The marker above denoting the birthplace of President Andrew Johnson hasn’t recently returned, but I don’t think it has been here for that long either. According to Raleigh Boy, it was originally located in front of the Ambadassor Theater at the north end of the 100 block of Fayetteville Street and was removed in the mid-1970s during the conversion of that street into a pedestrian mall.
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Within the past couple of weeks, the giant stone housing a memorial marker denoting the location of the first Court House of Wake County has returned to its original location at the front of Bloomsbury Estates condos. It has been absent throughout the construction procress likely to avoid any possible unintended damage that could have occurred during that time. This is the second such marker to note the historical significance of this area. The first, located on the corner of Boylan Avenue and Morgan Street, marks the area known as Bloomsbury–the namesake of the condos nearing completion near the Boylan Wye.

The inscription reads:

First Court House for Wake County. Built – 1771. The first Court House, Prison, and Stocks for Wake County stood in this area. Erected by The Wake County Historical Society – 1983 -

This past Thursday while waiting for (a very delicious) Thanksgiving dinner at the home of some friends of mine, I decided to walk down to Big John’s Community Grocery, which is on the corner of Edenton Street and Idlewild Avenue. It’s within eyesight of their front porch, and I’ve witnessed some interesting activity there for some time. Curiosity got the better of me, so I decided to walk down to the store and talk to some of the people hanging around outside. While on my way there, I noticed the historic ground marker above.

The inscription reads:

Idlewild Neighborhood, 1891. Idlewild Avenue is the center of Idlewild, an early area of African-American home ownership named after the Battle Family Estate on Cotton Place south of New Bern Avenue. The Raleigh Land and Improvement Company subdivided Idlewild, and the neighborhood grew in the early twentieth century. Bounded by Swain St. on west, Oakwood Avenue on north, Tarboro Road on east, and Edenton Street on south.

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The inscription on the marker reads:

First NC State Fair sponsored by the state agricultural society the fair was held here, October 18-21, 1853. New Bern Avenue and corner of Tarboro Road on site of Dept. of Motor Vehicles. The state fair, with its large racetrack, was two blocks south, between Hargett, Tarboro, and Davie Streets. It operated from 1853 to 1872, with exception of Civil War years, when it served as a millitary training camp. The “Fairgrounds Hospital”, the first millitary hospital in North Carolina, was established here in 1861.

This is the second sidewalk marker covered on this blog. The first was Raleigh At Four Hundred Acres. The second location of the North Carolina state fair was located on the present day location of Fairmont Methodist Church and Horse Track Alley.