Hornets' Nest

City Government in Charlotte

SINCE its birth two hundred years ago the crossroads village that was once known as Charlottetown or Charlotteburg has grown into the largest city in the Carolinas and one of the most important industrial and distribution centers in the nation. One of the distinctive features of this growth has been the thoroughness with which newcomers have been assimilated. An observant writer once said: "One adopts Charlotte ways or one does not, in which latter event, one soon moves on." And many did, both native born and newcomers.

Mecklenburg County

MOST authorities on the earliest known facts about Mecklenburg County rely on Lawson's History of North Carolina, by John Lawson (1714) and on A Journey to the Land of Eden, by William Byrd, written about 1733 but unpublished until 1841. Of the two, Lawson's book is the most enlightening as to the immediate vicinity of Mecklenburg County.

Early Settlers

IN America there were centuries of frontiers. The Piedmont frontier of the Carolinas was first described by an explorer sent out, in 1670, by Governor Berkeley of Virginia. To this traveler, John Lederer, belongs the credit for opening the trading path used later by the colonists of Virginia for trading with the Indians of the Carolinas. Originally known as the Occoneechee Trail, the Catawba Trading Path became, in the first phase of exploration and settlement, the most important route through the Piedmont.

Epilogue

THROUGH the cabin window he watched the car coming up the lane. Then he went outside. "'Light, and come in, John," he said, as the car slowed to a stop on the leaf-dappled parking circle. "Welcome to north Mecklenburg's woods."

. . . And Artists

A City Needs Boosters

MECKLENBURG staged one of its most notable independence day celebrations with the 1916 visit of President Woodrow Wilson. After a parade from the Southern Railway station on West Trade Street, Mr. Wilson spoke from a platform at Phifer Avenue and North College Street in front of the Presbyterian College. It was on this occasion that Charlotte's Mayor T. L. Kirkpatrick addressed a standing throng for some forty minutes in reviewing the illustrious history of Mecklenburg.

Of Things Medical

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.

A Great City Emerges

MECKLENBURG'S steady, if slow, development through the early and middle decades of the last century was halted, however with the outbreak of the War Between the States. It would be many years before the South would show an appreciable recovery.

The Presidential campaign of 1860 in Mecklenburg, as many subsequent campaigns would be, was a bitter one. when the votes for President were counted, it was found that John Breckinridge had received 1,101; Bell, 826; Douglas, 135, and Abraham Lincoln, none.

"The County Town of Mecklenburg"

INVENTION of the cotton gin had an almost immediately discernible effect upon the economic life of the South, including Mecklenburg, and, despite the fact that Charlotte, significantly and fortunately, would continue to develop as an industrial center, for the first several decades of the new century cotton would be the unchallenged king.

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