Introduction

Arthur Dobbs (1689-1765) served as the Royal Governor of the North Carolina Colony from 1754-64. An Irishman by birth, Dobbs saw his adopted home through a period of immense upheaval. His term is marked by the French and Indian War, colonists' changing relations with American Indians, and Dobbs' frequent disagreements with the North Carolina Colonial Assembly.

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Governor Dobbs' arrival in North Carolina coincided with the beginning of the French and Indian War in 1754 when the British learned that French fur traders were moving into a region of the Ohio Valley that England had claimed.

Dobbs recruited a group of North Carolinians to go on a military expedition under General Braddock to attack the French in the Ohio Valley. He sent the colony's recruits under the command of his son, Captain Edward Brice Dobbs.

French troops and their American Indian allies ambushed the British expedition at the Battle of Monongahela in July 1755, killing General Edward Braddock and igniting a large-scale war.

In response to the threat of a coming war, Governor Dobbs ordered the establishment of a fort on the colony's western frontier (now Statesville) called Ft. Dobbs, which is now a state historic site.

While there were never any major battles in North Carolina, Governor Dobbs often found himself at odds with the North Carolina Colonial Assembly about how many men they should recruit for the war effort and how the colony could pay them each year.

Picture of the modern reconstruction of Fort Dobbs, courtesy NC State Historic Sites.

In response to the King's demands for troops the Assembly questioned Dobbs, asking why should North Carolina raise troops to fight outside of the colony when they needed better security along their own frontiers? Moreover, troops were expensive and the assembly feared that they could pay the militia with costs for everything rising due to the war.

This tension between the assembly and Dobbs was major obstacle for the governor. In writing about the assembly, Dobbs often mentioned his "strong struggle" with them, how the representatives were "as obstinate as mules." He found some members "unreasonable and indecent" and even tried to have several colonial officers' dismissal for supposed misconduct, including John Rutherfurd and John Starkey.

Dobbs' term saw the colony through the rest of the French and Indian War, which ended in 1763. For North Carolina, the war had meant an economic downturn, frequent skirmished between western settlers and the Cherokee people, and partisan fighting between Dobbs and the Assembly. In the end, these struggles would contribute to the coming American Revolution.

Map of New Bern, North Carolina, where the North Carolina Colonial Assembly frequently met.

One of the most notable military commissions that Governor Dobbs granted was to John Dalrymple as the Commander of Fort Johnston on the Cape Fear River.

Sometime prior to 1760, Dalrymple left his post and went to England without asking for Dobbs' approval, leaving the fort without a commander in wartime.

Dalrymple tried to come back to his post in 1762 and Dobbs ordered him under arrest for deserting his post. Dalrymple was a "Reptile," with "ill Character" Dobbs wrote, and claimed General Braddock had once said:

Diagram of Fort Johnston, where Dalrymple assumed command and was later imprisoned

While Jeffery Amherst, the Commander of all British forces in North America figured out what to do with him, Dalrymple stayed under arrest at Fort Johnston.

In February 1763, while under confinement, Dalrymple asked Michael Sissholt, the fort's new commanding officer, to come in his room and drink some punch with him. When Sissholt agreed, Dalrymple trapped him in the room and challenged him him to a duel, offering him a sword or a stick and proclaiming that either he or Sissholt "should die on the Spot."

Sissholt avoided the fight, but Dalrymple continued to be combative. That summer, while still under arrest, Dalrymple shot at the fort's new commanding officer, John Paine, through the window of his room.

By September, Dobbs ordered him to leave the fort and go under house arrest. Instead, Dalrymple left North Carolina altogether and went to New York, where Dobbs never heard from him again.

In his spare time, Arthur Dobbs enjoyed gardening, botany, and the natural sciences.

He explored the colony's countryside extensively and wrote several reports about his observations of North Carolina waterways, geography, climate, and soil.

In 1759, Dobbs made the first known European observation of the Venus Flytrap, a plant unique to the Carolina Coast, which Dobbs called a "Catch Fly Sensitive which Closes upon any thing that touches it."

Due in part to Dobbs' discovery, the flytrap is now the official carnivorous plant of North Carolina.

Drawing of the Venus Flytrap plant by John Ellis, (1770), courtesy Biodiversity Heritage Library

Dobbs, who had been widowed prior to his arrival in North Carolina, remarried in 1762 at Brunswick Town to Justina Davis, aged 15. She was 58 years his junior.

Despite the age difference, surviving letters about & from Justina indicate that the pair shared a mutual affection and upon his death, she wrote, "I have Lost one of the best and tenderest of Husbands."

After the Governor's death in 1765, Justina married Abner Nash, 2nd Governor of the State of North Carolina. She died in 1771 at age 26.

Justina Dobbs Nash's gravestone in the Halifax Colonial Cemetery, courtesy Historic Halifax

Later photograph of the shipyard at Wilmington, where much of the colony's trade went through, courtesy State Archives of North Carolina

Art from a November 20, 1765 issue of the North Carolina Gazette protesting the Stamp Act, courtesy State Archives of North Carolina

Arthur Dobbs was a firm supporter of the King, but some issues he faced during his term were signs of the eventual American Revolution which would come a decade later.

Dobbs frequently found fault with colonial trade laws, which required British colonies to trade with England only, but not with one another. This law helped the English economy, but it made it hard for North Carolina's economy to develop. Dobbs urged the King to allow direct trade between NC and Ireland, but was refused.

Dobbs wasn't the only one frustrated. Many colonists grew increasingly upset about having to export their raw materials cheaply and in return having to buy manufactured good from Britain at high prices.

This trading system was by design, as it enriched England and kept colonies dependent, but colonists' feelings of exploitation in response to this system would be a factor in colonists' deciding to declare independence.

Another major sign of the coming revolution was one of the last acts that happened during Dobbs' administration: the Stamp Act.

Designed to help the British Treasury regain the money it lost fighting the Seven Years War, many colonists, including many in North Carolina, denounced the act as intolerable because they had not consented to the law.

Dobbs frequently fought with the Assembly about who had to right to make laws for the colony, was it the king or the people? Now, the Stamp Act Crisis heightened tensions between the Crown and the local Colonial government, putting colonists on a path towards revolution.

Citing poor health and a wish to settle his affairs back at home in Ireland, Dobbs was granted a temporary leave of absence from the governorship in May 1764.

Dobbs' replacement was William Tryon, who arrived in the colony in October 1764.

In March 1765 while preparing to leave the colony, Dobbs caught a cold and died, aged 75.

Dobbs was buried in St. Phillip's Church at Brunswick Town, not far from his home, survived by his wife Justina. Tryon assumed permanent governorship of the colony.

Exterior of St. Phillip's Church in Brunswick Town, where Dobbs is buried, courtesy State Archives of North Carolina

In the late morning hours of January 6, 1921, Thomas W. Bickett peeled himself from the comfort of his bed and dressed for his final trip as governor from the Executive Mansion to the State Capitol. Shortly before noon, he took his place at the dais in the House chamber, and in a booming, determined voice greeted the “Lady and Gentlemen of the General Assembly.” Members of the press took note of his drastic change in appearance. In the course of the four years of his administration, Bickett's hair had conspicuously transformed from a healthy salt and pepper to a stark white. He didn’t look frail or fragile, per se, but just substantially older than the spry man who first arrived for inauguration four Januaries prior. Perhaps it was the illness he was then fighting. Or perhaps the trying years of World War I had ground him up a bit.

Bickett had, after all, put in place the administrative machinery that sent more than 2,300 men to their wartime deaths. Thousands more returned to North Carolina “shell shocked” and struggled to rejoin their communities. These sacrifices were not lost on Bickett, the son of one Confederate veteran, the son-in-law of another. Though he had publicly lauded the state’s role in the world war, Bickett's personal thoughts about his own public service during that same time might never be known. No historian or archivist has yet managed to turn up a journal or even much in the way of personal correspondence that might provide some insight into Bickett’s intimate feelings on the matter.

Other issues, too, had each taken their pound of flesh. Lock outs and strikes ground manufacturing to a halt, the confrontations between capital and labor often turning violent. White North Carolinians continued their campaign of racial terror, lynching seven Black men—including a war veteran in uniform—and garnering national criticism of both the state and its chief executive. The influenza pandemic of 1918–1919 claimed the lives of an estimated 13,000 state citizens, leaving not a single community unscathed. The movement for women’s suffrage advanced rapidly, galvanized by the war’s societal restructuring, threatening to split his party in two. Nothing had come easy for Bickett, who, by the end of his term, seemed to wear the stress of it all like a wet wool cloak he could not shake from his shoulders.

Nevertheless, there he stood, one last time, before the legislature—noticeably older and quietly ill. Looking out over the gathered assembly, which for the first time included a woman, Bickett made known his lack of interest in celebrating his own accomplishments. “I do not propose to review my own administration,” he declared to the hushed crowd. “What is written is written, and will, in the fullness of time, be fairly appraised by the calm judgment of history.” For the Monroe-schoolboy-turned-Louisburg-lawyer, it was important that humility, above all else, characterize the closing chapter of his political career.

He could not have known then, standing there, a little tired, a little sick, that he would return to the Capitol just eleven months later—to lie in state. Any hope that he might run for United States Senate or any political office beyond that of the governorship had officially come to an end when Bickett breathed his last, shortly after Christmas Day, 1921. At once the champion of betterment for the people of North Carolina and also the defender of well-entrenched societal norms governing race, class, and sex, Bickett leaves behind him a complicated legacy that blurs the line between progressivism and conservatism. What results, for modern scholars of Bickett’s administration, is a unique and at times confounding convergence of old south and new, tradition and modernity, progress and stagnation.

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NASA tested the Mercury-Redstone system with a chimpanzee named Ham before sending Alan B. Shepard into suborbital flight. Courtesy NASA. 

Helicopter 44, of Marine Corps squadron HMR-262, served as the primary recovery vehicle for Mercury-Redstone 3. Newport resident George Cox can be seen in the cargo opening. Shepard and his capsule, Freedom 7, hang tethered below the craft. Courtesy NASA.

Eleven minutes after splashdown, Wayne Koons and George Cox moved in to recover Freedom 7 and astronaut Alan B. Shepard. Here, Cox winches up Shepard, as the Freedom 7 capsule hangs below. Courtesy NASA.

This letter from astronaut Alan B. Shepard to pilots Wayne Koons and George Cox thanks them for their "prompt and efficient service" during the recovery efforts of Mercury-Redstone 3. Courtesy George F. Cox.

During the recovery of Mercury-Redstone 4, the hatch of astronaut Virgil "Gus" Grissom's Liberty Bell 7 capsule jettisoned prematurely. Water poured into the capsule as Grissom made a desperate escape. Helicopter 32, of HMR-262, managed to hook the capsule and attempted to pull it out of the water. Water can be seen pouring from the hatch opening in this photo. Courtesy NASA.

George Cox's helicopter, number 30, flew in to rescue a drowning Grissom, whose suit had filled with water. As co-pilot on the mission, Cox operated the winch that pulled Grissom to safety. Courtesy NASA.

James L. Lewis, pilot of helicopter 32, was forced to cut the flooded Liberty Bell 7 loose when an alarm sounded. The capsule sank three miles to the ocean floor and remained there until it was recovered by salvage experts in 1999. The recovered capsule is pictured here following the salvage operation on July 21, 1999. Courtesy NASA.

Official portrait of Samuel Beddingfield, taken June 18, 1963. Courtesy Nan Lafferty.

During Mercury, a large part of Beddingfield's responsibilities included ensuring proper weight and balance of the capsule. Here, he can be seen installing rockets (seated on crate, right), alongside several colleagues, during the weight and balance process ahead of Mercury-Atlas 1 on July 25, 1960. Courtesy Nan Beddingfield.

Beddingfield and Gus Grissom had been good friends ever since their days at Wright Patterson Air Force Base. Beddingfield, far left, talks with two unidentified colleagues and astronaut Gus Grissom, far right, ahead of the Mercury-Redstone 4 flight. The Redstone rocket that carried Grissom into suborbital flight can be seen in the background. Courtesy Nan Lafferty.

Following the successful flight of Mercury-Atlas 6, Beddingfield (crouched beneath capsule, holding book) and colleagues inspected the Friendship 7 capsule. Courtesy NASA.

On February 20, 1962, Beddingfield (far left) presented the graphic design work for Friendship 7 to astronaut John Glenn (center) ahead of America's first orbital flight. Courtesy NASA.

Beddingfield, right, and two other engineers run through the weight and balance process with astronaut Walter Schirra on July 7, 1965, ahead of his Mercury-Atlas 8 flight. Courtesy Nan Lafferty.

In the white room on Pad 19, Beddingfield observes the "hard mate" of Gemini-Titan 3 on February 17, 1965. Courtesy Nan Lafferty

Beddingfield and another man inspect parachutes for a Gemini flight on September 19, 1966. Courtesy Nan Lafferty.

The most trying time of Beddingfield's career came in 1967, when fire erupted inside the Apollo 1 capsule, claiming the lives of Ed White, Roger Chaffee, and Gus Grissom. In a 1983 interview, Beddingfield reflected briefly on the accident, his grief over the loss of his good friend Grissom still palpable: "That was the most traumatic thing for me. At that time, I was responsible for the emergency egress." Following the accident, Beddingfield was charged with overseeing the disassembly and storage of the capsule, a job that took six months. Courtesy Nan Lafferty.

On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union successfully launched the world’s first satellite, a beach-ball–sized metal sphere called Sputnik.

During its three-week orbit, the satellite both captivated and terrified the American public. In response, the United States organized a new government agency—the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, or NASA—and tasked it with researching flight inside and outside the Earth’s atmosphere. The space race had officially begun.

When NASA put out the call for talented engineers, mathematicians, scientists, and more, North Carolinians—many of whom had received their training at hallowed state institutions like UNC Chapel Hill, North Carolina State University, and UNC Greensboro—came forward in droves. They moved, sometimes far from their families and hometowns, to NASA facilities in Texas, Florida, and Virginia with one unifying goal in mind: to put a man on the Moon.