Statesville: Fourth Creek and the Scots-Irish Frontier

Statesville, North Carolina, takes its name from its role as seat of Iredell County, but its roots go back to seventeen fifty-three, when Scots-Irish Presbyterians and German Lutherans migrating south from Pennsylvania chose this stretch of Piedmont for its fertile soil and plentiful game. They called their settlement Fourth Creek Congregation, named for the fourth creek west of the older town of Salisbury.

The community anchored itself around a log meeting house where the Presbyterians worshipped, and the site of that first church is still home to First Presbyterian Church today. Iredell County was carved from Rowan County in seventeen eighty-eight and named for James Iredell, one of the first justices appointed to the United States Supreme Court by George Washington. The town was formally established in seventeen eighty-nine, just as North Carolina joined the new nation. By eighteen thirty-three its leaders were already laying track to connect the Piedmont to the broader country.