North Carolina Resources
North Carolina was originally inhabited by a number of native tribes, including the Cherokee, Creek, Tuscarora, Lumbee, and Catawba. North Carolina was the first American territory the English attempted to colonize. Sir Walter Raleigh, for whom the state capital is named, chartered two colonies on the North Carolina (then Virginia) coast in the late 1580s, both ending in failure. The demise of one, the "Lost Colony" of Roanoke Island, remains one of the great mysteries of American history. Virginia Dare, the first English child to be born stateside, was born in North Carolina. Dare County is named for her. The first permanent European settlers of North Carolina were English and Scots-Irish settlers who had failed at establishing themselves in Barbados. By the late seventeenth century, several settlements had taken hold in the Province of Carolina, first named as such in a 1629 royal land patent to Sir Robert Heath that was never enforced. The territory, which also encompassed present-day South Carolina and Tennessee, was later a gift from King Charles II of England to the so-called Lords Proprietors, a group of noblemen who had helped restore Charles to the English throne in 1660. On November 21, 1789, North Carolina ratified the Constitution to become the twelfth state in the Union. North Carolina worked to establish its state and local governments. In 1840, it completed the state capitol building in Raleigh, still standing today. In mid-century the state's rural and commercial areas were further connected by construction of a 129 mile (208 km) wooden plank road, known as a "farmer's railroad," from Fayetteville in the east to Bethania (northwest of Winston-Salem).
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