Location: NC 98 at Wake Union Church Rd., w. of Wake Forest
County: Wake
Original Date Cast: 1950
In 1885, on a farm two miles west of Wake Forest, Priestley Hinton Mangum Jr. constructed the first examples of a revolutionary erosion control technique that would become known as the “Mangum Terrace.” Born on August 21, 1829, in Wake County, the son of Priestley H. and Rebecca Hilliard Sutherland Mangum, Priestley, Jr. was the brother of U.S. diplomat Willie P. Mangum, Jr., and the nephew of United States Senator Willie P. Mangum. Priestley Mangum Jr. attended the Bingham School in Orange County and graduated from Wake Forest College in 1851. After his graduation, he spent the remainder of his life as a farmer in Wake County.
As a farmer, Mangum faced two significant problems with the lay of his land: first, what to do with the wasted land necessary for ditches to control water runoff and, secondly, how to incorporate farm machinery that was not adapted for ditched land. His answer, with the help of his African American farm hand Tom Jones, was a terracing system comprised of broad ridges with smaller gentle slopes that would control water flow and still permit crop growth and machinery use.
Knowledge of Mangum’s system spread by word of mouth in the decade following its development, and soon his terrace was being publicized by farming periodicals associated with the North Carolina College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts. By 1912, the system had been officially adopted and endorsed by the United States Department of Agriculture. Within another ten years it was utilized in nearly every state in the country.
Mangum did not live to see his system’s use spread across the nation. He died on February 26, 1907. In 1856 he had married Mary Thomas Price, with whom he had six children. Mangum was buried in his family cemetery, now located on Horsecreek Golf Course on U.S. Highway 1 near Wake Forest.
References:
Samuel A. Ashe, ed., Biographical History of North Carolina, V (1906)
William S. Powell, ed., Dictionary of North Carolina Biography, IV, 207-208--sketch by H. Thomas Kearney, Jr.
J. S. Cates, Mangum Terrace and Its Relation to Efficient Farm Management (1912)
(Raleigh) News & Observer, March 3, 1907