Layer by layer, through the years, we can see the Northeast’s history
Tuesday evening, May 25, Michelle Michael, a senior planner at the Wake Forest Planning Department, and others unveiled a project two years in the making that will be added to and enhanced for years, the Northeast Story Map.
A brilliant description of the historic African American area of Wake Forest, it uses aerial photography, GPS, historical maps and documents, oral histories and other means to describe the properties, over 500 individual platted properties, in the area. You can see – by moving a marker – how a house appeared and then disappeared. You can read about the families who lived there and what is known of their lives.
It is available now for every one in Wake Forest to explore by going to the Wake Forest website – www.wakeforestnc.gov – and typing in “Northeast Story Map” in the query box on the first page.
It was conceived by Michael, by a University of Georgia graduate student who was an intern at the planning department in 2019 Chris Robey, by a professor of history at North Carolina State University and others. Two groups of State students have worked on the project, fleshing out the story of a few properties, including the first school building for African American children, men and women.
The first school for Black children in Wake Forest was probably an outgrowth of the Sunday School at Olive Branch Baptist Church shortly after or even before the end of the Civil War. But three men bought an acre from W.G. Simmons, a Wake Forest College professor, in 1869 and built a school near the church that they described as a “Freedman’s school.” A Wake Forest woman remembers what her mother told her about attending that school.
But you have to see this remarkable construct of history that reaches out to the Wake Forest Historical Museum, where they have recorded oral histories for years. To the Town of Wake Forest which has the Sanborn insurance maps, accurately recording the homes, businesses and streets in a changing town.
Go look at the Story Map. You will be amazed.
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