New NC highway markers will highlight local history, lore MARTHA QUILLIN, The News & Observer April 24, 2021 FacebookTwitterEmail RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Poor Naomi Wise: spurned by her lover, fished lifeless from a river, the crime of her North Carolina murder unpunished. The story of her violent end in the spring of 1807 has been told and retold millions of times through one of America’s best-known folk songs, with varying themes. Was she killed by the father of her unborn child so that he wouldn’t have to marry her or support the baby? Was she trying to extort money from a man to raise a child that wasn’t his?