North Carolina played a critical, often overlooked, role in our nation’s founding. We at the North Carolina History Project have put together this timeline of our state’s contributions to the American Revolution. The following timeline chronologically lays out some of the most important events in North Carolina’s revolutionary history and links out to our more...
To academic historians and amateur (or avocational) historians: We explored the North Carolina Historical Review to find articles about the American Revolution. I hope these summaries (written by a person, not AI) will whet your appetite for the longer versions. (A link to each article on JSTOR is provided for each.) Did North Carolina’s Revolution...
The North Carolina Historical Review includes a rich collection of articles about the American Revolution. This list was compiled by Kathryn McKee and Jane Shaw Stroup.
Pyle’s Defeat occurred in February 1781 near the end of the Revolution. It was a savage blow to British hopes, as Lt. Gen. Charles, Lord Cornwallis attempted to stop the Patriots’ momentum.
The subject of Scottish folklore and myth, Flora MacDonald assisted Prince Charles Stuart in his escape from King George II. In 1774, she moved to North Carolina, where her Loyalist husband and son fought in the Battle of Moores Creek.
The Edenton Tea Party was one of the earliest organized women’s political actions in United States history. On October 25, 1774, Mrs. Penelope Barker organized, at the home of Mrs. Elizabeth King, fifty-one women in Edenton, North Carolina. Together they formed an alliance wholeheartedly supporting the American cause against “taxation without representation.”
Robert Ruark (1915-1965)
Born in Wilmington, North Carolina, in 1915, Robert Ruark became one of the state’s most prominent writers during the 1940s and 1950s. A graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill, Ruark wrote for local newspapers until he moved to Washington, D.C. In the mid-1940s, Ruark gained popularity for his Washington Daily News columns, and he started writing fiction novels. His most popular work was Old Man and the Boy (1957), a semi-autobiographical work that details Ruark’s childhood with his grandfather in Southport, North Carolina.
Duke Homestead
See the early home, factories, and farm where Washington Duke first grew and processed tobacco. Duke's sons later founded The American Tobacco Company, the largest tobacco company in the world. The tour includes the Duke family's restored home, an early factory, a curing barn, and a packhouse. The Tobacco Museum exhibits traces tobacco history from Native American times to the present.
Saponi Indians
The Saponi Indian tribe is an eastern Siouan language tribe with ancestral land located in Virginia and North Carolina. The Occaneechi Band of the Saponi and the Haliwa Saponi are recognized by the state of North Carolina. The Saponi traveled in small tight knight communities and were avid corn farmers and hunters.
Somerset Place: The Site Rebuilt
Somerset Place is a representative state historic site offering a comprehensive and realistic view of 19th-century life on a large North Carolina plantation. Originally, this atypical plantation included more than 100,000 densely wooded, mainly swampy acres bordering the five-by-eight mile Lake Phelps, in present-day Washington County. During its 80 years as an active plantation (1785-1865), hundreds of acres were converted into high yielding fields of rice, corn, oats, wheat, beans, peas, and flax; sophisticated sawmills turned out thousands of feet of lumber. By 1865, Somerset Place was one of the upper South's largest plantations.
Guilford College
Guilford College was founded by the Society of Friends (Quaker church) in 1837 as a boarding school. During the Civil War, the institution became a place of Confederate resistance, largely due to the Quaker tradition of equality and pacifism.
Asa Biggs (1811 – 1878)
Born in Martin County in 1811, Asa Biggs grew up in the area to become a lawyer in the Williamson region. Biggs was admitted to the bar in 1831 and a high point of his career occurred when he helped codify North Carolina’s law in 1854. As both a judge and U.S. senator, Biggs remained a Democrat that supported state rights and slavery.
Catawba College
Catawba College was founded by the German Reformed Church in 1851, and it is the sixth oldest college in North Carolina. Established to train ministers, Catawba now offers co-educational undergraduate and master degrees. Annual enrollment is over 1,300 students, and Catawba has several joint study programs with the Appalachian State, Duke, and Wake Forest Universities.
Fort York
A little known Confederate fort that was built in anticipation of Union General George Stoneman’s Raid into Piedmont North Carolina and to protect the North Carolina Railroad Bridge, Fort York is now located adjacent to I-85 in Davidson County and across the Yadkin River from Rowan County.
Willie P. Mangum (1792 – 1861)
Willie Mangum, born in 1792 in Durham County, served as a North Carolina senator for nearly 20 years. Mangum studied at the University of North Carolina in 1815, and was admitted to the state bar in 1817. In 1823, Mangum was elected to the national House of Representatives, and in 1830 he became a North Carolina Senator. During President John Tyler's tenure, Mangum served as the Senate president pro tempore.
Lee S. Overman (1854 – 1930)
The first popularly elected Senator of North Carolina, Lee S. Overman served in the U.S. Senate for almost thirty years.
Davidson College
Founded by the Presbyterian church in 1837, Davidson College was named in honor of General William L. Davidson, a Patriot soldier who died during the Battle of Cowan's Ford. Early students helped develop the campus, but after a large endowment by Maxwell Chambers, Davidson College had the largest endowment of any college south of Princeton.
Thomas Clingman (1812 – 1897)
Senator from 1858 until 1861, Thomas Lanier Clingman supported state rights, slavery, and secession during his time as North Carolina public servant. Clingman attended UNC-Chapel Hill and he became a lawyer in the 1830s. After Senator Asa Biggs resigned from the U.S. Senate, Clingman was appointed to take his position. Although an ardent supporter of secession, Senator Clingman was the last southerner to leave Washington, D.C.