Qualla: Johnston County, North Carolina

Johnston County, North Carolina: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Hlj, Public domain. On March 19, 1865, eight weeks before the war ended, Confederate General Joseph Johnston launched the South's last serious offensive of the Civil War in a field near a Johnston County crossroads called Bentonville. He had perhaps 20,000 men. Sherman had 60,000. The fight lasted three days, and the largest Civil War battlefield in North Carolina now occupies that ground. Today Johnston County holds 215,999 people across 795 square miles of coastal-plain farmland and fast-growing suburbs east of Raleigh. The Bentonville battlefield is still there, and so is the tobacco-warehouse town of Smithfield where the actress Ava Gardner spent her childhood, and so is the Ham and Yam Festival every year, named for the two crops — pork and sweet potatoes — that Johnston County still grows better than almost anywhere else.

Image: Hlj | Public domain

Johnston County, North Carolina: Bordered by Counties That Took Pieces

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ricks99, CC BY-SA 4.0. Johnston County was established in 1746, named for Gabriel Johnston, governor of the province from 1734 to 1752. Over the next century, the General Assembly carved away at it — Orange County in 1752, Dobbs in 1758, Wake in 1770, Wilson in 1855. Each act of legislative subtraction...

Image: Ricks99 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Johnston County, North Carolina: The Battle of Bentonville

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit James Willamor (User:Bz3rk), CC BY-SA 2.0. Sherman's army was marching north from Georgia, having burned what he chose to burn, headed for a junction with Grant's forces in Virginia. Joseph Johnston gathered the scattered remnants of three Confederate commands — perhaps 20,000 men against Sherman's 60,000 — and attacked t...

Image: James Willamor (User:Bz3rk) | CC BY-SA 2.0

Johnston County, North Carolina: Ava Gardner's Grabtown

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Brisam, CC BY-SA 3.0. She was born in 1922 in a community called Grabtown, the youngest of seven children on a tobacco farm. The family lost the farm during the Depression and moved into a teacherage in Brogden. Her father died when she was fifteen. She graduated high school and left for New York a fe...

Image: Brisam | CC BY-SA 3.0

Johnston County, North Carolina: Cotton, Tobacco, Sweet Potatoes

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Indy beetle, CC0. Eli Whitney's cotton gin arrived in the county around 1804, and cotton became the dominant cash crop for half a century until the Panic of 1893 collapsed cotton prices and forced farmers into bright-leaf tobacco. Smithfield opened a tobacco market in 1898. The county's first bank...

Image: Indy beetle | CC0

Johnston County, North Carolina: Triangle Tides

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Abhiram Juvvadi, CC BY-SA 4.0. Johnston County is part of the Raleigh-Cary Metropolitan Statistical Area, and that affiliation has remade it. Clayton has become the county's largest community, drawing commuters who work in Raleigh and want yards. The 2020 census recorded 215,999 residents, up sharply from prev...

Image: Abhiram Juvvadi | CC BY-SA 4.0