On October 30, 1918, James Walker Hood died. Hood, as a missionary in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, was sent in 1863 to North Carolina where he served black congregations in New Bern and Beaufort. He established a North Carolina Conference of the AME Zion Church in 1864.
Topics Related to This Day in North Carolina History
On October 30, 1855, Edward Dudley, North Carolina’s first governor elected by a vote of the people, died.
On October 29, 1929, the stock market crashed earning the day the epithet “Black Tuesday.” It was the beginning of the Great Depression.
On October 29, 1618, Sir Walter Ralegh was beheaded on a charge of treason in London. The former court favorite of Elizabeth I of England had fallen far from his once-respected status.
Born sometime around 1554, Ralegh was a true Renaissance man before leading efforts to colonize the New World, serving as a courtier, soldier, poet, historian and member of Parliament.
On October 29, 1901, early in the morning, “Buffalo Bill” Cody’s Wild West Show met with disaster in Davidson County. An engineer on a freight train misread a telegraph message reporting that Cody’s train was in two sections and returned to the track after the first section had passed. The freight train and the second section of the Wild West Train collided, with engineers and firemen jumping just moments before impact.
On October 28, 1854, the Fayetteville and Western Plank Road was completed. Stretching nearly 150 miles west to Forsyth County, it was the longest plank road in the state.
Plank roads were wooden highways that were easier to navigate than rough, rutted and often muddy dirt roads. Tolls were collected along the route to pay for their maintenance.
On October 28, 1959, Guinean President Sékou Touré visited the Triangle on a two-week tour of the United States.
On October 28, 1798, Levi Coffin, anti-slavery leader and reputed “conductor” of the Underground Railroad, was born in the Guilford County Quaker community of New Garden.
On October 27, 1864, the Confederate ram CSS Albemarle was sunk.
The Albemarle was commissioned and launched in April 1864, departing directly for Union-occupied Plymouth. Since the iron plating was not yet complete, forges were installed on the deck and craftsmen worked on the ship as it floated down the Roanoke River.
On October 27, 1961, Henry Casey, Lemuel Houston and Thomas Carlyle began serious efforts to salvage the remains of the ironclad CSS Neuse from the Neuse River in Kinston.
The first stages of recovery proceeded easily since the river level was low and the weather was ideal, but ultimately the project would take much longer than anticipated.