Granville County, North Carolina: History
=== 18th century ===
Granville County and St. John's Parish were established on June 28, 1746, from the upper part of Edgecombe County. It was named for the John Carteret, 2nd Earl Granville, who as heir to one of the eight original Lords Proprietors of the Province of Carolina, claimed one eighth of the land granted in the charter of 1665. The claim was established as consisting of approximately the northern half of North Carolina, and this territory came to be known as the Granville District, also known as Oxford.
In 1752, parts of Granville, Bladen, and Johnston counties were combined to form Orange County. In 1764, the eastern part of Granville County was reassigned to the new Bute County. Finally, in 1881, parts of Granville, Franklin, and Warren counties were taken to be combined as Vance County.
Like most early counties on the eastern side of the early North Carolina colony, Granville was site of the Tuscarora uprising. Once the natives were defeated in the Tuscarora War, Virginia farmers and their families settled Granville County, where they concentrated on tobacco as a commodity crop. The economy of the region was dependent on slave labor, as tobacco was very labor-intensive to cultivate and process. By the start of the Civil War, Granville planters worked more than 10,000 slaves on their farms, at a time when total county population was 23,396.
During the American Civil War, more than 2,000 men from Granville County served the Confederacy. One company was known as the "Granville Grays." Most of these men fought in the major battles of the war. Surprisingly, many survived until the end of the war. Although the war brought an end to the plantation and slave labor economy that had made Granville County prosperous, the agricultural sector continued to thrive in the county. Freedmen stayed in Oxford to work, and the discovery of bright leaf tobacco stimulated the industry. Many African Americans in Granville County were already free before the start of the war; some had migrated into North Carolina as free people from Virginia in the colonial era. The free people of color before the Civil War were often descendants of families formed by unions between white women (who were free) and African or African-American men before the American Revolution. They made lasting contributions to the region, particularly through their skilled labor. Several black masons constructed homes for the county's wealthy landowners. Additionally, the bright leaf tobacco crop proved a successful agricultural product for Granville County. The sandy soil and a new tobacco crop that could be "flue-dried" proved a great incentive to farmers and tobacco manufacturers.
According to historian William S. Powell, Granville has remained a top tobacco-producing county in North Carolina for several decades. By the late 1800s and early 1900s, Oxford had become a thriving town with new industries, schools, literary institutions, and orphanages, due to jobs created by the bright tobacco crop.
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, northern Granville County, together with Halifax County, Virginia, were important mining areas. Copper, tungsten, silver and gold were mined in the region. …