Browse Items (74 total)

On December 12, 1860, citizens of Craven County met in response to the secession crisis. The meeting called for the North to adopt compromises that would protect the institution of slavery and also called for North Carolina to organize a convention…

This company takes risks upon all healthy lives between the ages of 14 and 60 years--for one year, for seven years, or for life--the assurers for life participating in the profits of the Company. Slaves between the ages of 10 and 60 years, are…

Seventy-Five Negroes Wanted. I desire to purchase from fifty to seventy fiveLikely Young Negroes, of both sexes, ranging from eight to thirty years old--such as will be saleable in the Southern Market. No unsound negro wanted. I will pay Richmond…

William Swaim, editor of the Greensborough Patriot, published this address in pamphlet form through his newspaper. Swaim was also the Secretary of the Manumission Society of North Carolina and printed the tract at the request of the Society President…

New perspectives mark Civil War anniversary BY JAY PRICE RALEIGH -- North Carolina has begun the sesquicentennial of perhaps its most important year in the Civil War, when Union troops staged amphibious attacks and seized crucial swaths of coastal…

William Gaston was born to Dr. Alexander and Margaret Gaston (née Sharpe) in New Bern North Carolina in 1778. His father’s involvement in the Revolutionary War left Margaret a widow when Gaston was three. His mother, an incredibly devout Catholic…

Lewis Bitting Banner was born in 1805 in Surry County, North Carolina. In 1856, Lewis B. Banner, his wife Nancy Meadow Flipping, and their seven children moved to Watauga County, North Carolina where their eighth child was born. He bought two…

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…

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…

Benjamin Sherwood Hedrick (1827-1886) was born and raised in Davidson County, North Carolina, the oldest of seven children to John and Elizabeth Hedrick. Benjamin's father was the descendant of German immigrants and a fairly prosperous bricklayer and…