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Tuesday, 30 June 2026
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Written by Jamie Bishop
Braxton Clark believes Fayetteville is carrying more history than it knows what to do with.
As a tour guide with Triangle Walking Tours, Clark spends Saturdays leading visitors through downtown streets that many residents pass every day without realizing what has happened beneath their feet. Ghost stories and true crime may draw the largest crowds, but for Clark, the real treasure is local history, the kind that reveals a city far older, stranger and more consequential than its reputation suggests.
“I feel like there are a lot of ways in this town where our history is treated very weird,” Clark said. “You’d be surprised at how historically significant this town was. Fayetteville is up there in terms of historically significant towns.”
Triangle Walking Tours offers several Fayetteville tours on Saturdays: a history and architecture tour at 2 p.m., a Black history tour at 4 p.m., a true crime tour at 6 p.m. and a ghost tour at 8 p.m. The tours give residents and visitors a chance to experience downtown Fayetteville as more than a collection of buildings, restaurants and familiar intersections.
For Clark, who describes himself as an archaeologist and local history enthusiast, the walking tours are about restoring depth to places that have often been flattened into a single sentence.
Take the Market House, for example.
To many, it is known primarily as a place where enslaved people were once sold. Clark does not dismiss that painful history, but he argues that the structure’s story is broader, more complicated and more revealing. He points to its role after the Civil War, when newly freed Black residents celebrated Jubilee Day there and gathered in the same space to mark freedom, survival and community.
“A lot of those newly freed enslaved individuals would have found out about their freedom at the Market House,” Clark said. “Going forward, you would actually have years and years where that Market House would be used specifically by the Black population of Fayetteville to celebrate their freedom on Jubilee Day.”
That, he said, is the kind of history Fayetteville should be willing to hold in full, not polished, not reduced, not hidden.
Clark is especially drawn to figures such as Isaac Hammond, a Black Revolutionary War soldier from Fayetteville who enlisted at 15, survived Valley Forge and returned home to a country that still denied Black citizens basic rights.
“He came home from the war fighting for the freedom of this new nation that he helped create,” Clark said. “And this nation immediately went and put up laws that said Black people aren’t allowed to be in a militia. Black people are not allowed to vote. And he did it anyway.”
For Clark, Hammond represents a Fayetteville spirit that deserves more recognition.
“That is the most American thing to do,” he said. “Do it anyway.”
The walking tours also challenge the idea that Fayetteville is simply an extension of Fort Bragg. Clark said many people think of the city as “Fort Bragg plus,” forgetting that Fayetteville’s story began long before the military installation became part of the region’s identity.
For most of its history, he said, Fayetteville was its own complicated, evolving Southern town, shaped by agriculture, commerce, slavery, war, Reconstruction, Black resilience and civic ambition.
The true crime and ghost tours offer a different doorway into that past. Some stories date back to the 1800s and, according to Clark, “read like a soap opera.” But even those darker tales are tied to real streets, real businesses and real families.
One of Clark’s favorite examples involves a carriage wheel he found near First Presbyterian Church and later donated to the local history museum. His research led him to the Simpson and McLaughlin carriage repository, once located near Liberty Point. That discovery connected to another tour story involving Alexander Simpson, one of the business owners, whose name appears in both the true crime and ghost tours.
“You start to really surprisingly easily put this puzzle together,” Clark said. “It’s like a 3D map of time and space.”
That is the power of a walking tour. Unlike a textbook or a museum case, the streets become part of the lesson. A guide can stand near the site of an old killing, point toward a nearby intersection and help guests imagine how a witness saw events unfold more than a century ago.
“There are so many things you don’t get from a page or a screen,” Clark said. “It’s a lot easier to get the lay of the land once you’re actually at an intersection.”
As America approaches its 250th anniversary, Clark believes Fayetteville has a responsibility to stop treating its local history as an afterthought. He wants the city to lean into its complexity, preserve what remains and tell the stories of ordinary people with the same care often reserved for generals, politicians and national heroes.
“History is just as much of a quilt,” Clark said. “Every person is a patch of fabric, and it’s all woven together in a way that really blows your mind when you start to look into it.”
That quilt, in Fayetteville, is still being stitched together.
And for those willing to walk slowly, listen closely and look again, the city is still speaking. For more information about the walking tours, visit their website, https://www.trianglewalkingtours.com
(Photo by J. Stephen Conn. For more photos, visit https://www.flickr.com/photos/jstephenconn/with/3908622566/)
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Tuesday, 30 June 2026
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Written by Jamie Bishop
Long before Fayetteville became synonymous with military service, another industry helped define the city and shape the lives of generations of local families.
Inside a modest home tucked along Camden Road, those stories still live.
The Fayetteville History Museum will open the doors to the historic Massey Hill Mill House on July 11 from 11 a.m. to noon, inviting visitors to step into a world where life revolved around spinning frames, neighborhood schools and front porches occupied by people who knew one another not simply as neighbors, but as family.
For Hattie M. Presnell of the Fayetteville History Museum, the significance of the house extends far beyond its walls.
“The Massey Hill Mill House provides our community with a glimpse of how our local textile mill communities lived,” she said. “The Massey Hill community has a strong community built around the textile industry.”
That spirit of togetherness helped define an era when textile mills served as the heartbeat of daily life. Families settled near the mills. Businesses emerged. Churches flourished. Baseball teams representing competing mills filled summer evenings with friendly rivalries.
Massey Hill High School, which recently celebrated its centennial, became another gathering place. The anniversary celebration drew alumni from across the country, a testament to the bonds forged decades ago.
“Individuals didn’t just work at the mill, or attend the same school or church, or go to the same stores,” Presnell said. “They were and are family. There is a reason why the 100th anniversary of Massey Hill High School was so well attended. It was a family reunion.”
Visitors attending the upcoming open house will encounter more than historical photographs and artifacts. The home itself has been carefully arranged to recreate everyday life as it would have appeared for a typical mill worker’s family.
Within the house, exhibits highlight several of the area’s textile operations, including Tolar, Hart and Holt Mills, Victory Mill and Lake View Cotton Mill. Rooms have been furnished to reflect the era, offering a tangible connection to a way of life that once touched thousands of residents.
“People will be able to see what these homes looked like and learn about the mills that shaped this community,” Presnell said.
The work of preserving those memories falls largely to the Fayetteville History Museum, whose mission reaches far beyond its downtown location.
“The purpose of the Fayetteville History Museum is to collect and share the stories about our entire community,” Presnell said. “It is an ongoing process that I’m grateful to be a part of.”
Sometimes that work leads to unexpected discoveries.
“Through our collection and research process, we are introduced to some amazing stories and ‘a-ha’ moments that help put the pieces together,” she said. “We hope to collect more of these stories in the near future.”
Those pieces matter because communities are built not only through industry, but through shared experiences and collective memory.
Today, many of the mills are gone, but their legacy remains etched into neighborhoods and family histories. Preserving places like the Massey Hill Mill House ensures that future generations understand the sacrifices, traditions and relationships that helped shape Fayetteville long before modern development transformed the city.
In many ways, the house serves as more than a museum.
It is a reminder that communities are woven together much like the textiles that once came from the mills themselves, thread by thread, story by story and family by family.
The Massey Hill Mill House open house is free and open to the public. For one hour on July 11, visitors will have the opportunity to step back in time and discover how a neighborhood built around industry became something far more enduring: a community bound together by memory. For more information, visit their website at https://www.fayettevillenc.gov/Parks-and-Recreation/Facilities/Fayetteville-History-Museum
(Photo: The Massey Hill Mill House will be open by the Fayetteville History Museum on July 11 for the public to check out a piece of Fayetteville's history. Photo courtesy of Fayetteville History Musem's Facebook page)
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