Author: Andrew Duppstadt, DNCR
This article is scheduled to appear in Recall, the magazine of the North Carolina Military Historical Society, and is published here with permission.
Centrally located in eastern North Carolina, Lenoir County emerged in 1791 from the abolished Dobbs County. Officials named the county in honor of William Lenoir, one of the heroes of the Battle of Kings Mountain during the American Revolution. On three separate occasions (1798, 1804, and 1819) parts of Craven County were annexed to Lenoir. Lenoir County is bounded by Craven, Jones, Duplin, Wayne, Greene, and Pitt counties.
Born in 1751, William Lenoir was the youngest of ten children in a French Huguenot family from Virginia. The family moved to eastern North Carolina when William was five years old, where he received little to no formal education. Even so, he could read and write Latin, Greek, and French, and worked first as a teacher and schoolmaster before going into surveying. This led him to settle in western North Carolina in the 1770s. During the American Revolution, he served first in the Surry County, then the Wilkes County Militia and saw action at Kings Mountain, Stono Ferry, the siege of Savannah, and Pyle’s Massacre. Following the war, he and his wife settled at their home named Fort Defiance, which is now a tourist attraction in Caldwell County. Lenoir was an anti-Federalist and served in many civil and political positions after the war including Clerk of Court for Wilkes County, Board of Trustees for the University of North Carolina, fourteen years in the State Legislature, including five years as Speaker of the Senate, and a delegate to both the Hillsborough (1788) and Fayetteville (1789) conventions that voted on approval and ratification of the United States Constitution. He died in 1839, just shy of his eighty-eighth birthday. Lenoir County, Tennessee, and the town of Lenoir, North Carolina, are also named for him.
Lenoir County encompasses 401 square miles and has a population of just over 55,000 residents. The county seat is Kinston, with a population of approximately 20,000. LaGrange and Pink Hill are the only other incorporated towns, and there are several unincorporated communities within the county. The Neuse River is a predominant feature in the county. The county is home to the Kinston Regional Jetport and the Global TransPark, which generates jobs in the aeronautics and aviation industries. The county is largely rural and agricultural. Kinston is home to Lenoir Community College, which also has campuses in neighboring Jones and Greene counties. Local attractions include the CSS Neuse Museum, Governor Richard Caswell Memorial State Historic Site, Neuseway Nature Center and Planetarium, Lion’s Waterpark, Down East Bird Dawgs minor league baseball, and Mother Earth Brewing. Lenoir County and Kinston are well-known as being home to top- quality athletes and entertainers, including multiple NBA and NFL players, and numerous jazz and blues musicians. Despite being named for a prominent figure of the American Revolution, Lenoir County is known primarily for its Civil War history, which includes the aforementioned CSS Neuse and two Civil War battlefields.
For more information and to learn more, visit: https://www.ncmilitaryhistoricalsociety.org/