeered the Pettigrew Hospital
site for a camp (renamed Camp Russell),
and the federal Bureau of the Freedmen,
Refugees, and Abandoned Lands,
commonly known as the Freedmen’s
Bureau, took over the former Confederate
hospital at Peace Institute. Not only
former slaves but also destitute whites
crowded Freedmen’s Bureau offices
for several years until the economy
rebounded. County and city governing
boards appointed by Holden, as well
as wealthy individuals and northern
religious and charitable organizations,
also provided assistance to the needy.
Several northern religious organizations
sponsored schools for freedmen, and the
Freedmen’s Bureau assisted in building
schoolhouses for them. The Friends’ Freedmen’s
Aid Society of Pennsylvania (Quaker) provided
funding to open Johnson School in 1865 on
the property of St. Paul’s African Methodist
Episcopal Church. In 1866 the New Yorkbased
American Missionary Association
(Congregational) sent Fisk Brewer and his
sister Adele to open Washington School,
originally a biracial institution. Lincoln, Miles,
and Oberlin were names of other schools
started by northern missionaries in and around
Raleigh in the late 1860s. Johnson, Miles, and
Oberlin schools were eventually absorbed by
the public school system in the 1880s.
Reverend Henry M. Tupper, an American
Baptist missionary from Massachusetts,
founded a school in 1865 to train African
American ministers. In 1870 it became Shaw
Collegiate Institute, named for Elijah Shaw, a
wealthy contributor from New England. The
Protestant Episcopal Church also opened St.
Augustine’s Normal School and Collegiate
Institute in 1867 to train African American
teachers. Both of these schools relied on
northern philanthropy and had white
administrators well into the 20th century.
As government assistance dwindled, northern-sponsored
schools became secondary
to survival for many former slaves. Jennylin
Dunn, interviewed in the 1930s by the
Federal Writers Project, lived near freedmen’s
schools in Raleigh during the postwar
years but admitted that most local African
Americans were too busy trying to make a
living to attend school.
County government underwent significant
changes under the Reconstruction Acts of
1867. A new constitution had to be adopted
recognizing the citizenship and voting
rights of African American freedmen. A
decentralized system was created to weaken
the control of the old ruling elite by dividing
the county into sixteen townships: Bartons
Creek, Buckhorn, Cedar Fork, House Creek,
Little River, Marks Creek, Middle Creek, New
Light, Oak Grove, Panther Branch, Raleigh,
St. Mary’s, St. Matthews, Swift Creek, Wake
Forest, and White Oak. Later townships
included Cary (1872), Neuse River (1877),
Holly Springs (1889), Leesville (the leftover
portion of Oak Grove, annexed to Durham
County in 1911), and Meredith (1941).
Justices of the peace in each township
wielded great control in county affairs until
1877. Townships then became geographical
divisions and a board of commissioners
established under the 1868 constitution
became the supreme county governing body.
The provisional government was replaced
by elected ruling bodies in 1868, and by
1870 reconstruction in North Carolina was
essentially over. Federal troops finally vacated
Camp Russell in 1877, and a newly created
State Guard reclaimed the site.
✧
Above: Shaw University’s Estey Hall, shown
on a 1907 postcard, is recognized as the
first building in the United States dedicated
to higher education for African American
women. It is also the oldest building
remaining on the Shaw campus.
COURTESY OF MICHAEL REID AND OLIVIA RANEY LOCAL
HISTORY LIBRARY, RALEIGH.
Below: Isaiah Hall was a free African
American who learned to read and write
before the Civil War. He became a pioneer
teacher of his race in the Wake County
public schools. From Simmons-Henry, The
Heritage of Blacks in North Carolina,
Volume 1, 1990.
COURTESY OF OLIVIA RANEY LOCAL HISTORY
LIBRARY, RALEIGH.
CHAPTER IV
39

HISTORIC WAKE COUNTY
40

CHAPTER V
G ILDED A GE TO P ROGRESSIVISM:
E RA OF M ANY F IRSTS, 1870-1929
The end of the Civil War forced a restructuring of the farming economy. With trunks full of
worthless Confederate currency and provisions in short supply, merchants and farmers resorted to
a feudal crop lien system that proved to be a boon to commercial development across the county
but a giant step backward for many yeomen who stayed one crop failure away from foreclosure.
For former slaves, the crop lien merely helped to keep them in servitude. By the 1880s farm
tenancy in the county was becoming more the rule than the exception. Cotton remained the crop
of choice even after foreign market prices plummeted in the 1890s. A shift to bright leaf tobacco
production that began in the 1880s accelerated with the arrival of the boll weevil in the late 1920s.
Some farmers abandoned farming altogether to work on railroads, in textile mills, or in other
industries. Raleigh boasted the first cotton factory in 1890, and by the time of World War I several
small railroad towns across the county had them. Increasingly urban, the county still remained
predominantly rural and agricultural on the eve of the Great Depression.
POLITICAL
DIVISION
From 1868 to 1894, Wake County was generally considered Republican territory. In fact, it was
noted as the only North Carolina county without a black majority to elect African American Republicans
in the 19th century, although many men still voted Democratic in state and national elections. Raleigh
printer and labor organizer John Nichols broke with the GOP and won a term in Congress in 1887 as
an independent candidate. There was not another Wake man in Congress until the 1930s.
In the late 1880s and early 1890s a large number of Wake Democrats became upset about the
plight of farmers and abandoned their party for the newly organized Populist or People’s Party
led by Raleigh Progressive Farmer editor L. L. Polk and Swift Creek Township horticulturist and vineyard
owner S. Otho Wilson. In the mid-1890s North Carolina Populists and Republicans “fused” together
and created an interracial coalition bent on overthrowing the Democratic majority that controlled the
state. The alliance successfully placed Populists and Republicans in control of the state legislature in
1894 and 1896. In 1898, however, Democrats vociferously attacked and defeated the Fusionists in what
historians now refer to as the “White Supremacy Campaign.” The 1898 Democratic strategy, led by U.S.
Senator Furnifold Simmons, and aided by News and Observer editor Josephus Daniels and other
Democratic leaders across the state, secured white votes by warning that continued support of the
Republican Party would lead to “Negro Domination.” The “White Supremacy Campaign” of 1898
ultimately prepared the stage for Jim Crow and ushered in a new era in North Carolina politics.
In 1900, a constitutional amendment sponsored by white supremacists made literacy a
requirement for voting and effectively eliminated the black vote as a threat to Democratic Party
domination. Republican leaders followed by making the party “lily white” and excluded blacks
from positions of leadership in order to attract more whites. Edward A. Johnson, a prominent black
attorney and Shaw University professor, left in disgust for New York in 1905 and in 1917 became
that state’s first African American legislator.
Local Democrats, though remaining in power for much of the 20th century, experienced a
schism in 1910 when editor Josephus Daniels and attorney Josiah W. Bailey led a movement to
replace some longstanding County and State officials with a fresh crop of Democratic politicians.
Daniels and Bailey publicly accused the incumbents, which they referred to as the Wake County
“courthouse ring,” of trading political favors within their close-knit clique and occasionally
scheming with Republicans. Daniels and Bailey held a rump party convention and managed to get
✧
Raleigh’s William S. Primrose and other
leading North Carolina businessmen staged
a grand State Exposition in 1884 to
celebrate new developments in industry,
technology, and diversified agriculture.
While not yet on board industrially, Wake
was a leader in agriculture by this time.
COURTESY OF NORTH CAROLINA STATE
ARCHIVES, RALEIGH.
CHAPTER V
41

✧
Above: John Nichols, printer, labor
organizer, and congressman.
COURTESY OF NORTH CAROLINA STATE
ARCHIVES, RALEIGH.
Below: Josephus Daniels (second from left)
is shown at his 80th birthday party in 1942
with (left to right) Shelley Rolfe, Jesse
Helms, and Ed Rankin. Helms worked for
Daniels as a reporter in his early career
before entering the U.S. Navy during World
War II.
REPRINTED BY PERMISSION OF THE NEWS AND OBSERVER
OF RALEIGH.
HISTORIC WAKE COUNTY
42
their anti-ring candidates elected. One of the
anti-ring reforms was a change in county
officials’ compensation from fee-based to
salaried. At least one of the “ring” leaders, former
Register of Deeds Joseph J. Bernard, returned to
public service. A respected accountant, officer in
the National Guard, and mentor of youth at
Raleigh’s Baptist Tabernacle, Major Bernard won
a seat on the Board of County Commissioners
in 1916 and pushed for financial reforms such
as county auditors, uniform bookkeeping, and
mandatory budgets at the beginning of each
fiscal year—innovations that became law within
months after his death in 1926.
Soon after the local Democratic rift, President
Woodrow Wilson rewarded Daniels’s campaign
support with an appointment as U.S. Secretary
of the Navy. He served from 1913 to 1921, when
the Navy and Marines saw action in various
Latin American countries and in World War I.
Daniels started shipboard vocational schools for
enlisted men and increased the number of
chaplains in the Navy. According to legend,
when Daniels banned beer and wine on naval
vessels, sailors began drinking more coffee and
coined the term “cup of Joe.”
Prohibition was one of the most divisive
political issues between the Civil War
and World War I. Ministers, church women,
politicians, and newspaper editors gained
enough momentum to get a statewide
prohibition referendum on the ballot in 1881,
but Wake voters helped to defeat the measure.
Raleigh Township voters approved prohibition
by local option in 1886, only to have the
ordinance repealed in 1888. Between 1890 and
1904 the city had seventeen to twenty-five
saloons in operation at a given time. In 1904 city
leaders used the 1903 Watts Law to close the
saloons and open a city-controlled dispensary.
A statewide referendum finally passed in
1908, though a majority of Wake citizens voted
against it. In fact, Wake’s “wet” majority ranked
third behind Johnston and Wilkes Counties.
Raleigh printer and publisher Needham B.
Broughton was a leading champion of
prohibition, being elected president of the North
Carolina Anti-Saloon League in 1902. One
unintended outcome of his efforts was a
financial crisis for public schools in Wake
County, which had relied heavily on liquor tax
revenues since the 1880s. Legislative approval of
new taxes and bond issues was necessary for
several years after 1909 to keep local schools
open. Prohibition remained in effect in North
Carolina until 1935. Wake County remained
dry until the first state-controlled Alcoholic
Beverage Control stores opened in 1937.
MOVING AT A
FASTER PACE
Improved transportation was the key to
making advances in agriculture, commerce,
industry, and education. Until the 1920s the
railroad reigned supreme. The advent of the
automobile in Wake in about 1902, followed by
the airplane in 1910, signified new alternatives
to the iron horse that would increase in
importance by the time of the Great Depression.
In 1869, fourteen years after its first charter,
the Chatham Railroad Company completed its
line from Raleigh through western Wake,
giving rise to new towns at Cary, Apex, and
New Hill. The Raleigh and Gaston Railroad
Company took over the struggling company in
1871 and made plans to extend the line to
Augusta, Georgia, renaming it the Raleigh and
Augusta. Both Wake-based companies became
part of Baltimore railroad magnate John
Moncure Robinson’s Seaboard Air Line system
in the late 1870s. Former Confederate engineer
John C. Winder managed the Seaboard from
the Raleigh and Gaston’s headquarters in
Raleigh. In 1901 the company’s operational
offices were moved to Hamlet, returning to
Raleigh in 1919.

The decade of the 1890s was a period of great
expansion in the railroad industry as American
imperialism opened new foreign markets. In
1893 the Seaboard extended its north-south line
through Georgia, allowing an overnight trip
from Raleigh to Atlanta or a five-hour excursion
to Norfolk or Richmond. When Pilot Cotton
Mill ran out of dye in 1899, managers were
astonished to receive a shipment from New York
only two days after wiring a purchase order.
The Seaboard system’s subsidiary companies
merged into one corporation in 1899. True to
its name, the line by that time finally ran the
entire length of the eastern seaboard from
Portland, Maine, to Tampa, Florida.
The east-west North Carolina Railroad,
operated by the Richmond and Danville
Railroad since Reconstruction, was leased to
J. Pierpont Morgan’s Southern Railway
Company in 1895. Alexander B. Andrews of
Raleigh had managed operations of the
Goldsboro-Charlotte line since leaving the
employ of the Raleigh and Gaston in 1875. He
persuaded Governor Elias Carr and North
Carolina Railroad Company directors to sign
the lease by convincing them that the
Southern’s plans to lay tracks from
Greensboro to Charlotte would put the North
Carolina company out of business. Carr’s
successor, Republican Governor Daniel L.
Russell, vowed to nullify the lease on the
grounds that the price was too low and was
negotiated in secret. He found a most unlikely
ally in News and Observer editor Josephus
Daniels, a die-hard Democrat, and the two
attempted in vain to undo the deal. Andrews
retaliated against Daniels by joining the
Dukes of Durham (also targets of the editor’s
attacks) in covertly sponsoring a competing
newspaper, the Morning Post, which ran from
1897 to 1905.
Railroad developers ignored the piney woods
of southern Wake County until century’s end,
when Raleigh businessman John A. Mills and
the Duke family built two new lines through the
area leading to Harnett County. Mills’s Raleigh
and Cape Fear Railroad was to connect the
capital with the Cape Fear River at Lillington
and allow him to harvest abundant virgin timber
between the two points. Construction began
in 1898 and was completed in 1899. A little
known mineral spring on the Fuquay farm soon
became one of the main attractions on the new
rail line. Between 1900 and the 1920s it was
fashionable for Raleighites to take day-long
excursions on the Mills train to picnic and “take
the waters” at Fuquay Springs. Flag stops were
established along the way at Caraleigh, Sylvaola,
Barnes, Hobby, McCullers, Banks, Austin,
Willow Spring, and Cardenas (originally called
Sexton), where rural folk took the train for a
day’s shopping and sight-seeing in the city.
The Raleigh and Cape Fear was finished to
Lillington by 1903, and in 1905 Mills and a
new group of investors formed the Raleigh
and Southport Railroad Company to carry the
line all the way to the sea. A connection with
the Atlantic Coastline at Fayetteville in 1906
proved to be the end of the line. After two
mergers, the Mills railroad ended up under
the control of the Norfolk and Southern
Railway Company in 1912.
✧
Above: Willow Spring(s) depot as it
appeared in the 1970s.
COURTESY OF MICHAEL REID AND OLIVIA RANEY LOCAL
HISTORY LIBRARY, RALEIGH.
Below, left: Local railroad magnate A. B.
Andrews is pictured with his family in the
late 19th century.
COURTESY OF NORTH CAROLINA STATE
ARCHIVES, RALEIGH.
Below, right: John A. Mills’s Raleigh and
Cape Fear Railroad transformed the
Fuquay mineral spring into a tourist mecca
from 1899 to the 1920s. This postcard
image dates from the early 20th century.
COURTESY OF MICHAEL REID AND OLIVIA RANEY LOCAL
HISTORY LIBRARY, RALEIGH.
CHAPTER V
43

✧
John A. Mills. From Johnson, Concerning
Our Ancestors.
COURTESY OF OLIVIA RANEY LOCAL HISTORY
LIBRARY, RALEIGH.
HISTORIC WAKE COUNTY
44
While Mills had convict laborers from the
state penitentiary busy clearing land, laying
tracks, and driving spikes in 1898, the
Dukes had men from the Mississippi Delta
constructing a competing line, the Cape Fear
and Northern, from Apex into Harnett
County for hauling timber to family member
John C. Angier’s Cary Lumber Company.
Holly Springs farmer-merchant George B.
Alford actually founded the Cape Fear and
Northern in 1891, but the financial Panic of
1893 left plans at a standstill until Angier and
brother-in-law Benjamin N. Duke took over
the project in 1898. Completed the following
year, the first leg crossed the Raleigh and Cape
Fear near the Fuquay springs at a site dubbed
Varina Junction after the nearest post office.
Passing through Holly Springs, the railroad
gave the village new life and also spurred
rural hamlets around stopping points at
Duketon (later Wilbon), Blanchard, Varina,
and Holland.
In 1901 rails were laid to Dunn, where the
Cape Fear and Northern connected to the
north-south Atlantic Coastline Railroad. In
1904, the railroad’s initial success inspired the
Dukes to reorganize as the Durham and
Southern Railroad and extend the line west
from Apex to East Durham. Flag stops were
established between the two points at
Carpenter and Upchurch prior to the completion
of this last leg in 1906.
W. R. Bonsal, S. O. Bauersfield, and H. A.
London built a 30-mile rail line in 1905-1906
from East Durham to Chatham County. Called
the Durham and South Carolina Railroad, it
skirted southern Wake and connected with
the Durham and Southern at Bonsal, one of
several short-lived incorporated areas.
Wake County’s easternmost reaches were
still not served by a railroad until 1906. Since
the 1880s there had been efforts to reduce
freight rates between coastal North Carolina
and Raleigh by building a line through eastern
Wake to the sea, but plans failed for lack of
interest and capital. In 1902 Raleigh attorney
James H. Pou, businessmen E. B. and C. B.
Barbee, Josephus Daniels, J. J. Thomas, and J.
M. Turner, along with men from Wilson,
Greenville, and “Little” Washington,
organized the Raleigh and Eastern North
Carolina Railroad. The company went
through a name change (Raleigh and Pamlico
Sound, 1903) and a merger with the North
Carolina and Ohio in 1905 before the line
reached present Wendell and Zebulon in
1906. That year the Raleigh and Pamlico was
consolidated with several others into the
Norfolk and Southern Railway Company, and
by 1907 Raleigh finally had a direct
connection to Washington, North Carolina.
By 1907 every township in Wake County
except Panther Branch, Swift Creek, Bartons
Creek, and New Light had a railroad. Trips
that required days in antebellum times could
now be made in hours. Except for the
Durham and Southern, all of Wake’s railroads
would soon be controlled by northern
conglomerates whose business acumen
proved superior to that of southern dreamers
and schemers such as John A. Mills.
In 1886, Raleigh began its climb to
modern city status when street engineer
Thomas Hogg induced J. F. Scott and G. M.
Snodgrass of Texas to build a streetcar system
through the city’s main business district.
Residents, politicians, and visitors were
accustomed to the clanging bells and the
excited faces of tourists on the street railway
as part of daily life until 1933. Originally
driven by mules and then by handsome
horses, the privately owned system switched
to electric power in 1891. The Raleigh Street
Railway Company opened Brookside Park
near Oakwood Cemetery in 1888, featuring a
merry-go-round, a lake with boats, bowling
alley, swings, riding horses, and electric lights.
After local philanthropist Richard Stanhope
Pullen donated land for Pullen Park west
of the city in 1887, he financed a spur track
to the park. As Raleigh suburbs developed
between 1907 and 1914, new routes were
run to Glenwood, Cameron Park, and
Boylan Heights.
In 1912 Carolina Power and Light
Company, the city’s electric provider, opened
Bloomsbury Park, a 100-acre amusement
park at the streetcar system’s northern
terminus on Glenwood Avenue. The new park
was a boon to tourism in Raleigh, as throngs
of visitors came to ride the carousel and roller
coaster, dance at the pavilion, go boating

at the pond, or play the penny arcade. Its
success, however, was short lived. The park
closed by 1915, and soon after Thomas
Ruffin, James H. Pou, and others purchased
the land for residential development. The
closing of Bloomsbury Park inspired the City
of Raleigh to improve Pullen Park. The City
moved Bloomsbury’s Dentzel carousel to
Pullen around 1920.
Controversy clouds the identity of the first
automobile owner in the county, but claims
for the distinction all come from Raleigh in
the year 1902. Machinist William H. Brewer
opened the first automobile dealership in
the city that year and in 1909 became a
partner of Ford dealer John A. Park, a State
College professor and later editor of the
Raleigh Times. The two had a showroom and
machine shop. Park had the distinction of
having the first automobile registered with the
state in 1909. Since vehicle owners were
responsible for making their own tags, he
used leather covered with black oil cloth and
tin numbers. Speed on the county roads at the
time was 25 miles per hour.
Raleigh Telephone Company president
Will A. Wynne built a motor truck in 1903 to
haul coal and to transport equipment and
supplies for his business. Within a decade
truck dealers were doing a booming business
with farmers and merchants. By the time of
World War I, buggy and wagon makers either
went out of business or became auto
mechanics and dealers. Rural communities
became a little less isolated, especially those
not served by railroads. Motorized “school
trucks” were the critical link in consolidating
the county’s small rural schools in the 1920s.
It was by no coincidence that more care
was given to Wake County’s roadways as the
automobile came on the scene. Citizen labor,
in use since colonial times, was finally
abandoned in 1903, when convicts were used
countywide. Raleigh Township had been using
convict road labor since the 1880s when the
first laws were passed to allow it. In 1889 city
leaders began a street-paving program, using
Belgian blocks from the city quarry where
stone for the Capitol had been cut in the
1830s. In 1911 state leaders unveiled plans for
a Central Highway (U.S. 10/70) to connect the
coast to the mountains and pass through the
capital. The federal government also built
highways that connected Wake to neighboring
states beginning in the 1910s. The Capital-to-
Capital route ran from Washington, D.C.,
south to Richmond and then to Raleigh,
following the basic route of present-day U.S.
401. Garner citizens boasted the state’s first
paved stretch of highway in 1919, followed
by a section between Raleigh and Cary the
same year.
Pioneer aviators J. A. D. McCurdy and
Eugene Ely performed the first air show in
North Carolina with two Curtiss biplanes
which they brought in by rail and assembled
on the racetrack. Thousands flocked to
Raleigh to witness the planes fly high above
the ground at speeds of up to 80 miles per
hour. John A. Park participated in an
automobile race at the same event. These
spectacles became special features at the fair
in subsequent years. Wake Forest College
alumnus Belvin W. Maynard, the “Flying
Parson,” was a favorite performer in the post-
World War I years. He became famous in
1919 after winning the first transcontinental
air race from New York to San Francisco. That
year he received a royal welcome by Governor
Thomas W. Bickett, who rode in his plane and
flew over his alma mater.
After World War I, there were efforts by the
Raleigh Chamber of Commerce to establish
a landing field and make the capital city a
center of air travel. The Chamber leased a
field on New Bern Avenue and called it
“Municipal Field,” although no city funds
supported it. In 1929, limited commercial
passenger service was offered at a new air
field, the Curtiss-Wright Field, near the
present intersection of Tryon Road and U.S.
70/401 between Raleigh and Garner.
✧
Above: A c. 1895 view of Fayetteville Road
as it crossed Rocky Branch leading into
Raleigh. Tucker Mill is in the foreground,
with John A. Mills’ wagon manufacturing
company and Shaw University in
the background.
COURTESY OF NORTH CAROLINA STATE
ARCHIVES, RALEIGH.
Below: Albert Carroll of Baltimore drives
Bessie Tucker down Raleigh’s Fayetteville
Street in a horseless carriage in 1902, the
year automobiles first began to appear in
Wake County.
FROM ELIZABETH REID MURRAY COLLECTION, COURTESY
OF OLIVIA RANEY LOCAL HISTORY LIBRARY, RALEIGH.
CHAPTER V
45

✧
Above: Air show at the State Fair
around 1912.
COURTESY OF NORTH CAROLINA STATE
ARCHIVES, RALEIGH.
Below: Dairy farming was one way
struggling cotton farmers survived low
prices and boll weevil. They found a ready
market in the fast-growing capital city.
Louis M. and Margaret Kerr Scott Smith’s
Pineview Dairy had one of the first
motorized milk delivery trucks when this
photograph was made in 1925.
COURTESY OF OLIVIA RANEY LOCAL HISTORY
LIBRARY, RALEIGH.
FERTILE GROUND
FOR KING COTTON
One of the immediate impacts of railroads
following the Civil War was the wide availability
of lower-priced commercial fertilizers. This
meant a virtual end to the soil depletion that
limited pre-war crop productions and sent
farmers constantly in search of new ground.
Local farmers in the 1870s invested such large
sums on nitrogen-enriching Peruvian guano
and chemical mixtures that Wake became
North Carolina’s leading cotton-producing
county by 1880, remaining close behind
Mecklenburg in succeeding decades. Raleigh,
in turn, had a thriving cotton market in the
1870s and 1880s as farmers in Wake and
adjoining counties piled 450-pound bales on
carts and wagons and journeyed to the city to
sell crops and buy clothes, provisions, and the
occasional luxury item for their families.
Overproduction and declining European
demand sent cotton prices plummeting in the
1890s. A growth in the state’s textile industry
helped create some demand, but not enough to
make cotton profitable for a small farmer.
Others suffered through decades and ended up
losing their land. Raleigh’s once-thriving cotton
HISTORIC WAKE COUNTY
46

market almost dried up by World War I as
productions dwindled and buyers set up offices
in surrounding towns along railroads.
Bright leaf tobacco was the second cash crop
of choice in Wake by the early 20th century. In
the late nineteenth century, a plant disease called
the wilt infected fields in the Old Tobacco Belt,
including Granville and surrounding counties.
Growers discovered that the Triassic soils of
western Wake and the sandy, coastal plain soils
of the county’s southern section were well suited
to tobacco. Local leaf markets opened in Raleigh
(1884), Apex (1905), Fuquay Springs (1907),
Wendell (1907), and Zebulon (1907). The wilt
spread through southern Granville County into
New Light Township in northwestern Wake by
about 1915 and forced many growers to relocate
to the county’s southern and eastern corners.
Generations of farmers who remained in
northwestern Wake survived by growing corn
and converting it to alcohol—a product in
demand while statewide prohibition was
in force between 1909 and 1937. Tobacco
made a comeback in this remote part of Wake
County in the 1940s when a wilt-resistant
variety was developed.
Diversified farming was the clarion cry
of agriculturists who saw how one-crop
agriculture ruined both the economy and the
soil. Beginning in the 1880s an increasing
number of Wake farmers tried truck farming,
horticulture, livestock breeding, and dairying.
The North Carolina College of Agriculture
and Mechanic Arts formed in Raleigh in 1887
was a center for the training of diversified and
scientific farmers.
The rise of commercial farming worsened the
problem of soil erosion, as more land was cleared
of trees and underbrush. In 1885 Wake Forest
area planter Priestly H. Mangum, Jr., devised a
method of terracing fields to prevent gullies,
while at the same time allowing movement
of heavy equipment. The A&M College’s
Agriculture Experiment Station staff began
publicizing the “Mangum terrace” in the 1890s,
and in 1911 the Country Gentleman magazine ran
an article on the terrace that garnered national
and even international attention. Mangum’s
innovation soon came into wide use and was
even included in two editions of Webster’s
International Dictionary in 1934 and 1961.
As the cotton boll weevil moved across Texas
in 1907, philanthropist John D. Rockefeller
funded a farm demonstration service to take
information about improved farming methods
to people at the grassroots level. Farmers D. H.
House of Cary and William H. Chamblee, Jr., of
Wakefield began the program in Wake County
in 1908. They emphasized cultivating corn to
encourage farmers to be more self-sufficient.
Juliana Royster Busbee instituted home
demonstration work in the county in about
1912. She taught farm women to can fruits and
vegetables, and her successor Chloe Blalock
organized highly popular community fairs in
rural areas following World War I. Lewis
Roberts, a teacher at Raleigh’s Garfield Graded
School, was hired as the county’s first Negro
Farm Agent in 1918. He staged a five-day Negro
County Fair at the corner of New Bern Avenue
and Tarboro Road the following year, while
whites held fairs in and around Knightdale,
Fuquay Springs, Rolesville, and Olive Chapel.
A postwar decade that began with a boom
was marked by impending crisis as an
agricultural depression set in. As prices
dropped and farmers increased acreage to
make up the difference, King Cotton was on
the verge of being dethroned in Wake County.
Land and time for producing grain were in
shorter supply, which meant farmers had to
buy what they previously produced on the
farm. The number of farms countywide peaked
at 6,800 in 1920 while postwar prices were
high. When the bottom fell out, farm tenancy
rose to 59 percent between 1920 and 1925.
The arrival of the boll weevil in 1927 gave
many farmers few other choices but to get out
of cotton or diversify.
✧
At the time Fuquay-area farmer Andrew D.
Jones displayed his crop at Union Square in
1891, Wake was considered one of North
Carolina’s leading agricultural counties. The
low price of cotton in the 1890s forced
many to look to watermelons and other
produce as an alternative source of income.
COURTESY OF NORTH CAROLINA STATE
ARCHIVES, RALEIGH.
CHAPTER V
47

✧
Above: Participants in a dental clinic at
Cary Farm Life School about 1920.
COURTESY OF NORTH CAROLINA STATE
ARCHIVES, RALEIGH.
Below: Basketball players at Berry O’Kelly
Training School in the 1920s.
COURTESY OF NORTH CAROLINA STATE
ARCHIVES, RALEIGH.
EDUCATIONAL
MECCA
By the 1880s, a new generation of post-Civil
War businessmen and professionals saw the
potential of public schools to lift the masses
out of poverty and ignorance. Raleigh’s concentration
of wealth and educated elite placed the
capital decades ahead of Wake’s rural population.
By the 1920s, however, two enviable
school systems and several acclaimed institutions
of higher learning made Wake one of the
state’s most desirable places to live.
Until the first state-supported high schools
opened in 1907, upper and middle class families
customarily sent their children to private
academies in Holly Springs, Cary, Apex,
Morrisville, Wakefield, Auburn, and Leesville.
Raleigh Male Academy, St. Mary’s School, and
Peace Institute were the premier city schools of
the late 19th century.
Beginning in 1876, Raleigh had a separate
public school system supported by a special
tax approved by city voters in 1877. All
white schools were consolidated into one,
Centennial Graded School, which was housed
in the former Governor’s Palace until a brick
building (the county’s first brick public school)
was completed on the same site in 1885.
Three private schools for black children—
Washington, Crosby, and Garfield—were converted
to public schools and added to the city
system in 1880, followed by Johnson and
Oberlin schools in 1885. As the city grew,
additional schools for whites were built:
Murphey (1887), Wiley (1900), Barbee (1903),
Brooklyn/Lewis (1903), Caraleigh/Eliza Pool
(1904), and Thompson (1907). Raleigh High
School, which opened in 1905 with legendary
Hugh Morson as principal, was Wake’s first
public high school.
The year 1881 became a turning point for
public education in the county when the
state created the position of county school
superintendent, a part-time job until 1903. In
1885, a county board of education became the
key local decision-making body for schools
independent of county commissioners. Dozens
of one and two-room schools were built in the
1880s under superintendents Eugene T. Jones
and Reverend William G. Clements. During
Zebulon V. Judd’s term, 1905-1915, a movement
began to consolidate small schools and to adopt
local-option taxes to fund new buildings and
longer school terms. The movement intensified
in the 1920s when a fleet of county school
trucks was purchased to transport children to
the more distant consolidated schools.
In 1907, Cary High School became North
Carolina’s first state-supported high school,
followed by Holly Springs, Bay Leaf, and
Zebulon. Competition for state funding
between Zebulon and neighboring Wakefield
intensified to the point that a site was selected
between the two communities and named
“Wakelon.” A Woman’s Betterment Association
organized fundraisers for buildings and to
beautify school grounds. A number of local
chapters had school farms to raise funds. In
fact, Wake was a pioneer in school farms when
state funding was provided for Farm Life
Schools statewide in 1911.
HISTORIC WAKE COUNTY
48

No provisions for African American high
schools appeared with the new state funds.
With the black vote virtually eliminated, there
was less political accountability to encourage
educational improvements. The Anna T. Jeanes
Fund provided funding for a county Domestic
Science agent for black schools in 1910, while
the Julius Rosenwald Fund provided matching
funds for building numerous new elementary
schools across Wake County between 1917
and 1928.
In 1914, the Connecticut-based Slater Fund
provided money for industrial training schools
that could be developed into high schools.
Professor Charles N. Hunter, principal of
Method School between Raleigh and Cary,
and local businessman Berry O’Kelly took
advantage of this funding and completed a
brick building in 1917. Schools at Method,
Apex, Fuquay Springs, and Zebulon were
consolidated into a county training school and
named for O’Kelly, the largest individual
contributor. The school was touted as a model
training school by the director of the Slater and
Jeanes funds. Raleigh’s Washington School
became Wake’s second public high school for
blacks in 1924. Wake Forest Industrial Normal
School, which opened in 1905, and Raleigh’s
St. Augustine’s School also gave high school
diplomas to African Americans.
By the late 1920s, Raleigh and Wake Forest
boasted two colleges for white men, while the
capital city had three for white women and
two colleges for African Americans. The oldest,
Wake Forest College, added a law school in
1893 and a medical school in 1902. By the
early 20th century Wake Forest graduates
included governors, congressmen, nationally
known ministers, physicians, judges, and
college presidents.
William Louis Poteat, college president
from 1905 to 1927, gained notoriety as a
biology professor at Wake Forest in the 1880s
for introducing the laboratory method (as
opposed to the tile recitation method) of
instruction. In his waning years he became
embroiled in controversy over the teaching of
Darwinian evolution. In 1925 he lobbied in
the state legislature to defeat the Poole bill, a
measure that would have banned teaching
evolution in North Carolina’s publicly funded
schools. Many uneducated ministers and
lay leaders in the South branded him liberal,
while northern academics considered him
fundamentalist because of his insistence that
religion and science complimented each
other, and because of his leadership in the
prohibition movement. His insistence on
academic freedom won support from
educated ministers and educators in the
Southern Baptist Convention. This helped
Wake Forest remain in the forefront of
higher education.
✧
William L. Poteat in his laboratory at Wake
Forest College in the 1880s. From Linder,
William Louis Poteat, Prophet
of Progress.
COURTESY OF OLIVIA RANEY LOCAL HISTORY
LIBRARY, RALEIGH.
CHAPTER V
49

✧
Above: Leonard Medical School in the early
20th century.
COURTESY OF MICHAEL REID AND OLIVIA RANEY LOCAL
HISTORY LIBRARY, RALEIGH.
Opposite page, top: Peace College’s Main
Building as it appeared in the early 20th
century. It served as a Confederate hospital
during the Civil War and as Freedmen’s
Bureau headquarters before being reclaimed
by Peace Institute’s trustees in the
early 1870s.
COURTESY OF MICHAEL REID AND OLIVIA RANEY LOCAL
HISTORY LIBRARY, RALEIGH.
Opposite page, center: State College campus
as it appeared in the 1930s. The clock tower
was constructed as a memorial to those who
died during World War I.
COURTESY OF MICHAEL REID AND OLIVIA RANEY LOCAL
HISTORY LIBRARY, RALEIGH.
Opposite page, bottom: Meredith College at
its second location on Hillsboro Street.
COURTESY OF MICHAEL REID AND OLIVIA RANEY LOCAL
HISTORY LIBRARY, RALEIGH.
HISTORIC WAKE COUNTY
50
After the Civil War, athletics were integral
to Wake Forest College life. Students cleared
a field near campus and began playing
baseball against boys from nearby crossroads
communities. Wake Forest students played in
North Carolina’s first intercollegiate football
game against the University of North Carolina
during State Fair week in 1888, defeating the
Chapel Hill team 6-4. The school’s physical
culture director, J. R. Crozier, was recognized
for introducing basketball to North Carolina
around 1904.
St. Mary’s School, though relatively small
with an enrollment of about 250, was the
nation’s largest Episcopal school for women
in the early 20th century. In the 1880s it
was renowned for excellence in music and art,
particularly piano instruction. A one-year
business course added in 1897 attracted many
young women wishing to enter the work force
as secretaries, stenographers, and clerks. This
program became especially important during
World War I when demand rose for female
office workers. Courses in domestic science and
chemistry were added in 1911 to augment the
school’s English, physical science, music and art
curriculum. Students were also required to
participate in “physical culture” by taking daily
walks around the campus oak grove. When an
athletic field was added for tennis and
basketball in 1907, these activities replaced the
daily walk. St. Mary’s became a junior college in
1927, and Margaret Cruikshank became the
first female president in 1932.
Peace Institute, incorporated before the
Civil War, was named for benefactor William
Peace. The school finally opened in 1872
after Raleigh Presbyterians reclaimed its main
building from the Freedman’s Bureau for
its original purpose as a college preparatory
school for young women. When school
trustees could not pay the mortgage on the
property, Richard Stanhope Pullen became
owner. He leased it to Principal Robert Burwell
and his son John B. Burwell. The school
had primary, preparatory, and collegiate
departments, with the primary department
enrolling both sexes. The kindergarten,
operated from 1879 to the 1890s, was said to
be the first of its kind in the South. First
Presbyterian Church acquired the property
in 1907. As the public school system improved
in the early 20th century the primary
department was phased out. By 1915, the
school offered only “sub-collegiate” (high
school) and collegiate departments. The school
had male presidents and “lady principals” until
1917 when Mary Owen Graham took over the
school’s administration. It was during her term
in 1919 that Peace became a junior college,
although college-level courses had been offered
for a number of years.
Morrisville native Sarah Mabel Pugh, a
1913 graduate, was among the school’s
illustrious alumnae. She studied in New York
and Philadelphia, winning the coveted
Cresson Traveling Scholarship in 1919. She
later returned to Peace for a long career as an
art instructor.
By its tenth anniversary in 1875, the
Reverend Henry M. Tupper’s Shaw Collegiate
Institute had hundreds of students. During
the same year, it was reincorporated as Shaw
University. Beginning with Tupper, all the
school’s presidents were white until 1932,
when Dr. W. S. Nelson was appointed.
Northern philanthropists whose names are
memorialized in buildings provided funding
for classrooms and dormitories. The school
offered normal, collegiate, scientific, and theological
departments, adding a medical
school in 1881, a law school in 1888, and a
pharmacy school in 1890. Shaw’s Leonard
Medical School was recognized as the first
four-year medical school for blacks in the
nation. Its instructors included some of
Raleigh’s most prominent physicians. The
pharmacy school operated a free dispensary
in the 1890s until financial constraints caused
it to close in the early 20th century. Mounting
debts forced the medical school to be reduced
to a two-year program in 1912 and forced the
law school to close in 1914. Leonard Medical
School closed in 1919 after graduating 438
black medical doctors.
St. Augustine’s Normal School and
Collegiate Institute, commonly known as “St.
Aug’s,” was led by white Episcopalians from
its inception in 1867 until the 1940s. Many of
the school’s buildings are also named for
white northern benefactors. The school’s
purpose was to train teachers and ministers,

ut many St. Aug’s graduates went on to other
institutions to receive training in medicine,
law, and other fields. The school became a
junior college by 1920. One of its most
illustrious graduates was Dr. Anna J.
Haywood Cooper, a nationally known
educator and college president in
Washington, D.C. Her career spanned 70
years from the early 1870s as a teacher at St.
Aug’s to her presidency at Washington’s
Frelinghuysen University from 1930 to 1940.
She died in 1964 at age 105 and is buried in
Raleigh. Florida native Henry Beard Delany,
an 1885 graduate, was vice principal of St.
Augustine’s in the 1890s and early 1900s. He
became North Carolina’s first black suffragan
bishop in the Protestant Episcopal Church in
1918. In 1892, alumnus Simon G. Atkins was
founder of a normal and industrial school in
Forsyth County which later became Winston-
Salem State University.
The North Carolina College of Agriculture
and Mechanic Arts was chartered by the
“farmer’s legislature” of 1887 at the behest of
national Farmer’s Alliance President L. L. Polk
of Raleigh and the Watauga Club. The Raleigh
Watauga Club consisted of a group of young,
progressive Raleigh men promoting industrial
development. The University of North
Carolina in Chapel Hill reluctantly gave up
federal Land Grant Act funds to support the
new school, and Richard Stanhope Pullen
donated sixty acres west of Raleigh for the
campus. The school’s early emphasis was on
training farmers and factory managers.
Applied science was added in 1893 and
military science in 1894. The military
department flourished through World War I
and furnished a number of officers for war
service. Wake Forest College graduate W. C.
Riddick was hired to begin a civil engineering
program in 1895 and a School of Textiles was
added in 1899. Riddick served as president
from 1916-1923, during which time the
school added architecture, education, highway
engineering, and business administration
departments. In 1917, the school was
renamed the North Carolina State College of
Agriculture and Engineering, although it
continued to be referred to simply as “State
College” for many years.
CHAPTER V
51

✧
Above: Anna Julia Haywood Cooper,
daughter of a Raleigh slave and one of the
first students to enroll at St. Augustine’s
School in 1868. She later attended Oberlin
College in Ohio and became the fourth
African American woman to earn a Ph.D.
From Hutchinson, Anna J. Cooper: A
Voice from the South.
COURTESY OF OLIVIA RANEY LOCAL HISTORY
LIBRARY, RALEIGH.
Below: Nicholas F. Roberts was a Shaw
University alumnus and professor who
served as interim administrator following
the death of the school’s founder, Dr. Tupper,
in the 1890s. He was also the only black
member of the county school board in the
19th century.
COURTESY OF OLIVIA RANEY LOCAL HISTORY
LIBRARY, RALEIGH.
HISTORIC WAKE COUNTY
52
Meredith College opened in 1899 as
Baptist Female University in an exuberant
Queen Anne-style building near the
Executive Mansion. The idea of a Baptist
school for young women originated with
leading churchman Thomas Meredith in the
1830s. It was revived by Colonel L. L. Polk in
1888. The Panic of 1893 delayed progress
until 1895, when construction began. Unlike
St. Mary’s and Peace, the school offered
college preparatory and college-level courses
from its inception. Founding president
O. L. Stringfield and trustees placed special
emphasis on recruiting deserving poor
girls willing to work their way through
school. In 1904, students played the first
basketball game in the county against
St. Mary’s, but, unfortunately, an exchange of
unsportsmanlike comments between the two
teams put a halt to competitions for another
year. Baptist Female University was renamed
Meredith College in 1909. By 1913, school
leaders realized their downtown location did
not allow room to grow and began making
plans to relocate. The move to the current
Hillsboro Street location finally came in 1926.
AFRICAN AMERICANS
AS FREEDMEN
In the years following the Civil War, Wake
County’s reputation as an agricultural and
educational center drew an influx of freedmen
seeking the keystones of independence—
land ownership and learning. However, the
majority of African Americans worked as day
laborers, washerwomen, cooks, nurses, or as
sharecroppers receiving either a fourth, third,
or half of their annual crop, depending on the
landlord’s investment. John Smith of St.
Matthews Township farmed on fourths, the
customary arrangement when a tenant used
his landlord’s stock and implements. Smith
had been taken to Alabama before the war,
but Union soldiers set him free. They gave
him his first shoes and underwear and in turn
expected him to steal food for them, so he
slipped away. “I didn’ have to pay an[y]thing
for going to Alabama,” he told an interviewer
in 1937, “but I had to pay to come back.” The
return trip cost him two years’ labor.
The fact that Wake had over 400 black farm
owners in 1900 and almost 700 in 1920 is a
testament to the importance of land ownership
in local African American communities.
African American community leaders such as
Raleigh’s James H. Harris, Lewis Mason of
Method, and Reverend James H. Dunston of
Morrisville took personal financial risks to help
freedmen acquire farmland in the late 1860s
and early 1870s. Zebulon-area former slaves
Feggins and Dorsey Perry worked diligently to
get farms and to make sure their children had
property. Between 1912 and 1914, Feggins
Perry’s sons Jasper and Guyon were able to
purchase portions of the plantations where
their father had worked as a slave—including
the “great house.”
Voting and office-holding were new
constitutional rights enjoyed by black
citizens, most of whom were aligned with the
Republican Party. James H. Harris was one of
the first blacks in North Carolina to serve in
the Reconstruction legislature of 1868. He
also represented his ward on the Raleigh
Board of Alderman several times between
1868 and the 1890. As a State Representative
in 1883, he opposed a new law that allowed
local school districts to base revenue
allocations for schools on the amount of taxes
paid by the race of the students—a measure
that would have crippled schools for blacks.
The state Supreme Court declared the law
unconstitutional in 1886.
In the 1880s Shaw University graduate
James H. Young rose to prominence. Young
landed a job with the Internal Revenue Service
and won appointment as Wake County’s
deputy register of deeds before gaining the
enviable position of federal collector for the
port of Wilmington from 1890 to 1893. He
returned to Raleigh in the midst of the
explosive campaigns of 1894 and became one
of several black Republicans who joined forces
with white Populists to unseat the Democratic
majority in the General Assembly. Fusion
voters returned him to the State House in 1896,
and Republican Governor Daniel L. Russell
appointed him commander of North Carolina’s
all-black regiment during the Spanish-
American War, 1898-1899. After Democrats
regained control of the legislature in 1898,

their resentment of Young was so great that
they had his name removed from the
cornerstone of the new state institution for the
deaf, dumb, and blind.
There were three major waves of black
outmigration during the half-century following
emancipation. The first was in 1879-1880
after state Democrats passed a Landlord and
Tenant Act giving landlords sole discretion in
settlement of tenants’ debts. Many went to the
lower south, Kansas, and Indiana. In 1889-
1890 an election law aimed at excluding
illiterate black voters touched off another
exodus. A third wave came during World War
I, 1917-1919, as wartime factory jobs and the
allure of large cities drew both blacks and
whites out of Wake.
TRANSMITTING
AND TRANSFORMING:
TELEPHONES,
ELECTRICITY, AND RADIO
Two years after Alexander Graham Bell’s
first successful telephone conversation in
1876, Western Union Telegraph’s Raleigh
manager Braxton Starke and an associate
in Wilmington received permission to
experiment with telephones by connecting
them to telegraph cables between the two
towns. They agreed on a Sunday morning
church hour of 11 o’clock in April 1878 for
testing the equipment. After the first remote
words were heard in the Raleigh telegraph
office, people on both ends sang hymns to
each other. In 1879, Starke put up wires across
the city and opened the state’s first telephone
exchange in the Tucker Pharmacy Building at
the corner of Martin and Fayetteville streets.
In 1882 Southern Bell Telephone and
Telegraph Company set up an exchange over
the Pescud, Lee & Co. drugstore. After the
expiration of Bell’s patent in 1891 drove down
prices, industrial magnates L. A. and Julian S.
Carr and George W. Watts of Durham formed
Inter-state Telephone and Telegraph Company
and opened a Raleigh exchange upstairs in the
Johnston drugstore building in 1898. The next
year IT&T offered long-distance calling between
Raleigh, Cary, Morrisville, Durham, Goldsboro,
Dunn, and most Johnston County towns.
After a brief stint with IT&T, Will A.
Wynne started Raleigh Telephone Company.
From 1900 to 1908, Raleigh was one of the
only towns in the world with three telephone
systems. Wynne painted his phone poles
along Salisbury Street to avoid confusing
them with those of other companies. He
reportedly pioneered use of the common
battery, two-metallic-wire system in the state,
eliminating the static and noise that plagued
telephone users in the 19th century.
A number of independent telephone
companies operated in Wake County in the
early 20th century: Cape Fear Telephone
in Apex and Bonsal, Cardenas Telephone
Company in Fuquay Springs and Holly
Springs, Clayton Telephone in the Garner area,
and Home Telephone and Telegraph Company
serving Wake Forest and environs. Despite all
the competition, Wake had fewer rural
telephones per capita than any other county
in the South Atlantic states in 1916. Soon
Will Wynne’s Raleigh Telephone and other
independent companies found competition
with large northern companies to be too great.
Wynne sold his company to Southern Bell in
1922 and the others soon sold out to bigger
companies or simply closed up shop.
Electricity came to Wake County less than a
decade after the advent of the telephone.
Representatives from the U.S. Electric Light
Company demonstrated this revolutionary
technology to visitors from across the state at
the 1884 State Exposition. The following year,
Raleigh became the first city in North Carolina
✧
Above: Feggins Jones who lived near
Zebulon, photographed in 1942, was one of
Wake’s elite class of African American farm
owners in the early 20th century.
PHOTOGRAPH BY ARTHUR ROTHSTEIN, FARM SECURITY
ADMINISTRATION, COURTESY OF LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.
Left: “Mittie Ann” (thought to be Mittie
Lyons), a Raleigh washerwoman
photographed in the 1890s.
COURTESY OF NORTH CAROLINA STATE
ARCHIVES, RALEIGH.
Below: Telephone and radio pioneer Will A.
Wynne posed with Dr. Hubert Royster in
1938 during the 50th anniversary of the
first collegiate football game between Wake
Forest College and the University of
North Carolina.
REPRINTED BY PERMISSION OF THE NEWS AND OBSERVER
OF RALEIGH.
CHAPTER V
53

to throw the switch on permanent electric light
service. The city continued to use gas lights for
streets in the suburbs for a number of years
until the Raleigh Lighting, Heating, and Power
Company and its 1908 successor, Carolina
Power and Light, provided outdoor lights
bright enough to justify the complete switch to
electricity. Other Wake towns began getting
electricity in 1910. Wake Forest installed a
municipal system in 1909-1910. Cumberland
Railway Power Company supplied service to
Wendell in 1913 and to Fuquay Springs and
Holly Springs in 1920. Cary, Zebulon, and
Apex each had municipal systems by 1916.
Garner finally got electricity in 1926, followed
by Morrisville in 1927 and Rolesville and
Knightdale in 1928.
After Will Wynne sold his telephone
company, he shifted his attention to another
emerging communication medium—radio. In
1922, WLAC, a short-lived radio station at
State College presented the state’s first radio
broadcast at 50 watts power. Two years later
Wynne began broadcasting on WFBQ from a
studio next to the Wake County Courthouse,
changing the call letters to WRCO (for Wynne
Radio Company) in 1925. He sold the
operation in 1927 to Durham Life Insurance
Company, who moved the studio to 410 S.
Salisbury Street. Durham Life assigned new
call letters to represent the corporate motto,
“We Protect the Family.” By the time of the
Great Depression radio sales were booming,
and WPTF was an important feature in homes
across central North Carolina as a source of
entertainment, news, and advertisement.
BUSINESS AND INDUSTRY
Raleigh was a center of government,
education, banking, insurance, and publishing
by the 1880s. Unfortunately, it was a late
bloomer in industrial development. When the
State National Bank failed in 1888, it convinced
local businessmen to invest in textile mills
instead of keeping their money in banks.
Raleigh Cotton Mill, a spinning plant,
opened in 1891, followed by Caraleigh in
1892, and Pilot in 1893. Several knitting and
hosiery mills also opened, beginning with
Melrose Knitting Mill in 1891, Raleigh Hosiery
HISTORIC WAKE COUNTY
54

Mill in 1898, Martin Hosiery in 1903,
Glenwood Knitting in 1908, and Capital
Hosiery and Carolina Hosiery in 1909. Two
additional spinning plants opened in 1901:
Falls of Neuse and Royall Cotton Mills near
Wake Forest. The brand new town of Zebulon
got a hosiery mill in 1907, as did Apex in
1909, Morrisville in 1910, Wake Forest in
about 1912, Wendell in 1913, and Holly
Springs in 1919. The Caraleigh Phosphate
and Fertilizer Works was also a major
industry. It opened in 1892 along with the
Caraleigh Cotton Mill and by 1916 was Wake
County’s largest single enterprise—attesting
to the importance of fertilizer as a farm staple.
Publishing and printing, especially newspaper
publishing, were important to the local
economy. Alfred Williams and Company,
established in 1867, specialized in books and
stationery. Other leaders in the industry were
Edwards and Broughton (1871), E. M. Uzzell
(1878), Capital Printing Company (1896),
Mutual Publishing (1902), and Commercial
Printing (1907). Competition for state government
printing contracts continued to vex
printers who happened to be on the losing
side of politics, just as it had in the days of
William Boylan and Joseph Gales.
Numerous political and religious organs
were published in Raleigh, the most longlasting
being the News and Observer, Raleigh
Times, Biblical Recorder (Baptist), and the
Raleigh Christian Advocate (Methodist). Both
the News and Observer and Raleigh Times
evolved as combinations of competing papers
representing both Democratic and Republican
parties. The two competed with each other
until 1955, when the former bought out
the latter. The Times continued to run as a
separate paper until 1989.
Insurance was also becoming an important
business segment in the capital city by 1900.
Dozens of agents in Raleigh represented northern
companies, but there were few underwriters
in the state. Established in 1886, Raleigh’s North
Carolina Home Insurance Company was one of
the few local companies that survived for any
length of time in the 19th century. Jefferson
Standard Life Insurance Company got its start in
Raleigh in 1907 but relocated to Greensboro in
1912—a monumental disappointment for
Raleigh boosters.
Two insurance men figured prominently in
the city’s development in the 1880s and 1890s.
William S. Primrose of the North Carolina
Home Insurance Company organized the State
✧
Opposite page, top: Black Exodus from
North Carolina, 1890.
COURTESY OF NORTH CAROLINA STATE
ARCHIVES, RALEIGH.
Opposite page, bottom: Marshall H. Johnson
(left) and a newsboy-in-training were
photographed about 1935 near the
State Theatre.
COURTESY OF THE NORTH CAROLINA COLLECTION,
UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA, CHAPEL HILL.
Above: The completion of a municipal water
and sewer system in Raleigh in 1886 opened
the way for unprecedented industrial and
commercial development in the 1890s. A
group of well dressed visitors is pictured
here at the city reservoir around the turn of
the century.
COURTESY OF NORTH CAROLINA STATE
ARCHIVES, RALEIGH.
Below, left: The U.S. Electric Light
Company’s exhibit at the 1884
State Exposition.
COURTESY OF NORTH CAROLINA STATE
ARCHIVES, RALEIGH.
Below, right: Massachusetts-based Whitin
Machine Works demonstrated its state-ofthe-art
textile manufacturing equipment at
the 1884 State Exposition.
COURTESY OF NORTH CAROLINA STATE
ARCHIVES, RALEIGH.
CHAPTER V
55

✧
Sunnyside (pictured in 1971), a Wendell
Historic Landmark and former home of the
R. B. Whitley family, was used as a
temporary hospital during the flu outbreak
of 1918-1919.
FROM ELIZABETH REID MURRAY COLLECTION, COURTESY
OF OLIVIA RANEY LOCAL HISTORY LIBRARY, RALEIGH.
HISTORIC WAKE COUNTY
56
Exposition in 1884 and was also instrumental
in founding the North Carolina College of
Agriculture and Mechanic Arts in 1887.
Richard Beverly Raney, proprietor of the
famous Yarborough House, made part of his
fortune as an insurance agent. In 1896,
following the untimely death of his first wife,
Olivia, he invested most of his wealth in a
memorial library for the white citizens of
Raleigh. The stately, three-story Olivia Raney
Library, Wake’s first public library, opened
in 1901 at the corner of Hillsboro and
Salisbury streets. Raney built a mansion
across the street where he could gaze at the
shrine he built for Olivia, although he had
remarried by that time.
Raleigh had several short-lived business
schools between 1889 and 1901, when J. Hugh
and his wife Mary King arrived in town
in 1901 and established King’s Business
College. It was an important training ground
for the local business community until it closed
in the 1950s. The school offered stenography
and bookkeeping at first and by 1914 added
banking, commercial law, and business
arithmetic courses. A satellite facility opened in
Charlotte in 1903 continues operation as King’s
College. Additionally, John F. Draughon’s
Nashville-based chain of business schools had
a branch in Raleigh from about 1904 to 1911.
HEALTH AND HOSPITALS
Wake County had one of the state’s highest
death rates in the early 1900s, despite having
three hospitals—Shaw University’s Leonard
Hospital (1885-1918) and St. Augustine’s
St. Agnes Hospital (1896-1961) for blacks
and Rex Hospital (1893-) for whites—and
three medical schools at Wake Forest College
(1902-), Shaw University (1881-1918), and
at the University of North Carolina’s short-lived
medical department in Raleigh (1902-1910).
The county also suffered the highest death
toll when an influenza pandemic struck in
1918-1919. The flu outbreak shocked city
and county leaders into a larger investment
in public health. City and county health
departments merged, and war was declared
on open wells, privies, flies and mosquitoes.
Additionally, more attention was paid to food
handling in restaurants, midwifery, vaccinations,
and examinations of children in schools.
Wake’s earliest hospital, excluding those
operated by the Confederate government, was
St. John’s, which was opened in 1878 by a
benevolent society of Raleigh’s Church of the
Good Shepherd to care for indigent patients.
The ladies of St. John’s Guild acquired the
former home of Governor Charles Manly on
W. South Street and moved there in 1882.
When mounting debts put the hospital in
jeopardy, trustees of the Rex Hospital Fund
took over the facility in 1893 and rescued the
guild from debt.
Meanwhile, Shaw University’s Leonard
Medical School had also established a hospital
soon after the medical school began in 1885.
In the beginning it was open from November
to April and staffed exclusively by white physicians
and surgeons. Dr. L. A. Scruggs became
resident physician following his graduation
from Leonard in 1886. A free dispensary
opened in 1890, and the city began furnishing
free medicines to indigent patients until the
economic downturn of 1893 (it was reopened
briefly in 1904). A new operating room and
laboratory were added in 1902, but financial
constraints eventually caused the hospital and
the medical school to close in 1918.
Rex Hospital opened in the Manly house in
1893 after adding a two-story wing for African

American patients. Local women volunteered as
nurses, and trustees hired Mary Lewis Wyche, a
Philadelphia General Hospital graduate, to serve
as head nurse and bookkeeper. She started a
nursing school since North Carolina had few
trained nurses. Though benefactor John Rex had
envisioned a hospital only for indigents, there
were some able and willing to pay for the up-todate
services of a hospital, so a wing for selfpaying
patients was added in 1896. Having
outgrown the dilapidated Manly house, trustees
built a new modern structure in 1908-1909.
Dr. J. M. Thompson of Alamance County
was resident physician, working without
compensation except room, board, and laundry.
The new facility had no accommodations for the
black community, since African American
patients were by then provided for at St. Agnes
and Leonard. Rex relocated to a larger site at the
corner of Wade Avenue and St. Mary’s Street in
1936 and in 1980 moved to the current location
at the intersection of Blue Ridge Road and Lake
Boone Trail.
St. Agnes Hospital was envisioned by Sarah
Hunter, wife of St. Augustine’s principal. She
proposed the idea at an Episcopal women’s
convention in Minneapolis in 1895. Following
her speech, I. L. Collins of Orange, California,
pledged the first major sum under condition
the hospital be named for his late wife
Agnes. The hospital opened in 1896 in the
former principal’s home. Mrs. Hunter was
superintendent until 1920, and Leonard
Medical School graduate Dr. L. A. Scruggs was
the first attending physician. Dr. Hubert
Royster and Dr. Catherine Hayden, both white
physicians, took over leadership of the hospital
in 1899-1900. Plans were soon made for a new
four-story stone building which was completed
in 1909. After Leonard Medical School’s
hospital closed during World War I, St. Agnes
was the county’s only medical facility for
African Americans. It closed in 1961 when a
racially integrated Wake Memorial Hospital
was completed.
Mary Elizabeth Hospital opened in 1914 in
a rented house at Peace and Halifax streets
in Raleigh. Dr. Harold Glascock and classmate
Dr. A. R. Tucker, osteopathic practitioners,
founded what they described as the “hospital
with a heart.” after finishing medical school in
Chicago and growing disenchanted by the
impersonal manner of treating patients they
encountered in Illinois. They named their new
venture in honor of their mothers (and,
coincidentally, their wives’ mothers had the
same names).
After World War I, Dr. A. J. Ellington and
Dr. Ivan M. Procter joined the Mary Elizabeth
staff. Procter, a Wake native, was the first North
Carolina physician to specialize in obstetrics
and gynecology. He was expelled from the
Wake County Medical Society for associating
with Glascock and Tucker but was soon
reinstated at the insistence of the state society’s
president. In 1920 Mary Elizabeth relocated to
a new building on Wake Forest Road. Prior to
the move, trustees voted to forbid the practice
of osteopathy, leading Dr. Tucker to resign.
The hospital was later renamed Raleigh
Community Hospital when a new facility
opened at the present location on Wake Forest
Road in the 1970s. Duke University Health
System took over the facility in 1998, giving it
its current name, Duke Raleigh Hospital.
RELIGIOUS
DIVERSITY
By the early 20th century, Wake County was
home to almost every denomination and sect
from the Judeo-Christian traditions of faith.
Churches affiliated with the Southern Baptist
Convention continued to lead numerically
among whites. Southern Baptist adherents
organized at least forty-six new churches in the
county between the Civil War and World War
✧
An ordination ceremony for pastor Thomas
B. Jiles at Springfield Baptist Church
in 1982.
FROM SPRINGFIELD BAPTIST CHURCH HISTORY. COURTESY
OF OLIVIA RANEY LOCAL HISTORY LIBRARY, RALEIGH.
CHAPTER V
57

✧
Top: Raleigh’s Christian Church at the
corner of Hillsborough and Dawson streets
as it neared completion in the mid 1890s.
COURTESY OF NORTH CAROLINA STATE
ARCHIVES, RALEIGH.
Above: Springfield Baptist Church near
Auburn was organized by former slaves
from Mt. Moriah and other area churches in
about 1866. The meeting house shown here
was built between 1895 and 1907.
FROM SPRINGFIELD BAPTIST CHURCH HISTORY, COURTESY
OF OLIVIA RANEY LOCAL HISTORY LIBRARY, RALEIGH.
HISTORIC WAKE COUNTY
58
I. Matthew T. Yates and other Baptist
missionaries in China received a
significant share of their support
from the Raleigh and Central Baptist
Associations, which were made up of
churches in Wake and surrounding
counties. Primitive Baptists and Free
Will Baptists, white and black, were
scattered across the county but were
not numerous.
The largest following of African
American church members in the
post-Civil War era was with the
biracial American Baptist Convention,
the denomination of Shaw University
founder Henry M. Tupper. In 1880,
Wake’s churches broke away and
joined an all-black Foreign Mission
Baptist Convention. Racial tensions led to
another schism in 1895, when local churches
affiliated with the National Baptist Convention.
Most resources were used to put up buildings
and sustain local congregations until the early
20th century when more emphasis was placed
on foreign missions in Africa.
Methodists had relatively few congregations
in Wake before the Civil War. As new
municipalities sprang up along railroads, each
had at least one Baptist and one Methodist
church. The intense revivalism that defined
Methodism earlier in the 19th century was
deemphasized by century’s end, especially by
urban ministers who wished to attract a more
respectable and affluent following. Raleigh’s
Edenton Street Church was considered an
important metropolitan center for Methodism
in North Carolina in the post-war years. As a
symbol of its prominence, the congregation
built a new brick edifice in 1881 with the
tallest steeple in the city. Later that decade,
Trinity College trustees considered relocating
from Randolph County to Raleigh, but Durham
tobacco tycoon Washington Duke made a more
lucrative offer. Efforts to locate a Methodist
orphanage in Raleigh were more successful.
Cary founder A. F. Page was a main benefactor
of the orphanage, which opened in 1900.
St. Paul’s Church, formerly Edenton Street
Church’s African mission, joined the all-black
African Methodist Episcopal Church, based
in Philadelphia. The denomination attracted
other freedmen who had attended Methodist
churches as slaves. The Methodist Episcopal
Church, North, also organized congregations in
Oberlin, Raleigh, and Holleman’s Crossroads.
The New York-based A.M.E. Zion Church, the
denomination of leading black activists such as
Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, and
Harriet Tubman, had one congregation in Wake
by the 1880s—originally known as Neville’s
and later renamed Rush Metropolitan Church.
The Christian Church, a branch of
Methodism dating from the 1790s, had a
large following in Wake County after the Civil
War. The Reverend William G. Clements, Wake
school superintendent around the turn of the
century, was one of the denomination’s leading
ministers and promoters. He was instrumental
in organizing most of the county’s Christian
churches, including one in the capital city in
1881. This denomination was often confused
with Disciples of Christ (also called “Christian”),
a group that did not come to Wake County
until 1910, when Mrs. R. B. Whitley helped
organize a congregation in Wendell. This was
followed by another in Raleigh spearheaded by
Mr. and Mrs. E. C. Hillyer. There were also
black branches of both “Christian” denominations.
The Colored Christian Conference had
over a dozen churches in Wake by the early
20th century.
Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and Roman
Catholics were present in Raleigh since
antebellum times. Jews, Congregationalists,
Latter Day Saints, Pentecostals, Lutherans, and
Christian Scientists had followings in Wake by
the early 20th century.
Christ Church was the county’s only
Episcopal parish until the Church of the Good
Shepherd was established in 1873. The new
parish broke with Episcopal tradition by
offering free pews, whereas Christ Church
rented pews to generate revenue. St. Ambrose
Church (originally called St. Augustine) was
built for blacks in 1868 at the corner of Lane
and Dawson streets. Short-lived Episcopal
missions were established north of Raleigh in
1889, at Cary in 1900, and at Wake Forest
in 1914.
While Dr. William M. White was pastor of
Raleigh’s First Presbyterian Church between
1908 and 1932, he helped to start several

churches in western and southern Wake and
around Raleigh. Northern Presbyterians
established Davie Street Church for blacks in
Raleigh when they started a school for
freedmen following the Civil War. In 1905, the
denomination established a church for African
Americans in Wake Forest. Catholicism
branched outside of Raleigh after 1895 with
the arrival of Father Thomas F. Price. This
congenial priest established short-lived
chapels in Holly Springs, Fuquay Springs,
Garner, and Apex. Of more long-lasting
importance was Nazareth Orphanage and
seminary in west Raleigh, which Price founded
in 1898.
WARTIME
North Carolina’s State Guard, established in
1877, was ill prepared for serious military
engagement when the United States declared
war on Spain in 1898. The First Regiment
trained at Camp Bryan Grimes, which was set
up on the Cameron family property between
Oberlin Road and the St. Mary’s School
campus. Men trained less than a month, while
throngs of family and friends visited freely
in the camp sites. After arriving at Camp
Reynolds near Jacksonville, Florida, they
became laughing stock for the other soldiers.
The Second Regiment was no better. They
trained at Camp Russell at the State
Fairgrounds, where there were outbreaks of
typhoid fever and measles presumed to be
caused by contaminated wells on the site.
Several companies were sent to perform
garrison duty along the Georgia and Florida
coast, but they saw little action. Those left
behind at Camp Russell took weapons and
used Raleigh’s electric and gas light fixtures
along Hillsborough Street for target practice.
The Third Regiment, an African American
unit, suffered from low morale, and its
politically appointed officers drew criticism
from both blacks and whites. Soldiers trained
at Fort Macon on the coast before being shipped
to Knoxville, Tennessee, and Macon, Georgia,
where they never faced an opponent. A few
Wake men, recruited by African American
druggist James E. Hamlin, went to fight
insurrectionists in the Philippines in 1899.
✧
Above: An African American state guard
company is pictured performing drills at the
North Carolina Negro State Fair in
the 1880s.
COURTESY OF NORTH CAROLINA STATE
ARCHIVES, RALEIGH.
Below: Throngs flocked to Raleigh to witness
returning soldiers as they paraded down
Fayetteville Street in 1919. Pictured are
members of the 113th Field Artillery.
COURTESY OF NORTH CAROLINA STATE
ARCHIVES, RALEIGH.
CHAPTER V
59

✧
Wake Forest College’s first football
team, 1888.
COURTESY OF NORTH CAROLINA STATE
ARCHIVES, RALEIGH.
HISTORIC WAKE COUNTY
60
The National Guard took over the state’s
militia in 1903, and by the time of World War
I in 1917 the state was better prepared than
the previous generation had been for the
Spanish-American war. President Woodrow
Wilson’s Committee on Public Information in
May 1917 recruited “Four Minute Men” to
make brief speeches in support of the war
effort. When Wake began filling its quota of
5,491 for registration for the draft, half of the
men came from Raleigh, making it the largest
mobilization of troops since the Civil War.
After exemptions, 177 Wake men outside
Raleigh and 129 from the city were shipped
off to war in the first draft. By war’s end, over
1,600 Wake men served in the army and 350
in the navy. The local death toll was high—
almost 500 within only a year’s time. These
young men were honored when a new city
performance hall, the Raleigh Memorial
Auditorium, was built in 1932.
A new military phenomenon, the armored
tank, was introduced to Wake when one of
the U.S. Army’s Tank Corps’ training camps
was located near Method in September 1918.
The camp initially had a labor force of 3,000.
Soon citizens in the sleepy capital city could
hear the crack of 45-calibre pistols and the
angry boom of tank guns through much of
the day. The war ended before the camp was
finished, and in December 1918, 2,000 men
vacated the premises. A month later, all but
about 200 men were gone. City boosters tried
without success to convince the federal
government to keep the camp in Raleigh.
EVERYDAY
LIFE
Advances in transportation and communication
and a more egalitarian public education
system brought significant changes in the
way people passed their time between the
Civil War and the Great Depression. Literacy,
trains, fertilizers, textile factories, telephones,
electricity, automobiles, radios, and stricter
regulations of public health paved the way for
a New South with more choices and, for
some, more free time. Many filled spare time
with excursions, entertainment, and sports.
Train-watching and day trips by rail were
popular pastimes in the late 19th century. In
1871, parallel tracks of the North Carolina
and Chatham Railroads (later Southern and
Seaboard) between Raleigh and Cary gave rise
to a popular race among excursion trains on
Sunday afternoons. The temptation to throw
rocks and other missiles at passing trains also
led to a much maligned but common
diversion for young boys. In 1919 a group of
Raleigh youths were tried in federal court for
interference with interstate commerce after
they attempted to derail a train passing
through the city. The ringleader’s father,
having disregarded repeated warnings by
juvenile officers, became the first parent in the
state to be criminally indicted for an offense
by a minor.
Musical performances, dances, plays, and
circuses were social and entertainment
highlights before moving pictures came in the
early 1900s. Tucker Hall and Metropolitan
Hall above the City Market were where
a generation of Raleigh and Wake County
folk escaped from the 1870s to the 1890s
to experience the thrills of traveling
operas, vaudeville shows, theater companies,
minstrels, vocal quartets, and bands. Some
shows took place at Pullen Park by the
1890s. W. B. Baum of Norfolk opened the
Academy of Music, an opera house, in 1893.
After R. C. Rivers abandoned Metropolitan
Hall and bought the Academy building
in 1898, he began to put Raleigh on the
entertainment map. Manager Sherwood
Upchurch recalled in the 1930s that locals
paid top prices for tickets but still filled every
seat when a Broadway show or music star

came in the early 1900s. In 1903, the building
had what may have been Raleigh’s first airconditioning
system—large fans blowing on
vats of ice blocks.
When a circus came to town, schools and
businesses closed. One of the largest ever was
the Sells Brothers and Forepaugh show, which
brought 420 elephants and a cast of a
thousand to the Fairgrounds on Hillsboro
Street in 1898. Cameron Field and Gatling
Field were also sites for circuses and carnivals.
The first moving pictures were shown in
Metropolitan Hall by an itinerant showman
in 1903, and a movie house, the Gem,
opened there in 1905. The earliest shows had
sound but soon went silent because of the
challenges of accurately matching sound
with picture. As one observer noted, it was
frustrating when the heroine’s voice squeaked
while the hero moved his lips. Other theaters
of the pioneer years included the Airdome, a
tent which featured dancing girls near the
Capitol on Fayetteville Street; the Revelry;
the Almo; and the Gaiety. By the 1920s,
practically every town of any size had a
movie theater with a short catchy name.
Piano players, violinists, and other musicians
provided sound.
Athletic events were popular diversions in
town and country. Union soldiers at Camp
Russell introduced baseball to the area in
the Reconstruction period and began playing
against local teams. By the 1870s many
towns and crossroads communities had
teams, most catching the ball barehanded.
When competition intensified in the 1880s,
professionals were sometimes hired to bolster
the local line-up. The Raleigh Athletics were
the pride of the city in the 1870s, followed by
the Red Birds in 1900, and the Capitals in
1912 and ensuing years. The Nationals were
an acclaimed African American local team of
the 1880s and 1890s. Football kicked off in
1888, when the first intercollegiate game was
played between Wake Forest and UNC at
the State Fair. The violent nature of the game
caused it to be discouraged, sometimes even
banned, by school administrators. Golf was
introduced at the turn of the century when
the Cameron Golf Club formed. Basketball
was first played in about 1904.
TOWNS AND SUBURBS
All but one of Wake County’s current
municipalities outside Raleigh were chartered
between 1871 and 1927. There were six
additional incorporated areas which sooner or
later lost their charters: Forestville (1879,
1899), Wakefield (1899), New Hill (1907),
Bonsal (1907), Royall Cotton Mills (1907), and
Eagle Rock (1911).
Raleigh’s unprecedented growth in the early
20th century spurred the development of
unincorporated suburbs in the surrounding
countryside where earlier well-to-do locals
had vineyards, truck farms, and herds
of thoroughbred cattle and swine. Boylan
Heights, Watson Park, and Capitol Heights
were annexed by Raleigh in 1907—the first
extension of the city’s boundaries since the
Civil War. Glenwood, Cameron Park, Hayes
Barton, Oberlin, and Fairview were added in
1920, finally giving Raleigh a population of
over 25,000 and official “city” status by the
U.S. Census Bureau.
The village of Rolesville (often pronounced
“Roseville”) is the county’s only town without
a railroad. In 1906, the post office closed,
and citizens soon stopped electing municipal
officers, allowing their charter to lapse. A
disastrous fire in 1913 left only two stores
standing. In 1941 the town was reincorporated,
and the post office was reestablished in 1944.
✧
A crowd was assembled at the Seaboard Air
Line depot in Apex when this postcard photo
was made about 1910.
FROM DURWOOD BARBOUR COLLECTION, COURTESY OF
NORTH CAROLINA COLLECTION, UNIVERSITY OF NORTH
CAROLINA, CHAPEL HILL.
CHAPTER V
61

Cary was incorporated in 1871 but traces its
origins to 1854 when a post office and railroad
stop on the North Carolina Railroad were built
there. Town founder Allison Francis “Frank”
Page was such an ardent prohibitionist that he
named the town for renowned temperance
lecturer Samuel Fenton Cary and had a ban on
liquor written into the town’s charter. Although
there were attempts at industrial development
in the early years the town remained a small
farming trade center until after World War II.
Local machinist William M. Sorrell made a
Cary Cotton Gin in the 1870s and 1880s. Frank
Page and partner J. M. Ellington opened a sash
and blind factory, and there was also a brickmaking
operation. William M. Jones also had a
sash and blind factory by the 1880s. Page built
a cotton spinning plant around 1874, but it
failed to take off in the midst of a depression.
When the ambitious Page family left in 1881 to
pursue lumber interests in Moore County, Cary’s
aspirations for industrial development dwindled.
Cary inventor Robert J. Harrison, one of
the town’s most longstanding businessmen,
manufactured and sold wagons and farming
implements from 1877 to well into the 20th
century. He invented many of the machines he
sold, including a cotton press, hay press, steam
washer, domestic bleacher, the “Harrison
Cultivator and Sweep,” a cotton planter and
cultivator. In the 1880s he invented a wireless
telegraph machine but, according to Wake
historian Moses Amis, decided not to pursue a
patent because he thought the expense of
making the machine too great to be profitable.
This revolutionary technology was finally
perfected and patented in the 1890s by the
Italian Guglielmo Marconi, who became
known as the Father of Radio.
Cary High School, which began as a private
academy in 1870, became the first state-funded
high school in North Carolina. It was soon
designated a Farm Life School. The town
boasts two famous native sons—Alfred D.
“Buck” Jones, who was appointed U.S. Consul
General to Shanghai, China, in 1893, and
Walter Hines Page (son of Frank), a New York
journalist and U.S. ambassador to Great Britain
during World War I.
HISTORIC WAKE COUNTY
62

Apex was chartered in 1873 and named for
its high elevation on the Chatham (later
Seaboard Airline) Railroad. Like Cary, Apex had
a number of young entrepreneurs in the early
years who tried in vain to make the fledgling
town an industrial center. In the 1870s and
1880s there were a sash and blind factory and
two plug tobacco factories, followed by a
canning company and large lumber mill in the
1890s. The Duke family’s Cape Fear and
Northern Railroad set up headquarters in Apex
in 1899, and in 1906 a successor company, the
Durham and Southern, connected the town to
the Bull City. The new rail connection led to a
tobacco market in 1905, followed by a boom
period for the town that lasted until the 1920s.
Several newspapers were published during
this time, including the Apex Journal. Prior to
1911, it was edited by radio and television
pioneer A. J. Fletcher. In 1922 Apex’s two
tobacco warehouses were converted to
cooperative ownership. The scheme fell
through, and the market folded. The town
continued to be a locally important agricultural
trade center because of its location at the
junction of two railroads.
Morrisville, chartered in 1875, traces its
origins to a post office established in 1852
by Jeremiah Morris. A depot was established
there when the North Carolina Railroad was
completed in 1856. After the Civil War, several
merchandising firms located there, but the
town’s size changed little until after World War
II. Merchant Samuel R. Horne built a hosiery
mill—the only sizeable industry—in about
1910. A private academy, the Morrisville
Collegiate Institute, was open from 1877 to the
early 1900s. Two of the town’s most prominent
early residents were the Reverend William G.
Clements, county school superintendent, and
Peace College art professor Mabel Pugh. Pugh’s
book Little Carolina Bluebonnet (1933) captures
the Morrisville way of life in the 1890s from a
child’s eyes.
Holly Springs was chartered in 1877 at the
behest of farmer-merchant George Benton
Alford. Alford moved his mercantile business
there in 1875 and bought the 1840s home of
Scottish tailor Archibald Leslie. The village by
then had Baptist and Methodist churches, a
post office dating from 1833, and a Masonic
lodge and academy built in the 1850s. In 1899,
Alford’s dream of a railroad, the Cape Fear and
Northern, came to fruition with the help of
Durham’s Duke family, and Alford started
publishing a weekly newspaper, the Cape Fear
Enterprise, to promote the town’s industrial
development potential. Holly Springs, however,
failed to grow into an industrial metropolis as
nearby tobacco markets in Fuquay Springs
and Apex lured business away from the
town in the early 20th century. In 1907,
the community’s pride in its local school paid
off when county school leaders chose Holly
Springs as the site for one of Wake’s first four
state-funded high schools.
Forestville was a stop on the Raleigh and
Gaston Railroad, with a post office from 1839
to 1914 and a railroad depot from 1840 to
1872. In the latter year, competition with Wake
Forest for the depot resulted in the building
being lifted off its foundation and moved to the
college town. Forestville’s leading industry, W.
B. Dunn’s iron foundry, followed the depot to
Wake Forest in 1879. That same year
Forestville received a municipal charter, but its
fate was sealed. The charter was repealed in
1885. Another charter was granted in 1899 but
was also repealed in 1915.
Wake Forest College was bypassed by the
Raleigh and Gaston Railroad in the late 1830s.
After its post office closed in 1848, students
and faculty grew accustomed to a pleasant
daily mile walk to get mail in Forestville.
Spurred by the political coup of getting the
depot moved, local leaders succeeded in
getting a municipal charter for “Wake Forest
College” in 1880. “College” was dropped
from the name 1909. The town soon became
an important farm trade center with
a cotton market by the early 1900s. Nearby
Royall Cotton Mills opened in 1901,
manufacturing cotton cloth and yarn. The mill
village was incorporated as a separate town
from 1907 to the 1930s.
By 1870, Garner was a wood and water stop
on the North Carolina Railroad when Silas G.
Holleman was sectionmaster. A post office was
established there in 1878 and called Garner’s
Station, a name shrouded in mystery. Postmaster
Thomas A. Bingham, who had speech and
hearing impairments, requested the name and
✧
Above: George B. Alford, merchant and
chief promoter of Holly Springs from the
1870s to the 1920s. From Amis, Historical
Raleigh (1913).
Opposite page, clockwise, starting from
top left:
Wake Forest depot in the 1930s.
COURTESY OF NORTH CAROLINA COLLECTION,
UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA, CHAPEL HILL.
A group of young Apex Lumber Company
employees in the early 20th century.
COURTESY OF MICHAEL REID AND OLIVIA RANEY LOCAL
HISTORY LIBRARY, RALEIGH.
The hub of Morrisville’s business district in
the 1950s.
COURTESY OF OLIVIA RANEY LOCAL HISTORY
LIBRARY, RALEIGH.
A granite quarry near Rolesville reportedly
provided stone for Raleigh’s water tower in
1887. By the 1920s there were three
commercial quarries near the town, one of
which is shown in this postcard image.
COURTESY OF MICHAEL REID AND OLIVIA RANEY LOCAL
HISTORY LIBRARY, RALEIGH.
Farm Security Administration photographer
Marion P. Wolcott captured Wendell town
father R. B. Whitley on camera in 1939 as
he held court in his downtown store.
COURTESY OF LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.
CHAPTER V
63

✧
Clockwise, starting from top left:
Zebulon’s Arendell Street, looking
south in the 1920s.
FROM THE DURWOOD BARBOUR COLLECTION, COURTESY
OF NORTH CAROLINA COLLECTION, UNIVERSITY OF
NORTH CAROLINA, CHAPEL HILL.
Varina Farmer’s Exchange in the 1950s.
COURTESY OF OLIVIA RANEY LOCAL HISTORY
LIBRARY, RALEIGH.
Knightdale depot in 1977. The building was
later relocated to serve as a dwelling.
FROM DURWOOD BARBOUR COLLECTION, COURTESY OF
NORTH CAROLINA COLLECTION, UNIVERSITY OF NORTH
CAROLINA, CHAPEL HILL.
Fuquay Springs business district in
the 1930s.
FROM DURWOOD BARBOUR COLLECTION, COURTESY OF
NORTH CAROLINA COLLECTION, UNIVERSITY OF NORTH
CAROLINA, CHAPEL HILL.
left town a few years later, apparently failing to
pass on his source of inspiration. In 1883 the
fledgling village received a municipal charter
which was repealed in 1891. A new charter was
granted in 1905. By that time Garner had a
cotton market, but the town failed to attract
industry in its early years.
Wakefield was a post office and farm trade
center on the Tarboro Road in the 19th century.
Residents received a charter, when it was
announced in 1899 that a railroad from Raleigh
to the coast would be built through the area.
Railroad plans faltered, but hopes were soon
raised again as plans for another railroad were
made in 1903. According to legend, a local
landowner who refused the railroad right-ofway
forced the line to be rerouted around the
Town of Wakefield to a site incorporated in
1907 as Zebulon.
Railroad stockholder Ed Barbee and
businessman Falc Arendell developed Zebulon,
named for Civil War Governor Zebulon B.
Vance. Neither of the two stayed around to build
the town, although the main streets bear their
names. Area native Thomas J. Horton was the
first mayor and president of the first bank and
hosiery mill. The town also had a tobacco
market from inception to the Great Depression.
Founders tried in vain to banish all hogs from
town in 1912. They also banned liquor and pool
rooms but in 1913 relaxed the ban on pool by
allowing it from 7 to 11:30 p.m. The town’s early
industries included the hosiery mill and a
cottonseed oil mill. As early as 1913, local
historian Moses Amis remarked on the town’s
attractiveness, with its wide streets, impressive
architecture, and well-landscaped lawns. Two of
the town’s greatest highlights were visits in 1958
and 1960 by former President Harry S. Truman,
whose daughter Margaret married Zebulon
native E. C. Daniel, Jr.
Wendell was chartered in 1903 as soon as
word was received that the Raleigh and Pamlico
Sound Railroad was coming. The name came
from a local post office established in 1891 and
an academy named by local school teacher
Mallie Asa Griffin in honor of his literary idol,
Oliver Wendell Holmes. According to oral
tradition, conductors on approaching trains
called out the name with both syllables
stressed, and the pronunciation stuck. When
the town was laid out, Wendell Academy was
in the center. The first train rolled into town in
1906, the same year Rayford B. Whitley moved
HISTORIC WAKE COUNTY
64

to Wendell from Johnston County to begin
building an empire in hardware and furniture,
banking, lumber, cotton, and tobacco. To help
others develop Wendell as an important local
tobacco market, M. A. Griffin left the teaching
profession and built a tobacco warehouse. As
the town grew, sports became a popular
pastime. Jakie May was the pride of the town
after he became a pitcher for the St. Louis
Cardinals in 1917. He later played for the
Cincinnati Reds and Chicago Cubs.
Fuquay Springs and Varina, like Forestville
and Wake Forest or Zebulon and Wakefield,
competed for business and tax base from
the early 20th century until finally merging
as Fuquay-Varina in 1963. Fuquay had the
advantage of a mineral spring and a tobacco
market, whereas Varina was at the junction of
two railroads, the Raleigh and Cape Fear (later
Norfolk and Southern) and the Cape Fear and
Northern (later Durham and Southern). A
union depot built at Varina in 1910 touched off
a wave of commercial development, including
a separate tobacco market by World War I.
Fuquay continued to thrive as a tobacco
market town even after automobiles made
seaside resorts more accessible and caused the
allure of the mineral spring to wane in the
1920s. The paving of the Capital Highway
(later U.S. 401) in the 1920s allowed Fuquay
to eclipse Varina’s development.
J. D. (“Squire”) Ballentine and Raleigh’s Dr.
James A. Sexton were the founders of Fuquay
Springs. Ballentine was the postmaster and
merchant who named the post office Varina.
According to legend, Varina was a nom de
plume his wife used in writing letters during
their courtship. Ballentine built a large general
store near the spring about the time Dr. Sexton
purchased the property from the Fuquay heirs
in 1900. The doctor planned to make this a
place where the sick could spend extended
periods of time to regain their health. He built a
pavilion and gazebo for young people who
found it fashionable to take train excursions to
picnic at the spring. When railroad builder John
A. Mills erected a depot near the spring in 1899,
his wife Isabella named the station “Sippahaw,”
in an attempt to honor the Sissipahaw Indians
who once inhabited the upper Cape Fear region.
The name was also given to the post office, but
it failed to catch on. At Mills’s business partner’s
insistence, the post office was renamed Fuquay
Springs in 1902. The town was incorporated in
1909. A newspaper, the Fuquay Gold Leaf, was
published 1913-1919, during which time A. J.
Fletcher briefly lived in Fuquay Springs and
worked with the paper.
Knightdale developed along the Raleigh and
Pamlico Sound (later Norfolk and Southern)
Railroad, which was completed through
eastern Wake by 1907. Former Wake County
Treasurer Henry H. Knight promised land for a
depot on his farm but died in 1904 before
tracks were laid. His wife followed through
with her husband’s plans, and the station
was named in his honor. A post office was
established in 1908. Several businesses,
including a bank, grew up around the depot,
and in 1927 the area was incorporated as the
Town of Knightdale.
✧
Above: The award-winning Cary High
School Marching Band, shown here in the
1970s, has been the pride of Cary townsfolk
for decades.
FROM DURWOOD BARBOUR COLLECTION, COURTESY OF
NORTH CAROLINA COLLECTION, UNIVERSITY OF NORTH
CAROLINA, CHAPEL HILL.
Below: Garner High School Class of 1925.
COURTESY OF OLIVIA RANEY LOCAL HISTORY
LIBRARY, RALEIGH.
CHAPTER V
65

HISTORIC WAKE COUNTY
66

CHAPTER VI
D EPRESSION, WAR, AND U RBANIZATION, 1929-1960
Cotton, Wake County’s economic mainstay, was dethroned by the boll weevil in 1927.
Accompanied by the 1929 stock market crash and subsequent bank failures, this led to federal crop
controls in the 1930s. This added insult to injury for an agricultural economy already in decline.
Many reluctantly switched to tobacco, livestock and dairy farming, truck farming, horticulture, or
diversification. Others abandoned farming altogether, especially tenants displaced by federally
mandated crop reductions. Some still produced cotton, but on a much smaller scale because of low
prices brought on by synthetics and foreign competition.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt pushed his New Deal programs through Congress and provided
short-term relief to the suffering masses and improvements to infrastructure that continue to
benefit Wake County even today. He did so with the opposition or, at best, reluctant support of
conservatives such as attorney Josiah W. Bailey of Raleigh. Bailey, a U.S. senator from 1931 to 1946,
was the first Wake resident in Congress after a hiatus of over four decades and the first of several
conservative senators from the county who wielded power in North Carolina politics throughout
the 20th century.
ECONOMIC IMPACTS OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
Six of Raleigh’s eight banks closed between 1930 and 1933, as did many small-town financial
institutions. Those remaining open were soon joined by Winston-Salem’s Wachovia Bank and Trust
and Smithfield-based First Citizens Bank and Trust Company. The Durham-based Mechanics and
Farmers Bank, which opened a Raleigh branch in the early 1920s, continued serving the African
American community from its downtown Raleigh branch. It rescued hundreds of families and
businesses from financial trouble in the 1930s. The Bank of Wendell was one of the few small
banks in the county to survive the federal bank holiday of 1933. Mild-mannered magnate Rayford
Bryant Whitley was president from its founding in 1907 until his death in 1944. The bank later
merged with First Union in the 1960s.
Factory closings at Caraleigh Cotton Mills, Melrose Knitting Mills, and Wendell Hosiery Mill
affected hundreds of families. Other textile operations were forced to down-size workforces. Town
governments went bankrupt or resorted to bond issues to meet obligations. Those fortunate
enough to have jobs had salaries cut. Public schoolteachers, for example, saw a 40 percent decrease
in pay in 1934. Shortages of money and clothing forced women to make underwear and dresses
from flour sacks. Families of the unemployed, whose ranks swelled in the early 1930s, reported
eating rice or collards at every meal for a week or longer.
✧
New Deal policies brought a sharp decline
in the number of farm tenants such as
Apex-area sharecropper David Wilson, seen
on moving day in January 1950.
REPRINTED BY PERMISSION OF NEWS AND OBSERVER
OF RALEIGH.
THE NEW DEAL
In 1933, the Agricultural Adjustment Administration began paying farmers to grow smaller
crops in order to increase demand. While this helped large landowners, it displaced many
sharecroppers—a large segment of Wake’s black population. Agricultural census statistics indicate
a tenth of the county’s farms had vacant dwellings in 1935 and that the number of black farm
tenant families fell by 800 in the decade of the 1930s. Charitable organizations such as Associated
Charities, Raleigh Community Chest, Salvation Army, and American Red Cross found it
increasingly difficult to meet the growing needs of the jobless. In 1933 leaders of Raleigh‘s African
American community held a mass meeting and organized local benevolence efforts largely through
a Negro Community Chest.
CHAPTER VI
67

✧
Above, left: Artist James McLean is shown
painting a mural at Raleigh’s WPA
art gallery.
COURTESY OF NORTH CAROLINA STATE
ARCHIVES, RALEIGH.
Above, right: Mollie Huston Lee is pictured
in the reading room of Richard B. Harrison
Library in 1940.
COURTESY OF RICHARD B. HARRISON LIBRARY, RALEIGH.
Below: Federal loan recipients made
payments on rehabilitation loans at the
Resettlement Administration’s Raleigh office
in the mid 1930s.
COURTESY OF LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.
Bottom: Thousands of acres of rocky fields
such as this one were taken out of
production when Crabtree Creek (Umstead)
State Park was built.
COURTESY OF LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.
HISTORIC WAKE COUNTY
68
In 1934, the federal Resettlement
Administration purchased 400 tracts of unproductive
farmland totaling over 5,000 acres in
Wake County’s House Creek and Cedar Fork
townships for a state park. Farm families were
relocated in 1935-1936, and the Civilian
Conservation Corps and Works Progress
Administration hired young men to clear land
and construct cabins and picnic shelters on the
property. Named Crabtree Creek Recreational
Demonstration Area, it was deeded to the state
in 1943 and renamed Crabtree State Park. It
was once again renamed in honor of Governor
William B. Umstead in 1955. From 1943 to
1966 the southern portion was set aside as a
segregated park for African Americans and
named Reedy Creek State Park.
A state Emergency Relief Administration was
established in 1932 under the leadership of
Annie Land O’Berry. Raleigh businessman
C. A. Dillon served on the five-member North
Carolina Emergency Relief Commission,
which administered federal Works Progress
Administration funds and local and state
matching funds for an assortment of projects
designed to improve the infrastructure and put
people to work.
Aside from state government buildings and
extensive landscaping around the Capitol, most
WPA money in Wake County was used for
schoolhouse repairs and painting, gymnasiums,
playground equipment, sanitary privies, street
and road maintenance, a swimming pool at
Pullen Park, a Raleigh meat cannery, concrete
bleachers and field house at State College’s
Riddick Stadium, and a countywide sewing
room. The largest single expenditure, $150,000,
was allocated for paving runways at Raleigh
Municipal Airport (formerly Curtiss-Wright
Field), which Eastern Air Transport had
established as a regular passenger and airmail
stop between New York and Miami in 1931.
Other funds were used to hire writers to
interview former slaves and working class
people. In 1936 a federal art project center was
established in Raleigh—the first in the nation
and precursor to the North Carolina Museum
of Art. An amphitheater for the Raleigh Little
Theatre was completed in 1940, and Olivia
Raney Library received WPA assistance to
begin countywide bookmobile service.
Richard B. Harrison Library (1935) and
Chavis Park (1938), both sponsored with
WPA funds, provided Wake County African
Americans with amenities most North
Carolinians of their race did not enjoy in the
Jim Crow South. Wake was still behind a dozen
other communities across the state in offering
library service to blacks when the City of
Raleigh hired Mollie Huston (later Lee),
librarian at Shaw University, to open the
Harrison library. Until moving to a house on
Blount Street in 1948, the library was located
in the Delany Building on Hargett Street in
the center of Raleigh’s “Black Main Street.”
Only Charlotte, Durham, and Greensboro had
facilities to rival Raleigh’s Chavis Park by 1940.
The park featured an Olympic-size swimming
pool, carousel, train rides, and picnic shelters.
In rural Wake, federal financing of electrification
had far-reaching impact. Farmers
around Wake Forest initiated the process by
forming the Wake Electric Membership
Corporation in 1940 and borrowing money
from the Rural Electrification Administration.
By the time of World War II, electric lights and

modern conveniences such as refrigerators,
freezers, washing machines, irons, radios, and
fans began to revolutionize living standards in
the countryside.
WAKE MEN
IN POLITICAL SPOTLIGHT
In 1930, Raleigh attorney Josiah W. Bailey
became the first Wake resident in Congress
since the 1880s, having defeated longtime
Senator Furnifold Simmons. He was a Wake
Forest College graduate and editor of the
Biblical Recorder before going into law. His
conservatism and belief in free enterprise
kept him at odds with President Franklin D.
Roosevelt and his New Deal. Bailey was a
key author of a 1937 Conservative Manifesto,
which called for lower taxes and less spending
on federal relief programs. In 1937 he did,
however, support the Farm Tenant Act, which
set up a loan program allowing tenants to buy
farms. Ironically, Bailey was able to ride on
Roosevelt’s coattails in 1936 and win the
largest majority of any governor or senator
in state history. Joe Holloway, a Bailey family
employee since the 1890s, chauffered the
senator in Washington and listened out for
job opportunities. He not only helped North
Carolina blacks get jobs but also got votes for
Bailey in the African American community.
Bailey served until his death in 1946.
Roosevelt appointed Josephus Daniels,
former Navy secretary, as Ambassador to
Mexico in 1933. Mexicans blamed him for an
American bombing and invasion ordered by
President Wilson prior to World War I and
stoned the embassy upon his arrival. However,
by the time of his departure in 1941, he had
smoothed relations between the United States
and its southern neighbor.
In 1940, J. Melville Broughton became the
first Wake native to be elected governor of
North Carolina. A graduate of Raleigh’s Hugh
Morson Academy and Wake Forest College,
he was a school principal in Franklin County
before entering Harvard Law School. In the
late 1920s, he represented Wake County
in the state senate, where he introduced
legislation for the secret ballot in 1929. The
measure passed overwhelmingly, and the
practice of party ballots in general elections
ended. As governor, Broughton succeeded in
lengthening the public school term from six
to nine months. He was elected U.S. Senator
in 1948 but served only a few months before
his death in 1949.
Willis Smith, another Raleigh attorney, was
elected to the U.S. Senate following one of the
most bitter primary races in state history. As a
former Speaker of the North Carolina House of
Representatives and president of the American
Bar Association, Smith ran against UNC
president Frank Porter Graham for senate in
1950. In the first Democratic primary Graham
came in first but did not win a majority. Smith
was encouraged by a young Jesse Helms and
other Raleigh conservatives to call for a run-off.
He won by accusing his more liberal opponent
of being a communist and by playing on white
✧
Left: Josiah W. Bailey (pictured at right) and
a colleague share a light moment during a
U.S. Senate session in 1935.
COURTESY OF NORTH CAROLINA STATE
ARCHIVES, RALEIGH.
Right: Governor J. Melville Broughton,
c. 1941.
COURTESY OF OLIVIA RANEY LOCAL HISTORY
LIBRARY, RALEIGH.
CHAPTER VI
69

✧
Left: Volunteers from Zebulon, Wendell, and
Rolesville are shown as they pitched in to
help with draft registration in 1940.
REPRINTED BY PERMISSION OF NEWS AND OBSERVER
OF RALEIGH.
Right: These British sailors enjoyed a rest
camp hosted by the state at Crabtree State
Park in 1942.
COURTESY OF NORTH CAROLINA STATE
ARCHIVES, RALEIGH.
HISTORIC WAKE COUNTY
70
fear that Graham would end racial segregation.
Unlike his campaign, his term in the U.S.
Senate was fairly unremarkable.
WORLD WAR II
War with the Axis powers from 1941 to 1945
ended the joblessness and economic paralysis of
the 1930s. It also pulled some 11,000 Wake
men and women of both races away from
families and livelihoods to serve in the military.
Many others migrated to large cities to work in
war-related factory jobs. By war’s end, the
countywide death toll of 227 was significantly
less than that of the previous world war, but
the impact of displacement was much greater.
Signs of the growing threat of Nazism were
manifest in the summer of 1940 when a
penciled swastika appeared on the walls of the
county courthouse staircase. Eldridge Smith,
county building superintendent, offered a $50
reward for the artist’s name. As the Nazi threat
became real, even the conservative Senator
Josiah W. Bailey supported activating Selective
Service in peacetime—the first such occurrence
in U.S. history. Bailey further boosted his
popularity when he supported the Lend-Lease
Bill in 1941 to aid Great Britain’s war effort.
The attack on Pearl Harbor December 7, 1941,
finally brought the United States into the war.
It also claimed the life of Wake native Robert
H. Westbrook, Jr., an Army Air Corps private
killed at Hickam Field.
No segment of the population was
untouched by the war. Wake residents
participated in USO entertainments, YMCA
and YWCA outreach, air raid drills, registered
for ration books, raised Victory gardens, and
bought war bonds. War bond rallies and scrap
metal drives were held at the Raleigh Memorial
Auditorium, State College, and other places.
An army finance school was established at
Wake Forest College. North Carolina State
College trained soldiers and began a school of
diesel engineering for the U.S. Navy. Army air
cadets also received pre-flight training at State
College. In area women’s colleges, defense
councils and Red Cross knitting and sewing
groups were organized, and schools offered
first aid courses and promoted war bond sales.
The absence of young men provided
opportunities previously not available to
women and African Americans. Wake Forest
College began admitting women in 1942. By
December 1942 most of the staff of Raleigh’s
Wachovia Bank was made up of women. That
same month John Haywood Baker became the
city’s first black policeman since 1876. In 1946
Lula Cooper became Wake County’s first
female juror.
Several Wake youths distinguished themselves
during the war. Raleigh native Vernon
Haywood was a Tuskegee Airman in the
European theater of operations. As a child, he
enjoyed watching airplanes take off and land at
Raleigh Municipal Airport. After high school, he
attended Hampton Institute in Virginia where he
enrolled in a pilot training program. In 1941, he
transferred to Tuskegee Army Air Field to learn
to be a fighter pilot and soon found himself
escorting B-17 and B-24 bombers to targets
across Europe. He completed seventy missions
before returning to the United States in 1945.
Before he retired in Tucson, Arizona, in 1971,
he had attained the rank of full colonel. Six
other Tuskegee Airmen, including Harold
Webb—later Wake County comissioner
chair—hailed from Wake County as well.
In early 1942, Katharine Stinson of Varina
became the first female hired as a civil

aeronautics engineer by the U.S. Civil
Aeronautics Agency (predecessor of the Federal
Aeronautics Administration). As a teenager
in 1932, she was taking flying lessons at the
Raleigh Municipal Airport when Amelia
Earhart flew in to service her plane. Stinson
introduced herself to the famous aviatrix, and
Earhart advised her to become an engineer. She
refused a scholarship at Meredith College in
order to enter the School of Engineering at State
College but initially was refused admission.
She eventually became the engineering school’s
first woman graduate and in 1997 was honored
in the naming of Stinson Drive on the North
Carolina State University campus.
Short runways and lack of room for
expansion made Raleigh Municipal Airport
obsolete by the time of World War II. In 1940,
after prodding by the CAA and by Eastern
Airlines president Eddie Rickenbacker, local
governments of Wake and Durham counties,
Raleigh and Durham joined forces to purchase
almost 900 acres of unproductive farmland
in Cedar Fork Township for a regional airport.
After the Pearl Harbor attack, the Army Air
Corps took over the property and in 1943
opened an army air field there with three
runways, barracks, and an air traffic control
tower. It was used infrequently as a training
facility, while Eastern Airlines was allowed to
continue commercial service. In 1948, the
property reverted to the Raleigh-Durham
Airport Authority.
vocational education, and civil rights for African
Americans. The wider use of scientific farming
methods and machines to increase food and
fiber productions during the war had placed
agriculture on a new course. By the 1950s, farms
produced more with fewer laborers. Mules and
horses, once members of every farm family, were
replaced with shiny tractors which could pull
heavier, labor-saving equipment. The result was
a workforce that increasingly moved away from
agriculture to industrial, commercial, and white
collar employment. The 1950 Census showed
for the first time a county with an urban
majority. Between 1940 and 1960, the county’s
rural farm population dropped from 35,000 to a
mere 17,000.
From the early 20th century, Raleigh was
considered the economic as well as political
capital of the Coastal Plain. In fact, on the eve
of World War I it ranked fifth in the nation in
industrial development among cities of its size.
The Great Depression, however, reversed the
✧
Above: The State Fair was suspended from
1942 to 1945 as most of the population was
mobilized for war. Shown here is a waterfall
which Fuquay Springs builder A. Y. Hairr
designed and constructed in 1940. It was a
popular meeting place for generations of
post-World War II fair-goers.
COURTESY OF NORTH CAROLINA STATE
ARCHIVES, RALEIGH.
Below, left: Shoppers at Cameron Village in
1950s. From Edmisten, J. W. Willie York:
His First Seventy-five Years in Raleigh.
COURTESY OF OLIVIA RANEY LOCAL HISTORY
LIBRARY, RALEIGH.
Below, right: T. C. Pippin’s mechanized
tobacco farm near Zebulon, 1959.
FROM LEWIS P. WATSON COLLECTION, COURTESY OF
OLIVIA RANEY LOCAL HISTORY LIBRARY, RALEIGH.
POST- WAR
RENAISSANCE
Those who returned home in 1945 soon
began to push for more business and industry,
CHAPTER VI
71

✧
Top: Dorton Arena under construction by
Muirhead Construction Company, 1951.
FROM LEWIS P. WATSON COLLECTION, COURTESY OF
OLIVIA RANEY LOCAL HISTORY LIBRARY, RALEIGH.
Above: The North Carolina State College
Nuclear Reactor in the 1950s.
COURTESY OF MICHAEL REID AND OLIVIA RANEY LOCAL
HISTORY LIBRARY, RALEIGH.
HISTORIC WAKE COUNTY
72
city’s economic progress, and it
was not until the 1950s that a
resumption of extensive business
recruitment came.
A new era in retail sales began
in 1949 when Cameron Village
Shopping Center opened in West
Raleigh. Developer J. Willie York
got the idea from a magazine
article he read on a train ride to
a homebuilders convention in
Chicago in 1946. In addition to
retail stores, York built apartment
buildings, homes, and business
and medical offices to provide a
nearby customer base. The shopping
center—the first of its kind
in the South—featured abundant
free parking, underground utility
wires, street-level stores, and covered
sidewalks. By the 1960s, almost 3,000
people were employed in Cameron Village’s
offices and stores.
After WWII, The Raleigh Chamber of
Commerce realized the acute need for more
non-farming jobs and hired an industrial
engineer to help attract them. Westinghouse
Electric Company’s decision to locate in
Raleigh was a tremendous boost. Other major
players in and around the city were Corning
Glass, International Paper, Gordon Foods, ITT
Kellogg, Rockwell Manufacturing Company,
Burlington Industries, Electric Storage Batteries,
Aeroglide, and Aerotron.
Small towns also formed chambers of
commerce in the late 1940s and early 1950s
to compete for economic growth. Wake
Manufacturing Company, Cornell-Dubilier,
and Paragon Southern were located in Fuquay
Springs. Garner had Jones Sausage Company,
Cary had Taylor Foods, and Zebulon attracted
Devil Dog during this period. Schieffelin and
Company, a pharmaceutical plant, was
located in Apex. After Wake Forest College
was moved to Winston-Salem in 1956, local
businessmen soon realized the campus’s new
occupant, Southeastern Baptist Theological
Seminary, compensated for the loss by
providing a more mature clientele for
merchants and a reliable workforce for a
growing number of industrial enterprises,
including Schrader and Athey Company. The
family of Wake Forest businessman W. W.
Holding donated property south of Raleigh
for a technical school (eventually known as
Wake Technical Institute), which was
chartered in 1958 and opened in 1963 to
train the workforce needed in the county’s
new industries. In the 1950s, the county’s
population experienced its highest growth up
to that time, from 136,450 to 169,082.
Many large companies chose Wake County
because of North Carolina State College and
the community of scientific research and
development it had fostered. In 1950, the
school hired in Dr. Clifford Beck from Oak
Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, Dr.
Beck made North Carolina State the first
academic institution to operate a nuclear
reactor. Burlington Industries sponsored the
project, which was completed in 1953. Dr.
Raymond Murray left Oak Ridge and joined the
faculty in 1955, later succeeding Beck as head
of the school’s nuclear engineering program.
Matthew Nowicki, head of the architecture
department at North Carolina State, developed
the trailblazing design for an extraordinary
arena at the State Fairgrounds but was killed
in a plane crash before construction started.
His friend William H. Deitrick completed the

project in 1951-1952, when it received
international attention for its suspended roof.
Named in honor of State Fair Manager J. S.
Dorton, its design eliminated the necessity for
structural steel supports which would obstruct
the view of spectators.
Raleigh-Durham Airport attracted the
attention of Russian immigrant Igor Bensen,
who established Bensen Aircraft Corporation in
Raleigh in 1953. Bensen initially planned to
make commercial helicopters, but he soon
found a niche in sporting craft. He invented the
Gyro-Copter, a small one or two-seat flying
machine produced until 1987 and later
featured in the National Air and Space Museum
in Washington, D.C.
Research Triangle Park, dating from the
1950s, owes its existence to the culture of
research and development at North Carolina
State, as well as at Duke University and the
University of North Carolina. Like the
Experimental Railroad of the 1830s, RTP was
yet another experiment imported to North
Carolina from Boston. It was the brainchild of
Romeo Guest, who had observed the success of
partnerships between businesses and the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology and
wanted to bring something similar to North
Carolina. After winning the support of leading
businessmen and Governor Luther Hodges in
1956, the idea took shape. Land in Wake’s
Cedar Fork Township and in adjoining
Durham County was acquired for an industrial
park which would figure largely in Wake
County’s future development.
DEVELOPMENTS
IN TRANSPORTATION,
COMMUNICATION
The depression and postwar years ushered
in a number of new innovations. In 1933,
Raleigh’s streetcars ceased running, and motor
busses took their place, offering routes through
the capital and also to nearby towns and
cities. The year 1939 was particularly eventful.
A. J. Fletcher went on the air with a second
radio station, WRAL, to offer competition to
WPTF. The City of Raleigh installed parking
meters. Dial telephones went into use. And
Halifax Court opened as the first governmentsponsored,
low-cost housing project at a time
when over a third of Raleigh’s dwellings were
deemed substandard. After the war, paved state
roads across the county and widened highways
made rural families seem closer to market
centers and urban jobs. Furthermore, after
WRAL-TV went on the air in 1956, the
television began bringing the world to living
rooms in city and country.
✧
Left: Thomas H. Purcell of Bensen Aircraft
Corporation kept this experimental airplane
car at his home in Raleigh when it was
photographed about 1954.
FROM LEWIS P. WATSON COLLECTION, COURTESY OF
OLIVIA RANEY LOCAL HISTORY LIBRARY, RALEIGH.
Right: Igor Bensen piloting an experimental
aircraft at Raleigh-Durham Airport
around 1955.
COURTESY OF NORTH CAROLINA STATE
ARCHIVES, RALEIGH.
CHAPTER VI
73

HISTORIC WAKE COUNTY
74

CHAPTER VII
O PENING F LOODGATES: W AKE C OUNTY S INCE 1960
Over the last fifty years, Raleigh and the Research Triangle Park have come to be numbered
among the nation’s most desirable locations for business and industry. As a result Wake County
has experienced unprecedented population growth—from 169,000 in 1960 to an estimated
868,000 in 2008, with professional planners projecting over a million by 2013. The prelude to
this explosive growth was the overturning of de jure racial segregation. A more diverse, educated,
affluent and urban populace gradually emerged, and the county’s longstanding Anglo-Saxon
Protestant foothold began to loosen.
THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT
African Americans who helped to liberate Europe from fascism in the 1940s began to demand
freedom from the legalized oppression they experienced at home. In April 1960, the Reverend
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., called a meeting of students from twelve states at Raleigh’s Shaw
University to form a Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). In August 1960 the
Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) held a meeting at Shaw to organize youth to conduct freedom
rides into Alabama and Mississippi. Many of these youth grew impatient with the slow pace of
change and broke ties with King in the mid-1960s.
Several important firsts followed. In September 1960, Ralph and June Campbell enrolled their
seven-year-old son William in Raleigh’s Murphey School, making him the county’s first African
American child to attend a previously all-white school. In 1961, Raleigh voters made John W.
Winters the first African American city councilman since 1900. In 1963, Larry Gene Williams
became the first black Raleigh fireman since 1912. In 1966, Robert C. Weaver, grandson of a
Raleigh slave, became U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development and the first of his race
to serve in a presidential cabinet.
Peaceful protests became a way of life in 1962 and 1963, as students at Shaw and
St. Augustine’s College staged “sit-ins” and “stand-ins” at Raleigh restaurants, hotels, and
theaters. The Reverend W. W. Finlator, the white minister of Pullen Memorial Baptist Church,
stunned many local whites when he defended the protesters from the pulpit, proclaiming that
any business refusing to serve blacks should be padlocked. Another white sympathizer
hosted Freedom Riders at his farm near Raleigh in 1963 as the group traveled from the Deep
South to march on Washington, D.C. Raleigh’s city swimming pools were soon integrated
after four black youths, aided by white companions, took a swim at the Pullen Park pool in
August 1962. The same four challenged segregation by taking ringside seats at an off-limits
wrestling match in Raleigh Memorial Auditorium a few days later. Because of the efforts of
black activists and progressive whites, “white only” signs were becoming relics of the past by the
mid-1960s.
Following the assassination of Dr. King in April 1968, Raleigh’s downtown Hudson-Belk
store was set on fire. Shaw University students and other angry protesters ran down Fayetteville
Street, and the National Guard was called in to control the crowds.
The 1970s was a decade of many firsts for African Americans in Wake County. In 1972,
Elizabeth Cofield became the first black member of the Wake County Board of Commissioners
since the 1870s. In 1973, Clarence Lightner became the first black Raleigh mayor and Vernon
Malone the first black city school board member. In 1975, former city councilman John W.
Winters was elected as Wake County’s first black legislator since 1897. In 1978, John Baker
became the county’s first African American sheriff, serving for over two decades.
✧
Martin Luther King, Jr., speaking to an
audience at Needham Broughton High
School in 1958 to promote his non-violent
campaign for racial justice. From Simmons-
Henry, Heritage of Blacks in
North Carolina.
COURTESY OF OLIVIA RANEY LOCAL HISTORY
LIBRARY, RALEIGH.
CHAPTER VII
75

✧
Above: Wake Memorial Hospital, a racially
integrated facility which opened in 1961,
provided care under one roof for indigent
patients formerly treated at Rex, Mary
Elizabeth, and St. Agnes hospitals.
FROM LEWIS P. WATSON COLLECTION, COURTESY OF
OLIVIA RANEY LOCAL HISTORY LIBRARY, RALEIGH.
Right: Wake Memorial Hospital’s
first nurses.
FROM LEWIS P. WATSON COLLECTION, COURTESY OF
OLIVIA RANEY LOCAL HISTORY LIBRARY, RALEIGH.
Below: Garner students boarding a school
bus in 1955, a year after the landmark
Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of
Education, and over twenty years before
Wake’s schools were effectively
racially integrated.
COURTESY OF OLIVIA RANEY LOCAL HISTORY
LIBRARY, RALEIGH.
HISTORIC WAKE COUNTY
76
INTEGRATING AND
UPGRADING PUBLIC
EDUCATION
Following King’s death, civil rights leaders
pushed for more effective measures to integrate
public schools. Token integration had been
piloted in Cary in the early 1960s and soon
implemented in other communities. Full-scale
integration of public schools, however, did not
begin until 1972, when a court-ordered bussing
plan was put in place. Some whites accepted
and even supported the change, while others
fought it strenuously and eventually chose
private schools. Local television commentator
Jesse Helms used the airwaves of WRAL-TV to
speak out against desegregation. His influence
across the state was evident when he won a U.S.
Senate seat in 1972. By the mid 1970s, city
schools had become predominantly black
and underutilized, while white flight from the
city had made county schools predominantly
white and crowded. School leaders backed a
referendum in favor of merging the city and
county systems to correct inequities, but the
white majority voted it down 6 to 1. The two
school boards still managed to merge in spite of
the vote, as the law allowed, by winning the
approval of the Wake County Board of
Commissioners and the Raleigh City Council.
The school system merger went into effect
in 1976—a century after the city system
was created. In 1982, the county began
operating under a voluntary desegregation
plan that created magnet schools in the city to
draw academically gifted students from across
the county. This came
just as the completion
of Interstate Highway 40
through Wake brought
a population surge that
caused crowding in schools
throughout the county.
Between 1985 and 2003,
voters approved almost
$2 billion in bonds to meet
school facilities needs.
With such excessive
capital outlay, school
leaders resorted to a yearround
calendar in some
schools to alleviate crowding. Cary’s
Kingswood Elementary (the first year-round
school in North Carolina) was made the
pilot school for the program in 1989. In 1991,
Morrisville (originally Crosstimbers) Elementary
became the nation’s first multi-track magnet
year-round school, with three tracks in school
and one on break at any given time. In 2007,
20 of the county’s 153 schools operated on
a year-round calendar. Efforts to adopt this
unconventional approach on a wider basis have
sparked as much opposition as integration did
in the 1960s
In 1999, the school board unanimously
adopted a new desegregation plan that
abandoned racial criteria altogether and based
school enrollment on socio-economic level and
reading proficiency. The result has been a racial
balance that is virtually unparalleled. Minority
students have performed at a higher level since
2000—a byproduct of the new policy that has
earned the Wake County Public School System
numerous accolades. In 2007, the National
Board of Certified Teachers named Wake its #1
school district in the nation.
GROWING
PAINS AND GAINS
In 1965, the decision by International
Business Machines (IBM) to locate at RTP was
a major factor in Wake County’s growth.
Wake’s population jumped from fourth to third
largest in the state in the 1960s. Planners in the
1970s anticipated Wake County’s impending
population explosion as they saw more and
more large corporations locating in the Sun
Belt. The general populace, however, was not
capable of comprehending the monumental

changes about to take place. In the 1960s and
1970s, growth was centered around North
Raleigh and Cary. A new concept in retail sales
came when North Hills Mall opened in 1963,
followed by Crabtree Valley Mall in 1972 and
Cary Village Mall (later Cary Towne Center) in
1979. In 1973, a controversial referendum on
liquor by the drink was passed, serving as a
boon to the local restaurant, night club, and
tavern business. The vote signified a weakening
of conservative Protestant influence as a
more diverse, liberal populace assembled.
Throngs of newcomers brought greater
demands for government services and facilities.
Wake’s 469 hospital beds were well
below national standards in 1955, when voters
approved $5 million in bonds to build a
300-bed county hospital. Wake County
Memorial Hospital opened in 1961, and St.
Agnes Hospital was closed after serving the
black community for over six decades. By the
1950s, the role of chairman of the Wake
County Board of Commissioners had become
a full-time job, but it was not until 1965 that
the first county manager was hired to act as
the administrative head of county government.
Space in the 1915 county courthouse
also became inadequate in the 1960s, and a
new courthouse was completed in 1970.
Traditional sources of water, sewer, and electricity
soon became inadequate to meet new
demands. In 1966, though the Neuse
River had never figured largely in the
county’s development, the City of
Raleigh began withdrawing water
from the river for domestic use.
In 1976, a wastewater treatment
plant opened downstream in southeastern
Wake, with treated sewage
being discharged into the river. To
help with flood control and boost
the area’s water supply, the Army
Corps of Engineers constructed a
dam at Falls of the Neuse in northern
Wake between 1978 and 1981.
Residents, some whose families had
farmed the land for generations,
were evacuated, and 12,000 acres
stretching across northwestern Wake
into Durham and Granville counties
were flooded over a two-year period
to form Falls Lake. Outdoor recreation was an
added feature of the lake and surrounding land
as the area was converted into a state recreational
site.
In 1971, Carolina Power and Light Company
announced plans to construct Shearon Harris
Nuclear Power Plant at New Hill to boost the
company’s capacity to produce electricity for
the region’s burgeoning population. Excavation
began in 1974, and by 1979 the U.S. Nuclear
Regulatory Commission allowed construction
to begin. CP& L finally began providing power
from the facility in 1987. The site covers 10,000
acres, including a 4,000-acre lake for cooling.
✧
Left: 1970 Courthouse.
COURTESY OF MICHAEL REID AND OLIVIA RANEY LOCAL
HISTORY LIBRARY, RALEIGH.
Below: The 1915 courthouse soon after
its completion.
COURTESY OF MICHAEL REID AND OLIVIA RANEY LOCAL
HISTORY LIBRARY, RALEIGH.
CHAPTER VII
77

✧
Right: Mrs. Gertie Jenks is shown in 1968 at
her Falls of Neuse farm, now under
Falls Lake.
FROM ELIZABETH REID MURRAY COLLECTION, COURTESY
OF OLIVIA RANEY LOCAL HISTORY LIBRARY, RALEIGH.
Below, left: Shearon Harris Lake in
the 1980s.
FROM ELIZABETH REID MURRAY COLLECTION, COURTESY
OF OLIVIA RANEY LOCAL HISTORY LIBRARY, RALEIGH.
Below, right: The Shearon Harris Nuclear
Power Plant under construction in the
mid-1980s.
FROM ELIZABETH REID MURRAY COLLECTION, COURTESY
OF OLIVIA RANEY LOCAL HISTORY LIBRARY, RALEIGH.
In the 1980s, Wake moved from third to
second among North Carolina’s most
populous counties, climbing from 301,429 in
1980 to 426,311 in 1990. By the time IBM’s
personal computer was introduced in 1981,
the company’s 8,500 employees were second
in size only to the State of North Carolina’s
15,000-member workforce. Other major
employers by the early 1980s included the
county school system, Carolina Power & Light
Company, North Carolina State University,
and Northern Telecom. In 1980, Northern
Telecom opened its largest plant in the United
States in Raleigh to manufacture digital
switching systems. The first switches were sold
to China in 1983.
The pace of growth did not slow in the
1990s, with 627,846 persons counted in 2000.
Estimates for 2008 range from 850,000 to
868,000. State government continues to be the
county’s largest employer, with 36,700 on the
payroll. IBM is still a major player, along with
North Carolina State University, Wake County
Public School System, Rex Healthcare, SAS
Institute, the County of Wake, Progress Energy
(formerly Carolina Power & Light), the City of
Raleigh, WakeMed (formerly Wake Memorial
Hospital), Wal-Mart, Cisco Systems, and
Pinkerton and Burns. The top manufacturers
are GlaxoSmithKline, Canac Kitchens,
the Reuben H. Donnelley Corporation,
Tekelec, Conagra Foods, Biomerieux, System
Peripherals, Square D, Elster Electricity, and
Verizon Communications.
Business and employment opportunities,
small towns with friendly people, moderate
climate, shoppers’ paradises, and an enviable
school system are among the attributes that
continue to woo people from across North
Carolina, New York, California, District of
Columbia, and elsewhere to Raleigh and Wake
County. In 2007 and 2008, Forbes magazine
named Raleigh #1 among Best Places for
Business and Careers. In 2007, Black Enterprise
Magazine ranked the city as third best place for
African Americans to live.
Sports and entertainment venues have
grown along with the population, particularly
since 1990. North Carolina State University
sports fans still remember with pride the NCAA
championships the men’s basketball teams won
in 1974 and 1983. In 2006 a new generation
of hockey fans celebrated a Stanley Cup victory
by the Carolina Hurricanes, a National Hockey
League team that moved to Raleigh from
Hartford, Connecticut, in 1997. The “Canes”
became the first North Carolina professional
team to win a national championship title. The
Carolina Mudcats, a minor league baseball team
affiliated with the Florida Marlins, came to
Wake in 1991 when Zebulon’s Five County
Stadium was completed. The City of Raleigh’s
Walnut Creek Amphitheatre (later renamed
Time Warner Cable Music Pavilion) also
HISTORIC WAKE COUNTY
78

opened in 1991. The RBC Center (originally
Raleigh Entertainment and Sports Arena), was
completed in 1999 to serve as home to North
Carolina State University’s men’s basketball as
well as to the Hurricanes. An expanded Raleigh
Memorial Auditorium in 2001 became the BTI
Center and was later renamed the Progress
Energy Center for the Performing Arts. Cary’s
Koka Booth Amphitheatre was completed
in 2001.
Many wonder how long it will take before
population growth reaches a saturation point.
County planners in the 1970s estimated the
county could accommodate 1.7 million people
before living standards would be reduced for
all county residents. While growth has yet to
lower the local quality of life, small towns
and rural communities have been redefined.
Morrisville, a slow-paced farming village of 221
in 1950, now estimates over 13,000 people with
few, if any, ties to agriculture. Cary, still called a
“town,” has surpassed Asheville as the seventh
largest municipality in North Carolina and was
identified as the nation’s fifth fastest growing
city in 2006-2007. In Holly Springs, where
20,000 people call home and enjoy such
amenities as a state-of-the-art library and
cultural center and an array of shopping and
dining venues, Colonel George B. Alford’s
dream of hitting the big time is much closer.
AGRICULTURE’ S
DEMISE
The impact of Wake County’s explosive
growth since 1980 is most poignantly seen in
agricultural statistics. A county with 1,755
farms in 1974 was found to have only 827
farms operating in 2007. Out of 532,415 acres,
only 35,610 are classified as harvested
cropland. Once a leading farm county, Wake
now ranks 48th among North Carolina
counties in farm cash receipts, with much of
that amount coming from federal government
payments. The fact that the average Wake
farmer is 59 years old signifies an uncertain
future for agriculture—once the life’s blood
of the local economy. Historic preservation
groups, such as Capital Area Preservation,
Inc., the Wake County Historic Preservation
Commission, and local museums are working
to make sure the last surviving farm buildings,
cotton gins, grist mills, factories, and material
culture from the
county’s rich and
fruitful agrarian
past are not lost.
✧
Above: North Hills, the epicenter of Wake
County’s commercial and residential
development in the 1960s and 1970s,
featured the area’s first indoor shopping
mall. Shown here is the centerpiece of the
area’s recent “Renaissance.”
PHOTOGRAPH BY K. TODD JOHNSON.
Below, left and right: Tobacco cultivation at
the Ernest Sauls farm in Panther Branch
Township in 1960.
FROM LEWIS P. WATSON COLLECTION, COURTESY OF
OLIVIA RANEY LOCAL HISTORY LIBRARY, RALEIGH.
CHAPTER VII
79

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Amis, Moses. Historical Raleigh, with Sketches of Wake County and Its Important Towns. Rev. ed. Raleigh: Commercial Printing Co., 1913.
Amis, Moses. Historical Raleigh. Raleigh: Edwards and Broughton Printing Co., 1902.
Belvin, Lynn, and Harriette Riggs, eds. The Heritage of Wake County, North Carolina, 1983. Raleigh: Wake County Genealogical Society in
cooperation with Hunter Publishing Company, Winston-Salem, 1983.
Chamberlain, Hope Summerell. History of Wake County, North Carolina. Raleigh: Edwards and Broughton Printing Co., 1922.
Cross, Jerry L. Chameleon on the Crabtree: The Story of Joel Lane. 2001.
Haun, Weynette Parks. Wake County, North Carolina, Court Minutes, Book 1, 1771-1784. Durham: Weynette P. Haun, 1978.
Johnson, K. Todd, and Elizabeth Reid Murray. Wake: Capital County of North Carolina, Volume 2: Reconstruction to 1920. Raleigh: County of
Wake, 2008.
Lally, Kelly A. The Historic Architecture of Wake County, North Carolina. Raleigh: County of Wake, 1994.
Lawson, John. A New Voyage to Carolina. Ed. Hugh Talmage Lefler. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1967.
Lefler, Hugh Talmage, and Albert Ray Newsome. North Carolina: The History of a Southern State. 3d ed. Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 1973.
Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936-1938.Linder, Suzanne Cameron. William Louis Poteat: Prophet of
Progress. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1966.
Morse, Jedidiah. American Universal Geography. 5th ed. Boston: Thomas & Andrews, 1805.
Morse, Jedidiah. Geography Made Easy: Being An Abridgement of the American Geography. 3d ed. Boston: Samuel Hall, 1791.
Murray, Elizabeth Reid. Collection. Olivia Raney Local History Library, Raleigh.
Murray, Elizabeth Reid. Wake: Capital County of North Carolina, Volume 1: Prehistory through Centennial. Raleigh: Capital County Publishing,
1983.
News and Observer (Raleigh).
Powell, William S. North Carolina Through Four Centuries. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989.
Powell, William S., ed. Dictionary of North Carolina Biography. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996.
Powell, William S., ed. Encyclopedia of North Carolina. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006.
Raleigh magazine, Wake County Bicentennial edition, 1971.
Raleigh Times (Raleigh).
Sharpe, Bill. A New Geography of North Carolina, Vol. IV. Raleigh: The Sharpe Publishing Company, 1965.
Simmons-Henry, Linda, and Linda Harris Edmisten. Culture Town: Life in Raleigh’s African American Communities. Raleigh: Raleigh Historic
Districts Commission, 1993.
State Magazine (Raleigh).
Whitaker, R. H. Whitaker’s Reminiscences, Incidents, and Anecdotes. Raleigh: Edwards and Broughton Printing Co., 1905.
HISTORIC WAKE COUNTY
80

SHARING THE HERITAGE
Historic profiles of businesses,
organizations, and families that have
SPECIAL
THANKS TO
contributed to the development and
economic base of Wake County
A. E. Finley Foundation, Inc. .........................................................82
Catholic Church in Raleigh and Wake County....................................86
Town of Apex ...............................................................................90
Velvet Cloak Inn...........................................................................94
Apex Instruments, Inc. ..................................................................98
York Companies..........................................................................100
Raleigh Rescue Mission, Inc..........................................................102
Greater Raleigh Convention & Visitors Bureau ................................104
North Carolina State University....................................................106
Manning Fulton & Skinner, P.A. ....................................................108
Akins Properties .........................................................................109
Inter-Faith Food Shuttle ..............................................................110
Baker Roofing Company ...............................................................111
Crown Builders & Developers .......................................................112
Jeffreys Appliance Center.............................................................113
Peace College.............................................................................114
Tango Real Estate .......................................................................115
Town of Knightdale .....................................................................116
Raleigh Golf Association ..............................................................117
SRI Shoe Warehouse ....................................................................118
Rising Sun Pools and Spas............................................................119
Fuquay Mineral Spring Inn and Garden..........................................120
Springmoor Life Care Retirement Community ..................................121
Terry’s Floor Fashions, Inc. ..........................................................122
Chamblee Graphics .....................................................................123
Capital Area Preservation, Inc. .....................................................124
The Capital Room Restaurant/
PMC, Inc.
Greater Raleigh
Chamber of Commerce
Smith Debnam Narron Drake
Saintsing & Myers, LLP
SHARING THE HERITAGE
81

A. E. FINLEY
FOUNDATION,
INC.
✧
Right: Albert Earle Finley.
Below: Marian Nottingham Finley.
Opposite, top: The home of Mr. and Mrs. A.
E. Finley, 1723 Canterbury
Road, Raleigh.
Opposite, bottom: Carter-Finley Stadium,
renamed in honor of A. E. Finley in 1979.
Few individuals have had a greater impact
on business and philanthropy in North
Carolina than Albert Earle Finley. Although
he died more than twenty years ago, his
spirit continues to live on through the many
worthwhile endeavors supported by the A. E.
Finley Foundation.
The story of A. E. Finley is a true American
success story, in which native talent,
determination and hard work transformed a
Virginia farm boy into one of North Carolina’s
most successful business entrepreneurs.
Finley was born in Northumberland County,
Virginia, on December 8, 1895, the youngest
of eleven children born to Washington Finley
and Sallie Webster Finley. The family moved
to Queen Ann’s County, Maryland, while
Finley was still a youngster, and then moved
back to Virginia where he became one of
fourteen students to graduate from Bloxom
High School in 1913.
Finley, a smallish, tow-headed teenager,
decided to attend Beacom Business College
in Salisbury, Maryland, where he took a year
of bookkeeping and business administration,
followed by a year of shorthand and typing.
He became an expert in shorthand, a skill
that served him well throughout his
business career.
In 1915, with two years of Business
College under his belt, the nineteen year old
country boy got his first job as stenographer
for the trainmaster and superintendent of the
Baltimore, Chesapeake and Atlantic Railroad
in Salisbury, Maryland. His beginning salary
was $30 a month.
Following service with the BC&A and,
later, with the Pennsylvania Railroad, Finley
got his first business break when he became
private secretary to W. A. Gore, general
manager of the Virginian Railway in Norfolk,
Virginia. Such jobs were prized by budding
businessmen of the day because they
presented a golden opportunity to learn
first-hand the intricacies of running a
large business.
During this period, Finley found time to
attend classes at the Norfolk Night Law
School for two years. He also served a year in
the Army, entering service as a private and
emerging as a Second Lieutenant.
In 1924, Finley left his job with the
Virginia Railroad to become office manager
for General Utilities Company of Norfolk, a
firm specializing in heavy equipment sales in
Virginia, West Virginia, and North and South
Carolina. A year later, Finley left his office
position and began calling on prospective
customers in the eastern part of the two
Carolinas. His extraordinary success as a
salesman of heavy equipment brought him to
Raleigh in 1926.
Eager for a taste of business on his own,
Finley and two partners—H. A. Mooneyham
and J. M. Gregory—founded Raleigh Tractor
and Truck Company in 1929. Then, in 1931,
Finley managed to scrape together $3,600
and established his own firm, North Carolina
Equipment Company.
Located at 833 West Hargett Street in
Raleigh, North Carolina Equipment Company
represented a first-class line of motor graders
and rollers but operated with only two
employees. H. J. Midgette was office manager,
parts manager, and janitor and Finley took to
the road, calling on the trade and selling.
Finley was imbued with ambition and
determination, but 1931 was not exactly a
great time to start a new business. The nation
was mired in the worst economic depression
HISTORIC WAKE
82
COUNTY

of modern times and the new company was
not swamped with orders. Undaunted by the
lean economic times, Finley spent long
hours on the road Monday through Friday,
then came home to spend the weekend
catching up on his correspondence, calling
on his early stenographic training as he typed
his own letters.
Finley always remembered his first big
sale; $3,000 worth of Heltzel steel road forms
sold to F. J. McGuire & Company, a paving
contractor in Norfolk. The company’s sales
for the first year totaled $180,000, a very
respectable figure for a new company in the
depths of the Depression.
The North Carolina Equipment Company
became the springboard for establishment of
many companies in widely diversified fields of
business and industry. The growing company
moved to larger headquarters at 3116 Hillsboro
Street in 1932 and to 3101 Hillsboro Street
in 1940. A branch office was opened in
Statesville, North Carolina, in 1936 and, in
1942, a branch was opened in Charlotte.
Finley built his business empire on his
reputation as a crack salesman, not the fasttalking
type but one who sold his products
with confidence and conviction. Through
sales meetings where he did much of the
instruction, and sales manuals, some of which
he wrote personally, his knowledge and love
of selling was passed on to hundreds of
salesmen who followed in his steps.
By the early 1950s, Finley’s network of
companies covered five Southeastern states,
the largest equipment distributorship in the
nation and probably the world. Among
the businesses that grew out of North Carolina
Equipment Company were A. E. Finley
and Associates, North Carolina Products
Corporation, Superior Stone Company,
Southern Equipment Sales Company,
Hampton Roads Tractor and Equipment
Company, Florida-Georgia Tractor Company,
and many others.
In addition to the Charlotte operation,
sales, parts and service installations were
opened in Asheville, Greensboro, Wilmington,
and Greenville. In 1962 the Charlotte and
Asheville branches were reorganized as the
Western Carolina tractor company.
At one time, Finley and his key associates
were operating a chain of about twenty
construction machinery distributing plants
between Norfolk and Miami. As Finley neared
SHARING THE HERITAGE
83

✧
Above: A symbol of international industrial
power brightens the evening sky above
Finley’s Raleigh headquarters. North
Carolina Equipment Company has four
branch offices in North Carolina and is
affiliated with six other distributorships
founded by Finley.
Below: Yates Mill, a water powered grist
mill for over 250 years located in Historic
Wake County Park, was once owned by A.
F. Finley; later his Foundation participated
in restoration.
retirement, various corporations were formed
to take over certain territories, each with
its own president, general manager, and
secretary-treasurer. Finley remained as
chairman of the board of all the companies.
Finley also had other business interests,
ranging from a big orange grove in Florida, to
a palatial motor court near Chapel Hill, the
College Inn Motel & Restaurant, adjoining
North Carolina State University in Raleigh,
and the Triangle Motel at the Raleigh-Durham
Airport. Fin-Crest Hereford Farm, consisting
of a thousand acres of land and around
400 head of cattle, was organized in 1953 for
the purpose of improving
the Hereford breed of
cattle. When the farm was
sold in 1960, buyers
from throughout the U.S.
attended the sale and cattle
were sold to ranches as far
west as Montana. The LBJ
Ranch in Texas, owned by
President Lyndon Johnson,
was one of the larger buyers
of cattle at the sale.
In a newspaper interview
in 1969 Finley said his
success “was due to
knowing how to select
personnel with a specific
skill and put them in the
right spots. You’ve got to do
that when you’re not so
smart yourself.”
Finley, who was called
‘Fin’ by close associates,
also allowed his executives
to make their own way. He delegated
duties and each man was expected to carry
them out. The key men also received a
percentage of the firm’s annual profits. The
confidence he placed in his executives
resulted in an unusually large number of
long-time associates.
Finley gave up full control of North
Carolina Equipment in 1965 and, over time,
he sold off virtually every business he
organized. The opportunity to purchase the
firms was limited to the men who helped him
build each business. The sales were made on
what Finley called “the easy payment plan,”
and he never sold stock to an outsider.
Finley had always been generous with
contributions and donations, but his first
major act of philanthropy was in 1949 and it
all came about because of a football game.
Finley was an avid football fan and when
he learned that North Carolina, led by
legendary All-American “Choo-Choo” Justice,
would play Notre Dame in New York’s
Yankee Stadium, Finley decided he would
like to attend the game. He called the Tar
Heel ticket office but was told there were no
tickets available.
Finley then contacted the school’s athletic
director, Chuck Erickson, who explained that
hard-to-get tickets went to the university’s
most generous financial boosters. “If you need
some money, let’s talk,” Finley said.
Erickson, who doubled as the Tar Heel’s
golf coach, told Finley the university had built
a nine-hole course during World War II, had
the land for nine more holes, and wanted to
upgrade the original course and build the
second nine.
A deal was struck. Finley, an avid golfer
himself, agreed to pay for the design and
construction of the course. In return, he got
his tickets to the Carolina-Notre Dame
game—won, incidentally, by the Fighting
Irish as Justice watched from the bench with
an ankle injury.
The new layout opened in 1950 and was
named in Finley’s honor. The course was
completely redesigned by Tom Fazio in 1999,
and A. E. Finley Foundation made the first
gift of $1 million toward its renovation, which
is still called the UNC-Finley Golf Course.
HISTORIC WAKE
84
COUNTY

Finley’s philanthropic efforts became more
focused in 1957 when he and his wife, Marian
Nottingham Finley, established the A. E. Finley
Foundation. Marian was ‘Fin’s’ inspiration and
they celebrated sixty-five years of marriage
prior to his death in 1986.
The “legacy continues” as the A. E. Finley
Foundation has been a benefactor to many
hospitals, including a $1 million gift for
the Duke Children’s Hospital in Durham,
many religious missions, along with area
schools, colleges and universities, especially
North Carolina State, UNC at Chapel Hill,
Ravenscroft, Duke, Peace College, Meredith
College, and Campbell University. The
Foundation was a major contributor to the
multimillion dollar Exploris Children’s
Museum in Raleigh.
Finley’s personal generosity also took an
unusual turn on occasion. When the city of
Raleigh had no money budgeted to purchase a
mechanical train for Pullen Park, Finley
bought the train and allowed the city to pay
him back from the receipts at no interest.
When Raleigh experienced an extreme
shortage of water, he provided the means for
furnishing water to the city from Lake Trojan
at no cost until the drought ended.
Although he never attended North
Carolina State University, Finley and his
Foundation have been generous to the
school through the years. Finley and his
business associates contributed the funds to
construct the Fieldhouse for the University’s
new Carter Stadium. Finley continued
supporting additions and upgrades for the
stadium and, in 1979, the University showed
its gratitude by renaming the football facility
Carter-Finley Stadium.
Another significant gift was a $1 million
contribution from the Foundation to develop
historic Yates Mill County Park in Wake
County. The donation will be used to develop
the park’s educational center.
The A. E. Finley Foundation continues
as one of the most vibrant and generous
philanthropic organizations in the Triangle.
The current Board of Directors includes
Bobby Brown, A. Earle Finley, II, Alton
Howard, Ben Nottingham, and Charles
Nottingham, II.
Since Finley’s death in 1986, his
Foundation’s asset growth has increased from
$13.5 million to the $35-$40 million range.
The Foundation has contributed more
than $25.5 million to charity over and
beyond operating expenses. The A. E. Finley
Foundation ranks among the Top 50 North
Carolina foundations by total giving,
according to the Foundation Center.
A. E. Finley Foundation’s long history
of commitment to our state’s nonprofit
and educational sectors earned it the
“Outstanding Philanthropic Award” from the
Association of Fundraising Professionals.
The A. E. Finley name lives on through the
Foundation’s gifts, and in the memory of
those whose lives have been made brighter by
his generosity.
✧
Above: Board members Alton Howard,
Andy Goodwin, Earle Finley, Bobby Brown,
Ben Nottingham and Charlie Nottingham at
dedication ceremony for the new home of
the A. E. Finlay Foundation on
May 21, 2003.
Below: The A. E. Finley Foundation offices
since May 2003.
SHARING THE HERITAGE
85

CATHOLIC
CHURCH IN
RALEIGH AND
WAKE COUNTY
✧
Above: Most Reverend Michael F. Burbidge,
bishop of Raleigh.
Below: The Cowper Mansion, first home of
Sacred Heart Church after the installation
of Bishop William Hafey.
On August 4, 2006, Most Reverend Michael
F. Burbidge was welcomed as the fifth bishop of
the Roman Catholic Diocese of Raleigh at Sacred
Heart Cathedral and the Meymandi Concert
Hall. Bishop Burbidge looked out over a hall
packed with 1,800 people from all walks of life
representing the almost 300,000 Catholics of
the Diocese of Raleigh now comprising the 54
eastern counties of North Carolina.
How different this was from the 1821 visit
to Raleigh of Bishop John England on his first
visit to North Carolina, the northernmost part
of his diocese of Charleston which included all
of South and North Carolina and Georgia. He
found only a small band of Catholics, among
whom were businessman John Devereux and
Jane Gaston Taylor, wife of Judge John Taylor,
but he also found welcome from other citizens
of this city and was invited to preach at the
First Presbyterian Church, which he did to a
packed house.
On this trip, Bishop England first organized
the Catholic Church in North Carolina,
establishing communities in Raleigh, New
Bern, Washington, Edenton, Wilmington, and
Fayetteville. The history of growth was slow, but
in 1839 the Catholic Community of Raleigh
dedicated its first Church, St. John the Baptist,
on South Wilmington Street. In 1859 the
congregation purchased the Baptist Church on
the corner of Wilmington and Morgan Streets.
This property was resold to the Baptists in 1868
and the Catholic Community worshiped in
various locations, such as Briggs Hardware
Building, until 1879 when they purchased
the former home of Confederate General Bryan
Grimes, then owned by his descendants Mary
and Stanislaus Cowper, on Hillsborough and
McDowell Streets. The Church was renamed
Sacred Heart Catholic Church and the Cowper
Mansion was a residence, school and church
until the present Cathedral was built. The corner
stone of Sacred Heart was laid in 1922 and the
Church dedicated in 1924. All of this was
accomplished with less than a hundred Catholic
families in the area.
Among the pastors of Sacred Heart Church
was Father Thomas Frederick Price (1895-
1899) the first native born North Carolinian
to be ordained a Catholic priest, in 1886. It
was Father Price who founded the Catholic
Orphanage at Nazareth. Father Price had
dreams of a missionary apostolate center near
Raleigh and began purchasing property in the
Nazareth Community for his future work. In
1899, Father Price moved to Nazareth to begin
his missionary work and was soon approached
by impoverished parents who needed care and
education for their children. He first received a
few boys and then when his sister, Sister Agnes
of the Sisters of Mercy, joined him they cared for
girls. While the missionary work floundered, the
Orphanage grew with separate residences for
boys and girls, a Chapel, a school building and
HISTORIC WAKE
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convent for the Sisters of Mercy. In the early
days there was a large working farm with both
vegetables and cattle. The school had all twelve
grades through high school.
After World War II and the improving
economy of North Carolina the enrollment at
Nazareth dwindled from 300 to 12 students
in 1976, at which time it was closed and
the children moved into a group home. Father
Price left North Carolina in 1911 and died a
missionary in China. He is now being considered
for Sainthood in the Catholic Church.
Sacred Heart Church, was only two months
old when the Diocese of Raleigh was
established, embracing almost the entire state
of North Carolina. Raleigh was named the see
city and Sacred Heart Church the Cathedral.
Bishop William J. Hafey was named the first
bishop. His work was to organize the thirtynine
hundred Catholics scattered throughout
the state into a unified congregation.
Catholics living in Wake Forest and Wendell
asked to have Mass in their communities in
order to avoid the long trip into Raleigh. Mass
started in the home of the Bolus family in Wake
Forest in 1930 and continued there until the
Diocese was given the St. Peter railroad car
chapel in 1938. It seems that this was brought
about by the football coach at Wake Forest
College who was having trouble recruiting
Catholic athletes because of the lack of a
Church. In 1940, Countess Kathleen Price of
Philadelphia donated the money for the
beautiful stone church of St. Catherine of Siena
on Main Street, which was used until 1997
when property was purchased for a new church
to house the 1,200 (now 3,700) families of the
parish. The growth in Wendell was slower and
Mass continued to be offered in the home of
Namy Joseph until 1946 when the original St.
Eugene Church was built. By the 1990s this
proved too small and property was purchased
on Lion’s Club Road and a temporary Church
built. Plans are now in progress to build a
permanent Church for both St. Eugene and St.
Catherine Parishes.
The years of World War II were difficult ones
for the small Catholic Community of Raleigh.
As few as their clergy were, their diocese was
generous in providing chaplains for the Armed
Forces of our country. Father Philip Edelen, a
native of Raleigh, was killed on the battlefields
of Normandy, where his body rests today. The
Cathedral Parish operated a USO in the hall of
Cathedral School and many servicemen away
from home were welcomed into the homes of
the parishioners.
After World War II the Catholic Church
began to grow in the south due mostly to the
marriage of native Tarheels with northern
soldiers who agreed to settle in North Carolina.
But the big spurt came with the move of
industry into the south. A large percentage of
families moving into the state with industry
were Catholic. This growth continues to today
with the immigration of industries, retirees and
Hispanic people, particularly from Mexico.
In 1952, Bishop Vincent Waters, third
bishop of Raleigh, saw the need for another
parish in Raleigh and he decided to build a
✧
Above: Father Thomas Frederick Price.
Below: The Catholic Orphanage at
Nazareth, North Carolina, in 1936.
SHARING THE HERITAGE
87

✧
The first four bishops of Raleigh (from left to
right): Bishop William Hafey, Bishop Eugene
McGuinness, Bishop Vincent Waters, and
Bishop Joseph Gossman.
church on the land donated by the Fallon
family on Anderson Drive. Our Lady of
Lourdes Parish with an elementary school was
dedicated in 1954. Our Lady of Lourdes
was followed by St. Michael in Cary in 1963,
St. Raphael the Archangel in 1966, St. Mary,
Mother of the Church, in Garner in 1967,
St. Joseph in 1968, St Francis of Assisi in
1982, St. Andrew the Apostle in Apex in
1983, St. Luke the Evangelist in 1985,
St. Bernadette in Fuquay-Varina in 1989,
and St. Mary Magdalene in Apex in 1997.
Including the Doggett Center for Catholic
Campus Ministry at NCSU there are now
14 Catholic parishes in Wake County. The
Diocese of Raleigh has grown from 15 parishes
scattered across the state in 1924 to 74 parishes
and 13 missions in the 54 counties of eastern
North Carolina.
The Catholic Church has always promoted
education and the Catholics of Raleigh began
planning a Catholic School as early as 1900,
but it was not until 1909 that these plans were
realized when Sacred Heart Academy opened.
Until 1936 the school was housed in the
Cowper Mansion in which the Dominican
Sisters of Newburgh, New York, operated a
twelve grade academy. When the Diocese
was erected the elementary division became
Cathedral School and the high school took the
name of Cathedral Latin High School. The
present school building was erected in 1936. In
1960 the high school moved to the Catholic
Orphanage property off Western Boulevard
and the name changed to Cardinal Gibbons
High School. This College Prep High School
has now moved to Trinity Road and has an
enrollment of nearly twelve hundred students.
Its academic record is excellent and its sports
program is well rounded.
Bishop Hafey felt a strong desire to serve the
African American community of east Raleigh.
While there were few Catholics among them
the bishop wanted a Catholic School, taught
by Religious Sisters. The Sisters, Servants of the
Immaculate Heart of Mary from Scranton,
Pennsylvania answered the call and the school
opened in 1930 with 140 students, not a
Catholic among them. Not only Catholics but
many of the leading citizens of the African-
American community attended St. Monica
School among whom were Ralph Campbell, Jr.,
the former North Carolina State Auditor and
Monsignor Thomas Paul Hadden, the Rector
Emeritus of Sacred Heart Cathedral. The
school flourished until 1967 when it merged
with Sacred Heart Cathedral School. St.
Monica Parish closed in 1968.
The establishment of Our Lady of Lourdes
School followed in 1954 and in the last fifteen
years we have seen Parochial Schools started
in the Parishes of St. Catherine, St. Raphael,
St. Francis, St. Michael, St. Mary Magdalene
and St. Joseph. Bishop Gossman approved
the establishment of a private Catholic High
School, Saint Thomas More Academy, in 2002.
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The early success of our Catholic Schools
was due to the dedication and hard work
of Catholic Sisters. The Dominican Sisters
served Cathedral School and Cardinal
Gibbons for seventy years. The Sisters of the
Immaculate Heart of Mary came to teach at St.
Monica’s and have remained as Pastoral
Administrators in four of our small parishes.
The Sisters of Holy Cross founded Our Lady
of Lourdes School and the St. Raphael Early
Childhood Center as well as Immaculata
School in Durham. The Sisters of Notre Dame
of Chardon led Our Lady of Lourdes School
and Cardinal Gibbons High School and
remain on their faculties today. The
Catechetical work of the Mission Helpers of
the Sacred Heart began the Faith Formation
Programs in many of our parishes.
In 1953, Bishop Waters decreed an end to
segregation of the races in all Catholic churches
and Institutions of the Diocese of Raleigh. This
was a bold decision taken a year before the
Supreme Court decision ending segregation
in public schools. It took several years for
this decree to be realized but there was an
immediate beginning in Newton Grove and
at the Cathedral Latin High School in Raleigh.
Bishop Waters served for almost thirty years
as bishop of Raleigh. He saw the early growth
of the Church in North Carolina, he saw the
end of segregation in our Church and he
supported the large growth of Catholic Schools
throughout the state. It was at his request that
the Diocese of Raleigh was divided in 1972
by the establishment of the Diocese of
Charlotte to whom was given the care of the
forty-six western counties of North Carolina.
The growth under Bishop Waters
accelerated under Bishop Joseph Gossman;
there was a dedication of a Church or school
every year and often several times in one year.
Here in Wake County he oversaw the erection
of five parishes, five elementary schools and a
new Cardinal Gibbons High School. He also
dedicated new or remodeled churches in five
other parishes. Bishop Gossman was a strong
promoter of social justice and an advocate for
ecumenism. Under his leadership the Diocese
contributed to many of the good social works
that are so much a part of our community.
At the same time he reorganized Catholic
Charities of the Diocese of Raleigh and
established branch offices in each of the eight
Deaneries (administrative areas) of the
diocese. CATHOLIC PARISH OUTREACH of
Wake County, which is an arm of Catholic
Charities, serves more than twenty-six
thousand needy people each year.
Bishop Gossman retired in June 2006 after
thirty-one years. He was succeeded by the
Most Reverend Michael F. Burbidge who was
an auxiliary bishop of Philadelphia. His youth
and vitality has brought new enthusiasm to
our Diocese. He has spent his first two years
visiting all the Churches of the Dioceses and
getting to know the people, priests, religious
and laity.
The Diocesan Website (dioceseofraleigh.org)
has been enhanced to give a full picture of the
work of the Diocese in Wake County and
throughout eastern North Carolina.
✧
Above: Sacred Heart Cathedral.
Below: Our Lady of Lourdes School.
SHARING THE HERITAGE
89

TOWN OF APEX
✧
Above: Peak City Grill, a favorite downtown
meeting place.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF DIANNE KHIN.
Below: Seaboard Railroad Caboose, located
at the historic Union Depot.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF LAUREN SIMMONS.
Although the Town of Apex is growing
rapidly, it has managed to maintain a small
town atmosphere where neighbors know each
other by name and a shopping trip means
a chance to visit with friends. In Apex “The
Peak of Good Living” is not only the town
motto, but a way of life.
The early history of Apex stems from a
railroad station chartered in 1854, although
the first train did not pass through town until
1869. The first settlers came to the area in the
1860s and the town was incorporated in
1873. The town was named Apex because it
was the highest point on the Chatham
Railroad between Richmond, Virginia and
Jacksonville, Florida. Another justification for
the name Apex comes from the fact that water
which falls on one side of the main street
flows to the Neuse River, while water falling
on the other side of the street flows to the
Cape Fear River.
As one of the first towns to develop around
the state capital of Raleigh, Apex became an
active trading and shopping center. Since the
train station was located in the heart of a vast
pine forest, Apex became a shipping point for
such products as tar, turpentine and lumber.
By the turn of the twentieth century, Apex
boasted a population of 349.
Tobacco farming became an important part
of the local economy in the early 1900s when
a plant disease forced many tobacco farmers
in Person and Granville Counties to relocate.
Many farmers discovered that the land around
Apex produced excellent tobacco crops
and decided to move to the area. The first
tobacco auction market in Wake County was
established in Apex in 1905.
The town’s early growth was shaped by two
disastrous fires. In 1905 a fire destroyed a
number of frame commercial buildings in
the town. A second fire in 1911 destroyed
much of the business district, including
the Merchants and Farmer’s Bank, the
postmaster’s house, and many of the old frame
stores. The fires provided merchants with a
strong incentive to replace the old frame
structures with fireproof brick buildings. By
1913 the 100 block of Salem Street was
rebuilt with pressed-brick front stores and, in
1914, the Union Depot was rebuilt.
The population of Apex had grown to
1,000 by 1920 but the tobacco market
declined during the 1920s and by 1930 the
population had dropped to 863. The Great
Depression of the 1930s hit Apex hard and,
by 1934, only four train stops were made at
the Depot.
Apex remained a sleepy little town into the
early 1960s when nearby Research Triangle
Park was established and began to attract
high-tech firms from throughout the world.
Apex began to boom, along with the rest of
the Triangle, and by 1990 the population
HISTORIC WAKE
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eached 5,000. The town experienced
unprecedented growth during the 1990s as
technology-driven industry continued to
move into the area. In 2008 the population of
Apex exceeded 34,000, making it the third
largest municipality in Wake County.
In 1994, Apex was named North Carolina’s
Number One Small Town in economic vitality
by Business North Carolina magazine. In 2007,
Money magazine ranked Apex Number
Fourteen in the nation—and first in North
Carolina—on its listing of the 100 Best Places
in America to Live.
Despite phenomenal growth in recent
years, Apex still combines a relaxing smalltown
atmosphere with the convenience of a
major metropolitan area. The town is ideally
located twenty minutes from Research Triangle
Park and Raleigh-Durham Airport and twentyfive
minutes from Raleigh, Durham or Chapel
Hill. Apex is eight miles from Jordan Lake
State Recreation Area, while the American
Tobacco Trail rails-to-trails project runs
through Apex’s extra-territorial jurisdiction.
Apex is a family-centered community and
parents are rightfully proud of the excellent
✧
Above: Above: Apex Town Hall.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF DIANNE KHIN.
Below: Historic Downtown Apex.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF DIANNE KHIN.
SHARING THE HERITAGE
91

✧
Above: Maynard-Pearson House, home to
the Apex Historical Society.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF LAUREN SIMMONS.
Below: 1914 Union Depot, home of the
Apex Chamber of Commerce.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF DIANNE KHIN.
schools which are part of the Wake County
Public School system, the largest system in
the state.
A major streetscape renovation project has
restored Apex’s downtown and recaptured its
historic flavor. The downtown is listed on the
National Register of Historic Places as one of
the best examples of an intact turn-of-thecentury
railroad town. The downtown
Historic District has commercial and
residential buildings that date to the late
1800s and represent a wide variety of
architectural styles. The downtown district
houses a number of antique and specialty gift
shops as well as dining experiences that
include an old-fashioned ice cream parlor
and a variety of restaurants.
Perhaps the most significant landmark in
Apex is the 1914 Union Depot located in the
National Register Historic District in the
heart of downtown. The original Depot, built
in 1906, burned in 1914, and was replaced
with the current structure. The Depot became
Apex’s library when passenger train service
was discontinued and, when a new regional
library opened, the building was restored to
its original grandeur. The Depot now houses
a Visitor’s Center, the Apex Chamber of
Commerce offices and several meeting rooms,
which may be rented for social events,
meetings or private parties. A thirty-seven
foot long bay window Louisville caboose is
located beside the Depot.
The Maynard-Pearson home, built in
1872, has been restored and now serves as a
home for the Apex Historical Society. The
house is open several times each year and is
the site for a reception which follows the
Society’s Holiday Home Tour each December.
Apex residents and visitors alike enjoy a
number of festivals and celebrations each year.
The annual Peak Fest, which celebrates the
HISTORIC WAKE
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“Peak of Good Living,” has grown from a small
community day in a school parking lot to an
event which draws hundreds of vendors and
more than 25,000 people to downtown Apex.
The annual Old Fashioned Fourth of July
celebration in historic downtown captures all
the fun and excitement of traditional
Independence Day events. The highlight is a
children’s Parade of Wheels led by Uncle
Sam. Hundreds of bikes and scooters
decorated in red, white and blue parade
down Salem Street in competition for ribbons
and prizes.
Apex welcomes the holiday season on the
first weekend of December with carolers and
horse-drawn sleigh rides in a fairyland of
white lights. The event begins with residents
gathering in front of the Depot for carols and
the official lighting of the town Christmas
tree. Historic Salem Street is closed to vehicles
and becomes a walking mall of twinkling
lights and greenery as shop owners lure
customers with hot cider, cookies and a
chance to win big prizes during Scrooge’s
Scavenger Hunt. Santa and Mrs. Claus make a
visit to Apex to read stories and listen to
children’s wish lists at the Salem Street fire
station. Apex’s nighttime Christmas Parade is
a favorite for thousands of people in the area.
In 2003, Apex adopted an ordinance to
discourage the demolition of historic
structures by prohibiting the submission of
development applications for forty-eight
months following the demolition of an
historic structure. This ordinance was the
first of its kind in North Carolina. The
Town was awarded Preservation North
Carolina’s 2007 Award of Merit and Capital
Area Preservation’s 2004 Anthemion Award
in recognition of this achievement. In
2006, Apex adopted a Small Town Character
Overlay District to protect the core area
of Apex and help maintain its small
town appeal.
The Town showed its ongoing commitment
to the preservation of historic structures in
the $2.2 million renovation of the original
Town Hall into the Halle Cultural Arts
Center of Apex, completed in 2008. The
building houses an auditorium, art galleries,
studios and meeting rooms, and received
a Merit Award from the American Institute
of Architects.
The well preserved downtown business
district reminds Apex residents of the past,
while the new subdivisions, shopping centers
and businesses enhance today’s lifestyle. “The
Peak of Good Living” is not only a motto for
the town, but a way of life for its citizens.
For additional information on what the
Town of Apex has to offer, please visit
www.apexnc.org on the Internet.
✧
Bottom, Left: The Green at Scotts Mill, a
traditional neighborhood development.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF LAUREN SIMMONS.
Bottom, Right: Halle Cultural Arts Center of
Apex, a contributing structure in the
National Register Historic District.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF DIANNE KHIN.
SHARING THE HERITAGE
93

VELVET CLOAK
INN
✧
David and Dr. Jeanne Smoot.
The Velvet Cloak Inn, a Raleigh landmark
for more than four decades, has been
renovated and updated by new owners who
are dedicated to restoring the hotel to its
original elegance.
David Smoot, a Raleigh real estate
developer, and his wife, Dr. Jeanne Smoot,
who taught literature at North Carolina State
University for thirty years, purchased the
property in 2004 from the Kamehameha
schools foundation of Hawaii.
Now, all the guest rooms and public spaces
have been renovated, new heating and cooling
systems have been installed, and each room has
been equipped with the latest conveniences,
including refrigerators, microwaves and wireless
Internet access. Yet the portrait of Sir Walter
Raleigh and the priceless grandfather clock,
which have always graced the hotel lobby,
continue to provide a familiar greeting to
returning guests.
“We’re here for the long haul and we’re here
to bring the hotel back,” comments Dr. Smoot.
“We’ve done a lot of systemic repairs that don’t
necessarily show, and a great deal of repair
work to the ornamentation.” As part of the
restoration project, the Velvet Cloak’s grandly
renovated restaurant, once considered one of
the finest in the Southeast, will soon be
reopened for fine dining.
The Smoots, realizing that the location,
layout and amenities of the Inn were ideal for
individual ownership, soon registered each
room as a condominium unit, a Velvet Cloak
Villa. Today, more than forty of the original 179
rooms are owned by residents for permanent or
occasional use, by businesses for office use, or
by investors who share in the room’s revenue.
Often combined to create larger suites,
many of the Villas offer spectacular views of
the downtown Raleigh skyline and all include
concierge service, gated covered parking,
heated atrium pool, and easy access to
shopping and the nearby colleges and
university. Legislators, real estate agents,
attorneys and consultants have offices in this
charming setting. Students (with parents
grateful for the security provided by gated
Villa living), older residents and downtown
executives also enjoy the amenities.
A famous basketball coach and a down-East
artist each have “getaway places” at the Velvet
Cloak. North Carolina State fans, professors,
doctors, and other investors enjoy income
while still having their own place to stay in
Raleigh when they so desire. Together, they all
create an eclectic and vibrant community.
A courtyard bar and café and a sidewalk
café will soon offer a choice of casual dining
venues for the guests. And, in an event sure to
bring “déjà vu all over again” to many longtime
legislators and Raleigh residents, the
downstairs supper club will soon offer song
and dance—and even the museum-quality
painting of the graceful nude will be restored
to its perch above the fireplace!
The Velvet Cloak Inn was built in 1963 by
legendary Raleigh developer J. W. “Willie”
HISTORIC WAKE
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York, who also developed Cameron Village, a
still-thriving shopping center just a short walk
from the Velvet Cloak. “Willie York’s vision
and genius created the pleasing complex of
quality buildings,” said David Smoot, “and we
are grateful that Smedes York has allowed us
to name the Boardroom in his father’s honor.”
The Inn was designed by well-known
Raleigh architect Leif Valand who was
commissioned by York to create a traditional
New Orleans style structure of brick and
wrought iron, rather than the modern
institutional hotel style in vogue at the time.
Valand spent weeks in New Orleans soaking up
atmosphere and gathering ideas for the Velvet
Cloak. Today, two of the original open-flame gas
lamps that once illumined each room now flank
the front entry, and flags and flowers abound as
the founder intended for it to be decorated.
“The construction is still considered state-ofthe-art,”
says Dr. Smoot. “The buildings are
soundly built of heavy steel and masonry
construction. There’s also finely crafted
ornamentation, working window blinds, and allcopper
plumbing. Adding to the charm and
character of the Velvet Cloak are quality accents
✧
Above: A guest room at the Velvet
Cloak Inn.
Below: The inn’s lobby/reception area.
SHARING THE HERITAGE
95

✧
Above: A buffet set for a party in the
inn’s atrium.
Below: A decorative fruit tray.
such as the Perla di Sicila marble in the lobby,
which is quite prized. Occasionally, we have
people come in who actually know marble or are
into architecture and interior design and they
just ooh and aah over the beauty of the hotel.”
Ceilings are higher than usual in the extralarge
rooms, which contributes to a feeling of
spaciousness. Plus, since the ceilings are
dropped from the floor above, and each room
has two masonry walls separating it from
other spaces, guests enjoy a quiet and tranquil
stay. Each fully-tiled, marble-accented bath
even has a telephone!
The Velvet Cloak Inn opened in April
1963 with a gala event timed to coincide with
the three hundredth anniversary of the
granting of the Carolinas Charter. Willie York
commissioned a painting of Sir Walter
Raleigh based on a portrait in the state
museum in Richmond, Virginia and it is that
portrait that still hangs in the hotel lobby.
The hotel took its name from the velvet
cloak that Sir Walter Raleigh purportedly
placed in Queen Elizabeth’s path so she would
not muddy her shoes.
The Velvet Cloak began with ninety-one
guest rooms in two buildings reminiscent of
the New Orleans French Quarter. A five-story
Tower with eighty-eight additional rooms was
added in 1966. And, in a feat of engineering
and original thinking York built a 6,100
square-foot elevated heated pool atrium above
parking, thus creating rooms on the second
floor of the original two buildings. “Willie York
wanted anything he developed to be better and
finer than the competition and the Velvet Cloak
was in a class by itself,” comments Dr. Smoot.
From the very beginning, the Velvet Cloak
Inn became the preferred hotel for visitors to
the city, as well as a popular meeting place for
clubs and political organizations. The hotel’s
restaurant was considered among the finest in
the Southeast and the basement bar became a
popular meeting spot. Observers reported
many thorny political issues were settled at
the Velvet Cloak when the legislature was
in session.
The Velvet Cloak attracted more than its
share of famous guests, including Bob Hope,
astronaut Sally Ride, former President Bill
Clinton, Marilyn Monroe, Joe DiMaggio, and
actress Michele Pfeiffer. The hotel became a
popular venue for wedding receptions,
debutante balls, political events, bar mitzvahs
and business meetings.
The Inn is located at 1505 Hillsborough
Street, only a couple of blocks from the
sprawling campus of North Carolina State
University, and several other colleges are within
a short distance of the hotel. Because of this
strategic location, the Inn has always been a
center of activity for the academic community.
“We’re in an area where there is a lot of
vibrant academic interaction, and the Inn has
always had a close association with the university
as well as the other colleges,” notes Dr. Smoot.
“Nobel Laureates and world-renowned
HISTORIC WAKE
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physicists stay here, along with mathematicians
and people in agriculture and life science. And
they come from all over the world.”
The Velvet Cloak is close to the State
Capital, the legislative buildings, and other
Raleigh attractions. The Research Triangle Park
and Raleigh-Durham Airport are only a short
drive away.
Dr. Smoot reports that the Inn’s Honeymoon
Suite is occupied nearly every weekend with
couples who held their wedding receptions—
or even their weddings—at the Inn and want to
return for their anniversary. “We get a lot of
people who tell us they were married at the
Velvet Cloak and they want to come back and
celebrate their anniversaries,” she says.
The York organization operated the Velvet
Cloak Inn for several years until it was
acquired by the Connecticut General
Insurance Company. It later was owned by
William R. Kenan, the King Kamehameha
schools foundation, and, since 2004, by
David and Jeanne Smoot.
The Inn went into a period of slow decline
under the previous absentee owner, and both
occupancy and room revenue went down. By
2004 the future of the venerable property was
in doubt. There was even talk of bulldozing
the landmark to make room for a new
structure or another parking lot. The Smoots,
however, are working diligently to return the
Inn to its previous stature, installing brick
walkways and Brazilian cherry flooring in the
ballrooms and dining rooms.
Adding to the Inn’s appeal as a meeting place
is the spacious parking provided for guests and
events in a very congested neighborhood. The
Smoots also own two lots directly across the
street from the property and an adjacent lot on
Park Avenue, which means there is always an
abundance of parking in addition to the on-site
parking spaces.
Raleigh’s Velvet Cloak Inn has a rich history
and, now that it has been rescued from the
wrecking ball, the new owners are looking
forward to an even brighter future for the
grand old hotel.
✧
Above: The atrium swimming pool.
Below: The portrait of Sir Walter Raleigh
that hangs in the lobby of the Velvet
Cloak Inn.
SHARING THE HERITAGE
97

APEX
INSTRUMENTS,
INC.
✧
Above: Bill Howe, president.
Below: Apex Instruments Manufacturing
Headquarters, Fuquay-Varina,
North Carolina.
Apex Instruments, a
world leader in emission
measurement sampling
equipment for particulate
and gaseous pollutants,
started in 1988 on the back
deck at the home of founder
Bill Howe.
Howe, an environmental
graduate of Virginia Tech,
was working in Raleigh for an
environmental engineering
firm when he began
reconditioning and selling
used sampling equipment as
a sideline. Howe attended
equipment auctions, picking up equipment he
could refurbish and resell. As a result, Howe
found himself doing stack testing by day and
working evenings and weekends to grow his
own firm, Apex Instruments, Inc.
Howe conducted business from his back
porch and a shed for about six months, and
then rented an old Quonset hut where he could
store his equipment and conduct business.
Before long, Howe realized there was one
area of source testing that was practically
vacant—woodstove testing. The Environmental
Protection Agency was getting tough on
the manufacturers of woodstoves, issuing
regulations that required each individual
woodstove to be tested for compliance with
measures that limited the type and quantity of
soot produced by the stoves. Most of the
nation’s woodstove manufacturers were in
the Southeast, and many in the mountains of
western North Carolina, so Howe discovered
he had a ready market in his own backyard.
Sales were soon growing at about $50,000
per year.
In April of 1989, Apex Instruments, Inc.,
earned a Certificate of Accreditation from the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for the
testing and certification of wood heaters. Howe
set up woodstove testing labs, did the testing
for the stove manufacturers, working long
hours under miserable conditions and meeting
difficult customer time schedules so he could
use the proceeds to finance the next step in his
business plan—manufacturing the testing
equipment himself. He hired several employees
and set up shop in a warehouse on Chatham
Street in Apex. Howe soon learned there was a
lot more money to be made in manufacturing
source sampling equipment for a broad range
of air quality testing procedures than there
was in testing woodstoves one at a time.
The staff was expanded to fifteen and work
began on the development of a single-source
sampling system that would become the
major product of Apex Instruments. The
source sampler can be used for about a
hundred different testing methods, and may
be used with various reagents, eliminating
many difficult adjustments and making it
easier to use than other similar instruments.
This early experience in working closely with
the wood heater industry was invaluable in
the development of Apex Instruments. The
knowledge gained in manufacturing and metal
fabrication was crucial to the company’s success.
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By the end of 1994, Apex Instruments had
sold its wood heater testing division and
moved to a larger manufacturing facility. In
2005, the company moved to its current
12,000 square foot manufacturing facility at
204 Technology Park Lane in Fuquay-Varina.
The facility, custom designed and built for
Apex Instruments, provides for the smooth
flow of incoming parts and materials,
assembly and fabrication processing, and the
shipment of completed products. Two-thirds
of the facility space is devoted to assembly
and welding.
While this facility is primarily dedicated
for assembly and storage; sheet metal
fabrication, painting, and machining are
subcontracted to reliable venders, with whom
the company has a long history of success.
A dedicated, climate-controlled calibration
room houses wet test meters and a bell-prover
for calibration of dry-gas meters, orifices, and
meter consoles, both new manufacture and
existing customer units. A recent addition
to the shop is a laser engraver used to create
component labels, front panel details and
custom designs.
From firsthand, on-stack experience and
hand-drawn sketches in the late 1980s to
sophisticated, automated equipment with
highly evolved software for mercury sampling
today, Apex Instruments has always been
directly involved with the environmental
industry, working closely with the U.S. EPA.
When the Clean Air Act was enacted in
1990 and hazardous air pollutants were
identified for control, Apex Instruments was
at the forefront of product design, method
evaluation and implementation. A wide range
of products from isokinetic and gaseous
sampling trains to flow measurement and
high-tech sorbent systems are manufactured
by Apex Instruments.
Apex Instruments has a history of employee
loyalty too. More than a third of the staff
has been with the company over five years.
One-fourth of the current employees have
been with the company between ten and
fifteen years.
In October of 1996, Apex Instruments was
recognized by INC. 500 magazine and ranked
417 among the 500 fastest growing private
companies. In 2007, Apex Instruments was
presented with the North Carolina
Department of Labor SHARP Award. This
Safety and Health Achievement Recognition
Program (SHARP) recognizes small to midsize
businesses that establish and maintain
effective safety and health programs. The
award ceremony, held at the company’s
facility, was attended by an array of local and
state officials. The company received an
award banner, a certificate from the NCDOL
and a commendation from the North Carolina
State Senate.
For twenty years, Apex Instruments, Inc., has
manufactured quality products and provided
consulting services to customers worldwide.
✧
Above: Apex Instruments employees receive
the SHARP safety award.
Below: Apex Instruments Production facility
for Fabrication and Assembly.
SHARING THE HERITAGE
99

YORK
COMPANIES
✧
Above: J. Willie York, G. Smedes, George
and Smedes York III.
Below: Smedes, George and Smedes York.
As the city’s oldest continuously operating
construction contractor, developer, and real
estate brokerage, the York Companies have
served Raleigh for a almost a century. As such,
they proudly reference the past while looking
forward to building a great twenty-first
century city.
Founded in 1910 by Charles Vance York,
the C. V. York General Contracting Company
built many of Raleigh’s early twentieth
century residential and institutional icons
that define pre-World War II Raleigh. This
building campaign included the stylish 1916
Capital Apartments, the first multistory
housing in Raleigh; several handsome buildings
at North Carolina State University; the 1924
Sir Walter Hotel that became the “third house
of the legislature;” and many early twentieth
century neighborhoods that are now listed
in the National Register of Historic Places.
Only the grip of the Great Depression ended
C. V. York’s remarkable building career
that culminated with the 1933 Memorial
Auditorium (currently known as the Progress
Energy Center) that stands as an historic
anchor for current public-private downtown
revitalization efforts.
C. V. was joined by his son, J. W. “Willie”
York, who started his career at age ten as a
water boy on the Wiley School construction
site in 1923. In 1933 he graduated with a
degree in civil engineering from North
Carolina State University and, like many of his
generation, weathered the Great Depression
through federal public works initiatives. His
first engineering project was the concrete
and stone arched bridge on the main road
into what was then the Crabtree Creek
Demonstration Area (now Umstead State
Park). From there, he went on to Gatlinburg,
Tennessee, where he worked as an engineer for
the Bureau of Roads. When the United States
entered World War II, he relocated to eastern
North Carolina in order to build military bases
demanded by the war effort.
Upon his return to Raleigh following WWII,
Willie re-opened York Construction and
built a “Veterans’ Village” in 1945 to ease the
prevalent post-war housing shortage. He then
joined the Board of Realtors in order to be
able to sell the houses he constructed. Thus
he was poised to make an indelible mark
on the city’s post-war development. He
purchased a 160-acre tract northwest of the
city and, inspired by an article about a
“shopping center,” retained nationallyrenowned
land use planner, Seward Mott, to
design Cameron Village, completed in 1949.
As the first mixed-use retail and residential
development in the southeast, Cameron
Village is renowned as a post-war prediction
of the late twentieth century trend toward
“Smart Growth.”
Cameron Village launched York Enterprises
into a building and community development
business that shaped post-war Raleigh.
Although the city’s major mid-twentieth
century industries were rooted in government
and education, York led the way to the city’s
current mix of light industry and research-
HISTORIC WAKE
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ased industry by building one of the
city’s first large industrial developments, the
Westinghouse meter plant, on U.S. 1 North in
1953. From there he amassed an impressive
portfolio of projects that continue to
contribute to the region’s vitality.
In 1968, Willie’s son, Smedes York, armed
with a civil engineering degree and a Master
of Business Administration, joined York
Construction Company. After gaining practical
construction, development and management
experience, he made a successful run for
the Raleigh City Council where he was a
district representative from 1977 until 1979.
He then served as Raleigh’s mayor from
1979 until 1983, during which time he
advocated responsible working relationships
between public works initiatives and private
development ambitions, and worked to
draw the Triangle cities and towns into a
cooperative entity.
This commitment to the city of Raleigh
honored the York family tradition of public
service. Willie York served on the Raleigh
School Board and cast the pivotal vote that
resulted in the 1960 peaceful desegregation
of the city’s schools. In 1964, he commenced
a four-year term as the Chairman of the
North Carolina Board of Conservation and
Development where he launched the current
network of highway welcome centers.
In addition to his city council and mayoral
service, Smedes has served as chairman of
North Carolina Citizens for Business and
Industry, the North Carolina State University
Board of Trustees, and the Triangle United Way
Board of Directors. He has also rendered a
lifetime of service to the Urban Land Institute
(ULI), a professional organization committed
to ensuring that the best industry practices are
applied to the nation’s development. Through
the ULI he gained a global real estate
perspective, and in 2005 chaired an advisory
panel that recommended redevelopment
strategies for the City of New Orleans after the
devastation of Hurricane Katrina.
The outstanding professional and
community service of Willie and Smedes
York resulted in both men being inducted
into the Raleigh Hall of Fame, the first father
and son to be so recognized.
Smedes is currently Chairman of the Board
of York Companies that include York
Properties, York Simpson Underwood, and
McDonald-York Construction. His son, George,
joined the company in 1993 and is executive
vice president of York Properties.
Today York Companies are leading Raleigh’s
downtown renaissance with the construction
of apartments and condominiums, and are
providing brokerage services for the
revitalization of the Blount Street Historic
District. Thus the enterprise that Charles Vance
York launched in 1910 defines Raleigh’s
development with enduring twentieth century
landmarks, and through his son’s, grandson’s,
and great-grandson’s continuing real estate
and property development activities,
continues to build a great twenty-first century
metropolitan landscape.
SHARING THE HERITAGE
101

RALEIGH
RESCUE
MISSION, INC.
✧
Above: Homeless men receive Christian
counseling, recovery services, life-skills
classes, computer training, job preparation
and more during their stay at Raleigh
Rescue Mission.
Below: Since 1961, Raleigh Rescue Mission
has served the hurting and homeless in the
Greater Raleigh area.
Through the love of Jesus Christ, Raleigh
Rescue Mission rebuilds broken lives of men,
women and children in our community by
ministering to their physical, emotional and
spiritual needs.
For nearly half-a-century Raleigh Rescue
Mission has shared Christ’s love with those in
need and helped them rebuild their lives. The
Mission has helped thousands of people begin
their journey toward lasting life change by
meeting their physical, emotional, and
spiritual needs.
The seed for the Mission was sown in 1959
when two local businessmen, Charlie Morton
and T. W. McDaniel, invited some homeless
men to a revival meeting at a local
Presbyterian church. The homeless men,
however, did not feel comfortable going into
the church and this inspired Morton and
McDaniel to seek a different way to share the
Gospel with the homeless community.
Morton and McDaniel, along with other
men from the community, began weekly
prayer meetings and decided to offer food and
the Gospel to homeless men. The Union Hall
on Wilmington Street was rented each Friday
night for one dollar. Each week, different
speakers would minister to the men at Union
Hall and they were given meal tickets to eat at
Bud Green’s Restaurant.
Working with the homeless men filled
an important need in the community
and Morton and McDaniel’s efforts soon
developed into an organized ministry. Raleigh
Rescue Mission, Inc., was chartered in
December 1960. A rooming house at 314 East
Hargett Street was purchased for $20,500 and
renovated to make space for a meeting room
for forty to fifty people and bedroom space
for sixteen to eighteen persons. When the
doors first opened in 1961, the Mission had
six single beds, eight chairs, a refrigerator, a
stove, and a small table. Two men were
housed on November 1, 1961, the first night
the shelter was open, with a population of
eleven by the end of the month. In 1964 a
separate facility for women was opened with
space for sixteen women.
It was wonderful to see how God provided
for the operation of the Mission. For instance,
one day they happened to have given away all
of the food in the kitchen to a family in need,
and the men started wondering what they
were having for dinner. They prayed about
this, and not one, but three truckloads of food
arrived from the Temple Baptist Church!
The first Board of Directors consisted of C. R.
Morton, Harold Cashwell, J. F. Sansom, W. R.
Jennette, Hugh E. Cherry, James Croswell and
Jackie T. Sealey. Reverend Waymon E. Pritchard,
a graduate of Bob Jones University with several
years of Rescue Mission experience, was the first
Superintendent of Raleigh Rescue Mission.
Various locations have been used for
dormitory, warehouse, work training and
thrift store space over the years. In 1968 a
large farm was purchased near Clayton and
used as a long-term rehabilitation facility for
recovering alcoholic men until 1989.
HISTORIC WAKE
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In 1974 the Mission built a three-story
building at 314 East Hargett Street, adjacent
to the Mission’s Open Door Chapel, which is
located in an historic stone structure at 210
South Person Street that originally was a
Greek Orthodox Church.
A free clinic was established in the basement
of the Open Door Chapel in 1985. Three years
later, the city of Raleigh asked the Mission if it
could provide more housing for the homeless.
The Mission responded by renovating the
basement of the Open Door Chapel to provide
thirty more beds. Also in 1988, Reverend
Richard B. Fitzgerald joined the staff and has
served in several capacities, including Program
Director and Director of Fundraising and
Agency Relations, for over twenty years.
The Mission’s first Superintendent, Reverend
Pritchard, stepped down in 1993. During
his thirty-two years as director, the Mission
grew from six beds to an organization with
a $1.6 million operating budget, providing
services to more than a hundred people
each day.
Sam Foster took over as Executive Director
in 1993 and served until 2004. During his
tenure, the Mission sold the farm near Clayton
and purchased eight acres at New Bern Avenue
and Swain Street, which will be used for future
development. The Adult Learning Center
was started in 1995 to provide educational,
computer, vocational and job training and in
2000, the Children’s Development Center
program was organized to care for and teach
the children of women in the Mission’s Life
Plan, a long-term recovery program.
A medical clinic was established in 2001
and, in 2002, the Mission acquired the
Beacon Haven House for women, which
serves as a transitional home for women in the
Life Plan Program.
Sam Foster retired in 2004 and Lynn
Daniell was named Executive Director. The
Mission soon completed a capital campaign
to add an additional 7,200 square feet to the
main building to house additional women
and children. In 2006 the Open Door Chapel
was renovated and became the W. E. Mangum
Children’s Development Center.
Raleigh Rescue Mission, with more than
fifty employees and an annual operating
budget of $2.9 million, now houses up to 115
men, women and children and provides
medical and referral services to countless
others. In 2007 the Mission provided more
than 27,000 nights of lodging, served nearly
70,000 meals, provided more than 7,800 hours
of educational instruction, and witnessed at
least thirty-nine decisions for Christ.
Raleigh Rescue Mission works in cooperation
with other ministries, nonprofit organizations
and government agencies to serve the
homeless, the hungry and the hurting in
the community.
✧
Above: A mother who received life
restoration on our long-term recovery, Life
Plan Program.
Below: Children receive loving attention
while learning and growing in our W. E.
Mangum Children’s Development Center.
SHARING THE HERITAGE
103

GREATER
RALEIGH
CONVENTION
AND VISITORS
BUREAU
✧
Left: David L. Heinl, CDME, was the
Greater Raleigh Convention and Visitors
Bureau’s president and CEO from inception
to 2007.
Right: Dennis Edwards became the second
president and CEO of the Greater Raleigh
CVB in April 2007.
Travel and tourism is big business in
Raleigh and Wake County. Studies show that
visitor spending in Wake County totals more
than $1.5 billion each year, an average of
more than $4 million each day, 365 days a
year. The jobs generated from this visitor
spending total more than 19,000, with an
annual payroll exceeding $486 million.
Spearheading these travel and tourism
efforts is the Greater Raleigh Convention and
Visitors Bureau, which acts as the official
destination marketing organization for
Raleigh and Wake County. The nonprofit
organization was created in January 1992 by
the Wake County Board of Commissioners
and the Raleigh City Council, following
legislation passed by the 1991 General
Assembly. The Bureau is governed by a
twelve-member Board of Directors and
funded through a six percent Wake County
Hotel Occupancy Tax and the one percent
Prepared Food and Beverage Tax.
The organization began as a department of
the Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce
and operated as the Raleigh Convention and
Visitors Bureau from 1986 through 1991.
The Bureau, which operates with a $4
million annual budget, has twenty employees
and is headed by President and CEO, Denny
Edwards. The Bureau is located in One Bank
of America Plaza, 421 Fayetteville Street in
downtown Raleigh.
The Bureau’s Sales Department solicits
conventions and meetings for the Greater
Raleigh area, coordinates sales efforts with
hotels and meeting facilities, and responds to
visitor information requests from meeting
planners, tour companies and travel agencies.
The Department also promotes Raleigh and
Wake County for group business to enhance
the economic growth and development of
the area.
The Marketing Department develops and
manages the promotion of Raleigh and
Wake County to leisure visitors, develops
promotional tactics for increasing occupancy
and off-season business at Wake County
hotels, and implements an aggressive online
marketing program. This Department also
develops strategic partnerships with airlines,
Amtrak, rental car agencies and private-sector
companies on packaging and creating awareness
of Greater Raleigh as a leisure market.
A Sports Marketing Department promotes
Raleigh and Wake County for sports
championships, events and sports-related
activities and works closely with other
organizations that pursue sports business.
The Bureau’s Services Department offers a
wide range of services for meetings and
conventions that have booked a Wake County
venue. Services include, but are not limited
to, pre-convention and event planning,
information and collateral distribution,
housing assistance, convention publicity and
attendance building. The Convention Services
Department also has implemented community
wide initiatives such as: the Community
Hospitality Partnership and the Red
Carpet Welcome Program.
The Bureau also maintains a
Communication Department that
develops public relations and
community awareness programs,
assists local, state and national
media, and maintains and updates
the GRCVB website.
Located in the Raleigh City
Museum, 220 Fayetteville Street, the
Bureau opened its first official
Visitor Information Center in March
2008. The Visitor Information Center
provides convenient street level
access for residents and visitors to
gather information on restaurants,
HISTORIC WAKE
104
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accommodations, attractions and events
throughout Wake County. This visitor
resource center is a collaborative effort
between the Greater Raleigh Convention and
Visitors Bureau and the Raleigh City Museum.
The efforts of the Greater Raleigh
Convention and Visitors Bureau result in
more than 10.4 million visitors each year,
with an economic impact of $1.48 billion.
The hospitality industry generates more than
$103 million in state and local tax revenue in
Wake County annually.
Among the Bureau’s efforts is creation of
a Red Carpet Welcome Program, which
was unveiled in the summer of 2008. This
program gives restaurants, hotels, retail
vendors, transportation companies and other
organizations an opportunity to showcase
products and services to the hundreds of
events scheduled at the new Raleigh
Convention Center.
“We want to position the Greater Raleigh
area as one of the most hospitable
destinations in the country,” says Edwards.
“By giving businesses the tools they need to
effectively communicate with meeting
planners and convention delegates, we can
ensure that visitors to our destination arrive
to a warm welcome and leave with the desire
to return, not only for business, but also
for pleasure.”
For more information about the Greater
Raleigh Convention and Visitors Bureau,
check their website at www.visitRaleigh.com.
✧
Above: The Raleigh Civic & Convention
Center overlooks the Fayetteville Street
pedestrian mall, as seen in this 1987 photo.
Below: Serving as a catalyst for more than
$2 billion in downtown Raleigh
development, the new Raleigh Convention
Center opened in September 2008.
SHARING THE HERITAGE
105

NORTH
CAROLINA
STATE
UNIVERSITY
✧
The 115 foot Memorial Bell Tower greets
you as you enter the university’s main
entrance on Hillsborough Street.
More than a century after its establishment
as a land-grant institution in 1887, North
Carolina State University continues to follow
the mission on which it was founded—to
provide teaching, research, and extension
services to the people of North Carolina.
NC State, the state’s largest university, is a
comprehensive university known for its
excellence in education and research, and
globally recognized for its science, technology,
engineering, and mathematics leadership.
NC State, then known as North Carolina
College of Agriculture and Mechanical Arts,
began classes in the fall of 1889 with 72
students, 6 faculty members, and 1 building.
Today, the university has nearly 34,000
students, 8,000 faculty and staff, and more
than 700 buildings on its campus in Raleigh.
In the early 1900s two federal programs
sparked a new era in extension and research
at the college. An agreement with the U.S.
Department of Agriculture in 1909 led to
what is now known as the 4-H program. The
passage of the Smith-Lever Act in 1914
enabled land-grant colleges to establish
state, county and local extension programs to
further support their existing demonstration
work. This prompted North Carolina to
establish the Cooperative Agricultural
Extension Service at State College.
Although the term ‘State College’ had been
in use for years, the broadening of the school’s
teaching, research, and extension activities
led the Board of Trustees to officially adopt
the name for the school. By the late 1920s,
State College was beginning to grow beyond
its original agriculture and mechanical focus,
adding schools of engineering, science
and business, textiles, education, and a
graduate school.
The Great Depression of the 1930s brought
economic challenges for higher education
throughout the state, but as the Depression
slowly receded, the college renewed its
growth in numbers of students and
development of programs. The onset of World
War II brought about more changes for the
university, including lower enrollments and
reductions in programs.
Despite these difficulties, State College
made contributions to the war effort by
hosting a number of military detachments
and training exercises, and refitting the work
of several departments and programs to
military and defense purposes. The campus
experienced unparalleled growth during
the postwar years as the G.I. Bill brought
thousands of former servicemen to campus.
In the following decades the college
continued to expand its curricula, creating
schools of design, forestry, physical science
and mathematics, and humanities and social
science. During these years of growth, the
school’s name was changed again, this time to
North Carolina State University at Raleigh.
NC State celebrated its one hundredth
anniversary in 1987 with the creation of
Centennial Campus, which brings together
university and corporate leaders to engage in
teaching, research and economic development.
Centennial Campus is a unique community
of collaboration where industry and government
partners work alongside faculty, staff,
post-docs and students to conduct cuttingedge
research in state-of-the-art facilities.
Home to more than 130 corporate and
government research partners, as well as
incubator companies and NC State University
research units, Centennial Campus is the
premier university research park in the country.
NC State’s research expenditures approach
nearly $325 million annually, with almost
seventy percent of the faculty engaged in
sponsored research and 2,500 graduate
students supported by research grants. NC
State is ranked third among all public
universities (without medical schools) in
industry-sponsored research expenditures.
North Carolina Cooperative Extension, a
joint effort with NC A&T State University,
puts knowledge to work, providing unbiased,
research-based information to more than 2.2
million citizens throughout the state each
year. Over the past five years, the group has
HISTORIC WAKE
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eturned nearly $540 million in direct annual
gain to the state by helping businesses
increase efficiency, productivity and quality
through the use of the latest technologies
and best practices in engineering and
business management.
NC State is consistently ranked among
the nation’s top fifty public universities and
is a Princeton Review top ten “best value”
for students, providing hands-on, real-world
education. Beginning their freshman year,
NC State students start work on their major
immediately, whether it is conducting research
alongside faculty or starting a challenging
co-op or internship. Faculty and staff are
accessible, friendly and helpful, and large
classes are always paired with smaller
discussion sections or labs.
Students, faculty and staff at NC State
enjoy one of the nation’s most appealing
locations to work and study. Raleigh, the state
capital, is ranked consistently as one of the
nation’s best places to live and work. Nearby,
Research Triangle Park where many of the
country’s leading Fortune 500 technology,
research, and pharmaceutical companies are
located surrounds the NC State campus.
NC State operates with a total annual
budget of $1.01 billion and the university’s
total endowment totaled $412.3 million for
fiscal year 2006.
In the words of NC State Chancellor James
Oblinger, “Our University’s history is one of
listening to the needs of North Carolina and
responding with real-world applications that
solve real-world problems. NC State
University’s future is to use knowledge,
collaboration and creativity to impact the
economic, human, environmental and social
concerns of all of society, today and, even
more importantly, for tomorrow.”
As one of the leading land-grant
institutions in the nation, North Carolina
State University is committed to playing an
active and vital role in improving the quality
of life for the citizens of North Carolina, the
nation, and the world.
✧
Below: Centennial Campus Bridge. New
arbor on the courtyard between Clark Labs,
Kilgore Hall and Fox Labs.
SHARING THE HERITAGE
107

MANNING
FULTON &
SKINNER, P.A.
✧
Bottom: Carrying on the Tradition: Today’s
leaders at Manning Fulton include (from
left to right, front row) Samuel T. “Ted”
Oliver, Jr.; Managing Partner David D.
Dahl; (back row) Michael T. Medford; Barry
D. Mann; Deborah Hildebran-Bachofen;
John B. McMillan; and W. Gerald Thornton.
Below: Founding partners (from top to
bottom): Howard E. Manning, Sr.; Charles
L. Fulton; and William P. Skinner, Jr.
One of Wake County’s longest-lasting law
partnerships began in a back hallway of the
Wake County Courthouse in 1950, when
Howard Manning interviewed a young lawyer
recommended by the dean of the University
of North Carolina School of Law.
Manning was so impressed by the young
lawyer, Charles Fulton, that he offered him a
job on the spot, starting at $40 a week.
The firm of Manning and Fulton was
officially formed on January 1, 1955. William
Pailin Skinner, Jr., joined the firm a year later
and the name changed to the one that remains
today, Manning Fulton & Skinner.
The firm’s founders are legendary figures
in North Carolina legal circles. Howard
Manning’s grandfather founded the law school
at UNC-Chapel Hill. At his death in 2002
at the age of eighty-eight, Manning left a
reputation as a lawyer whose integrity and
credibility were unquestioned.
Charles Fulton was raised in humble
circumstances in the mountains of Appalachia,
but an undergraduate scholarship to UNC
was his ticket out of the hills. After graduating
from the UNC School of Law, he joined
the Navy and later made his way to Raleigh,
where he became Manning’s partner. Fulton,
who retired in 2007, is recognized as an
authority on real-estate law.
Skinner is a native of Elizabeth City who
served on active duty with the U.S. Naval
Reserve in the Korean War, then returned to
Chapel Hill in 1953 and earned his law
degree. Skinner, now retired, concentrated his
practice on tax law and estate planning.
The firm’s first home was in the old Capital
Club Building, where large fans were used to
circulate Raleigh’s humid summer heat. In 1965
the growing firm moved to the Wachovia
Bank Building on Fayetteville Street. In 1986
the firm moved to its current location in the
Glenwood Plaza office building on Glenwood
Avenue, just inside the Beltline.
With a staff of sixty-five, including thirty
attorneys, Manning Fulton & Skinner remains
an independent, mid-sized firm dedicated
to the principles its founders established:
Providing the highest-quality legal work and
passionate advocacy for clients in exchange
for fair compensation.
Areas of practice include business disputes;
commercial real estate; condemnation; construction;
corporate transactions; employment;
estate planning; franchise and product
distribution; government relations; general and
complex litigation; mergers and acquisitions;
professional liability; and tax.
The firm’s clients include one of the largest
privately-held companies in North Carolina,
as well as large public and private real-estate
companies, REITs, insurance companies,
manufacturers and numerous other businesses
and individuals.
Additional information is available on the
Internet at www.manningfulton.com.
HISTORIC WAKE
108
COUNTY

The Akins family has been prominent in
eastern Wake County for three generations,
serving as leaders in farming, law, banking
and development, as well as in politics and
civic affairs.
The family’s rise to prominence began with
Herbert Akins, who was born in 1889 and
became one of the first farmers in the area
awarded an allotment to grow tobacco under
government control. As the importance of
tobacco as a cash crop grew, Akins increased
his allotments and eventually became one of
the largest land owners in Wake County.
Akins began to expand in the mid 1920s,
establishing Varina Supply Company, a farm
supply store in the town of Varina. He also
branched out into tobacco warehousing
with the Gold Leaf Warehouse and, in the
1940s, purchased the Bank of Varina. He was
active in these businesses until his death
in 1965.
With the death of Akins, the family
farming and business ventures passed to his
son, Waverly Akins. Born in 1932, Waverly
grew up on the family farms and worked
in the family businesses before attending
the University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill, where he earned a law degree. He
became an FBI agent after serving two years
in the Army and was working with the FBI in
Ohio when his father became ill and
requested that he come home and run the
family enterprises.
Waverly returned to Varina where he
became a trusted small-town lawyer, looking
after wills, estates, and real estate issues.
Although most of his father’s businesses were
sold, Waverly continued to expand the family
land holdings and farming activities.
He also became an articulate and
progressive member of the Wake County
Board of Commissioners, helping pave the
way for the tremendous growth the county
has experienced in the past forty years. He
was a leader in efforts to merge the county
school system with the Raleigh city system,
thus bringing about vast improvements to
schools in rural parts of the county.
Anticipating the Triangle area’s spectacular
growth since the 1960s, Waverly advocated
expansion of county government services and
facilities and pushed for purchase of the
county’s modern office building in downtown
Raleigh. In appreciation of his efforts, that
building is now known as the Waverly Akins
County Office Building.
Following Waverly’s untimely death in
1997, his son, Bill, is carrying the family
legacy into a third generation. Bill Akins,
who graduated from the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill, realized that tobacco
was declining as a crop and began to
develop the family land for subdivisions.
He also moved into commercial real estate
and has been active in restoration efforts in
old Varina.
Among other ventures, Bill purchased the
building that once housed his grandfather’s
farm supply business and converted it to an
office building. Bill’s office is now located
in the Varina Supply Building, the building
where his grandfather operated the family
businesses more than seventy-five years
ago. In addition to renovating some of the
old buildings in Varina, Bill built a 20,000
square foot mixed-use retail/luxury apartment
building called Varina Station that has added
a progressive feel to a 100-year-old downtown.
AKINS
PROPERTIES
✧
Above: Varina Supply Company.
Below: Varina Station. c. 2006.
SHARING THE HERITAGE
109

INTER-FAITH
FOOD SHUTTLE
✧
Above: Veteran volunteers Dave Duchand
Carl Sigel on a food rescue and
distribution route.
Top, right: Co-founders Maxine Solomon
and Jill Staton Bullard.
Below: Chef Terri Hutter and students from
the Culinary Job Training Program
celebrate graduation.
One day in 1989, Jill Staton Bullard
and Maxine Solomon were in a fast
food restaurant when they noticed that
breakfast sandwiches were being
thrown away simply because it was
time to put out lunch items.
As children of Depression-era parents,
Jill and Maxine were horrified at
this waste of good food in a community
where people were standing in line
at soup kitchens. They vowed to do
something about this waste of perfectly
good food by involving friends and
neighbors in a food recovery project
that is now known as the Inter-Faith
Food Shuttle.
Starting with those eleven breakfast
sandwiches, which were quartered so that fortyfour
people could have some protein, the
volunteers of Inter-Faith Food Shuttle have kept
more than 50 million pounds of nutritious,
perishable food out of the waste stream.
Most of the food recovered came from
retail grocery stores until the North Carolina
State Farmer’s Market became a donor in
1991. With the fresh fruits and vegetables
from the market, plus the protein and grain
sources from the grocery stores, the Food
Shuttle volunteers and staff are able to get the
most nutritious food to those most in need in
a safe and timely manner.
Using twelve refrigerated vehicles, 30,000
volunteer hours, over 200 grocery stores and
other food donors, the Inter-Faith Food
Shuttle now serves needy people in a
seven-county area surrounding the Triangle.
In addition, raw produce is turned into
nutritious meals in a state-of-the-art kitchen.
Thousands of people rely on this food rescue
organization each day.
Inter-Faith Food Shuttle consists of
volunteers from all faiths who are dedicated
to helping people from all walks of life. The
volunteers do not discriminate in their
services or judge the needs of others. Each
person is treated with dignity and respect,
whether donor, recipient, or clients of
agencies served by the organization.
As a nontraditional food bank of Feeding
America, the Inter-Faith Food Shuttle has
built award-winning programs that include
one that trains life-challenged people in
culinary skills for future employment. In
addition, it offers nutrition education and
healthy cooking classes for families using
food stamps, provides nourishing meals
to at-risk children through the BackPack
Buddies and Summer Food Service Programs,
and has created a Community Gardens-Farm
Project so that low-wealth people will have
access to local food through community
supported agriculture.
As an organization, Inter-Faith Food
Shuttle is dedicated to the premise that
hunger is just unacceptable.
To become a volunteer with Inter-Faith
Food Shuttle, or to learn more about its
programs, please visit www.foodshuttle.org.
HISTORIC WAKE
110
COUNTY

BAKER
ROOFING
COMPANY
In 1915, W. Prentiss Baker, Sr., shaped his
first piece of tin at Baker and Rawls Tin Shop
in downtown Raleigh, which he owned with
his friend and business partner, Horace Rawls.
“They were very skilled in sheet metal
fabrication and crafted much of the fancy
metalwork and intricate designs you see on
old buildings in downtown Raleigh,” says
W. Prentiss Baker, III, the founder’s grandson
and president of the firm for forty years.
The skill and craftsmanship of Baker
and Rawls helped their sheet metal and
roofing business flourish. Their insistence on
excellence in every job from barn roofs to
corporate structures such as the Occidental
Life building soon cemented the company’s
reputation as one of the area’s quality builders.
Baker, III joined the business in 1968 after
graduating from college. At the time, the
company employed about a dozen workers
and the business was struggling. Today, Baker
Roofing employs more than 300 persons and
the firm is rated among the Top Five of all
roofing contractors in the U.S. by Engineering
News Magazine.
As a full-service roofing company, the
firm focuses on residential, commercial,
and institutional roofing; architectural
sheet metal; waterproofing; restoration; and
gutter installation.
The specialists at Baker Roofing may be
called on to install a built-up roofing system
on a new warehouse; repair a single-ply roof
on an old school; or remove, repair and
reinstall the slate roof of an aging church. The
company fabricates metal roofs, gutters and
downspouts for new shopping centers, and
installs and repairs cooper roofing and
guttering on both industrial and residential
buildings. Residential re-roofing is a specialty
of Baker Roofing.
The types of roofing materials have
changed dramatically in recent years. Today,
there are more than 125 manufacturers of
roofing materials, and the technology of the
materials has become more complicated. As a
result, Baker Roofing employees are highly
skilled in using all types of roofing materials.
In addition to being known for its quality
work, Baker Roofing has a solid reputation for
being a family business that cares about its
employees. This tradition began with Prentiss
Baker, Sr., who drove the streets of Raleigh
searching for friends who needed work. In
recent years, the company has offered classes
in English for the growing number of
Spanish-speaking employees.
Built on a long tradition of customer
service and employee satisfaction, Baker
Roofing Company continues to be the
foremost roofing contractor in the Triangle.
“We want happy customers,” says Baker, III.
“You will always have financial benchmarks,
but if you do a good job the customer will
reward you with new work.”
Baker Roofing is located at 517 Mercury
Street in Raleigh. For more information,
check the website at www.bakerroofing.com.
SHARING THE HERITAGE
111

CROWN
BUILDERS &
DEVELOPERS
As visitors can see from the large
American flag on his office wall,
Mike Vala (Mehdi Valanejad) takes
great pride in being a citizen of the
United States. He feels this country
has allowed him to live the American
Dream by providing the American
Dream of home ownership to
hundreds of satisfied clients.
Vala attended college in Boston,
where he received a BS degree in
Civil Engineering and a Masters in
Structural Engineering and Metal
Building. After college, he moved to
Denver where he worked for the
WedgeCor Company, building metal buildings.
He then moved to Viselia, California, where he
was a project manager for Industrial Group of
California, also in the metal building field.
Vala moved to Cary in 1992 and spent
two years as superintendent for Habitech
Enterprises, a home building firm.
Feeling he had the qualifications and
experience, and recognizing Cary as a growth
community with a lot of potential, Vala
decided to move out on his own. His early
projects—ranging from $150,000 to $1
million—were in Arlington Ridge, Brookline
Village, Picardy Village, Norman, McGregor
West and Regency Park in Cary. In Apex, he
built in Glen Arbor, Walden Creek, Dogwood
Ridge and Haddon Hall. In addition, Vala has
worked in Holly Springs and Fuquay-Varina.
Crown Builders & Developers is currently
working on Brookshire in North Raleigh,
which features fifteen estate homes starting at
$550,000. The firm is also involved in Phase I
of Salem Creek, a fifty-nine unit townhome
development in Apex.
Vala takes pride in the details of his homes.
Beautiful wood flooring, fireplaces, moldings
and trim, cabinets, tile and granite countertops
are just some of the upgrades that are the
norm in his homes. He adds the little touches
customers want in their dream homes and
feels it an honor to work with the client
through the entire building process, including
post construction. Many of Vala’s homes have
been featured in the Parade of Homes and
several have won awards.
A well-respected builder, Vala is a member
of the Home Builders Association of the
Triangle, the American Society of Civil
Engineers, the Construction Institute, the
Association of Iron and Steel Engineers and
the Building Trades Association.
An active member of the community, Vala
was captivated recently by a structure he saw
in Apex called “The Dome.” He checked into
the history of the unique property and was
thrilled when he was able to purchase it. The
run-down, dome-like structure, constructed
in the early 1960s as a roadside fruit stand,
is an adaptation of architect Buckminster
Fuller’s ‘world architecture’ and is the only
one of its kind known to exist in Wake
County. Vala is now working with Capital
Area Preservation to revitalize and preserve
the historic dome.
For more information on Crown Builders,
visit www.crownbnd.com on the Internet.
HISTORIC WAKE
112
COUNTY

JEFFREYS
APPLIANCE
CENTER
When it comes to appliances and
electronics, Triangle shoppers know they can
find the best selection and most competitive
prices at Jeffreys Appliance Center in Raleigh.
The company was founded by Giles Jeffreys,
Sr., in the late 1960s as Jeffreys Furniture
Company. His sons, Giles, Jr., and Tony, joined
the business later. In 1988 the appliance and
television departments of the business were
purchased by one of the company managers,
Glenn Suggs, and a partner, Jim Ashley, and
Jeffreys Appliance Center was established.
Jeffreys Furniture moved to Wake Forest in the
late 1980s and closed in the late 1990s.
In 2001 the late Bill Pittman and his son,
Andy, purchased Jeffreys Appliance Center from
Suggs and Ashley. The business is currently
owned and operated by the Pittman family.
Jeffreys has occupied several locations on
Capital Boulevard, first in the Starmount
Shopping Center, later in what is now the
International Center, then at the intersection
of Spring Forest and Capital, and next at
the north end of Capital Boulevard in
Wake Forest. Jeffreys has been in its current
location at 3514-102 Capital Boulevard,
a mile-and-a-quarter north of the I-440
Beltline, since 1994 and now available at
www.jeffreysappliancecenter.com.
The Appliance Department at Jeffreys
features a wide selection of refrigerators and
freezers, laundry appliances, cooking products,
microwaves, dishwashers, outdoor grills, and
air conditioners and ventilation products. Such
well respected name brands as GE, Monogram,
Kitchen Aid, Bosch, Maytag, Amana, Electrolux,
Jenn-Air and Frigidaire are represented.
In the electronics department, customers
may choose from the very latest home audio
systems, LCD, plasma flat, and projection
televisions. Jeffreys carries products from
Samsung, LG, Sharp, Panasonic and other
well-known brands.
Appliances at Jeffreys are attractively
displayed in home-like settings and welltrained
sales representatives are available to
help customers choose the best products for
their particular application.
Giles Jeffreys, Sr., was a master at advertising
long before his competitors and Jeffreys
Appliance continues to be a leader in
advertising within the market. By providing a
wide selection of products, knowledgeable sales
staff, competitive prices and a positive shopping
experience, Jeffrey’s hopes its customers
become the best form of advertising by referring
family and friends.
Along with Brand Source, Jeffreys’ national
marketing group, the company is a local
partner with the Ronald McDonald Houses.
Jeffreys also contributes to a number of local
civic and charitable organizations.
SHARING THE HERITAGE
113

PEACE
COLLEGE
A vibrant downtown landmark, Peace
College is a well-respected private college
for women. The College was founded in 1857
by Presbyterian Church leaders who desired
“a school of high grade for the education of
young women” in the State Capital.
Raleigh merchant William Peace, an elder
at Raleigh’s First Presbyterian Church,
donated eight acres of land and $10,000
to help start the school. In honor of his
contribution, the school was named Peace
Institute of Raleigh. First Presbyterian Church
has continued to be involved with the college
throughout its history.
While the College's first building, Main,
was under construction in 1862 it was
appropriated by the Confederate Army for use
as a hospital. At the time only the four-story
brick frame of Main and its roof were in place,
but the Army added floors and window
frames to complete the construction. Because
glass was not available, muslin was tacked
into the window frames to keep out the cold.
At the end of the Civil War, the Freedmen’s
Bureau was installed in Main, remaining at
that site for a year. Main was reclaimed by
Peace Institute in 1872, and renovated and
opened as a school for young women for the
1872-73 academic year. The first kindergarten
in the South opened at Peace in 1879.
During its long and distinguished history,
Peace has grown from a “finishing school”
for proper young women, to a junior college,
and to baccalaureate college status beginning
in 1995. Since becoming a four-year college,
Peace graduates have become doctors, lawyers,
actors and ministers and have gained admission
to notable graduate schools.
The school’s long list of distinguished
alumnae includes Katharine Bryan Sloan, who
became the mother of noted educator Frank
Porter Graham, president of the University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill from 1930 to
1949 and, later, a U.S. Senator. Others included
are Mary Kerr Morehead, the South’s first
female judge; Jane Simpson McKimmon, who
was the first woman to graduate from North
Carolina State College and became a leader in
the home demonstration movement; Addie
Worth Bagley Daniels, the first female trustee of
Peace (and the first in the South) and the wife
of publisher Josephus Daniels, who served as
Secretary of the Navy and Ambassador to
Mexico; and Mary Lily Kenan Flagler Bingham,
a philanthropist who established the UNC-
Chapel Hill Kenan Professorship.
In the past ten years, Peace has grown from
a two-year, associate degree granting college
with about 400 students to a four-year,
baccalaureate degree granting college of
approximately 700 students. Peace is located
at 15 East Peace Street, just a few blocks from
the State Capitol and has occupied the same
site since it was founded. Main Building has
been in continuous use by the college since
1872 and was placed on the National Register
of Historic Places in 1972.
You can visit Peace College on the Internet
at www.peace.edu.
HISTORIC WAKE
114
COUNTY

Kim Stone, the founder of Tango Real Estate,
has managed to combine a love of historic
properties and a concern for downtown
development into a thriving business.
Before opening her own firm in 2001, Kim
was business development manager for the
Downtown Raleigh Alliance, an experience
that provided comprehensive knowledge of
downtown properties, businesses and
development interests. She was later involved
in the early planning stages of a proposed
downtown condominium project.
A love of historic properties prompted her
to move into the downtown Boylan Heights
Historic District and begin rehabbing old
homes, her own included. Many of the historic
homes had been divided into apartments but
she was able to convert them back to single
family homes and renovate them.
Although a real estate broker’s license was
not required in her job as a marketing and
sales director, Kim earned her license in 2001
while working for a developer. When the condo
project she was working on was put on hold
she decided to put her entrepreneurial energy
to work by starting her own brokerage firm.
In 2008, she was joined by a partner, Phizzy
King, who contributes her experience with a
large national real estate firm.
Tango Real Estate operated in Boylan
Heights for the first six years. In 2008 the firm
moved to a beautifully restored historic
building in the Blount Street Historic District,
which it shares with several other businesses.
“The location was appealing because it placed
us in the heart of the next major downtown
redevelopment—the moving and renovation of
twenty-five historic homes which have housed
State offices for many years,” she explains.
Those homes are now being sold to individuals
in concert with the new large scale mixed-use
development of Blount Street Commons.
Tango Real Estate is both a residential and
commercial broker, working with both
buyers and sellers, and specializing in
historic properties and rehabs. Although
Tango offers brokerage services to all thirteen
counties in the regional Board of Realtors
system, most of the firm’s business is in
downtown Raleigh.
Tango is a proud corporate
donor of Capital Area
Preservation and a member
of Preservation North Carolina
Professional Associates
Network. Kim was also a
founding member of a West
Side advocacy group to
improve business and living
conditions in downtown’s
warehouse district. This
group has been sanctioned
by the Raleigh City Council
as the Downtown West
Gateway task force, which
works with the city and other
downtown interest organizations
to create a development
plan for that area.
The business plan for
Tango Real Estate includes
getting more involved in
historic preservation and
rehab properties, working
with individuals and investors
to acquire, rehab, and sell or
rent historic homes.
For additional information
on Tango Real Estate visit
www.TangoRealEstate.com.
TANGO REAL
ESTATE
✧
Below: Kim Stone (seated) and Phizzy King.
SHARING THE HERITAGE
115

TOWN OF
KNIGHTDALE
Although Knightdale is the youngest
incorporated municipality in Wake County,
the area almost became the capital of North
Carolina some 200 years ago.
The early history of the Knightdale area was
dominated by the Hinton family, who received
some of the first land grants given within the
county’s present-day boundaries. By the late
1700s, when North Carolina was considering a
location for its capital, Major John Hinton’s land
along the picturesque eastern bank of the Neuse
River initially received the most votes among the
original seventeen sites under consideration.
However, Major Hinton’s site was not able
to secure a majority of votes in that first
round, thereby allowing
his brother-in-law, Joel
Lane, a successful planter
and tavern operator, to
secure enough votes in
the second round to build
the capital on his land
a few miles west of the
Neuse River. Lane’s land
is now the site of presentday
Raleigh.
Prior to the Civil War,
the land on the eastern
banks of the Neuse continued
to be cultivated
by members of the Hinton
family on their many
plantations. It was not
until after the war that
many new families came
to the area to purchase
and farm the land.
Although many farmers
grew corn and other
vegetables, tobacco reigned supreme as the
area’s main cash crop.
As the nineteenth century drew to a close
Raleigh was looking to establish a railroad
connection to the eastern port cities. Many
local farmers hoped that the new rail line
would pass through their vicinity before
crossing the Neuse River into Raleigh. Finally,
in 1904, Henry Haywood Knight and his wife
sold a strip of farmland along their southern
boundary to the Norfolk and Southern
Railroad Company for one dollar. Needham
Jones and his wife also sold a strip of land
along the northern border of their adjacent
property for the same amount. The railroad
provided freight and passenger service and
facilitated the incorporation of the community
that would come to bear Knight’s name.
The small town developed with the usual
collection of businesses and services: doctor’s
office, hardware store, general store, barbershop,
bank, drug store, and farmer’s co-op,
along with residences. However, there was no
municipal water system in the early days and
a fire on February 7, 1940, wiped out most of
Knightdale’s’ fledgling business district.
Until the late 1980s, Knightdale remained
a small rural town, but since 1990 the town
has seen tremendous growth in population,
averaging ten percent per year.
Today, Knightdale enjoys a partnership
with Raleigh that oversees a robust water
system and is part of a nationally recognized
county school system. Town leaders and local
staff are committed to maintaining Knightdale
as a safe, healthy and vibrant community.
Although Knightdale never became the capital
of North Carolina, it has become one of the
best places in the state to call home.
HISTORIC WAKE
116
COUNTY

RALEIGH GOLF
ASSOCIATION
On July 26, 1929, a group of twenty-seven
of Raleigh’s’ progressive business and civic
leaders incorporated the Raleigh Golf
Association. A. E. Finley was elected president,
E. W. Prince, vice president and John P. Swain,
secretary-treasurer. At that time, the only golf
course in Wake County was the Carolina
Country Club, a private membership-only
facility. It was the founder’s intention to
provide a quality golf course that would be
available to the general public at a price they
could afford. This philosophy has been the
guiding principle followed by all the
succeeding Boards of Directors.
Page and McLawhorn was selected to
design the course and John W. Coffey and
Sons to build it. The historic Clubhouse was
constructed ten years later in 1939.
Harold Long was hired as the first golf
professional and served in that capacity until
1961 when he was replaced by Maurice
Brackett. Ronnie Casper replaced Brackett as
head professional in 1978 and he continues in
that capacity today, meaning RGA has had
only three Head Golf Professionals since 1929.
On November 8, 1929, North Carolina
Governor O. Max Gardner drove a golf ball
150 yards down the fairway of the 350-yard
par four number one hole to open the Raleigh
Golf Association as Raleigh’s’ first public golf
course. RGA President A. J. Maxwell and Mayor
E. E. Culbreth pointed to the new course as an
important addition to the recreational
facilities of Raleigh. The course was opened
for public play with greens fees of fifty cents
per player for eighteen holes. In 1937 a
historic match was played on the course
between RGA pro Harold Long, golf legend
Gene Sarazen, Carolina Pines golf pro Gene
Mills and then rising PGA star Sam Snead,
with Long and Sarazen prevailing.
On September 11, 1959, Governor Luther
Hodges and RGA President A. E. Finley
opened a third nine holes designed to be used
primarily by RGA stockholders. The course
was redesigned in 1998 by David Postlewaite.
The wide open fairways are lined by mature
trees, and the L93 bent grass greens are
always among the best in the area.
The golf course is owned by approximately
190 individual stockholders, most of whom
own a single share. They pay a modest annual
fee for unlimited playing privileges on all
twenty-seven holes, including spouse, minor
children and grandchildren. They have never
received a dividend on their shares. Instead,
any profits are reinvested in the golf course.
The Board attempts to make at least one major
capital improvement each year.
With play available daily from early
morning hours through twilight, RGA now
supports both men’s and women’s league play,
and hosts numerous local civic and charitable
tournaments during the year.
Additional information may be found on
the Internet at www.rgagolf.net.
SHARING THE HERITAGE
117

SRI SHOE
WAREHOUSE
✧
Above: Stuart and Barbara Rosenberg.
Below: SRI Shoe Warehouse is located at
6031 Oak Forest Road in Raleigh.
Barbara and Stuart Rosenberg
opened SRI Shoe Warehouse in
Raleigh in November 1991. The store
sold women’s shoes and was open
only on Saturdays and Sundays.
However, public demand convinced
the Rosenbergs to expand to three
days a week, Fridays, Saturdays
and Sundays. This was followed by
the addition of men’s shoes and
a much larger selection of brands and
accessories. Finally, kid’s shoes were
added in 1994.
SRI is now open seven days a week and
operates stores in Baltimore, Greensboro, and
Charlotte, in addition to the store at 6031
Oak Forest Road in Raleigh. At SRI stores,
shoppers find rows and rows of more than
45,000 pairs of brand name designer shoes
for men, women, and kids, plus handbags
and accessories. The Raleigh store has been
selling shoes in the warehouse concept prior
to any other existing warehouse shoe outlet.
SRI sells the same brands carried by
department stores for thirty to sixty percent
less. By keeping overhead expenses low in the
warehouse and through inventory deals, the
Rosenbergs are able to keep their retail costs
down. SRI’s business has more than doubled
since the first store was opened in 1991.
“My niche is knowing the market and
knowing there is a big fashion market in
Raleigh,” Stuart says. With such low
price points, the Rosenbergs cannot afford to
carry shoes that do not sell. A dud can be a
costly mistake.
Stuart's father worked as a sales
representative in Philadelphia and Stuart grew
up in the shoe business. He took a full-time
job as a salesman in a department store while
a student at Temple University and aspired to
becoming a buyer for a shoe business.
He became a buyer after graduation and
developed a specialty in women’s styles,
which make up about two-thirds of the sales
in most shoe stores. Colleagues say Stuart
“has the eye” for styles that will be popular in
a particular market. He describes having the
‘eye’ as “one part feel and one part experience.
I have an instinct for where things are going
and what looks good, what’s fashionable, but
doesn’t go too far. A good reputation helps
in finalizing deals in the industry and being
first to be notified when great opportunities
become available.”
While Stuart concentrates on buying
the right styles for the stores, Barbara handles
the marketing of SRI Shoe Warehouse in
all four markets.
A family owned and operated business, SRI
Shoe Warehouse strives to offer outstanding
values for its customers, a rewarding work
environment for its employees, and to be a
good corporate citizen in the cities where it
does business. In Raleigh, SRI Shoe Warehouse
employees have been active in Jimmy V Cancer
Research, North Carolina Child Advocacy
Group, Special Olympics, and Soles 4 Soles.
For more information about SRI Shoe
Warehouse, check out the website at
www.srishoes.com.
HISTORIC WAKE
118
COUNTY

RISING SUN
POOLS AND SPAS
Charlie Vassallo, who founded Rising Sun
Pools in 1972, was a natural born entrepreneur.
As a child in Queens, New York he would
set up shop in his mother’s kitchen, selling
canned goods to his siblings and ringing up
the sales on a toy cash register. By age ten he
had both newspaper and magazine routes
and, at age twelve, he delivered Chinese food
on his bicycle.
During his high school years, Charlie
commuted three hours by train each day to
attend John W. Brown High School, a merchant
marine trade school located aboard an actual
ship. The family had moved to Massapequa,
Long Island by this time but after his long
commute, Charlie still worked evenings at a
gas station and on Saturdays at a commercial
cabinet shop.
“You would be hard pressed to meet a more
ambitious and hard working teenager,” says
his wife, Pat. “He carried those traits with him
throughout his life.”
After graduating from high school in 1968,
Charlie landed a lucrative job as union wirelather
tying steel on Manhattan skyscrapers.
Two years later he met and married Pat Smith.
Shortly after the marriage, however, the New
York City economy went soft and most high
rise building stopped. Charlie was out of a job
but kept his young family going through a
series of odd jobs.
In 1970, Charlie was offered a job with a
small swimming pool company in Raleigh.
After visiting Raleigh and deciding it would
be a great place to raise a family, Charlie and
Pat loaded their belongings in a pink hearse—
courtesy of his new employer, who used it as
a work vehicle—and headed from New York
to North Carolina.
Always an entrepreneur, Charlie soon
knew that he wanted to operate his own
business. He opened Rising Sun Pools in 1972,
selling pool supplies out of a storage room
attached to his home. Two years later, as the
business grew; he opened a small store at
Quail Corner Shopping Center. The shop had
only one employee, Mary Jane Clancy, who
became a close friend and confidant for
more than eighteen years. In 1979, having
outgrown the first location, Rising Sun Pools
purchased the current, much larger, showroom
at 5608 Hillsborough Street. The company
also operates express locations in North
Raleigh and Garner.
Charlie died in 2003 and the company
is now operated by his children—Michael
Vassallo, Gina da Roza and Tara Onthank—
who are continuing the proud tradition began
by their father.
Rising Sun Pools has made the dream of
pool ownership a reality for more than 7,000
Triangle residents since 1972. The company,
which has doubled in size under the direction
of Charlie’s children, operates twenty-eight
service vehicles and has fifty employees and a
customer base of 17,000.
SHARING THE HERITAGE
119

FUQUAY
MINERAL
SPRING INN
AND GARDEN
Fuquay-Varina Mayor, John W. Byrne, has
a personal role in the revitalization of the
town’s downtown area. Along with his wife,
Patty Byrne, a retired English
teacher at Fuquay-Varina
High School, Byrne spent
more than two years
lovingly restoring the historic
Fuquay Mineral Spring Inn
and Garden.
The Inn was built in 1927
as the home of Dr. & Mrs.
Wiley Cozart, who also built
the Ben Wiley Hotel where
guests stayed while enjoying
restorative treatments at
the mineral spring. Both
Dr. Cozart and his wife were
very community minded and
their home was used for
many community functions
for fifty years.
This Colonial Revival Landmark Inn is one
of the historic inns of North Carolina, listed
on the National Register Historic Places and
one of only ninety properties listed as a Local
Landmark in Wake County, North Carolina.
The bed and breakfast, offering lavish
accommodations and breathtaking gardens,
is located directly across the street from the
Historic Fuquay Mineral Spring Park.
Guests enjoy a grand living room fashioned
in the style of the late 1920s and featuring
an original painting of Andrew Johnson,
seventeenth president of the United States
and a native of Wake County. The living room
accentuates classical plaster
molding, a brass chandelier
designed with tassel motif, and
a grand stairway with fluted,
classical Doric columns. Guests
enjoy playing chess, checkers or
cards in this beautiful room.
The garden in the side and
front yards whispers ‘welcome’
with the splashing of a classic
fountain. The green space and
Official Wildlife Habitat is a
perfect location for relaxing
and quiet times. The Carriage
House and Gazebo offer the
perfect place for morning coffee or afternoon
tea or wine and bird watching. Just across the
street is the Fuquay Mineral Spring, founded
in 1858 by members of the Fuquay family.
Many visitors to the historic town park bring
jars to take home a sample of the legendary
mineral water.
The Fuquay Mineral Spring Inn and
Garden has also become a popular wedding
venue. The main parlor can easily host a party
of thirty and during the winter months the
fireplace adds to the warmth of the formal
room. Garden weddings are very popular and
the lighted gazebo and beautiful magnolia
trees provide an enchanting background for
wedding photos.
The Inn also offers cooking classes with a
local chef for both residents and guests.
An unusual feature of the bed and breakfast
is an extensive collection of New York Yankees
baseball memorabilia from the 1940s and ‘50s.
John Byrne’s father, Tommy Byrne, played
with the Yankees during the “Golden Era of
Baseball” and the collection includes many of
the All-Star pitcher’s collection.
Internationally known wildlife artist Terry
Isaac’s original art is featured all through the
Inn. This collection of art complements the
gardens of the Inn and the efforts the Byrnes
have made to restore the property.
In addition to serving as Mayor of
Fuquay-Varina, John W. Byrne is active in St.
Bernadette’s Catholic Church, a director of
Fidelity Bank, and a member of Fuquay-Varina
Lions Club, Fuquay-Varina Chamber of
Commerce, and Fuquay-Varina Revitalization.
HISTORIC WAKE
120
COUNTY

Located in a beautiful area of Northwest
Raleigh, Springmoor Life Care Retirement
Community is a nationally accredited, fullservice
continuing care retirement community
where the focus is always on the residents.
Springmoor is designed to emphasize
independent living, dignity, security and
peace of mind. Residents may choose from a
wide range of residences, services, amenities
and comprehensive healthcare.
Springmoor was developed by Justus M.
“Jud” Ammons, a leading Raleigh developer.
Located in Greystone Village, Springmoor is
one of many large communities Ammons
has developed in Raleigh and other sections
of North Carolina. In planning Springmoor,
Ammons enlisted the guidance of consultants
and community leaders and personally studied
the needs of senior citizens. His deep interest
in senior citizens and his personal and
financial commitment resulted in Springmoor
becoming one of the nation’s foremost life care
retirement communities.
Springmoor is beautifully situated on
forty-two wooded acres where buildings,
streets and walking trails are planned and
landscaped to take full advantage of the area’s
beauty and privacy. Residents also have access
to seventy-five acres of beautiful greenways,
four lakes, picnic areas, and other recreational
facilities in Greystone Village. Stonehenge
Shopping Center is within walking distance
via safe and convenient walkways. Crabtree
Valley Mall is less than three miles away.
A wide range of living accommodations
are available at Springmoor. Residents may
choose from nineteen different types of floor
plans, ranging from studio/alcove apartments
to a two-bedroom single-family home with
den and a one-car garage. Apartments, villas
and homes range in size from about 500
square feet to nearly 1,500 square feet.
Springmoor’s campus offers an amazing
array of facilities, including a beautifully
decorated dining room, greenhouse, a chapel,
and garden plots. Residents also enjoy the
exercise room, billiards’ rooms, parlors,
music room, greenways, putting greens, and
library. Springmoor provides onsite banking,
as well as a beauty salon, barber shop and
convenience store.
The onsite Stewart Health Center provides
medical, nursing and personal care on a
short-term or continuing basis. The Health
Center also provides outpatient healthcare to
residents. Stewart Health Center has a specially
designed and staffed wing for residents who
have Alzheimer’s disease or related disorders.
Onsite dental care, physical therapy and
occupational therapy are also available.
Springmoor Life Care Retirement
Community provides the promise of care for
life, a home where residents may continue
their careers, pursue hobbies, develop new
interests, travel, or spend time relaxing,
socializing and taking advantage of the many
activities and services of Springmoor.
For additional information, check the
website at www.springmoor.org.
SPRINGMOOR
LIFE CARE
RETIREMENT
COMMUNITY
SHARING THE HERITAGE
121

TERRY’S FLOOR
FASHIONS, INC.
Terry’s Floor Fashions was taken over in
1966 by a young, anspiring teenager by the
name of Ralph Betts. He was only seventeen
when he realized he wanted to take over
the small flooring business, which was then
owned by his uncle, Terry Andrews.
His uncle really did not think he was
serious and did not want to sell the company,
even though it was in the red and struggling.
But, after much consideration, he decided he
would take several months off just to see if
Ralph could handle things. After four months
of leaving the business in his hands, he felt
confident Ralph could handle things. It was at
this time he decided to sell the business for
$10,000. While all of Ralph’s friends were
thinking about girls and the prom, he was
thinking his dream had come true—he was a
business owner.
Starting from practically zero, he had a
big hill to climb to get the company in the
black. Trying to keep costs down, he did
everything he could himself from selling,
ordering and installing. And, at the end of
the day, he still had to double-check his
secretary’s bookkeeping.
As the work, clients and referrals started
coming in, Ralph started adding employees.
There have been several key individuals
that have contributed to his success. Terry
Andrew, 1952-1965; Carol King Bordeauz,
1969-1996; Kenny Langdon, 1978–present;
Rod Wishart, 1981–present; Dennis Bennett,
1985–present; and Bobbie Richards,
1989–present. As you can see, Ralph has a
track record for retaining employees. He says,
“What you have to do is make sure the right
people are working the right job.”
With many years of hard work in what used
to be a quiet town, Terry’s has gone from a
small 1,200 square foot flooring business in
the red, to a thriving five-store chain that
averages total annual sales of $10 million.
With seventy-five percent of the business
being commercial, they provide flooring for
many types of buildings. The backbone of the
business is still the referral business of Mr. and
Mrs. Consumer. Averaging yearly four to seven
schools, two to three apartment complexes
and over 100 office/government fit-ups each
year, they have lots of experience to offer.
Terry’s has always helped to support local
organizations. They are currently supporters
of Veterans, the homeless, Raleigh Rescue
Mission, Special Olympics, The Jaycees, the
A.O.P.A., United Way, local schools and
churches, Boy Scouts of America, the local
Rescue Squad, Battered Women’s Shelter, and
many more.
Terry’s provides a large array of
commercial and residential flooring products
including Green Products. Please stop by
one of their showrooms or visit them at
www.terrysfloorfashions.com. Terry’s strives
to provide customers service the old
fashioned way and help customers select
the right product for the right location.
HISTORIC WAKE
122
COUNTY

The printing industry has changed
dramatically since James G. Chamblee
founded Chamblee Graphics in 1966. At that
time, traditional letterpress printing was in its
dying days, while offset printing was
flourishing. In the past few years, digital
printing has become an industry standard.
Chamblee Graphics offers its customers
full service offset and digital printing,
including electronic prepress and complete
bindery. Chamblee’s products include sales
literature, product brochures, catalogs,
newsletters, annual reports and financial
printing. The customer base includes the
financial and governmental markets,
manufacturing firms, trade associations and
many others.
In the very early days, what is now
Chamblee’s, Inc., DBA Chamblee Graphics,
operated as General Business Machines and
Systems. Jim Chamblee rented a ten by twelve
foot office at 618 West Johnson Street in
Raleigh where he sold business machines,
business forms and offset printing. Jim
married Linda White in 1967 and her state job
with the Probation Commission helped keep
food on the table during the lean early years.
In 1969 the business machines portion of
the business was sold to Larry Taylor, who
formed Capital Business Machines, a firm still
operating in Raleigh. Jim convinced his
brother-in-law, Joe Denton, to set up a parttime
printing shop in an old country store in
Franklin County. Joe thus became the firm’s
first pressman.
As the business grew, Chamblee rented a
basement under the Old Dutch Inn Restaurant
at 128 South Salisbury Street in Raleigh. In
1971 the company moved to a street-level
location at 620 North Person Street, the old
Krispy Kreme Doughnut Shop. Chamblee’s
was in this location for four years and
during that time Jim rented the old Person
Street Pharmacy space and added Heritage
Typesetting Company, owned by Bob King.
Chamblee’s moved to a modern building
on Alwin Court in 1975 and, in 1985, the
company moved to its present location at the
corner of Alwin Court and Hodges Street.
To keep up with rapidly changing
technology, Chamblee’s purchased its first
large two-color press, a Miller TP29S, in 1980.
Technology has continued to expand and,
today, Chamblee’s capabilities include a sixcolor
plus coater Heidelberg press in addition
to its digital printing equipment.
Chamblee’s has always considered its
employees and customers to be its number one
asset. Of the twenty-one current employees,
two have more than thirty years of service; two
more than twenty years of service; three more
than fifteen years; and one has been with the
company more than ten years.
Chamblee’s is a member of the Printing
Industries of America/Graphics Arts Technical
Foundation (PIA/GATF) and National
Association of Printing Leadership (NAPL).
Chamblee’s recently received seven awards
from the North Carolina Chapter of PIA/GATF
for excellence in printing.
CHAMBLEE
GRAPHICS
✧
Above: Modern Heidelberg six-color offset
press plus coater being installed.
Below: Joe Denton operating a Multilith
Press in the old country store in Franklin
County, North Carolina.
SHARING THE HERITAGE
123

CAPITAL AREA PRESERVATION, INC.
✧
Above: The Guess-White-Ogle House,
National Register Historic District, Cary
Landmark, and CAP Easement Property
and Anthemion Award Winner.
Below: The Jesse-Penny House, Individually
Listed National Register, Wake
County Landmark.
Capital Area Preservation, Inc. (CAP)
traces its beginnings to the first stirring of a
grass roots preservation movement in Raleigh
and Wake County during the late 1960s. One
of the sparks that lit the flame was the
potential loss of Raleigh’s eighteenth-century
Mordecai House. Preservationists mobilized
and, at their insistence, the City of Raleigh
purchased the Mordecai House for the
purpose of establishing a city park.
In 1972, many of the individuals who had
been instrumental in saving the Mordecai
House founded CAP’s predecessor
organization, the Mordecai Square Historical
Society (MSHS). MSHS, and later CAP,
managed the Mordecai Park for more than
thirty years, and CAP continues its support for
the park through the loan of its collection of art
and artifacts for the enjoyment of the public.
During the early years, the society’s attention
was largely focused on Mordecai, but the
founders shared a broader vision on service to
Wake and neighboring counties. Between 1983
and 1985 the MSHS accepted five historic
preservation easements in downtown Raleigh.
In recognition of the organization’s growing
preservation efforts, the group voted
unanimously to change the name to “reflect a
better understanding of the full purpose of the
organization.” On July 11, 1989, the society
adopted the name “Capital Area Preservation.”
Since the 1980s, CAP’s preservation program
has continued to expand. From 1994 to 1999,
CAP added five more historic preservation
easements to its growing portfolio, including the
first outside the City of Raleigh. CAP’s growth
has continued into the new century with
increased attention to saving historic properties
through its real estate program and addition of
fifteen preservation easements. Perhaps the most
significant event of the new century has been the
establishment of a partnership with the Wake
County government in 2003. Under the
partnership arrangement, CAP operates the
county’s preservation program and provides
staffing services to the Wake County Historic
Preservation Commission (WCHPC). Since
assuming responsibility for the program, the
number of landmarks in the jurisdiction of the
WCHPC has more than doubled.
Today, threats to Wake County’s historic
resources continue. As an organization, CAP has
committed itself to strengthening its efforts on
behalf of our region’s vanishing historic
properties. Capital Area Preservation continues
to meet the challenges that growth presents by
working closely with local municipalities in
order to make preservation an integral part of
the future growth and community development.
Proud of our heritage, but never complacent,
CAP looks forward to the challenges and
opportunities ahead.
HISTORIC WAKE
124
COUNTY

SPONSORS
A. E. Finley Foundation, Inc. ..............................................................................................................................................................82
Akins Properties................................................................................................................................................................................109
Apex Instruments, Inc.........................................................................................................................................................................98
Baker Roofing Company....................................................................................................................................................................111
Capital Area Preservation, Inc. ..........................................................................................................................................................124
The Capital Room Restaurant/PMC, Inc. .............................................................................................................................................81
Catholic Church in Raleigh and Wake County ....................................................................................................................................86
Chamblee Graphics...........................................................................................................................................................................123
Crown Builders & Developers ...........................................................................................................................................................112
Fuquay Mineral Spring Inn and Garden ............................................................................................................................................120
Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce...............................................................................................................................................81
Greater Raleigh Convention & Visitors Bureau ..................................................................................................................................104
Inter-Faith Food Shuttle....................................................................................................................................................................110
Jeffreys Appliance Center ..................................................................................................................................................................113
Manning Fulton & Skinner, P.A.........................................................................................................................................................108
North Carolina State University.........................................................................................................................................................106
Peace College ....................................................................................................................................................................................114
Raleigh Golf Association....................................................................................................................................................................117
Raleigh Rescue Mission, Inc. .............................................................................................................................................................102
Rising Sun Pools and Spas.................................................................................................................................................................119
Smith Debnam Narron Drake Saintsing & Myers, LLP ........................................................................................................................81
Springmoor Life Care Retirement Community...................................................................................................................................121
SRI Shoe Warehouse .........................................................................................................................................................................118
Tango Real Estate ..............................................................................................................................................................................115
Terry’s Floor Fashions, Inc. ...............................................................................................................................................................122
Town of Apex......................................................................................................................................................................................90
Town of Knightdale...........................................................................................................................................................................116
Velvet Cloak Inn .................................................................................................................................................................................94
York Companies................................................................................................................................................................................100
SPONSORS
125

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
K. TODD J OHNSON
K. Todd Johnson is a native of the Cleveland community of Johnston County, North Carolina, and a resident of Smithfield. His
immersion in Wake County history began as a graduate student at North Carolina State University between 1988 and 1991, when he
worked with architectural historian Kelly Lally on a survey of the county’s historic landmarks and sites. The project culminated in the
monumental publication Historic Architecture of Wake County (1994).
From 1991 until 1997 Johnson was curator of the Public Library of Johnston County and Smithfield’s local history and genealogy
collection. He was founding executive director of the Johnston County Heritage Center in Smithfield, 1997-2003. Since that time he has
been a free lance public historian, providing historical research and writing, digitization, and archival management consulting for
museums, libraries, and archives.
He was a contributing writer for the Encyclopedia of North Carolina, edited by William S. Powell (2006), and has co-authored
several other local history books, including Images of America: Johnston County, with Durwood Barbour (1997); Wake: Capital County of
North Carolina, Volume 2: Reconstruction to 1920, with Elizabeth Reid Murray (2008); and Images of America: Clayton, with Pam L.
Baumgartner (2008).
In addition to his work in the public history field, Johnson has also served as a church organist and music director. He was a founder
of Neuse Charter School of Johnston County, which opened in Selma in the fall of 2007, and has been a teacher at the school since 2008.
He holds a B.A. degree in history from Campbell University in Buies Creek, North Carolina, and an M.A. in public history from North
Carolina State University. He is currently working on a Master of Divinity degree at his alma mater, Campbell University.
He is married to the former Donna Barfield of Garner, NC, and they have three children—Abby, 17; Cliff, 14; and Kevin, 13.
HISTORIC WAKE
126
COUNTY

ABOUT THE COVER
K AY
H UTCHISON
Kay Hutchison was born and raised in Raleigh, North Carolina. Kay received a BFA in illustration from the Rhode Island School of
Design in Providence, Rhode Island. Other than her canvas paintings, Kay’s energies are spread between painting murals and commercial
illustrations. Kay’s largest project to date is a twenty-foot-long mural for the United States Military Academy at West Point. Other important
projects include murals for Duke Hospital’s Raleigh location and the five-star Umstead Hotel in Cary, North Carolina.
For more information, please visit her Website, www.muralmatters.com.
ABOUT THE COVER
127

For more information about the following publications or about publishing your own book, please call
Historical Publishing Network at 800-749-9790 or visit www.lammertinc.com.
Black Gold: The Story of Texas Oil & Gas
Garland: A Contemporary History
Historic Abilene: An Illustrated History
Historic Alamance County: An Illustrated History
Historic Albuquerque: An Illustrated History
Historic Amarillo: An Illustrated History
Historic Anchorage: An Illustrated History
Historic Austin: An Illustrated History
Historic Baldwin County: A Bicentennial History
Historic Baton Rouge: An Illustrated History
Historic Beaufort County: An Illustrated History
Historic Beaumont: An Illustrated History
Historic Bexar County: An Illustrated History
Historic Birmingham: An Illustrated History
Historic Brazoria County: An Illustrated History
Historic Charlotte:
An Illustrated History of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County
Historic Cheyenne: A History of the Magic City
Historic Clayton County: An Illustrated History
Historic Comal County: An Illustrated History
Historic Corpus Christi: An Illustrated History
Historic DeKalb County: An Illustrated History
Historic Denton County: An Illustrated History
Historic Edmond: An Illustrated History
Historic El Paso: An Illustrated History
Historic Erie County: An Illustrated History
Historic Fayette County: An Illustrated History
Historic Fairbanks: An Illustrated History
Historic Gainesville & Hall County: An Illustrated History
Historic Gregg County: An Illustrated History
Historic Hampton Roads: Where America Began
Historic Hancock County: An Illustrated History
Historic Henry County: An Illustrated History
Historic Hood County: An Illustrated History
Historic Houston: An Illustrated History
Historic Illinois: An Illustrated History
Historic Kern County:
An Illustrated History of Bakersfield and Kern County
Historic Lafayette:
An Illustrated History of Lafayette & Lafayette Parish
Historic Laredo:
An Illustrated History of Laredo & Webb County
Historic Lee County: The Story of Fort Myers & Lee County
Historic Louisiana: An Illustrated History
Historic Midland: An Illustrated History
Historic Montgomery County:
An Illustrated History of Montgomery County, Texas
Historic Ocala: The Story of Ocala & Marion County
Historic Oklahoma: An Illustrated History
Historic Oklahoma County: An Illustrated History
Historic Omaha:
An Illustrated History of Omaha and Douglas County
Historic Orange County: An Illustrated History
Historic Ouachita Parish: An Illustrated History
Historic Paris and Lamar County: An Illustrated History
Historic Pasadena: An Illustrated History
Historic Passaic County: An Illustrated History
Historic Pennsylvania An Illustrated History
Historic Philadelphia: An Illustrated History
Historic Prescott:
An Illustrated History of Prescott & Yavapai County
Historic Richardson: An Illustrated History
Historic Rio Grande Valley: An Illustrated History
Historic Scottsdale: A Life from the Land
Historic Shelby County: An Illustrated History
Historic Shreveport-Bossier:
An Illustrated History of Shreveport & Bossier City
Historic South Carolina: An Illustrated History
Historic Smith County: An Illustrated History
Historic Temple: An Illustrated History
Historic Texas: An Illustrated History
Historic Victoria: An Illustrated History
Historic Tulsa: An Illustrated History
Historic Williamson County: An Illustrated History
Historic Wilmington & The Lower Cape Fear:
An Illustrated History
Historic York County: An Illustrated History
Iron, Wood & Water: An Illustrated History of Lake Oswego
Jefferson Parish: Rich Heritage, Promising Future
Miami’s Historic Neighborhoods: A History of Community
Old Orange County Courthouse: A Centennial History
Plano: An Illustrated Chronicle
The New Frontier:
A Contemporary History of Fort Worth & Tarrant County
The San Gabriel Valley: A 21st Century Portrait
The Spirit of Collin County
Valley Places, Valley Faces
Water, Rails & Oil: Historic Mid & South Jefferson County
HISTORIC WAKE
128
COUNTY

Foundation,
The A. E. Finley
Inc.
The of Raleigh
Diocese
LEADERSHIP
SPONSORS
ISBN 9781935377108