Browse Items (39 total)

Thomas Ruffin was born in Virginia in November of 1787, and moved to North Carolina early in his life. He attended Princeton University and later studied law in Rockingham County and eventually passed the bar in 1808. After practicing law for a few…

William Woods Holden was the Governor of North Carolina throughout the period of our nation's history known as Reconstruction. Governor Holden would become to be the first state governor to be impeached and subsequently convicted, in American…

Hinton Rowan Helper was born on December 27, 1829, in Mocksville, North Carolina, where he was educated at the Mocksville Academy and graduated in 1848. He caught gold fever in 1850 and headed to California, but he failed as a prospector, having made…

Daniel Harvey Hill, Sr. (1821-1889) was a talented Confederate General from North Carolina and brother-in-law of infamous Confederate general, Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson. He was educated at the United States Military Academy at West Point…

Bartholomew F. Moore was a lawyer and leader of the Unionist cause for North Carolina during the Civil War. Moore was one of many people that gave creditability to a pro-Union cause and was against the act of secession. Even with the abandonment of…

James William "Jim Billy" Craig was a river and harbor pilot on the Cape Fear River during and after the Civil War. He is most well known as the pilot for the blockade runnners Annie, Don, Gibraltar, Lilian, Lynx, and Orion. In the short four year of…

Henry Martin Tupper (1831-1893), an honorary discharge from the Union Army, was a very important figure in the education of blacks during the Reconstruction period of the Civil War because he funded Shaw University. When Henry Tupper arrived in…

Zebulon Baird Vance was born in Western North Carolina in 1831 to a middle class family. After high school, Vance continued his education at the University of North Carolina where he pursued a degree in law. Vance slowly worked his way up in North…

Henry Berry Lowry was a well known outlaw in the area nearby Wilmington, NC. He came from a family long established in the state when it was still a colony under British rule, and was by blood a member of the Lumbee Indian tribe that inhabited much…

John Willis Ellis was a North Carolina lawyer, legislator, judge, and Democratic governor. Born in Rowan County in 1820, he was a son of a Planter. Ellis graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1841, and served as a lawyer, until he was…