Last of the History Lessons! lol

4 July 2022--We thought the Capitol building would be closed for the holiday, but we called and it was open so we headed to downtown Raleigh yesterday afternoon.  That is the Capitol in the background, but the 1st thing to draw our attention was all the churches around us.  Over Cathy's right shoulder is the 1st, but on each corner of the Capitol grounds were churches.  These 4 were Episcopal, Presbyterian, and 2 Baptist.  You gotta love that separation of church and state thing!  And you have to wonder how the Catholics didn't get a corner--lol.

 

   

The outside of the Capitol, built between 1833 and 1840, was more impressive than the inside.  A big statue of Washington in front, and a big one of the 3 presidents from NC...James Polk, Andrew Jackson and Andrew Johnson in the back.  Looking at the inscriptions beneath each one, you can see under Jackson that he "Revitalized American Democracy".  Hmm, he's actually best known for signing the Indian Removal Act that led to the Trail of Tears most of us have heard about.  A little fun fact about Johnson--he succeeded Lincoln after the assassination, of course, but he was also basically illiterate until he met his wife at 17 yrs old.  He was 2nd only to Lincoln as the president with the least amount of formal education.

   

On the side of the building was a nice WWII memorial.  The 2nd pic lauds the citizenry for supplying more confederate soldiers and supplies to the war effort than any other southern state during the Civil War.

  

As I said, the inside of the building itself was nothing to write home about, but they did have a couple interesting displays.  Here in the 1st pic we learn that NC was the 1st colony to recommend American Independence--really?  I can't prove otherwise, of course, but that just seems like a stretch to me.  lol  And then we have Virginia Dare--the 1st child born to English parents in the New World.  I have to ask--can anyone possibly have known that at the time?  We seem to be a country obsessed with "firsts"...absurdly so if you ask me. lol

  

Here they basically throw Betsy Ross under the bus.  lol

  

Of all the state Capitols we've been to, I think NC had the most extensive acknowledgement of the role played by slavery in building and maintaining it's capitol.  The 3rd pic actually names all the enslaved men who were involved.  

   

This is the story of just one man who was a slave, tried to buy his freedom, went to Massachusetts and then returned to try to buy his wife and kids out of slavery.  He ended up tarred and feathered, but lived, and went on to author several books and speak out against slavery. 

 

This was the senate library and the senate in the 1800s.

  

  

Back outside a bunch of people were gathering around a pop-up tent, so we went over and were delighted to see a couple Screech Owls, a Horned Owl and a Red Shouldered Hawk.  The Screech Owls are adorable--only about 6 inches tall.  And we were told the Horned Owl has incredible hearing--it can hear the heart beat of a mouse 30-40 feet away.

    

Cathy read about the Historic Oakwood section of town, where they have some very old and nice houses.  Here's just a few.

     

From Oakwood we headed to the Mordecai Plantation, built in 1785 and the oldest house in Raleigh that sits on it's original foundation.  I guess a lot of the older homes in Raleigh have actually been moved from their original spot.

They have tours here, but due to the holiday they were closed.  We were free to roam the property, and the best we could determine, without almost any signs telling us what we were looking at, is that a lot of these buildings were actually moved onto this site long after it's plantation days.

 

This is the home Andrew Johnson was born in--but not here on the plantation.

  

These are just some of the other buildings on the property--no signs as to what they were used for.  

  

So we didn't spend long at all at the plantation--over we went to the Capitol Trail on our way home.  Talk about some beautiful homes!  In the last row--the 1st pic is the Lt Governor's office, and the last 2 pics are of the Governor's mansion.  The Governor's Mansion was built in 1891 using prison labor and moved to this spot later.

  

     

One last fun fact--Raleigh, NC was named after Sir Walter Raleigh, who attempted to establish the 1st English Colony on the shores of the New World in the 1580s--so take that, Virginia! lol

Just a quick stop in NC...off tomorrow to N Myrtle Beach to visit a couple days with our friend Denise.  TTYL