JoCoYo

March 5th, 1943. Clayton, North Carolina. A federal government rationing office gets mobbed. Fistfights break out. Arrests are made. Over gasoline coupons. Now — before you judge these people — you need to understand what March 1943 actually looked like in Johnston County. Three gallons of gas a week. A pleasure driving ban. Two hundred members of Congress quietly driving on unlimited fuel while t...

There's a Chuck Norris joke you've never heard: there was someone who could beat him. Repeatedly. That man grew up on a farm in Knightdale, trained under Bruce Lee, sold Chuck Norris his karate studio, won everything worth winning in American martial arts, and invented kickboxing on the side. He is buried twelve miles from the Johnston County line. This podcast is apparently the first anyo...

March 1849. Stone Creek, Johnston County. Two thousand acres of cotton. Forty-five enslaved people. And a family about to be orphaned by death — then torn apart by war. The Snead brothers didn't start the Civil War. But they lived it up close — in the letters they wrote home, in the hands who slowed their work when news of Lincoln spread, in a family Bible where "Harriet and children gone...

In 1893, the American economy collapsed — and Johnston County's cotton farmers watched decades of work evaporate at six cents a pound. What came next was a gamble: build a curing barn you'd never operated, raise a crop you'd never grown, and sell it at an auction that didn't yet exist in your county. This is the story of how the Panic of 1893 killed King Cotton, how a sleeping blac...

For 250 years, Johnston County was farmland. Then Interstate 40 arrived, and Raleigh suddenly felt like a neighbor. This is the story of how one county went from tobacco rows to rooftops — and how a single date, October 1st, 1991, set everything in motion. From the first zoning ordinance to the Unified Development Plan being written right now, Johnston County has been racing to manage a growth it...

Before it was I-95, before it was US 301, before Johnston County even had a name — there was a path. Deer made it first. The Tuscarora walked it for centuries. Colonial settlers used it as their address system. And today, seventy thousand vehicles a day travel it without a second thought. This is the story of Greens Path: the ancient road hiding in plain sight beneath the highway you drive every d...

He was a free Black saddler from Fayetteville, North Carolina. He had a wife, a newborn daughter, and a rare kind of stability. He gave it all up — and walked into Harpers Ferry with a rifle. Most history books remember John Brown's raid. Few remember the five Black men who joined it. Fewer still remember the one who held the line until he took three bullets in a doorway — and refused to surre...

In 1864, Johnston County farmer  William Rains Lee  made a choice few dared—he walked away from the Confederate cause. Once a loyal soldier in North Carolina’s 24th Infantry, Lee saw the truth behind the slogans: a “poor man’s fight” fueling a planter’s empire. With or Without You  tells the untold story of a Confederate deserter who refused to die for slavery’s survival—and found courage in consc...

In 1711, the Carolina frontier burned. The Tuscarora Nation—once rulers of North Carolina’s coastal plains—rose against English colonists after years of enslavement, land theft, and lies. At the center stood two leaders:  Chief Hancock , who chose war, and  Chief Tom Blount , who chose survival. Their decisions would determine whether the American colonies expanded—or collapsed before they began....

Pine Level, 1941. A high school girl signs up for Navy WAVES—needing her parents' signature. From Bronx boot camp to D.C. code rooms, Lenora Crocker Stanley breaks every ceiling. Back home, her fierce alto turns Legion meetings and hospital boards into battlegrounds.

Step onto the muddy banks of Moores Creek in 1776, where the fate of North Carolina—and the fledgling American Revolution—hangs in the balance. In this episode, we follow Colonel John Smith as he leads Patriot militia into one of the first decisive battles of the war: the Battle of Moores Creek Bridge. From midnight marches across rain‑soaked fields to the thunder of loyalist Highlanders charging...

Strap in for the story of  Easy Street Drag Strip , where Johnston County’s red clay meets American speed. We trace Korean War veteran Charles Tart’s journey from Army half‑tracks to Newton Grove farmland, where in 1957 he built Eastern North Carolina’s first drag strip from scratch. From moonshine‑chasing sheriffs to flathead Fords under homemade Christmas lights, this is the roar that turned bac...

It's March 2, 1933, and a U.S. Senator fresh off busting the Teapot Dome scandal—America's biggest political corruption case—is secretly honeymooning with a glamorous Cuban widow when his train suddenly stops between Wilson and Rocky Mount. He doesn't get back on. In this episode of JoCoYo, we ride the rails with Thomas J. Walsh from Montana mines to Havana romance, through poisoning r...

A Scottish orphan sails from the Highlands to New Bern in the 1780s, builds a waterfront empire, and watches Union soldiers occupy his elegant mansion during the Civil War. Fast forward two centuries—what if one of his descendants became the voice that taught America to dream of Carolina? In this episode of JoCoYo, we trace a 250-year family journey from New Bern’s wharves to Chapel Hill’s piney w...

Picture this: it’s 1932 in Selma, North Carolina. Gas is too expensive, cars are parked and useless, and farmers are hitching their mules to stripped-down Fords and rolling them straight through town—on purpose. They’re not just getting to town; they’re mocking the president and about to change history.

Find me someone that does not like the TV show Young Sheldon… Actually, don’t. I don’t want to meet that person. It seems like a stretch, but there’s so much of a connection to eastern North Carolina, including Johnston county. Makes me love the show even more.

I absolutely love it when we uncover almost uniquely geological marvels that exist under our feet, and in our backyard. Johnston County, and East, North Carolina, are home to thousands of lakes. You’ve never seen them, you say? You would know if we had thousands of lakes? Well, let’s take a trip.

No one would ever accuse central North Carolina of being a hotbed of science-fiction history. Yet, here we are.

There’s a place in Johnston County that’s older than the hills… Quite literally. It is completely out of place and a freak of nature.

This is the case where a tree likely change the course not just American, but also world history. In 1844, Henry Clay of Kentucky, sat under an oak tree in Raleigh and wrote a letter.

Hilery wanted a chance for his children. Legacy that they could build on. A legacy was made, but not by him and not the way that he wanted.

What’s in a name? Success.

To become a surveyor in colonial America made that you had made the big time. Your chance had come. It was up to people like John Hinton to take advantage of it.

For poor and poverty stricken young English man, making the trip over to America in the 17th and 18th centuries Was full of risk and danger. Sometimes, those are the only things that will work

Death at an early age was fairly common and colonial and early North Carolina’s history. So were multiple marriages as a result of the death of a spouse. It’s because it didn’t have doctors back then, right? Wrong.