Abstract:
Elias Carr was a renaissance man in North Carolina during the 19th century in which he was a prosperous planter, agricultural political leader, democrat and Governor of North Carolina. During this period, he also kept an estate in Edgecombe County, Bracebridge Hall, which maintained a flourishing environment before and after the Civil War. Carr was able to maintain this prosperity by avoiding common pitfalls of the time such as one-crop farming, sharecropping, labor unrest, and financial failure by diversifying his farming operations, paying employed workers good wages, partaking in fair labor practices and using modern farming techniques.