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HendersonHenderson is an appropriate spot to contemplate the impact of the revolution in transportation that occurred in America in the nineteenth century. Nationwide, thousands of villages evolved at convenient points to serve steamboats, canal boats and railroads.Henderson, named for a railroad executive, was created when the first railroad entered Caroline in 1868, the year before the transcontinental railroad was completed. Suddenly, trains ran from Henderson to California! The nearby stagecoach stop at Melville crossroads promptly closed and its post office relocated to Henderson. New settlers erected a hotel, two barrooms, and a school that shared space with a fruit evaporator. The depot shipped Caroline peaches, but the extensive peach industry was eventually destroyed by severe winters together with a virus called the "yellows". Unintentionally spread during tree trimming, the virus devastated thousands of acres of peach trees in the 1890s and bankrupted many Caroline families, including the Hardcastles of "Castle Hall."
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