City of Winston-Salem history

The university was established in 1834 by the Baptist State Convention.

In 1838, it was renamed to Wake Forest College.

In 1849, the residents of Salem sold some of the city’s land to the county of Forsyth, so that the county could build and establish a county seat.

Salem (from the Hebrew shalom, meaning “peace”) was laid out in 1766 by Moravian colonists in the centre of their Wachovia land tract; it was incorporated in 1856, when the land was sold to outsiders.

Richard Joshua Reynolds founded his tobacco company there in 1875, and tobacco still dominates the city’s diversified industry, which includes the manufacture of textiles, beer, food products, apparel, batteries, and swimming pool filters and pumps.

In 1899, the United States Post Office moved into Winston.

Information on Salem was gathered from the "Records of the Moravians in North Carolina" from 1766 to 1913.

In 1920, the city had become the largest in North Carolina.

The university held its first summer session in 1921.

By the 1940’s, over 60 percent of all residents in the city worked for either Reynolds or the Hanes textile factories, which had also made their home in the city.

In 1941 the medical school moved to Winston-Salem.

The following year, 1942, Wake Forest admitted its first women undergraduate students.

In 1956, as a result of large endowments from the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation, the rest of the college also moved to Winston-Salem.

1766 to 1966Information from 1766 to 1966 was compiled by Robert W. Neilson, a retired director of Public Works, to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Winston-Salem.

The Babcock Graduate School of Management was established in 1969.

In 1986, the university became independent of the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina.

Since the traumatic buyout of RJR Nabisco in 1989 - one of the largest business deals in history - Winston-Salem has started redefining itself.

The Wake Forest Divinity School opened its doors in 1999.

Winston-Salem is a pleasant city of 229,617 (2010) people–large enough to afford the pleasures of city life without the discomforts.