Welcome to Buried History, where we visit historic cemeteries to dig into the rich and fascinating lives of those who came before us. This isn’t about ghosts; it’s about people. Each life mattered, and by taking a moment to pause and contemplate their struggles and joys, we keep their memory alive. It’s this connection to the past that ultimately helps guide us toward a better future. Join us for the journey.
Today we’re continuing our tour of Raleigh’s Historic City Cemetery. Established in 1798 as the capital city’s first city burying ground, the cemetery is the final resting place for many historical city founders including ‘Father of Raleigh,’ Patriot Joel Lane, to pioneering editor of the Raleigh Register and abolitionist Joseph Gales to Revolutionary War Colonel William Polk, founders of locale colleges Rev. Meredith (Meredith College) and William Peace (Peace College, now William Peace University), and many African American citizens like renowned educator Anna Julia Haywood Cooper.
In our first post, we met Patriot and Founder of Raleigh Joel Lane, as well as Father of a President, Jacob Johnson who sacrificed his life to save several of Raleigh’s prominent citizens from drowning…his son, Andrew would later be forced to flee Raleigh due to a $10 bounty after leaving his apprenticeship…
In this post we’re going to meet two rival newspapermen whose opposing views led to a physical altercation in 1804.
Over the next few blogs we’ll continue to ‘meet’ the residents of City Cemetery and learn about their fascinating life stories and impact they made on Raleigh’s history.
The War of the Ink Blots
You may remember from our last post that Raleigh is unique in that the state purchased the 1000 acres of land owned by Joel Lane with the intention of building a capital city from the ground up. Prior to Raleigh’s formation, Wake County was sparsely populated with small farms and a few larger plantations, as well as a couple of taverns like Isaac Hunters Tavern, Joel Lane’s Tavern and Roger’s Tavern (near Wake Forest/Rolesville).
However with Raleigh’s birth as a capital city the population grew fairly quickly as merchants, innkeepers, politicians and intellectuals moved to the area given its proximity to the state government.
The years of 1790-1804 not only signified the birth of a new Democratic Republic under the Constitution, it also gave rise to something that still divides (and can unite us) today, the political party.
Prior to the Constitution, the United States’ governing principles were outlined in the Articles of Confederation, which provided almost zero ability for the federal government to tax; one of the biggest issues with the articles was that the government didn’t have a single currency, so each state created their own money and currency system, which in itself was a disaster. The federal government also had no say in interstate trade.
President George Washington who had presided over the Constitutional Convention of 1787, understood the principles of the Constitution. As he stepped into the role as President, Washington wanted a stronger federal government not because he was power hungry, but because he had seen first hand the damage that the Articles of Confederation’s limited federal authority had caused during the war. In 1781, there was even a mutiny by Continental soldiers demanding wages, much of this was because Congress couldn’t force the states to pay their taxes. Washington knew that a stronger central government would help the states find stability and actually promote their growth because they would have a unified federal government behind them. Washington enlisted Alexander Hamilton, who had worked closely with James Madison during the Constitutional Convention, and later helped pen with Madison and John Jay, The Federalist Papers to sell the idea to the states, to serve as Secretary of the Treasury. This is where things got dicey. Hamilton wanted a federal bank and many felt that was not Constitutional, including Thomas Jefferson (Secretary of State for Washington at the time). Jefferson, while a believer in the Constitution, had a vision of smaller government and more states rights. Jefferson as a farmer saw America’s future more in Agriculture and land development from small homesteads, which while a wonderful idea was not fully sustainable (most economies need a mix). That being said, Jefferson did have valid concerns about the idea of big government as parliament and the monarchy taking advantage of their rights as Englishmen.
These opposing views led to the formation of the first political parties: the Federalists and the Democratic-Republicans.
In Raleigh the debate raged via two opposing newspapers: the Democratic-Republican leaning The Raleigh Register run by Joseph and Winnifred Gales, and the staunch Federalist Minerva Paper run by William Boylan. The two clashed fundamentally in the beginning on ideas of governance. In 1799, when both papers got started, the United States was under the Federalist Party of John Adams, but by 1804, the pendulum had shifted nationally and in Raleigh to the Jeffersonian Democratic-Republicans.
During one heated debate in 1804, the two men got into a severe physical altercation, in which Gales was beaten up by Boylan. The courts ordered that Boylan pay Joseph Gales a hefty sum of $100 in damages, which is around $2700.00 today!
Eventually the two passionate journalists let cooler heads prevail and became friendly acquaintances, even serving on various councils together.
Let’s dig deeper into the biographies of Raleigh’s earliest newspaper men.
Joseph Gales: Reformer, Editor, Journalist and Abolitionist
I first learned about Joseph Gales during the City of Raleigh Museum’s Fall into History Event, where I met his wife, Winnifred, a “superstar in her own right” as America’s first female novelist and an outspoken abolitionist. In researching Winnifred, I discovered she was buried in Washington, D.C.’s Congressional Cemetery, where the couple had lived for a time. Surprisingly, after Winnifred’s death in 1839, Joseph returned to North Carolina and is buried in the Raleigh City Cemetery.
Joseph was born in Eckington, England, on February 4th, 1761, the eldest son of a local artisan and school master. Joseph was trained in the printing trade and by 1784 established himself as a printer, stationer, book binder, and auctioneer in Sheffield, an important manufacturing town in England.
He married his partner in life and activism, Winnifred Marshall, on May 4, 1784. With a shared passion for improved government and social issues like labor reform, the couple became active in England’s late eighteenth-century Constitutional Reform movement. In 1791, Joseph helped launch the Sheffield Society for Constitutional Information, dedicated to “the enlightenment of the people” regarding political reform. Their circle of friends included leading free-thinkers of the day, such as Thomas Paine, whose pamphlet Common Sense had helped galvanize support for American independence.
After the onset of the French Revolution, the English government grew wary of any potential factions that could lead to a similar uprising. In 1793, with the onset of war with France, reformers came under surveillance. The habeas corpus act was suspended and a committee in the House of Commons launched a heresy hunt for those suspected of treason. When the arrest of a London reformer produced letters incriminating Gales, he learned an arrest warrant had been issued for him and he immediately fled to Hamburg, a free city and important trading port in northern Europe.
Winnifred had to stay behind with their children in Sheffield, trying to keep the business afloat with the help of their assistant, future famed poet James Montgomery. After bankruptcy proceedings were initiated, Montgomery helped stabilize the firm. With affairs in order, Winnifred and their four children, accompanied by a young apprentice, left Sheffield in July 1794 to join Joseph in Altona, a city in the Duchy of Holstein (then under Danish protection) near Hamburg.
The Gales moved to Philadelphia in July 1795, where Joseph quickly established his reputation as a reporter with the American Daily Advertiser through his verbatim, shorthand accounts of U.S. Senate speeches. In 1796, with printing materials sent by friends in England, Gales purchased the semi-weekly Independent Gazetteer. It quickly gained popularity for its sympathetic coverage of Jeffersonian Republican ideals. However, Gales sold the paper in September 1797. The move was prompted by two major factors: a Yellow Fever outbreak that had shaken the family, and the threat of the looming Alien and Sedition Acts. As an immigrant with strong Republican sympathies, Gales feared being targeted again.
Gales was recruited by Nathaniel Macon, a North Carolina Congressman and staunch states’ rights advocate. Macon, who would later serve as Speaker of the House, believed Gales was the forceful editor Republicans needed in North Carolina. With the crucial election of 1800 approaching, Macon urged the elder Gales to move to Raleigh, promising him the state printing contract. Gales agreed, and his family moved there in 1799 to start the Raleigh Register. He and his family ran the paper until his retirement in 1833. As the state’s political voice for the Jeffersonian Republicans, the Raleigh Register was the leading newspaper in North Carolina for over three decades. Beyond his press duties, Gales became one of Raleigh’s most respected citizens, serving as Mayor of Raleigh for nineteen years.
Fun fact: in researching the paper, I found a letter from Thomas Jefferson to Gales from 1817. Jefferson had been a subscriber, but had decided to suspend his newspaper subscriptions. He apologizes to Gales for not paying the subscription for eight years! Gales had written him to confirm the subscription and fees! Read the letter here
Gales remained a dedicated abolitionist. With new North Carolina laws making life more difficult for African Americans in the 1830s, Joseph and Winnifred moved to Washington D.C. after his retirement, where his son Joseph had moved previously and served as DC’s Mayor (1827-1830). In addition to being closer to their son’s family, they also believed they could be more effective in pursuing abolition and other reforms by being closer to the hub of the federal government.
Fun fact: Joseph Gales’ son, Joseph Gales Jr. followed the family trade, establishing the National Intelligencer in Washington D.C. as the official printers of Congress. He served as the Mayor of Washington City (D.C.) from 1827 to 1830. Gales built a prominent country estate there in 1815. He named this property Eckington after the village in England where he was born. Today, the D.C. neighborhood that grew up around that estate still carries the name Eckington.
The Raleigh Register continued under their son, Weston, and later briefly became North Carolina’s first daily paper under their grandson, Seaton. After Winnifred’s death in D.C., Joseph returned to Raleigh and continued to help with the paper until his death on August 24, 1841. Today, he and other family members rest in the Gales plot in Raleigh’s City Cemetery.
William Boylan: Editor, Federalist, Legislator
William Boylan was born in 1777 in Somerset County, New Jersey to Elizabeth and John Boylan. John served as a Minute Man in the New Jersey militia during the American Revolution. The Boylan Family home in Pluckemin (NJ) was built in the 1750s and played witness to key Revolutionary War events, including when General George Washington passed through in January 1777 (and multiple times through the coming years). Pluckemin served as a training camp under the direction of Henry Knox from 1778-79 and also a winter camp before moving to Morristown.
Boylan came from deep New Jersey ancestry and you can still visit his childhood home today in Pluckemin. After attending the College of New Jersey (now known as Princeton), in 1796, Boylan moved to Fayetteville North Carolina to work with his Uncle Abraham Hodge on his newspapers the Minerva and Fayetteville Advertiser. There he spent the next three years learning the printing and journalism trade from his uncle.
Hodge was a staunch Federalist and with the crucial election of 1800 (between Federalist President John Adams vs. Democratic-Republican Thomas Jefferson) coming up, Hodge enlisted Boylan (his nephew) to move to North Carolina’s new State Capitol to help promote the voice of the Federalist media. They established the Raleigh Minerva. Founded in 1799, it was the first official newspaper in Raleigh, followed shortly after by Joseph Gales’ Raleigh Register later in the year. As mentioned before, the rivalry between the two political papers hit a boiling point in 1804 when Boylan beat up Gales in a fiery altercation of Federalist vs. Republican. Fortunately they forgave one another (after Boylan paid a $100 fine). They would later serve on many committees together as Gales served as Mayor of Raleigh and Boylan a prominent businessman and legislator.
Boylan was involved in the Minerva until 1820 (although he’d moved on as the majority stakeholder by 1810). Boylan was close friends with fellow Raleigh Federalists including Colonel William Polk (who we learned was rescued by Jacob Johnson in our first Buried History: City Cemetery post), and John Steele.
Boylan strongly disagreed with the War of 1812 and attempted to start a Peace party to thwart Madisonian policy. The War of 1812 had been petitioned heavily from southern War Hawks like John C. Calhoun, but the last gasp of the Federalist Party (mostly in New England) opposed going to War with Britain. This opposition was due to a number of factors. For one New England (and other ports, including those in the South) did a lot of business with English companies and even built ships for them. Going to war with England was bad for business. For many the United States, which had greatly reduced its army under Jefferson and Madison and had a slim Navy against the British Naval Superpowers, was not ready to fight. A loss could lead to devastating effects – even forced reconciliation with England in the minds of men like Boylan. While War Hawks believed this would show the might of United States autonomy and stop the impressment policy. In researching a branch of my family history I discovered one of my ancestors (from my grandmother’s New England line in Pennsylvania) petitioned Congress for help in settlement of lost goods from his ship being taken in this sort of high seas privateering in the years leading up to the War of 1812.
In the end the War of 1812 was a mixed bag. Major disasters in Canada and the Burning of Washington City (DC) were catastrophic, and yet the Battle of Fort McHenry where our flag ‘still remained’ inspired our National Anthem. Andrew Jackson’s bravery at the Battle of New Orleans anointed him as a hero and strengthened unified pride in the American identity. I recommend reading this article by the American Battlefield Trust for a great overview of the War of 1812.
Boylan was passionate about agriculture and is believed to be one of the first to plant cotton in Wake County. He owned three plantations in Wake County and properties invested in properties near Chapel Hill, in Johnston County, and in Mississippi. He served one term as treasurer of the North Carolina Agricultural Society (1818), and he was once requested to acquaint the New York editor of the Farmer’s Library with southern agriculture. As did many wealthy planters of the region, he sought relaxation and escape from the summer heat by making annual pilgrimages to White Sulphur Springs, Va., home of the world-famous Greenbrier Hotel, whose roots date back to 1778.
While Boylan did own slaves, he like many men of his time was conflicted. He bought and sold slaves, yet was said to have treated them well (per Lunsford Lane narrative), and played a role in helping Lunsford Lane and his family escape Raleigh to freedom. You can read more about this history here. I plan to do a feature on Lunsford Lane soon!
While in the City Cemetery I noticed a unique plaque that drew me in. I read the inscription—it was for Cato, a slave owned by William Boylan (first by his Uncle Abraham Hodge). When Cato died of consumption (tuberculosis) on February 7, 1811, Boylan and Hodge published a tribute to his honor in the Raleigh Minerva. This public declaration of praise is historically striking, demonstrating the paradoxical nature of emotional attachment within the system of enslavement. While that seems natural to us today, at that time it was extremely rare for a family to publish an obituary for an enslaved person. They applauded Cato as a good printer, tolerable book binder, with wit and understanding…his exact grave is lost to time* but this marker is a testimony not only to Cato but to all the enslaved who deserved a voice and were important souls in the heart of Raleigh’s history.
Boylan – The Railroad Visionary
The age of steam began in earnest when the Stockton and Darlington Railway in England first powered up in 1825. While earlier experimental lines existed, this was the world’s first public railway to use steam locomotives for both freight and passengers. Even though the railroad industry wouldn’t truly boom in much of America until the late 1840s and 1850s, Boylan immediately grasped the scale of the opportunity, realizing the imperative for North Carolina to invest in a strong rail system.
Acting on his foresight, he invested in and became the head of the Raleigh and Gaston Railroad, chartered in 1835 and completed just five years later in 1840. Later, Boylan lent his considerable influence and powerful voice as an orator to urge the public to subscribe to the stock that would eventually bring the crucial North Carolina Railroad (chartered in 1849) to fruition.
Yet, the visionary wasn’t solely focused on industry and agriculture. Despite his massive business pursuits, Boylan never lost sight of his first love: printing and literature. He owned a popular bookshop in downtown Raleigh, demonstrating a truly multi-faceted passion for both modern industry and classic knowledge.
Advocate for the People
Boylan’s influence extended far beyond railroads and publishing; he was a dedicated civic leader with a deep commitment to the social good.
He valued education immensely, serving as an early charter supporter of the Raleigh Academy in 1801—a private preparatory school established for young men. (A fascinating side note: the academy’s second headmaster, William McPheeters, was also the first minister at the First Presbyterian Church of Raleigh. We’ll explore his story in a future post!)Boylan’s heart for helping people was evident throughout his life. He was responsible for establishing Wake County’s first poorhouse, creating a working poor-farm that provided lodging and employment to help struggling families move past hardship. It is also famously said that during the “big snow of ’57,” a ferocious winter storm, he personally donated large quantities of firewood from his private supply to the poor, ensuring everyone in Raleigh had enough fuel to stay warm.
The Enduring Family Legacy
The footprint of William Boylan is quite literally built into Raleigh’s geography. He owned much of the land in the southwest area of Raleigh, and the historic Boylan Heights neighborhood is named for him and his descendants.
In 1818, Boylan purchased the venerable Joel Lane House—the “Birthplace of Raleigh”—from the lawyer Peter Browne, who infamously planted cabbages in the old Lane family cemetery. Boylan lived in the home for many years with his family. He and his first wife, Elizabeth Stokes McCulloch, had eleven children before her death in 1825. They had met while she was visiting family members in New Jersey. He later married Jane Elliott, with whom he had one daughter.
His legacy continued through his son, William Montford Boylan, who commissioned one of Raleigh’s finest homes: Montford Hall. Designed by renowned English architect William Percival, the magnificent Italianate-style plantation house on Boylan Avenue was the family home from 1858 to 1909. (The historic neighborhood itself is known today for its artsy vibe, celebrated annually during the Boylan Art Walk). Today you can check into Boylan Height’s Living History with a stay at the Heights House (located in Montford Hall)
Fun fact: Boylan Heights was one of Raleigh’s first planned suburbs.
William Boylan Sr. died in July 1861, just as the Civil War was beginning. As a staunch Federalist, he struggled with his loyalties as a North Carolinian and did not support secession. He was buried in the Boylan family plot. From the railroad tracks he fought to build to the streets that bear his name, Boylan’s mark remains an indelible part of Raleigh’s public works and history
Next time on Buried History, we’ll continue our tour by meeting patriots to pioneering educators and more. Don’t forget to subscribe for the latest posts.
Hi, I’m Adele Lassiter, the travel enthusiast behind American Nomad Traveler. This is where I share my love for history, cool museums, art, and travel tips.
As a sixth generation Wake County resident through my dad’s side of the family (Lassiter line), I have a deep love of Raleigh and Wake County history, which I look forward to diving deeper into in the coming months.
*I do my best in researching these articles to provide the best facts, but if I missed something feel free to email me. I have tried to link key sources in the body of the article.
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