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CHARLOTTE - They come from Florida, the Rust Belt and the Northeast. And the way they vote is changing the political complexion of North Carolina.

The waves of moderates and independents who have moved here have made this a battleground state, one that Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama has a chance to win, pollsters say. That’s a massive shift for a state where Sen. Jesse Helms used race in 1990 and 1996 to beat Senate seat rival Harvey Gantt, Charlotte’s only black mayor.

But many of today’s voters weren’t even here then.

Newcomers have everything to do with the state’s being in play, said Ferrel Guillory, director of the Program on Public Life at UNC-Chapel Hill.

Republican political consultant Dee Stewart disagrees. North Carolina is a battleground, he says, because Obama has outspent Republican John McCain and is ahead of him nationally.

Obama “is running further ahead than the Democratic nominees in 2000 and 2004, and some of that is spilling over into North Carolina,” Stewart said. Another factor, he said: “The economy is not performing well right now with a Republican in office.”

Still, he believes the state’s conservative roots are strong and McCain will win here.

Where they come from

People have flocked to North Carolina because of better job opportunities, leaving behind places where the economy has been worse off, such as the Midwest and Florida. Charlotte’s big banks have also drawn transplants from the Northeast, a traditional Democratic stronghold.

Last year, Florida and New York delivered the most newcomers, while three Rust Belt states — Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania — were in the top 10. A Charlotte Observer analysis of county voter registration records shows more than half of Mecklenburg’s eligible voters registered after 1999.

Newcomer Fran Walshin, of Davidson, says she got out of Florida just in time — three years ago, when she could still sell her house. But it’s not all rosy here, she said, noting that as a job recruiter, she meets lots of “devastated” professionals.

“We got in trouble, and now we need a new outlook to get us out of this problem. You can’t speak to the same people to get us out of this mess,” said Walshin, who is in her 60s and will cast a ballot for Obama.

Past predictability

Until now, North Carolina had been a politically predictable state — one that hasn’t voted for a Democrat for president since 1976, when Jimmy Carter was elected. In 2004, President Bush won the state by 12 percentage points over Sen. John Kerry and North Carolina-raised running mate John Edwards.

Polls show McCain and Obama are tied in North Carolina less than two weeks before the election. McCain has visited the state twice, and Obama has been here four times. Both vice presidential picks have made multiple visits. And both campaigns are flooding the airwaves with ads.

But newcomers — 263,000 last year — aren’t the only reason North Carolina is in the election spotlight.

The Democratic Party has held huge voter drives targeting blacks. Then, there are economic and banking woes. The state was late to the slowdown but is now feeling the effects of slumping home prices and rising unemployment. The recent collapse of home-grown, Charlotte-based Wachovia Corp. is yet another reason people are on edge about jobs and the future.

Tina Gerbino, 39, who moved to Charlotte two years ago from Long Island, N.Y., cast her early vote for Obama. It was her first time ever voting. Her issue: the economy. Soon after moving, she lost her job, and her husband can get only part-time hours at his job.

Read More:News & Observer

Driven from land in Zimbabwe, couple in their 50s seize opportunity in N.C.

AYDEN - In Zimbabwe, Wally Herbst would’ve left this kind of hard and dirty work to his hired hands. But in North Carolina, stripped of his vast African ranch and starting over at 58, his only hands are his own. So he bends to his filthy task, the removal of a bloated, dead pig that weighs more than 200 pounds, its stink thickening in the humidity of the July afternoon. He ties a simple knot with a piece of rope — a “bit of African technology,” he says — and pulls a loop tight around the pig’s hind legs. Using a 4-foot board as a ramp, Herbst yanks the carcass into the bed of a pickup.

In Africa, Herbst worked a 13,000-acre farm, part of which had been in his family for generations. He grew paprika that was exported to Spain, ran a successful safari business, raised cattle and employed more than 150 people during the busy harvest seasons.

That life ended in 2002 when men armed with automatic weapons evicted the Herbst family from its farm. In a land redistribution campaign overseen by President Robert Mugabe, political loyalists seized thousands of white-owned farms in Zimbabwe and turned them over to impoverished blacks.

The seizures wrecked the country’s agricultural infrastructure, leading to extensive food shortages and stratospheric inflation. The United Nations estimates that 1 million people have lost their livelihoods and homes as a result of the redistribution.

Herbst and his wife, Helen, are among them.

Theirs is a refugee story turned upside down. They were not poor political dissidents, but successful farmers whose skin color and economic achievement made them vulnerable in a violent, hostile environment.

At an age when most couples are spoiling their grandchildren and mapping retirement plans, the Herbsts packed four suitcases for a chance at the American dream. In Africa, the couple lived among giraffes and elephants, and hunters from overseas paid big money for the right to hunt sable antelope on their land.

In Ayden, south of Greenville, their first home was a one-bedroom apartment across the street from a Piggly Wiggly.

Nearly broke when they arrived a year ago, the Herbsts need to save money so they can eventually retire. Wally secured a visa and a job with a large hog operation near Greenville. It’s grunt work, but he does not complain.

As if to prove this, he finishes his gruesome chore, pulling another pig that has succumbed to natural causes into the back of the pickup. It will be taken to a compost bin.

Wally smiles.

“It keeps me young.”

Dispossessed

Wally is built like a middle linebacker, with a strong-willed attitude to match. Helen, 53, has the red hair and fair complexion of her Irish ancestors, and she is the chatty one. In an African accent that exudes its British ancestry, she shares their story:

Wally and Helen, both born in Africa, were married in 1977 and have three children. They lived and worked in rural Matabeleland, a region in southwestern Zimbabwe.

Wally employed about 30 permanent workers, who lived in traditional African huts on the property. Their homestead was a three-bedroom, two-bath house that, until 15 years ago, depended on generators for electricity.

Chaos and violence has defined Mugabe’s 28-year presidential reign. In the 1980s, he dispatched troops to attack a rival tribe in a campaign that became known as the Matabeleland atrocities.

It was during this time that Wally found a mass grave on the farm. The police removed about 20 skulls, including those of children.

By 1997, Mugabe announced his plan to seize white farms and redistribute the land. Five years later, Helen was home eating lunch when an employee rushed to tell her that police were parked at the gate and wanted to speak with her.

Read More:News & Observer

The brisk pace reflects predictions that general election turnout will set records this year

Louise Renner, 79, voted Thursday for the first time since 1976. Using a walker, she inched down Fayetteville Street from the Sir Walter Apartments to be one of the first to cast her ballot at the Wake Board of Elections office in downtown Raleigh.

Renner declined to reveal whom she was voting for but said that she wanted to make a statement by voting early.

“I’m so burned up with the way this country is being run,” she said. “It’s not just one thing, but everything.”

Val Simpson, 66, used to think that she would not live to see a black candidate with a real chance of becoming president.

“I’ve seen it all — the dogs, the marches — I’ve come full circle,” said Simpson as she stood in line outside the elections office near downtown Durham. “Thank you, Jesus, that I’m here to see it. Thank you.”

Civic duty, the sense they were making history or just the desire to get voting over with sent thousands to the polls for the first day of early voting in an election season expected to set turnout records.

Statewide vote totals were not available, and efforts to reach Gary Bartlett, executive director of the State Board of Elections, were unsuccessful. But in Durham, voters arrived at the election headquarters before 6 a.m., knowing they wouldn’t be able to get in until 9 a.m., said local elections director Mike Ashe. More than 6,250 people had voted in Durham by the end of the day.

“This is huge,” Ashe said. “It doesn’t take a genius to know this is a big election. There’s no incumbent president, no incumbent governor. Commissioners, taxes, we’ve got everything on this ballot. Obviously, the presidential election is driving this train.”

More than 6,000 Wake voters had cast ballots by 5 p.m., said Cherie Poucher, the county’s elections director. She said she was startled when she got to work and saw the line outside the building. “This election is of more interest than any other general election in the 18 years that I’ve been here,” she said.

N.C. a swing state

The presidential campaigns are paying unusual attention to North Carolina this year, with polls showing a tie between Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama. No Democratic presidential candidate has won the state since Jimmy Carter did in 1976.

Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin visited the state Thursday. McCain is coming to the state Saturday, and Obama is returning Sunday.

The atmosphere was electric Thursday as voters crowded polling places around the state.

Kenny McLawhorn, 18, a UNC-Chapel Hill freshman from Kinston, participated in his first election Thursday. He voted a straight Republican ticket, even though he said he was not happy with the way President Bush has conducted the war in Iraq.

“McCain I see as not as far right as Bush is,” McLawhorn said. “He’s more moderate, and Obama’s too far left.”

McLawhorn said early voting was convenient and exciting because North Carolina has become a swing state this election.

Both parties have emphasized early voting this year, but the feeling that Obama could win here appeared to energize his supporters.

When poll workers at Wake’s election headquarters unlocked the doors at 8:30 a.m., there were more than 50 early birds in a line that wrapped around a corner of the building. The Obama vibe was strong, with a handful wearing his name on buttons, T-shirts and, in one case, a baseball cap. As the line moved forward, at least two people loudly exclaimed to each other that he was why they were there.

At N.C. Central University in Durham, hundreds of students marched across campus to a polling place set up in a former church.

Carolyn Edgerton, 63, had been there hours earlier, waiting in a line that had grown to at least 40 by the time the doors opened.

Read More:News & Observer

Contact: Maggie O’Neill; Ed Johnson
919. 772.4688
Wood from Old Home Site will be Salvaged for New Garner Nature Center
On Friday, July 18, wood from a farmhouse in Garner’s White Deer Park will be salvaged for reuse in the new Nature Center to be built there. Slated for demolition when the park is built, the dilapidated 1930’s farmhouse will contribute first as part of the new building, and also as part of the interpretive program for the park. Staff from Garner’s Parks and Recreation and Public Works Departments and volunteers from the park design team will carefully remove the boards with hand tools. The 3/4” tongue and groove heart pine boards will be used as flooring in the new Nature Center.
The Nature Center will be the Town of Garner’s first LEED Accredited building. LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design and is a measurement tool used internationally to evaluate performance in site development, water savings, energy efficiency, materials selection and indoor environmental quality.
Removing the boards is just one of the many environmentally sustainable initiatives the project is undertaking to achieve a LEED rating from the US Green Building Council (USGBC).
“The Nature Center will have many environmentally friendly systems and features,” said Tom Maynard, Director of Garner Parks and Recreation Department. “It will include exhibits about protecting the environment. We believe the building itself will be a tool for use in teaching about how to care for and sustain the environment. The reclaimed wood is one example of how we can show people what they can do at home.”
“Reclaiming the wood is also a nice way to remember the people who once lived in the area and the history of Garner as a farming community,” said architect Louis Cherry of Cherry Huffman Architects.
The Town will store the boards until they are refinished and installed in the new Nature Center. The wood that cannot be salvaged will be recycled. The building begins construction in Fall of 2008 with expected completion in June 2009.
About the Project
White Deer Park is a 96 acre nature park located on Buffaloe and Aversboro Roads in Garner that is slated for construction this Fall. In addition to the nature center, the Park will feature 2.5 miles of paved walking trails, five picnic shelters, two new playgrounds, wildflower meadows and an arboretum. The Nature Center will also permanently house the white deer that the park is named for. The 2500 square foot Nature Center will achieve a LEED Silver Rating from the US Green Building Council for its many environmentally sustainable features.
The design team for the park includes Garner Parks and Recreation Department, obs Landscape Architects, Cherry Huffman Architects, Design Dimension, Stewart Engineering and ConsiderDesign.
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TOWN OF GARNER
(919) 772?4688
www.garnernc.gov
moneill@garnernc.gov
MEDIA ADVISORY
July 17, 2008
Town of Garner to Salvage The Homestead
The best photo opportunities related to this project will be Friday, July 18 from 9:30 to 11:30 a.m. or 12:45 to 2:00 p.m.
The address of the facility is 2400 Aversboro Road. It is located approximately .5 miles from the Aversboro Road and Timber Drive intersection. Please contact CB McDonald at 919?772?4688 if you plan to visit the site so we can arrange an escort to get you from the parking lot to the site.

Town Of Garner NC website

Garner NC City Guide

City5NC.blog

WASHINGTON - The Democratic presidential nomination his, Barack Obama reached out Wednesday to mend fences with his defeated rival as Republican opponent John McCain tried to frame the fall campaign on his own terms. “I think he has exercised very bad judgment on national security issues and others,” McCain said.

Hillary Rodham Clinton was angling to become Obama’s running mate and her aides ramped up the speculation on that matter Wednesday. “I think a lot of her supporters would like to see her on the ticket,” Clinton campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe said. But Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs cautioned “there is no deal in the works.”

Clinton has yet to acknowledge Obama’s victory in the bruising Democratic race and her aides - also dodging that conclusion - said on the morning talk shows that she would take a few days to decide what comes next for her. Obama spoke by phone with her Tuesday night and both sides predicted he and Clinton would sit down together before long.

“When the dust settles and it makes sense for her, he’ll meet whenever she wants to,” Gibbs said. “She’s accumulated a lot of votes throughout this country. We want to make sure that we’re appealing to her voters.”

Read More:News & Observer

(ARA) - Throughout U.S. history, women of every race and class have made contributions that have helped to shape and strengthen the country. In 1987, Congress declared the month of March Women’s History Month to recognize these contributions and to promote the teaching of women’s history.

This Women’s History Month is especially significant. For the first time in American history, a woman has a legitimate chance of winning a major party’s presidential nomination. And whether she wins or not, history continues to be made in our country.

Our national parks offer an extremely unique opportunity to visit the sites and learn about the people that made women’s history what it is today. The parks help to commemorate advances made in education, economic and social welfare, property rights, family life, and most importantly, the right to vote. National parks allow present and future generations to witness this history firsthand.

“America’s history comes alive in the national parks,” says National Parks Conservation Association Deputy Vice President for Government Affairs Laura Loomis. “Taking care of the places that honor our past, and continue to inspire our future, should be a national priority for all Americans.”

Despite the rich history the parks hold, they often go ignored. They are significantly underfunded and understaffed, and currently face an operational shortfall of $750 million. They face issues such as adjacent development, crumbling buildings, looting of cultural resources, and numerous invasive plant species. The parks hold our country’s most valuable history. There is the real potential of losing this history forever, unless we continue to advocate for their protection and enhancement for generations to come.

In Congress, Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY) introduced a bill that could significantly enhance the historic significance of the women’s rights movement embodied in our national parks. Her bill would establish a commemorative trail in connection with the Women’s Rights National Historical Park in New York. The trail would link properties that are historically and thematically associated with the struggle for women’s suffrage. Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) introduced a companion bill in the Senate.

“Each time I take part in our democracy by casting a vote, whether it is on the House Floor or on Election Day, I am humbled by the shadow of history by the decades of work of women before me who fought tooth and nail for women’s suffrage,” says Rep. Slaughter. “In their honor, I have introduced HR 3114, the National Women’s Rights History Project Act, which hopes to provide Americans with the opportunity to learn more about the female heroes that fought tirelessly to secure the right we take for granted today.

“We’ve clearly come a long way since the suffrage movement, but we still have a long way to go. By recognizing our foremothers, my bill will remind us of the need to continue the movement for women’s equality on behalf of our granddaughters,” concludes Slaughter.

To walk in the shoes of other trail blazing American women, the nonprofit National Parks Conservation Association, the nation’s leading voice for the national parks, recommends travelers explore some of the national park sites that commemorate women’s history, including:

Mary McLeod Bethune Council House National Historic Site (D.C.) was the original home of the National Council of Negro Women. Mary McLeod Bethune was the founder of NCNW, a national political leader, renowned educator, and one of America’s most influential black women. The organization’s mission remains today to lead, develop and advocate for African American women. Today, the site offers tours and special programs about the history of African American women. For more information visit http://www.nps.gov/mamc/ .

Women’s Rights National Historical Park (N.Y.) honors and commemorates the First Women’s Rights Convention, which was convened at Wesleyan Chapel in 1848. At the convention, 100 individuals signed the Declaration of Sentiments, publicly committing to a broad array of rights for women, including suffrage. Guided tours of the park are offered daily. For more information visit http://www.nps.gov/wori/ .

Rosie the Riveter/WWII Home Front National Historical Park (Calif.) preserves the many stories and sites of our country’s home front response to World War II. The Rosie the Riveter Memorial illustrates the challenges and opportunities that women faced during the war years. The National Park Service offers a self-guided automobile tour of the various sites that make up the Rosie the Riveter/World War II Home Front National Historical Park. For more information visit: http://www.nps.gov/rori .

Mesa Verde National Park (Colo.) was created thanks to the energy and leadership of a young newspaper reporter named Virginia McClurg. In the late 1800s, McClurg, frustrated by the indifference the federal government showed toward preserving Puebloan history at Mesa Verde, started a petition demanding protection of the ruins, and lobbied Congress to take action. Finally, in 1906, Mesa Verde was the first national park established for its cultural significance. For more information visit http://www.nps.gov/meve.  

Clara Barton National Historic Site (Md.) serves as a memorial to the legacy of Clara Barton, the founder of the American Red Cross. The site served as both Clara’s home and an early headquarters of the Red Cross. In 1975, the site became the first National Historic Site dedicated to the accomplishments of a woman. Guided tours are available at the site. For more information visit http://www.nps.gov/clba .

Courtesy of ARAcontent

RALEIGH, N.C. - A modern house perched on a steep hillside in Raleigh’s established Laurel Hills neighborhood is featured this month in Architectural Record magazine, one of the profession’s most respected journals.

In the article, entitled “Frank Harmon raised the Strickland-Ferris Residence off the ground, then let its roof take flight,” Pearson addresses the innovative “butterfly roof..floating above a band of windows wrapping around the top of the building,” which also helps collect rainwater for irrigating the forest floor.

Read More:CarolinaNewsWire

RALEIGH, N.C. - In a show of support for conservative military and displomatic historian Mark Moyar, who insists he was denied an interview for a position in the N.C. State University Department of History solely because of his political leanings, Raleigh Metro Magazine editor and publisher Bernie Reeves has posted a letter Moyar recently wrote to a reporter at The Technician, NCSU’s student newspaper, on the Metro website (www.metronc.com). The post is entitled “Campus Radicals Strike Again: The Mark Moyar Story.”

Reeves responded to Andrew, a close friend who has worked with Reeves on the annual Raleigh Spy Conference, that he was “not surprised. In my 30 years as an editor and publisher in a community containing three large, prestigious universities, I learned that the liberal arts departments at UNC, State and Duke have closed their doors to teacher applicants who did not toe the [liberal] party line.The result is the destruction of scholarship in the liberal arts and the ascent of sensitivity propaganda masquerading as learning.”

Read More:CarolinaNewsWire

Exhibition features Durham man’s pictures of a troubled era

The woman is holding her infant carefully, almost reverently, but she cannot shield him from the reality etched above their bus seat: “For colored patrons only.”

Alexander M. Rivera Jr. took the photograph more than half a century ago, but when he sees it on the museum wall, he pauses to look at it once again.

“This is the kind of world that this kid was born into,” says Rivera, 94. “That’s what they had to look forward to.”

That photograph — along with dozens of others that Rivera took as a journalist covering the civil rights struggle during the 1940s and 1950s — went on display Friday at the N.C. Museum of History. Rivera’s work will remain a part of the museum’s collection until early next year.

Rivera, a North Carolina native who lives in Durham, spent nearly 30 years writing and photographing for black newspapers, including the Pittsburgh Courier, one of the nation’s most prominent at the time. He traveled the Southeast, documenting lynchings, wrongful prosecutions and the push for integration.

He wrote stories that the mainstream media avoided, covering both the accomplishments of black athletes and performers and the suffering of the families of lynching victims. He wrote about a 14-year-old boy sentenced to a 30-year prison term for stealing a flashlight, and a sharecropper arrested for “unlawfully looking” at a white girl.

He recorded the stark trappings of segregation. One photograph shows the audience at a 1948 spring dance in Rocky Mount. Whites and blacks sit on the same expanse of bleachers, but a wire strung from the ceiling neatly divides the races. The dividing line, in Rivera’s day, was no metaphor.

Rivera says he had little sense at the time that he was recording history. He says he was just supporting his family, doing “a job that needed to be done.”

Shirl Spicer, the museum curator overseeing the exhibit, said Rivera was a pioneer, one of the South’s most prolific and respected black journalists. He earned national awards and in the 1950s struck up a friendship with then-Vice President Richard Nixon, who invited Rivera along on a 1957 diplomatic trip to Ghana.

But in the years since, she said, his work has been largely forgotten, with only a handful of photos permanently displayed in the N.C. Central University library.

“We have, in our midst, a living legend,” Spicer said. “But very few people know it.”

Rivera’s work often drew ire rather than respect. He was jailed in Lumberton in 1948 for photographing the three separate entrances to a movie theater, one for whites, one for blacks and one for Indians.

And on a rural road in Montgomery County, Georgia, Rivera feels sure that his life was saved only by the chauffeur’s cap he happened to be wearing. He was on his way back from interviewing the widow of Isiah Nixon, who was shot in his front yard in 1948 after angering whites by voting.

Sallie Nixon told Rivera that a group of men lured her husband to the fence, and then shot him while his children watched. When the gun went off, she told Rivera, “my children scattered like a covey of birds.”

He snapped a picture of Nixon on the porch of her wooden shack — the kind that has become emblematic of rural Southern poverty. She is surrounded by her six children, one of whom is only a few weeks old. The face of one child is clenched in a sob.

As Rivera drove the winding road away from her house, he rounded a curve and found a car blocking the road, he remembers. The sheriff was one of several white men inside. The sheriff got out and demanded to know what Rivera had been doing.

The photographs of Alexander M. Rivera Jr. will be on display until March 1, 2009, at the N.C. Museum of History, 5 E. Edenton St., in downtown Raleigh. The exhibit, on the third floor, is free. The museum is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday, and from noon to 5 p.m. on Sunday.

Read More:News & Observer

History of Yates Mill
Yates Mill served Wake County as a water-powered mill for more than 200 years. Of the 70 gristmills that once served Wake County, Yates Mill is the only one still standing. The water-powered gristmill was an important economic and social center for residents of Wake County from colonial times through the early 1900s. Gristmills provided the important service of grinding corn and wheat into meal and flour. In rural areas of North Carolina, before towns or crossroad-stores developed, gristmills served as public gathering places for scattered rural populations. Millponds were popular locations for fishing, swimming and picnicking. Yates Millpond is again a popular gathering place, as it once was in the past.

Samuel Pearson, the mill’s founder, is thought to have first moved to the Steep Hill Creek area in 1748. The earliest document related to Samuel Pearson and the land that now surrounds the mill dates to 1756. This document, a request for a land survey, appears to include the land where Samuel’s home stood. After this 1756 request for a land survey, Samuel Pearson received the land grant in 1761; however, no documents on file mention the mill until a 1778 survey specifically mentions it as already standing.

Samuel Pearson owned the mill until his death in 1802. In his will, he divided his land among his four sons, and intended the proceeds of the sale of his personal property to go to his six daughters. His son, Simon Pearson, received 340 acres of land that included the old mill. Because of debts owed to the State Bank of North Carolina, Simon Pearson was forced to sell his land, including the mill, in a sheriff’s sale in 1819. The sheriff sold the property for $3,031 to William Boylan, a prominent Raleigh businessman and director of the State Bank. Boylan established Raleigh’s first newspaper, The Raleigh Minerva, by the close of the 19th century; he later also established the Raleigh Advertiser. He also served on the commission to build a new state capital.

In order for the mill to continue as a successful business, Boylan made constant changes to the mill building and its operation. Architectural evidence shows that major renovations were likely made to the structure between 1820 and 1850. This most likely came in response to a flood in the early 1800s, which probably destroyed the original mill. However, despite that setback, Boylan had a sawmill operating at the mill by the 1840s.

Mr. Boylan owned the mill for 37 years. He sold it to John Primrose, Thomas H. Briggs and James Penny on June 30, 1853. In 1859, James Dodd bought Primrose’s share of the mill. Thomas H. Briggs was a prosperous Raleigh businessman who started a building materials business that continues today as Briggs Hardware. Briggs was Raleigh’s most influential post-Civil War businessman. Having wisely converted his Confederate currency into silver before the war’s conclusion, Briggs was one of the few North Carolinians with money to invest during Reconstruction.

On March 2, 1863, Penny, Dodd, and Briggs sold the mill and 94 surrounding acres to Phares and Roxanna Yates, James Penny’s son-in-law and daughter. James Penny’s possible involvement in the murder of Hinton Franklin may have prompted the sale. Local legend says Franklin was a northern sympathizer whom Penny reportedly killed for not paying a $700 mill debt. Franklin’s widow supposedly told Union troops that were occupying the Raleigh area in 1865 that her husband’s death was a result of his political beliefs. Allegedly, the troops tried to burn the mill by setting fire to the entrance porch. Charred wooden beams from the mill’s underside suggest possible evidence of the attempted burn. Court records show that Penny was tried for murder in December 1866 but was found not guilty.

Upon his death in 1902, Phares Yates left his real estate and the mill on Steep Hill Creek to his son, Robert E. Lee (R.E.L.) Yates, a math professor at North Carolina State College. R.E.L. Yates left the land and the mill to his wife, Minnie Johns Yates, when he passed away on December 28, 1937.

Ten years later, Minnie Yates and her son Wilbur sold the mill to the Trojan Sales Company, a subsidiary of A.E. Finley Associates. The title was later transferred to the North Carolina Equipment Company, another subsidiary of A.E. Finley Associates. A.E. Finley built a retreat lodge for use by his family and employees on the millpond. The mill continued operation until the 1950s, when it closed for lack of business.

North Carolina State University obtained title to the mill and the pond in 1963. The property was part of a 1,000-acre tract that was purchased for use by North Carolina State University Field Laboratory’s experimental farms and demonstration fields. Shortly after the University obtained the property, John Daniel Lea – the miller who had worked at the mill since 1898 – operated the mill for the last time as a demonstration.

After the mill shut down for business, it began to fall into disrepair. In 1989, the nonprofit group Yates Mill Associates (YMA) formed to preserve and restore the mill. In 1996, after stabilizing the mill building, YMA approached Wake County with a proposal to turn Yates Mill into a county park. Park planning between NC State, YMA, Wake County and the North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services began, and the Wake County Board of Commissioners approved the park’s master plan in 1997.

In 2001 N.C. State leased 157 acres to Wake County. In addition, Wake County bought 16 acres upstream and signed a memorandum of understanding with the N.C. Department of Agriculture for the development of hiking trails on 400 acres of land upstream from the pond.

Shortly after park planning began, Hurricane Fran breached the dam, drained the millpond, and caused the shed to collapse in the fall of 1996. The mill and its pond were badly damaged, but not beyond repair. Restoration of the mill and its grinding machinery was finally finished in 2005.

Construction of the visitor center for the park began in summer 2003, and was completed in April 2006. Historic Yates Mill County Park opened to the public May 20, 2006. Tours of Yates Mill are available to the public March through November, and corn-grinding demonstrations are offered the third weekend of each month during that time.

MILL OWNERSHIP

1750-1802, Samuel Pearson
1802-1819, Simon Pearson
1819-1853, William Boylan
1853-1859, John Primrose, Thomas Briggs, James Penny
1859-1863, James Dodd, Thomas Briggs, James Penny
1863-1902, Phares and Roxanna Yates
1902-1937, Robert E. Lee (R.E.L.) Yates
1937-1947, Minnie John Yates
1947, Trojan Sales Company/A.E. Finley Associates
1947-1963, NC Equipment Company/A.E. Finley Associates
1963-present, North Carolina State University (NCSU)
1989, Yates Mill Associates forms and begins mill restoration
1996, Park planning begins – NCSU and the N.C. Dept. of Agriculture agree to let Wake County use 558 acres for the park; Wake County purchased an additional 16-acre property upstream of the millpond
1999, Development of the 574-acre historic and environmental park begins
2006, Park (with the restored mill as its centerpiece) opens to public

SOURCE:Wake County Government

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