Qualla: Cumberland County, North Carolina

Cumberland County, North Carolina: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Gerry Dincher, CC BY-SA 2.0. There is an irony in the name that hides in plain sight. Cumberland County was carved out of Bladen County in 1754 and named for Prince William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, the British general who broke the Highland Scottish clans at Culloden eight years earlier. The same Highland families he scattered then sailed for the Cape Fear River - and many of them settled here. They named their new town for the Marquis de Lafayette, the French general who helped win American independence from the same British crown the Duke had served. The county is full of these doublings: Confederate, Union, Black, white, military, civilian. Cumberland holds all of them at once.

Image: Gerry Dincher | CC BY-SA 2.0

Cumberland County, North Carolina: From Fayette to Cumberland and Back

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit KMaynerECU, CC BY-SA 3.0. In July 1784, the General Assembly briefly renamed the county Fayette in honor of Lafayette. Three months later they restored Cumberland. For one strange autumn the place existed under both names - the formal records said Fayette County, the people kept saying Cumberland. The bou...

Image: KMaynerECU | CC BY-SA 3.0

Cumberland County, North Carolina: Bragg and Liberty and Bragg Again

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit RadioFan at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0. The geography of Cumberland County shifted permanently when the Army established Camp Bragg in 1918, on the sandhills just north of Fayetteville. Renamed Fort Bragg in 1922, it grew into the largest U.S. military installation by population, eventually home to the 82nd Airborne Di...

Image: RadioFan at English Wikipedia | CC BY-SA 3.0

Cumberland County, North Carolina: Howard's Gift

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit US Census, Ruhrfisch, Public domain. Cumberland County is also where, in 1867, seven Black men pooled $136 to buy two lots on Gillespie Street in downtown Fayetteville. Matthew Leary, Andrew Jackson Chesnutt, Robert Simmons, George Grainger, Thomas Lomax, Nelson Carter, and David Bryant - their names belong on any h...

Image: US Census, Ruhrfisch | Public domain

Cumberland County, North Carolina: Cape Fear, Hay Street, Cross Creek

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit KMayner78 of English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Cape Fear River runs along the county's eastern edge, and Fayetteville grew where it meets Cross Creek - a confluence that for generations made the city a riverport for plantations upstream. Downtown still carries that geometry. Hay Street curves toward the river. The 1838 Co...

Image: KMayner78 of English Wikipedia | CC BY-SA 3.0