State

Changes On Our Map Many names, onee representing important towns. Iiave entirely disappeared, while in other instances names have been changed not only once hut several times. TO ONE not familiar with the state of affairs in colonial North Carolina it would seem upon finding upon the pages of Colonial Records one legislative enactment after another authorizing the estab¬ lishment of a town, that the early province was do.tted with flourish¬ ing centers of trade and industry. Such, however, was not the case. Few of the towns so specifically laid out by Act of Assembly ever grew beyond the size of cross¬ roads villages and some, indeed, never materialized even that far. First Seat of Government Even the first seat of govern¬ ment. u city to be called Tower Hill, existed only upon the paper upon which the legislative enact¬ ment was recorded. In 1758 the General Assembly selected as the most eligible spot for the capital city a section of Governor Dobbs’ lantotion on the Neuse River, ower Hill, four miles north¬ east of the present town of Kinston, and made provision for the erection of a house for the Governor and other buildings nec¬ essary for the carrying on of the government. Four years later, how¬ ever. although local tradition has it that an assembly hall was erected on the Hill, so inaccessible by land and by water had the ap¬ pointed capital proved that the act fixing the site as the seat of gov¬ ernment was repealed and New Bern was selected instead. A study of early maps of North Carolina would show that names prominent in colonial and Revolu¬ tionary days have disappeared al¬ together from modern maps. For instance, we no longer have Albe¬ marle, designating a large county in eastern North Carolina. Bute County, comprising what is now Warren and Franklin, and named in honor of a friend of George HI. the Earl of Bute, First Lord of the Treasury, also has been erased from the map, as have the counties Dobbs and Tryon, named for Royal governors. By MARY CALLUM WILE' The dropping of one name from a county reflects upon the honor of a brave Revolutionary Patriot. James Glasgow, the first Secretary of State North Carolina had after attaining statehood. In 1799 the county named for Glasgow became Greene County because of Glas¬ gow's conviction of fraud in issu¬ ing land grants in Tennessee. Changes at Hillsboro It is of interest to note the changes in names of towns. In 1754 William Churton. Lord Gran¬ ville's surveyor, laid out a tract of land on the Enoe and called it Orange; soon afterwards the name was changed to Corbinton in honor of the land agent. Francis Corbin. In 1759 the village was in¬ corporated as Childsboro, after Thomas Childs, the Attorney Gen¬ eral of the Province. In 1766 Gov¬ ernor Tryon, to honor a kinsman of his wife— the Earl of Hillsbor¬ ough, Secretary of State for the colonies — - renamed the village Hillsboro, or Hillsborough, as it was formerly spelled. In 1736 a ship load of three hun¬ dred Scotchmen settled on the Cape Fear River, near the point where two creeks met and crossed, and called their settlement Camp- bellton, after their leader, Farqu- hard Campbell. Some years later one of the settlers built a mill at the point where the creeks crossed and around this mill in time grew the "town” of Cross Creek, an im¬ portant center of trade. In 1778 Campbellton and Cross Creek be¬ came one town and to this united community the name Fayetteville was given, in honor of General La- Fayette. In recent years there has been one change in the names of North Carolina towns. Burlington was known as Company Shops from 1855 when the first train passed through the village of six families until 1887. The erasure of certain names from the map of our state is due to the moving of towns from one site to another, under a different name, or the changing of county seats. The Case of Martinsville Such was the case of Martins¬ ville. around which raged the bat¬ tle between the forces of the Amer¬ icans under General Greene and the Red Coats of Lord Cornwallis. At the time of the conflict the strag¬ gling settlement was known as Guilford Court House. After the Revolution the village was named Martinsville, in honor of Gover¬ nor Alexander Martin; and then in 1808 when a more central location was needed as the county seat of the rich and growing county, a tract of forty-two acres some miles from Martinsville, was rapidly set¬ tled as Greensboro, named in hon¬ or of the hero of Guilford battle— General Nathanael Green. Until 1847 the county seat of Wayne County — established in 1779 from a section of old Dobbs — was the village of Waynesboro, named, like the county, in honor of the popular Revolutionary hero. Mad Anthony Wayne. On February 23. 1839, the first train of the old Wilmington and Weldon Railroad entered Wayne County and a railroad village sprang up, which was known as Goldsboro, after the assistant civil engineer who had hel|>cd survey the road. In 1847 the railroad center of Goldsboro was made the county seat and many of the dwelling houses and places of business in Waynesboro were taken down and put up again in the new town. Wake Courthouse When the site of Raleigh was selected as the capital of our state, the place was known as Wake Courthouse or old Bloomsbury. Across the street from Wake Courthouse was the residence of Joel Lane, used also as a tavern. The tiny settlement, consisting of the tavern, the courthouse, the jail, l Continued on page 24)