On February 14, 1891, the North Carolina Confederate Soldiers’ Home was established by an act of the General Assembly. Attempts to establish the North Carolina Confederate Home Association began in 1884 when veterans, led by Senator Zebulon B. Vance, met in Charlotte.
Topics Related to This Day in North Carolina History
On February 14, 1775, Janet Schaw, a noted colonial diarist, arrived in Brunswick from the Caribbean.
On February 13, 1969, African American student activists at Duke University occupied the school’s main administrative building. The takeover of the Allen Building was sparked by the slowness of racial reform at the university.
Black undergraduates were not admitted to Duke until 1963. In the mid-60s, the Afro-American Association formed on campus, influenced by the Black Power movement. By early 1969, the Association and its supporters had become impatient with the progress of promised reform.
On February 13, 1943, the first women to sign up for non-clerical duties enlisted in the Marine Corps Women’s Reserve.
On February 12, 1912, Robeson County established the first rural health department in the United States.
On February 12, 1828, Confederate General Robert Ransom Jr. was born in Warren County.
Ransom was appointed to West Point where he graduated in 1850. The young officer was assigned to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Ransom returned to West Point as a cavalry instructor in 1854, and again was posted to the Kansas frontier in 1856.
On February 12, 1795, Hinton James became the first student to enter the University of North Carolina. James, who had walked to Chapel Hill from his home in New Hanover County, was the only student for the first two weeks of the school year. Academically gifted, James helped organize the first literary club and debating society on campus. He was awarded a bachelor’s degree as one of the seven students in the university’s first graduating class in July 1798.
On February 11, 1919, a subcommittee of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee opened hearings on the influence of Bolshevism in America. Chaired by North Carolina senator Lee Overman, originally from Salisbury, the hearings are regarded as a forerunner of the House Un-American Activities Committee of the 1950s.
On February 11, 1813, freedom seeker, writer and abolitionist Harriet Jacobs was born in Edenton.
Jacobs spent her childhood unaware of her station in life but, when her White mistress, Margaret Horniblow, died in 1825, she and her brother John were willed to Horniblow’s 3-year-old niece, Mary Norcom, and were placed under the control of Norcom’s father, Dr. James Norcom.