Greensboro

Greensboro, a city and the county-seat of Guilford county, North Carolina, U.S.A., about 80 m. N.W. of Raleigh. Pop. (1890) 3317, (1900) 10,035, of whom 4086 were negroes; (1910 census), 15,895. Greensboro is served by several lines of the Southern railway. It is situated in the Piedmont region of the state and has an excellent climate. The city is the seat of the State Normal and Industrial College (1892) for girls; of the Greensboro Female College (Methodist Episcopal, South; chartered in 1838 and opened in 1846), of which the Rev. Charles F. Deems was president in 1850-1854, and which, owing to the burning of its buildings, was suspended from 1863 to 1874; and of two institutions for negroes—a State Agricultural and Mechanical College, and Bennett College (Methodist Episcopal, co-educational, 1873). Another school for negroes, Immanuel Lutheran College (Evangelical Lutheran, co-educational), was opened at Concord, N.C., in 1903, was removed to Greensboro in 1905, and in 1907 was established at Lutherville, E. of Greensboro. About 6 m. W. of Greensboro is Guilford College (co-educational; Friends), founded as “New Garden Boarding School” in 1837 and rechartered under its present name in 1888. Greensboro has a Carnegie library, St Leo hospital and a large auditorium. It is the shipping-point for an agricultural, lumbering and trucking region, among whose products Indian corn, tobacco and cotton are especially important; is an important insurance centre; has a large wholesale trade; and has various manufactures, including cotton goods1 (especially blue denim), tobacco and cigars, lumber, furniture, sash, doors and blinds, machinery, foundry products and terra-cotta. The value of the factory products increased from $925,411 in 1900 to $1,828,837 in 1905, or 97.6%. The municipality owns and operates the water-works. Greensboro was named in honour of General Nathanael Greene, who on the 15th of March 1781 fought with Cornwallis the battle of Guilford Court House, about 6 m. N.W. of the city, where there is now a Battle-Ground Park of 100 acres (including Lake Wilfong); this park contains a Revolutionary museum, and twenty-nine monuments, including a Colonial Column, an arch (1906) in memory of Brig.-General Francis Nash (1720-1777), of North Carolina, who died in October 1777 of wounds received at Germantown, and Davidson Arch (1905), in honour of William Lee Davidson (1746-1781), a brigadier-general of North Carolina troops, who was killed at Catawba and in whose honour Davidson College, at Davidson, N.C., was named. Greensboro was founded and became the county-seat in 1808, was organized as a town in 1829, and was first chartered as a city in 1870.

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1 One of the first cotton mills in the South and probably the first in this state was established at Greensboro in 1832. It closed about 20 years afterwards, and in 1889 new mills were built. Three very large mills were built in the decade after 1895, and three mill villages, Proximity, Revolution and White Oak, named from these three mills, lie immediately N. of the city; in 1908 their population was estimated at 8000. The owners of these mills maintain schools for the children of operatives and carry on “welfare work” in these villages.

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