Lincolnton was established as the county seat of Lincoln County in 1785. It was laid out with a central courthouse surrounded by a grid plan of streets, blocks, and lots with four primary streets—East Main, West Main, North Aspen and South Aspen—leading from the court-house and dividing the town into quadrants. Over time, development in Lincolnton filled the original grid plan, expanded it, and eventually moved beyond it while maintaining the four principal arteries like compass points. Due to a steady influx of pioneers to North Carolina’s backcountry, by 1840 Lincoln County was one of the largest and most populous counties in North Carolina. It led the state in the value of many farm products, including wheat, orchard products and dairy products and was among the top producers of cotton and livestock statewide. In the late eighteenth century, forges and furnaces in Lincoln County were among many that were established in the western Piedmont. By 1849, the county’s ironworks lead the industry in North Carolina, producing large quantities of iron castings, bar iron, and wrought iron tools. Other manufacturing activities such as saw mills, grist mills, tanneries, paper mills, and potteries bolstered the economy.

Of particular significance, around 1813 Michael Schenck established the first successful textile mill south of New England. In 1816 it was destroyed by a flood, but three years later Schenck, James Bivens, and John Hoke erected a larger plant, the Lincoln Cotton Mills, on the South Fork of the Catawba River, which operated until the Civil War.

Lincolnton grew into a prosperous center of trade, culture and government. In 1800 forty-eight whites and forty-four slaves lived in town. In 1816, growth had continued to the point where the General Assembly authorized the laying off of additional lots in the town on land previously set aside, reserving tracts for an academy and a church. By 1820, the number if town lots had expanded from the original 100 to 161. The sale of town lots provided for the construction, ca. 1821, of the Pleasant Retreat Academy for male students. Several years later a female academy was constructed (Brown and York, 262).

Growth in Lincoln County’s population remained static during the mid-nineteeth century and progressed at a slow pace throughout much of the second half of the century. In 1887, the editor of the of the Lincoln Courier wrote that “Lincolnton is not dead. Her condition is simply comatose….” (Brown and York, 271).

Today Lincolnton’s history is reflected in its downtown and residential historic districts adjacent to downtown.