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Topics Related to This Day in North Carolina History
On April 8, 1959, the restored Tryon Palace opened to the public.Interest in rebuilding the parts of the Palace that were lost in a 1798 fire was shown as early as 1925, but it wasn’t until 1945 that Gov. R. Gregg Cherry appointed a commission to study the idea and organize restoration efforts. Maude Moore Latham, a New Bern native who had played in the Palace ruins as a child, served as commission’s chair and committed substantial amounts of her own money to the project.
On April 8, 1808, Jonathan Lewis was arrested for the murder of Naomi Wise. Wise, an orphan, cook and an occasional field hand noted for her beauty and her innocence, lived in the household of William Adams in Randolph County. Lewis was a frequent visitor to the Adams house.
On April 8, 1928, the first machine-made oriental design rug came off the loom in Leaksville in Rockingham County. Branded Karastan, the process used to make the rug replicated the detailed craftsmanship of a hand-woven rug.
On April 8, 1946, famed baseball player James “Catfish” Hunter was born in Perquimans County.Though Hunter excelled in a variety of sports in high school, his pitching skill was what stood out. Word spread fast, and soon major league scouts began to make the trip to Hertford to see him play. Though wounds from a hunting accident jeopardized Hunter’s prospects in the eyes of many professional scouts, the Kansas City Athletics had faith in the young pitcher and signed him to a contract.
On April 7, 1910, the Honolulu Pacific Commercial Advertiser published a letter that Wrightsville Beach resident Burke Haywood Bridgers had written to the national magazine Colliers Weekly requesting information about building surfboards.Bridgers wrote to Colliers in response to Alexander Hume Ford, founder of the Outrigger Canoe and Surfboard Club in Hawaii, who penned an article for the magazine the previous year encouraging readers to try the sport.
On April 7, 1850, citizens in northwestern Guilford County met and appointed a board of trustees to erect a schoolhouse. The school would eventually become Oak Ridge Academy, the first coeducational military high school in the nation.
On April 6, 1917, the United States entered World War I.That summer, Major General Leonard Wood, charged with selecting sites for new military camps, visited Charlotte as part of a tour of prospective locations in North Carolina. Wood chose the Queen City as the site for Camp Greene, a 2,300-acre military training facility for the Army.
On April 6, 1959, pioneering photographer Bayard Wootten died in New Bern.Born in New Bern in 1875, Wootten left the area to attend college in Greensboro and then teach. She returned to New Bern to help family members. Once back, she did design work to support her family, eventually creating Pepsi-Cola’s first trademarked logo. She embraced photography in 1904 and, after displaying her first photograph that year, orders for her work began to roll in.
On April 5, 1986, author Manly Wade Wellman died in Chapel Hill.Born in 1903 in the African nation of Angola where his father was a medical officer, Wellman returned to the United States with his family when he was 6. After receiving degrees from what is now Wichita State University and Columbia Law School, he moved to North Carolina in 1947.
On April 5, 1919, the Camp Bragg Flying Field was renamed in memory of First Lieutenant Harley Halbert Pope, the first officer assigned to the post. Pope had been killed when the Curtiss JN-4 Jenny he was flying crashed into the Cape Fear River earlier that year.