88.5 Wfdd - Carolina Curious

Historical maps of Forsyth County displayed in the Wachovia Room at Old Salem’s Moravian Research and Archaeology Lab. APRIL LAISSLE/WFDD County border lines in North Carolina are often far from symmetrical. That’s especially the case for Forsyth County, which is certainly not a perfect square. That had listener John Strong wondering:  “Why do Forsyth County’s southern boundaries look like Swiss cheese?” WFDD’s April Laissle spoke to Martha Hartley, the director of research at Old Salem’s Moravian Research and Archaeology Lab, to find the answer.  Diagram excerpted from The North Carolina Atlas: Portrait of a Changing Southern State. “Forsyth County's distinctive outline is a product of history and nature," Hartley says. That history is centered around the Moravian Church and its purchase of 100,000 acres of land in 1753 in the backcountry of North Carolina. Hartley says they named their new colony Wachovia after the Wachau Valley they knew in Austria with its similar rolling land