History

In the late 1880s, charmed by Asheville’s beauty, railroad scion George Washington Vanderbilt II decided to build a “little mountain…

The first blues song I heard growing up on Atlanta college radio was “Cross Road Blues,” 1936, by genre progenitor Robert Johnson.

Before 1895, Dockery Plantation was, like much of the Delta at the time, a swampy tangle of gum and cypress trees, panthers, wolves and mosquitoes.

The U.S. Civil Rights Trail stops in 15 states, few as chilling as Mississippi.

“My disease has increased in severity and I feel that it will soon cost me an increased amount of money if not my life,” wrote Wilbur Wright in 1900, referring to his irrational obsession with powered flight.

During the Great Depression, a young entrepreneur named Vernon Rudolph purchased a unique recipe for fluffy doughnuts. In 1937, he opened shop in Winston-Salem, and the Krispy Kreme Doughnut Corporation was born.

In 1932, a composer and WWI veteran named Lamar Stringfield united a gaggle of musicians to form the North Carolina Symphony. By 1935, they’d performed over 140 concerts all over the state.

From 1720 to 1870, North Carolina led the world in the production of tar, pitch and turpentine – products used to paint and seal wooden ships. From there, historians debate how the term “Tar Heel” originated.

In 1587, after a failed first attempt, the English again tried to colonize Roanoke Island. Received peacefully by the Croatoan tribe, the English established a healthy settlement.

“Nothing happens unless first a dream.” Carl Sandburg, one of America’s best-known, best-loved poets and writers wrote that back in 1922.

Stephen, a slave on the 1839 plantation of Abisha Slade in Caswell County, was tired from a long day of work. It was no surprise then that he nodded off from the heat of the fire he was watching to cure the tobacco.

To conduct the business affairs of a state – or a colony in earlier times – requires a place for leaders to meet. Of course, it has not always been Raleigh.

It was bloody and never pretty. In the early days of the North Carolina colony, Native Americans inhabited the land and none were more powerful than the Tuscarora.

It was first known as a school for teachers until it became a college. Now, it is one of the state’s foremost universities.

Lesley “Esley” Riddle is probably one of the most influential people in county music’s early days whom you have never heard of.

It may be hard for us to fathom, but school has not always been public and free. In the state’s early days, if you wanted to educate your children, you sent them to private school, often far from home.

He’s often considered the world’s greatest showman. But when P.T. Barnum spent a November Saturday night in 1836 at Rocky Mount Falls (now Rocky Mount), he mesmerized a crowd not with circus acts but with a sermon.

North Carolina entered a new era in its effort to regulate alcoholic beverage sales when the state’s first Alcohol Beverage Control (ABC) store opened in Wilson on July 2, 1935, where over 800 bottles of liquor were sold.

John W. Thomas was always confident, a make-it-happen type of guy. He had to be. John grew up fast when his father died in 1810 when John was ten. By the age 17, he moved to Davidson County to mine for precious metals.

It’s officially called the Qualla Boundary, a name most of us aren’t familiar with. We know it by its more common name – the Cherokee Indian Reservation in Haywood County. How it came to be is an interesting story.

When you think of coal mining and coal mining disasters, you don’t think of North Carolina. But the Egypt Coal Mine opened in 1856 in the Deep River Valley in Lee County. It even spawned the Western Railroad, which moved coal to Fayetteville and was in operation during the Civil War.

We’ve all heard of Eng and Chang Bunker – the Siamese twins – who became famous and called North Carolina home. But there was another set of conjoined twins who never became as well-known because they were born into slavery.

In politics you often have the boss, the one who works behind the scenes, to pull the levers of power. Furnifold McLendel Simmons was the big boss of North Carolina politics early in the 20th century.

It’s the eternal home for the rich and famous, and for the poor and unknown. Located in Asheville, the Riverside Cemetery sits quietly and is often overlooked by residents and visitors.

Robert Babington was reading his newspaper in Gastonia in 1909, when he came across a disturbing article about a young crippled child who was refused admission to an orphanage because he was handicapped. Robert then realized that North Carolina had no hospital for handicapped children.

What’s unique about Rutherford College, North Carolina? Well, for one thing there is no college there. The small Burke County town built up around the college Robert Abernathy started in 1853; the town was later incorporated.

When outnumbered, a little ruse can work wonders.

Although the town he grew up in was – and still is – often called “Little Washington” to distinguish it from the nation’s capital, there was nothing little about Cecil’s imagination.

Most people think we have always received personal mail by going out to the mailbox. That has not always been the case.

James Kenan was a leader.