Raleigh, NC news and local guide

Joel Lane petitioned the General Assembly in December 1770 for a new county, and Wake County, named for Margaret Wake Tryon, the governor's wife, was created on January 5, 1771. During the Revolution the capital at New Bern became unsafe, and the legislature wanted a capital in the center of the state, out of reach of attack from the coast. Raleigh was chosen in 1788 and established in 1792 as the state capital and county seat. It was incorporated on December 31, 1792, and named for Sir Walter Raleigh, sponsor of the lost colony on Roanoke Island. No town existed on the site before, and Raleigh is one of the few American cities planned and built to be a state capital. Its grid, with a central square and a square in each corner, was based on Thomas Holme's 1682 plan of Philadelphia. The legislature first met there in December 1794.

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Andrew Johnson, the 17th president, was born at Casso's Inn in Raleigh in 1808. Fire destroyed the State House in 1831, and the new Capitol, built of gneiss hauled on the state's first railroad, was finished in 1840. The first State Fair was held near Raleigh in 1853. North Carolina seceded on May 20, 1861. As General William T. Sherman approached in April 1865, Governor Zebulon Vance fled and left Mayor William H. Harrison authority to surrender. On the morning of April 13, 1865, Harrison and others met General Hugh Judson Kilpatrick, offering no resistance, and Kilpatrick agreed to protect the city from destruction. Sources Wikipedia: Raleigh, North Carolina