North Carolina Railroad

"North Carolina Railroad Has Proved Profitable Investment--It Lent Money to Confederacy and Has Returned State and Individual Stockholders Profit of More Than $14,000,000 in 94 Years"

Raleigh, Feb 9, 1944--(AP)--A $4,000,000 investment which survived and lent money heavily to the Confederate States in the Civil War, has returned the State of North Carolina and hundreds of individual stockholders a profit of more than $14,000,000 in 94 years. The investment is the North Carolina railroad, now owned by the North Carolina railroad company -- or the State and its hundreds of co-partners. Chartered in 1849, it now is under lease to the Southern Railway company for 99 years at a net annual rent of 7.15 percent of the owners net capital stock -- or $214,007 a year. Add to that the revenues derived from special dividends from the sale of special rights and property along the line itself. Taken over a period of 47 years since the lease was signed, the operating company now has paid to the owners something like $10,058,294 in rental percentage payments alone. At the end of the 99 years a new lease must be signed or the property goes back to the owners.

Danville, Virginia: Early History

"Wynne's Falls Provided Site For City To Grow" by John H. Brubaker III

As if the place just grew, like Harriet Beecher Stowe's Topsy, the origins of Danville are frustratingly vague because its first settlers did not keep written records of life on the south side of the Dan. It is known from early land records that the first man to ask the Commonwealth for land of his own within what has become the City of Danville was William Wynne, a justice of Brunswick County. He received 200 acres on the south side of the Dan in 1738, at which time Danville, Pittsylvania County and all the land around them in Virginia were a part of Brunswick. Later he moved his family to this area and settled at the falls on the river.