The Earl Scruggs Center

/ Earl Scruggs Center/

Nestled in the heart of Shelby, NC just a few miles from the Flint Hill Community where Earl Scruggs was born and raised, the Earl Scruggs Center is located in the beautifully restored 1907 Cleveland County Courthouse.

"Music & Stories from the American South" opened in 2014. The museum focuses on both the life of local musician Earl Scruggs, and the music, history and culture of the American South. The museum also hosts concerts and music lectures. After Scruggs' death in 2012 at age 88, the Earl Scruggs Center was founded near his birthplace in Shelby, North Carolina, with the aid of a federal grant and corporate donors. The center features the musical contributions of Scruggs and serves as an educational center providing classes and field trips for students.

Earl Eugene Scruggs (January 6, 1924 – March 28, 2012) was an American musician noted for popularizing a three-finger banjo picking style, now called "Scruggs style", which is a defining characteristic of bluegrass music. His three-finger style of playing was radically different from the traditional way the five-string banjo had previously been played. This new style of playing became popular and elevated the banjo from its previous role as a background rhythm instrument to featured solo status. He popularized the instrument across several genres of music.

The Earl Scruggs Center combines the life story of legendary five-string banjo master and Cleveland County native, Earl Scruggs, with the unique and engaging story of the history and cultural traditions of the region in which Mr. Scruggs was born and raised. It was in the nearby Flint Hill community where Mr. Scruggs learned to play banjo and began the three-finger playing style that has come to be known around the world as “Scruggs Style.”

The Earl Scruggs Center explores Mr. Scruggs’ innovative career and the community that gave it shape while celebrating how he crossed musical boundaries and defined the voice of the banjo to the world. Mr. Scruggs embraced tradition while also adapting to the changing times and looking toward the future—themes which resonate throughout the Center. Engaging exhibits, special event space and rich programming provide a uniquely rich experience for visitors.

Scruggs' career began at age 21 when he was hired to play in Bill Monroe's band, the Blue Grass Boys. The name "bluegrass" eventually became the eponym for the entire genre of country music now known by that title. Despite considerable success with Monroe, performing on the Grand Ole Opry and recording classic hits such as "Blue Moon of Kentucky", Scruggs resigned from the group in 1946 due to their exhausting touring schedule. Fellow band member Lester Flatt resigned as well, and he and Scruggs later paired up in a new group they called Flatt and Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys. Scruggs' banjo instrumental called "Foggy Mountain Breakdown", released in 1949, became an enduring hit, and had a rebirth of popularity to a younger generation when it was featured in the 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde. The song won two Grammy Awards and, in 2005, was selected for the Library of Congress' National Recording Registry of works of unusual merit.

Flatt and Scruggs brought bluegrass music into mainstream popularity in the early 1960s with their country hit, "The Ballad of Jed Clampett" — the theme music for the television sitcom The Beverly Hillbillies — the first Scruggs recording to reach number one on the Billboard charts. Over their 20-year association, Flatt and Scruggs recorded over 50 albums and 75 singles. The duo broke up in 1969, chiefly because, while Scruggs wanted to switch styles to fit a more modern sound, Flatt was a traditionalist who opposed the change and believed doing so would alienate a fan base of bluegrass purists. Although each of them formed a new band to match their visions, neither of them ever regained the success they had achieved as a team.

Scruggs received four Grammy awards, a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and a National Medal of Arts. He became a member of the International Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame and was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 1985, Flatt and Scruggs were inducted together into the Country Music Hall of Fame and named, as a duo, number 24 on CMT's "40 Greatest Men of Country Music". Scruggs was awarded a National Heritage Fellowship by the National Endowment for the Arts, the highest honor in the folk and traditional arts in the United States. Four works by Scruggs have been placed in the Grammy Hall of Fame.

Hours of Operation

Sunday & Monday: Closed
Tuesday: 10 a.m.—4 p.m.
Wednesday: 10 a.m.—6 p.m.
Thursday-Saturday: 10 a.m.—4 p.m.

Sources:
Welcome to Cleveland County, NC
National Register | Historic Shelby
Cleveland County Courthouse: Shelby, North Carolina: A National Register of Historic Places
Home - Earl Scruggs Center
Wikipedia

Cleveland County Courthouse

/ Earl Scruggs Center/

The courthouse was built in 1907, and is a three-story, rectangular, Classical Revival-style building sheathed in a smooth ashlar veneer above a rusticated first floor. It features tetrastyle Corinthian order porticoes at each of the four entrances and a three-stage cupola atop the flat roof.

In 1916, Thomas Dixon, Jr., the author of The Clansman: A Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan, planned to erect a statue of his uncle Leroy McAfee on the courthouse square. The project was initially met with enthusiasm, until it was announced that Dixon wanted McAfee to wear a Ku Klux Klan mask in the statue.

Courthouse offices moved to a new building in 1974, and the old courthouse houses offices, and public meeting hall. It was also home to the Cleveland County Historical Museum, which closed in 2004 and became the Earl Scruggs Center in 2014 after extensive interior renovations.

It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. It is located in the Central Shelby Historic District.

The courthouse is now home to the Earl Scruggs Center--"Music & Stories from the American South", which opened in 2014. The museum focuses on both the life of local musician Earl Scruggs, and the music, history and culture of the American South. The museum also hosts concerts and music lectures. After Scruggs' death in 2012 at age 88, the Earl Scruggs Center was founded near his birthplace in Shelby, North Carolina, with the aid of a federal grant and corporate donors. The center features the musical contributions of Scruggs and serves as an educational center providing classes and field trips for students.

Joshua Beam House

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The Joshua Beam House, one of the most prominent ante-bellum residences in Cleveland County, is an imposing two-story building sited on a 150-acre tract of pasture and woodland northeast of Shelby. The house features a two-story pedimented portico, pedimented gable ends and simple but consistent Greek Revival interior woodwork--all characteristic of the development of the vernacular Greek Revival architecture style in this region.

The home reflects the growing prosperity of the planter and business class of the western Piedmont of North Carolina in the decades before the Civil War. It was constructed sometime between 1841 and 1845 for Joshua Beam (1800-1869), a successful planter, slave owner and businessman who established an iron manufacturing operation on his property and was involved in numerous other business and mining interests.

It was built about 1845, and is a two-story, gable-roofed frame dwelling in the Greek Revival style. It has a one-story rear kitchen ell. The front facade features a two-story pedimented porch with an intervening second floor balcony.

It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980. T

he Joshua Beam house is located at New Prospect Church Rd. It is a private residence and not open to the public.

Photo courtesy of Uptown Shelby Association

Photo courtesy of Uptown Shelby Association

Photo courtesy of Uptown Shelby Association

Photo courtesy of Uptown Shelby Association

Bath Historic District

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Bath Historic District is a historic district in Bath, Beaufort County, North Carolina. The district is now a North Carolina Historic Site belonging to the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources and known as Historic Bath, and includes a visitor center offering guided tours of the Bonner House and Palmer-Marsh House, which is also a National Historic Landmark. Visitors can also tour the Van der Veer House and St. Thomas Episcopal Church.

Bath is North Carolina's oldest town, celebrating its 300th anniversary in 2005. Located in the coastal plain region, it is near Pamlico Sound, a destination for sport fishing and commercial harvest of fish, shrimp, and crab.

European settlement near the Pamlico River in the 1690s led to the founding of Bath. The first settlers were French Huguenots, Protestants who went as refugees to Virginia; among those inhabitants was John Lawson, naturalist, explorer, and town father.

In 1708, Bath consisted of 12 houses and about 50 people. Early Bath was disturbed by political rivalries, epidemics, Indian wars (the Tuscarora War), and piracy. Residents suffered yellow fever, along with a severe drought in 1711. A war between the early settlers and the powerful Tuscarora Indians arose following the fever and drought, as the American Indians tried to push out the peoples encroaching on their territory. They attacked Bath, as well as plantations along the rivers, but by 1715 were defeated by a coalition of colonial settlers from the Carolinas and a much larger group of American Indians allied against them.

From 1705 until 1722, Bath was the first nominal capital of North Carolina; Edenton was designated next. The colony had no permanent institutions of government until their establishment of the new capital New Bern in 1743.

Bath has changed little since the colonial and early federal period. People interested in heritage tourism have made it a destination for both locals of eastern North Carolina and visitors from other regions. Tourists swell the population during the summer. Favorite water-based recreation includes wakeboarding, water skiing, and boat rides or jet ski rides through the creek down to the river.

Other attractions include the Historic Bath State Historic Site, which gives tours of the old town of Bath; St. Thomas Church, the oldest standing Episcopal Church in North Carolina; historical houses; and a visitors center. A ferry route provides service from the northern shore of the Pamlico River to the southern shore of the river. Visitors to Goose Creek State Park can see and learn about the beautiful marshes and swamps along the Pamlico River and Goose Creek; they can rent canoes as well as fish from the shores of the river.[12]

In addition to the Bath Historic District and St. Thomas Church, the Bath School, Bonner House, and Palmer-Marsh House are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Stagville Plantation

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Stagville Plantation is located in Durham County, North Carolina. With buildings constructed from the late 18th century to the mid-19th century, Stagville was part of one of the largest plantation complexes in the American South. The entire complex was owned by the Bennehan, Mantack and Cameron families; it comprised roughly 30,000 acres (120 km2) and was home to almost 900 enslaved African Americans in 1860.

The remains of Historic Stagville consist of 71 acres (290,000 m2), in three tracts, and provide a unique look at North Carolina's history and general infrastructure in the antebellum South. Among structures on the Stagville site are several historic houses and barns, including the original Bennehan House and some of the original slave quarters, which were in an area known as Horton Grove.

The Bennehan House, built 1787 with a large addition in 1799, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973; Horton Grove, an area of two-story slave residences built in 1850, was listed in 1978. The slave residences are well preserved and are the only two-story slave quarters remaining in North Carolina. Significant archaeological finds around the quarters have given archaeologists and historians a glimpse into the lives of the many enslaved people who lived and worked at Stagville and throughout the Bennehan-Cameron holdings.

In 1976, Liggett and Meyers Tobacco Company, which had owned and worked the land for decades, donated some of the acreage to the state of North Carolina, which now operates the property as Historic Stagville State Historic Site, a historic house museum, which belongs to the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.

Source - Wikipedia

Fort Dobbs

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Fort Dobbs was an 18th-century fort in the Yadkin–Pee Dee River Basin region of the Province of North Carolina, near what is now Statesville in Iredell County. Used for frontier defense during and after the French and Indian War, the fort was built to protect the American settlers of the western portion of what was then Rowan County, and served as a vital outpost for soldiers, traders, and colonial officials. Fort Dobbs' primary structure was a blockhouse with log walls, surrounded by a shallow ditch, and by 1761, a palisade. It was intended to provide protection from French-allied Native Americans such as the Shawnee and Delaware, and French raids into North Carolina.

The fort's name honored Arthur Dobbs, the Royal Governor of North Carolina from 1755 to 1765, who played a role in designing the fort and authorized its construction. Between 1756 and 1761, the fort was garrisoned by a variable number of soldiers, many of whom were sent to fight in Pennsylvania and the Ohio River Valley during the French and Indian War. On February 27, 1760, the fort was the site of an engagement between Cherokee warriors and Provincial soldiers that ended in a victory for the Provincials. After this battle and other attacks by Cherokee warriors on North Carolinian settlements, several successful counter-attacks were inflicted by the Provincials against the Cherokee, largely quelling their incursions.

Fort Dobbs was abandoned after 1761, and disappeared from the landscape. Archaeology and historical research led to the discovery of the fort's exact location and probable appearance. The site on which the fort sat is now operated by North Carolina's Division of State Historic Sites and Properties as Fort Dobbs State Historic Site. The reconstruction of the fort was completed on September 21, 2019.

The State of North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural History maintains and operates the area as Fort Dobbs State Historic Site. The visitor center, located in a log cabin constructed from parts of local, 19th-century log structures, features displays about both the colonial fort and the French and Indian War period.[63] Outdoor trails lead visitors through the excavated ruins of the fort. Events, including many living history demonstrations, are held throughout the year at the fort. The Fort Dobbs site remains the only historic site in the state related to the French and Indian War.

Source - Wikipedia

Charlotte Hawkins Brown Museum

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The restored campus buildings of the Palmer Memorial Institute are now the Charlotte Hawkins Brown Museum, which belongs to the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources and links Dr. Brown and Palmer Memorial Institute to the larger themes of African American women, education, and social history, with an emphasis on the contributions made by African American citizens to education in North Carolina.

After one year of college, Brown was hired to work at the Bethany Institute, a rural school for African American children, in Sedalia, North Carolina. Brown arrived to the school, run by the American Missionary Association, in 1901 to find it severely lacking in resources.

When the American Missionary Association decided to close the school a year later, Brown decided to create a school on her own. Coming from humble beginnings in a small blacksmith’s cabin, Brown continued raising money, eventually obtaining 200 acres and constructing two new buildings for her campus. The school was named the Palmer Memorial Institute, in honor of Alice Freeman Palmer, and was a day and boarding school for African Americans. Brown worked tirelessly to create a safe haven for African American youth, she established the Palmer Memorial Institute’s board of trustees entirely of African Americans. Brown’s institute served as one of the only schools in North Carolina to offer college preparatory programs.

By the 1920s, the Palmer Memorial Institute was an established and successful boarding school attracting students from around the country, many of whom went on to become educators. Brown attracted national attention for her efforts, lecturing frequently at colleges around the country and receiving several honorary degrees. In 1941 she published The Correct Thing To Do--To Say--To Wear, committing many of her educational philosophies and maxims in print. She continued to run the school until her retirement in 1952.

In addition to her work at the Palmer Institute, Brown was active in national efforts to improve opportunities for African Americans, including the Southern Commission for Interracial Cooperation and the Negro Business League. She was the first African American woman named to the national board of the YWCA. She was an honorary member of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority.

The museum's visitor center is located in the Carrie M. Stone Teachers' Cottage (1948), and features exhibits about Dr. Charlotte Hawkins Brown, the Institute and African American education in North Carolina. There is also a video about the school. Visitors can tour Dr. Brown's residence, known as Canary Cottage, which has been furnished to reflect the 1940s and 1950s, when the school was at its peak. Several dormitories, the dining hall, bell tower, teahouse and several teachers' cottage can also be seen.

Source - Wikipedia

Hayes Plantation

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Hayes Plantation, also known as Hayes Farm, is a historic plantation near Edenton, North Carolina that belonged to Samuel Johnston (1733–1816), who served as Governor of North Carolina from 1787 to 1789. Johnston became one of the state's first two United States Senators, serving from 1789 until 1793, and served later as a judge until retiring in 1803. Samuel Johnston died in 1816 at "the Hermitage," his home near Williamston in Martin County, N.C. The residence known as Hayes was completed by his son, James Cathcart Johnston, a year after Samuel's death. There are numerous other structures on the property, some predating the Hayes house itself, including the Hayes Gatehouse, which James Johnston lived in prior to the construction of the Hayes house.

The main house, considered by architectural scholars to be "one of the South's most accomplished examples of a five-part palladian villa," was designed by English-born architect, William Nichols, Sr., famous for his early Neoclassical-style buildings in the American South and for designing statehouses for three Southern states. Construction of the house began in 1814, but was not completed until 1817. The central block of the house is connected to its dependencies by curved hyphens. A broad belvedere crowns the roof of the central block. The plantation house is privately owned, but was designated a National Historic Landmark on November 7, 1973 and added to the National Register of Historic Places on February 26, 1974.

Source - Wikipedia

Wright Brothers National Memorial

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Wright Brothers National Memorial, located in Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina, commemorates the first successful, sustained, powered flights in a heavier-than-air machine. From 1900 to 1903, Wilbur and Orville Wright came here from Dayton, Ohio, based on information from the U.S. Weather Bureau about the area's steady winds. They also valued the privacy provided by this location, which in the early twentieth century was remote from major population centers.

The Wrights made four flights from level ground near the base of the hill on December 17, 1903, in the Wright Flyer, following three years of gliding experiments from atop this and other nearby sand dunes. It is possible to walk along the actual routes of the four flights, with small monuments marking their starts and finishes. Two wooden sheds, based on historic photographs, recreate the world's first airplane hangar and the brothers' living quarters.

The Visitor Center is home to a museum featuring models and actual tools and machines used by the Wright brothers during their flight experiments including a reproduction of the wind tunnel used to test wing shapes and a portion of the engine used in the first flight. In one wing of the Visitor Center is a life-size replica of the Wright brothers' 1903 Wright Flyer, the first powered heavier-than-air aircraft in history to achieve controlled flight (the original being displayed at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C.). A full-scale model of the Brothers' 1902 glider is also present, having been constructed under the direction of Orville Wright himself. Adorning the walls of the glider room are portraits and photographs of other flight pioneers throughout history.

The visitor center's Modern design was a departure from the National Park Service's earlier, more traditional buildings, and was built as part of its "Mission 66" modernization and expansion program. As the first major building of that effort, it was a high-profile success, bringing critical notice for its Modern design and launching the careers of its designers. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1975 for its architecture and its importance to the Park Service's program.

A 60 feet (18.29 m) granite monument, dedicated in 1932, is perched atop 90-foot-tall (27 m) Kill Devil Hill, commemorating the achievement of the Wright brothers. They conducted many of their glider tests on the massive shifting dune that was later stabilized to form Kill Devil Hill. Inscribed in capital letters along the base of the memorial tower is the phrase "In commemoration of the conquest of the air by the brothers Wilbur and Orville Wright conceived by genius achieved by dauntless resolution and unconquerable faith." Atop the tower is a marine beacon, similar to one found in a lighthouse.

The doors of the tower are stainless steel over nickel, with a price of $3,000 in 1928 (equivalent to $35,818 in 2019[7]). The six relief panels represent the conquest of the air.

Source - Wikipedia

Thomas Wolfe House

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The Thomas Wolfe House, also known as the Thomas Wolfe Memorial, is a state historic site, historic house and museum located at 52 North Market Street in downtown Asheville, North Carolina. The American author Thomas Wolfe (1900–1938) lived in the home during his boyhood. The house was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1971 for its association with Wolfe. It is located in the Downtown Asheville Historic District.

The two-story frame house was built in 1883, influenced by Queen Anne style architecture in the United States. By 1906, when Wolfe's mother, Julia E. (Westall) Wolfe (1860-1945), bought the house, it was a boarding house named "Old Kentucky Home". She soon went to live at her business with Tom, while the other Wolfes remained at their Woodfin Street residence. Wolfe lived at the boarding house until he went to the University of North Carolina in 1916. Julia Wolfe enlarged the house in 1917 by adding five rooms.

Wolfe used the house as the setting for his first novel, Look Homeward, Angel (1929). Changing the name of his mother's boarding house to "Dixieland" in his autobiographical fiction, he incorporated his own experiences among family, friends and boarders into the book.

The house became a memorial to Wolfe after his mother's death (he having died relatively young of tuberculosis). It has been open to visitors since the 1950s, owned by the state of North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources since 1976 and designated as a National Historic Landmark. In 1998, 200 of the house's 800 original artifacts and the house's dining room were destroyed by a fire set by an arsonist during the Bele Chere street festival. The perpetrator remains unknown. After a $2.4 million restoration, the house was re-opened in 2003.

Source - Wikipedia

Town Creek Indian Mound

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Town Creek Indian Mound is a prehistoric Native American archaeological site located near present-day Mount Gilead, Montgomery County, North Carolina, in the United States.[3] The site, whose main features are a platform mound with a surrounding village and wooden defensive palisade, was built by the Pee Dee, a South Appalachian Mississippian culture people (a regional variation of the Mississippian culture)[4] that developed in the region as early as 980 CE. They thrived in the Pee Dee River region of North and South Carolina during the Pre-Columbian era. The Town Creek site was an important ceremonial site occupied from about 1150—1400 CE. It was abandoned for unknown reasons. It is the only ceremonial mound and village center of the Pee Dee located within North Carolina.

The Pee Dee people shared the Mississippian culture that was characterized in part by building large, earthwork mounds for spiritual and political purposes. They participated in a widespread network of trading that stretched from Georgia through South Carolina, eastern Tennessee, and the mountain and Piedmont regions of North Carolina. The Town Creek site is not large by Mississippian standards. The earthwork mound was built over the remains of a rectangular-shaped earth lodge. The site was declared a National Historic Landmark on October 15, 1966, and is identified as reference number 66000594.

The site is the only national historic landmark in North Carolina to commemorate American Indian culture. It is owned by the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources and is operated by the Division of State Historic Sites. Today the Pee Dee people are based in South Carolina, where the state has recognized four bands and one group.

Group tours are available with advance scheduling. Groups are led through some hands-on activities. Various special events held throughout the year focus on the lifestyle of the Pee Dee. Self-guided tours of the rebuilt structures and mound occur during normal operational hours, and admission to Town Creek Indian Mound is free.

Source - Wikipedia

Reed Gold Mine

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The Reed Gold Mine is located in Midland, Cabarrus County, North Carolina, and is the site of the first documented commercial gold find in the United States.[2] It has been designated a National Historic Landmark because of its importance and listed on the National Register of Historic Places

In 1799, Conrad Reed, the son of farmer and former Hessian soldier John Reed (né Johannes Reidt) born June 6, 1757, found a 17-pound yellow "rock" in Little Meadow Creek on the family farm in Cabarrus County, North Carolina. For three years, the rock served as a bulky doorstop. In 1802, a jeweler from Fayetteville identified the rock as a large gold nugget. He told John Reed to name his price. Reed, not understanding the true value of gold, asked for what he thought was the hefty price of $3.50, or a week's worth of wages. The large nugget's true value was around $3,600.

About 1803, John Reed organized a small gold mining operation. Soon afterward a slave named Peter found a 28-pound nugget. Reed continued with placer mining for a number of years. In 1831 he began underground mining. John Reed died at age 88 on May 28, 1845, rich from the gold found on his property.

Some years later, the American Civil War decreased mining activity because of labor and resources being pulled into the war. The last large nugget uncovered by placer mining was discovered in 1896. The last underground mining took place at the Reed Mine in 1912. To handle the large amount of gold found in the region and state from the 19th into the early 20th century, the Charlotte Mint was built in nearby Charlotte, North Carolina.

Today, the Reed Mine is a state historic site that belongs to the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources and open to the public. Visitors can tour a museum with extensive displays about North Carolina gold mining. In addition, they can explore several hundred feet of restored gold mine tunnels.

Source - Wikipedia

Old Salem

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Old Salem is a historic district of Winston-Salem, North Carolina that was originally settled by the Moravian community in 1766 . This small city features a living history museum (operated by the non-profit Old Salem Museums & Gardens, organized as Old Salem Inc.) that interprets the restored Moravian community. The non-profit organization began its work in 1950, although some private residents had restored buildings earlier. As the Old Salem Historic District, it was declared a National Historic Landmark (NHL) in 1966. and expanded in 2016. The district showcases the culture of the Moravian settlement in North Carolina during the 18th and 19th centuries, communal buildings, churches, houses, and shops.

The town's restored and reconstructed buildings, staffed by living-history interpreters, present visitors with a view of Moravian life in the 18th and 19th centuries. The features include skilled interpreters such as tinsmiths, blacksmiths, cobblers, gunsmiths, bakers and carpenters, practicing their trades while interacting with visitors. Approximately 70% of the buildings in the historic district are original, making this a truly unique living history museum.

Highlights of the town include the Salem Tavern, where George Washington spent two nights (May 31 and June 1, 1791), while passing through North Carolina during his "Southern Tour"; the Single Brothers' House; Boys' School; Winkler Bakery; and a host of restored homes and shops, and several stores including T. Bagge Merchant and the Moravian Book and Gift Shop.

Of note is the St. Philip's Moravian Church complex. Site of an 18th-century graveyard, the (now reconstructed) 1823 'Negro Church' was built following a congregational vote to segregate worship in accordance with North Carolina state law in 1816. Before that the African-Americans who joined the Moravian church attended Home Moravian Church. In 1861, St. Philip's Church was constructed. Now restored, the church was originally built by the Salem congregation for the enslaved and free African-Americans of the community. Completed just before the Civil War in 1861, it is the oldest surviving African-American church built for that purpose in North Carolina. The Emancipation Proclamation was read there to the congregation in 1865 by the chaplain of the 10th Ohio Regiment. The church continued to grow and was expanded in the 1890s. The congregation moved to a new location in 1952 then a third location on Bon Aire Avenue, before returning to hold services in the brick Church in 2019. The building stood vacant from 1952 until its restoration. St. Philip's Church is individually listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Source - Wikipedia

USS North Carolina

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USS North Carolina (BB-55) is the lead ship of the North Carolina class of fast battleships, the first vessel of the type built for the United States Navy. Built under the Washington Treaty system, North Carolina's design was limited in displacement and armament, though the United States used a clause in the Second London Naval Treaty to increase the main battery from the original armament of nine 14-inch (356 mm) guns to nine 16 in (406 mm) guns. The ship was laid down in 1937 and completed in April 1941, while the United States was still neutral during World War II.

Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December, North Carolina mobilized for war and was initially sent to counter a possible sortie by the German battleship Tirpitz, though this did not materialize and North Carolina was promptly transferred to the Pacific to strengthen Allied forces during the Guadalcanal Campaign. There, she screened aircraft carriers engaged in the campaign and took part in the Battle of the Eastern Solomons on 24–25 August, where she shot down several Japanese aircraft. The next month, she was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine but was not seriously damaged. After repairs, she returned to the campaign and continued to screen carriers during the campaigns across the central Pacific in 1943 and 1944, including the Gilberts and Marshall Islands and the Mariana and Palau Islands, where she saw action during the Battle of the Philippine Sea.

The ship was undergoing a refit during the invasion of the Philippines but took part in the later stages of the Philippines campaign and was present when the fleet was damaged by Typhoon Cobra. She took part in offensive operations in support of the Battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa in 1945, including numerous attacks on Japan. Following the surrender of Japan in August, she carried American personnel home during Operation Magic Carpet. North Carolina operated briefly off the east coast of the United States in 1946 before being decommissioned the next year and placed in reserve. Stricken from the Naval Vessel Register in 1960, the ship was saved from the breaker's yard by a campaign to preserve the vessel as a museum ship in her namesake state. In 1962, the North Carolina museum was opened in Wilmington, North Carolina.

Source - Wikipedia

Hinton Rowan Helper House

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The Hinton Rowan Helper House is a historic house on United States Route 64 outside Mocksville, Davie County, North Carolina. Built on land that once belonged to Daniel Boone, it was the childhood and early adult home of Hinton Rowan Helper (1829-1909) whose The Impending Crisis of the South (published 1857) was an influential antislavery work that inflamed tensions in 1860. The house was added to the National Register of Historic Places and declared a National Historic Landmark in 1973.

It was here that author Hinton Rowan Helper (1829-1909) spent the first twenty years of his life, living in an area where he experienced directly the impact of slavery, not just on the slaves, but also on the white lower classes. In 1857 he published The Impending Crisis of the South, a reasoned polemic arguing that slavery was economically bad for most Southern whites, because it concentrated power and money in the slaveowning plantation elites and suppressed wages and drives to industrialize the region. The work was met with fury in the South, where it was banned, and was used by the Republican Party as campaign material in the 1860 United States election.

Source - Wikipedia

Fort Fisher

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Fort Fisher was a Confederate fort during the American Civil War. It protected the vital trading routes of the port at Wilmington, North Carolina, from 1861 until its capture by the Union in 1865. The fort was located on one of Cape Fear River's two outlets to the Atlantic Ocean on what was then known as Federal Point or Confederate Point and today is known as Pleasure Island. The strength of Fort Fisher led to its being called the Southern Gibraltar and the "Malakoff Tower of the South". The battle of Fort Fisher was the most decisive battle of the Civil War fought in North Carolina.

The site was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1961, the first in North Carolina. It is now part of Fort Fisher State Historic Site, belonging to the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, and includes the main fort complex, a museum and a visitor center. Undersea archaeology is also practiced around the site. Fort Fisher State Recreation Area is adjacent to the State Historic Site, and the remnants of the once formidable Battery Buchanan is a part of the North Carolina National Estuarine Research Reserve's Zeke's Island site.

The beach at Fort Fisher State Recreation Area, North Carolina

The museum features a map of the 1865 battle with three-dimensional models of Fort Fisher and Battery Buchanan. The map features a narration of the battle and fiber-optic lights to show the troop activities and locations. Other exhibits highlight aspects of the battle, life at the fort, Union and Confederate soldiers' clothing and gear, weapons and armaments from the period, local cultural and natural history, Fort Fisher's history during World War II, and excavations and artifacts found at the fort.

Because of natural sea attrition, the construction of US 421 and a landing strip during World War II few of the original sand mounds have survived. Part of the original land face fence has been reconstructed.

Visitors can take a tour around the surviving earthworks of the fort with trail marker displays. A restored 32-pound seacoast cannon is located at the Sheperd's Battery, and is fired on special occasions. Scheduled guided tours are given daily, and special costumed tours are held occasionally. Fort Fisher's original innovative 150 pound Armstrong cannon is now located at West Point, NY, having been brought there for display at "Trophy Point."

Fort Fisher is the subject of an exhibit at the Cape Fear Museum in downtown Wilmington. Included are impressive dioramas of the fort and the Civil War waterfront of Wilmington originally created for the former acclaimed Blockade Runner Museum at Carolina Beach.

Source - Wikipedia

Guilford Courthouse National Military Park

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Guilford Courthouse National Military Park, at 2332 New Garden Road in Greensboro, Guilford County, North Carolina, commemorates the Battle of Guilford Court House, fought on March 15, 1781. This battle opened the campaign that led to American victory in the Revolutionary War. The loss by the British in this battle contributed to their surrender at Yorktown seven months later. The battlefield is preserved as a National Military Park and operated by the National Park Service (NPS). Based on research of historical evidence, the interpretation of the battle has changed since the late 20th century, which will affect the placement of monuments and markers.

Today, the National Park Service has moved beyond Schenck's interpretation of the battle with a more researched understanding of the battle's events. It hopes to reconstruct the battlefield and its monuments to be consistent with historical evidence. A revived Guilford Battleground Company supports preservation efforts for Guilford Courthouse National Military Park and Colonial Heritage Center, where British forces assembled for their advance.

The park is linked by a bicycle path to the adjoining Greensboro Country Park, and residents use both for jogging and cycling.

Source - Wikipedia