This movement gained momentum between 1900 and 1930, and added mining operations, brick dealerships, furniture stores, casket companies, textile mills, new church buildings, a new courthouse, and a desire to form a local historical society to add to Lincolnton’s economic, social, and historical infrastructure. In addition, this movement affected the demographics and geographic layout of Lincolnton’s central business district. The population in the county seat increased from 828 in 1900 to 2,413 in 1910. During this decade, a proliferation of large two-story brick buildings took the place of older one- and two-story frame homes around Lincolnton’s court square, stretching down East and West Main Streets. During the first two decades of the twentieth century, Nixon was present at all newly constructed modern buildings in Lincolnton, historic structures throughout the county, and family, political, and social functions for photographs captured by local photographers. In these positions, he preached a message to the people of Lincolnton that “old things and old customs with increasing rapidity are giving place to new things and new customs,” and at that time it was more important than ever before to remember, celebrate, and mark the county’s history by collecting material culture, dedicating monuments, and writing about their ancestors. He echoed this sentiment in each of his speeches and addresses throughout the county until his death in 1924. Alfred Nixon was a man caught between his commitment and desire to unite the people of Lincolnton and Lincoln County with a rural, agrarian past and Lost Cause tradition and identity, and the inevitability and emergence of modernity. His movement from the rural environs of eastern Lincoln County into various urban environments including his academic career at the University of North Carolina and political appointments in Lincolnton, forced him to integrate and reconcile the two conflicting elements of tradition and modernity, and create for the people of his home county an everlasting and impermeable traditional identity. Bounded by his interpretations of family tradition, folklore, and the need to collect history when and where others had failed, Nixon infused his local community, family, and region with a sense of place and time at a point when he believed it was most susceptible to being lost or forgotten. He revered the past and viewed its values and instrumental to the creation of the New South.