Early history The earliest inhabitants of the land eventually comprising Richmond County were
Cheraw Native Americans. The county seat was established at Richmond Court House, which was renamed
Rockingham in 1785 in homage to
Charles Watson-Wentworth, 2nd Marquess of Rockingham, a British politician who had friendly relations with the Americans. During the
American Revolutionary War, Richmond was afflicted by numerous
Loyalist raids. By 1790, the county had 5,885 residents, with 583 of them being slaves. Following the war, area farmers moved away from cattle switched to growing corn, oats, indigo, and cotton. In 1837, the county's first textile mill, Richmond Manufacturing Company, was built. A growth in cotton production, concentrated in the western portion of the county, led the enslaved population to increase to the point where they made up half of local residents. Around 1850 the largely unused Sandhills region in the eastern section of the county began to be exploited by the
naval stores industry, particularly for the harvest of
turpentine from
longleaf pines. Railway service was introduced in Richmond in 1861.
Civil War and Reconstruction era During the
American Civil War, Richmond County had troops serve in various units of the
Confederate States Army, including the Pee Dee Guards, Scotch Boys, and the Harrington Light Artillery. Federal troops under General
William Tecumseh Sherman entered Richmond County in March 1865. Confederate troops fled, and the federal forces sabotaged local industry before moving north. The Richmond Manufacturing Company mill, having been burned, was rebuilt as the Great Falls Mill in 1869. That year rail service was extended to Rockingham. A second cotton mill was built in 1876 and rapidly followed by more textile plants. Cotton production increased after the war and remained a significant crop in the county until the mid-1900s. Farmers also began diversifying their crops, with tobacco and peach trees growing in popularity, with peach orchards being concentrated in the
Sandhills. By the late 1800s, Richmond County had a majority black population and tended to support the
Republican Party in elections, while the state of North Carolina was dominated by the
Democratic Party. In response to this, white Democrats built up a political base in
Laurinburg. During the state legislative elections of 1898, Democrats organized intensely in the area to unseat the
Fusionist coalition of
state Republicans and
Populists, including the deployment of paramilitary
Red Shirts in Laurinburg to intimidate blacks and other opponents at the polls. Democrats regained a majority in the General Assembly. In tribute to the efforts of Democrats in Laurinburg, on February 20, 1899, the assembly split off the town and the surrounding area from Richmond County and created the new
Scotland County, which began operating as an effective unit of government in December the following year.
Development (pictured in 1912) developed as a railway town in the early 1900s. At the turn of the century, Richmond County's economy revolved around agriculture and textile mills in Rockingham. In the early 1900s,
Hamlet grew as a center for the
Seaboard Air Line Railroad, which had five lines cross through the town. The railway created numerous jobs and, in conjunction with the establishment of
Blewett Falls Dam and its hydroelectric power, facilitated the expansion of the textile industry. By the end of
World War II, Richmond County hosted ten textile mills which employed as many as 15,000 people. Through the 1940s, most of the independent mills were acquired by larger outside corporations and many began producing non-cotton fabrics, facilitating a local decline in cotton production. Seaboard established an $11 million
classification yard, the first one in the
Southeastern United States, about one mile north of Hamlet in 1954. In 1968 the county, Rockingham, and Hamlet school systems merged. In November 1989, Chem-Nuclear Systems, the contractor in charge of constructing the disposal facility, announced a prospective Richmond County site for the nuclear waste. Local residents promptly formed For Richmond County Environment (FORRCE) to lobby against the site. The group attracted wide grassroots support across Richmond, including significant backing from both white and black communities and both of the county's major municipalities, Hamlet and Rockingham. FORRCE conducted an opposition
petition drive and obtained 26,756 signatures, over 60 percent of the county's total population. Under significant political pressure, local officials denounced the site, and 1,200 residents traveled to
Raleigh to deliver the FORRCE petition to the governor. In 1993, a state panel voted to move the site to
Wake County, but listed the Richmond location as its second choice. The project was later abandoned under scrutiny from state regulators. State authorities imposed a record fine upon the company for the violations and the incident brought negative national attention to the town. National declines in textiles through the 1990s and into the early 2000s further strained the county's economy; from 1993 to 2005, the county suffered nine textile mill closures and the loss of 1,730 mill jobs. Unemployment rates worsened after the
Great Recession commenced in December 2007. ==Geography==