Topics Related to This Day in North Carolina History

On April 3, 1930, Thomas Built Buses—the High Point company now recognized internationally for building bright yellow school buses—was incorporated.

On April 3, 1730, Scotsman Sir Alexander Cuming was present at a meeting of Cherokee leaders at the council house at Nikwasi. With Cuming’s support and apparent influence among the Indians, local headman Moytoy was selected to be “Emperor of the Cherokee.” Moytoy and Cuming then persuaded those present to pledge their allegiance to King George II. In a ceremony of friendship and possibly of political adoption, the Indians presented Cuming with the “Crown of Tannassy,” a dyed possum-hair headdress.

On April 3, 1973, the Mast General Store was added to the National Register of Historic Places.  After a century as a landmark in the mountain community of Valle Crucis, today it is an iconic symbol of the heyday of country stores and their role in life of rural communities.

On April 1, 1937, Lloyd Frutchey, a Montgomery County farmer, conveyed one acre of land containing a Mississippian-era Indian mound to the state of North Carolina for excavation, interpretation and protection.  The area was known as Frutchey State Park until the 1940s, when its name was changed to Town Creek.

On April 1, 1987, WRAL-TV in Raleigh broke the “Gar-barge” story.

The story began a year earlier when Alabama businessman Lowell Harrelson proposed to alleviate overcrowding in a Long Island landfill by sending garbage to landfills across the South via barges. A parcel in Jones County was selected as the site for the first transfer of waste, and more than 3,000 tons of garbage set sail aboard the Mobro 4000 in late March 1987 bound for the port in Morehead City.

On March 31, 1862, Vincent Colyer was appointed Superintendent of the Poor for the Union’s Department of North Carolina. Stationed in the occupied town of New Bern, Colyer immediately set about employing African Americans as skilled laborers to work on fortifications for the town. He managed to have three sets of earthworks constructed during his brief tenure.

On March 31, 1934, songwriter John D. Loudermilk was born in Durham.

Loudermilk learned to play instruments at the Salvation Army church he attended as a child, and his mother taught him to play a cigar box ukulele built by his father. At age 13, he performed on Durham radio station WTIK as Little Johnny Dee, his recording name on the Colonial label.