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Topics Related to This Day in North Carolina History
On December 12, 1957, the first Food Town—now known as Food Lion—opened in Salisbury. The chain began when brothers Ralph and Clifford Ketner teamed up with family friend Wilson Smith to leave Winn-Dixie and try their own hands in the grocery business.
On December 12, 1989, the ca. 1751 Palmer-Marsh house at Historic Bath caught fire, but what could have been a tragedy turned out to be a win for preservationists.
On December 11, 1789, the General Assembly passed a bill chartering a state-supported university.
On December 11, 1924, James B. Duke established the Duke Endowment with an initial gift of $40 million. The Endowment received an additional $67 million at Duke’s death the following year.
On December 10, 1825, former North Carolina Governor William Miller died in Key West, Florida.Born around 1783 in Warren County, Miller worked as a private lawyer, the state’s attorney general and a member of the General Assembly before first being elected governor in 1814. He went on to serve three terms in the post, and was the first to occupy the newly completed Governor’s Palace at the south end of Raleigh’s Fayetteville Street.
On December 10, 1718, Stede Bonnet, the “Gentleman Pirate,” was hanged in South Carolina.
On December 10, 1775, Daniel Little died and was laid to rest on land that became the Old English Cemetery in Salisbury. He was the first of many to be buried on the property, eventually donated to the city by Thomas Frohock and located downtown near the courthouse.
On December 9, 1958, Chowan County native Robert Welch founded the John Birch Society in Indianapolis. Named for a Georgia missionary who was killed by Chinese communists just after the close of World War II, Welch got the society started with a 17-hour speech to a group of 11 businessmen from across the country.
On December 9, 1921, Ferdinand Foch, formerly the commander-in-chief of all allied armies in World War I, gave a speech at the Union County Courthouse praising America’s role in the conflict. He was joined by Gov. Cameron Morrison and former Gov. Thomas Bickett.
On December 9, 1861, the Confederate prison at Salisbury took in its first Yankee prisoners.Early in the war, the Confederacy purchased an old cotton mill in southeast Salisbury for $15,000 and converted the structure into a place of confinement. Many of the incarcerated spent their time writing, whittling or playing baseball. These constituted some of the first baseball games played in the South. One prisoner noted that early life within the prison was “more endurable than any other part of Rebeldom.”