1805-1829

A restoration project in 1999 revealed the Oval Ballroom's original floor.

The Oval Ballroom at Heritage Square on Dick Street boasts craftsmanship seen in the finer colonial homes of New York and Philadelphia.

The ballroom was built about 1815 as an addition to the Halliday-Williams house on Gillespie Street. It may have been built for a family wedding.

The Halliday-Williams house was torn down in 1956, but the ballroom was moved to Heritage Square. It is between the Sandford House, circa 1800, and the Baker-Haigh-Nimocks House, circa 1804.

The ballroom was renovated in 1999 to its original condition. The interior includes ionic columns that flank six oversized windows. Intricate molded plaster rings the ceiling.

Crape myrtles bloom outside Myrtle Hill.

Myrtle Hill, the home of Robert Strange, is on Kirkland Drive off Ramsey Street. Most accounts place its date of construction as 1817, but it could have been built as late as 1825. Strange was elected a U.S. senator in 1836.

"In private circles, his good humor and wit rendered him a welcome guest to all. His inflexible firmness and unwavering support of whatsoever his conscience assured him was right, commanded the respect of his compeers in the Senate," wrote one historian.

Strange originally owned more than 500 acres. In 1938, the owners of the property sold 146 acres to the federal government for a veterans hospital.

Strange is buried in the family cemetery off Brainard Street. The house is on the National Register of Historic Places.

The carriage that carried the Marquis de Lafayette during his visit to Fayetteville.

The Marquis de Lafayette rode in this carriage in 1825 when he crossed the Cape Fear River on the Clarendon Bridge into Fayetteville.

Lafayette was escorted by members of the Fayetteville Independent Light Infantry. The carriage and escorts rode through the mud and rain that day.

The county advertised its 1814 Independence Day celebration with this sheet.

How did the community celebrate the Fourth of July in 1814? With a procession forming at the courthouse, to include militia units, public officials ("High Sheriff and Magistrates of the County") and others: "Gentlemen of the Learned Professions" and "Strangers of Distinction."

The details for this "Great National Festival" marking the country's 38th birthday are spelled out on this sheet dated July 1, 1814, that's known as a broadside.

The directions for Fayetteville's celebration included the following: "The Procession will march to the Town-House with Martial Music - Bells ringing - where the Declaration of Independence will be read, and an appropriate Oration delivered." Only ladies, the broadside advised, would be "permitted to occupy seats till the Procession is accommodated."