Edward B. Dudley: The People's Governor

Before eighteen thirty-six, North Carolinians had no say in who governed them. The state legislature chose the governor, a system unchanged since colonial days. Edward Bishop Dudley, born two miles west of this marker in seventeen eighty-nine, became the man who broke that pattern. Running as a Whig candidate, he won the first gubernatorial election decided by popular vote in North Carolina history, defeating his opponent by about four thousand ballots on August fourth, eighteen thirty-six.

Dudley served two terms as governor, but his other legacy may be even larger. He became the first president of the Wilmington and Weldon Railroad, which opened in eighteen forty as the longest railroad in the world, stretching one hundred sixty-one miles through the North Carolina coastal plain. That line transformed the state's economy, connecting inland farmers to Atlantic port markets for the first time. Dudley died in eighteen fifty-five, his birthplace now marked only by this roadside sign and the memory of a man who gave his neighbors both a vote and a railroad.