Richmond County, North Carolina: History
=== Early history ===
The earliest inhabitants of the land eventually comprising Richmond County were Cheraw Native Americans. The first European settlers in the area were Scottish Highlanders, who traveled up the Cape Fear River valley to find farmland. English settlers initially arrived in the northwestern section of the eventual county after traveling down the Pee Dee River and gradually became the dominant European-descent group in the area. Many early settlers reared cattle. Politically, the area was first organized as a portion of Bladen County and then eventually Anson County.
Richmond County was formed in 1779 from a portion of Anson in order to reduce the amount of travel needed by residents to reach a county courthouse. It was named for Charles Lennox, 3rd Duke of Richmond and Lennox who was an Englishman and a member of the Parliament of the United Kingdom who sided with the colonists in America during the American Revolution. The county seat was established at Richmond Court House, which was renamed Rockingham in 1785 in homage to Charles Watson-Wentworth, 2nd Marquess of Rockingham, a British politician who had friendly relations with the Americans. During the American Revolutionary War, Richmond was afflicted by numerous Loyalist raids. By 1790, the county had 5,885 residents, with 583 of them being slaves.
Following the war, area farmers moved away from cattle switched to growing corn, oats, indigo, and cotton. In 1837, the county's first textile mill, Richmond Manufacturing Company, was built. A growth in cotton production, concentrated in the western portion of the county, led the enslaved population to increase to the point where they made up half of local residents. Around 1850 the largely unused Sandhills region in the eastern section of the county began to be exploited by the naval stores industry, particularly for the harvest of turpentine from longleaf pines. Railway service was introduced in Richmond in 1861. …