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<br /> NPS Form 10-900-a OMB Approval No.1024-0018
<br /> (8-86)
<br /> United States Department of the Interior
<br /> National Park Service
<br /> National Register of Historic Places
<br /> Continuation Sheet
<br /> Section number 8 Page 17 North Carolina Industrial Home for Colored Girls
<br /> Orange County,NC
<br /> Two African American residents of Henderson,North Carolina—public school teacher Henry
<br /> Plummer Cheatham and Baptist church pastor Augustus Shepard—partnered with twelve other black
<br /> leaders to create Grant Colored Asylum,the first orphanage for African American children in North
<br /> Carolina. Donations from churches and individuals subsidized the 1883 purchase of a twenty-three-
<br /> acre faun one-and-one-half miles south of Oxford in Granville County and the renovation of a small
<br /> house and barn on the property. The facility functioned as Grant Colored Asylum until March 28,
<br /> 1887,when it incorporated as the Colored Orphan Asylum of North Carolina. That year,the
<br /> institution's board of directors elected Reverend Robert L. Shepard to serve as superintendent. In
<br /> 1892,the African American Grand Lodge of Masons of North Carolina pledged a recurring donation
<br /> equal to ten per cent of its annual gross receipts. The following year, the North Carolina General
<br /> Assembly delineated a$2,500 appropriation to subsidize the orphanage's operation. The amount
<br /> increased over time.38
<br /> Churches and fraternal organizations managed ten sizable orphanages statewide by 1899. Facility
<br /> administration typically comprised a board of directors and a superintendent who was often a minister
<br /> in institutions overseen by religious denominations. The wives of married superintendents or a chief
<br /> matron assisted with daily management, along with teachers,house parents, and staff, most of whom
<br /> lived on campus. Orphanages provided academic instruction as well as training in agricultural,
<br /> domestic, and vocational pursuits. Children executed tasks such as cooking, cleaning, laundering,
<br /> farming, food preservation, and building and grounds maintenance. Although their labor greatly
<br /> reduced annual operating costs, orphanages struggled to be self-supporting.39
<br /> The Colored Orphan Asylum of North Carolina(NR 1988) epitomized this paradigm. Reverend
<br /> Shepard superintended the institution until 1907. Henry Plummer Cheatham, a former slave, educator,
<br /> and United States congressman (1889-1893),then headed the Granville County campus, overseeing
<br /> until his death in1935 a broad campus improvement program that involved replacing frame buildings
<br /> with edifices erected with brick manufactured by students. State funding allowed for the 1915
<br /> completion of the two-story,brick, Italianate-style building that bears Cheatham's name and contained
<br /> a chapel, dining room, kitchen, and classroom. Other brick structures included girls' and boy's
<br /> dormitories, an infants' cottage, a laundry, and a smokehouse.4°
<br /> 38 North Carolina Department of the Secretary of State,"Colored Orphan Asylum of North Carolina,"
<br /> http://www.secretary.state.nc.us/Search/profcorp/4905941 (accessed January 2015);"Colored Orphanage Office Building
<br /> Is Erected on Campus,"Oxford Public Ledger,June 15, 1934;"History of the Colored Orphanage of North Carolina," 1935
<br /> document from Central Children's Home of North Carolina,Inc.,files;The Duke Endowment, Twelfth Annual Report,
<br /> August 1937, 87-88.
<br /> 39 Fink,"Changing Philosophies and Practices in North Carolina Orphanages,"337,339,351.
<br /> 40 A March 20, 1948,fire destroyed the boys' dormitory,which was replaced the next year. North Carolina
<br /> Mutual Life Insurance Company,""A`Charitable Object'Becomes a Monument to the Development of Negro Youth," The
<br /> Whetstone,fourth quarter 1964;Marvin A.Brown and Patricia Esperon,"Central Orphanage,"National Register of
<br /> Historic Places nomination, 1987.
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