Individual Most Historically Influential ON North Carolina?

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donbosco said:
@05C40 -- "The basic fundamental ideas of ordered liberty that I hold dear can be traced back to these two groups."

Are you familiar with David Hackett Fischer's Albion's Seed?
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Short answer: No.
Long Answer: I have purchased this book and it is on my Kindle. I'm thinking your suggestion was, in part, due to the fourth folkway: Borderlands to the Backcounty.
 
donbosco said:
That leads me to think about William Richardson Davie -- come to discover that he was born in England and died in Sub Carolina. He is, nevertheless, The Father of The University of North Carolina.
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And all he got for his trouble is naming rights to one of the least significant counties in the Piedmont.
 
Mulberry Heel said:
I certainly wouldn't call him the most influential or the greatest citizen of our state (or anywhere close), but if you want to look at a NC resident who was such a failure that they had a major impact on North Carolina history - and in his case his incompetency was actually a positive impact in the long run - then I'd suggest Confederate General Braxton Bragg, for whom Fort Bragg was originally named. He is widely regarded as one of the worst generals on either side during the war, and lost nearly every battle he led except for Chickamauga, where he got lots of help from James Longstreet, and he threw away any advantages from that victory a few months later with a crushing defeat at Chattanooga to Grant. He later helped lose Wilmington and Fort Fisher to the Union.

By losing battle after battle in the West and being despised by nearly everyone who knew him (except for Confederate President Jefferson Davis, who stubbornly supported him almost to the bitter end) he played a large role in losing the war for the Confederates, which for North Carolina was ultimately a great thing. I've always found it amusing that Fort Bragg was named after such an incompetent and widely hated general.
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I've always been of the opinion that naming the Army base in Fayetteville after Braxton Bragg, makes as much sense as would naming the post where the United States Military Academy is after Benedict Arnold, as in Fort Arnold. Braxton Bragg's incompetence was much more influential in preserving and expanding American freedoms than anything Benedict Arnold did in an effort to prevent the birth of those freedoms.
 
donbosco said:
That leads me to think about William Richardson Davie -- come to discover that he was born in England and died in Sub Carolina. He is, nevertheless, The Father of The University of North Carolina.
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Davie Court where WIlliam Richardson Davie is buried. It is located in the cemetery at the Old Waxhaw Presbyterian Church in, as you noted, South Carolina. This cemetery has my FAVORITE collection of old tombstones of any place I have ever been in the entire United States. Just wonderful tombstones. From finely crafted and evocative grave markers to heart breakingly simply stones for young children that look as if the father plucked the stone out of the field and carved it himself.

1753984756773.jpeg
 
05C40 said:
Short answer: No.
Long Answer: I have purchased this book and it is on my Kindle. I'm thinking your suggestion was, in part, due to the fourth folkway: Borderlands to the Backcounty.
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Yes - Fischer identifies a sense of “ordered liberty” with The Puritans. For the Backcountry Borderlanders the corresponding liberty is defined as natural. I’ll post something more explanatory in just a minute - lemme rummage around a bit…
 
Oh - and if you love cemeteries (I do) you should check out Sleepy Hollow! Outstanding.

Riverside in AVL is a good one too.
 
@05C40 Here's the Fischer stuff...

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The work of David Hackett Fischer as outlined in Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways In America



An often disputed and debated interpretation, this way of interpreting the early years of colonization what would become these United States can, no matter one’s final judgment on the conclusions, serve as a useful glass through which to view these times.


Puritans, 1629—1640. Settle mainly in New England.

Cavaliers, 1640—1675. Settle mainly in Virginia but can also be found on the coasts of North and South Carolina.

Quakers, 1675—1715. Settle in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and the Delaware River Valley.

Backcountry Borderlanders, 1715—1775. Settle in Piedmont and Mountains of Virginia, North Carolina and western South Carolina.


Each of these groups, according to Fischer, had a contrasting conception of liberty/freedom. Much related information can be divined through an application of this revelation to the worldview of these four groups of people.


Puritans believed in “Ordered Liberty.” The Freedom to live in a society in which one’s place was secure, production controlled, and no one too far above or below another.

Cavaliers in “Hierarchical Liberty.” The Power to Rule rather than to Be Ruled.

Quakers in “Reciprocal Liberty.” Every liberty demanded for oneself should be extended to All. (What is good for me is good for thee)

Backcountry Borderlanders, in “Natural Liberty.” A worldview that looks to the natural world as a model for human relationships.
 
DB, I always learn something new reading your threads and as a student of history (all eras) I appreciate the care you take posting these things. So a huge thanks for enlightened me on so many topics I thought I would know but didn't until your threads.

If I ever get the pleasure of meeting you sometime, the first round - at the very least - is on me!
 
Gov. Ashe bc he owned a slave, Amar. Amar was a West African woman kidnapped and brought to America in 1735 and while awful it gave us perhaps the greatest non-white male tennis player ever, Arthur Ashe, who was a direct descendant of Amar.
 
NOVAHEEL13 said:
DB, I always learn something new reading your threads and as a student of history (all eras) I appreciate the care you take posting these things. So a huge thanks for enlightened me on so many topics I thought I would know but didn't until your threads.

If I ever get the pleasure of meeting you sometime, the first round - at the very least - is on me!
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Deal...sometimes I stop around NOVA when doing my drive between NC and NYC.
 
donbosco said:
Deal...sometimes I stop around NOVA when doing my drive between NC and NYC.
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Definately let me know bc I have a rotating telework schedule so some days I'm in my office near Williamsburg or I'm teleworking from my townhouse in Haymarket. Regardless, if you stop anywhere between the DMV to Richmond, I'm up for it!
 
05C40 said:
I've always been of the opinion that naming the Army base in Fayetteville after Braxton Bragg, makes as much sense as would naming the post where the United States Military Academy is after Benedict Arnold, as in Fort Arnold. Braxton Bragg's incompetence was much more influential in preserving and expanding American freedoms than anything Benedict Arnold did in an effort to prevent the birth of those freedoms.
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I've read in several books that when his men were routed by Grant's forces along Missionary Ridge at the Battle of Chattanooga, Bragg grabbed his sword and tried to rally his men by yelling at them and waving the sword in the air wildly, but he was so hated by his own troops that not only did they not rally, but many of them yelled back curses and profanity at him as they ran past him, and his army virtually fell apart until it fell back some 25 or 30 miles into northern Georgia, where Bragg and others were finally able to stop the retreat and get it organized again. He apparently was a martinet when it came to strict discipline and his troops despised him for it, he had a notoriously bad and quick temper, and he constantly argued and fought with nearly all of his subordinate generals, one of whom apparently threatened to kill him. Quite the dude.
 
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donbosco said:
Oh - and if you love cemeteries (I do) you should check out Sleepy Hollow! Outstanding.

Riverside in AVL is a good one too.
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I do enjoy walking through old cemeteries. But Sleepy Hollow is a bit more than a Saturday afternoon drive for me. I was just up at Riverside in Asheville, making arrangments for a headstone to mark the grave of my mother's younger brother, who had died as an infant. My mother had wanted for a long time to mark his grave, but "never got around to it." So now, 98 years late, I finally got a marker placed on his grave.
 
05C40 said:
I do enjoy walking through old cemeteries. But Sleepy Hollow is a bit more than a Saturday afternoon drive for me. I was just up at Riverside in Asheville, making arrangments for a headstone to mark the grave of my mother's younger brother, who had died as an infant. My mother had wanted for a long time to mark his grave, but "never got around to it." So now, 98 years late, I finally got a marker placed on his grave.
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Well if you ever are up that way - you can stand right square between the graves of Samuel Gompers and Andrew Carnegie, within sight of one another - a good reminder that we’re all dirt after all.

My Deddy put up a grave marker for his little sister some 60 years after she passed away in 1924 at the age of 2.
 
Jesse Helms. He was an editorial guy on WRAL back in the day. Became a long tenured senator. His wife baked cookies for protesters in front of his house whenever they showed up. NC used to be a gentle southern state.
 
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