NORTH CAROLINA GENERAL ASSEMBLY

1969 SESSION

CHAPTER 1152

HOUSE BILL 750

AN ACT APPROPRIATING FUNDS FOR THE REPAIR AND RESTORATION OF THE WRIGHT TAVERN.

WHEREAS, The Wright Tavern in Wentworth, Rockingham County is described by Thomas T. Waterman, the State's leading architectural historian, as the finest surviving example of a two-story, frame Dog-Run building, and

WHEREAS, The Wright Tavern is associated with some of North Carolina's greatest Statesmen of the nineteenth century, among them Congressman Thomas Settle,I, Chief Justice Thomas Ruffin, Governor John M. Morehead, Governor and Senator David S. Reid, Legislator and historian Archibald DeBow Murphey, Brigadier General and Governor Alfred M. Scales, and Governor Robert B. Glenn, and

WHEREAS, with funds raised from private sources, and supplemented by an appropriation of the Rockingham County Board of Commissioners, The Wright Tavern, an architecturally unique early Tavern (1812), has been purchased and is now being restored as an historic site, County museum and educational facility, and

WHEREAS, the Rockingham County Historical Society, Inc., in cooperation with the State Department of Archives and History, has outlined a five-year restoration program estimated to cost eighty-five thousand dollars ($85,000.00), and

WHEREAS, the Society has developed plans for raising additional funds from private sources, but needs State assistance at this time in order to complete major repairs now underway without interruption or postponement;

NOW, THEREFORE,

The General Assembly of North Carolina do enact:

Section 1.  There is hereby appropriated from the General Fund to the State Department of Archives and History the sum of fifteen thousand dollars ($15,000.00) to be used for the repair and restoration of The Wright Tavern, upon the condition that fifteen thousand dollars ($15,000.00) be raised in non-state matching funds by the Rockingham Historical Society, Inc..

Sec. 2.  All laws and clauses of laws in conflict with this Act are hereby repealed.

Sec. 3.  This Act shall be in full force and effect from and after its ratification.

In the General Assembly read three times and ratified, this the 30th day of June, 1969.