Strawberry culture began in Chadbourn in 1895 when Joseph Addison Brown, merchant farmer, and North Carolina State Senator, bought and/or developed thousands of acres of timber lands of the Chadbourn area for productive farm lands. With the Wilson Publishing Company of Chicago, Illinois, a colony was formed named The Sunny South Colony.

Thus the advertisement for this desirable climate and fertile soil brought an estimated 160 families to The Sunny South Colony after 1895. Some of the colonist were successful and many of the local farmers began the cultivation of strawberries.