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Tales of a Traveling Genealogist

ca. 40,000–15,000 B.C.
People migrate to North America from Asia at irregular intervals by way of the Bering Land Bridge.

10,000–8000 B.C.
Paleo-Indian-period American Indians are nomadic and hunt large animals for food. They also eat small game and wild plants. They leave no evidence of permanent dwellings in North Carolina.

8000–1000 B.C
Archaic-period American Indians move from big-game hunting to small-game hunting, fishing, and collecting wild plants. These people change their patterns of living because of the changing climate in North America.

ca. 8000 B.C.
Possibly this early, American Indians begin to use a site in present-day Wilson County for either permanent or seasonal habitation.

ca. 1200 B.C.
Southeastern Indians begin growing squash gourds.

1000 B.C.–A.D. 1550
Woodland-culture American Indians settle in permanent locations, usually beside streams, and practice a mixed subsistence lifestyle of hunting, gathering, and some agriculture. They create pottery and also develop elaborate funeral procedures, such as building mounds, to honor their dead.

ca. 200 B.C.
Southeastern Indians begin growing corn.

A.D. 700–1550
Mississippian-culture American Indians create large political units called chiefdoms, uniting people under stronger leadership than the Woodland cultures have. Towns become larger and last longer. People construct flat-topped, pyramidal mounds to serve as foundations for temples, mortuaries, chiefs’ houses, and other important buildings. Towns are usually situated beside streams and surrounded by defensive structures.

Many groups of American Indians live in the area now called North Carolina. These include the Chowanoke, Croatoan, Hatteras, Moratoc, Secotan, Weapemeoc, Machapunga, Pamlico, Coree, Neuse River, Tuscarora, Meherrin, Cherokee, Cape Fear, Catawba, Shakori, Sissipahaw, Sugeree, Waccamaw, Waxhaw, Woccon, Cheraw, Eno, Keyauwee, Occaneechi, Saponi, and Tutelo Indians.

A.D. 1000
Vikings from northern Europe, after establishing colonies on Iceland and Greenland, settle on the North American continent at Newfoundland. How far south and west they explore is unknown. After a few years, they abandon the Newfoundland colony.

A.D. 1492
Italian explorer Christopher Columbus leads expeditions for Spain to explore new trade routes in the western Atlantic Ocean. This results in European contact with native peoples in the Caribbean and South America, creating a continuing and devastating impact on their cultures.

1500-1525

1520
Pedro de Quexoia leads a Spanish expedition from Santo Domingo that explores the coastal region.

1524
Florentine explorer Giovanni da Verrazano explores for France along what is now the North Carolina coast.

1526-1550

1526
July: A Spanish colony directed by Luís Vasquez de Ayllón settles along the Cape Fear River. The colony has more than 500 men, women, and children, including African slaves. After more than 300 settlers die of starvation and disease, the survivors abandon the colony in October and return to Santo Domingo.

1540
A Spanish expedition led by Hernando de Soto explores the western portions of present-day North Carolina, looking for gold. De Soto and his men visit Indian communities and probably introduce smallpox and other deadly European diseases to the native populations.

1551-1575

1565
Spanish explorers establish Saint Augustine in present-day Florida. This is the first permanent European settlement in America.

1566
August 24: Spaniards looking for the Chesapeake Bay land on the coast of present-day Currituck County. Led by Pedro de Coronas, they explore for a few days without encountering any natives and eventually return to the West Indies.

1566–1567
Spanish explorer Juan Pardo, seeking gold, leads an expedition through what is now western North Carolina. Pardo visits the Catawba, Wateree, and Saxapahaw Indians.

1576-1599

1584
Sir Walter Raleigh sends explorers Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe to North America in search of potential colony sites. At Roanoke Island the explorers meet Native American chief Wingina and find the site excellent for settlement. They return to England with two Indians, Manteo and Wanchese, who learn English and are used to create publicity for Raleigh’s colony.

1585
The first English settlement in America is founded at Roanoke Island, and Ralph Lane is appointed governor. The Roanoke Indian people, some of whom initially welcome the colonists, begin to see the English as a drain on food and other resources.

1586
Ralph Lane leads an expedition into the interior of North Carolina in search of gold and other precious metals. Roanoke Indians warn inland tribes about the English, but Lane makes an alliance with the Chowanoke, who hope to use the English against their enemies the Tuscarora. Chief Wingina plots to get rid of the English settlers, and Lane has him killed.

Sir Francis Drake arrives at Roanoke Island and takes most of the colonists back to England, leaving an exploring party. Possibly Drake also leaves Africans and South American Indians that he captured from the Spanish. A relief ship arrives at Roanoke Island and, finding none of the colonists, leaves 15 men to hold the area for England.

1587
Raleigh sends explorer and artist John White to Roanoke Island as leader of a new group of settlers—the second English attempt to settle there. The colonists find bones of the 15 men left behind in 1586. White enlists the help of Manteo to build relationships with the Roanoke and Croatoan Indians. Most of the native peoples decide to let the colonists fend for themselves.

Governor White leaves Roanoke Island for England to acquire supplies for the colonists. With England and Spain at war, White cannot make an immediate return to the colony.

August 18: Virginia Dare becomes the first English child born in the New World.

1590
White finally returns to Roanoke Island to find the colony deserted, with little evidence of what happened to the colonists. He attempts to sail to Croatoan Island in hopes of finding some of them, but severe weather prevents him from reaching the island, and he never returns to the area. The Roanoke settlement is known afterward as the Lost Colony.

1600-1625

1606
King James I grants a charter to the Virginia Company of London for the region that includes present-day North Carolina.

1607
Jamestown, the first successful English colony in the New World, is established in Virginia. The colonists begin using tobacco as a cash crop for export to England.

1608
Jamestown leader John Smith sends expeditions to the Roanoke Island area to seek information about the Lost Colony. His men find nothing conclusive.

1611
Because of Spain’s rivalry with England, the Spanish government develops an alliance with the Tuscarora people to monitor the Jamestown colony.

1619
A Dutch ship arrives at Jamestown carrying 20 captive African natives. Apparently these Africans are treated as indentured servants and work in tobacco fields. Their introduction into Virginia sets the stage for African slavery to develop in English America.

1622
An expedition from Jamestown, led by John Pory, explores the Chowan River region.

1626-1650

1629
October 30: King Charles I grants land south of Virginia to Sir Robert Heath. Charles names the region Carolina, or Carolana, for himself.

1650
White settlers begin to move into Indian lands along the coastal sounds and rivers of North Carolina.

1650–1820
The area of present-day North Carolina serves as a haven for runaway slaves. Many flee to the Great Dismal Swamp, and some establish communities.

1651-1675

1651
September–October: Edward Bland travels from Virginia to explore Carolina and publishes a description of the region entitled The Discovery of New Brittaine.

1653
Virginia legislator Francis Yeardly hires fur trader Nathaniel Batts to explore the Albemarle Sound region as an area of possible settlement. Yeardly agrees to purchase land from the Roanoke Indians but dies before his settlement is established.

July: The Virginia Assembly grants lands along the Roanoke and Chowan Rivers to Roger Green, who has previously explored the region.

ca. 1655
Batts settles along the Chowan River in a building that serves as both his home and a trading post. He trades with local Native Americans and becomes the area’s first permanent white settler.

1661
March 1: King Kilcocanen of the Yeopim Indians grants land to George Durant in the earliest grant on record in the colony.

1663
King Charles II grants Carolina to eight supporters called Lords Proprietors. The region, which includes present-day North and South Carolina, stretches from Albemarle Sound in the north to present-day Florida in the south and west to the Pacific Ocean. The Proprietors divide this land into three counties: Albemarle, Clarendon, and Craven. Scottish merchant William Drummond is appointed governor of Albemarle County, the only one of the three counties with colonists.

Tobacco becomes a major export crop, although lack of a deepwater port prevents shipment of goods directly to England.

1663–1667
Colonists from Boston and Barbados attempt to settle in the Cape Fear region, but no settlements last long. Settlers continue to enter the colony from the north, but the Cape Fear region will not have permanent colonists until 1725.

1665
June 30: The Lords Proprietors’ charter is amended to include settlements in the Albemarle region previously considered a part of Virginia.

The Albemarle County Assembly, North Carolina’s earliest legislative assembly, meets for the first time.

1666
Peter Carteret, assistant governor of Albemarle County, grants a license to three New England men to hunt whales along Carolina’s northeast coast. This is the earliest known document indicating commercial whaling in the colony.

1667
August 27: A severe hurricane sweeps along the coast, destroying settlements in the Cape Fear and Albemarle regions.

1668
May 1: The Great Deed of Grant from the Lords Proprietors permits Albemarle settlers to hold lands under same terms as colonists in Virginia.

1669
Laws reducing the land tax and giving settlers five years’ immunity from suits over former debts encourage immigration.

In an attempt to tighten their control over unruly Albemarle colonists, the Lords Proprietors issue the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina, written by John Locke. This document increases the power of appointed officials, decreases the power of elected officials, and makes ownership of 50 acres of land a requirement for voting.

1670
The County of Albemarle is divided into Currituck, Pasquotank, Perquimans, and Chowan Precincts.

The Ashley River settlement (present-day Charleston, S.C.) is founded. Its excellent port makes it easy for people there to ship goods to England.

1672
George Fox, founder of the Society of Friends (Quakers), and missionary William Edmundson visit Albemarle and convert many colonists to Quakerism. Edmundson preaches the first sermon in the colony near the site of Hertford. Quakers will become the first religious body to obtain a foothold in Carolina and the only communion of importance before 1700.

1673
The Plantation Duty Act requires that all colonies trade directly with England or face heavy duties on goods. Albemarle colonists resist because their lack of an adequate harbor requires them to ship goods to northern colonies before they can be shipped to England. Albemarle governor John Jenkins refuses to enforce the act.

1675
Chowanoc Indians attack white settlements in Carolina. The uprising is quelled with the "loss of many men."

Factionalism emerges in the colony between newer residents, who favor Proprietary rule, and older settlers, who disagree with the way the Proprietors rule Albemarle. Two leaders of the Proprietary faction, Thomas Eastchurch and Thomas Miller, clash with Governor John Jenkins, a leader of anti-Proprietary sentiment. Jenkins jails Miller for “treasonable utterances” and attempts to dissolve the assembly. The majority of that body disagrees with Jenkins, however, and he is deposed and jailed.

1676-1699

1676
By March, Jenkins is released and resumes the post of governor. Eastchurch and Miller go to England to try to sway the Lords Proprietors in their favor. The Proprietors side with Eastchurch and appoint him governor. But Eastchurch delays his return to Carolina and, without authority to do so, appoints Miller as acting governor.

1677
Albemarle settlers market 2,000 hogsheads of tobacco, receiving £20,000 for the year’s crop.

Thomas Miller rules Albemarle harshly and raises tobacco taxes, becoming increasingly unpopular with the inhabitants.

December: John Culpeper and George Durant lead “Culpeper’s Rebellion” against Miller and take over the government for eighteen months, until the summer of 1679. Eastchurch threatens to retake control but dies in 1678 before he can reach Albemarle.

1679
The de facto government of Carolina sends Culpeper to England to negotiate with the Lords Proprietors. Miller beats him there, however, and Culpeper finds himself charged with treason and embezzlement. He agrees to face trial and, with the support of several Proprietors, is acquitted. The court agrees that there was no regular acting government in the colony at the time of the rebellion, and therefore the rebels did not act in a treasonous manner.

The Proprietors appoint John Harvey as the colony’s next governor. Harvey is well liked by the colonists but dies within a year.

October 10: Virginia bans the importation of Carolina tobacco on the grounds that "the importation of trash greatly injures the reputation of the Virginia manufacture." However, Carolina tobacco still goes to Virginia.

1680
John Jenkins is reappointed governor for one year. Seth Sothel holds the office next and becomes known as a corrupt and oppressive governor.

1684
February 27: Considering "the great damage that does arise in his Majesty’s service by harboring and encouraging pirates in Carolina," the Committee for Trade and Plantations sends a “Draught of the law now in force in Jamaica against Pirates and Privateers,” with instructions that it take effect as a statute of Carolina.

1686
The 1669 law exempting persons in the colony from prosecution for debts contracted abroad is repealed.

1688
Found guilty of 13 charges, including tyranny, extortion, and bribery, Governor Seth Sothel is removed from office by the Lords Proprietors.

1689
The Proprietors appoint Philip Ludwell governor of Albemarle and all of the colony “north and east of the Cape Feare.” This splits Carolina into two political entities—"North" Carolina and "South" Carolina.

1690s
Cherokee traders establish trade agreements with the English at Charles Towne (present-day Charleston, S.C.).

1691
Governor Ludwell is sent south to Charles Towne to govern all of Carolina. A deputy governor is appointed to manage the area known as North Carolina.

1696
Albemarle County establishes a new settlement south of Albemarle Sound on land taken from the Pamlico Indians. This settlement becomes Bath County.

1698
Henry White, a prominent Quaker in Perquimans Precinct, writes the first known poem in North Carolina, a long, untitled religious poem about the "fall of man" and his "restoration by Jesus Christ."

1700-1720

1700
The Chowanoc and Weapemeoc peoples have gradually abandoned their lands. Some have become slaves or indentured servants, and others have migrated south to join the Tuscarora. Only about 500 American Indians remain in the Albemarle region.

An escaped slave serves as an architect in the construction of a large Tuscarora Indian fort near the Neuse River.

Anglicans in England grow concerned that their church does not have a significant presence in North Carolina. The Reverend Daniel Brett becomes the first Anglican minister to serve in the colony. Brett’s disorderly behavior causes him to be called “the Monster of the Age.”

ca. 1700
The first public library is established at Bath with books sent from England by the Reverend Thomas Bray.

1701
Settlers begin moving west and south of the Albemarle area.

The Vestry Act divides North Carolina into Anglican parishes and requires all citizens to pay taxes for the support of Anglican priests. Non-Anglicans (also called Dissenters) object. The Lords Proprietors reject the act in part because it does not provide enough funding for the clergy.

December 15: Chowan Parish is organized, followed by Pasquotank and Perquimans Parishes.

1703
The Vestry Act passes, requiring members of the General Assembly to be members of the Church of England and to take an oath of allegiance to Queen Anne. Subsequent governors and assemblymen ignore these requirements.

1705
Parliament passes the Naval Stores Act in an effort to cut British dependence on foreign sources of tar, pitch, and other commodities badly needed for sailing ships. The act subsidizes the production of naval stores in the colonies by paying premiums of four pounds sterling per ton on tar and pitch, and six pounds per ton on hemp. North Carolina benefits substantially from this act, and the production of naval stores becomes one of the coastal area’s prime industries.

1705–1708
Charles Griffin, the first schoolteacher in North Carolina, operates a school in Pasquotank County. He later moves to Edenton and runs a school there for several years. The only other known school in operation during the Proprietary period is at Sarum, in Gates County.

1706
Bath becomes the first incorporated town in North Carolina.

1708–1711
Thomas Cary is appointed governor in 1708. Quakers protest his heavy-handed actions and send John Porter to England to petition for his removal. The Proprietors agree to remove Cary as governor, but through a complicated chain of events, he retains his office into 1711. In that year, Edward Hyde becomes deputy governor and de facto governor. A brief rebellion by Cary’s followers is put down with the aid of forces from Virginia. Cary is sent to England for trial but is ultimately released.

1709
Surveyor John Lawson, who began a thousand-mile journey through the colony at the end of 1700, publishes A New Voyage to Carolina. It describes the colony’s flora and fauna and its various groups of American Indians. Lawson also publishes a map of Carolina.

1710
Baron Christoph von Graffenried, a leader of Swiss and German Protestants, establishes a colony in Bath County. The town, called New Bern, is founded at the junction of the Trent and Neuse Rivers, displacing an American Indian town named Chattoka.

June 8: Tuscarora Indians on the Roanoke and Tar-Pamlico Rivers send a petition to the government of Pennsylvania protesting the seizure of their lands and enslavement of their people by Carolina settlers.

1711
Early September: Tuscarora capture surveyor John Lawson, New Bern founder Baron von Graffenried, and two African slaves. Lawson argues with the chief, Cor Tom, and is executed. The Indians spare von Graffenried and the slaves.

September 22: The Tuscarora War opens when Catechna Creek Tuscaroras begin attacking colonial settlements near New Bern and Bath. Tuscarora, Neuse, Bear River, Machapunga, and other Indians kill more than 130 whites.

October: Virginia refuses to send troops to help the settlers but allocates £1,000 for assistance.

1711–1715
In a series of uprisings, the Tuscarora attempt to drive away white settlement. The Tuscarora are upset over the practices of white traders, the capture and enslavement of Indians by whites, and the continuing encroachment of settlers onto Tuscarora hunting grounds.

1712
January: South Carolina sends assistance to her sister colony. John Barnwell, a member of the South Carolina Assembly, leads about 30 whites and some 500 “friendly” Indians, mostly Yamassee, to fight the Tuscarora in North Carolina. A battle takes place at Narhantes, a Tuscarora fort on the Neuse River. Barnwell’s troops are victorious but are surprised that many of the Tuscarora’s fiercest warriors are women, who do not surrender “until most of them are put to the sword.”

January 24: Edward Hyde is commissioned as governor. North Carolina and South Carolina officially become separate colonies.

April: Barnwell’s force, joined by 250 North Carolina militiamen, attacks the Tuscarora at Fort Hancock on Catechna Creek. After ten days of battle, the Tuscarora sign a truce, agreeing to stop the war.

Summer: The Tuscarora rise again to fight the Yamassee, who, unsatisfied with their plunder during earlier battles, remain in the area looting and pillaging. The Tuscarora also fight against the continued expansion of white settlement.

September 8: Governor Hyde dies of yellow fever, during an outbreak that kills many white settlers.

1713
March 20–23: Another force from South Carolina, consisting of 900 Indians and 33 whites, begins a three-day siege on the Tuscarora stronghold of Fort Neoheroka. Approximately 950 Tuscarora are killed or captured and sold into slavery, effectively defeating the tribe and opening the interior of the colony to white settlement. Although a few renegades fight on until 1715, most surviving Tuscarora migrate north to rejoin the Iroquois League as its sixth and smallest nation.

1715
A treaty with remaining North Carolina Tuscarora is signed. They are placed on a reservation along the Pamlico River. The Coree and Machapunga Indians, Tuscarora allies, settle in Hyde County near Lake Mattamuskeet. The land will be granted to them in 1727, and a reservation will be established.

An act of assembly declares the Church of England the established church of the colony and adopts plans to build roads, bridges, ferries, sawmills, and gristmills throughout the colony.

North Carolina adopts its first slave code, which tries to define the social, economic, and physical place of enslaved people.

The General Assembly enacts a law denying blacks and Indians the right to vote. The king will repeal the law in 1737. Some free African Americans will continue to vote until disfranchisement in 1835.

1717
The few Tuscarora remaining in the colony, led by Tom Blount, are granted land on the Roanoke River in Bertie County, near present-day Quitsna. The Tuscarora left their reservation on the Pamlico River because of raids by tribes from the south.

After British authorities drive them from the Bahamas, pirates transfer their operations to the Carolina coast. Most notable are Stede Bonnet and Edward Teach (Blackbeard). Teach locates at Bath, where he boasts that he can be invited into any home in North Carolina.

Blackbeard seizes English and colonial ships along the coast. When the king offers to pardon all pirates who surrender and promise to cease their piratical operations, Teach promptly takes the pardon. Within a few weeks, however, he returns to his old trade. Bonnet continues to operate off the mouth of the Cape Fear River.

January: England, France, and Holland form a triple alliance against Spain, and the resulting war leads to Spanish raids on English colonists in North Carolina.

1718
North Carolina’s first free school, endowed by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, opens at Bath.

November 22: In a battle between British sailors and pirates near Ocracoke Inlet, Lieutenant Robert Maynard kills Blackbeard.

December 10: Stede Bonnet and 29 fellow pirates, captured earlier off the North Carolina coast, are hanged at Charlestown, S.C.

1720
Exports of pitch and tar to Great Britain by way of New England are reported at 6,000 barrels.

1721-1740

1722
Charles Eden, governor since 1714, dies. The Town on Queen Anne’s Creek is incorporated and renamed Edenton in his memory.

1723
Beaufort Town is incorporated.

South Carolina planters settle along the Lower Cape Fear River and begin developing the rice and naval stores industries. They bring large numbers of enslaved people and a large, plantation-style slave system.

1725
Brunswick Town is founded. It will be incorporated in 1745.

Roger Moore builds Orton Plantation House on the Lower Cape Fear.

1726–1739
The Cheraw (Saura) Indians incorporate with the Catawba living near present-day Charlotte.

1727
The first Baptist congregation in North Carolina forms as Shiloh Church, in Chowan Precinct.

1728
Surveyors begin determining where the North Carolina–Virginia line will lie.

The “cotton weevil” is reported.

1729
North Carolina becomes a royal colony when King George II purchases shares from seven of the eight Lords Proprietors. Only Earl Granville refuses to sell.

Between 1743 and 1746, an area equaling one-eighth of the original land grant is surveyed and marked off as the Granville District, in order to differentiate between areas of royal and Proprietary control. The district consists of a 60-mile-wide strip along North Carolina’s border with Virginia and contains some of the most densely settled areas in the colony.

Small quantities of iron are shipped to England.

1730
North Carolina’s population numbers about 35,000, but a new wave of immigration is beginning.

Virginia ends the ban on importation of North Carolina tobacco.

Cherokee leaders visit London and confer with the king. They pledge friendship to the English and agree to return runaway slaves and to trade exclusively with the British.

early 1730s
Welsh immigrants living in Pennsylvania come to North Carolina and settle mainly along the Northeast Cape Fear River (in present-day Pender County), in an area that becomes known as the Welsh Tract.

1731
Brunswick flourishes, and 42 vessels carrying cargo sail from the port in one year.

1732
Highland Scots begin immigrating to North Carolina and settling in the Cape Fear backcountry. Thousands will eventually come to this area.

1734
Saint Thomas Episcopal Church, now the oldest church building in the state, is constructed in Bath.

The first tobacco market in North Carolina opens in Bellair, Craven County.

1735
Scots-Irish immigrants begin coming to North Carolina in large numbers, settling mainly in the Piedmont. Most are second-generation colonists moving south down the Great Wagon Road from Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia, but a few come directly from Northern Ireland.

Surveyors begin defining the North Carolina–South Carolina border.

1736
The North Carolina colony establishes an Indian Trade Commission to regulate trade with native peoples.

1738–1739
Mail is first carried regularly through North Carolina on the post road that runs from Boston to Charlestown, S.C.

A smallpox epidemic decimates the Indian population in North Carolina, especially in the eastern part of the colony. The epidemic decreases the number of Cherokee by 50 percent.

1739
The Reverend George Whitefield, a Methodist missionary and one of the earliest circuit-riding preachers, makes his first foray into North Carolina.

1740
England calls on the colonies to support a war against the Spanish in South America. North Carolina sends four companies of 100 men each. They participate in a failed attack on a Spanish fort at Cartagena, Colombia. Many are killed or die of disease, and only 25 of the 400 men return to the colony. The Spanish attack shipping off the North Carolina coast for the next eight years.

Waxhaw Indians, decimated by smallpox, abandon their lands in present-day Union County and join the Catawba. The vacated lands are taken up by German, English, Scottish, and Welsh immigrants.

Aaron Moses witnesses a will, becoming the first Jewish person on record in North Carolina.

1741-1760

1741
The privilege of performing marriage ceremonies is restricted to clergy of the Anglican Church and, in lieu of such, any lawful magistrates.

A law is enacted requiring newly freed slaves to leave North Carolina within six months.

1743
Physician and naturalist John Brickell lists the colony’s religious groups, including Quakers, Presbyterians, Roman Catholics, Anabaptists, and “many Sectaries.”

1745
Assembly delegates choose New Bern as the colonial capital and vote for equal representation among the counties. Delegates from the Albemarle region, absent because of bad weather, protest these decisions. Many people in their districts refuse to pay taxes for several years.

April 20: The first liquor control law adopted by the colonial assembly levies a fine on any tavern keeper who allows a person “to get drunk in his home on the Sabbath.”

1747
A new wave of Highlanders begins arriving in North Carolina after the failed revolt in Scotland in 1746. Forced from their Scottish homelands, these immigrants settle mainly in the Cape Fear Valley.

1747–1748
During King George’s War, the Spanish attack Beaufort and Brunswick. In the so-called Spanish Alarm, they sack settlements before local militia can drive them away.

1748
People of German descent begin migrating in large numbers from Pennsylvania and resettle throughout the western Piedmont.

1749
James Davis installs North Carolina’s first printing press in New Bern. His first publications are government documents.

1750–1751
Squire Boone settles with his family, including his son Daniel, near present-day Mocksville.

1750s
Armed conflicts arise between the Cherokee and colonists, who continue to expand areas of settlement further into the western part of the colony.

1751
James Davis begins publishing the North Carolina Gazette, the colony’s first newspaper, in New Bern. He also prints North Carolina’s first book, A Collection of All the Public Acts of Assembly, of the Province of North Carolina, Now in Force and Use.

The first monthly meeting of Friends (Quakers) in central North Carolina begins in Alamance County.

1752
Orange County is established in an area of heavy immigration. It encompasses all or parts of the present-day counties of Alamance, Caswell, Chatham, Durham, Guilford, Orange, Person, Randolph, Rockingham, and Wake. Its county seat, Hillsborough, will become known as the “capital of the backwoods.”

1753
Moravians from Pennsylvania purchase a 100,000-acre tract in present-day Forsyth County from Earl Granville. They name the area Wachovia, which means “peaceful valley.” They establish the settlement of Bethabara in November.

The colony reports exports of pitch, tar, and turpentine at 84,012 barrels.

1754–1763
The French and Indian War is fought between England and France all along the frontier of North America. North Carolina troops serve both in North Carolina and in other colonies.

1755
Salisbury is founded as the county seat of Rowan County, created from Anson County in 1753 to accommodate increasing numbers of German and Scots-Irish settlers in the area.

The Reverend Shubal Stearns leads a group of 15 Separate Baptists from Connecticut to Orange County and establishes Sandy Creek Baptist Church, the “mother of Southern Baptist churches.”

The Indian population in eastern North Carolina is estimated at around 356. Most of these are Tuscarora who have not moved north.

The colonial governor approves a proposal to establish an Indian academy in present-day Sampson County.

October 14: The assembly awards a contract for the first postal service to James Davis, public printer. Davis is authorized to “forward public dispatches to all parts of the province.”

1756
Fort Dobbs, built near Statesville to house settlers during times of war, is completed. The Moravians build a fort around the village of Bethabara.

1758
North Carolina militia and Cherokee assist the British military in campaigns against the French and Shawnee Indians. The Cherokee decide to change sides after receiving ill treatment by the English, and they return home, where they eventually attack North Carolina colonists.

The Moravians establish Bethania in present-day Forsyth County.

1759
The French and Indian War intensifies as the Cherokee raid the western Piedmont. Refugees crowd into the fort at Bethabara. Typhus kills many refugees and Moravians there.

A second smallpox epidemic devastates the Catawba tribe, reducing the population by half.

1760
An act of assembly permits North Carolinians serving against Indian allies of the French to enslave captives.

February: Cherokee attack Fort Dobbs and white settlements near Bethabara and along the Yadkin and Dan Rivers.

June: An army of British regulars and American militia under Colonel Archibald Montgomerie destroys Cherokee villages and saves the Fort Prince George garrison in South Carolina but is defeated by the Cherokee at Echoe.

August: Cherokee capture Fort Loudoun in Tennessee and massacre the garrison.

1761-1780

1761
June: An army of British regulars, American militia, and Catawba and Chickasaw Indians under Colonel James Grant defeats the Cherokee and destroys 15 villages, ending Cherokee resistance.

December: The Cherokee sign a treaty ending their war with the American colonists.

1763
King George III issues a proclamation that demarcates the western edge of settlement. This “proclamation line” through western North Carolina is meant to separate the Native Americans and the colonists.

A group of white men from Edgecombe, Granville, and Northampton Counties petitions the General Assembly to repeal a 1723 law that heavily taxes free African Americans upon marriage. The petitioners state that the tax leaves blacks and mixed-race people “greatly impoverished and many of them rendered unable to support themselves and families with the common necessaries of life.”

February: The Treaty of Paris ends the Seven Years’ War in Europe and the French and Indian War in North America.

1765
The New Bern Academy, chartered by the assembly, opens. The academy receives support from the church and a provisional tax: in return for the tax revenue, the school will educate 10 poor children without charge. The academy will operate until it is incorporated into the New Bern public school system in the 1920s. It is the oldest public-supported educational institution in North Carolina.

Parliament passes the Stamp Act. It requires that paper items such as licenses, playing cards, wallpaper, newspapers, pamphlets, and almanacs be stamped with a tax. Colonial assemblies protest.

October: Two public protests over the Stamp Act take place in Wilmington. After November 1, with no stamped paper available, ships cannot clear North Carolina, and newspapers cease publication. Governor Tryon reports that “all Civil Government is now at a stand.”

1766
The Moravians establish Salem in present-day Forsyth County.

The North Carolina Assembly appropriates £5,000 for the construction of a governor’s mansion in New Bern. Previously, the seat of government has not been permanent but has moved up and down the coast with the governor. The assembly, controlled by wealthy coastal landowners, chooses New Bern over Hillsborough, the site preferred by residents of the backcountry.

February: North Carolina “Sons of Liberty” offer armed resistance to the Stamp Act at Brunswick. They coerce officials to reopen the port.

March: The Stamp Act is repealed.

1767
The Reverend David Caldwell opens a school, later known as Caldwell’s Log College, in present-day Guilford County. The school, which serves as an academy, a junior college, and a theological seminary, becomes the most important one in the colony. It is coeducational and eventually instructs approximately 50 to 60 students per year.

Construction of the governor’s residence at New Bern begins under the direction of Governor William Tryon. It becomes known as Tryon’s Palace because of its extravagance.

Chowan County Courthouse, now the oldest standing courthouse in the state, is constructed in Edenton.

Parliament passes the Townshend Act, which imposes duties on imported glass, paper, lead, pigments, and tea. Calls to boycott these goods circulate throughout the colonies.

March 15: Andrew Jackson, the future seventh president of the United States, is born in or near Union County. The precise place of his birth is in dispute.

1768
Farmers in Orange County organize the Regulator movement, which spreads to surrounding counties. The movement protests excessive taxation and abuses by public officials. Edmund Fanning is considered the most corrupt official. Herman Husband and William Butler lead the protest. Over the next two years, the Regulator movement gains strength in the Piedmont.

1769
A committee of the assembly votes to join other colonies in a “nonimportation association” and to vow that after January 1770, no “slaves, wine, nor goods of British manufacture” will come into the colony.

1770
Tryon’s Palace is completed in New Bern.

Regulators storm the Hillsborough Superior Court and assault several public officials, including Edmund Fanning. The assembly passes reform measures designed to address some of the Regulators’ concerns. It also passes the Johnston Riot Act, authorizing the governor to put down the Regulators by military force if necessary.

Iron is being mined and ironworks are established on Troublesome Creek, in present-day Rockingham County.

1771
The assembly charters Queen’s College in Charlotte as the colony’s first full-fledged college. A bill to collect taxes to support the college passes, and classes begin before the colony learns that King George III refuses to approve the charter. The Crown does not approve of the college because most of the pupils will be Presbyterians or Dissenters of some sort rather than members of the Church of England.

May 16: North Carolina militiamen under the command of Governor Tryon defeat the Regulators at the Battle of Alamance in Orange County, ending the Regulator movement.

1772
Joseph Pilmoor preaches the first Methodist sermon in the colony at Currituck Courthouse.

1773
Approximately 4,000 Highland Scots arrive to settle along the Cape Fear River, bringing the total Scottish population in the colony to 20,000.

September 25: Frontiersman Daniel Boone leaves his Yadkin River home to begin exploring Kentucky.

December 16: The Boston Tea Party takes place in Massachusetts.

1774
Scottish heroine Flora MacDonald, who helped Prince Charles Edward Stuart (Bonnie Prince Charlie) escape from British forces in 1746, immigrates to North Carolina. In accord with her forced oath to the Crown, she remains a staunch Loyalist during the Revolutionary War. Her husband is captured by Patriots early in the war, and she returns to Scotland in 1779.

August: The First Provincial Congress meets in New Bern. It adopts a resolution criticizing the acts and policies of the British government. In addition, the members adopt a nonimportation and nonexportation agreement and elect delegates to the First Continental Congress.

August 4: Rowan County freeholders adopt resolutions opposing Crown taxes and duties, favoring restrictions on imports from Great Britain, and objecting to the “African trade.”

September–October: The First Continental Congress issues a “Declaration of Rights and Grievances” against Great Britain.

October 25: The Edenton Tea Party takes place at the home of Mrs. Elizabeth King. The 51 women in attendance resolve to support American independence.

1775
North Carolina has a population estimated at 250,000, making it the fourth most populous mainland British colony. Between 10 and 30 percent of the backcountry population is of German descent, and most other white settlers in the region are Scots-Irish. Eastern North Carolina is populated mostly by English colonists and enslaved African Americans.

The Treaty of Sycamore Shoals (now Elizabethton, Tenn.), between Richard Henderson of the Transylvania Company and the Cherokee people, is signed. It opens for settlement the area from the Ohio River south to the Watauga settlement. The Shawnee people, who inhabit the lands, refuse to accept the terms of the treaty.

April 8: Royal governor Josiah Martin dissolves the last North Carolina colonial assembly.

April 19: The first battles of the American Revolution take place at Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts.

May 24: Governor Martin goes from the capital at New Bern to Fort Johnson on the Cape Fear River for safety.

May 31: A committee of citizens from Mecklenburg County meets at the courthouse in Charlotte and adopts the Mecklenburg Declaration. The declaration protests acts of the British government, voids all British authority in the colony until abuses are corrected, and calls for the election of military officers by the people.

June 19: Patriots burn Fort Johnson on the Cape Fear, and Governor Martin escapes to a British warship.

August 24: The North Carolina Provincial Congress declares that the people of the colony will pay their due proportion of the expenses of training a Continental army. The delegates appoint a committee to devise a system of government for the province.

November–December: Virginia’s royal governor, the earl of Dunmore, calls upon slaves, indentured servants, and other Loyalists to assist in suppressing the rebellion of American colonists. Hundreds of African Americans from Virginia and North Carolina join his Royal Ethiopian Regiment. At the Battle of Great Bridge, Virginia and North Carolina colonials defeat Dunmore’s forces.

ca. 1775
The first German Baptist (Dunker) congregation in the state forms near Muddy Creek in present-day Forsyth County.

1775–1776
The Coharie, Catawba, and ancestors of the Lumbee join the Patriot cause; the Cherokee decide to support the British.

1776
Washington, N.C., becomes the first town in the United States named for George Washington. Laid out in 1771, it was originally called Forks of the Tar River. It will be incorporated in 1782.

The Yearly Meeting of Friends (Quakers) denounces slavery and appoints a committee to aid Friends in emancipating their slaves. Forty slaves are freed, but the courts declare them still enslaved and resell them.

The British recruit enslaved and free African Americans along the North Carolina coast to form the Black Pioneers and Guides, a regiment of guides and laborers. This unit serves throughout the Revolutionary War.

February 27: North Carolina Patriots defeat North Carolina Highland Scots Loyalists at the Battle of Moores Creek Bridge. The victory emboldens the Patriots and prevents the Loyalists from reaching Wilmington, the site of a planned rendezvous with a British naval expedition.

April 12: In the Halifax Resolves, the North Carolina Provincial Congress, meeting at Halifax, authorizes North Carolina delegates to attend the Continental Congress to “concur in independency.”

April 24: The Provincial Congress orders that a saltworks be established in Carteret County for use in the cause of independence.

May–June: Cherokee village councils discuss going to war against the American colonists. The Cherokee decide to fight, knowing that the consequences are enormous. However, the Cherokee are fighting to protect the existence of their society, so they ignore the overwhelming odds against them.

June: White settlements in Watauga and South Carolina are raided by the Cherokee, allies of the British, who have promised to protect the Indians from encroachments by colonial borders.

July 29–November: General Griffith Rutherford with 2,400 men invades Cherokee country, destroying 32 towns and villages. Rutherford is joined by Colonel Andrew Williamson with South Carolina troops and Colonel William Christian with Virginians. This expedition breaks the power of the Cherokee and forces them to sue for peace.

August 2: North Carolina’s Continental Congress representatives, Joseph Hewes, William Hooper, and John Penn, sign the Declaration of Independence.

December 18: The Provincial Congress adopts the first North Carolina state constitution and elects Richard Caswell as governor.

1776–1792
Halifax, Hillsborough, Fayetteville, Smithfield, and Tarboro serve at various times as the state’s capital.

1777
North Carolina recognizes settlements in what is now Tennessee as Washington County, and in 1783 Davidson County, including present-day Nashville, is formed in the Cumberland River valley.

The first paper mill in the state is built in Hillsborough to help reduce the paper shortage brought on by the war.

April: An exodus of British sympathizers (mostly Highland Scots) to England, Scotland, Canada, Nova Scotia, Florida, and the West Indies follows the enactment of punitive laws by the assembly.

June–September: Some 90 men from Martin, Bertie, and Tyrrell Counties form a conspiracy under the leadership of John Lewelling to resist North Carolina’s militia draft and loyalty oath. The conspirators, some of them Loyalists, fear that an independent state would lead to increased secularization of government, the weakening of the Anglican Church, and increased influences from overseas French-Catholic powers. The conspiracy is broken when Lewelling’s plans to start a slave rebellion become known.

July 20: By the Treaty of Long Island of Holston, the Cherokee cede territory east of the Blue Ridge and along the Watauga, Nolichucky, Upper Holston, and New Rivers (the area east of present-day Kingsport and Greenville, Tenn.).

October 4: Brigadier General Francis Nash is mortally wounded while leading the North Carolina Brigade at the Battle of Germantown, Pa.

1778
A list of blacks in the Continental army shows that 58 African Americans served in the North Carolina Brigade. According to some historians, at times as much as one-tenth of George Washington’s Continental army consisted of African American men.

April 24: North Carolina ratifies the Articles of Confederation.

June 29: North Carolina Continentals in General Washington’s American army fight in the Battle of Monmouth, N.J.

November 15: The Continental Congress adopts the Article of Confederation, uniting the colonies in the war against Great Britain and toward a unified government.

December: North Carolina Continentals begin a harsh winter encampment as part of General George Washington’s army at Valley Forge, Pa. They remain there until spring.

December: African American John Chavis from Halifax County joins the Fifth Virginia Regiment of the Continental army. Chavis remains in the army for three years and will go on to become a prominent teacher and minister. In 1832 Chavis will write to Senator Willie P. Mangum: “Tell them if I am Black I am free born American & a revolutionary soldier & therefore ought not to be thrown out of the scale of notice.”

1779
November: North Carolina Continentals are transferred from Washington’s army to General Benjamin Lincoln’s American army at Charlestown, S.C. They arrive there in March 1780.

1780
May 12: The British capture Charlestown, S.C., and a large American army. Among those who surrender are 815 Continental troops and 600 militia from North Carolina. Loyalists across the backcountry are emboldened as the British army approaches North Carolina, and significant Loyalist groups form in Anson, Rowan, Tryon, and Surry counties. Local Patriot forces defeat most of them, but 800 men under the command of Samuel Bryan reach the main British army.

June 20: In the Battle of Ramseur’s Mill, near present-day Lincolnton, North Carolina Patriots defeat North Carolina Loyalists who are attempting to join British commander Lord Cornwallis’s approaching army.

July: North Carolina partisans defeat Loyalists in three small battles in the western Piedmont of North and South Carolina.

August 16: The new American commander of the South, General Horatio Gates, and his army, including 1,200 North Carolina militia, are surprised and defeated at the Battle of Camden, S.C. North Carolina general Griffith Rutherford is captured, and 400 North Carolinians are killed.

September: The town of Charlotte defends itself against approaching British troops. The ferocity of resistance causes Cornwallis to call the area a “hornet’s nest.”

October 7: Americans defeat Loyalists at the Battle of Kings Mountain, just south of the North Carolina–South Carolina border. This battle ends Cornwallis’s first invasion of North Carolina.

December 2: General Nathanael Greene takes command of the American army at Charlotte.

1780–1783
North Carolina enacts legislation that provides lands in present-day Tennessee to Revolutionary War veterans.

1780–1816
Bishop Francis Asbury preaches Methodism throughout the state.

1781-1799

1781
January–February: After a futile chase across North Carolina, known as the Race to the Dan, Cornwallis does not catch the American army led by Greene. Cornwallis occupies Hillsborough, hoping that local Loyalists will join him, but few do.

January–November: British troops occupy Wilmington. From there British and Loyalists conduct raids into the countryside. Cornelius Harnett, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, is captured, and New Bern is raided.

January 17: A British force under Colonel Banastre Tarleton attacks Americans under General Daniel Morgan at Cowpens, S.C., but is badly defeated.

February 25: En route to join Cornwallis’s army near Burlington, a force of some 400 Loyalists led by Colonel John Pyle is massacred by Patriots. This event becomes known as Pyle’s Hacking Match.

March 15: The largest armed conflict in North Carolina during the war, the Battle of Guilford Courthouse, results in a costly narrow victory for Cornwallis’s British troops. Cornwallis retreats to Cross Creek (present-day Fayetteville) and then to Wilmington. His army marches north and occupies Halifax briefly before moving into Virginia.

May–June: A bloody civil war between Loyalists and Whigs erupts in eastern and central North Carolina. It becomes known as the Tory War. Loyalist successes during the confrontations end with the British evacuation of Wilmington later in the year.

September 12: Loyalist troops under the leadership of David Fanning capture Governor Thomas Burke at Hillsborough and set out to take him to Wilmington.

September 13: Whig forces attack Fanning’s army in an attempt to free Governor Burke and other prisoners. The Battle of Lindley’s Mill, which results from this attack, is one of the largest military engagements in North Carolina during the war. Fanning is injured, but his column continues. Burke is given over to the British, who imprison him at Charlestown, S.C.

October: North Carolina militia under General Rutherford sweep through the Cape Fear region clearing out Tory opposition. As they reach Wilmington, the British abandon the city.

October 19: Cornwallis surrenders a large British force at Yorktown, Va., effectively ending large-scale hostilities. North Carolina Loyalists are among those who surrender.

1782
May: David Fanning escapes from North Carolina, marking the end of the Tory War in the state.

November: The British evacuate Charlestown. With them go more than 800 North Carolina Loyalist soldiers (some will later be joined by their families) and perhaps as many as 5,000 African Americans, many of them runaway slaves from North and South Carolina. Some of the Loyalists go to England, but most disperse to other British possessions, including Florida, Bermuda, Jamaica, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Ontario.

1783
Despite the Indian treaty of 1777 fixing the boundary at the foot of the Blue Ridge, the assembly declares lands open for settlement as far west as the Pigeon River.

The North Carolina General Assembly passes the Act of Pardon and Oblivion, offering amnesty to some North Carolinians who remained loyal to Britain during the Revolution. Many notable Loyalists, such as David Fanning, do not receive amnesty. The state continues to sell confiscated Loyalist property until 1790.

Cross Creek, which merged with Campbellton in 1778, is renamed Fayetteville in honor of the marquis de Lafayette, a French general who helped Americans win the war.

June 18: Governor Alexander Martin proclaims July 4 “a day of Solemn Thanksgiving to Almighty God.” This is the earliest known proclamation of the observance of July 4 as Independence Day.

September 3: Great Britain and the United States sign a treaty that officially ends the American Revolution and recognizes the independence of the former British colonies.

1784
Methodist circuit riders, or traveling preachers, cover the North Carolina backcountry. Some Methodists are “Republican Methodists” who denounce slavery, and many circuit riders bar slaveholders from communion.

1785
The State of Franklin secedes from western North Carolina, but Congress refuses to recognize it. Statehood by Franklin collapses.

April 19: The first North Carolina conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church takes place in Louisburg.

November 28: By the Treaty of Hopewell, S.C., the Cherokee cede additional territory reaching to a line east of present-day Marshall, Asheville, and Henderson. They also cede a strip along the south bank of the Cumberland River in present-day middle Tennessee. The treaty delineates the boundaries of Cherokee territory.

December 29: The General Assembly enacts a law requiring free and enslaved African Americans to wear badges in the towns of Edenton, Fayetteville, Washington, and Wilmington. A slave must wear a leaden or pewter badge in a conspicuous place. A free black must wear a cloth badge on his or her left shoulder with the word free in capital letters.

1786–1787
In Bayard v. Singleton, Elizabeth Bayard attempts to recover property confiscated because her father was a Loyalist. Spyers Singleton has purchased the property from the state. Judges declare the Confiscation Act, passed by the General Assembly during the American Revolution, unconstitutional. The decision is the first in the United States to declare an act passed by a legislature as contrary to a written constitution.

1787
The banjo, an African musical instrument, is first mentioned in a journal by a visitor to Tarboro.

After a period of study in Salisbury, Andrew Jackson, future seventh president of the United States, is admitted to the bar in Rowan County.

September 17: William Blount, Richard Dobbs Spaight, and Hugh Williamson sign the United States Constitution for North Carolina.

1788
North Carolina lawyers Andrew Jackson and Colonel Waightstill Avery engage in a duel in Jonesboro, now in Tennessee. Neither man is injured, and they leave the field as friends.

The assembly encourages ironworks by offering 3,000 acres of vacant land for each set of works placed in operation.

August 2: Delegates to the constitutional convention at Hillsborough, unsatisfied with the document’s lack of a bill of rights to ensure personal freedoms, protest by choosing to neither ratify nor reject the United States Constitution.

August 15: The assembly orders the state capital located within 10 miles of Isaac Hunter’s plantation in Wake County.

August 26: An iron mine and forge operate in Lincoln County.

November: The Synod of the Carolinas of the Presbyterian Church forms at Centre Church in Iredell County.

1789
John Wallace and John Gray Blount establish a “lightering” complex at Ocracoke Inlet. It includes warehouses, docks, a gristmill, a chandlery, and a lighthouse—the first on the coast. The area will become known as Shell Castle Island and Harbor.

November 21: The convention at Fayetteville votes to accept the United States Constitution, which now contains the Bill of Rights, making North Carolina the 12th state to ratify.

December 11: The state’s first university, called for under the 1776 constitution, is chartered.

December 22: North Carolina’s western lands are ceded to the United States, forming what will become the state of Tennessee.

1790
The federal government takes the first census of the United States.

North Carolina Census Data
Total 393,751
Free white persons 288,204
All other free persons 4,975
Slaves 100,572

Henry Evans, a free black shoemaker and Methodist minister, is credited with starting the Methodist church in Fayetteville.

The Dismal Swamp Canal, designed to connect the Chesapeake Bay with the Albemarle Sound, is chartered.

February 10: President George Washington appoints North Carolinian James Iredell a justice of the United States Supreme Court.

1791
Wilmington exports about 3,000 hogsheads of flaxseed. Flax and hemp are important in the economy of backcountry farms.

April–June: George Washington visits several North Carolina towns on his southern tour.

July 2: The Cherokee sign the Treaty of Holston, by which they cede a 100-mile tract of land in exchange for goods and an annuity of $1,000.

1792
Joel Lane sells 1,000 acres of land on his Wake County plantation as the site of North Carolina’s new capital. The city is named Raleigh after Sir Walter Raleigh.

Approximately 1,200 African Americans living in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, many formerly from the Carolinas, resettle in Sierra Leone, Africa. Former North Carolina slave Thomas Peters leads the party. Peters left his Wilmington-area plantation in 1776 to join the Black Pioneers and eventually attained the rank of sergeant in the regiment.

1793
Eli Whitney invents the first commercially successful cotton gin near Savannah, Ga. The cotton gin eventually changes the agricultural face of North Carolina by making cotton a profitable cash crop.

Work begins on the Dismal Swamp Canal, which will link South Mills in Camden County with waterways in Virginia. Constructed with slave labor, the canal is the oldest man-made waterway in the United States.

April 22: President George Washington issues a proclamation of neutrality to keep the United States out of war between France and Great Britain, establishing a policy of noninterference in European conflicts.

1794
August: A group of dissenters from the Methodist Episcopal Church, led by North Carolinian James O’Kelly, forms the southern Christian Church in Surry County, Va. The denomination will evolve into the present-day United Church of Christ.

December 30: The General Assembly convenes for the first time at the new State House in Raleigh.

1795
January 15: The University of North Carolina opens its doors in Chapel Hill. It is the first state university in the nation to open for students.

November 2: James Knox Polk, future 11th president of the United States, is born in Pineville.

ca. 1795
John Fulenwider founds the High Shoals Ironworks in present-day Gaston County.

1796
The Bald Head Lighthouse, the state’s first permanent lighthouse, is erected in Brunswick County. In 1817 it will be replaced by the current structure, which will operate until 1935.

1797
The Buncombe County Courthouse and the village around it are renamed Asheville in honor of Governor Samuel Ashe.

Because of an aversion to increased taxation, public lotteries, authorized by the assembly, are a popular way of raising funds for academies, churches, bridges, canals, and other public works. Between 1797 and 1825, the state lotteries raise $150,000 for educational purposes alone.

North Carolina–born William Blount, a United States senator from Tennessee, becomes the only member of Congress to be impeached by the House. He is impeached for conspiring with the British to launch a military expedition of frontiersmen and Indians to help Great Britain take New Orleans, La., and Florida away from Spain. The Senate expels Blount and later dismisses the impeachment charges.

1798
The General Assembly takes a stand against the Alien and Sedition Acts, which allow the federal government to jail or deport individuals who speak out against the president or Congress.

October 2: By the Treaty of Tellico, the Cherokee cede a triangular area with its points near Indian Gap, east of present-day Brevard, and southeast of Asheville.

1799
Gold is discovered on John Reed’s farm in Cabarrus County, starting North Carolina’s gold rush. North Carolina becomes the primary supplier of gold for the United States until 1849.

Joseph Rice kills the last bison, or buffalo, seen in the Asheville area.

May 20–June 28: The North Carolina–Tennessee boundary is first surveyed.

December: North Carolinian Alfred Moore is appointed a justice of the United States Supreme Court.

December 16: The North Carolina Medical Society holds its first meeting in Raleigh. The organization will continue until 1804.

1800-1820

1800 North Carolina Census Data

Thomas Jefferson is elected president of the United States.

1802 A planned slave rebellion alarms white residents of northeastern North Carolina. Eleven suspected organizers hang.

After a meeting at Bell’s Meeting House in Randolph County, religious revivals sweep the state, peaking in 1804.

The Meigs-Freeman Line is surveyed in western North Carolina. It will remain the boundary between areas of white settlement and areas of Cherokee control until 1819.

Salem Female Academy is established by the Moravian Church in Salem.

September 6: Richard Dobbs Spaight, who served three terms as governor between 1792 and 1795 and was a congressional representative from 1798 through 1801, dies from a wound received in a duel with his political opponent in the 1802 senatorial election, John Stanly.

1803
War breaks out between Great Britain and France. President Thomas Jefferson doubles the size of the United States with the Louisiana Purchase from France.

May 2: John G. Arends of Lincoln County becomes the first president of the North Carolina Lutheran Synod.

1804
The Bank of Cape Fear and the Bank of New Bern are chartered. They are the first banks in the state.

Winifred Marshall Gales publishes Matilda Berkely; or, Family Anecdotes, a story of upper-class life in England and Russia. It is the first novel written by a resident of North Carolina.

1807
Federal law ends the legal importation of enslaved Africans. African people are still smuggled into the country, and internal slave trading continues until abolition.

Rather than declare war because of British outrages on American shipping, the United States passes the Embargo Act, the first in a series of economic sanctions focused primarily against Great Britain.

1808
John Chavis, a freeborn African American, opens a school in Raleigh. Chavis, who fought in the Revolutionary War, teaches white children by day and black pupils at night.

The Cherokee establish a law code and the “Light Horse Guards” to maintain law and order.

December 29: Andrew Johnson, future 17th president of the United States, is born in Raleigh.

1809
North Carolina native Dolley Madison becomes first lady when James Madison is inaugurated as the fourth United States president. She becomes one of the most popular first ladies in the nation’s history.

The Cherokee abolish clan revenge as a mechanism for social control.

James Gay of Iredell County publishes A Collection of Various Pieces of Poetry, Chiefly Patriotic, the first poetry book written in North Carolina.

The Bank of North Carolina is chartered.

1811
November 11: The Battle of Tippecanoe, fought in Ohio between the United States Army and Shawnee Indians, ends in the defeat of the American Indians and the loss of their land.

December 16: The people of western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee experience the “shaken, trembling, and sounds” of the New Madrid, Mo., earthquake.

1812
Secretary of State William Hill establishes the North Carolina State Library. James F. Taylor will become the first official state librarian in 1843.

Cherokee Indians fight on the side of the Americans to put down Shawnee chief Tecumseh’s efforts to drive away white settlers.

June 18: The United States declares war on Great Britain. The War of 1812 lasts until 1815. Onslow County native Otway Burns, captain of the Snap Dragon, is America’s most successful privateer during the conflict, capturing more than a million dollars worth of British shipping.

1813
The state’s first cotton mill, owned by Michael Schenck, opens in Lincoln County.

The Presbyterian Synod of North Carolina forms at Alamance Church in present-day Guilford County.

July 12–16: A British fleet occupies Portsmouth and Ocracoke as part of the hostilities during the War of 1812.

1814
March 27: Cherokee Indians aid General Andrew Jackson in defeating the Creek Indians in the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in Alabama. After the battle, Jackson tells the Cherokee chief Junaluska: “As long as the sun shines and the grass grows there shall be friendship between us, and the feet of the Cherokee shall be toward the East.” As president, Jackson later plays a major role in the effort to move the Cherokee west.

August 24: The British army burns Washington, D.C. Before the soldiers arrive, first lady Dolley Madison packs papers, furnishings, and Gilbert Stuart’s portrait of George Washington for transport, ensuring that valuable items remain safe.

1815
December 24: The United States and Great Britain sign a peace treaty ending the War of 1812. News of peace does not arrive in time to prevent a decisive defeat of the British army at New Orleans, La., on January 8, 1816.

1815–1816
Archibald Murphey reports to the General Assembly on internal improvements and education in North Carolina.

1816
The Fayetteville Observer, the oldest continuously published newspaper in the state, is founded. It operates as a weekly until 1896, when it becomes a daily.

The Tariff Act passed by Congress places import fees on foreign goods to protect and promote the growth of industry in the United States.

1817
The Episcopal Church organizes in North Carolina.

The Cherokee cede land in exchange for land on the Arkansas River, and 2,000 Cherokee move west.

1818
The Neuse River Navigation Company operates a steamboat between New Bern and Elizabeth City.

The Prometheus, built by Otway Burns and operated on the Cape Fear River, is the first steamboat constructed in North Carolina.

Construction begins on the state’s second cotton mill, Rocky Mount Mills in Rocky Mount.

Richard Jordan Gatling, inventor of the Gatling rapid-fire machine gun and various improvements for farm machinery, is born in Hertford County.

1819
The Cherokee agree to a treaty by which a large amount of their land in present-day Henderson, Transylvania, and Jackson Counties is ceded to the federal government. The Cherokee are allowed to receive land grants as individuals and can resell the land to white settlers to earn money.

Congress passes the Missouri Compromise, which admits Missouri to the United States as a slave state but prohibits slavery in the northern territories. North Carolina congressmen are divided on the issue: those from the east oppose the slavery exclusion measure, and those from the west favor it.

The USS North Carolina joins the United States fleet.

The Cherokee establish a judicial administration and eight judicial districts.

1821-1840

1821
Sequoyah completes his work of establishing the Cherokee alphabet, making the Cherokee people the only group of American Indians to have a written language.

1822
Sculptor Antonio Canova’s statue of George Washington arrives and is placed in the State House.

The Cherokee National Supreme Court is established.

1823
President James Monroe issues a foreign policy declaration, known as the Monroe Doctrine, that places North and South America off-limits to European colonization.

The Ocracoke Lighthouse is erected. It is the oldest lighthouse in North Carolina currently in service.

1824
Gold is discovered in Rowan County in an area that becomes known as Gold Hill. Extensive mining begins in 1843, creating a short-lived boom town. Copper is also found in the area and will be mined until 1907.

Lemuel Sawyer of Camden County creates the play Blackbeard. It is the first play written by a native North Carolinian. The play is about people trying to find Blackbeard’s treasure, and the misadventures of a gentleman named Candid.

1825
The state legislature creates the Literary Fund to pay for the establishment of the first public schools in the state.

African American artisan Thomas Day begins making furniture and opens his own shop, where he teaches his trade to white apprentices and to slaves.

1826
The North Carolina General Assembly passes a law forbidding the migration of free blacks into the state.

D. H. Bingham founds the first military school in North Carolina. The school occupies various sites in Orange, Vance, and Alamance Counties before moving to Asheville in 1891.

1827
November 5: Robert Vance, a former North Carolina congressman, is fatally wounded during a duel with his political successor, Samuel P. Carson, in present-day Henderson County.

The Buncombe Turnpike is completed, increasing commercial traffic in the Mountain region of North Carolina.

The Cherokee approve a new tribal constitution.

1828
Andrew Jackson is elected president of the United States.

Congress passes the Tariff Act, which raises import fees. This angers the South, which pays most of the import duties but receives little benefit from the tax.

The first annual conference of the Methodist Protestant Church convenes at Whitaker’s Chapel in Halifax County.

Henry Humphries of Greensboro builds the first steam-powered mill.

The first edition of the Cherokee Phoenix, a newspaper printed in Cherokee and English, is released.

Nine families in Washington, N.C., dedicate the first Roman Catholic church in North Carolina: Saint John the Evangelist, a simple frame structure with dirt floors. Fire set by retreating Union soldiers will destroy the church in 1864.

August 1: The first public meeting in support of establishing railroads in North Carolina takes place in Alamance County.

1829
John C. Blum of Salem begins publication of the Farmer’s and Planter’s Almanac.

George Moses Horton publishes a book of poetry entitled The Hope of Liberty. It is the first book by a North Carolina slave and a southern black.

President Andrew Jackson signs the Indian Removal Act calling for American Indians to be forced from their homes to lands west of the Mississippi.

The General Assembly passes “black codes” restricting the activities of free and enslaved African Americans.

David Walker, an African American born free in Wilmington in 1785, publishes Walker’s Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World in Boston. Appalled by slavery, he advocates open rebellion. The North Carolina General Assembly bans Walker’s writings, as well as other “seditious” works that “might excite insurrection.”

The North Carolina Baptist State Convention organizes in Greenville.

1831
Slave and preacher Nat Turner leads 20 followers in a bloody revolt through Southampton County, Va., just north of the North Carolina border. The North Carolina militia is called out to assist in stopping the rebellion.

The North Carolina General Assembly passes a law forbidding African American preachers to speak at worship services where slaves from different owners are in attendance, and forbidding anyone to teach African Americans to read and write.

Omar ibn Said, a enslaved African and Arabic scholar, writes his autobiography in Arabic. Intrigued by his slave’s abilities, Said’s owner, General James Owen, gives him little work and permits him to study an Arabic translation of the Bible. Said had learned English and converted to Christianity, becoming a member of First Presbyterian Church in Fayetteville in 1820. He will die in 1864 at the age of 94.

Christopher Bechtler establishes a private mint in Rutherford County.

June 21: Fire destroys the state capitol building in Raleigh.

1833
A mile-long experimental railroad is built in Raleigh to convey granite from a quarry to the site of the new capitol building. The legislature charters another new line, known as the Wilmington and Weldon Railroad.

Frankie Silver is convicted of the murder of her husband in present-day Mitchell County. She becomes the first woman in North Carolina to be executed by hanging.

Sir Archie, the sire of American Thoroughbred horses such as Timoleon, Boston, Lexington, and Man o’ War, dies at Mowfields in Northampton County.

March 2: After South Carolina threatens to secede from the United States over the import tariff issue, President Andrew Jackson signs a bill lowering tariff fees. He also signs a bill authorizing him to use force, if necessary, to collect import duties.

1834
Baptists found Wake Forest Institute in Wake County. It later becomes Wake Forest College. It will move its campus to Winston-Salem in 1956 and become Wake Forest University in 1967.

John Nissen founds the Nissen Wagon Works in Forsyth County. In 1919, just before automobiles begin to dominate the market, the business will produce 50 wagons a day.

1835
The state constitution is extensively revised, with amendments approved by the voters that provide for the direct election of the governor and more democratic representation in the legislature. However, new laws take voting rights away from American Indians and free blacks. Women are not allowed to vote.

A small, unauthorized group of men signs the Cherokee Removal Treaty. The Cherokee protest the treaty, and Chief John Ross collects more than 15,000 signatures, representing nearly the entire Cherokee population, on a petition requesting the United States Senate to withhold ratification.

1836
The Senate approves the Cherokee Removal Treaty by one vote.

Edward B. Dudley becomes the first North Carolina governor elected by popular vote.

1837
The federal government opens a United States Mint branch in Charlotte. It produces gold coins until the Civil War. After 1868 the federal government will run an assay office at the mint, but no coins will be produced.

Presbyterians open Davidson College in Mecklenburg County.

Quakers found New Garden Boarding School, later Guilford College, in Guilford County.

1838
Approximately 17,000 North Carolina Cherokee are forcibly removed from the state to the Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma). This event becomes known as the Trail of Tears. An estimated 4,000 Cherokee people die during the 1,200-mile trek. A few hundred Cherokee refuse to be rounded up and transported. They hide in the mountains and evade federal soldiers. Eventually, a deal is struck between the army and the remaining Cherokee. Tsali, a leading Cherokee brave, agrees to surrender himself to General Winfield Scott to be shot if the army will allow the rest of his people to stay in North Carolina legally. The federal government eventually establishes a reservation for the Eastern Band of Cherokee.

A Methodist minister founds Trinity College in Randolph County. It will move to Durham in 1892 and become Duke University in 1924.

The Methodist Church opens Greensboro College, the state’s first chartered college for women.

The cornerstone for the United States Arsenal is laid in Fayetteville. The Fayetteville Arsenal is largely complete by 1839. The arsenal, seized by local militia 1861, will produce approximately 10,000 rifles, as well as other accoutrements, for the Confederacy during the Civil War. Union troops will destroy it in 1865.

1839
Stephen Slade, an enslaved African American, discovers a method of curing bright-leaf tobacco on the plantation of Abisha Slade in Caswell County.

Yonaguska, chief of the Eastern Band of Cherokee, dies at age 80. His adopted white son, William Holland Thomas, becomes chief of the Cherokee and fights to secure reservation land for them.

The General Assembly passes the Common School Law, which establishes the first free public schools in the state. The legislation requires that schools remain open at least 2.5 months per year.

North Carolinian and United States senator Robert Strange publishes the book Eoneguski; or, Cherokee Chief, one of the first novels written about North Carolina.

The Wilmington and Weldon Railroad is completed. At 161.5 miles, it is the longest railroad in the world.

The Raleigh and Gaston railroad is completed. It is the first North Carolina railroad to travel across a state line (Virginia).

The new State Capitol building is completed in Raleigh.

The state’s first public school opens in Rockingham County.

Floral College, one of the earliest colleges for women in the South, is founded in Robeson County.

The state has 25 textile mills containing nearly 50,000 spindles and about 700 looms and employing around 1,200 people.

The General Assembly passes a law prohibiting Indians from owning or carrying weapons without first obtaining a license.

1841-1860

1842
Those Cherokee who avoided forced removal in 1838 and remained in North Carolina are given citizenship. In 1848 Congress grants them a small amount of money to use for the purchase of land.

Harriet Jacobs, an Edenton slave, is smuggled onto a ship to escape slavery after spending seven years hiding in a tiny attic room in her grandmother’s house. She escapes to New York, where she buys the freedom of her children. She later becomes an author and abolitionist and writes Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, published in 1861.

The Episcopal Church establishes Saint Mary’s College in Raleigh.

1844
The Methodist Church splits into northern and southern contingents over the issue of slavery, followed by a split in the Baptist Church a year later.

1845
Southern Methodists organize the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. North Carolinian Robert Paine helps lead this effort.

1846
North Carolina native President James K. Polk leads the United States into war with Mexico. As part of the peace treaty signed in 1848, Mexico agrees to sell the Southwest to the United States.

1847
The United States Marine Hospital opens in Portsmouth.

Educator Calvin Henderson Wiley publishes Alamance, the first novel written by a North Carolina native.

1848
Dorothea Dix visits North Carolina and calls for reform in the care of mentally ill patients.

A Women's Rights Convention takes place in Seneca Falls, N.Y.

1849
The North Carolina State Medical Society forms.

The construction of an institution in Raleigh for the care of mentally ill patients is authorized. The hospital, named in honor of Dorothea Dix, will open in 1856.

Construction begins on a toll plank road to connect the major market towns of Salem and Fayetteville and to facilitate the transportation of mercantile and agricultural goods. When this 129-mile-long Bethania-to-Fayetteville road opens in 1854, it will be the longest plank road in the world. Fayetteville becomes the terminal point of five commercial plank roads chartered between 1849 and 1852.

Thomas Day, a free African American cabinetmaker, operates the state’s largest furniture-making business in Milton, Caswell County.

1850
Congress passes a compromise bill between North and South that includes a strict fugitive slave law and admission of California to the Union as a free state. The compromise helps prevent secession in the South but angers antislavery northerners.

David S. Reid wins the governorship by calling for free suffrage, which would eliminate the ownership of property as a requirement for voting in state senate elections. An amendment ending the requirement will be adopted by an overwhelming majority of the popular vote in 1857.

The Raleigh Register becomes the first daily newspaper in the state, followed by the Wilmington Daily Journal in 1851.

Supported by the Literary Fund, 2,657 public, or common, schools are established in the state.

1851
The State Museum of Natural History is founded in Raleigh.

1853
Calvin Wiley becomes the first superintendent of the state’s common schools.

Agricultural reformer John F. Tompkins founds the North Carolina State Fair, which takes place for the first time on October 18–21 in Raleigh.

The Holt Mill in Alamance County produces Alamance plaid, the first factory-dyed cotton cloth made in the South.

1854
The Kansas-Nebraska Act, passed by Congress, reopens hostilities between North and South over the expansion of slavery in the territories.

1856
The North Carolina Railroad, which connects Goldsboro and Charlotte, is completed.

The North Carolina Dental Society organizes in Raleigh.

1857
Hinton Rowan Helper, born in Davie County, publishes his controversial antislavery book The Impending Crisis of the South.

The Presbyterian Church establishes Peace Female Institute (later Peace College) in Raleigh.

March 6: The United States Supreme Court issues the Dred Scott decision stating that blacks are not considered citizens and that slaveholders can legally take slaves into the free states. The Court’s decision angers antislavery northerners.

1859
The Cape Lookout Lighthouse is completed. It replaces the original tower built in 1812.

A Wreath from the Woods of Carolina, by Mary A. Mason of Raleigh, is the first North Carolina book written especially for young people.

October 16: Abolitionist John Brown captures the United States Arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Va., in an attempt to incite a slave insurrection. Two free African Americans from North Carolina, Lewis Sheridan Leary from Fayetteville and John Anthony Copeland from Raleigh, join Brown’s forces. Leary is killed when United States troops capture Brown’s forces. Copeland, along with John Brown and other followers, is tried and executed for treason. Some northerners believe Brown a martyr, but many southerners consider his raid an outrage.

The production of turpentine, primarily for use in shipping, is the largest manufacturing industry in North Carolina. Two-thirds of the nation’s output of turpentine comes from the state. Most turpentine distilleries are located in Bladen, Cumberland, and New Hanover Counties.

North Carolina has 39 cotton mills and 9 woolen mills in operation.

Even as industry grows in the state, North Carolina remains essentially rural. Wilmington, the state’s largest and most cosmopolitan city, has only 9,542 inhabitants.

The number of common schools reaches 2,854, with a statewide enrollment of 118,000 white students. Illiteracy among whites has dropped from 30 percent in 1840 to 23 percent.

May 10: The Morrill Tariff, which doubles fees on imported goods, passes in the United States House but is blocked in the Senate by southern votes.

October: A planned slave uprising near Plymouth fails when a slave exposes the plot.

November: Abraham Lincoln, who opposes the expansion of slavery in the territories and supports taxes on imported goods, wins the presidential election. He receives no votes from North Carolina or any other southern state. After his election, seven southern states leave the Union.

1861-1880

1861
North Carolina lawmakers bar any black person from owning or controlling a slave, making it impossible for a free person of color to buy freedom for a family member or friend.

January: In a state referendum, North Carolina voters refuse to consider secession. Instead, the state sends representatives to Washington, D.C., to attempt peace negotiations between northern and southern leaders.

February 4–9: The Confederate States of America is established in Montgomery, Ala., and Jefferson Davis becomes its president. North Carolina remains in the United States.

March 2: Congress passes the Morrill Tariff Act.

April 12: Confederate forces at Charleston, S.C., fire on Fort Sumter when President Lincoln attempts to resupply the United States garrison there. On April 15, Lincoln calls for troops to suppress the rebellion in the South. North Carolina governor John W. Ellis refuses Lincoln’s request for troops.

May 20: A state convention at Raleigh votes to leave the United States and join the Confederacy. North Carolina is one of the last two states to adopt a secession ordinance.

June 10: North Carolina troops under Colonel D. H. Hill win a decisive victory in the first battle of the war, at Bethel Church in Virginia. Another Confederate victory, at Manassas, Va., follows in August.

August 27–28: Federal forces capture Forts Hatteras and Clark on the Outer Banks.

1861–1865
Approximately 42,000 North Carolinians lose their lives in the Civil War. North Carolina sends the most men and suffers the most casualties of any Confederate state.

Native Americans have varying experiences during the war. Many Cherokee in western North Carolina support the Confederacy. Thomas’s Legion, a well-known fighting unit, has two companies of Cherokee soldiers. The Lumbee in eastern North Carolina are treated quite differently. They are forced to work on Confederate fortifications near Wilmington. Many flee and form groups to resist impressment by the army. Henry Berry Lowry leads one such group, which continues to resist white domination long after the war’s end.

1862
After Federal troops destroy three saltworks operations along the coast, the state establishes a saltworks near Wilmington to alleviate the wartime scarcity of salt.

Mary Jane Patterson, a free black from Raleigh, becomes the first African American woman to receive a bachelor of arts degree. She obtains it from Oberlin College in Ohio.

February–April: Federal forces capture and occupy Roanoke Island, New Bern, Washington, and Fort Macon, securing most of coastal North Carolina.

May–December: North Carolina Confederate troops fight in numerous battles in Virginia and Maryland and suffer great losses of officers and men, including Generals George Anderson and L. O’B. Branch.

August 6: Zebulon B. Vance is elected governor of North Carolina.

September: A yellow fever epidemic hits eastern North Carolina.

December 31: The ironclad USS Monitor sinks off the North Carolina coast during a storm.

1863
James City, a community of freed slaves, is settled near New Bern in Union-occupied Craven County.

As a result of his gallantry in the Vicksburg, Miss., campaign, Howell G. Trogden becomes the first North Carolinian to win the Congressional Medal of Honor. Trogden, born at Cedar Falls in Randolph County, serves as a private in the Eighth Missouri (United States) Infantry. He will receive the medal in 1894.

January 1: President Abraham Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation.

July 1–3: General Robert E. Lee’s Confederate army is defeated at the Battle of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania. North Carolina’s loss of 7,000 men killed or wounded makes up 25 percent of Lee’s total casualties and is the state’s greatest battlefield loss in the war. Among the dead are two high-ranking North Carolina officers: Generals Dorsey Pender and Johnston Pettigrew.

1864
Zebulon B. Vance is reelected governor by an overwhelming majority.

April 17–20: Confederate troops under the command of General Robert F. Hoke retake Plymouth from the Federals.

May–October: North Carolina troops in General Robert E. Lee’s army suffer tremendous casualties in battles in Virginia, including the deaths of Generals Junius Daniel, James Gordon, and Stephen Ramseur.

October 27: Federal forces blow up the Confederate ironclad Albemarle at Plymouth.

1865
January 15: Wilmington is the last major Confederate port open to the outside world. Fort Fisher falls to Federal forces, closing the port to blockade runners and resulting in the fall of Wilmington on February 22.

March: The Union army commanded by General William T. Sherman invades North Carolina.

March 19–21: General Sherman’s Federal army defeats General Joseph E. Johnston’s Confederate forces at the Battle of Bentonville in Johnston County.

March–April: Union forces commanded by General George Stoneman conduct raids throughout western North Carolina.

April 9: General Robert E. Lee surrenders the Army of Northern Virginia to General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox, Va. Lee’s forces include large numbers of North Carolinians.

April 10–26: After abandoning the capital at Richmond, Va., Confederate president Jefferson Davis and his cabinet stop in Greensboro to attempt to reorganize the failing Confederate war effort. Davis passes through Charlotte on his way south when the surrender of General Johnston’s army becomes certain.

April 13: General Sherman’s Union army occupies Raleigh.

April 15: President Abraham Lincoln dies after being shot by John Wilkes Booth in Washington, D.C. Raleigh native Andrew Johnson becomes president of the United States.

April 26: General Johnston surrenders his army to General Sherman at James and Nancy Bennett’s farm, now known as Bennett Place, near Durham.

May 13: Federal troops arrest Governor Zebulon B. Vance. William W. Holden is appointed governor by President Andrew Johnson on May 29.

October: A North Carolina convention votes to repeal the Ordinance of Secession and end slavery. On November 28, the General Assembly ratifies the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution, which officially abolishes slavery.

1866
John Ruffin Green of Person County first uses the Bull Durham tobacco trade name.

1867
March 2: Congress passes a Reconstruction Act, making North Carolina part of a military district under Federal army occupation.

September 23: The Wilmington Morning Star is established. It is currently the oldest daily newspaper continuously in publication in the state.

1868
An election places in office the first African American state legislators—3 senators and 17 representatives.

March 13–May 26: President Andrew Johnson is impeached by a Congress led by Radical Republicans who oppose his stance on many issues. Several Republicans side with Democrats, however, in contending that there is not enough evidence to prove that Johnson has committed “high crimes and misdemeanors.” The president is acquitted by one vote.

April: A new state constitution is ratified by popular vote. William W. Holden is elected governor.

May 1: Tom Dula (the Tom Dooley of folk ballads) is hanged near Statesville for the murder of Laura Foster.

July 4: North Carolina is readmitted to the Union.

1869
The North Carolina General Assembly attempts to revitalize the public schools by passing a bill reorganizing the schools and providing $100,000 to fund them.

James Walker Hood, an African American minister and an assistant superintendent in the Bureau of Education, reports that North Carolina has 257 black schools with a combined enrollment of 15,657 students.

March 5: North Carolina ratifies the 15th Amendment, which gives African American men the right to vote.

The new Cape Hatteras Lighthouse is completed, replacing a structure built in 1802. At 208 feet, it is the tallest brick lighthouse in the nation.

North Carolina native Hiram R. Revels is the first African American to serve in Congress when he becomes a senator for Mississippi.

James Lytch of Scotland County receives a patent for his cotton planter, a popular southern agricultural implement and one of four successful inventions.

June 8: Governor Holden proclaims Alamance and Caswell Counties in a state of insurrection after the Ku Klux Klan perpetrates acts of violence, including several murders. Empowered by an 1869 law, Holden declares martial law and deploys troops to the area. Although the troops fire no shots, more than 100 men are arrested, and some violence occurs. The situation becomes known as the Kirk-Holden War.

1871
February 2–March 23: Democrats, newly returned to power in the legislature, remove Republican governor W. W. Holden from power. They impeach Holden on eight charges, which include illegally raising troops to send to areas not in actual rebellion, arresting citizens illegally, and denying the writ of habeas corpus to those arrested. He is convicted on six charges.

September: Congress, alarmed about recent events in North Carolina, investigates the role of the Ku Klux Klan in the state’s politics. Nearly 1,000 men are arrested by United States soldiers for alleged involvement with the Klan, and 37 are convicted. This investigation helps limit Klan activity in the state for a period of time.

1872
Susan Dimock, a native of Washington, becomes the first female member of the North Carolina Medical Society. Dimock had to go abroad to find a medical school that would accept women. She received her medical education in Zurich, Switzerland, and practiced at a hospital in Boston as one of the nation’s first licensed female doctors.

1873
The North Carolina Press Association forms in Goldsboro.

James Edward O’Hara becomes the first African American lawyer admitted to the North Carolina Bar.

1874
Washington Duke and Sons builds its first tobacco factory in Durham. R. J. Reynolds builds his first tobacco factory in Winston-Salem.

The United States Lifesaving Service begins operating on the North Carolina coast with seven lifesaving stations.

1875
John A. Hyman becomes the first African American to represent North Carolina in Congress. He serves until 1877.

The mining boom town of Ore Knob is chartered in Ashe County. Copper is mined extensively in the area throughout the 1870s and 1880s.

Voters approve 30 amendments revising the 1868 state constitution.

1875–1876
A congregation established in 1867 builds the Temple of Israel, North Carolina’s first Jewish house of worship, in Wilmington.

1877
National political Reconstruction ends when newly elected Republican president Rutherford B. Hayes removes Federal troops from the South.

The General Assembly authorizes a normal school for blacks and chooses the Howard School, which opened in 1867 in Fayetteville, as the most promising site because of its academic record in educating black children. The school is renamed the State Colored Normal School (now Fayetteville State University) and designated as a teacher training school. It is the first state-supported institution of higher learning for African Americans in North Carolina.

Zebulon B. Vance, North Carolina governor during the Civil War, is reelected to the post as Democrats regain control of the state government.

North Carolina creates the State Board of Health.

The USS Huron sinks off Nags Head with the loss of around 100 passengers. The tragedy creates a public outcry for increased government resources for maritime disasters. This wreck, along with the sinking of the Metropolis at Currituck earlier in the year, convinces Congress to expand the United States Lifesaving Service.

Leonidas L. Polk becomes the first commissioner of the newly created North Carolina Department of Agriculture.

1878
James F. Shober, the first known African American doctor in the state to possess an M.D. degree, begins practicing medicine in Wilmington.

North Carolina author Christian Reid, whose real name is Frances Fisher Tiernan, publishes her 10th book. The Land of the Sky is a travel novel in which young ladies and gentlemen engage in mild flirtations during a vacation trip to the state’s Mountains. The book’s title becomes a nickname used ever since to denote the western part of North Carolina.

January 8: Tabitha Ann Holton passes the North Carolina Bar and becomes the first licensed female lawyer in the South.

1879
North Carolina’s first telephone exchanges open in Raleigh and Wilmington.

May: S. S. Satchwell becomes the first president of the State Board of Health.

November: Charles N. Hunter and his brother form the North Carolina Industrial Association to try to improve the lives of African Americans by emphasizing economic progress rather than political activity. Hunter’s Colored Industrial Fair, held in Raleigh, becomes the most popular social event for blacks in the state. Hunter also starts the O’Kelly Training School in Wake County. In 1917 a Baltimore newspaper calls the school the “finest rural training school in the entire South.”

North Carolina has 126 tobacco factories that annually manufacture 6.5 million pounds of plug tobacco and 4 million pounds of smoking and other tobacco, valued altogether at $2,300,000. Tobacco manufacturing eventually becomes centered in Durham, Winston-Salem, Reidsville, and Greensboro.

A government inquiry investigates possible negligence by the staff of the Pea Island Lifesaving Station. Richard Etheridge is appointed to head the station, becoming the first African American station keeper in the United States Lifesaving Service. From 1880 to 1947, the Pea Island station is the nation’s only all-black lifesaving facility.

The North Carolina Pharmaceutical Association forms during a meeting held in the state senate chamber in Raleigh.

1881-1899

1881
White Furniture Company in Mebane is founded as North Carolina begins mass-producing furniture.

1882
The first registered Guernsey cattle in the state are imported from Pennsylvania by H. T. Bahnson to his farm in Winston-Salem.

1883
September 11: North Carolina experiences a violent hurricane that kills more people than any other hurricane in the state’s history. At least 53 peopl