YOU ARE HERE Each month, we’ll throw a dart at a map and write about where it lands. LOCATION: 9921 Old Statesville Road
le Statesvil 9921 Old
Road
A Pocket of Contested History SOME HISTORICAL AREAS inspire reverence. Stand there, and you can picture the sweep of soldiers on battlefields or the everyday comings and goings of people who changed the course of history. Others just seem plopped into the middle of 21st-century life. That’s the case with a small plot of land near Huntersville called Alexandriana, the location of a monument to the much-disputed Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence. Some local history buffs believe the “Meck Dec” was the first such declaration
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made in the 13 original colonies, predating the official one in Philadelphia by more than a year. A committee of prominent Mecklenburg County citizens supposedly signed it in a wooden courthouse at what’s now Trade and Tryon on May 20, 1775. But no original copy exists, and historians have long questioned whether it was a formal declaration or simply a series of resolutions that fell short of declaring independence. On this wooded spot—the homesite of John McKnitt Alexander, the committee’s secretary—is a low stone wall, a worn
CHARLOTTEMAGAZINE.COM // JANUARY 2022
plexiglass display case, and a plaque that bears the names of committee members. Inside the case are printed biographies, a timeline, and a print of the supposed declaration. Trucks rumble as they enter and exit the new, 140,000-square-foot Amazon delivery station next door. Across the street, crews armed with nail guns frame homes for a subdivision. If you can tune out the modern-day cacophony, Alexandriana is a pretty good place to contemplate history. —Cristina Bolling
SHAW NIELSEN; CRISTINA BOLLING
Alexandriana quietly honors the long-disputed Meck Dec as modern life encroaches
