North Carolina

This article is about the U.S. state. For the former British colony, see Province of North Carolina. For other uses, see North Carolina (disambiguation).

North Carolina is a state located in the eastern portion of the United States. It is divided into 100 counties. North Carolina was the 12th state to join the Union on November 21, 1789. It was formed from the Crown Colony of North Carolina. The State Capital is Raleigh.

North Carolina (Template:IPAc-en) is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States. North Carolina is the 28th largest and 9th-most populous of the 50 United States. It is bordered by Virginia to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, Georgia and South Carolina to the south, and Tennessee to the west. Raleigh is the state's capital and Charlotte is its largest city. The Charlotte metropolitan area, with an estimated population of 2,569,213 in 2018, is the most-populous metropolitan area in North Carolina, the 23rd-most populous in the United States, and the largest banking center in the nation after New York City. The Raleigh-Durham-Cary combined statistical area is the second-largest metropolitan area in the state, with an estimated population of 2,079,687 in 2019, and is home to the largest research park in the United States, Research Triangle Park.

Earliest discoveries of human occupation in North Carolina date back to 10,000 years ago, found at the Hardaway Site. North Carolina was inhabited by Carolina Algonquian, Iroquoian, and Siouan speaking tribes of Native Americans prior to the arrival of Europeans. North Carolina was established as a royal colony in 1729 and was one of the Thirteen Colonies. North Carolina is named in honor of King Charles I of England who first formed the English colony, Carolus being Latin for "Charles". The Halifax Resolves resolution adopted by North Carolina on April 12, 1776, was the first formal call for independence from Great Britain among the American Colonies during the American Revolution.

On November 21, 1789, North Carolina became the 12th state to ratify the United States constitution. In the run-up to the American Civil War, North Carolina declared its secession from the Union on May 20, 1861, becoming the tenth of eleven states to join the Confederate States of America. Following the Civil War, the state was restored to the Union on July 4, 1868. On December 17, 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright successfully piloted the world's first controlled, sustained flight of a powered, heavier-than-air aircraft at Kitty Hawk in North Carolina's Outer Banks. North Carolina uses the slogan "First in Flight" on state license plates to commemorate this achievement, alongside a newer alternative design bearing the slogan "First in Freedom" in reference to the Mecklenburg Declaration and Halifax Resolves.

North Carolina is defined by a wide range of elevations and landscapes. From west to east, North Carolina's elevation descends from the Appalachian Mountains to the Piedmont and Atlantic coastal plain. North Carolina's Mount Mitchell at 6,684 feet (2,037Template:Nbsm) is the highest point in North America east of the Mississippi River. Most of the state falls in the humid subtropical climate zone; however, the western, mountainous part of the state has a subtropical highland climate.

Formation & boundaries

Animation of North Carolinas expansion westward

• October 30, 1629, Province of Carolana, English Colonial America
• March 24, 1663, Province of Carolina, English Colonial America
• May 1, 1707, Province of Carolina, British Colonial America
• 1712, Colony of South Carolina, British Colonial America
• 1712, Colony of North Carolina, British Colonial America
• November 21, 1789, North Carolina, United States

History

Native Americans, lost colony, and permanent settlement

See also: Native Americans in the United States, Joara, Roanoke Island, and Fort Raleigh National Historic Site

Ceremony of Secotan warriors in North Carolina. Watercolour painted by English colonist John White in 1585.

A plaque to commemorate the first indigenous person who was converted to Christianity, Manteo, at the Roanoke Colony

North Carolina was inhabited for at least ten thousand years by succeeding prehistoric indigenous cultures. The Hardaway Site saw major periods of occupation dating to 10,000 years BCE. Before 200 AD, the people were building earthwork platform mounds, which were used for ceremonial and religious purposes. Succeeding peoples, including those of the South Appalachian Mississippian culture, established by 1000 AD in the Piedmont and mountain region, continued to build this style of mounds. In contrast to some of the larger centers of the classic Mississippian culture (as noted below), in what became known as the western Carolinas, northeastern Georgia and southeastern Tennessee, most of the larger towns had only one central platform mound. The smaller settlements had none but developed close to the more prominent towns. This area became known as the homelands of the historic Cherokee people, who are believed to have migrated over time from the Great Lakes area.

In the 500–700 years preceding European contact, the Mississippian culture built large, complex cities and maintained far-flung regional trading networks. Its largest city was Cahokia, which had numerous mounds for different purposes, a highly stratified society, and was located in present-day southwestern Illinois near the Mississippi River. The Native polities of the Mississippian culture fell apart and reformed as new groups, such as the Catawba, due to a series of destabilizing events known as the "Mississippian shatter zone". As described by anthropologist Robbie Ethridge, the Mississippian shatter zone was an area of great instability, in what is now the American South, caused by the instability of Mississippian chiefdoms, high mortality from new Eurasian diseases, construction of a global capitalistic economy based on trading of Native American slaves, and the emergence of Native "militaristic slaving societies".

Historically documented tribes in the North Carolina region include the Carolina Algonquian-speaking tribes of the coastal areas, such as the Chowanoke, Roanoke, Pamlico, Machapunga, Coree, and Cape Fear Indians, who were the first encountered by the English; the Iroquoian-speaking Meherrin, Cherokee, and Tuscarora of the interior; and Southeastern Siouan tribes, such as the Cheraw, Waxhaw, Saponi, Waccamaw, and Catawba of the Piedmont.

In the late 16th century, the first Spanish explorers traveling inland recorded meeting Mississippian culture people at Joara, a regional chiefdom near what later developed as Morganton. Records of Hernando de Soto attested to his meeting with them in 1540. In 1567, Captain Juan Pardo led an expedition to claim the area for the Spanish colony and to establish another route to reach silver mines in Mexico. Pardo made a winter base at Joara, which he renamed Cuenca. His expedition built Fort San Juan and left a contingent of 30 men there, while Pardo traveled further. His forces built and garrisoned five other forts. He returned by a different route to Santa Elena on Parris Island, South Carolina, then a center of Spanish Florida. In the spring of 1568, natives killed all but one of the Spanish soldiers and burned the six forts in the interior, including the one at Fort San Juan. Although the Spanish never returned to the interior, this effort marked the first European attempt at colonization of the interior of what became the United States. A 16th-century journal by Pardo's scribe Bandera, and archaeological findings since 1986 at Joara, have confirmed the settlement.

John White returns to find the colony abandoned

Anglo-European settlement

In 1584, Elizabeth I granted a charter to Sir Walter Raleigh, for whom the state capital is named, for land in present-day North Carolina (then part of the territory of Virginia). It was the second American territory which the English attempted to colonize. Raleigh established two colonies on the coast in the late 1580s, but both failed. The fate of the "Lost Colony" of Roanoke Island remains one of the most widely debated mysteries of American history. Virginia Dare, the first English child to be born in North America, was born on Roanoke Island on August 18, 1587; Dare County is named for her.

Map of the coast of Virginia and North Carolina, drawn 1585–1586 by Theodor de Bry, based on map by John White of the Roanoke Colony

As early as 1650, settlers from the Virginia colony had moved into the area of Albemarle Sound. By 1663, King Charles II of England granted a charter to start a new colony on the North American continent; this would generally establish North Carolina's borders. He named it Carolina in honor of his father, [[Charles I of England|CharlesTemplate:NbsI]]. By 1665, a second charter was issued to attempt to resolve territorial questions. In 1710, owing to disputes over governance, the Carolina colony began to split into North Carolina and South Carolina. The latter became a crown colony in 1729.

Later in the 1700s, a series of smallpox epidemics swept the South, causing high fatalities among the Native Americans, who had no immunity to the new disease (it had become endemic over centuries in Europe). According to the historian Russell Thornton, "The 1738 epidemic was said to have killed one-half of the Cherokee, with other tribes of the area suffering equally."

Colonial period and Revolutionary War

Reconstructed royal governor's mansion Tryon Palace, in New Bern

After the Spanish in the 16th century, the first permanent European settlers of North Carolina were English colonists who migrated south from Virginia. The latter had grown rapidly and land was less available. Nathaniel Batts was documented as one of the first of these Virginian migrants. He settled south of the Chowan River and east of the Great Dismal Swamp in 1655. By 1663, this northeastern area of the Province of Carolina, known as the Albemarle Settlements, was undergoing full-scale English settlement. During the same period, the English monarch CharlesTemplate:NbsII gave the province to the Lords Proprietors, a group of noblemen who had helped restore him to the throne in 1660. The new Province of Carolina was named in honor and memory of his father, CharlesTemplate:NbsI (Latin: Carolus). A large revolt happened in the state in 1711, known as Cary's Rebellion. In 1712, North Carolina became a separate colony. Except for the Earl Granville holdings, it became a royal colony seventeen years later.

In June 1718, the pirate Blackbeard ran his flagship, the Queen Anne's Revenge, aground at Beaufort Inlet, North Carolina, in present-day Carteret County. After the grounding her crew and supplies were transferred to smaller ships. In November 1718, after appealing to the governor of North Carolina, who promised safe-haven and a pardon, Blackbeard was killed in an ambush by troops from Virginia. In 1996 Intersal, Inc., a private firm, discovered the remains of a vessel likely to be the Queen Anne's Revenge, which was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.

North Carolina became one of the English Thirteen Colonies and with the territory of South Carolina was originally known as the Province of North Carolina. The northern and southern parts of the original province separated in 1729. Originally settled by small farmers, sometimes having a few slaves, who were oriented toward subsistence agriculture, the colony lacked large cities or towns. Pirates menaced the coastal settlements, but by 1718 the pirates had been captured and killed. Growth was strong in the middle of the 18th century, as the economy attracted Scots-Irish, Quaker, English and German immigrants. A majority of the North Carolina colonists generally supported the American Revolution, although there were a small number of Loyalists. Loyalists in North Carolina were smaller in number than in some other colonies such as Georgia, South Carolina, Delaware, and New York.

During colonial times, Edenton served as the state capital beginning in 1722, followed by New Bern becoming the capital in 1766. Construction of Tryon Palace, which served as the residence and offices of the provincial governor William Tryon, began in 1767 and was completed in 1771. In 1788, Raleigh was chosen as the site of the new capital, as its central location protected it from coastal attacks. Officially established in 1792 as both county seat and state capital, the city was named after Sir Walter Raleigh, sponsor of Roanoke, the "lost colony" on Roanoke Island. The population of the colony more than quadrupled from 52,000 in 1740 to 270,000 in 1780 from high immigration from Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania, plus immigrants from abroad.

Differences in the settlement patterns of eastern and western North Carolina, or the Atlantic coastal plain and uplands, affected the political, economic, and social life of the state from the 18th until the 20th century. Eastern North Carolina was settled chiefly by immigrants from rural England and the Scottish Highlands. The Piedmont upcountry and western mountain region of North Carolina was settled chiefly by Scots-Irish, English, and German Protestants, the so-called "cohee". Arriving during the mid- to late 18th century, the Scots-Irish from what is today Northern Ireland were the largest non-English immigrant group before the Revolution; English indentured servants were overwhelmingly the largest immigrant group before the Revolution. During the American Revolutionary War, the English and Highland Scots of eastern North Carolina tended to remain loyal to the British Crown, because of longstanding business and personal connections with Great Britain. The English, Welsh, Scots-Irish, and German settlers of western North Carolina tended to favor American independence from Britain.

Most of the English colonists had arrived as indentured servants, hiring themselves out as laborers for a fixed period to pay for their passage. In the early years the line between indentured servants and African slaves or laborers was fluid. Some Africans were allowed to earn their freedom before slavery became a lifelong status. Most of the free colored families formed in North Carolina before the Revolution were descended from unions or marriages between free white women and enslaved or free African or African-American men. Because the mothers were free, their children were born free. Many had migrated or were descendants of migrants from colonial Virginia. As the flow of indentured laborers to the colony decreased with improving economic conditions in Great Britain, planters imported more slaves, and the state's legal delineations between free and slave status tightened, effectively hardening the latter into a racial caste. The economy's growth and prosperity was based on slave labor, devoted primarily to the production of tobacco.

On April 12, 1776, the colony became the first to instruct its delegates to the Continental Congress to vote for independence from the British Crown, through the Halifax Resolves passed by the North Carolina Provincial Congress. The date of this event is memorialized on the state flag and state seal. Throughout the Revolutionary War, fierce guerrilla warfare erupted between bands of pro-independence and pro-British colonists. In some cases the war was also an excuse to settle private grudges and rivalries.

During the Revolutionary War, North Carolina had around 7,800 men join the Continental Army under General George Washington; and an additional 10,000 served in local militia units under such leaders as General Nathanael Greene. There was some military action, especially in 1780–81. Many Carolinian frontiersmen had moved west over the mountains, into the Washington District (later known as Tennessee), but in 1789, following the Revolution, the state was persuaded to relinquish its claim to the western lands. It ceded them to the national government so the Northwest Territory could be organized and managed nationally.

A major American victory in the war took place at King's Mountain along the North Carolina–South Carolina border; on October 7, 1780, a force of 1,000 mountain men from western North Carolina (including what is today the state of Tennessee) and southwest Virginia overwhelmed a force of some 1,000 British troops led by Major Patrick Ferguson. Most of the soldiers fighting for the British side in this battle were Carolinians who had remained loyal to the Crown (they were called "Tories" or Loyalists). The American victory at Kings Mountain gave the advantage to colonists who favored American independence, and it prevented the British Army from recruiting new soldiers from the Tories.

1st Maryland Regiment holding the line at the Battle of Guilford Court House

The road to Yorktown and America's independence from Great Britain led through North Carolina. As the British Army moved north from victories in Charleston and Camden, South Carolina, the Southern Division of the Continental Army and local militia prepared to meet them. Following General Daniel Morgan's victory over the British Cavalry Commander Banastre Tarleton at the Battle of Cowpens on January 17, 1781, southern commander Nathanael Greene led British Lord Charles Cornwallis across the heartland of North Carolina, and away from the latter's base of supply in Charleston, South Carolina. This campaign is known as "The Race to the Dan" or "The Race for the River".

In the Battle of Cowan's Ford, Cornwallis met resistance along the banks of the Catawba River at Cowan's Ford on February 1, 1781, in an attempt to engage General Morgan's forces during a tactical withdrawal. Morgan had moved to the northern part of the state to combine with General Greene's newly recruited forces. Generals Greene and Cornwallis finally met at the Battle of Guilford Courthouse in present-day Greensboro on March 15, 1781. Although the British troops held the field at the end of the battle, their casualties at the hands of the numerically superior Continental Army were crippling. Following this "Pyrrhic victory", Cornwallis chose to move to the Virginia coastline to get reinforcements, and to allow the Royal Navy to protect his battered army. This decision would result in Cornwallis' eventual defeat at Yorktown, Virginia, later in 1781. The Patriots' victory there guaranteed American independence. On November 21, 1789, North Carolina became the twelfth state to ratify the U.S. constitution.

Antebellum period

After 1800, cotton and tobacco became important export crops. The eastern half of the state, especially the Coastal Plain region, developed a slave society based on a plantation system and slave labor. Planters owning large estates wielded significant political and socio-economic power in antebellum North Carolina. They placed their interests above those of the generally non-slave-holding "yeoman" farmers of North Carolina. While slaveholding was slightly less concentrated compared to some other Southern states, according to the 1860 census, more than 330,000 people, or 33% of the population out of 992,622 people in total, were enslaved African Americans. They lived and worked chiefly on plantations in the Piedmont and Coastal Plain regions of the state. In addition, 30,463 free people of color lived in the state. They were also mainly concentrated in the eastern coastal plain, especially at port cities such as Wilmington and New Bern, where a variety of jobs were available. Most were descendants from free African Americans who had migrated along with neighbors from Virginia during the 18th century. The majority were the descendants of unions in the working classes between white women, indentured servants or free, and African men, indentured, slave or free.

Map of the roads and railroads of North Carolina, 1854

After the American Revolution, Quakers and Mennonites worked to persuade slaveholders to free their slaves. Some were inspired by their efforts and the language of the Revolution to arrange for manumission of their slaves. The number of free people of color rose markedly in the first couple of decades after the Revolution. Many free people of color migrated to the frontier, along with their European-American neighbors, where the social system was looser. By 1810, nearly three percent of the free population consisted of free people of color, who numbered slightly more than 10,000. The western areas of North Carolina were mainly white families of European descent, especially Scotch-Irish, who operated small subsistence farms. In the early national period, the state became a center of Jeffersonian and Jacksonian democracy, with a strong Whig presence, especially in the western part of the state. After Nat Turner's slave uprising in 1831, North Carolina and other southern states reduced the rights of free blacks. In 1835, the legislature withdrew their right to vote.

In mid-century, the state's rural and commercial areas were connected by the construction of a 129 mi (208 km) wooden plank road, known as a "farmer's railroad", from Fayetteville in the east to Bethania (northwest of Winston-Salem). On October 25, 1836, construction began on the Wilmington and Raleigh Railroad to connect the port city of Wilmington with the state capital of Raleigh. In 1840, the state capitol building in Raleigh was completed, and still stands today.

In 1849, the North Carolina Railroad was created by act of the legislature to extend that railroad west to Greensboro, High Point, and Charlotte. During the Civil War, the Wilmington-to-Raleigh stretch of the railroad would be vital to the Confederate war effort; supplies shipped into Wilmington would be moved by rail through Raleigh to the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia.

American Civil War

Further information: American Civil War

Union troops capture Fort Fisher, 1865

In 1860, North Carolina was a slave state, in which one-third of the state's total population was enslaved. The state did not vote to join the Confederacy until President Abraham Lincoln called on it to invade its sister state, South Carolina, becoming the last or penultimate state to officially join the Confederacy. The title of "last to join the Confederacy" has been disputed; although Tennessee's informal secession on May 7, 1861, preceded North Carolina's official secession on May 20, the Tennessee legislature did not formally vote to secede until June 8, 1861.

Around 125,000 troops from North Carolina served in the Confederate Army, and about 15,000 North Carolina troops (both black and white) served in Union Army regiments, along with many other men leaving the state to join Union regiments elsewhere. Over 30,000 North Carolina troops died from disease, battlefield wounds, or starvation. Elected in 1862, Governor Zebulon Baird Vance tried to maintain state autonomy against Confederate President Jefferson Davis in Richmond. The state government was reluctant to support the demands of the national government in Richmond, and the state was the scene of only small battles. In 1865, Durham County saw the largest single surrender of Confederate soldiers when Joseph E. Johnston surrendered the Army of Tennessee and all remaining Confederate forces still active in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, totalling 89,270 soldiers.

Confederate soldier monument Silent Sam, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (now removed), by John Wilson

After secession, some North Carolinians refused to support the Confederacy. Some of the yeoman farmers chiefly in the state's mountains and western Piedmont region remained neutral during the Civil War, with others covertly supporting the Union cause during the conflict. Approximately 15,000 North Carolinians (both black and white) from across the state would enlist in the Union Army. Numerous slaves would also escape to Union lines, where they became essentially free.

Confederate troops from all parts of North Carolina served in virtually all the major battles of the Army of Northern Virginia, the Confederacy's most famous army. The largest battle fought in North Carolina was at Bentonville, which was a futile attempt by Confederate General Joseph Johnston to slow Union General William Tecumseh Sherman's advance through the Carolinas in the spring of 1865. In April 1865, after losing the Battle of Morrisville, Johnston surrendered to Sherman at Bennett Place, in what is today Durham. North Carolina's port city of Wilmington, was the last Confederate port to fall to the Union, in February 1865, after the Union won the nearby Second Battle of Fort Fisher, its major defense downriver.

Bennett Place historic site in Durham

The first Confederate soldier to be killed in the Civil War was Private Henry Wyatt from North Carolina, in the Battle of Big Bethel in June 1861. At the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863, the 26th North Carolina Regiment participated in Pickett/Pettigrew's Charge and advanced the farthest into the Northern lines of any Confederate regiment. During the Battle of Chickamauga, the 58th North Carolina Regiment advanced farther than any other regiment on Snodgrass Hill to push back the remaining Union forces from the battlefield. At Appomattox Court House in Virginia in April 1865, the 75th North Carolina Regiment, a cavalry unit, fired the last shots of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia in the Civil War. For many years, some North Carolinians proudly boasted that they had been "First at Bethel, Farthest at Gettysburg and Chickamauga, and Last at Appomattox".

Reconstruction era through late 19th century

Following the collapse of the Confederacy in 1865, North Carolina, along with the rest of the former Confederate States, was put under direct control by the U.S. military and was relieved of its constitutional government and representation within the United States Congress in what is now referred to as the Reconstruction era. In order to earn back its rights, the state had to make concessions to Washington, one of which was ratifying the Thirteenth Amendment. Congressional Republicans during Reconstruction, commonly referred to as "radical Republicans", constantly pushed for new constitutions for each of the Southern states that emphasized on equal rights for African-Americans. In 1868, a constitutional convention restored the state government of North Carolina. Though the Fifteenth Amendment was also adopted that same year, it remained in most cases ineffective for almost a century, not to mention paramilitary groups and their lynching with impunity.

The elections in April 1868 following the constitutional convention led to a narrow victory for a Republican-dominated government, with 19 African-Americans holding positions in the North Carolina State Legislature. In attempt to put the reforms into effect, the new Republican Governor William W. Holden declared martial law on any county allegedly not complying with law and order using the passage of the Shoffner Act.

A Republican Party coalition of black freedmen, northern carpetbaggers and local scalawags controlled state government for three years. The white conservative Democrats regained control of the state legislature in 1870, in part by Ku Klux Klan violence and terrorism at the polls, to suppress black voting. Republicans were elected to the governorship until 1876, when the Red Shirts, a paramilitary organization that arose in 1874 and was allied with the Democratic Party, helped suppress black voting. More than 150 black Americans were murdered in electoral violence in 1876.

Post civil war-debt cycles pushed people to switch from subsistence agriculture to commodity agriculture. Among this time the notorious Crop-Lien system developed and was financially difficult on landless whites and blacks, due to high amounts of usury. Also due to the push for commodity agriculture, the free range was ended. Prior to this time people fenced in their crops and had their livestock feeding on the free range areas. After the ending of the free range people now fenced their animals and had their crops in the open.Template:Citation needed

Democrats were elected to the legislature and governor's office, but the Populists attracted voters displeased with them. In 1896 a biracial, Populist-Republican Fusionist coalition gained the governor's office and passed laws that would extend the voting franchise to blacks and poor whites. The Democrats regained control of the legislature in 1896 and passed laws to impose Jim Crow and racial segregation of public facilities. Voters of North Carolina's 2nd congressional district elected a total of four African-American congressmen through these years of the late 19th century.

Political tensions ran so high a small group of white Democrats in 1898 planned to take over the Wilmington government if their candidates were not elected. In the Wilmington Insurrection of 1898, more than 1,500 white men attacked the black newspaper and neighborhood, killed numerous men, and ran off the white Republican mayor and aldermen. They installed their own people and elected Alfred M. Waddell as mayor, in the only coup d'état in United States history.

In 1899, the state legislature passed a new constitution, with requirements for poll taxes and literacy tests for voter registration which disenfranchised most black Americans in the state. Exclusion from voting had wide effects: it meant black Americans could not serve on juries or in any local office. After a decade of white supremacy, many people forgot North Carolina had ever had thriving middle-class black Americans. Black citizens had no political voice in the state until after the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 were passed to enforce their constitutional rights. It was not until 1992 that another African American was elected as a U.S. Representative from North Carolina.

Geography

Deer in the Eno River as it flows through the Piedmont region of North Carolina

North Carolina is bordered by South Carolina on the south, Georgia on the southwest, Tennessee on the west, Virginia on the north, and the Atlantic Ocean on the east. The United States Census Bureau places North Carolina in the South Atlantic division of the southern region.

North Carolina consists of three main geographic regions: the Atlantic coastal plain, occupying the eastern portion of the state; the central Piedmont region, and the mountain region in the west, which is part of the Appalachian Mountains. The coastal plain consists of more specifically-defined areas known as the Outer Banks, a string of sandy, narrow barrier islands separated from the mainland by sounds or inlets, including Albemarle Sound and Pamlico Sound, the native home of the venus flytrap, and the inner coastal plain, where longleaf pine trees are native.

So many ships have been lost off Cape Hatteras that the area is known as the "Graveyard of the Atlantic"; more than a thousand ships have sunk in these waters since records began in 1526. The most famous of these is the Queen Anne's Revenge (flagship of the pirate Blackbeard), which went aground in Beaufort Inlet in 1718.

The coastal plain transitions to the Piedmont region along the Atlantic Seaboard fall line, the elevation at which waterfalls first appear on streams and rivers. The Piedmont region of central North Carolina is the state's most populous region, containing the six largest cities in the state by population. It consists of gently rolling countryside frequently broken by hills or low mountain ridges. Small, isolated, and deeply eroded mountain ranges and peaks are located in the Piedmont, including the Sauratown Mountains, Pilot Mountain, the Uwharrie Mountains, Crowder's Mountain, King's Pinnacle, the Brushy Mountains, and the South Mountains. The Piedmont ranges from about 300 feet (91 m) in elevation in the east to about 1,500 feet (460 m) in the west.

The Blue Ridge Mountains of the Shining Rock Wilderness Area

The western section of the state is part of the Blue Ridge Mountains of the larger Appalachian Mountain range. Among the subranges of the Blue Ridge Mountains located in the state are the Great Smoky Mountains and the Black Mountains. The Black Mountains are the highest in the eastern United States, and culminate in Mount Mitchell at 6,684 feet (2,037 m), the highest point east of the Mississippi River.

Cullasaja Falls in Macon County

North Carolina has 17 major river basins. The five basins west of the Blue Ridge Mountains flow to the Gulf of Mexico, while the remainder flow to the Atlantic Ocean. Of the 17 basins, 11 originate within the state of North Carolina, but only four are contained entirely within the state's border—the Cape Fear, the Neuse, the White Oak, and the Tar–Pamlico basin.

Flora and fauna

Further information: Wildlife of North Carolina

Getting Started

Getting Started with North Carolina Research Links to articles on getting started with North Carolina research. Guided Research Step-by-Step North Carolina Research, 1880-Present How to Find Birth Records How to Find Marriage Records How to Find Death Records Research Strategies

North Carolina Research Tools Links to articles and websites that assist in North Carolina research. North Carolina Record Finder Boundary Changes for North Carolina Counties North Carolina Archives and Libraries NCGenWeb Geographical Names Information System - U.S. gazetteer of places, cemeteries and post offices in North Carolina.

North Carolina online genealogy records

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Counties

• Alamance County, North Carolina
• Alexander County, North Carolina
• Alleghany County, North Carolina
• Anson County, North Carolina
• Ashe County, North Carolina
• Avery County, North Carolina
• Beaufort County, North Carolina
• Bertie County, North Carolina
• Bladen County, North Carolina
• Brunswick County, North Carolina
• Buncombe County, North Carolina
• Burke County, North Carolina
• Cabarrus County, North Carolina
• Caldwell County, North Carolina
• Camden County, North Carolina
• Carteret County, North Carolina
• Caswell County, North Carolina
• Catawba County, North Carolina
• Chatham County, North Carolina
• Cherokee County, North Carolina
• Chowan County, North Carolina
• Clay County, North Carolina
• Cleveland County, North Carolina
• Columbus County, North Carolina
• Craven County, North Carolina
• Cumberland County, North Carolina
• Currituck County, North Carolina
• Dare County, North Carolina
• Davidson County, North Carolina
• Davie County, North Carolina
• Duplin County, North Carolina
• Durham County, North Carolina
• Edgecombe County, North Carolina
• Forsyth County, North Carolina
• Franklin County, North Carolina
• Gaston County, North Carolina
• Gates County, North Carolina
• Graham County, North Carolina
• Granville County, North Carolina
• Greene County, North Carolina
• Guilford County, North Carolina
• Halifax County, North Carolina
• Harnett County, North Carolina
• Haywood County, North Carolina
• Henderson County, North Carolina
• Hertford County, North Carolina
• Hoke County, North Carolina
• Hyde County, North Carolina
• Iredell County, North Carolina
• Jackson County, North Carolina
• Johnston County, North Carolina
• Jones County, North Carolina
• Lee County, North Carolina
• Lenoir County, North Carolina
• Lincoln County, North Carolina
• Macon County, North Carolina
• Madison County, North Carolina
• Martin County, North Carolina
• McDowell County, North Carolina
• Mecklenburg County, North Carolina
• Mitchell County, North Carolina
• Montgomery County, North Carolina
• Moore County, North Carolina
• Nash County, North Carolina
• New Hanover County, North Carolina
• Northampton County, North Carolina
• Onslow County, North Carolina
• Orange County, North Carolina
• Pamlico County, North Carolina
• Pasquotank County, North Carolina
• Pender County, North Carolina
• Perquimans County, North Carolina
• Person County, North Carolina
• Pitt County, North Carolina
• Polk County, North Carolina
• Randolph County, North Carolina
• Richmond County, North Carolina
• Robeson County, North Carolina
• Rockingham County, North Carolina
• Rowan County, North Carolina
• Rutherford County, North Carolina
• Sampson County, North Carolina
• Scotland County, North Carolina
• Stanly County, North Carolina
• Stokes County, North Carolina
• Surry County, North Carolina
• Swain County, North Carolina
• Transylvania County, North Carolina
• Tyrrell County, North Carolina
• Union County, North Carolina
• Vance County, North Carolina
• Wake County, North Carolina
• Warren County, North Carolina
• Washington County, North Carolina
• Watauga County, North Carolina
• Wayne County, North Carolina
• Wilkes County, North Carolina
• Wilson County, North Carolina
• Yadkin County, North Carolina
• Yancey County, North Carolina

Extinct or Renamed Counties: Albemarle | Bath | Bute | Cherokee Reservation | Clarendon | Dobbs | Glasgow | Tryon

Counties gone to Tennessee or Virginia:  State of Franklin · Blount · Caswell (TN) · Davidson (TN) · Fincastle (VA) · Greene (TN) · Hawkins · Sevier · Spencer · Sullivan · Sumner · Tennessee · Washington (old) · Wayne (TN)

North Carolina migration routes

Atlantic Coast Ports · Black Fox Trail  · Catawba and Northern Trail  · Catawba Trail  · Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad  · Fall Line Road Southern Road  · Fayetteville, Elizabethtown, and Wilmington Trail  · Great Valley Road  · Jonesboro Road  · King's Highway  · Lower Cherokee Traders' Path  · New River and Southern Trail  · Occaneechi Path  · Old Cherokee Path  · Rutherford's War Trace  · Secondary Coast Road  · Unicoi Trail  · Upper Road  · Wilmington, Highpoint, and Northern Trail

FamilySearch Resources

Below are FamilySearch resources that can assist you in researching your family.

• Facebook Communities - Facebook groups discussing genealogy research
• Learning Center - Online genealogy courses
• Historical Records - databases and record images on FamilySearch
• Family History Center locator map

Additional Resources

• Cyndi's List - North Carolina genealogy sites on the internet
• North Carolina Genealogy Trails - collection of transcribed data for the state of North Carolina
• Access Genealogy – Genealogy guide for North Carolina
• Ancestorhunt.com - resources for North Carolina genealogy research
• Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness - Guide to Ancestry and Family Tree Records for North Carolina
• North Carolina Research Outline – Original Family History Library research outline; contains many out of date links
• Guide To Research Materials In the North Carolina State Archives (archived version, 11th edition, 2002) 379 page county record inventory. Lists county formation date, courthouse disasters, record types (bonds, corporate, court, election, estate, land, marriage, roads, tax, wills), dates covered, if a book, boxed, or filmed.
• State Archives of North Carolina Finding Aids —— Narrative descriptions of archival materials held, often providing more detailed information than the online catalog, box lists, and folder lists, about individual collections.
• North Carolina Blacksheep Ancestors, NC prisoners, outlaws, court records, and executions.
• DigitalNC Collection: North Carolina's Digital Heritage
• Every Name Index
• Online encyclopedia about all things North Carolina
• Piedmont Trails - North Carolina genealogy with references to colonial migrations, land grants and detailed history of the piedmont region.
• 1737 North Carolina Manuscript Map

See also

• Index of North Carolina–related articles
• Outline of North Carolina
• Template:Portal-inline

References

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Bibliography

• Lefler, Hugh (numerous editions since 1934). North Carolina History Told by Contemporaries . University of North Carolina Press.
• Jones, H. G. (1984). North Carolina Illustrated, 1524–1984. University of North Carolina Press.
• North Carolina Manual. Published biennially by the Department of the Secretary of State since 1941.
• The Religion in North Carolina Digital Collection. A grant-funded project to provide digital access to publications of and about religious bodies in North Carolina. Partner institutions at Duke University, UNC-Chapel Hill, and Wake Forest University contributed the largest portion of the items in this collection, but the collection is enriched by unique materials from libraries and archives throughout North Carolina. The materials in this collection include local church histories, periodicals, clergy biographies, cookbooks, event programs, directories, and much more.

Further reading

• James, Clay; Orr, Douglas, eds. (1971). North Carolina Atlas: Portrait of a Changing Southern State.
• Christensen, Rob (2008). The Paradox of Tar Heel Politics. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
• Cooper, Christopher A.; Knotts, H. Gibbs, eds. (2008). The New Politics of North Carolina. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
• Crow; Jeffrey J.; Tise, Larry E. (1979). Writing North Carolina History. Online.
• Eamon, Tom (2014). The Making of a Southern Democracy: North Carolina Politics from Kerr Scott to Pat McCrory. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press.
• Fleer, Jack D. (1994). North Carolina Government & Politics. Online political science textbook.
• Hawks, Francis L. (1857). History of North Carolina, Volumes I and II.
• Kersey, Marianne M.; Coble, Ran, eds. (1989). North Carolina Focus: An Anthology on State Government, Politics, and Policy. 2d ed. Raleigh: North Carolina Center for Public Policy Research.
• Lefler, Hugh Talmage (1963). A Guide to the Study and Reading of North Carolina History. Online.
• Lefler, Hugh Talmage; Newsome, Albert Ray (1954, 1963, 1973). North Carolina: The History of a Southern State. Standard textbook.
• Link, William A. (2009). North Carolina: Change and Tradition in a Southern State. History by leading scholar.
• Luebke, Paul (1990). Tar Heel Politics: Myths and Realities.
• Powell, William S. (1979–88). Dictionary of North Carolina Biography. Vol. 1, A-C; vol. 2, D-G; vol. 3, H-K.
• Powell, William S. (1958). North Carolina Fiction, 1734–1957: An Annotated Bibliography.
• Powell, William S. (1989). North Carolina through Four Centuries. Standard textbook.
• Powell, William S.; Mazzocchi, Jay, eds. (2006). Encyclopedia of North Carolina.
• Ready, Milton. (2005). The Tar Heel State: A History of North Carolina.
• Thuesen, Sarah Caroline. (2013). Greater Than Equal: African American Struggles for Schools and Citizenship in North Carolina, 1919–1965. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press.
• WPA Federal Writers' Project (1939). North Carolina: A Guide to the Old North State. Famous WPA guide to every town.

Acknowledgements

This page uses Creative Commons Licensed content from the Wikipedia article North Carolina (view authors). Template:FamilySearch

External links

• Maps that Include North Carolina

General

• Wineries, Restaurants and Tourism in the state
• Template:Curlie

History

• North Carolina State Guide, from the Library of Congress
• The Guardian: "U.S. nearly detonated atomic bomb over North Carolina—secret document"

Government and education

• North Carolina state government
• North Carolina state library
• Energy & Environmental Data for North Carolina
• USGS real-time, geographic, and other scientific resources of North Carolina
• North Carolina facts from U.S. Department of Agriculture ERS
• North Carolina Court System official site
• North Carolina facts from U.S. Census Bureau
• NC ECHO—North Carolina Exploring Cultural Heritage Online
• North Carolina Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• Green 'N' Growing: The History of Home Demonstration and 4-H Youth Development in North Carolina hosted by NCSU Libraries Special Collections Research Center
• NC Office of Archives and History
• Commemorative Landscapes of North Carolina
• Driving Through Time: The Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina
• The Religion in North Carolina Digital Collection

Other

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