Did you know? North Carolina

A Cherokee fish basket, made in 1900. Image credit: N.C. Museum of History. Before the coming of European explorers, Native Americans inhabited the territory that is now North Carolina. The major tribes were the Tuscaroras, the Catawbas, and the Cherokees. Beginning with Verrazzano in 1524, various French, Spanish, and English explorers made contact with this area, and DeSoto and his men marched through the western region in 1540. The first English colonies in the New World were founded on Roanoke Island in 1585 and 1587, sponsored by Sir Walter Raleigh; but these ventures were destined to fail. The first permanent English settlers subsequently entered the Albemarle region from Virginia about the middle of the seventeenth century.

In 1663, King Charles II of England granted the region south of Virginia to eight of his friends, the Lords Proprietors of Carolina. The settled area expanded gradually, but a dangerous coast, poor government, and a disastrous war with the Tuscaroras hindered growth. North Carolina was separated from South Carolina in 1712 and became a royal colony in 1729, at which time the Crown purchased seven of the eight proprietary shares.

The number of colonists increased rapidly during royal rule. English settlers pushed inland from the coast, Scottish Highlanders settled in the upper Cape Fear Valley, and large numbers of Scots-Irish and Germans entered the Piedmont. When the federal government took the first census in 1790, North Carolina ranked third in population.

1780-84 Chinese tea caddy. Originally belonged to family of Mary Bonner & daughter, Lydia, both signers of the Edenton Resolves (Edenton tea party), Oct. 25, 1774. Image credit: North Carolina Museum of History. Although many North Carolinians were reluctant to rebel against the Crown, royal control was overthrown in 1775; an independent state government under a constitution was set up the next year. The decisive Whig victory at Moores Creek Bridge in February of 1776 led to the Halifax Resolves, April 12, 1776, by which North Carolina became the first colony to instruct its delegates in the Continental Congress to vote for independence. A British army led by Lord Cornwallis invaded the state in 1780, but the Battle of Guilford Courthouse on March 15, 1781, so weakened the army that its subsequent surrender at Yorktown, Virginia, was a logical consequence.

North Carolina sent delegates to the Continental Congress and participated in the government under the Articles of Confederation. The state held back in the movement for a stronger central government, declining to ratify the new Constitution of the United States at the Hillsborough Convention of 1788 and ratifying later at the Fayetteville Convention on November 21, 1789, only after the proposed addition of a Bill of Rights.

For several decades after 1789, the state’s progress was slow, and North Carolina came to be known as the “Rip Van Winkle State.” A reawakening occurred after 1835 when constitutional revisions gave more political power to the growing western half of the state. Canals, railroads, and plank roads helped solve the problem of transportation. Improved access to markets stimulated industrial and agricultural growth. Although approximately one-third of the state’s population in 1860 were slaves, most white North Carolinians did not own slaves. There were relatively few large plantations in the state. The University of North Carolina, which opened in 1795, came to be one of the leading educational institutions in the entire nation, and the state was the first in the South to set up a tax-supported system of public schools. By 1861, North Carolina was moving ahead in many ways.

With the outbreak of the Civil War, North Carolinians made the difficult decision to cast their lot with the Confederate States. The state supplied more troops and suffered more casualties than any other in the Confederacy. Early in the war, Federal forces occupied much of the eastern part of the state, but the port of Wilmington remained open until the fall of Fort Fisher in January 1865, and was an important source of supplies for the Confederates. Gen. William T. Sherman’s Federal army invaded North Carolina in March 1865, and the next month Gen. Joseph E. Johnston surrendered his Confederate army to Sherman at the Bennett House, near the present city of Durham.

The Reconstruction period saw much internal upheaval. Although a new state constitution was adopted in 1868, partisan discord marked much of the remainder of the century. In the meantime, the state gradually recovered from the effects of the war and made significant advancements in industrial development. Agricultural prosperity was thwarted by a number of problems that plagued the entire nation at this time.

During the first third of the twentieth century, the state was laying the foundation for rapid progress. In the 1920s, the state undertook an ambitious road-building program, the basis for what is today the largest state highway system in the nation. The public schools, placed under state administrative control in 1931, later developed programs to serve the needs of all children, including gifted and talented and handicapped students.

World War II poster North Carolina’s economy was aided by the programs of the New Deal, but it was the impact of World War II that removed the lingering effects of the Great Depression. The growth of manufacturing and industrial jobs generated revenue, which allowed the state to invest more funds in improving the quality of life for its citizens. Population became more urban, particularly in the rapidly developing Piedmont corridor, which extends from Wake County to Mecklenburg County. By the advent of the last decade of the twentieth century, the long trend of out-migration by African American North Carolinians had reversed itself.

The Research Triangle Park was established in 1958 to boost the state’s growth in research-related fields. Located in close proximity to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, North Carolina State University at Raleigh, and Duke University in Durham, the Triangle contains the South’s greatest concentration of scientists, research sources, laboratory facilities, and cultural activities. The Research Triangle gave a much-needed impetus to economic and industrial growth in North Carolina.

The Democratic Party dominated state government for the first half of the twentieth century, but in 1972 both a Republican United States senator and a Republican governor were elected. Twenty years later, in 1992, two African American candidates were elected to the United States Congress. Democrat James B. Hunt Jr. was elected to an unprecedented fourth four-year term as governor in 1996. In 2008, Beverly Purdue became North Carolina’s first female governor.