Settling and founding surveyed the eventual county and dubbed the area the "Land of Eden". Prior to European colonization, the area eventually comprising Rockingham County was inhabited by
Cheraw/Saura Native Americans. In the 1600s they inhabited several small settlements along the
Dan River, though around 1710 they migrated towards
South Carolina. Between 1728 and 1733, the Dan River Valley in the
Granville District was surveyed by
William Byrd II as part of efforts to delineate the North Carolina-Virginia border. He soon thereafter purchased 20,000 acres of the land, which he described as the "
Land of Eden" to attract prospective farmers. The region's first white settlers came from
Pennsylvania,
New Jersey,
Maryland, and Virginia and were of German, English, Scottish, and Irish descent. Some had wealthy backgrounds, but most were poor. Some local white men served in
militias during the
American Revolutionary War. American troops under General
Nathanael Greene and British troops under General
Charles Cornwallis moved through the area around the time of the
Battle of Guilford Court House in 1781. The
North Carolina General Assembly created Rockingham County from a northern portion of
Guilford County on December 29, 1785. It was named for
Charles Watson-Wentworth, 2nd Marquess of Rockingham, Settlement, mostly by
Scotch-Irish Americans, continued from 1785 up until 1800. Rockingham County's first court session was convened near Eagle Falls south of the Dan River in February 1786. The following year a wooden courthouse was erected near the center of the county and the community of Rockingham Courthouse was established. The community was renamed
Wentworth in 1798, Wentworth remained a poor and sparse community well into the early 1800s, sustained only by business related to governmental affairs. Leaksville was established in 1795 in an attempt to build a trading community near the confluence of the Dan and
Smith rivers.
Antebellum and Civil War By the early 1800s, economic activity in Rockingham County was largely centered around small farms in hilly areas and a handful of plantations near the rivers. Most farmers were engaged in subsistence operations, with tobacco planted as the area's primary
cash crop. The economy began to diversify after 1812. In 1813,
John Motley Morehead erected the county's first cotton mill at the confluence of the Dan and Smith rivers in Leaksville. In 1818 the town of
Madison was platted and the trading post of Jackson was established at Eagle Falls. By 1831, Leaksville hosted an oil mill, sawmill, and cotton gin. Nevertheless, throughout most of the 1800s, tobacco was the main source of economic activity in Rockingham County, with the towns of Madison, Leaksville, and Reidsville serving as market towns for the crop. Following the passage of public school legislation, in 1840 the first public school in North Carolina opened in Rockingham County. A tobacco manufacturing facility was opened in Reidsville in 1856, At the time of its construction, the Avalon Mill was the largest textile manufacturing plant in the state. The Avalon Mill burned down in 1911, and the rest of the community was integrated into Mayodan. By 1920, the textile operations in the area had consolidated in the latter town as the Washington Mills, making Mayodan the center of western Rockingham's textile industry. By the 1890s, Morehead had grouped his textile holdings into two companies, the Leaksville Cotton and Woolen Mill Company and the Spray Water Power and Land Company, and turned them over to his son-in-law,
Frank Mebane. Under Mebane's direction and with the backing of northern investors, the Spray Water Power and Land Company, between 1898 and 1906, built six new cotton mills and created a warehouse company. The expansion of the textile industry led to the growth of two new mill communities in the vicinity of Leaksville, Spray and Draper. The three communities collectively became known as the "Tri-Cities". One of Mebane's holdings, the
Spray Cotton Mills company, was sold to a private owner in 1897. Economic differences between the tobacco-heavy Reidsville area and the textile-based Leaksville-Draper-Spray area also created political fault lines during the early 20th century. Social, political, and economic rivalries also emerged between Reidsville, Leaksville-Draper-Spray, and the western Rockingham towns of Madison, Mayodan, and Stoneville. Under American Tobacco's control, the factory quickly rose to become Reidsville's most significant industry and the county's largest taxpayer. Offering high wages to workers, in the 1940s and 1950s it served as its corporate owner's flagship facility and peaked with the employment of 2,000 workers. The consolidation led Eden to surpass Reidsville as the county's largest city.
Economic decline The textile industry struggled nationally in the 1980s and 1990s. Stoneville's major employer, a furniture factory, filed for bankruptcy in 1990. The tornado damaged homes and a textile mill in Mayodan, destroyed several buildings in Stoneville's main business district, and killed two people. In 1999, the former Washington Mills plant in Mayodan closed. Pluma closed its Eden plant in 1999, Spray Cotton Mills closed its yarn mill in 2001, and Pillowtex collapsed in 2003. Some former workers moved to larger cities outside the county in search of jobs. In February 2014, a coal
ash pond in Eden at
Duke Power's
Dan River Steam Station spilled into the Dan River. ==Geography==