Homegrown Skills: Creating a Way of Life at the Coast By Karen Willis Amspacher. From Tar Heel Junior Historian 49:1 (fall 2009).

Life at the coast today greatly differs from what it would have been one hundred, fifty, or even twenty-five years ago. These days, the modern conveniences of communication, transportation, and commerce are readily available to everyone who visits or lives along the coast of North Carolina. But throughout history, people there have depended on the coast’s natural resources—beautiful and productive waters, abundant seafood, and wintering grounds for waterfowl—to survive.

In the past, certain skills existed that were very important to a coastal family’s way of life. Income and survival depended on these skills and the ability to use the waters nearby. A community’s food traditions relied on the area’s natural resources. Even a young person’s entertainment and fun would be based on their knowledge and skills. For example, in the early 1900s, a teenager would need to be able to handle a boat to go on a date in another community. There were no roads or bridges to get from place to place in many parts of the coast. A young boy’s winter fun might be hunting waterfowl along the coastal marshes, which required knowing how to shoot, how to handle a boat, and maybe even knowing how to make decoys.

Let’s look more closely at life one hundred years ago in North Carolina’s coastal communities. At that time, hunting and fishing supplied a family’s food and income. It was important to have hunting skills; to know about waterfowl like ducks and geese and their habits; to understand the ways of fish and how to catch them; to know where to find oysters and clams; to grasp how to handle (and even build) a boat; and to know plenty about local waters, feeding grounds, and navigation channels. People needed carpentry skills to build a house for shelter and a boat for transportation. Creativity and ingenuity, along with basic know-how, could make life easier and more enjoyable in many ways.

The Tar Heel coast looked very different as late as the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. The region featured great expanses of marshes, creeks, rivers, and sounds scarcely touched by humans. Roads and bridges had not yet come to every area, so everything (including people) was still moved around by boat. Each neighborhood had its own store, and doctors came in boats to treat the sick. Communication usually meant one telephone in the local store, with a radio in almost every home. It

took work and effort to get anything. Life centered on family, school, and church. Children grew up in a limited world.

After World War II, in the mid-1950s, life started to change. Coastal communities began to shift from “living off the land and the local waters” to a more diverse economy. More and more people moved into the area. Vacationers found the unspoiled waters and open beaches. More jobs with the government—such as the Coast Guard, teaching, civil service, and state agencies—mixed with the traditional coastal trades of commercial fishing, boatbuilding, hunting, and local commerce, such as running small stores and other businesses. Women joined the workforce and helped provide families with money to buy food and other needed items. Even traditional coastal occupations began to change, becoming more trade oriented and specialized. Men became boatbuilders, decoy makers, net hangers, fishermen, and hunting guides—and most times, a combination of those roles. Coastal communities’ economies continued to depend on these skills, but men usually focused on certain trades to make a living instead of using several skills just to provide for their families.

In the 1980s, coastal economies shifted even more toward tourism (or travel) and becoming retirement destinations. Traditional skills are gradually becoming harder to find. Most people view commercial fishing as a dying industry. Wooden boats used for working the waters are being replaced by recreational and sportfishing styles of boats. Waterfront homes, condominiums, and businesses suited to travelers and new-home buyers are replacing working fish houses, boatyards, and harbors.

Still, traditions like commercial fishing, boatbuilding, hunting and fishing, decoy carving, and net hanging—and the creative men and women who work in these trades—remain important to North Carolina’s cultural heritage. Today, such heritage skills are most often featured in museums, tourism programs, and festivals that remind us of how much the coast has changed in just the last few decades. The value of these skills continues to grow, because abilities that define Tar Heel coastal traditions provide an important link to the past that should be passed on to the next generation.

Decoy Making “Decoys are my way of holding onto the past.” —Joe Fulcher Jr., third-generation decoy carver

For many years—centuries, perhaps—waterfowl such as large flocks of redheads, canvasbacks, blackheads, pintails, and geese spent the winters along North Carolina’s coast, especially in places like Currituck and Core sounds. These birds became a major food source for people living in the region. The tradition of hunting created a need: decoys. Decoys are man-made replicas, or models, of ducks and geese that are made to float and look like real birds. Decoys provided an important tool for hunting. These wooden ducks were placed in the water to lure live birds to land in the creeks and marshes. Hunters watched from a duck blind nearby. (A duck blind is a small hideout for the hunter; adapting the blind to the hunter’s needs offers another example of Tar Heels’ creativity. A blind is usually a small shack, sometimes resting on posts over the water and sometimes built into the marsh close to hunting grounds.) The goal for using decoys was to get live ducks and geese close enough for hunters to shoot them. Again, the mid-1900s brought change to this tradition. For most people, hunting changed from being a way to put food on the table to being a sport. So the way that people made decoys changed, too. People bought plastic decoys from catalogs and stores. These manufactured (instead of handmade) decoys were lighter and easier to handle. They began to replace the old wooden decoys. Again, the mid-1900s brought change to this tradition. For most people, hunting changed from being a way to put food on the table to being a sport. So the way that people made decoys changed, too. People bought plastic decoys from catalogs and stores. These manufactured (instead of handmade) decoys were lighter and easier to handle. They began to replace the old wooden decoys.Making decoys then became more of a folk art than a survival skill. Decoys became collectors’ items rather than tools. This was another way that the coastal

culture changed to meet new opportunities. The creative waterfowl lover could become an artist rather than a hunter. Carvers could make money by creating decoys for a new audience, and decoys became even more detailed and beautiful.

Like other everyday activities that become old-

fashioned as lifestyles change, the practice of turning wood into ducks could have been taken for granted, ignored, or forgotten, had it not been for people who appreciated this skill as part of their coastal heritage. Today, artists who make decoys join in heritage celebrations and events, are featured at places like the Core Sound Waterfowl Museum and Heritage Center, and share their skills with young people. They are making sure that coastal traditions will continue to survive.

Boatbuilding “If she ain’t pretty, she won’t work right.” —Calvin Rose, Harkers Island boatbuilder

North Carolina has a long and winding coastline. Along the coast, the land borders creeks, rivers, and sounds, while the Outer Banks meet the Atlantic Ocean for hundreds of miles. Counties up and down the coast—ranging from Dare to the north and Brunswick to the south—have economies that were historically tied to the waters surrounding them through commercial fishing and boatbuilding. For instance, along the central coast, Carteret County includes more water than it does land: 821 square miles of water compared to 520 square miles of land. Even that land is filled with creeks and rivers. Is it any wonder that boatbuilding has been so important throughout the county’s history? Boats had been needed for transportation in the early years and for food (including commercial fishing for generations). Now they are needed as part of a growing tourism industry. According to Sonny Williamson in Sailing with Grandpa—a local publication highlighting the history of working sail skiffs along North Carolina’s central coast—boatbuilding first grew into a business in the late 1800s. That meant that boats became more than a part of subsistence living—in which each household or family raised or caught its own food, needing a boat to get from place to place in order to have something to eat. Boatyards and shipbuilding

operations appeared along the coast to support the growing ocean trades and provide boats for commercial fishing, in which people sold what they caught. Boat styles have developed over the generations, beginning with the sharpie, a type of sailing skiff. This boat came south from the Chesapeake Bay with oystermen who arrived to work North Carolina waters in the early 1900s. Changes were made to the sharpie’s design over generations. For example, Tar Heel builders adjusted for North Carolina’s shallow waters by adapting the design of the boat’s bottom. They created ways to have larger sails, so the boats could go faster and work better in the sounds between the mainland and the Outer Banks. With the coming of gasoline engines in the mid-1900s, builders put aside the sharpie sail skiff for new, larger, and more efficient ways to move people and goods. Mail boats, freight boats, and commercial fishing vessels lined the docks of places like Ocracoke, Hatteras, Wanchese, and Sneads Ferry. Boats were important to everyone – carrying doctors, groceries, preachers, servicemen, and families from community to community, especially in rural areas where roads and bridges did not even begin to appear until the 1930s and 1940s. Today’s boatbuilding industry has followed changes in the coastal landscape, economy, and culture. More builders focus on recreational and sportfishing boats that cater to tourists instead of working fishermen. Materials have changed from wood to fiberglass. Most boats are manufactured using machinery instead of being made by hand. A strong love for handmade wooden boats remains, however. Events, classroom programs, and small businesses along the coast of North Carolina and other states focus on traditional boatbuilding. The practice was important to the past and remains crucial to the region’s economy, history, and traditional culture.

Imagine that you are living in the 1700s. You have come to America from Europe to buy some land and have a better life. You’ve been looking for land in Pennsylvania, but not much is left. You hear that there’s good farmland farther south in the colony of North Carolina. But getting there won’t be easy. Cars, trains, and planes haven’t been invented yet. That leaves horses, oxen, and your own two feet. The problem is there are few roads. And you must take your family and everything you own with you. What will you do?

In the mid-1700s many settlers moved south from Pennsylvania on an old Indian trail that became known as the Great Wagon Road. They traveled in Conestoga wagons, sturdy covered wagons that were pulled by four to six horses. The trip was very hard. At first the Great Wagon Road was narrow, muddy, and uneven. It improved as more settlers used it, but the journey was still long, slow, dusty, and bumpy. Wagons got stuck in the mud and were damaged from hitting large rocks and logs in the road. Travelers had to look for water and most of their food along the way, but they kept going until they found a place to settle. The Great Wagon Road brought many settlers to central North Carolina between 1735 and 1775. By 1775, 209,550 people lived in the colony. That was six times the number of residents in 1730! Most of

the people who settled in the Tar Heel State were Scots-Irish, German, and English immigrants from Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia. They established towns such as Bethabara, Bethania, Salem, Salisbury, and Charlotte along the road. Many of them started farms, and others set up businesses.The Great Wagon Road eventually stretched from Philadelphia to Augusta, Georgia, about 735 miles. You can travel in the footsteps of early settlers on the Great Wagon Road today, as parts of the old road are now modern roads. Highway 311 from Madison in Rockingham County to Walnut Cove in Stokes County, for instance, follows the route of the old road. And while you’re “on the road,” visit Old Salem in Winston-Salem to learn about the Moravians, a German religious group that came to North Carolina from Pennsylvania on the Great Mountain Road. Tour the historic community of Old Salem, which the Moravians founded in 1766. See how they lived, worked, and played. You can even sample some of the foods they ate. Then try to imagine getting there by covered wagon on the Great Wagon Trail.

Great Wagon Road

Searching for Greener Pastures: Out-Migration in the 1800s and 1900s

By Donald R. Lennon and Fred D. Ragan. From Tar Heel Junior

Historian 34 (spring 1995). Images may differ from those in the original articles.

Frederick Marryat, an English visitor traveling through the Ohio Valley in 1838, was surprised at the stream of emigration which appears to flow from North Carolina to Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri. Every hour you meet with a caravan of emigrants from that sterile but healthy state. Every night the banks of the Ohio are lighted up with their fires. Marryat’s observations were not unusual during the first half of the 1800s. North Carolina was the third most populous state in the Union in 1790, but by 1860 it had dropped to twelfth in population. Hundreds of thousands of White North Carolinians fled the state during those years, seeking cheap, fertile land in Tennessee, western Georgia, Indiana, Alabama, Missouri, Mississippi, and other trans-Allegheny states and territories. Thirty percent of North Carolina’s native-born population, amounting to more than four hundred thousand persons, was living outside of the state in 1860.

European American Out-MigrationThe migration west actually began before the

Revolutionary War (1775–1783), as adventurous North Carolinians followed Daniel Boone in search of new frontiers beyond the mountains. After the war, veterans of the Revolution were rewarded with free land in what became Tennessee. Land speculators also rushed into that area in search of wealth. Among these speculators were members of the Polk family of Mecklenburg County. By 1806 Samuel Polk and his young family joined their kinsmen on the Tennessee frontier. Sam’s oldest child was eleven-year-old James K. Polk. Born in North Carolina, he went on to become the eleventh president of the United States.

After the War of 1812, the caravans of wagons moving west increased, but the reasonswere different. North Carolina had become known as the Rip Van Winkle State. State leaders opposed spending tax money on schools, roads, agricultural reforms, or any other form of economic advancement. Their opposition hurt the state’s people. Without good roads to get crops to market, farmers could not make profits. Without progressive leadership in agricultural reforms, farmers did not learn about the importance of crop rotation. Instead, they continued old farming

practices that used up nutrients in the soil and exhausted the land. Although newspapers and reformers pointed out the high degree of ignorance and poverty in which people lived, state leaders seemed to pay no attention to the needs of the people.

Disgusted by the state’s do-nothing policy, farmers gave up on their exhausted lands and moved west, where they could find cheaper, more fertile land to farm. In 1834 a Raleigh newspaper reported that “our roads are thronged with emigrants to a more favored Country.” As late as 1845, a Greensboro newspaper proclaimed, “On last Tuesday morning nineteen carts, with about one hundred per-sons, passed this place, from Wake County, on their way to the West.”

Marryat, the English visitor, wrote“..these caravans consist of two or three covered wagons, full of women and children, furniture, and other necessaries, each drawn by a team of horses; brood mares, with foals by their sides, following; half a dozen or more cows, flanked on each side by the men, with their long rifles on their shoulders; sometimes a boy or two, or a half-grown girl on horseback.”

Young, energetic, and ambitious citizens were leaving. Many of these talented NorthCarolinians later became presidents, vice presidents, and cabinet members of the United States government, as well as governors and congressmen for their adopted states. Presidents Andrew Jackson, James K. Polk, and Andrew Johnson were among the future leaders who left. Conditions in North Carolina did not begin to improve until a progressive political leadership gained control of the state in 1835. The state constitution was rewritten to create a state and local government that was more democratic and responsive to the people. Even then, progress was slow.

In 1840 the first public school was established. Soon railroads were introduced, withtracks stretching across the state. Plank roads and other internal improvements developed. Manufacturing began to flourish. At last North Carolina could shake its Rip Van Winkle image. Once White North Carolinians felt they could prosper at home, the massive emigration of White citizens out of the state began to decline.

African American Out-MigrationThe out-migration of African Americans

increased after the Civil War (1861–1865). The war brought freedom for former slaves but did not satisfy their desire for a better life. Faced with poverty and a political environment that was becoming more and more repressive, many North Carolina Blacks moved north, where they could find better opportunities. During the last quarter of the 1800s, approximately one hundred thousand African Americans emigrated from the Tar Heel State. An extreme example of North Carolina’s repressive political environment is represented by the 1898 Wilmington race riot. In the 1890s farm prices had declined, which meant that farmers were making less money by selling their crops. Farmers protested by forming a new political party, the Populist Party, that challenged the Democratic and Republican Parties. In the 1896 state elections,

Populists and Republicans elected a number of African American officials. A Republican governor also was elected. Democrats charged that the state had fallen under “Black domination.”

Two years later, in the 1898 election, Democrats tried to frighten White voters by saying that African Americans were going to rule the state if the Democrats lost. Red Shirts paraded on horse-back with weapons in full view to intimidate Black voters. Some Blacks rejected the threat and spoke out. Alex Manly, the militant and progressive editor of the Wilmington Daily Record, was among them.

Democrats won the election. Soon afterward a mob of four hundred Whites demolished Manly’snewspaper office, shot up the African Americansection of town, killed and wounded a large number of Blacks, and drove hundreds from their homes. Hundreds more, including Manly, fled Wilmington. In 1900, White voters changed the state constitution by requiring that anyone who registered to vote had to pay a poll tax and take a literacy test. The voters also passed a “grandfather clause.” This clause stated that if a person failed the literacy test, that person could still vote if he, his father, or his grandfather had voted before January 1, 1867. African Americans who had been slaves were not able to vote before 1867. Even free Blacks had lost the right to vote in 1835. As a result, these changes in the constitution disfranchised Blacks much more than Whites.

The Tar Heel State also began to pass Jim Crow laws that required segregation, or separation of different races. On buses, in theaters, at restaurants, and in other public places, African Americans could not sit with Whites. Instead they were forced to sit in separate sections. They had to attend separate schools, which were usually underfunded. They were not allowed to work at the same jobs as Whites.

Vehicle ticket for the Fayetteville and Western Plank Road. During the 1850s farmers and merchants agitated for the construction of a system of all-weather roads that would reduce the difficulty of transporting their goods to market or the nearest rail connection. The legislature chartered numerous private companies to construct "plank roads" with the modest financial backing of the state. Although such roads were built in almost every part of the state, Fayetteville served as a focal point for their development. Six plank roads converged at thisthriving market center, the longest being theFayetteville and Western, which ran 129 miles northwest through Salem to the Moravian town of Bethania, in Forsyth County. Courtesy of the North Carolina Office of Archives & History.

Alexander Manly 1890s

In response to all of these problems, large numbers of Blacks left the South. Between World War I (1914–1918) and the 1960s, hundreds of thousands of African Americans left southern states. So many left that the movement was called “The Great Migration.” Between 1910 and 1950, approximately 280,000 Black citizens left North Carolina. Their destinations varied, but large numbers went to Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York. Many of the same reasons that encouraged earlier Blacks to leave continued to influence these citizens. Discrimination, low wages, and inferior housing and schools exerted a powerful push to leave.

Other factors also contributed to their emigration. In the 1920s and 1930s, the devastation of cotton crops by boll weevils and the gradual replacement of farmworkers with machines left many Black farmworkers unemployed. New Deal farm policies tried to help farmers by driving up the prices of farm goods. These policies limited the number of acres that a farmer could work and limited how much of a crop a farmer could grow. But these changes eliminated agricultural jobs and left many unemployed. These unemployed people often went north to find work.

During World War II (1941–1945) the military draft and increased job opportunities inthe North also pulled at Blacks. Those who were drafted to fight in the war often were sent north, with other soldiers, to train for battle. While there, many saw better opportunities and decided to remain after the war. Others went to the North to work in growing defense industries.

Ambitious and talented Black families were among those leaving. Many native NorthCarolinians made significant contributions to their new states. For example, lawyer, publisher, and journalist Robert L. Vann founded the Pittsburgh Courier. Wilson Goode became mayor of Philadelphia. John Coltrane, Thelonius Monk, and Roberta Flack made important contributions to music.

With the advances made by the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s, the end of segregation, and the growth of jobs in the Sun Belt region in the 1970s, North Carolina’s African Americans have received much less of a push out of the state than in earlier times. Barriers to better economic and educational opportunities are falling in North Carolina. With improvements at home, many now feel that they can prosper and have the full life promised by the American dream in North Carolina.

North Carolina: A Culinary Crossroads By Amy Rogers. From Tar Heel Junior Historian 46: 2 (spring 2007)

Have you ever wondered where your food comes from? Yes, chicken comes from the many poultry farms around the state. Grits are made from the corn that North Carolina farmers grow in their fields. Okra and tomatoes are abundant almost everywhere, from the coast to the Piedmont to the Mountains. However, many of the foods we eat every day started out somewhere else. Although we think of these foods as key parts of traditional Carolina cooking, there is much more to know about our surprisingly complex cuisine. Look at the following list. See if you can identify which of these foods are native to North Carolina and which were brought here from another country or continent: chicken rice peaches sweet iced tea okra black-eyed peas Did you guess that all six are native to our region? Did you guess three or four? One? None of these foods are native to North Carolina—or even to the United States! Most people are quite surprised to learn that even these common foods have a complicated history. There is a modern term used to describe the way that culinary traditions and customs evolve: foodways. When we talk about North Carolina foodways, we are discussing not only foods themselves, but also the ways that people choose foods according to individual and collective cultures, religions, habits, and preferences. For example, consider chicken. Historians believe that modern chickens descended from wild fowl native to Asia. Early European traders and colonists brought the first chickens to the Americas.

Rice may seem ordinary, but it played a crucial role in the development of the South’s economy during colonial and antebellum times. Traders had brought rice from Asia to the colonies, but the rice crops did not grow well at first. That changed when enslaved people, captured from rice-growing countries in western Africa, arrived in the southern colonies. These men and women knew how to plant, harvest, and store rice efficiently. Despite the circumstances that brought them here, they were crucial in helping the South’s economy thrive. We can trace back to Spain the peaches that we see growing in orchards along rural roads. Tea came here from Asia. Sugar was traded around the globe for hundreds of years before making its way to the Caribbean islands. Enslaved Africans brought okra to the United States, as well as black-eyed peas, which are native to Asia. Like rice, these crops flourished under the care of expert African growers.By now you may be wondering if there are any foods Americans can claim as our own. The answer is yes.

When we think of tomatoes, Italian food often comes to mind, but tomatoes are native to America, specifically South America. Spanish explorers took tomatoes home to Europe, but most people refused to eat them because they thought tomatoes were poisonous. The potatoes we usually associate with Ireland began in the Americas, too. Many Europeans also rejected the starchy tubers, believing they were toxic. Corn is also native to the Americas and an important part of our regional cuisine. With its many varieties and uses, corn is endlessly versatile. Cornmeal, corn syrup, corn oil, popcorn, and grits are just some of the ways we utilize this crop. This humble grain appears in popular Italian cuisine in a dish called polenta. Polenta is made from cooked cornmeal that is chilled, sliced, and fried. Carolina peach farmer and author Dori Sanders likes to talk about the differences and similarities between now-popular foods and those she remembers from her youth. “Nowadays, you can find polenta in fine Italian restaurants,” she says, “but I remember eating our version of polenta when I was growing up on the family farm. Back then, we just called it ‘fried cornmeal mush’!”

North Carolina’s population continues to grow as thousands of people move here every year. These new Tar Heels—whether from neighboring states or faraway countries—bring with them the rich and diverse cultures of their homelands. The study of foodways will become more important as we interact more frequently with people from other backgrounds and beliefs. With the ease and speed of modern transportation and communication, our foodways are affected directly more than ever before. That’s why we can buy tomatoes and strawberries in wintertime; we don’t have to wait until summer because fresh produce from a warm climate is a truck trip away. With a few computer commands, we can search and find recipes for anything from achiote seeds to zucchini. Even small towns now boast restaurants that offer us a world tour of tastes from Thailand, Vietnam, Mexico, and beyond. When you bite into an apple dumpling, you taste the shared heritage of an Italian ravioli, Indian samosa, Polish pierogi, and Chinese wonton.

History, geography, economics, and politics—and even weather patterns—are the forces behind what we find on our plates. Each of us contributes to changing foodways with the culinary choices we make. Despite its complicated origins, North Carolina cuisine always will remain a source of pride for the growers, chefs, and home cooks who keep alive the best of our regional traditions. Understanding food helps us understand each another—and the changing world around us.

Contemporary Migration

in North CarolinaBy Alfred W. Stuart and Laura BaumFrom Tar Heel Junior Historian 34 (spring 1995).

Did you know that, until recently, more people emigrated out of North Carolina than immigrated in? In the early 1800s, hundreds of thousands of European Americans left. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, more than 380,000 African Americans emigrated out. This trend of out-migration continued until the last decade. Between 1950 and 1960, 327,838 more people left North Carolina than moved in. Between 1960 and 1970, this drain fell to just over 94,000 people. Between 1980 and 1990, North Carolina actually had a net in-migration of 374,354 people. What caused this population tilt, or reversal of past trends? The main cause is the creation of new jobs, primarily in factories, offices, and stores in the state’s cities. The growth of industries in and around Charlotte, the Piedmont Triad, and the Research Triangle has attracted workers from across the country and even from around the world.

Growth through ImmigrationWho are these people who are immigrating to

North Carolina today? Many are African Americans whose families once left the state and are now returning to find jobs, to retire, or to improve their

quality of life. The end of segregation in the South in the 1960s has made more of the new jobs available to African Americans. A lessening of racial tension has also made life in the South more attractive. Meanwhile, racial problems, crime, violence, a decline in jobs, and disappointment with the quality of life in urban areas of the North have led many Black North Carolinians to return home. Many African Americans say that they are returning to be with family members they left behind, to find work, and to find safer schools and communities than they could find in the North.

People of other races are also coming to North Carolina from the North and Midwest to find work. In the past twenty years or so, jobs in those areas have declined, while jobs in North Carolina, especially near its cities, have increased. Still other people are coming to North Carolina from other countries to find work or to escape persecution in their home countries. The fastest growing segment of these immigrants has been Asian, with their population more than doubling between 1980 and 1990 from 21,168 to 52,166 people. More than 8,000 Asian people came to North Carolina as refugees from Southeast Asian countries that were affected by the Vietnam War (1964–1975). Many South Vietnamese fled their country as America withdrew from the area in 1975. Thousands of Cambodians left their country after the Khmer Rouge overthrew their American-backed government. More than 400 Dega men, who had helped American forces fight the highlands of South Vietnam, came to North Carolina in 1986 and 1994 and now live in Raleigh, Greensboro, and Charlotte, Lao and Hmong refugees now living in North Carolina helped fight a North Vietnamese backed Communist movement in Laos. They fled Laos in 1975 when communist forces gained power and began persecuting them.

Many resettled elsewhere in the United States before coming to North Carolina to get away from the crime and unemployment they found in larger inner cities. In the last thirty to forty years, other Asians, including Japanese, Koreans, and Chinese,have come to North Carolina to go to school and to work. Many Japanese and Koreans came when their companies in Japan and Korea opened branches or started factories in the state. People from other countries such as India and countries in the Middle East have also come to North Carolina to go to schools here and to find work.

Another group of people who have come to North Carolina are people of Hispanic heritages. In 1990, the number of Hispanics living in the state reached 76,726, a 35.5 percent jump over 1980. Though some Hispanics have come from Cuba and South and

Central America, the majority of Hispanics in North Carolina are from Mexico. The first Hispanics to come to North Carolina in the twentieth century were Cubans. In the 1960s they came to America fleeing the socialist revolution in Cuba that had put Fidel Castro in power.

In the mid-1970s and early 1980s, a recession hit Mexico. Many Mexicans left their country to look for jobs in the United States. Many went to California looking for agricultural work. Soon, there were more immigrants looking for work in California than there were jobs available for them.

At the same time, North Carolina farmers began looking for migrant labor to help them harvest tobacco and crops such as sweet potatoes, cucumbers, and tomatoes. Mexicans in California and throughout the United States heard about the jobs through family and friends who had already migrated to North Carolina. They began moving to the state and to other states on the East Coast where they could find jobs.

In 1985 the federal government passed a law that offered amnesty to agricultural workers who could prove they had worked ninety consecutive workdays in the field. Those who applied for amnesty became legal residents and could apply for permanent citizenship. They could not be deported. The law helped Mexican migrants already working in the United States and may have encouraged others to come as well. This law lasted for only a limited time.

In recent years, professional workers have from Mexico and Central and South America to North Carolina hoping to earn more money in their jobs. Many other Hispanics have come to North Carolina fleeing civil war in their home countries. These people include emigrants fro El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Peru. People from Columbia and Venezuela have come fleeing economic and political problems in their countries.Change through In-State Migration Most of the state’s population growth has occurred in urban areas. Net in-migration of all people between 1980 and 1990 was led by the larger metropolitan counties, especially Wake (Raleigh), with 94,890 in-migrants, Mecklenburg (Charlotte), with 68,881, and Durham (Durham), with 19,166. The total growth rate of the state’s thirteen metropolitan counties was more than double that of the rest of the state.

Though many of the people are immigrating to North Carolina’s cities from other states or other countries, many are coming from North Carolina’s rural areas. They, too, migrate looking for work. Many of those leaving rural areas are African Americans. All of these migrations have enriched the culture of North Carolina. Restaurants and grocery stores featuring

Mexican, Japanese, Thai, Vietnamese, Indian, Middle Eastern, and other ethnic foods are becoming more popular. Many local businesses now carry items that these new citizens need. Different languages are heard on city streets and college campuses and in bilingual school classes. People from different backgrounds live near each other, go to school together, and work together.

The people immigrating to North Carolina today are only the state’s latest arrivals. They are a continuation of the flood of people who first started migrating here hundreds and even thousands of years ago.

Net population migration in N.C., 1920-2004. Courtesy of the North Carolina Atlas Revisited.

Quaker Out-Migration

By Lisa Coston Hall. From Tar Heel Junior Historian 45:2 (spring 2006).

By some estimates, during the first half of the 1800s, roughly a third of North Carolina’s residents moved to other states. The third-most populous state in the Union in 1790, North Carolina by 1860 had dropped to twelfth. Many of the immigrants were whites moving to Tennessee, western Georgia, Alabama, and other points farther west in search of less worn-out farmland and better opportunities. Some families left in the early 1800s because of the state’s general backwardness, including its lack of attention to education, agricultural reform, and internal improvements, such as roads.

Another group of people moving out during the years before the Civil War were Quakers—members of the Religious Society of Friends, a spiritual movement founded in England in the 1600s by people dissatisfied with the existing sects of Christianity. Many Quakers, because of their opposition to slavery, left southern states to move to states such as Indiana, Iowa, and Illinois. Levi Coffin (1798–1877) is one example. His father’s family had emigrated from England in 1773 and was part of the large group of Quakers based at New Garden in Guilford County; his mother’s family had moved to the area a generation earlier from Wales, after a stop in Maryland. Coffin later wrote that both his parents and grandparents clearly opposed slavery. In 1826 Coffin, who had married in 1824, moved to Indiana. He later wrote:

The laws relating to slavery were constantly made more oppressive. A law was finally passed prohibiting slaves who had been set free by their masters from remaining in the State, except in exceptional cases, where they had been manumitted for meritorious conduct. Slavery and Quakerism could not prosper together, and many of the Friends from New Garden and other settlements moved to the West. . . . . In the early part of the ninth month, 1826, we took a final leave of North Carolina. My parents had emigrated to Indiana the previous year, and I was the last of our family to go. My family at this time consisted of myself, my wife [Catharine], and our son Jesse, about a year old. My wife’s parents were not then prepared to move, but followed the next year. On our way to Indiana we

had the company of my wife’s cousin, Elias Jessup, and his little family. We made the journey in light wagons, with good teams, and had a pleasant trip. We took the shortest route, called the Kanawha road, and arrived at our destination in four weeks from the time of starting. We located at Newport, Wayne County, Indiana .

Coffin is sometimes called the “president” of the Underground Railroad, a secretive interstate network of “stations” of abolitionists helping slaves escape; southern Indiana and Ohio were key parts of this network of hiding places since they were relatively close to southern states allowing slavery. Coffin’s longtime home in Indiana is a National Historic Landmark.

During the twenty years they lived there, he and his wife are estimated to have helped more than two thousand slaves reach safety; they aided more after moving to Ohio.

To read more information about the house, access www.waynet.org/nonprofit/coffin.htm.

–Quoted passage from Reminiscences of Levi Coffin, The Reputed President of the Underground

A County Name Changes

By Russell Koonts. From Tar Heel Junior Historian 44:2 (spring 2005).

What do Arthur Dobbs, James Glasgow, and Nathanael Greene have in common? Since it was first established as Dobbs County, present-day Greene County has been named for each of these men. Nathanael Greene was a Revolutionary War hero whom the North Carolina legislature sought to honor for his military actions in the state. But who are Arthur Dobbs and James Glasgow, and why was a county named for them only to be changed? Both men served at the highest levels of North Carolina government, with Dobbs as a colonial governor and Glasgow as the first secretary of state. Their service brought them both honor, having a county named after them, and, in the end, dishonor, having the county name changed.

In 1753 King George II appointed Arthur Dobbs (1689–1765) the royal governor of North Carolina. Born in Antrim, Ireland, Dobbs had been a member of the Irish House of Commons and surveyor general of Ireland. As governor, Dobbs sought to please both the king of England and the colonists. As a result, he often drew heavy criticism from both sides. However, in 1758 the North Carolina General Assembly created Dobbs County by dividing Johnston County. A year later, Governor Dobbs tried to relocate the colony’s capital to his farm in Dobbs County, named Tower Hill. This move was defeated, and Snow Hill, as the place is now known, never became the capital of North Carolina.

In 1765 Governor Dobbs, tired of the constant battles with the General Assembly, asked to take a leave of absence from his duties. Although the leave was granted, Dobbs died at his home in Brunswick County before departing for England. The western portion of Dobbs County was split off to form Wayne County in 1779, but Dobbs County continued to exist until 1791.

In that year, the North Carolina legislature passed an act dividing Dobbs County into two distinct counties. The southern county was named in honor of General William Lenoir, a hero in the American Revolution. The northern county was named in honor of Secretary of State James Glasgow. Dobbs County ceased to exist. James Glasgow (ca. 1735–November 17, 1819) was born in Maryland and studied at the College of William and Mary in Virginia. Sometime before 1763, he moved to Kingston (now Kinston), North Carolina, to study law and he was admitted to the bar in Johnston County on July 17, 1764. Glasgow quickly moved into politics. By 1769 he was a regular attendee at the North Carolina General Assembly, often serving as an

assistant. In 1771 he obtained his first political office as Dobbs County coroner.

During the American Revolution, James Glasgow served as a colonel in the Dobbs County militia; a delegate to the Third Provincial Congress; an assistant secretary to the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Provincial Congresses; a secretary to the North Carolina Council of Safety; and a member of the Committee of Safety for New Bern District. When the Fifth Provincial Congress passed “An Ordinance for appointing a Governor, Council of State, and Secretary, until the next Assembly,” James Glasgow was appointed as the first secretary of state of the new state of Carolina. When the General Assembly met in April 1777, Glasgow again received the nomination for the office he had held since the previous December. On April 18, “by the Unanimous Votes of both Houses,” he was elected “Secretary of State for three years.” He would continue to receive this level of support even in 1797, when charges of misconduct in office first appeared. The charges surrounded Glasgow’s office’s handling of the issuing of land grants to former soldiers from North Carolina who had served in the Continental Line during the American Revolution.

During the war, the Continental Congress had requested nearly 24,000 soldiers from the state. However, service rolls show that North Carolina provided a little over 7,600 men. In 1782, attempting to improve recruitment and to pay existing soldiers, the North Carolina General Assembly set aside land (in present-day Tennessee) and promised it to soldiers, based on their rank and term of service, ranging from 640 acres for a private up to 12,000 acres for a brigadier general. Surviving heirs of soldiers who had died in service were allowed to claim the soldiers’ land. In 1797 future president Andrew Jackson wrote Samuel Ashe, North Carolina’s governor, with information about deceptive practices taking place in the granting of land to soldiers, including the suspicious activities of Glasgow himself. Although the General Assembly moved quickly to apprehend and try the individuals accused of fraud, it refused to suspend Glasgow from office. For more than a year, the investigation continued, and pressure mounted on the secretary. Finally, in 1798 Glasgow resigned from office to defend himself against his accusers. Later in 1799, with the phrase “That from and after the passing of this act, the county of Glasgow shall be called and known by the name of Greene County,” the North Carolina General Assembly removed the honor it had bestowed upon James Glasgow eight years before.

During this period in state history, North Carolina did not have a court that had the authority to

try the twenty-one men accused of fraudulent activities. In order to try those charged, the General Assembly created a special two-year court that had the power to pass judgment. Trials for three of the accused occurred in June 1800. On Thursday, June 19, Glasgow was found guilty of two charges of misconduct in office and fined £2,000. Willoughby Williams, Glasgow’s son-in-law and deputy secretary of state, and John Bonds were also found guilty and fined £500 and £100, respectively.

At the time of the discovery of the frauds, no man had enjoyed the public’s confidence more fully than Glasgow. So horrified were North Carolina officials in learning of Glasgow’s possible involvement in any sort of fraud that Governor Samuel Ashe purportedly remarked, “An angel has fallen!” By 1805 Glasgow had moved to Tennessee, where he died on November 17, 1819. Additionally, in 1819 the court, which had been created to try those accused in the “Glasgow Land Frauds” and had been continued in existence by the legislature, was made a permanent court: the North Carolina Supreme Court.

In summary, North Carolina citizens received Arthur Dobbs’s arrival as royal governor with great anticipation. When he failed to meet these expectations, he found himself in constant battles with the legislature, and these conflicts ultimately led to his request to leave the colony. James Glasgow rose to prominence during North Carolina’s early statehood. As an early leader, he helped guide the state during its formative years and had widespread support among its citizens. When he was found guilty of misconduct in office, he left North Carolina in shame and lived the rest of his life in obscurity in Tennessee.

From Dobbs to Glasgow to Nathanael Greene, each man realized North Carolina’s gratitude by having a county named in his honor. Unlike Dobbs and Glasgow, whose misdeeds brought shame and the removal of their names from the state’s maps, Nathanael Greene maintained his heroic standing. Greene County continues today as a testament to his service to North Carolina.