List of People From North Carolina - North Carolina Residents Born Elsewhere

North Carolina Residents Born Elsewhere

  • Maya Angelou (born 1928), poet, historian, author, actress, playwright, producer, director, and professor at Wake Forest University (Winston-Salem)
  • Joseph Bathanti (born 1953), American poet, writer, professor; North Carolina Poet Laureate (Vilas)
  • Marshall Brain (born 1961), technology expert and internet personality at HowStuffWorks.com (Raleigh)
  • Chang and Eng Bunker (1811–1874), the original Siamese twins who performed for audiences in Asia, Europe, and North America before settling in the mountains of North Carolina and marrying two local sisters (Wilkesboro)
  • Orson Scott Card (born 1951), lecturer and author of the award-winning science fiction book Enders Game (Greensboro)
  • Allison Hedge Coke (born 1958, raised in North Carolina), American Book Award winning author of Blood Run and other novels. (various counties)
  • John Edwards (born 1953), former U.S. Senator and 2004 Democratic Vice-Presidential nominee (Robbins)
  • Ric Flair (born 1949), most decorated professional wrestling champion of all time (Charlotte)
  • Robert Wilkie (born 1962) Defense Department Leader and National Security Assistant to the President (Fayetteville)
  • John Hope Franklin (1915–2009), historian and professor of African-American history at Duke University; also a civil-rights activist in the 1950s and 1960s (Durham)
  • Harry Golden (1902–1981), Jewish-American humorist, writer and publisher of the "Carolina Israelite" and author of many popular books including "Only in America". (Charlotte)
  • Alex Grant, Scottish-born American poet, instructor (Chapel Hill)
  • Bob Havens (born 1930), musician who played trombone for the Lawrence Welk orchestra from 1960 to 1983, born in Quincy, Illinois. (Buies Creek)
  • Joseph Hewes (1730–1779), signatory of the Declaration of Independence for North Carolina and first U.S. Secretary of the Navy (Edenton)
  • Samantha Holvey (born 1986), Miss North Carolina USA 2006 (Buies Creek)
  • Michael Jordan (born 1963), basketball legend for the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, leading UNC to the 1982 NCAA basketball championship and winning six NBA titles with the Chicago Bulls (Charlotte)
  • Si Kahn (born 1944), singer-songwriter and activist, supporting numerous civil-rights and environmental causes with his music (Charlotte)
  • Mike Krzyzewski (born 1947), long-time men's basketball coach for Duke University, garnering four NCAA basketball national championships (Durham)
  • William Lenoir (1751–1839), American patriot, serving in the Battle of Kings Mountain and several other skirmishes during the American Revolution, also the first President of the board of trustees of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Wilkes County)
  • Michael Peterson (born 1943), novelist and convicted murderer; currently serving a life sentence for the 2003 murder of his wife (Durham)
  • Tom Regan (born 1938), philosopher and animal rights activist at North Carolina State University, his book
  • Kathy Reichs (born 1950), forensic anthropologist at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; also the author of best-selling mystery novels featuring the character Temperance Brennan (Charlotte)
  • Tony Rice, musician (Reidsville)
  • Eric Rudolph (born 1966), anti-abortion terrorist currently serving five life sentences for the bombing at the 1996 Summer Olympics which killed one person and injured 111 others; Rudolph eluded capture for 5 years (Murphy)
  • Randolph Scott (1898–1987), American film actor whose career spanned from 1928 to 1962. His most enduring image is that of the tall-in-the-saddle Western hero. Out of his more than 100 film appearances more than 60 were in Westerns.(Charlotte)
  • Dean Smith (born 1931), retired men's basketball coach for the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, member of the NCAA Hall of Fame, earned 879 wins and two national championships in his career (Chapel Hill)
  • Lee Smith (born 1944), author and instructor at North Carolina State University, winner of the O. Henry award for short-story writing (Hillsborough)
  • Josef Sommer (born 1934), character actor who appeared in such hit movies as X-Men: The Last Stand, The Sum of All Fears, and Patch Adams (born in Greifswald, Germany, raised in North Carolina)
  • Nicholas Sparks (born 1965) author of numerous romance novels and currently lives in New Bern (born in Omaha, Nebraska)
  • Jessica Stroup (born 1986), actress who grew up in Charlotte, North Carolina (born in Anderson, South Carolina)
  • Edward Teach (1680–1718), pirate known as Blackbeard, who kept his hide-out in the harbor of Ocracoke Island on North Carolina's Outer Banks (Ocracoke)
  • John Tesh (born 1952), musician and television personality, best known as the host of the television series Entertainment Tonight from 1986 to 1996 (Winston-Salem)
  • George Washington Vanderbilt II (1862–1914), billionaire who created the Biltmore Estate in the North Carolina mountains; it is the largest privately-owned mansion in the Western Hemisphere and North Carolina's top tourist attraction (Asheville).
  • Daniel Wallace (born 1959), author of the best-selling novel Big Fish: A Novel of Mythic Proportions (Chapel Hill)
  • Hugh Williamson (1735–1819), physician and the third NC signatory of the Constitution (Edenton)
  • Brittany York (born 1989), Miss North Carolina USA 2011 (Wilmington)

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Famous quotes containing the words north, carolina, residents and/or born:

    “Ah, how shall you know the dreary sorrow at the North Gate,
    With Li Po’s name forgotten,
    And we guardsmen fed to the tigers.”
    —Li Po (701–762)

    “Poetry presents indivisible wholes of human consciousness, modified and ordered by the stringent requirements of form. Prose, aiming at a definite and concrete goal, generally suppresses everything inessential to its purpose; poetry, existing only to exhibit itself as an aesthetic object, aims only at completeness and perfection of form.”
    —Richard Harter Fogle, U.S. critic, educator. The Imagery of Keats and Shelley, ch. 1, University of North Carolina Press (1949)

    “Most of the folktales dealing with the Indians are lurid and romantic. The story of the Indian lovers who were refused permission to wed and committed suicide is common to many places. Local residents point out cliffs where Indian maidens leaped to their death until it would seem that the first duty of all Indian girls was to jump off cliffs.”
    —For the State of Iowa, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)

    “He was begotten in the galley and born under a gun. Every hair was a rope yarn, every finger a fish-hook, every tooth a marline-spike, and his blood right good Stockholm tar.”
    —Naval epitaph.