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NorthEnd Partners, Inc., founded in 1992 as TryonNorth Development Corporation, serves as a non-profit advocate for the improvement and redevelopment of the North Tryon Corridor. The organization’s boundaries are 10th Street to University City and include the surrounding areas along the corridor.
Historical Past
(information courtesy of Historic Rosedale)
When the first European settlers traveled the well-worn path along Sugar Creek, the land along its banks had already been inhabited for hundreds of years. Native Americans had long before established the trading path that is today North Tryon. Sugar Creek and its main tributary Little Sugar Creek, were named after the Sugaree Indians that John Lawson found inhabiting the area during his explorations in the early 1750's. The Sugarees had disappeared by the time the first settlers arrived, probably assimilated into the Catawba Indian Nation.
In the late 1740's and the early 1750's hundreds of settlers arrived in the piedmont of the Carolinas using the same path, then an offshot of the Great Philadelphia Wagon Road. The Scot-Irish settlers arrived from Maryland and Pennsylvania in large extended family groups and began to settle along the waters of Sugar Creek.
Religion was highly important in the lives of these Scottish Conventanters who quickly requested a minister to serve the backcountry of NC. Their requests were met by the arrival of the charismatic and fiery circuit minister, Alexander Craighead. Sugaw Creek Presbyterian Church was established in 1755 under his direction.
If religion was foremost in the minds of these hard working settlers, education came next. The Sugaw Creek Church built a log schoolhouse to educate young men who were planning to study medicine, law or the ministry.