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IT TOOK NATURE AND MAN 150 years to build Charlotte into a city of 50,000 people. The government built a city of equivalent size in west Charlotte in less than 90 days. The campsite was 2,340 acres of farm country with a total population of perhaps 75 and cotton growing waist high.
MUCH OF THE Material in this book is information that was told to me by older people. Much of it is what I have remembered from my childhood experiences.
THREE weeks after Charleston fell and the British started toward the Waxhaw settlements, General Griffith Rutherford assembled nine hundred militiamen in Charlotte. The situation in the South, he told them, was desperate.
Among Charlotte lawyers of the 20th century, none will be remembered more vividly than Colonel Thomas LeRoy Kirkpatrick, good roads enthusiast, mayor, public servant extraordinary, and orator.
The first year after the library's reopening the county appropriation was set at 3 cents per $100 valuation. This gave the library an income of $38,000, a 26% increase over the budget in the year before it had closed.
HIS LORDSHIP'S venturing into North Carolina had been disastrous. The carefully thought out southern campaign upon which he had embarked so hopefully was shattered never to be reshaped. The backbone of the British offensive against the South was broken.
By the late 1890s, Dr. Annie enjoyed an ever expanding medical practice, she had privileges at both St.
Photographer Al Ricks volunteers his time to copy photographs for the project. Photo by Jane Johnson.
The Kirkpatrick family on the porch of their farmhouse, c.1910
From The Samuel Kirkpatrick Family by Addie Pettice and Josephine Wade
CHARLOTTE MECKLENBURG LIBRARY
From 1917 to 1932, Jewish philanthropist Julius Rosenwald donated millions of dollars to build schools for black children throughout the rural South. He gave half the money needed and required that the black and white community work to raise the other half.
In the spring of 1848, the recently promoted Commodore Charles Wilkes and his youngest son, Edmund, traveled south to investigate the estate of his uncle, William Renwick, who had left behind an interest in a gold mine near Charlotte, North Carolina. Jack was still away at sea.
MY AIM IN WRITING A SHORT SKETCH of Mr. Houser is to try to present a word picture of him as a worthy citizen, and at the same time, call attention to the length of time that colored people had been landowners in the Brooklyn section of Charlotte.
Based on correspondence between herself and her father, Annie's home town of Charlotte, NC, was never a consideration as a place to start a practice. In the summer of 1884, she wrote the following to Dr. J. B. Alexander: “I can’t decide where to locate when I leave Philadelphia.
THOUGH in no phase of Mecklenburg life would two centuries bring a greater advancement than in the field of medicine, Charlotte's present-day importance as one of the foremost medical centers in the South had its beginning in the early days of the region's settlement.
THE CHARLOTTE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE considered the greatest problem concerning Camp Greene to be convincing the government to locate it in Charlotte. Unfortunately, a greater problem was the failure of mother nature to cooperate with the government and Charlotte.
In 1929 the Charlotte Public Library became involved with the Julius Rosenwald Fund in a library demonstration project. The project was designed to provide incentive for increased local support. The library would receive $80,000 from the fund spread over five years.
Acknowledgments
This project would not have been possible without the assistance of the following individuals and organizations who generously loaned photographs or otherwise contributed to the project:
Mrs. Kelly Alexander, Sr.
Mildred P. Alridge