Wake Forest Township got its start in 1834 when Calvin Jones sold his farmland to the North Carolina Baptist State Convention. The college began as a place for local boys to trade manual labor for a religious education. But the campus soon grew and so did the community, "surpassing any other neighborhood in refinement, good society, and wealth," according to one 19th-century account. By 1909, the town was incorporated. Not long after, with transformers...