1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Winston-Salem

WINSTON-SALEM, two contiguous cities of Forsyth county, North Carolina, U.S.A., about 115 m. N.W. of Raleigh. Pop. of Winston (1880) 2854; (1890) 8018; (1900) 10,008 (5043 negroes); (1910) 17,167. Pop. of Salem (1890) 2711, (1900) 3642 (488 being negroes); (1910) 5533. Both cities are served by the Southern and the Norfolk & Western railways. Since July 1899, when the post office in Salem was made a sub-station of that of Winston, the cities (officially two independent municipalities) have been known by postal and railway authorities as Winston-Salem. Winston is the county-seat and a manufacturing centre. Salem is largely a residential and educational city, with many old fashioned dwellings, but there are some important manufactories here also; it is the seat of the Salem Academy and College (Moravian) for women, opened as a boarding-school in 1802; and of the Slater Normal and Industrial School (non-sectarian) for negroes, founded from the Slater Fund in 1892. The surrounding country produces tobacco of a very superior quality, and to the tobacco industry, introduced in 1872, the growth of Winston is chiefly due; the manufacture of flat plug tobacco here is especially important. The total value of Winston’s factory products increased from $4,887,649 in 1900 to $11,353,296 in 1905, or 132.3%.

Salem was founded in 1766 by Friedrich Wilhelm von Marschall (1721–1802), a friend of Zinzendorf, and the financial manager of the board controlling the Moravian purchase made in North Carolina in 1753, consisting of 100,000 acres, and called Wachovia. The town was to be the centre of this colony, where missionary work and religious liberty were to be promoted, and it remained the home of the governing board of the Moravian Church in the South. In 1849 exclusive Moravian control of Salem’s industries and trades was abolished; in 1856 land was first sold to others than Moravians, and in the same year the town was incorporated. Winston was founded in 1851 as the county seat and was named in honour of Major Joseph Winston (1746–1815), a famous Indian fighter, a soldier during the War of Independence and a representative in Congress in 1793–1795 and 1803–1807. The growth of the two cities has been rapid since 1900.

See J. H . Clewell, History of Wachovia in North Carolina (New York, 1902).