Wake Forest Wedding

Wake Forest is a town in Wake County, North Carolina, a suburb of Raleigh. The population was 12,588 at the 2000 census. The town was the original home of Wake Forest University. The former Wake Forest campus is the current home to the Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Development of the town of Wake Forest began in 1820 when Dr. Calvin Jones, originally from New England, bought 615 acres (2.5 km). The sparsely populated area became known as Wake Forest, or the Forest of Wake. Jones sold his farm for $2,000 to the North Carolina Baptist Convention, which opened the Wake Forest Manual Labor Institute, later Wake Forest College, on the site. The Raleigh & Gaston Railroad, completed in 1840, gave a boost to the school and surrounding village with its nearby depot in Forestville. College leaders convinced the railroad to move the depot even closer to the college in 1874, leading to more economic development. This growth allowed the community to become incorporated by the state in 1880 as the "Town of Wake Forest College." In 1909, the word "College" was removed from the official name. 1956 saw the removal of the college itself, to the much larger city of Winston-Salem. [1]