White Street downtown was a busy place
100 Years of History By Carol Pelosi In the decade between 1910 and 1920, the businesses along South White Street provided goods and services for the 300 to 400 college students and 20 or so professors, for the 1,443 residents of the town and for the numerous farmers of the area. The town fathers worried about parking space for all the horse and mule teams when the farmers came to town to shop on Saturday. Cotton was the biggest cash crop. Its importance had grown since 1869 when Peterson Dunn was presented a silver cup for shipping the county’s first bale of cotton. The Dunn family had been in the area since 1781 when John Dunn moved from Virginia and bought land in what is now Franklin County. His son, Bolling, bought an original land grant just north of the Neuse River from Francis Perry – land where Riverplace, once