The French Heritage of North Carolina

There is a subtle but significant French heritage in North Carolina. The first European explorers to the North Carolina region were, in fact, French (1524). French Huguenots migrated to the state as early as 1690, and many North Carolinians have family names of French origin. Towns such as Bath, Beaufort, New Bern, and La Grange are a testimony to French settlers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and the city of Fayetteville is named after the Marquis de Lafayette, a French ally during the American Revolution. Beyond names, North Carolina has many other remnants of the French presence sprinkled throughout the state. Built from materials gathered from archives, libraries, interviews, and photographs of locations relevant to the historical presence of the French in North Carolina, this book traces the French heritage in North Carolina from its origins to the present and tells the story of a little-known but important part of North Carolina's cultural history.