Location
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Coordinates: 35.2587, -77.5801.
Type: Stop
Tour: Cape Fear
County: Lenoir
Full
Harmony Hall, the headquarters of the Lenoir County Historical Association at the coordinates in Kinston, can be viewed from the outside anytime. It has limited regular hours, but also offers tours by appointment.
Both it and our second stop are fully accessible.
A Home that Became a Capitol
The first version of Harmony Hall was built sometime between 1772 and ’76 for Capt. Jesse Cobb and his wife, Elizabeth. She was the daughter of the man who owned the land that became the town of Kingston. Her brother-in-law, local plantation owner Richard Caswell, introduced the 1762 bill to charter the town and name it after King George III. Cobb and Caswell were close friends.[1]
Cobb joined the local county’s part-time defense force or “militia” as the war broke out in 1775 (then Dobbs County). In February 1776 he led a company of 58 “Minutemen,” trained to respond quickly to threats, at the Battle of Moore’s Creek Bridge, helping to prevent a British invasion. He came home to learn he was a new father to a baby boy! The next month he and his company went to Wilmington for a month, likely helping to drive British warships back down the Cape Fear River.[2] The Minutemen were disbanded soon after, but Cobb remained in the militia until at least 1781, probably helping to protect a military supply depot in town.[3]
In April 1777, Caswell officially became the new state’s first governor (after serving in an interim role). During the American Revolution, North Carolina had no permanent capital city; in effect that was wherever the governor lived. Caswell started out in Tryon Palace at the colonial capital New Bern, but feared threats from both the British navy and smallpox. He decided to live at his plantation in Kingston. He bought the Cobb home that year and arranged for the first Secretary of State of North Carolina, James Glasgow, to move in.