Swepsonville is an N.C. town with a unique history

Roads connecting rural America are often referred to as “blue highways” because they were shown in blue ink on the old-style Rand McNally road atlas. 

North Carolina has a plethora of blue highways, running through all sorts of interesting villages – like Swepsonville in Alamance County. (No other U.S. state has a Swepsonville.) 

Located on the Haw River, where N.C. Route 54 meets N.C. Route 119, “our Swepsonville” took its name from George William Swepson, who built a massive cotton mill there in 1868. (In its prime, the factory employed 1,200 people.)

 

George Swepson

The mill was built during the Reconstruction period after the Civil War, and manufacturing jobs were highly coveted. The people of Alamance County revered Swepson. Everyone in the area “admired him, respected him and loved him,” noted historian Mark Chilton. 

In his blog, Chilton cited a 10-year-old who worked the night shift at the Swepsonville mill as bobbin boy who commented that Swepson was “a good man, a strong man, a Southern gentleman. He appreciated the humanity of his employees and was interested in them personally. There was none of the ‘soulless magnate’ about him.”

 

Mark Chilton

Swepson also was politically connected. He married Virginia Yancey, a daughter of Bartlett Yancey of Caswell County, who served in the U.S. Congress as well as the N.C. Senate.) 

Swepson’s brother-in-law Giles Mebane was a “pillar of integrity in Alamance County” and a member of the N.C. House of Commons. (Mebane married Mary Yancey, Virginia’s older sister.) 

Swepson had other friends in high places. He was a chum of N.C. Gov. William Woods Holden.

 

Gov. Holden

Yet, Swepson proved to be a “strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.” 

The late William S. Powell, an esteemed North Carolina historian, dubbed Swepson “one of the chief scalawags and greatest rascals” in North Carolina history.

 

William Powell

Robert J. Wyllie, a contributor to NCPedia, said that Swepson “enjoyed considerable success” as a banker, textile manufacturer, stockbroker, liquor wholesaler, real estate developer and a land speculator.” 

“A dreamer and a planner, he met his downfall by using other people’s money to finance his projects,” Wyllie said. 

As president of the Western North Carolina Railroad, Swepson became involved with “the notorious carpetbagger” Milton Smith Littlefield of New York, who was a Union general during the Civil War. In 1868-69, Swepson and Littlefield” defrauded the state of an estimated $4 million in bonds that were intended for a western extension of the North Carolina Railroad” from Salisbury to Morganton, Wyllie wrote.

 Milton Littlefield

“This they accomplished through forged proxies, stock manipulation, bribes, crooked bookkeeping and numerous other intrigues,” Wyllie added. 

“Swepson was indicted for embezzlement, but probably due to the influence of highly placed friends, he was never convicted. The fraud delayed construction of the eastern extension of the Western North Carolina Railroad until 1880 and thus resulted in substantial economic loss to the region.” 

Efforts to connect Gov. Holden to Swepson’s machinations were unsuccessful, but Gov. Holden was impeached by the North Carolina house in 1870 “for high crimes and misdemeanors.” 

Impeachment charges stemmed from Gov. Holden’s decisions to use the state militia to suppress Ku Klux Klan terrorism activities in the state. The N.C. senate voted along party lines in 1871 to convict Gov. Holden, a Republican, and remove him from office. 

In 2011, the N.C. senate voted unanimously to grant a pardon posthumously to Gov. Holden. 

“Today, we correct a 140-year-old wrong,” Sen. Neal Hunt told the Reuters news service. 

Something to do in Swepsonville: Kayak the Haw River. It’s a 5.5-mile paddle from Swepsonville to Saxapahaw.