1830-1854

Perhaps Cumberland County's most significant public figure, this Fayetteville native was a lawyer and graduate of the University of North Carolina.

He served as a three-term congressman and as speaker of the state House. He sponsored the bill establishing a state insane asylum (later named for Dorothea Dix). He made the presidential nominating speech for Franklin Pierce in 1852 and, as secretary of the Navy under Pierce (1853-1857), he presided over the steam modernization of the U.S. fleet.

James Cochran Dobbin died in Fayetteville at his home off Raeford Road, on land that was later subdivided into the Sherwood Forest development.

When she died in 1857 at age 102, "Nurse" or "Aunt Hannah" Mallett (also spelled Mallet) had literally touched hundreds of lives in her career as a midwife for more than 75 years.

She was "nominally" a slave of the Mallett family and may have been the town's best-known slave during this antebellum period.

The obituary for Nurse Hannah was as conspicuous as the death notices for well-known white residents at that time. Her funeral, held in St. John's Episcopal Church, was "attended by a large concourse of colored and a number of whites."

In addition to his career as a lawyer, U.S. senator, state legislator, Superior Court judge and leader of the Fayetteville Independent Light Infantry (he welcomed Lafayette during his visit to the town in 1825), Strange is noted as the author of the first novel to employ North Carolina as a setting. The book was "Eoneguski, or The Cherokee Chief: A Tale of Past Wars" (1839).

Strange also directed the defense in the notorious Ann K. Simpson murder trial of 1850. Strange is buried in his family graveyard at "Myrtle Hill," the name of his home off Ramsey Street.

Matthew Nathaniel Leary was one of the most notable free black men in Fayetteville during the 19th century. He operated a saddle and harness shop at Person and Dick streets and owned hundreds of acres.

After the Civil War, he continued his work in promoting education, served as a county commissioner, helped found the local Republican Party and helped organize St. Joseph's Episcopal Church.

One of his sons, Lewis Sheridan Leary, was an early martyr for black freedom: He was killed at Harpers Ferry, Va., in 1859 as a member of abolitionist John Brown's raiding party.

This native Irishman was a founder of St. Patrick Catholic Church, which was the first Roman Catholic church to be consecrated in North Carolina, in 1829.

Fayetteville had a small but well-to-do Catholic congregation, which was unusual at that time for the rural South.

Kelly was a planter and merchant and was known as a community benefactor. When he died in 1842, he left the largest estate recorded in the county that year.