Jones County, North Carolina

98 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 9, ISSUE 12 in culling the location of Raleigh, the new state capital, in 1791. At a time when wealthy landowners among the Revolutionary patriots were generally quite conservative, Willie Jones was an Anti-Federalist and a radical—the man responsible for the State’s refusal to join the Union for a year after its formation (although North Carolina eventually came under the ‘Federal JONES COUNT Y, NC roof’ as the 12th State in the autumn of 1789). Before the Civil War, Jones County had a cash crop economy. By the 1860s, it had one of the wealthiest plantation economies in the United States. After the war, many of the surviving farms and plantations entered into tenant farming and today, farmers and foresters continue to honor that agricultural heritage with tobacco and