On February 3, 1834, Wake Forest Institute opened with an initial enrollment of 16 students. The school’s first building, a simple provincial house, was the home of Dr. Calvin Jones, a founder of the Medical Society of North Carolina , officer in the War of 1812 and long-time trustee of the University of North Carolina.
Topics Related to This Day in North Carolina History
On February 3, 1881, entrepreneurs chartered the French Broad Steamboat Company, with the objective of ferrying passengers and freight along the river from Asheville to Horse Shoe to Brevard.
Six months later, they christened the frame, 90-foot-long, two-deck excursion boat the Mountain Lily. Like its eastern North Carolina counterpart, the CSS Neuse, the Mountain Lily met its fate not far from where it was constructed after a few years.
On February 3, 1993, Maggie Axe Wachacha, Beloved Woman of the Cherokee, died at age 98 in Murphy.
Born in 1894 in Snowbird Gap in Graham County, Wachacha learned to write the Cherokee language as a 7 year-old and, by the time she was 10 was beginning to master midwifery and healing skills her mother and grandmother had already mastered.
On February 2, 1864, Confederate troops engaged the men of the 9th Vermont Infantry at the Newport Barracks in Carteret County.
The 7th Regiment North Carolina Infantry built the barracks south of Newport for quarters in the winter of 1861 and 1862. Shortly thereafter, the cluster of log huts was captured by Union troops, who added a hospital, headquarters, stables, storehouse and earthworks. Newport Barracks effectively became a Federal supply depot, since it was located near both the Atlantic Ocean and railroad tracks.
On February 2, 1864, Union Maj. Francis M. Davidson and the 14th Illinois Cavalry engaged in a skirmish with Thomas’s Legion, a Confederate company of Cherokees led by Col. William Holland Thomas, on Deep Creek near Quallatown in Haywood County.
On February 2, 1864, the 325-ton federal steamer USS Underwriter was captured at New Bern in a well-executed pre-dawn raid.
Led by Commander John Taylor Wood, the raid involved 14 boats carrying 250 sailors and marines stealthily making their way down the Neuse River from Kinston. Those participating in the mission had been selected from crews of Confederate vessels at Richmond, Wilmington and Charleston.
On February 1, 1889, the first streetcar in North Carolina made its debut in Asheville. The first line extended from Pack Square down Biltmore Avenue and Southside Avenue, and then was routed west of present-day McDowell Street to a train depot.
On February 1, 1960, four African American college students sat down at the lunch counter at Woolworth’s Department Store in downtown Greensboro and asked to be served. They were refused, launching a sit-in movement that would spread throughout North Carolina and the South.
The four students, Ezell Blair, Jr. (later known as Jibreel Khazan), Franklin E. McCain, Joseph A. McNeil and David L. Richmond, were all freshmen from nearby North Carolina A&T State University.
On January 28, 1934, a devastating fire destroyed much of Wrightsville Beach, including the legendary Oceanic Hotel.
A photo of an earlier Challenger mission crew presented to the people of North Carolina by NASA and now in the collection of the N.C. Museum of History