Maxton has been called three different things, and changed its name four times in thirteen years. What follows is the record as far as it is documented — the settlement, the railroad, the colleges, the day the Lumbee broke up a Klan rally, and the slow squeeze of the years since.
Highland Scots settle the upper Cape Fear and push inland along the Lumber River. The area that becomes Maxton is first settled during the eighteenth century, and the Scottish names it carries — McCaskill, McKinnon, McLeod, McRae, McLean — arrive with them.
The community is incorporated under the name Shoe Heel, taken from the creek that runs through it. It exists because two railroads cross here.
The town renames itself for Samuel J. Tilden, the Democratic candidate in that year's presidential election — the one he won the popular vote in and lost anyway.
The Tilden name does not last five years.
The town settles on Maxton — commonly explained as a nod to the sheer number of Mac and Mc surnames in the place. The name has held ever since.
A brick hotel called the McCaskill House opens in November, later renamed the Maple Shade Hotel. It is demolished in the 1950s. See the homes page — it is a different building from the McCaskill family residence, which still stands.
A Methodist college for women operates in Maxton from 1912 until 1926. For fourteen years a town of this size has a women's college in it.
The federal government establishes Pembroke Farms, a New Deal resettlement community for Lumbee families near Maxton. The Farm Security Administration sends Marion Post Wolcott to photograph it — those pictures are in the gallery.
A glider training base opens between the two towns and runs through the end of the Second World War, training crews for the CG-4 assault gliders used in the invasions of Europe.
In January the Ku Klux Klan burns crosses on the lawns of Lumbee families. On 18 January 1958 the Klan holds a rally near Maxton; hundreds of armed Lumbee surround and break it up, and the Klan leaves the field. It made national news and it happened here.
A boys' military school operating from 1963 to 1972, taking grades seven and up. It admitted female day students in its 1970–71 year.
Agricultural consolidation steadily removes Maxton's role as the place farmers came to buy, sell and bank. The decline that shapes the town today starts here.
Twenty-one acres in the middle of town, holding forty-nine contributing buildings, join the National Register of Historic Places on 12 February.
The census records Maxton as majority Black for the first time, and the population peaks at 2,551.
A highway bypass is completed. Through traffic stops coming down Main Street, and the businesses that lived on it feel it immediately.
A town of two thousand people has sent a governor to Raleigh and, less obviously, changed how everything in the world gets shipped.
Governor of North Carolina from 1924 to 1928. From Maxton.
Singer and actress in the era of independent Black cinema, and the wife and collaborator of the pioneering film-maker Oscar Micheaux.
Invented containerised shipping. Before McLean, cargo was loaded piece by piece by hand; he put it in standard steel boxes that move straight from lorry to ship. It reshaped world trade, and he came from here.
Civil rights activist and program director.
Professional baseball player, later a scout, coach and manager.
The town grew through the market-town years, peaked around the turn of this century, and has fallen since — agricultural consolidation from the 1960s, and a highway bypass in 2004 that took passing trade off the main street.
As of the 2020 census Maxton is 61.0% Black or African American, 16.9% white (non-Hispanic) and 16.7% Native American, with a median age of 38.5. It covers 2.70 square miles across Robeson and Scotland counties.
Twenty-one acres in the middle of town, roughly bounded by Graham Street, Martin Luther King Drive, McCaskill Street and Florence Street, hold forty-nine contributing buildings put up between about 1884 and 1948. The district joined the National Register on 12 February 1999. These are the houses we can name so far. The list is incomplete, and we say so plainly at the bottom of this page.
No photograph yetWe have not found a picture of this house we can publish. If you have one, we will credit you.
The oldest surviving frame building in Maxton. It began as the law office of Gilbert Patterson and was moved to its present site on Graham Street in 1972. It now houses the Maxton Historical Society museum — so the building that has outlasted every other frame structure in town is also the building where the town keeps its records.
No photograph yetWe have not found a picture of this house we can publish. If you have one, we will credit you.
Built for Major A. J. “Sandy” McKinnon, who made his money in cotton and truck farming. A large two-storey frame house with intricately carved trim on the frieze and the portico. It belongs to the period when Maxton's businessmen built large houses close to the middle of town rather than out on the land they farmed.
No photograph yetWe have not found a picture of this house we can publish. If you have one, we will credit you.
Grander still than the McKinnon house, and built three years later by Robert Lee McLeod, a successful lumberman. Also two storeys and Neoclassical Revival. The two houses together mark how much money moved through Maxton in the decade the Patterson Building went up.
This one is a hotel, not a family home — and it is gone. A brick hotel called the McCaskill House opened in November 1889, was later renamed the Maple Shade Hotel, and was demolished in the 1950s. It is the building on the postcard, with its two tiers of verandah and sawn woodwork.
Source: the National Register of Historic Places district description — “A brick hotel, the McCaskill House, opened in November of 1889 (later the Maple Shade Hotel; demolished in the 1950s).”
No photograph yetWe have not found a picture of this house we can publish. If you have one, we will credit you.
Separate from the hotel above, and still standing: a house built by John C. McCaskill for his son, as a wedding gift. John C. McCaskill was among the men who moved into Maxton by 1869, drawn by the railroad, the land and the timber, and he was running a business in the town by 1875. The avenue carries the family name.
The wedding-gift account comes from the present owner rather than from a published source, and we have not yet found it in print. If the Maxton Historical Society holds the deed history, this entry gets finished properly.
No photograph yetWe have not found a picture of this house we can publish. If you have one, we will credit you.
When the original Maple Shade Inn burned, Mrs. Sue Kelly McRae converted part of this large house and an outbuilding into a hotel to replace it. That makes two buildings in Maxton to have carried the Maple Shade name, which is worth knowing before anyone matches an old postcard to an address.
Source: the “Remembering Robeson County’s History” community group. Contributed local history, not yet checked against the Historical Society’s records.
Details comingWe know this one is in the district. We do not yet have the name, date or a photograph.
A further contributing property on Central Street, identified by the Commission. Name, date and photograph still to come — if this is your house, or you know whose it was, we would like to write it up properly.
A two-storey frame house with a deep porch, decorative gable trim and a small upper balcony — clearly one of the town's older dwellings, and clearly in trouble. The post that carried it did not say which house it is.
If you recognise it, tell us. A street name is enough to start with.
Identify ItThe earliest surviving buildings go up close to the railroad crossing that made the town. The Gilbert Patterson Law Office, about 1885, is the last frame structure of that generation still standing.
Cotton, lumber and the two rail lines put money in Maxton, and the men who made it built large houses within walking distance of their offices rather than out on the land. The McKinnon and McLeod houses both date from this decade.
Residential building pushes north from where Graham Street meets McCaskill Avenue. From this decade a separate African American neighbourhood develops along East Wilmington Street and the streets around it — the segregated pattern that shaped where families in Maxton have lived ever since.
The McCaskill House, by then the Maple Shade Hotel, is demolished. It is the loss that makes the surviving postcards worth keeping.
Housed in the Gilbert Patterson Law Office on Graham Street, directly across from the library. Holdings cover educational, social, genealogical and industrial history of Maxton and Robeson County, including the Maxton Memories family books and material on the Laurinburg-Maxton Air Base. Open by appointment.
Forty-nine buildings contribute to the district. Four are named in sources we can reach. To fill the rest we need either the National Register nomination document, or the Society’s own inventory.
If you live in one of these houses, or your family built one, a photograph and a few sentences is enough. We will credit you by name.
Send Us a HouseFamily pictures, team photos, festival snapshots, anything from the town's past. We would like to add them here, with credit to you.
Send Them In
