Colonial beginnings The city was founded in the 1730s. After going through a series of different names (New Carthage, New London, Newton), its name became Wilmington. In the early 16th century, Italian explorer
Giovanni da Verrazzano, commissioned by the king of France with a French crew, was reportedly the first European to see this area, including the city's present site. The first permanent colonial settlement in the area was established in the 1720s by
European settlers. The settlement, founded by the first royal governor,
George Burrington, was called New Carthage, and then New Liverpool; it gradually took on the name New Town or Newton.
Governor Gabriel Johnston soon after established his government there for the
North Carolina colony. Some early settlers of Wilmington came from the
Albemarle and
Pamlico regions, as well as from the colonies of
Virginia and
South Carolina, but most new settlers migrated from the
northern colonies, the
West Indies, and
Northern Europe. Many of the early settlers were
indentured servants from Northern Europe. As the indentured servants gained their freedom and fewer could be persuaded to travel to North America because of improving conditions back home, the settlers imported an increasing number of
slaves to satisfy the labor demand. Many worked in the port as laborers, and some in ship-related trades.
Naval stores and lumber fueled the region's economy, both before and after the
American Revolution. During the Revolutionary War, the British maintained a garrison at
Fort Johnston near Wilmington.
Revolutionary era draws many tourists annually to downtown. , the backdrop of
Andy Griffith's
Matlock television series Due to Wilmington's commercial importance as a major port, it had a critical role in opposition to the British in the years leading up to the revolution. The city had outspoken political leaders who influenced and led the resistance movement in North Carolina. The foremost of these was Wilmington resident
Cornelius Harnett, who was serving in the
General Assembly at the time, and where he rallied opposition to the
Sugar Act in 1764. When the
British Parliament passed the
Stamp Act the following year, designed to raise revenue for
the Crown with a kind of tax on shipping, Wilmington was the site of an elaborate demonstration against it. On October 19, 1765, several hundred townspeople gathered in protest of the new law, burned an effigy of one town resident who favored the act, and toasted to "Liberty, Property, and No Stamp Duty." On October 31, another crowd gathered in a symbolic funeral of "Liberty". Before the effigy was buried, though, Liberty was found to have a pulse, and celebration ensued. William Houston of
Duplin County was appointed stamp receiver for Cape Fear. When Houston visited Wilmington on business, still unaware of his appointment, he recounted, "The Inhabitants immediately assembled about me & demanded a Categorical Answer whether I intended to put the Act relating [to] the Stamps in force. The Town Bell was rung[,] Drums [were] beating, Colours [were] flying and [a] great concourse of People [were] gathered together." For the sake of his own life, and "to quiet the Minds of the inraged and furious Mobb...," Houston resigned his position at the courthouse. Governor
William Tryon made attempts to mitigate the opposition, to no avail. On November 18, 1765, he pleaded his case directly to prominent residents of the area. They said the law restricted their rights. When the stamps arrived on November 28 on
HMS Diligence, Tryon ordered them to be kept on board. Shipping on the Cape Fear River was stopped, as were the functions of the courts. On February 18, 1766, two merchant ships arrived without stamped papers at
Brunswick Town. Each ship provided signed statements from the collectors at their respective ports of origin that no were stamps available, but Captain Jacob Lobb of the British cruiser
Viper seized the vessels. In response, numerous residents from southern counties met in Wilmington. The group organized as the
Sons of Liberty and pledged to block implementation of the Stamp Act. The following day, as many as a thousand men, including the mayor and aldermen of Wilmington, were led by Cornelius Harnett to Brunswick to confront Tryon. The governor was unyielding, but a mob retrieved the seized ships. They forced royal customs officers and public officials in the region to swear never to issue stamped paper. The Westminster Parliament repealed the Stamp Act in March 1766.
Antebellum period In the 1830s, citizens of Wilmington became eager to take advantage of
railroad transportation. At this time, the shipping tonnage registered at Wilmington was 9,035. Plans were developed to build a railroad line from the capital,
Raleigh, to Wilmington. When Raleigh citizens declined to subscribe in sufficient number to
stock to raise money for the project, organizers changed the terminus to
Weldon. When the railroad line was completed in 1840, it was the longest single line of
railroad track in the world. The railroad also controlled a fleet of steamboats that ran between Wilmington and
Charleston; these were used both for passenger travel and freight. Regular boat lines served
Fayetteville, and packet lines traveled to northern ports. The city was a main stopover point, contributing greatly to its commerce. Many remains from St. James churchyard were relocated to the new cemetery. The Wilmington Gas Light Company was established in 1854. Soon after, streetlights were powered by gas made from lightwood and
rosin, replacing the old street oil lamps. On December 27, 1855, the first cornerstone was laid, and construction began on a new city hall. A grant from the Thalian Association funded the attached opera house, named Thalian Hall. In 1857, the city opened its first public school, named the Union Free School, on 6th Street between Nun and Church Streets, serving White students. Wilmington had a Black majority population before the Civil War. As nearly all the military action took place some distance from the city, numerous
antebellum houses and other buildings survived the war years. In mid-August 1862, Wilmington was devastated by a deadly outbreak of
yellow fever. This fever outbreak was brought about by a blockade runner named
Kate. Sources suggest that the runner had crew members who were sick before the ship landed, but Dr. W.T. Wragg would later write an article in the
New York Journal of Medicine that there were at least five cases in the city before the ship arrived. Dr. Wragg treated many of the yellow fever victims during the outbreak and claimed that the dirtiness of the city and the fumes of the dirty water left by heavy rains caused the disease. By the end of the outbreak at least 1,500 and perhaps as many as 2,000, contracted yellow fever. Of those, between 650 and 800 died, a mortality rate approximately 40 percent.
Walter Reed would later discover in 1900 that yellow fever was transmitted by mosquitoes, so Wilmington's outbreak had to be introduced by a third party and spread by mosquitoes in the city.
Reconstruction era and 1898 insurrection During the
Reconstruction era, former free Blacks and newly emancipated
freedmen built a community in the city. About 55% of its residents were Black people. At the time, Wilmington was the most populous city and the economic capital of the state. Three of the city's aldermen were Black. Black people were also in positions of justice of the peace, deputy clerk of court, street superintendent, coroners, policemen, mail clerks, and mail carriers. At the time, Black people accounted for over 30% of Wilmington's skilled craftsmen, such as mechanics, carpenters, jewelers, watchmakers, painters, plasterers, plumbers, stevedores, blacksmiths, masons, and wheelwrights. In addition, they owned 10 of the city's 11 restaurants and were 90% of the city's 22 barbers. The city had more Black bootmakers/shoemakers than White ones, and half of the city's tailors were Black. Lastly, two brothers,
Alexander and Frank Manly, owned the
Wilmington Daily Record, the only Black-owned newspaper in the state, and one of the few in the country at that time. In the 1890s, a coalition of Republicans and
Populists had gained state and federal offices. The Democrats were determined to reassert their control. Violence increased around elections in this period, as armed White
paramilitary insurgents, known as
Red Shirts, worked to suppress Black and
Republican voting. White Democrats regained control of the state legislature and sought to impose
white supremacy, but some Blacks continued to be elected to local offices. The
Wilmington Insurrection of 1898 (also known as the Wilmington Race Riot) occurred as a result of the racially charged political conflict that had occurred in the decades after the Civil War and efforts by White Democrats to re-establish white supremacy and overturn Black voting. In 1898, a cadre of White Democrats, professionals, and businessmen planned to overthrow the city government if their candidates were not elected. Two days after the election, in which a White Republican was elected mayor and both White and Black aldermen were elected, more than 1500 White men (led by Democrat
Alfred M. Waddell, an unsuccessful gubernatorial candidate in 1896) attacked and burned the only Black-owned daily newspaper in the state and ran off the new officers. They overthrew the legitimately elected municipal government. Waddell and his men forced the elected Republican city officials to resign at gunpoint and replaced them with men selected by leading White Democrats. Waddell was elected mayor by the newly seated board of aldermen that day. Prominent Black Americans and White Republicans were banished from the city in the following days. Whites attacked and killed an estimated 60 to more than 300 people; In 1910,
Charlotte passed Wilmington to become North Carolina's most populous city. In the mid-20th century, efforts to preserve many historic building began. Due to this, many historic buildings were listed as
National Register of Historic Places. Since the 1980s, Wilmington has remained the largest film and television production area in the state; many locations in and outside the city have been
used for filming. Three
prisoner-of-war (POW) camps operated in the city from February 1944 through April 1946. At their peak, the camps held 550
German prisoners. The first camp was located on the corner of Shipyard Boulevard and Carolina Beach Road; it was moved downtown to Ann Street, between 8th and 10th Avenues, when it outgrew the original location. A smaller contingent of prisoners was assigned to a third site, working in the officers' mess and doing groundskeeping at Bluethenthal Army Air Base, which is now
Wilmington International Airport.
21st century Starting in the 1990s, Wilmington began to grow rapidly, partially due to the film industry and the completion of I-40. The city successfully annexed the areas of
Seagate in 1998 and
Masonboro in 2000. The annexation of
Monkey Junction was stopped in 2012 by the
North Carolina House of Representatives after local backlash. In 2017, a chemical compound called
GenX, discharged by a
Chemours plant near
Fayetteville, North Carolina, was first found to be present in the
Cape Fear River; a major
water source for the region. It was also revealed that the same plant had been discharging the chemical compound since 1980. In 2020, then-President
Donald Trump designated Wilmington as the first
World War II Heritage City in the country due to the city's contributions during the war. ==Geography==