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Article: Charlotte
- Article from:
- Dictionary of American History
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 The Gale Group Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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CHARLOTTE
CHARLOTTE
(North Carolina). In the mid-eighteenth century, Scotch-Irish settlers moved west from the Carolina coastal plain, and German families traveled through the valley of Virginia to settle in the region called the Piedmont. There, a small town took shape at the intersection of two Indian trading paths. Settlers called it "Charlotte," after Queen Charlotte of Mecklenburg, Germany. By 1850, the modest settlement had fewer than 2,500 inhabitants. The arrival of the railroad connected the landlocked town with the markets of the Northeast and the fertile fields of the Deep South. After the Civil War (1861
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1865), the city resumed railroad building, extending as many as ...