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The Center of the County
Eli A. Moffitt General Store located on the southeast side of the Old Courthouse Square in Asheboro. Built 1889, burned down on December 30, 1896. The building in the background on the left is the...
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“Oldest” Houses
The Mordecai House (the rear part, above, built in 1785) is the oldest house in Raleigh, seven years older than the city itself. “What’s the oldest house in—“ This is one of the most-asked questions...
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Who Values Randolph County Historic Properties?
The Tommy White House in 1978. My book The Architectural History of Randolph County has 283 pages and more than 600 entries on the structures I found during the historic properties survey from 1978 to...
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Barbecue
Blue Mist Barbecue Restaurant, US 64 near Cedar Falls, by Louis Brady Jr. When World War II rationing made gasoline and rubber tires available to the public again, Americans took to the highways like...
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Pancake Day
Asheboro Kiwanis Club Pancake Day at the National Guard Armory, circa 1985 “Shrove Tuesday” -the day before “Ash Wednesday” for traditional Catholics and Anglicans, is the day to confess your sins...
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The Conjurer
June 19, 1865, “Juneteenth,” was the day freedom finally came to the enslaved people of Texas, and is now celebrated as our second American independence day. But African Americans in eastern North...
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Franklinsville Manufacturing Company Store
(“The Upper Store”) From the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, one of the most vital parts of any textile mill village was a shop selling a variety of goods not otherwise locally available. When...
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Company Stores, Truck Farming, Tokens and Checks
When a reporter from Raleigh visited the new mill village of Franklinsville in September 1849, he counted forty-two dwelling houses clustered around the upper factory, which indicated a work force of...
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December 25th Through the Years.
Elisha Coffin, circa 1860. Two hundred years ago, December 25, 1821, a miller from Guilford County named Elisha Coffin bought a defunct mill site on Deep River in eastern Randolph County. His...
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Randolph County and the Society of Friends
Quakers on Barbadoes- New York Public Library One of the most common questions I get asked is, Why was Randolph County so different from most of the rest of North Carolina? The short answer is,...
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Monuments and Memorials in Randolph County
Original 1946 plan of War Memorial Park in Asheboro; none of the features shown were built as designed. [The following was part of the report I gave to the county commissioners at a public hearing...
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White privilege and systemic racism
East Market Street facade of the Greensboro S&W. Martin Evans Boyer Papers, 1910-1993 (UNCC MC00094), J. Murrey Atkins Library Special Collections at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte...
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A Family Tradition: Working more than 175 years in North Carolina’s Textile...
The Franklinsville Factory, as rebuilt after the 1851 fire. The textile mill started by the original Franklinsville stockholders in 1838 wove its first yard of cotton sheeting in March 1840 and its...
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The “Spanish Flu” Pandemic
The worst pandemic to hit the United States before COVID-19 was the “Spanish” influenza epidemic that followed the end of World War I. The parallels between that epidemic of one hundred years ago and...
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Plague and the Pest House
I am writing this from my home in Franklinville, NC, in the midst of COVID-19 self-isolation. For most of America, home isolation is designed to “flatten the curve”- to impose community isolation...
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Heart Surgery in the Plague Year
There are times when events gang up on us and deliver punches to the gut so that we have no choice but to recognize that ‘this is history’ – we’re experiencing something we will look back on as a...
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The Power of Water: Hurricane Florence in Randolph County, September 2018
Hurricane Florence from space- NASA. People often ask me why we don’t have a Randolph County museum. The short answer is that a decent museum would cost a lot of money and need staffing, neither of...
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The “Factory Branch” of the Cape Fear and Yadkin Valley Railway
The Franklinsville Depot, about 1900 The Main Line. When the Civil War began Randolph County was without any direct rail connections. The North Carolina Railroad had opened in 1856, passing just 2...
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WWI Aviation Mechanics: Ralph Whatley
Ralph Whatley, seated on the ground, lower right, with French and American members of the 1st Motor Mechanics Brigade of the US Army in France, 1918. When the contents of my great-grandparents’ house...
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Women’s War Work: Julia Thorns
In my job at the library I write a lot of stuff, but most of it doesn’t end up on this blog. For example, here is an article I wrote for the NC Department of Natural and Cultural History blog during...
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