The Lake Company was created in 1784 by Josiah Collins, Sr., Nathaniel Allen, and Dr. Samuel Dickenson to acquire and develop land around Lake Phelps. The Lake Company was a successful agricultural business and built canals around Lake Phelps. After a long legal battle, Collins bought his partners’ shares in the company, and turned the Lake Company into “Somerset Place” Plantation.
Located in what is now Hyde County and named by Algonquian Indians, Lake Mattamuskeet, meaning “near marsh or bog,” is North Carolina’s largest natural lake. It is seven miles wide and eighteen miles long, covering 40,000 acres, and is part of the Mattamuskeet National Wildlife Refuge.
What started in 1913 as 500 pounds of unwanted Virginia peanuts has evolved into Lance Inc., with revenues steadily approaching one billion dollars. Phillip L. Lance, a Charlotte-based food distributor, ordered 500 pounds of peanuts directly from a planter with the intent to resale them to one of his customers. When Lance’s customer reneged on the peanut deal, Lance roasted the peanuts at his home and sold them on the streets of Charlotte for a nickel a bag instead of returning them to the planter. The home roasted peanuts quickly became popular among Charlotte residents, and Lance soon started producing peanut butter.
Born just outside of Raleigh, North Carolina on May 30, 1803, Lunsford Lane exhibited entrepreneurial talent as a child and a determination as an adult to buy his freedom. He is most famous for writing a slave narrative that included descriptions of his business activities while in bondage and his troubles securing his and his family’s freedom.
Founded by Reverend Morgan London Latta in 1892, Latta University was a school and orphanage for former slaves’ children.
Jack A. Laughery grew up in the small town of Guthrie Center, Iowa. He studied business at the University of Iowa, graduating in 1957 and later joined the regional fast-food chain Sandy’s as a manager in 1962.
Adventurer John Lawson booked passage for the New World and sailed from Cowes, England on May 1, 1700. An acquaintance who had been to America assured Lawson "that Carolina was the best country I could go to," and the young traveler was eager to see Britain’s colony in the New World. After a harried ocean voyage lasting nearly three months, Lawson’s ship put in at New York Harbor. In late August, following a brief stay in New York, Lawson sailed for the bustling colonial port of Charleston. By December, the young adventurer had been given a daunting task. The Lords Proprietors — wealthy Englishmen appointed by the Crown to govern the settlement of Carolina — assigned John Lawson to conduct a reconnaissance survey of the interior of the province. The Carolina backcountry at that time was an unknown and forbidding place. There were no adequate maps, and little was known about the Native American inhabitants of the region — including their attitude toward English settlers.
The growing predominance of the railroad had much to do with the formation of Lee County in the early 1900s. In 1907, The North Carolina General Assembly selected pieces of the surrounding Moore and Chatham Counties to create Lee County. Even though it was one of the last counties to be formed in the state (98th), Lee County has been significant to the economy and welfare of North Carolina.
Alton A. Lennon was a Democratic U.S. Senator from North Carolina between 1953 and 1954. Prior to that from 1957 to 1973, he was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. Alton was known as one of North Carolina’s most conservative politicians.
Landlocked in North Carolina’s Coastal Plains region, Lenoir County is famous for its history, innovation, and as the birthplace of several notable persons.
Located in Hickory, North Carolina, Lenoir-Rhyne University was founded in 1891 as Highland Academy by four Lutheran ministers. Since its inception the school has grown to a student body of 1,900 students, and Lenoir-Rhyne continues its affiliation with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
Missionary Henry Martin Tupper founded Shaw University, a private African American college, in 1865. Within a few years, he realized that a medical school for African American was needed, so in 1880, the university’s trustees established Leonard Medical School.
LFPINC (Lowest Food Prices In North Carolina) was an acronym used successfully by Ralph W. Ketner, co-founder and president of Food Town/Lion, to symbolize his cutting cost theory—lowering prices on all items to sell more products and therefore make a larger profit. By the 1970s, the LFPINC concept revolutionized the supermarket industry.
Until 1868, the Governor was North Carolina’s only elected executive. The Constitution of 1868, however, created the office of Lieutenant Governor and provided for the popular election of the office of the Governor and the Lt. Governor, each for four-year terms. In 1970 the Lt. Governorship became full-time and evolved into the only elected post with executive and legislative duties.
Lillian Exum Clement became the first woman elected to the North Carolina General Assembly and the first woman to serve in any state legislature in the American South.
Named after a Revolutionary War hero, the town is located approximately halfway between Raleigh and Fayetteville.
Namesake of the town of Lillington (the county seat of Harnett County), John Alexander Lillington served as a colonel during the American Revolution and earned fame as a military hero. Many credit him for the Patriot victory at the Battle of Moore’s Creek Bridge.
Named in honor of General Benjamin Lincoln, Lincoln County, along with Rutherford County, was established in 1779 from a section of Tryon County. Lincoln is a southwestern, Piedmont county that is known for its rolling topography and its many creeks and brooks. The first cotton mill in the South and some of the oldest iron works furnaces are within Lincoln County.
In 1873, the North Carolina Supreme Court applied the principle of the separation of church and state in a unique case involving William Linkhaw of Lumberton.
In 1825, a bill was passed that established The Literary Fund, and the effort became North Carolina’s first attempt to establish public schools. The Literary Fund never accomplished its mission because only approximately 20 percent was spent for public schooling.
Governor O. Max Gardner implemented the Live at Home Program in 1929. The initiative encouraged farmers to increase food and livestock production in order to improve farm conditions and provide for year round family farm consumption.
The “Sword Maker for the Confederacy,” Louis Froelich moved his company (formerly known as the CSA Arms Factory) to Kenansville, North Carolina after a yellow epidemic epidemic struck Wilmington in 1862. The factory produced numerous swords, utensils, and sabers for the Confederacy’s fighting forces.
James Spencer Love was the founder of Burlington Industries, the biggest textile manufacturing company in the world by the mid-1950s. His entrepreneurship helped to expand the textile industry and provide funding for education.
Lowe’s Companies is a North Carolina based chain of home improvement and appliance stores located in the U.S., Mexico, and Canada. Lowe’s is one of the nations largest retailers and serves over 1,400 customers a week with 1,710 stores in the U.S. and twenty in Canada.
Known to some as a local hero and to others as a criminal, Henry Berry Lowry and his armed band, consisting of Lumbees, African Americans and one “buckskin” Scot, fought the Home Guard during the Civil War and the Ku Klux Klan during Reconstruction. The outlaw robbed from planters and redistributed wealth. He mysteriously disappeared after robbing $28,000 from the sheriff’s office in 1872.
During the mid-twentieth century manufacturing jobs started providing the majority of employment for North Carolinians. Luck’s Incorporated, a Seagrove-based company, produced approximately twenty four meat and vegetable products that were distributed across the Southeast.