Mebane: The Railroad Town Named for a Revolutionary Soldier

The North Carolina Railroad reached this corner of Alamance County in the eighteen fifties, but the community that formed around the tracks did not get its official name until eighteen eighty-one, when it incorporated as Mebanesville. Two years later, the name was shortened to Mebane.

The namesake was Brigadier General Alexander Mebane, an officer of the North Carolina Militia during the Revolutionary War and a member of Congress in the seventeen nineties, who lived at nearby Hawfields.

The same year of incorporation, the White Furniture Company was organized here, anchoring Mebane in the furniture manufacturing tradition that defined much of the North Carolina Piedmont. Mebane spent most of the twentieth century as a quiet mill town along the railroad corridor between Greensboro and Durham. In recent decades it has grown rapidly as residents look for smaller-town alternatives within commuting range of the Research Triangle.