Workspace for Appalachia Project - North Carolina

Date: [unknown] [unknown]
Location: [unknown]
Surnames/tags: North Carolina Appalachia

Project: Appalachia | South Central Appalachia Team | North Carolina Appalachians^[1]

This Appalachia Project workspace page for North Carolina was created as a reference for Appalachia county space pages (for categories, see Counties of Appalachia). All 31 of North Carolina's Appalachia counties^[2] are in the South Central Appalachia Region, which is covered by the project's South Central Appalachia Team.

Timeline: See Navigating North Carolina in Wikitree and Virginia-North Carolina Boundary (which includes Tennessee in some of the maps).^[3]

1664-1750: The northern counties of the Carolinas - Albemarle and Clarendon - were formed in 1664 (the "Clarendon County Settlement" was abandoned in 1667 and the county discontinued).^[4] As settlement expanded westward, the counties of Anson and Rowen were created in 1750 and 1753, respectively, with an open boundary to the west.^[5] For the purposes of the Appalachia Project, these were the easternmost North Carolina counties that included land in Appalachia (see below).

1750- today is covered by the rest of this page.

The North Carolina Project is very robust, with links to many pages of interest, including Province of North Carolina History and Formation of North Carolina Counties. North Carolina's county formation history for land in Appalachia is complex. The Appalachia Project is working on providing timelines on county space pages for the 31 North Carolina counties in Appalachia today. As of 10 July 2022, however, many of them do not yet have a space page - see the table below, which links to the county's space page if the link is green; a red link means the page does not exist. Links to the category pages for the 31 counties in Appalachia are listed in the North Carolina table at the Counties of Appalachia page.

For all of North Carolina's current counties, see Category: North Carolina. The North Carolina Project notes that 32 of the 104 North Carolina counties were created before 1776, which can probably be found in the following categories:

• Southwest Territory
• Category: Province of North Carolina
• Category: Province of Carolina
• Category:North Carolina Extinct Counties

Parts of the Province of Carolina combined with other territory to form the states of Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi,^[6] which are covered by the Southern Appalachia Team.

Historic Counties: The geographic area of today's Appalachia is defined by county by the Appalachian Regional Commission (listed in the next section). Identifying which counties once included that land is a bit trickier, especially when the earlier counties were shown without a western boundary. See more below.

Geographic: WikiTree guidelines are to "use their convention, not ours", meaning the place where someone lived may be in Rowan County today but was not in, say, 1755 - or it was in 1755 but is not today. The information on this Workspace page is intended to help determine the correct category of someone's profile.

Contents 1 North Carolina Appalachia Counties 1.1 Historic North Carolina Counties in Appalachia 2 Past and Present Counties

North Carolina Appalachia Counties

Today's Appalachia includes 31of North Carolina's 104 counties: Alexander, Alleghany, Ashe, Avery, Buncombe, Burke, Caldwell, Catawba, Cherokee, Clay, Cleveland, Davie, Forsyth, Graham, Haywood, Henderson, Jackson, McDowell, Macon, Madison, Mitchell, Polk, Rutherford, Stokes, Surry, Swain, Transylvania, Watauga, Wilkes, Yadkin, and Yancey.^[2]

31 North Carolina County Space Pages
Alexander	Alleghany	Ashe	Avery
Buncombe	Burke	Caldwell	Catawba
Cherokee	Clay	Cleveland	Davie
Forsyth	Graham	Haywood	Henderson
Jackson	Macon	Madison	McDowell
Mitchell	Polk	Rutherford	Stokes
Surry	Swain	Transylvania	Watauga
Wilkes	Yadkin	Yancey

Defunct Counties: The North Carolina table posted by the United States Project lists five defunct counties: Albemarle, Bath, Bute, Dobbs and Tryon County. Tryon included land that was in Appalachia, from its creation in 1768 to 1779, when it was split into Lincoln and Rutherford counties. Today's Rutherford County is in Appalachia; Lincoln is not.

Historic North Carolina Counties in Appalachia

As noted above, the geographic area of today's Appalachia is defined by county by the Appalachian Regional Commission,^[2] but identifying which counties once included that land is a bit trickier, especially when the earlier counties were shown without a western boundary.

For project purposes, the most eastern counties covering land in Appalachia were Anson (created in 1750) and Rowan (created from the northern half of Anson in 1753). As counties to the west were formed from Anson and Rowan counties, the counties they were created from ceased to cover land in Appalachia. So Anson was an Appalachia county from 1750 to 1762, when Mecklenburg County was created. And Mecklenburg was in Appalachia only until Tryon County was created in 1768. Catawba County is a bit more complicated. It was created in 1842 from Lincoln County, which had been created from Tryon County (along with Rutherford County) in 1779. But that Lincoln County land was not in Appalachia - the land that Lincoln County gained from Burke County in 1782 was in Appalachia, and it is that land that became Catawba County in 1842.

In 1776, the District of Washington was "formed from western lands (later became TN)".^[4] Between 1784 and 1788, "The State of Franklin" existed to the west of North Carolina Counties. In 1790, seven North Carolina counties (which would later be in Tennessee) were ceded to the Federal Government: Davidson, Greene, Hawkins, Sullivan, Sumner, Tennessee, and Washington County/District.^[7] The Federal Government named the area that is now Tennessee as "The Territory South of the Ohio River",^[4] more commonly known as the Southwest Territory.^[8] Tennessee was admitted to the union on 1 June 1796.^[9]

The following outline of county formations involving land in Appalachia is in progress. See also the "Counties Past and Present" table (also in progress). ~ Noland-165 16:25, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

Looking at the interactive maps showing the history of county formations,^[4] comparing them to the ARC map (here),^[2] and together with [ this map],^[10] the following historic counties appear to have encompassed land in Appalachia (and the dates that they did), from Anson & Rowen to present.

NOTE - the following is still in progress

#Anson - #Rowan - #Washington_District

Anson County (1750-1762)

• Rowan County (see below)
• Mecklenburg County (1762-1768)
• Tryon County (1768-1779) - Tryon County ceased to exist when it was split into
  • Rutherford County (1779- )
  • Lincoln County (1782-1842)
    • Catawba County (1842- ) Lincoln County when created was not in Appalachia. Catawba County, which is in Appalachia, was created from the land that Lincoln County gained from Burke County in 1782.

Note: Rutherford County is in Appalachia today, but not as it was created in 1779. Rutherford gained land from Burke County in 1787; Henderson and McDowell gained from Rutherford in 1844. The following Appalachia counties were created in part from Rutherford County:

• Buncombe County (1791- ), formed from Burke and Rutherford counties
• Cleveland County (1841- ), formed from Lincoln and Rutherford counties
• McDowell County (1842- ), formed from Burke and Rutherford counties
• Polk County (1847-1848), formed from Henderson and Rutherford counties (returned to them in 1848)
• Polk County (1855-), formed from Henderson and Rutherford counties

Rowan County (1753-1788)^[11]

• Surry County (1770- )
  • Wilkes County (1777- ) and some land from District of Washington
• Burke County (1777- )
• Iredell County (1788-1847)
  • Alexander County (1847- )

Note that the Davidson County created from Rowan County in 1822 is the second of the name - not the Davidson County in Appalachia that became part of Tennessee. The North Carolina counties of Guilford (1770), Randolph (1778), and Rockingham (1785) were also not in Appalachia. A portion of Iredell County, which was formed from Rowan County in 1788, became Alexander County in 1847. Alexander County is in Appalachia today.

District of Washington formed in 1776 from western lands (giving Rowan and Tryon counties a western boundary)

• Washington County (1777)

Past and Present Counties

Note - This table will probably take quite a while to build.

North Carolina Appalachia Counties — Past and Present
County (link=space page, if one exists)	Category (landing-level)[12]	Preceded by (created from) (link=category page)	Followed by (county/ies created from it) (link=category page)	Categories[13]
Mecklenburg (1762-1768)	Category	Anson	Tryon	North Carolina
Polk (1847-1848) (1855- )	Category	Henderson & Rutherford	none	North Carolina
Rutherford (1779- )	Category	Tryon County (1779)	several (see above)	North Carolina
Tryon (1768-1779)	Two with people profiles: Category1 Category2	Mecklenburg County	Rutherford County (1779- ) Lincoln County (1782-1842)	North Carolina Province of NC NC History NC Extinct Counties 2: Tryon History
Wilkes (1777- )	Category	Rowan County, and some land from the District of Washington	TBD	North Carolina

Footnotes

1. ↑ Category: North Carolina Appalachians is the "landing-level" category (for people profiles). "North Carolina Appalachians" is a project category. People profiles should also be categorized by location, which this Workspace page is intended to facilitate. For space pages about North Carolina Appalachians, see Category: South Central Appalachia Team.
2. ↑ ^{2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3} As listed by the Appalachian Regional Commission (here) as of 6 July 2022.
3. ↑ The boundaries of Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina were a bit fluid in the early years. See also The Squabble State (accessed 10 July 2022).
4. ↑ ^{4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3} North Carolina County Formation Maps
5. ↑ The counties preceding Anson and Rowen counties, for reference (source: North Carolina County Formation Maps):
   • 1696: Bath County formed as an original county.
   • 1705: Bath County divided into Wickham, Archdale, & Pamptecough Precincts.
   • 1712: Archdale name changed to Craven.
   • 1729: New Hanover and Carteret Precincts formed from Craven Precinct.
   • 1734: Bladen Precinct formed from New Hanover Precinct.
   • 1750: Anson County formed from Bladen County.
   • 1753: Rowan County formed from Anson County.
6. ↑ Wikipedia:Province of North Carolina
7. ↑ Tennessee County Formation Maps
8. ↑ Wikipedia: History of Tennessee (accessed 10 July 2022).
9. ↑ Wikipedia: Tennessee (accessed 10 July 2022).
10. ↑ From Formation of North Carolina Counties, posted by WikiTree's North Carolina Project (accessed 10 July 2022).
11. ↑ For a detailed timeline of Rowan County's history, see the North Carolina Project's Historical Timeline of Rowan County North Carolina.
12. ↑ "Landing-level" means that it is for "people profiles". This is the category that would be added to someone's profile, if the person was in that county during the time it included land in Appalachia.
13. ↑ The organization of North Carolina county categories and space pages appears to be that each county has only one landing-level category, but it is included under North Carolina, Province of, etc., as needed. This column lists the categories that county category is categorized under. Note that exploring those categories may lead to additional pages that are relevant to the county.