Along with the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, black (men) were also permitted to go to the polls for the first time after the Reconstruction Act of 1867. Raleigh’s first elected black politician was James Henry Harris, who was a member of the 1868 North Carolina constitutional convention. But as Abraham Lincoln’s Republican party grew and expanded with numerous black members entering the fold during the Reconstruction-era, their rivals, the Democrats, were cooking up ways to lash back at African American’s newly granted liberties. Our capital city was all too often the scene of such injustice.

One of the most egregious examples of the Democrat’s backlash was the May 1883 election of the Raleigh Board of Alderman. Of the seventeen seats, eleven elected were white Republicans, and six were Democrats, one white and five black.  All seventeen were sworn in and seated the very next day. But because of changes that a majority-Democrat city government had made back in 1875, the diversity of the 1883 Board of Alderman was not going to last.

In 1875, the Raleigh city government was completely dominated by Democrats. In fact, all seventeen seats on the Board of Alderman were held by Dems. That board decided to revise the Raleigh city charter to make it more difficult for freedmen to vote, and to make the position of mayor electable by only the Board of Alderman and not the general public (convenient for the Dems, since about half of Raleigh’s population was African American). They also fired all of Raleigh’s black policeman, and left it so the only city job an African American could hold was the caretaker of Mt. Hope Cemetery. That would be the black cemetery, of course.

So having secured all that power back in 1875, the majority-Democrat Board of Alderman in 1883 decided the day after they had been sworn in to kick out as many of the black Republicans as they could. They asked the North Carolina Attorney General to decide if four of the black Republicans were ineligible since they already held government positions with the federal government. The attorney general’s office agreed with the Dems, and four black alderman, Stewart Ellison, James E. Hamlin, Armenius Hunter and James H. Young, plus one white alderman, James Doyle, were removed from office.

That decision left only one black alderman, Republican Charles W. Hoover. The white alderman who was kicked out, James Doyle, was quickly reinstated because it was decided that his position as night watchman for the U.S. Post Office was not a government title. Both Hoover and Doyle refused to attend any alderman meetings that year, waiting until they were re-elected the following year to serve on the board.

The “government offices or titles” that the black Republicans held making them ineligible according to the Democrats and the Attorney General were as follows; Stewart Ellison, post office custodian, James E. Hamlin, post office clerk, Armenius Hunter, mail collector, and James H. Young, clerk for the U.S. Revenue Department.

The campus, which originally consisted of 160 acres of thick oak forest, was purchased from Colonel William Polk. The school’s first headmaster was Joseph Green Cogswell, a New Englander and Episcopal clergyman who had been trained at Harvard.
Under Cogswell’s leadership as headmaster, the Episcopal School built their first building out of the same rock that was also being used for Raleigh’s new capitol building. That building would later be known as East Rock, with West Rock being completed in 1835.

It was about that time, just two years into his tenure as headmaster, that Cogswell decided to leave the school and Raleigh. He had always found the location too wild, and indeed had woken to a cottonmouth snake in his bed at one time. The Episcopal School of North Carolina did not do well without Cogswell, and was ordered to be closed by the Episcopalian Diocese in 1839.

In the interim years, several different schools leased the buildings for their courses, but the Diocese was still deeply in debt. Then in 1841, Judge Duncan Cameron, whose home stood across Hillsborough Street from the campus, decided to buy the property with the idea in mind of opening a girl’s school. Cameron was an Episcopalian, and he wished to keep the new school connected to the church.

While at a conference in New York, the Episcopal Bishop of North Carolina, the Right Reverend Levi Silliman Ives, met Reverend Aldert Smedes, and they struck a deal to establish a girl’s school in Raleigh, which became St. Mary’s College. The land was then leased to Smedes by Cameron, and Smedes established a learning curriculum in English, French and music, as well as strict dress codes and social rules. Those rules included only having guests on Sunday nights at the weekly soirees. Girls could not have male visitors, and were not even allowed to exchange letters with a young man.

Like many other schools, St. Mary’s was threatened with the real possibility of having to close its doors during the Civil War. The mayor of Raleigh had proposed using the campus as a Confederate Hospital in 1862, but Smedes personally went to Goldsboro to make the appeal to save his campus. Fees and tuition were raised during the war, but Smedes efforts paid off and they never shut down during the war.

In fact, students at St. Mary’s regularly volunteered their time to sew and knit for Confederate officers and soldiers. In 1863, when the Confederacy was considering moving its capital from Richmond to Raleigh, Jefferson Davis’ wife, Varina Howell Davis, and their children stayed at St. Mary’s campus. Robert E. Lee’s daughter also spent some time at the school during the war.

At the end of the Civil War, as Confederate troops retreated from the battlefields at Bentonville and Averasboro through Raleigh, they were met at the gates of St. Mary’s with water and food. The soldiers continued their march and did not stop, but some had the good fortune to exchange flirtations and addresses with the students there. Soon after, General Sherman and his Federal troops came into Raleigh. They actually camped at St. Mary’s, and like their rivals, were greeted with food and water.

The area around St. Mary’s remained wild until 1886, when the Raleigh streetcar made its turn around in front of the campus. Soon the woods around St. Mary’s became residential neighborhoods. In 1907, Raleigh annexed those neighborhoods, and St. Mary’s became part of the capital city. It was not until 1998, however, that St. Mary’s converted from a junior college to a four-year high school, and was renamed St. Mary’s School.

The Olivia Raney Library. Image courtesy the NC Division of Archives and History.

On May 4, 1896, Olivia Cowper Raney, wife of Richard Beverly Raney, died suddenly after the couple had been married only a year and a half. Olivia Cowper and her family had moved to Raleigh when she was just 10 years old, first living in the Five Points area and later relocating to a home on McDowell Street between Edenton and Hillsborough. She had attended school at St. Mary’s, and was remembered as being diligent, cultured, and beloved.

Richard Raney was a successful insurance agent, a former president of the Raleigh Chamber of Commerce, and the proprietor of the popular Yarbourough House hotel on Fayetteville Street. Richard Raney had grown up in Kittrell, located in what is now Vance County. He began working on farms, eventually making his way to Raleigh and landing a job as a clerk at the Yarborough House at age 18. In 1896, at the age of 36, Richard found himself a widower.

Also in the year 1896, the Raleigh Chamber of Commerce began holding meetings with the hope of establishing the first library in the capital. A soliciting committee was formed, and an effort to raise funds to buy books was under way. The committee figured it needed $2500 initially, and they worked towards that goal by selling $3 memberships and asking more well-to-do residents for a bigger chunk.

Despite the soliciting committee’s fund raising efforts, including benefit concerts, the process was moving along rather slowly. Josephus Daniels made an appeal to the public in his News and Observer, asking if there wasn’t a benefactor out there who wanted to erect a memorial library for a loved one. After a period of grieving, Richard Raney came forward to say that he would be that benefactor, and he would gift to Raleigh a library in memory of his wife, Olivia Raney.

In 1899, the Olivia Raney Memorial Library was chartered to serve “the white citizens” of Raleigh. The building, designed by Nicholas Ittner of Atlanta, was three stories of cream colored brick, topped with a terra cotta tile roof, and flanked by Corinthian Doric columns in brownstone at the entrance. The first floor included an apartment for the librarian, plus two storefronts to supply a rental income.  The stacks were located on the second floor, along with a ladies’ reception room, while the third floor included a music hall and the gentleman’s reception room.

The library opened on January 24, 1901, and was lauded in the N&O as the “most notable event” in North Carolina in the early days of the twentieth century. Indeed, the Olivia Raney Memorial Library was praised as “beautiful”, “handsome”, and “unparalleled” in North Carolina and the South.  It stood on the corner of Salisbury and Hillsborough Streets.

By 1927, the library’s charter was amended to include all white citizens of Wake County.  But over the years, the library had been predominantly funded by Richard Raney himself, including an endowment he left after his death in 1909.  The library focused those funds on acquiring books and paying staff, and barely had enough to do that.  Repairs fell by the wayside, and by mid-century, the Olivia Raney library was far too small and the building was beyond repair.

In 1962, the libary was relocated to the old Kress Department Store on Fayetteville Street.  Four years later, the iconic and beautiful home of the first library in Raleigh and Wake was razed.  By 1985, the Fayetteville Street location closed as Wake set aside space in the courthouse for the downtown library branch.  It was not until August 19, 1996, that the Olivia Raney Library reopened, this time in the Wake County Park on Poole Road, now dedicated to local history and genealogy.

Students prepare for a bus trip from the Nazareth Catholic Orphanage, 1931. Click for a larger version. Image courtesy the NC Division of Archives and History.

On May 3, 1900, Sister Mary Agnes Price became the postmaster of the newest post office in the Raleigh area.  The post office was called “Nazareth,” named for the Catholic orphanage located near Bilyeu Street and Western Boulevard.  Sister Mary Agnes’ brother, Father Thomas Frederick Price, founded the orphanage two years earlier.

Thomas Frederick Price was the first native North Carolinian to be ordained a Catholic priest in 1886.  As a priest, he was known to be energetic and full of zeal, even continuing his sermon and cracking jokes after being pelted with vegetables.  It was Father Price’s idea to start an orphanage and seminary, and he was granted permission by Bishop Haid, the Vicar of the Apostolic Church of North Carolina.

The Nazareth Orphanage started to shelter Catholic and Protestant boys in 1898, and the seminary followed 1902.  Boys at the Nazareth Orphanage worked on the 600 acres farming, bookbinding and publishing.  Father Thomas Price published two Catholic magazines from the orphanage, Truth and Our Lady’s Orphan Boy.  It was the large volume of mail generated by those magazines that necessitated the opening of a new post office.

Nazareth Orphanage was the home to as may as 100 children at a time, and eventually accepted girls as well.  Local Raleigh businesses and residents donated items like food and books to help the orphanage.  At the Nazareth seminary, students came from across the U.S. to study to become Catholic home missionaries in the “Regina Apostolorum” building.

A child prays at his bed in the orphanage, 1931. Click for a larger version. Image courtesy the NC Division of Archives and History.

Nazareth experienced several fires, starting in 1905, that led to gruesome ghost stories that persist even today.  Legend has it that the orphanage burned to the ground, taking the lives of many innocent children with it.  If you go there at night, you will hear the screams of children and smell smoke in the air.  That road is now referred to as “Cry Baby Lane”.

What happened, in fact, is that a fire in 1905 consumed the priest’s living quarters.  One priest was crippled after jumping from a third story window to escape the flames, and another, John Gladdish, was killed in the same manner after helping a number of his fellow priests to safety.

The orphanage school's athletic group. Image courtesy the NC Division of Archives and History.

A fire in 1912 burned the stables, but no one was injured.  A 1961 fire, started by a priest who was attempting to burn wasps’ nests, burned the rectory to the ground, but again, no one was injured.

Father Price left Nazareth in 1911 to begin an international mission, and died suddenly in China in 1919 after his appendix burst.  That year, Catholic supporters began to call for his canonization, an effort that continues to this day.

Nazareth began to sell off some of its 600 acres, donating a portion of land where the original orphanage had stood to Cardinal Gibbons High School in 1962.  This private Catholic high school was one of the first institutions in the nation to integrate in 1953, a year before the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling. In 1975, the remaining orphanage building became the home of Catholic Diocese of Raleigh, and it is still standing today.

Despite the ghostly legends, my favorite story about Nazareth Orphanage comes from one of its young residents in the 1950s.  Harry Stewart recalled yearly trips to Morehead City during summers at the orphanage.  Since they had to milk cows everyday, they took the cows with them on the train.  The orphans led about 10 cows from a spot near what is now Mission Valley through Raleigh to the train depot at the corner of Jones and West Streets.

See Part 1 here.

Ernest Dollar is a North Carolina native who began working in historic sites in 1993 after completing his B.A. in History and B.F.A. in Design from UNC Greensboro.  Dollar has worked in several historic parks in both North and South Carolina. In 2003, he completed his M.A. in Public History from NC State University and currently serves as the Executive Director of the Preservation Society of Chapel Hill. In 2008, Ernest published a photographic history on the town of Morrisville and is currently working on a history of the end of the Civil War in North Carolina.

Filmed by Kate Pattison at the Horace Williams House in Chapel Hill.

Video editing by Cody Moran.

Images courtesy of the North Carolina Division of Archives and History.

Ernest Dollar is a North Carolina native who began working in historic sites in 1993 after completing his B.A. in History and B.F.A. in Design from UNC Greensboro.  Dollar has worked in several historic parks in both North and South Carolina. In 2003, he completed his M.A. in Public History from NC State University and currently serves as the Executive Director of the Preservation Society of Chapel Hill. In 2008, Ernest published a photographic history on the town of Morrisville and is currently working on a history of the end of the Civil War in North Carolina.

Filmed by Kate Pattison at the Horace Williams House in Chapel Hill.

Video editing by Cody Moran.

Images courtesy of the North Carolina Division of Archives and History.

An aerial view of the Method neighborhood, 1949. Image courtesy the NC Division of Archives and History.

At the end of the Civil War, Brigadier General William Ruffin Cox settled back into his quiet life in Raleigh. General Cox had fought in numerous major battles during the war, including Antietam and Appomattox, and was wounded three times at the Battle of Chancellorsville. Once back in Raleigh, he resumed his law practice and returned to his home on Ashe Avenue.

General Cox in his post-war life began to invest in community development around Raleigh, such as the railroad, and a new teacher training school for blacks called Saint Augustine’s. He had even offered to sell some land to his former carriage driver, John O’Kelly. O’Kelly had also worked as a builder, and had a hand in the construction of J.P. Prairie’s Standard building on Fayetteville Street as well as various railroad projects.

It is most likely the railroad construction that brought John O’Kelly together with the Mason family. The O’Kellys and Masons were former slaves, but were working after emancipation to buy their own homes for the first time. John O’Kelly died before he had the chance to buy some land, but his friend Lewis Mason, who also built railroads, was intrigued by the idea. Lewis then passed to idea on to his father, Jesse Mason, and a plan was hatched.

Berry O'Kelly, image courtesy the NC Division of Archives and History.

Jesse Mason invested in 69 acres of land in what was then called House Creek Township, part of which had been Camp Mangum during the Civil War. In the spring of 1870, Jesse Mason began to subdivide and sell lots to former slaves. They built small log-cabin or slab houses with dirt floors, much like the early colonial pioneers had once constructed. The new town four miles west of Raleigh and across from what is now the Meredith College campus was called Mason’s Village, or by the nick-names Slabtown, after the houses, or Save-Rent.

Berry O’Kelly, who had been born in Orange County, was raised by his kin in Mason’s Village. He began by working at the general store in the village, and within a few short years, he bought the store. Soon afterward, he had succeeded in bringing a railroad spur to the village, starting a trans-Atlantic mercantile and warehouse, and establishing Mason Village’s first post office.

It was the United States Post Office in 1890 that assigned the name “Method” to the small community. That name stuck; after all, it was an enormous source of pride and affirmation to get their own post office. Meanwhile, Method’s most prominent resident Berry O’Kelly continued to invest in real estate and banking, and brought the first Merchant and Farmer’s Bank to Raleigh. Merchant and Farmer’s of Durham was started for the newly freed and money-earning black demographic.

Students at the Berry O'Kelly school. Image courtesy the NC Division of Archives and History.

Berry O’Kelly’s passion and life’s work, however, was education for blacks. In 1914, O’Kelly succeeded in transforming the village’s one-room schoolhouse into a teacher training and boarding school for blacks. The Berry O’Kelly School, as it came to be known, was one of only three fully accredited black high schools in North Carolina in the early part of the twentieth century.

By the 1950s, Method was still a rural community with dirt roads and no sewage or water systems. Residents came together to erect street signs as the city of Raleigh encroached from the east. Then in the 1960s, Raleigh incorporated Method and put up all new street signs with entirely different names. Method community members gathered at Raleigh City Council meetings and demanded that their street names be changed back, and a compromise was reached. Method Road now stretches from Beryl Road (named for Berry O’Kelly’s daughter), to Western Boulevard, where it changes over to the Raleigh-given name, Kent.

Joseph McDowell, image courtesy the NC Division of Archives and History.

On Saturday, March 31, 1792, William Christmas began to survey 400 acres just purchased from Joel Lane to become the City of Raleigh, the new capital of North Carolina. Christmas and his helpers stayed nearby at Lane’s home called Wakefield while they worked for the next two weeks clearing the way for a street grid.

The names of those streets were presumably assigned by the nine capital commissioners that chose to buy land from Lane, or perhaps they were chosen by Lane to show his gratitude for their patronage.

Street names went like this: the bounding streets would be called North, South, East and West. The streets that surrounded Union Square where the capitol building would sit were named for North Carolina’s eight judicial districts: New Bern, Edenton, Morgan, Salisbury, Halifax, Wilmington, Fayetteville and Hillsborough. Several prominent North Carolinians got a nod: William Lenoir – Senate Speaker, Stephen Cabarrus – House Speaker, William R. Davie – Governor, and of course state senator Joel Lane.

Then there were the capital site commissioners. The eight judicial districts were represented, plus one at-large. Each commissioner would get a street named for him in Raleigh. They were:

• General Henry William Harrington of the Fayetteville District, Richmond County. A Revolutionary War hero, he was not present during the deliberations for choosing the site of the new capital.

• Frederick Hargett of the New Bern District, Jones County.

• William Johnston Dawson of the Edenton District, Chowan County. His grandfather was the Royal Governor Gabriel Johnston. He became a U.S. congressman in 1793 after defeating Anti-Federalist candidate Stephen Cabarrus.

• Joseph “Quaker Meadows” McDowell of the Morgan District, Burke County. He was called “Quaker Meadows Joe” to distinguish him from his cousin Joseph “Pleasant Gardens” McDowell (the names of their respective plantations). Both were legislators and soldiers, but Quaker Meadows Joe was most likely the Major of the Burke County militia and a Revolutionary War hero. Major McDowell led his Over-Mountain Men to a resounding victory over the British at the Battle of Kings Mountain in 1780, and restored hope to the colonies after the fall of Charles Town.

• James Martin of the Salisbury District, Stokes County. Martin was surely one of Lane’s tightest cronies, as they, along with Theophilus Hunter, served as commissioners to oversee the building of a courthouse, jail and stocks for the newly formed Wake County in 1771. Then during the Revolutionary War, Martin, Lane, and Issac Hunter bought seized property from Tory-sympathizers at a Cross Creek (now Fayetteville) auction.

• Thomas Blount of the Halifax District, Edgecombe County. He was also absent during the capital locating party at Lane’s.
  

  Thomas Blount, image courtesy the NC Division of Archives and History.

• Willie Jones of the Halifax District, the at-large commissioner. Jones was a Regulator sympathizer before the Revolutionary War, and an ardent state’s rights supporter. He led a movement to oppose North Carolina’s ratification of the new federal Constitution after giving up a slot to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. President George Washington visited him at his home in Halifax to ease Anti-Federalist tensions. Jones moved to Raleigh and is buried somewhere on what is now the Saint Augustine College’s campus.

• James Bloodworth of the Wilmington District, New Hanover County.

• Thomas Person of the Hillsborough District, Granville County. He was the first commander of the Hillsborough militia during the Revolutionary War. Also a Regulator sympathizer and rabid Anti-Federalist, he once called President Washington “a damned rascal and traitor” for signing the Constitution into law.

By that Saturday, Thomas Blount finally made his way to Wake Crossroads, and he and William Dawson spent two more weeks lodging at Wakefield and assisting William Christmas with surveying.

Strangely, Christmas was the only major player not to receive a street named for him. Christmas was also a state senator from Franklin County, and had been conveniently present at Wakefield while Lane persuaded the commissioners to buy his land. Joel Lane might have said to the commissioners, “See, I already have this surveyor William Christmas here as my guest. Now how about another round of cherry bounce?”

William Boylan, image courtesy the North Carolina Division of Archives and History

In the Spring of 1799, a 23-year-old William Boylan relocated to North Carolina’s capital to re-establish his uncle’s pro-Federalist newspaper.  The Raleigh Minerva, formerly the Fayetteville Minerva, became Wake County’s first newspaper.

The turn of the nineteenth century was the height of the Federalist’s power, with national leaders like Alexander Hamilton and John Adams, plus a Federalist-dominated congress.  But Federalists were rather unpopular in the South.

The Jay Treaty, which forgave debts of the British from the Revolutionary War, was a financial determent to large plantation owners in the South.  Federalists were also uninterested in supporting agriculture, they were far more interested in banking, manufacturing, and the urbanization of the United States.

Boylan could not have had many political allies in Raleigh, but it never stopped him from becoming an extremely civic-minded public servant and philanthropist.  William Boylan had an active role in the following (and likely more) Raleigh enterprises: He…

• Owned a bookstore on New Bern Avenue (Now New Bern Place)

• Was appointed to Wake County Court in 1804, serving as chairman from 1815 til his death in 1861

• Was a Raleigh City Commissioner several times

• Served as the treasurer of the Agricultural Society of North Carolina

• Advocated for a statewide mutual fire insurance company beginning in 1803 (the idea didn’t take until 1843, after several disastrous fires)

• Was a Lieutenant of a Raleigh City Corps during the War of 1812

• Acquired large tracts of land including Joel Lane’s Wakefield in 1818 and Yates Mill in 1819

• Served on the Construction Commission for the new State House in the 1830s

• Was a trustee of the Raleigh Academy (which was located on Burke Square, now the site of the Governor’s Mansion)

• Was one of the directors of the Raleigh and Gaston Railroad

• Was an investor and supporter of the North Carolina Railroad beginning in the 1840s

• Was an investor in a (failed) Plank Road construction effort in the 1850s

• Served as a warden of the poor and established the first Wake County poorhouse

• Served as President of the State Bank of North Carolina

Boylan’s Minerva was defunct by 1821, having been overshadowed by rival Joseph Gales and his pro-Republican Raleigh Register.  Gales has an equally long and impressive resume, which we’ll look at later.

William Boylan remained a staunch Federalist, which was only ever popular in New England and the Northeast, while the national impression of Federalism was that of an out-of-touch and even unpatriotic aristocracy.  This may be one reason why Boylan’s pro-Federalist paper went under.

But despite Boylan’s politics, he took measures throughout his life to serve the city and state he loved.  He was long remembered for using his carriage to deliver firewood to the poor, and helped his friend and former slave Lunsford Lane flee Raleigh for safe haven in the North.

And although the Federalist position had been one of a strong central government, Boylan sensed impending war with the North, and warned the capital that it was completely unprepared. Boylan seemed to be poised at 79 years old to protect his state’s rights, or perhaps his four plantations in Mississippi.

The local militia, known as Oak City Guard, was re-established at Boylan’s urging in 1855.  In 1861, the same year as Boylan’s death, North Carolina seceeded from the Union and entered into war with the North, whose soldiers were known as the Federal troops.

An 1838 advertisement for the Raleigh and Gaston Railroad. Image courtesy the NC Division of Archives and History.

On Saturday, March 21, 1840, a jubilant crowd gathered at a new depot near Halifax and North Streets in Raleigh to greet a modern marvel and perhaps the very salvation of a capital in jeopardy; a locomotive called “The Tornado”. Its top speed was 15 mph, the cab where the engineer fed pine kindling into the fire was open, hot embers rushed out and started small brush fires and burned holes in the clothes of passengers, and the people of Raleigh were wild for it.

By 1840, Raleigh’s position as the capital of North Carolina had spent half a century on shaky ground. The city, one of a very few in the U.S. to be planned and built as a capital, was often challenged by residents in well-established cities on navigable rivers like Fayetteville, Hillsborough and New Bern. Raleigh’s nearest river, the Neuse, could only receive freight as far north as Smithfield.

Then a disaster in 1831 put Raleigh’s capital status in peril. A careless repair worker started a fire that consumed the North Carolina State House, the physical seat of state government and Raleigh’s raison d’être. Antoino Canova’s marble statue of George Washington that the General Assembly commissioned in 1816, as well as the state’s records and library were destroyed. The voices of capital relocation rose up, and large numbers of residents left Raleigh and Wake County for opportunities in other parts of the state.

But all was not lost, and during the 1832 legislative session, a bill was passed to rebuild the State House in Raleigh on Union Square. Not only would the new State House be the crown jewel of the capital, it would be built using the very latest in transportation technology: a railroad.

Raleigh-Gaston Railroad President W.R. Vass stands on the locomotive, 1850. Image courtesy the NC Division of Archives and History.

Raleigh’s experimental railroad led from the rock quarry to Union Square, and brought cut stone over wooden rails on boxcars pulled by horses or mules. The city’s residents could catch a ride for 25 cents.

The experimental railroad proved to be an enormous success, both financially and in popularity. Numerous railroad companies emerged in the following years with the hopes of getting a real locomotive to the capital, even though many believed it would be impossible to build a rail line over hilly country. Considering that most rail lines ran along the flat land next to rivers, they may have been right.

But the Raleigh and Gaston Railroad Company, headed by president George W. Mordecai, found the formula for success. Using slave labor, Raleigh and Gaston laid tracks beginning at an established line in Weldon on the Roanoke River. They charged other rail companies to use their tracks, thereby funding further construction. Bit by bit and year by year, the railroad crept closer to the capital.

In a final push, Raleigh and Gaston purchased the latest passenger cars, several new freight cars, and four brand new locomotive engines in 1839. Instead of relying on English engines, D.J. Burr and Company in Richmond, Virginia, were commissioned to build the Tornado, the Whirlwind, the Spitfire, and the Volcano.

But before they could finish, the planned line had to be diverted around Warrenton, where residents literally chased surveyors away with loaded rifles. Another obstacle arose when the ship carrying the last iron rails from England ran aground, then a back-up shipment from Philadelphia froze in port near Norfolk. Not to be stopped there, Raleigh and Gaston proceeded off the rails and the Tornado rolled into Raleigh right on the wood.

For many, the arrival of the railroad meant that Raleigh’s position as the capital of North Carolina was secure, and it would be a modern and prosperous capital at that. A reporter on the scene from the Raleigh Register wrote:
“We now have occular demonstration of that, which no man would have believed, thirty years ago, to be within the compass of human power.”

For some, that reporter may very well have been referring to Raleigh’s hold on the title of North Carolina’s capital.