During 1976-1977, Miriam Grace Mitchell was a history graduate student at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte. Her assignment, from Professor Edward Perzel, was to write a paper describing the important activities in the decade between 1910 and 1920. What she once thought was the worst time period to pick in Charlotte's history became almost an obsession as she read the local newspapers in the public library. The quality of her work and depth of her research prompted her professor to encourage her to publish her paper as a book.




Being unfamiliar with the contacts and requirements needed to publish, professor and student agreed to work together and co-publish it. The proceeds from the book were given to the Dowd House Preservation Committee for the restoration of the Dowd home.

Mitchell's research involved twenty-five personal interviews with people who had been at Camp Greene, had dated Camp Greene soldiers or had lived near the Camp. After exhausting the resources of the public library in Charlotte, Ms. Mitchell went to the National Archives to see what else was available. There she found more than sixty boxes of photos, commander's journals, arrest records of soldiers as well as routine information relating to the daily supervision of a large camp.

Mecklenburg's population had grown somewhat slowly and steadily over the previous years. When the soldiers came to Camp Greene, the population of the county exploded. The location of a military camp in Mecklenburg County forever changed the history, development and economy of this area.