A native of Asheboro, NC., Mac Whatley graduated from Harvard University, with a major in Fine Arts and a specialization in architectural history. He has worked for the Virginia Research Center for Archaeology in Williamsburg and the Historic Preservation Section of the NC Dept. of Cultural Resources as an architectural survey specialist. He has published The Architectural History of Randolph County, NC; Randolph County: A Pictorial History; and Notes on the History of Randolph County, N.C. (ongoing WordPress blog). Whatley also has an MA in Library Science from UNC-Chapel Hill and a JD degree from NC-Central University in Durham and serves as a Trustee of the N.C. Humanities Council, the Adjunct Curator of Machinery and the American Textile History Museum.
Schoolmaster Yorke and The Tories
Offering a different interpretation than presented by B.J. Lossing in his groundbreaking Pictorial Field Book of Revolution, Randolph County historian Mac Whatley argues that historians should do further research and regarding the Regulator Rebellion and the story of David Fanning and Bay Doe.
Asheboro Colored Graded School
At the southwest corner of Central School, now known as “East Side Homes,” is a marble stone that predates the 1926 construction of Asheboro’s oldest existing African American school. It reminds passersby about the first African American school in the Piedmont town.
Howell Gilliam Trogdon (1840 – 1894)
Howell Gilliam Trogdon, born in Randolph County in 1840, was the first North Carolinian to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor. There is no better illustration of the ever-divided loyalties of Randolph County than one of its native sons, born in the last state to join the Confederacy, who received the highest award for valor in action that can be bestowed upon an individual serving in the Army of the United States of America.