1889-1904

Fayetteville's business history is filled with the names of longtime successful merchants such as Huske, Lilly, Rose, Leak, Hensdale, Stein, Fleishman. But none was bigger for a time than Frank Thornton, who built an impressive store on Hay Street for his thriving dry goods business, one of the largest such enterprises in the state by the 1890s.

Thornton came to Fayetteville after the Civil War "as a poor, friendless young man" but built his mercantile business and amassed large real-estate holdings.

Historian John A. Oates gave an example of the price-slashing practices that ultimately hurt Thornton and his major competitor, Rose & Leak: "Thornton would advertise to give away shoes. He would have a man on the third floor throw one shoe of a pair out the window onto the street. You would have to go inside to get the other shoe."

The man who is generally regarded as the nation's first important black novelist and short-story writer spent his formative years and early professional career in Fayetteville, which he referred to as Patesville in some of his writings.

Charles Waddell Chesnutt was born in Ohio, the son of Fayetteville natives Andrew Jackson Chesnutt and Anne Maria Simpson Chesnutt. The family returned to Fayetteville after the Civil War. Charles Chesnutt succeeded Robert Harris as the principal of the school for blacks that began as the Howard School and was later renamed the State Colored Normal School and eventually Fayetteville State University. When he resigned from that position in 1883 after serving three years, a Fayetteville newspaper article described Chesnutt as "a man of indefatigable perseverance whose sin in life has been to excel in all he undertook."

Chesnutt later lived in New York and Ohio, practiced law, and championed civil rights. His major works include "The Conjure Woman," "The House Behind the Cedars" and "The Marrow of Tradition." The library at FSU is named for him.

He was a farmer and teacher from the Flea Hill (Eastover) community who led a county Populist convention in 1894 that "fused" with the Republicans to wrest power from the entrenched Democrats.

The "Fusion" ticket won county and legislative races that year, including Murphy's election by just 47 votes - 2,227 to 2,180 - over his Democratic opponent for clerk of court. In 1898, the Democrats focused on race as a political issue and narrowly ousted Murphy and other Fusionist winners from 1894 and 1896.

In 1902, when Eastover School opened for pupils of the Rock Hill, Flea Hill and Bear communities, "Professor" Murphy and Henrietta Holmes were the two teachers. It reportedly was the first county-supported school with more than one teacher on the east side of the Cape Fear River.

This Cumberland County native is known as "the father of the graded school in North Carolina."

He was a Confederate veteran and a lawyer who, in the late 1870s, led the drive to organize the public schools in Fayetteville. He served as the head of the local schools until he moved to Charlotte in 1888. He was the Charlotte schools superintendent until 1913 and the assistant superintendent until 1927. A junior high school in Fayetteville was named for him in 1924.

Alexander Graham's son, Fayetteville native Frank Porter Graham, was the president of the University of North Carolina, a U.S. senator and a United Nations official.

One of Cumberland County's most important politicians of this period was a member of the minority party in North Carolina, the Republicans.

Ralph Potts Buxton was the son of a well-known Episcopal priest, Jarvis P. Buxton. Ralph Buxton served as the mayor of Fayetteville before the Civil War and later, for several years, as a judge.

In 1880, Buxton ran as the Republican candidate for governor, a race he lost. In later years, he was a mentor for lawyers and politicians of both parties. Throughout his career he supported civil rights, improvements in education and economic development.