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Topics Related to This Day in North Carolina History
On July 23, 1840, John Hyman, the first African American to represent North Carolina in the United States Congress, was born into slavery in Warren County.
On July 22, 1996, Vermont Connecticut Royster, a journalist affiliated with the Wall Street Journal for 60 years, died.
American poet, journalist, biographer and folk musician, Carl Sandburg wrote a third of his works and spent the last 22 years of his life at Connemara, his antebellum home in Flat Rock. There, in an upstairs garret, Sandburg wrote, and in a downstairs bedroom, he died at age 89.
On July 21, 1930, Duke University Hospital opened to patients after three years of construction.
On July 21, 1788, 270 delegates convened in Hillsborough for what would become a two-week debate on ratifying the national Constitution that had been drafted in Philadelphia in 1787.
On July 20, 1892, Ellen Smith was fatally shot by Peter DeGraff near the Zinzendorf Hotel in Winston-Salem. The murder became the subject of a popular turn-of-the-century ballad, “Poor Ellen Smith.”
On July 20, 1863, Union cavalry led by Gen. Edward Potter torched Rocky Mount Mills, the second cotton mill in North Carolina after the short-lived Schenck-Warlick Mill in Lincoln County.