By Rebeccah Waff Cope
“The Ramsgate Road was cut Westward from this place by order of Governor William Tryon while encamped with his troops at Hunters Lodge near this spot when marching against The Regulators
Erected by the Bloomsbury Chapter Daughters of the Revolution and the North Carolina Historical Commission A.D. 1923”
Once upon a time, an old street sign on the way to the town of Cary near the U.S. Route 1/64 and Tryon Road intersection pointed in the direction of Rhamkatte. An almost forgotten dirt farm road ran behind the Interfaith Food Shuttle’s old location on the south side of Tryon Road. The dirt road was rumored to have been part of Rhamkatte Road and been used as a wagon road by farmers to bring their corn to old Yates Mill, the water-powered gristmill located south of town on Steephill Creek. A dilapidated general store with peeling red paint on its wooden exterior and thick vines growing up its rotting sides once rested near the intersection of Tryon Road and Holly Springs Road and bore the same name.
A section of the Carolinian paper published in Raleigh used to include news from Rhamkatte, and the News & Observer paper as far back as 1903 included a section of editorial writing called the Rhamkatte Roaster. The Roaster was even mentioned in an August 16, 1909, article in the New York Times. A 1960 postcard shown online at Goodnight Raleigh (goodnightraleigh.com) mentions the “Skyline from Rhamkatte Road.” The location pictured was for decades the primary vantage point for photographing Raleigh’s skyline, much as South Saunders Street is today. Furthermore, the State Farmers Market Restaurant in Raleigh includes the Rhamkatte Road name on a painted mural that’s featured inside.
Fendol Bevers’ 1871 map of Wake County shows Ramcat Road (note the different spelling) while the Rhamkatte name is included on Shaffer’s 1887 map of Wake County. Look over a modern street map and you can still find the Rhamkatte name included to the south-southwest side of downtown Raleigh, and now there is even a newer mixed-use development bearing this same name: Rhamkatte Village, which is a Holly Springs neighborhood with commercial, single- and multi-family units, and townhomes located near the intersection with Bass Lake Road, construction for which started in 2018. This area has one of the fastest growing real estate markets in Wake County.
Where did this unusual name come from? Exactly where was this mysterious place located? And why does it no longer exist? The area historically known as Rhamkatte wasn’t where the Village development is today. Older individuals in the greater Raleigh community may well remember the name or heard family members talk of this place. They may even have been part of the “Rhamkatte Wheel-A-Rounds” square dance group. A few other clues remain in place to lend their evidence to our tale, but the actual location and history of Rhamkatte has become almost lost over time, in pace with the landscape which is being transformed by new construction and a rapid trend towards urbanization in Raleigh’s borderlands.
The answer to this community puzzle comes in several forms. First, a lichen-encrusted boulder with an old bronze plaque which sits along Fayetteville Road (Highway 401 near the Highway 70 split) south of Raleigh. Next, a few historical documents and newspaper articles. And also, an old map which was published in the News & Observer on March 5, 1944, and which may have been made as a proposed addition to a North Carolina highway map.
The 1944 map has Rhamkatte prominently labeled in the southwest area of Raleigh, and it essentially encompasses the then rural areas lying south of Avent Ferry Road, along Walnut Creek between Lake Johnson and Lake Raleigh, down the east side along what is now Lake Wheeler Road, over and around Penny and Yates Mill Pond Roads to the south and west, and north again along Holly Springs Road. Also mentioned on the map are the mill village of Caraleigh (off Maywood Road near the State Farmers Market), the State Hospital (today known as Dix Hill), Capitol Square, the town of Macedonia, and Yates Pond. What is today known as Tryon Road is the primary east-west thoroughfare that is seen on the map, running through the center of Rhamkatte, and the Tryon name and related history figure prominently in our story.
The aforementioned boulder off Highway 401 just south of Tryon Road is mentioned in a 1939 Works Progress Administration Guide to the Old North State and helps to provide detail on the road’s name and history: “At 28.1 m. a tablet embedded in a boulder commemorates the Ramsgate Road. This highway between Wake Crossroads, now Raleigh, and Orange County was built by Governor William Tryon in 1771 before his expedition against the Regulators (see tour 25). The route, so named for the old Ramsgate Road in England, over which pilgrims to Canterbury journeyed centuries ago, was nicknamed Ramcat or Rhamkatte in derision of Tryon.” (A “ramcat” is a term that’s been in use since the late 17th century and is defined as a male tom cat.)
Ramsgate Road was constructed by militiamen from Johnston and Wake Counties in about one week in May 1771 supposedly following an older Indian trail (ncpedia.org/ramsgate-road). Governor Tryon moved his cannon over this new road on his way to the Alamance Courthouse. A November 4, 1934, article in the News & Observer by Willis G. Briggs adds that “the distance of the Regulators at Hillsboro and the creations of Wake and Chatham Counties in 1770, had caused Governor Tryon to run new roads westward, both for commercial and military purposes.”
Further history of this road and what was there before it may be gleaned from The NC Booklet published by the NC Society in July 1905 (Volume V, No. 1), where details are provided about Tryon’s march against the Regulators: “At the beginning of Tryon’s march from Wake Crossroads, it was found necessary for his Corps of Engineers to cut a new road, as the old one—the Granville Tobacco Path—was too rough for artillery to pass over. The new thoroughfare was called ‘Ramsgate Road’.”
Note that there is a small section of road that is still today known as “Ramsgate Road,” located between Lake Wheeler Road and Lineberry Drive. The 1905 article goes on to say how the name changed to “Ramcat” and later “Rhamkatte,” and also mentions that the locality was “a great trade center which supplies Raleigh with light-wood, ‘possums, and blackberries, and even begins to threaten the commercial supremacy of Chatham in its chief source of support, the rabbit industry.” (Who knew?)
According to Elizabeth Reid Murray in her History of Wake County book, volume I, the earliest recorded name for this road, from the 1860s, was “Ramcat,” and the road encompassed what is now parts of Lake Wheeler Road and Tryon Road. Military movement along this road was not over with the American Revolution, however. In the mid-1860s, during the War Between the States, Dix Hill became occupied by Union troops.
On April 13, 1865, the Union’s 14th Corps, under the command of General William T. Sherman, camped on the Dix Hill hospital grounds for one night, followed by General Joseph A. Mowers 20th Corps, numbering 17,000 men. They camped around the hospital from Rocky Branch to the southwest to Rhamkatte Road, where they remained until the end of the month. The troops were known to have pillaged the hospital and grounds. They used fences for firewood, confiscated produce and livestock, and damaged the gasworks, causing the staff and patients in the hospital to use their meager supply of candles.
Interestingly, Dix Hospital accepted its first African American patient, a soldier, on August 13, 1865, by order of the federal provost marshal. President Lincoln would be assassinated the next day, on August 14.
Times were tough for local folks, especially during the occupation of Raleigh by Union troops. During reconstruction, Rhamkatte Road became known as a freedman’s crossroads community and many freed Blacks and their families settled there. The area was seen as a good place to start new communities and rapidly expanded until well after World War II. Development pressures were strong, and most of this area would later become part of NC State University’s Centennial Campus.
In 1933—in the midst of the Great Depression—the portion of Rhamkatte that is known as Carolina Pines was transformed by Herbert Anderson Carlton into a resort attraction with a hotel that was meant to rival the likes of Asheville’s Grove Park Inn and Southern Pines in Moore County. Carolina Pines, which encompassed a 450-acre pine grove, included a colonial revival hotel (now a fraternity house), two 18-hole golf courses, a casino, outdoor theater, polo grounds and a riding stable, swimming pool, and tennis courts with outdoor lighting. (We wonder what’s left.) Unfortunately, Carlton was too ambitious and the hotel went into receivership within one year and the lands were sold off over time to developers. The hotel ceased operation in 1957.
Bits and pieces of the Rhamkatte legacy remain in small corners of Raleigh and its suburbs, and perhaps more of its history still remains to be discovered, preserved on ancient documents in the archives and in the older minds of those who lived in the area during its heyday, as well as in more recent times. Lingering questions about the area remain, such as who is “Punk” Johnson whose grave is noted on the 1944 Rhamkatte map?
One thing is certain though, the Rhamkatte name lives on and seems to find new life with subsequent generations of North Carolinians. There is so much to discover about these small towns and glimpses of our past to be embraced and remembered.
