1805-1829

Among the few women who operated businesses in the community during this time was Rebecca Fletcher, who ran the tavern that her late husband, George, operated before the Revolution, where Patriots issued the "Liberty Point Resolves." Lewis Barge's widow did the same at his nearby tavern or "public house."

Land records indicate that Rebecca Fletcher was active in business during this era when women had little legal standing in real estate and probate matters. When she died at age 73, her obituary hailed her as one of the "first citizens" of the community.

Reportedly a protege and friend of Thomas Jefferson, he moved to Fayetteville in the early 1800s and became a renowned physician and surgeon in the region. He was an early advocate of smallpox inoculation.

Robinson was also a longtime member of the county Court of Pleas & Quarter Sessions. One of his sons, B.W. Robinson, also practiced medicine for decades and was active in politics.

Who built the Market House? That's a matter of historical debate, but some say a likely candidate was Grimes, a free black man who was known as one of the best brick masons in the area.

He owned property in the Moore-North Street area where many free blacks lived. In 1821, he deeded land to the state for a "house in Fayetteville for the safe-keeping of public arms," and he also may have been the contractor for this state arsenal.

Grimes, a native of Jamaica who moved to Cumberland County before 1810, became the patriarch of the community's building craftsmen, who were mostly free and enslaved black men and boys.

Considered the founder of St. John's Episcopal Church (1817), Winslow was influential in many aspects of civic life in the first part of the 19th century: as a booster of education, a businessman and banker, a state senator (1815-1819), a Mason and, at the time of his death, the "magistrate of police" (equivalent to mayor).

His son, Warren Winslow, was a three-term congressman and served briefly as North Carolina governor in 1854.

He served as Fayetteville's postmaster for nearly 40 years, a position he inherited from his father, and also was mayor.

MacRae was briefly the publisher of The Carolina Observer and Fayetteville Gazette and was renowned as a civic booster and, as one historian put it, "general factotum of the town."

During the Civil War, four of his sons fought for the Confederacy and one (Alexander MacRae) for the Union. One of John MacRae's sons, James C. MacRae, went on to become the dean of the law school at the University of North Carolina.