Voices of a City: Bewitching Country

Life before 1808

It is perhaps the most pleasing, the most bewitching country which the continent affords.
French American writer J. Hector St. John De Crèvecoeur, 1782

Long before Greensboro’s creation in 1808, people lived, worked and fought on this land.

Generations migrated to the Carolina backcountry, lured by lush forests and abundant land. Generations of Native Americans, Europeans and Africans, whose voices echo through artifacts and the written word.

Native American artisans created tools and products, pieces that could be used at home or traded. Those pieces spoke alluringly to trading partners, especially ambitious Europeans. Newcomers to this beautiful, unfamiliar land – German-speaking Lutherans, Scots-Irish Presbyterians, enslaved Africans and English Quakers – voiced their commonalities and differences with each other. When those voices became filled with political conflict, what happened was the furor of war.

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