Samuel C. Alexander
co-founder of Biddle Institute
co-founder of Biddle Institute
In the record (15)
1758
Alexander Craighead, a radical Presbyterian minister previously arrested in Virginia for preaching doctrines that 'smacked of treason,' was installed in November 1758 as pastor of Rocky River and Sugaw Creek Presbyterian Churches in Mecklenburg County, and from 1760 devoted himself full-time to Sugaw Creek.
Rocky River Presbyterian ChurchGeorge AlexanderAbraham AlexanderAlexander Craighead
Source · checked 2026-08-13
1760
Alexander Craighead urged his Mecklenburg congregations to resist rather than cooperate with the provincial (royal) government, mixing Cameronian theology with overt political dissent against British authority; historians credit his preaching with helping shape the county's later reputation for revolutionary sentiment leading up to the Mecklenburg Declaration of 1775.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Government CenterGeorge AlexanderAbraham AlexanderAlexander Craighead
Source · checked 2026-08-13
1762
Hopewell Presbyterian Church in northern Mecklenburg County was organized in 1762 by Rev. Alexander McWhorter under the Synod of Philadelphia, though informal preaching there traces to the late 1740s/early 1750s when missionary John Thomson preached at the home of Richard Barry; a log meeting house was built in 1765, and Hopewell's present 1831 sanctuary is the oldest standing, continuously used worship facility in Mecklenburg County.
Mecklenburg PresbyteryFirst United Presbyterian ChurchFirst Baptist Church WestPhiladelphia Presbyterian ChurchHopewell Presbyterian ChurchGeorge AlexanderAbraham AlexanderAlexander McWhorterJohn ThomsonRichard Barry
Source · checked 2026-08-13
1763 · 1763-04-26
George Alexander, Mecklenburg County's first Register of Deeds, made the county's first deed-book entry on April 26, 1763.
George AlexanderAbraham AlexanderKing George
Source · checked 2026-08-13
1767 · 1767-01-15
On January 15, 1767, Abraham Alexander, Thomas Polk, and John Frohock purchased 360 acres from George Augustus Selwyn for ninety pounds as the site for the town of Charlotte; commissioners then laid out one hundred acres in half-acre lots on a grid of streets, with the east-west trading path becoming Trade Street and the Great Wagon Road becoming Tryon Street (named for royal governor William Tryon).
Trading Path (NC highway marker L-36)George AlexanderAbraham AlexanderThomas PolkAugustus BechtlerKing GeorgeWilliam TryonJohn FrohockGeorge Augustus Selwyn
Source · checked 2026-08-13
1775 · 1775-05-20
The Mecklenburg Historical Association (publisher of meckdec.org) maintains, as an advocacy position defending the tradition, that the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence was a real and distinct event from the Resolves, citing 1830s eyewitness testimony, John McKnitt Alexander's surviving fragmentary notes referencing 'the 19th and 20th of May 1775,' and the persistence of the story across multiple independent family and militia traditions as evidence the document existed even though it was never found; historians classify this as a heritage-advocacy rather than a neutral scholarly source.
Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.
George AlexanderAbraham AlexanderJohn McKnitt Alexander
Source · checked 2026-08-13
1780
A widely repeated but undocumented version of the legend holds that Cornwallis exclaimed something like 'Let's get out of here; this place is a damned hornet's nest' as he prepared to depart Charlotte after his roughly sixteen-day occupation; no primary source records this specific wording, and local news retrospectives explicitly note 'no written proof exists' for the quote, attributing its spread to John McKnitt Alexander beginning in the early 1800s.
Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.
George AlexanderAbraham AlexanderJohn McKnitt AlexanderLord Cornwallis
Source · checked 2026-08-13
1780
The famous attribution of the phrase 'hornet's nest [of rebellion]' to Lord Cornwallis describing Charlotte/Mecklenburg has NO surviving contemporary 18th-century documentary source -- no letter, diary, or dispatch written by Cornwallis or his officers during or shortly after the 1780 occupation contains the quote. According to multiple secondary historical accounts, the earliest known appearances of the story in writing come from local Mecklenburg figures John McKnitt Alexander and William Polk, writing in the early 19th century (i.e., 30+ years after the events), meaning the quote as popularly repeated is oral tradition/local legend rather than a documented historical fact.
Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.
George AlexanderAbraham AlexanderThomas PolkJohn McKnitt AlexanderLord CornwallisWilliam Polk
Source · checked 2026-08-13
1800 · 1800-04-06
Heritage tradition holds that the original 1775 Mecklenburg Declaration papers, kept by county clerk John McKnitt Alexander, were destroyed when a fire consumed the home of Alexander's son-in-law in April 1800, which is cited as the reason no contemporary copy survives; historians note this fire claim itself cannot be independently verified and conveniently explains the total absence of primary evidence.
Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.
George AlexanderAbraham AlexanderJohn McKnitt Alexander
Source · checked 2026-08-13
1819 · 1819-01-01
The text of the Mecklenburg Declaration was first published in 1819 in the Raleigh Register, 44 years after the alleged May 20, 1775 event, having been reconstructed from memory by John McKnitt Alexander (who had died in 1817) and forwarded to U.S. Senator Nathaniel Macon, making the claimed 1775 document's public debut coincide suspiciously with the buildup to the 1826 semicentennial of American independence.
Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.
George AlexanderAbraham AlexanderJohn McKnitt AlexanderNathaniel Macon
Source · checked 2026-08-13
1838
Historians, following the argument first advanced by Peter Force and later developed rigorously by William Henry Hoyt (1907), conclude that the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence was most likely a mistaken 19th-century conflation: elderly witnesses giving testimony decades after 1775, combined with a memory-reconstructed text prepared by John McKnitt Alexander after the alleged 1800 fire, blended the genuine, comparatively modest May 31, 1775 Mecklenburg Resolves with an imagined, more sweeping 'declaration of independence,' producing a spurious document that nonetheless became entrenched in North Carolina civic identity and state symbolism.
Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.
George AlexanderAbraham AlexanderRobert HenryPeterJohn McKnitt AlexanderWilliam Henry HoytPeter Force
Source · checked 2026-08-13
1867
Samuel C. Alexander, a Pennsylvania-born Presbyterian minister, and Willis L. Miller, a former Confederate soldier and slaveholder who became a Presbyterian minister, co-founded and served as the first two professors of the freedmen's school in Charlotte that became Biddle Memorial Institute.
Johnson C. Smith UniversityHarding High SchoolSecond Ward High SchoolCentral High SchoolBiddle Memorial InstituteGeorge AlexanderAbraham AlexanderMary Deborah Baird BiddleWillis L. MillerHenry J. Biddle
Source · checked 2026-08-13
1867 · 1867-04-07
At a meeting on April 7, 1867 in Charlotte's old Presbyterian church, the Catawba Presbytery of the Presbyterian Church agreed on a plan to establish a school for training Black preachers and teachers among the formerly enslaved, and selected ministers Samuel C. Alexander and Willis L. Miller as the school's first two professors.
Harding High SchoolSecond Ward High SchoolCentral High SchoolMecklenburg PresbyteryFirst United Presbyterian ChurchFirst Baptist Church WestCatawba NationGeorge AlexanderAbraham AlexanderWillis L. Miller
Source · checked 2026-08-13
1923
Second Ward High School opened at the corner of Alexander and First streets in Charlotte's Brooklyn neighborhood, becoming the city's first public high school for African American students; the same year the city opened Central High School for white students on Elizabeth Avenue.
Harding High SchoolSecond Ward High SchoolCentral High SchoolW.W. WardGeorge AlexanderAbraham Alexander
Source · checked 2026-08-13
1969
Second Ward High School was closed as part of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools' desegregation-era plan, one of five historically Black center-city schools (along with Fairview, Alexander Street, Bethune, and Isabella Wyche) that the school board voted to close that summer rather than fully integrate and maintain.
Harding High SchoolSecond Ward High SchoolCentral High SchoolW.W. WardGeorge AlexanderAbraham Alexander
Source · checked 2026-08-13