Airlie North Carolina

Airlie, North Carolina refers to a **historic neighborhood and locale in Wilmington, New Hanover County, along Bradley Creek and the Intracoastal Waterway, rather than an independent incorporated town; it is best known for Airlie Gardens, a significant cultural landscape in the region. Airlie Gardens was created beginning in 1886 as a private estate and garden by Sarah Green Jones and her husband Pembroke Jones, naming the property Airlie after the Jones family’s Scottish ancestral home, and over decades the grounds were developed into a lush landscape of azaleas, camellias, magnolias, lakes, and live oaks, including the famed Airlie Oak dating back centuries. The Garden’s Mount Lebanon Chapel (built c. 1835) and adjacent cemetery are among the oldest surviving structures in New Hanover County and provide direct links to early settlement in the area, with records of burials valuable for genealogical research. Today Airlie is part of Wilmington’s coastal community, with local history tied to New Hanover County records (land grants, deeds, probate, church registers) held at county archives and libraries, and Airlie Gardens itself is a documented historic site offering insight into 19th–20th century families and landscape evolution.