On February 6, 1832, Elizabeth City congressman William Shepard petitioned the House of Representatives for a light station to help guide sailors to safety by the mouth of the Roanoke River.
Two years later, Congress appropriated $10,000 for a lightship to operate on the Albemarle Sound. The ship operated through the Civil War, but was replaced by a screw-pile lighthouse that operated on whale oil in 1867. That structure, in turn, was damaged by fire and ice in the 1880s.
An image of William Holland Thomas from the N.C. Museum of History
On February 5, 1944, William Carey Lee, the “Father of the Airborne,” suffered a heart attack that ended his military career.
Born in Dunn in 1895, Lee volunteered for the United States Army during World War I. After the war, he remained in the army and, in 1939, was assigned to the Chief of the Army’s office in Washington, D.C. There he became part of a maverick group of army officers advocating for the development of an airborne army infantry force.
(Image: Office at the N.C. Equal Suffrage Association headquarters, 116 Fayetteville St., Raleigh, N.C, ca. 1910s. L-R: Gertrude Weil; Palmer Jerman (a page) with dog; Sallie Dortch, volunteer chair; Cornelia Petty Jerman, chair of the state ratification committee. A “Votes for Women” grosgrain ribbon is tacked to the desk. Image from the Gertrude Weil Papers, PC.1488.50, folder 4, State Archives.)
On February 3, 1834, Wake Forest Institute opened with an initial enrollment of 16 students. The school’s first building, a simple provincial house, was the home of Dr. Calvin Jones, a founder of the Medical Society of North Carolina , officer in the War of 1812 and long-time trustee of the University of North Carolina.
On February 3, 1881, entrepreneurs chartered the French Broad Steamboat Company, with the objective of ferrying passengers and freight along the river from Asheville to Horse Shoe to Brevard.
Six months later, they christened the frame, 90-foot-long, two-deck excursion boat the Mountain Lily. Like its eastern North Carolina counterpart, the CSS Neuse, the Mountain Lily met its fate not far from where it was constructed after a few years.
On February 3, 1993, Maggie Axe Wachacha, Beloved Woman of the Cherokee, died at age 98 in Murphy.
Born in 1894 in Snowbird Gap in Graham County, Wachacha learned to write the Cherokee language as a 7 year-old and, by the time she was 10 was beginning to master midwifery and healing skills her mother and grandmother had already mastered.
On February 2, 1864, Confederate troops engaged the men of the 9th Vermont Infantry at the Newport Barracks in Carteret County.
The 7th Regiment North Carolina Infantry built the barracks south of Newport for quarters in the winter of 1861 and 1862. Shortly thereafter, the cluster of log huts was captured by Union troops, who added a hospital, headquarters, stables, storehouse and earthworks. Newport Barracks effectively became a Federal supply depot, since it was located near both the Atlantic Ocean and railroad tracks.
On February 2, 1864, the 325-ton federal steamer USS Underwriter was captured at New Bern in a well-executed pre-dawn raid.
Led by Commander John Taylor Wood, the raid involved 14 boats carrying 250 sailors and marines stealthily making their way down the Neuse River from Kinston. Those participating in the mission had been selected from crews of Confederate vessels at Richmond, Wilmington and Charleston.