Clik here to view.
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...
View ArticleClik here to view.
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...
View ArticleClik here to view.
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...
View ArticleClik here to view.
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...
View ArticleClik here to view.
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...
View ArticleClik here to view.
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...
View ArticleClik here to view.
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...
View ArticleClik here to view.
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...
View ArticleClik here to view.
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,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
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...
View ArticleClik here to view.
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...
View ArticleClik here to view.
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...
View ArticleClik here to view.
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...
View ArticleClik here to view.
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...
View Article