Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/Raleigh

RALEIGH, a city of the United States, the capital of North Carolina and the seat of justice of Wake county, is situated in 35° 47′ N. lat. and 78° 48′ W. long., a little to the north-east of the geographical centre of the State, and occupies a kind of high ground in the upper valley of the Neuse, a river flowing south-east towards Pamlico Sound. It is the meeting-place of three railways—the Raleigh and Gaston, the Raleigh and Augusta, and the Richmond and Danville lines—and its railway distance from Portsmouth is 177 miles and from Washington 230. Raleigh is laid out round a park of 10 acres called Union Square and divided into four sections by four broad streets which strike out symmetrically from this centre; the fine old trees which were spared by the original settlers give it the sobriquet of “City of Oaks.” Besides the State house or capitol (a substantial granite structure in Union Square), the public buildings comprise the county courthouse, the governor's mansion, the United States courthouse and post-office (1875), the State geological museum, a State insane asylum, institutions for the blind and the deaf and dumb, the penitentiary, and the Shaw institute for the higher education of coloured pupils. There are a normal school and a graded school system for both white and coloured pupils. Raleigh is a centre of the cotton and tobacco trades, has railway machine and car shops, and manufactures steam-engines, shuttle blocks and bobbins, ice, cotton-seed oil, fertilizers, hosiery, clothing, agricultural implements, carriages, carpentry, cigars, marble wares, &c. The population was 4780 in 1860, 7790 (4094 coloured) in 1870, and 9265 (4354 coloured) in 1880. Raleigh was selected as the seat of government in 1788, was laid out in 1792, and made a city in 1794.