has, to some extent, persisted to the present day.
The city of Durham developed on a ridge between the Eno River and New Hope Creek northeast of Chapel Hill and west of Raleigh. The area's original settlements were close to the intersection of two roads, “mere cart tracks winding through boundless forests that alternated with scattered homesteads and fields.”53 The east-west road connected Hillsborough to Raleigh, while the north-south road connected Roxboro to Fayetteville. In the early 1800s, Dilliardsville, a small collection of buildings and a general store on the east side of what is now downtown Durham, was awarded the first post office in the area. By 1827, however, this community was in decline, and the post office was moved first to nearby Herndon's store and, in 1836, to Prattsburg which already had a general store, a cotton gin, and a blacksmith shop.54 Prattsburg also had a reputation for tolerating those who disturbed the “peace and dignity of the state [by] drinking, tippling, playing at cards and other unlawful games, cursing, screaming, quarreling and otherwise misbehaving themselves.”55
Another settlement on the west side of what is now downtown Durham did its part to contribute to Durham's reputation as “a roaring old place.” Pin Hook, developed along the Raleigh-Hillsborough Road, was a place frequented by teamsters who would “refresh themselves from the well and a strategically located grog shop.”56 It, too, became known as a place of drinking, gambling, brawling, and prostitution. Among others, students from the University of North Carolina “would repair to Pin Hook, seeking release from the pressure of their studies where they were safely out of sight of the University of North Carolina's faculty.”57
The coming of the North Carolina Railroad would substantially change the fortunes of Prattsburg and Pin Hook. The idea of a railroad through the central part of the state had been discussed since 1828 as less expensive transport for farmers sending surplus crops to national and international markets. But not until 1849 did the state legislature pass a bill establishing the North Carolina Railroad to run from Goldsboro, where it would connect to the north-south Wilmington and Weldon line, to Raleigh and then through Hillsborough and end in Charlotte.58 Surveyors located the railroad line near the Raleigh-to-Hillsborough road, and sought to acquire property for a station between Morrisville and Hillsborough in the vicinity of Prattsburg.
Several years prior to passage of the railroad bill, Dr. Bartlett Durham, who was born in 1824 on a farm west of Chapel Hill, bought a hundred acres of land between Prattsburg and Pin Hook.59 In seeking land for a station between Hillsborough and Morrisville, railroad agents first approached William Pratt, owner of Prattsburg. But his asking price being too high, the agents pursued negotiations with Dr. Durham, who saw the potential of a station on his property. Durham donated four acres for the purpose and the station became known as Durham's Station.
In keeping with the area's tradition, Dr. Durham did not fit the stereotype of a quiet country doctor. He was said to be “a jovial fellow” who “on moon-shiny nights would get a group of boys together and serenade the town.” He was also an entrepreneur. By the time the railroad was completed in 1856, he had built a general store close to the station at the present corner of Main and Mangum Streets. In 1853 the local post office was moved to Durham's store.60 Dr. Durham also became the railroad's station agent, all the while continuing to practice medicine out of a back room. Dr. Durham was elected to represent Orange County in the General Assembly. While selling spirits in his store, and having a reputation as a drinker, he nonetheless introduced a bill to incorporate a “Sons of Temperance” chapter in Durham.61
BULL DURHAM: THE RISE OF THE TOBACCO INDUSTRY
The improbable story of Durham becoming the center of the tobacco industry in the late 1800s begins on a rainy summer night in 1839. An eighteen-year-old slave, known only as Stephen, fell asleep while tending a tobacco-curing fire on a plantation in Caswell County.62 Awaking in the middle of the night to find the fire almost out he stoked it with charcoal rather than wood. The charcoal fire burned hotter and began turning the tobacco leaves a bright yellow rather than the typical brown.63 The novelty and superior taste of bright leaf tobacco was to play an important role in Durham becoming the country's tobacco capital. But it would take another serendipitous event in 1865 to introduce bright leaf to the world.
Figure 7. Map of Durham in 1888 developed by the Sanborn Map Company. The chaotic street pattern was a result of the lack of a plan to guide development. The shaded and numbered areas reference more detailed maps showing the individual land parcels and building footprints (courtesy of the N.C. State Archives).
Several energetic and creative entrepreneurs provided the other major ingredient for Durham's early tobacco success. While tobacco had long been grown on many farms in central North Carolina, growers began to realize that the real money was in producing shredded leaf ready to chew or smoke. So small factories began sprouting up on tobacco farms and in small towns close to rail stations, such as Durham's Station. Robert and Thomas Morris and Wesley Wright opened their factory there in 1858, selling it in 1861 to John Ruffin Green, the son of a local tobacco farmer.64 Green greatly expanded the business by targeting “the sophisticated smokers at the university in Chapel Hill for whom Durham's Station was the closest connection to the outside world. His product positioning worked, and thus the good word on Durham tobacco began going places.”65 It was Green who conceived and trademarked the portrait of a bull, which would travel around the world in one of the most celebrated mass marketing campaigns in business history.
The Civil War temporarily slowed development of Durham's tobacco industry. Although few major battles were fought on North Carolina soil, the state provided more than its share of men and supplies to the war effort, and shared mightily in the resulting deprivations and hardships.66 Durham's Station did, however, play an important role in the closing days of the war. After his famous “march to the sea,” the Union general William T. Sherman worked his way back north. On March 19, 1865, the Confederate general Joseph Johnston and his army of thirty-two thousand men confronted Sherman's troops in Bentonville, about forty miles east of Raleigh. Although Johnston achieved initial success, three days of fighting Sherman's superior numbers forced him to retreat west where he set up a temporary headquarters in a farmhouse outside Hillsborough. In hot pursuit, Sherman and his troops occupied Raleigh on April 13.67
Four days earlier, General Robert E. Lee had surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox Courthouse. Realizing that the outcome of the war was now inevitable, and not wanting to prolong the misery, General Johnston sent a letter to Sherman asking for a conference to discuss terms of surrender. On April 17 Sherman and his delegation took a train from Raleigh to Durham's Station, where they set off on horseback to meet Johnston and his delegation on their way from Hillsborough. The two delegations met three and one-half miles west of Durham's Station and commandeered the Bennett family's farmhouse to conduct their negotiations. After nine days, with time out for checking with superiors, General Johnston surrendered the last major army of the Confederacy.68
These events set the stage for the second serendipitous event that helped catapult Durham to the forefront of the tobacco industry. While peace was being negotiated in the Bennetts' farmhouse, soldiers on both sides began helping themselves to the bright leaf tobacco stored in Durham's factories and warehouses, including those of John Ruffin Green. J. Bradley Anderson relates that “Green counted himself a ruined man [but] the theft proved an advertising scheme on a scale beyond his wildest dreams.” The soldiers took to the taste of bright leaf tobacco and when they returned to their home communities they sent to Durham for more bright leaf tobacco, “spreading its reputation far and wide.”69
Green's business grew in leaps and bounds. To help finance and manage that growth, in 1867 Green took on a new partner—William T. Blackwell—who had grown up on a tobacco farm in Person County and had become successful selling Green's product in eastern North Carolina. Two years after Blackwell joined the company Green died, and Blackwell bought his share of the business, along with the Bull Durham trademark. Wanting to expand the company further, Blackwell brought in new partners: James R. Day, then in 1870, Julian Shakespeare Carr—the twenty-six-year-old