Charlotte Rhone, RN, was born in New Bern in 1874. She graduated from Freedmen’s Hospital School of Nursing in Washington, DC in 1901 and returned home to New Bern to serve her community.

She began her nursing career as a private nurse because there were no hospitals in the New Bern area that were willing to hire African American nurses. She primarily provided home health care and childbirth assistance to her patients.

Rhone became one of the first African American women in the United States to become an RN when she registered with the NC Board of Nurse Examiners in 1903. She moved to Durham in 1910, where she served as the head nurse at the National Religious Training School (now North Carolina Central University).

Returning to New Bern in 1915, Rhone resumed private practice nursing, but her career trajectory shifted following a devastating fire in New Bern in 1922.

In the wake of the fire she became the first African American welfare worker in Craven County and was tasked with supporting recovery efforts for the Black community. She went on to serve as Assistant Superintendent of the Craven County Welfare Department in the late 1930s and was a leader in the North Carolina Negro Social Work Association.

Rhone was also an entrepreneur and civic leader who operated the Rhone Hotel in New Bern. She was a member of The Climber’s Club and the local Library Board of Directors. Charlotte Rhone passed away in 1965.

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Excerpt from the New Bern Historical Society.

The Rhone sisters, Carrie and Charlotte, two of four African American sisters, spent a lifetime working to serve the community. The Isaac Smith House on Johnson Street, in New Bern was built by Isaac Smith, legislator, realtor and philanthropist who was married to Carrie Rhone in 1898. He passed away in 1915.

Following the 1922 fire, Carrie Rhone Smith built the Johnson Street house, known as the Isaac Smith House. The Charlotte Rhone Cultural Center is on West Street. This building was originally the West Street Colored Library, built in 1947 with funds raised in a community effort.

It served as a Colored library from 1947 to 1972 for the Black community. The building is named now for Charlotte S. Rhone, for her work championing the library initiative and her leadership of the Climbers Club, which is the current owner of the building.

The Climbers Club is a service organization founded in 1921 by a group of 9 women including the first President of the group, Carrie Rhone and the third President Charlotte Rhone.