19 Historic Photos That Show Us What It Was Like Living In North Carolina In The Early 1900s
By Carolyn Harmon|Published November 09, 2022
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Carolyn Harmon
Author
Under Brown Mountain Lights the Beast of Blandenboro wanders this magical land where lighthouses shine on kingdoms only accessible by ferries. A Lost Colony of legends and pirates revealed in historical sites and majestic mountains with views that make us weep. The home of handmade sculptures and scrumptious cuisine. North Carolina leaves this long-time writer and artist breathless with endless surprises, including the unlikely warmth a winter walk on the beach can bring.
Like every other place in the world, this beautiful, mountainous state was built on the backs of people as these historic photos of North Carolina show. While ruggedly handsome and mystical throughout, the spellbinding truth in their eyes will tell without even a word of the daring adventures, hardships, and fun that existed in the state long before we came along. And what remains is so valuable as we have built upon the greatness they started in agriculture, industry, education, and cultivation of ideas and dreams they lived and died trying. It is with great reverence these photos are shared of our long-gone fellow North Carolinians whose lives mattered just as much as ours.
This magical photo from the book "In Cloudland Mayview Park, Blowing Rock, North Carolina" published around 1920, shows an extraordinary land of promise and wonder.
By the early 20th century, High Point, North Carolina, became one of the state's most prominent manufacturing centers, especially in furniture and textiles.
Some of the African-American workers lived in these homes in High Point, North Carolina.
And there were children, such as this lovely 11-year-old young lady looking outside on a cold November day in 1908 from the Rhodes Manufacturing Co. in Lincolnton, where she was a spinner for more than a year when this was taken.
This photograph was taken in October 1908, also by Lewis Wickes Hine.
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And yet another young boy worked at a warping machine and had been there two years when this photo was taken by Hine in 1908 at Clyde Cotton Mill in Newton, North Carolina.
Thank goodness for Lewis Wickes Hine, a reform-minded journalist or what was called a muckraker, an American sociologist, and photographer, who took this portrait of himself in 1930.
Others lived in orphanages, such as these two girls at The Thompson Orphanage and Training Institute in 1909. A 40-acre campus had a functioning farm, which offered daily chores for the children.
And before there were roads, there were workers, such as these toiling away on project No. 62, which was 3.43 miles of bituminous macadam, 18 feet wide, laid on a broken stone base course between Black Mountain and Ridgecrest, which began on March 15, 1920.
And building dreams of flying machines in this photo possibly snapped by Orville Wright, Dec. 14, 1903, at Kitty Hawk. If you look closely at the bottom right, you can see his shadow.
The book was written and arranged by Crete Hutchinson. The historic photographs of North Carolina were taken by H.W. Pelton and Earl Hardy.
Whether we are striving to make ends meet every day or making decisions on a board of directors, remember whatever contributions we make in life matter to the next generations. How lucky we are to appreciate and remember that we once lived in this beautiful, vast open space called North Carolina. Here are 14 more historic photos of North Carolina. Do any of these photos conjure up some memories you’d like to share in the comments below?
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