World War II Memorial

The granite tablets honoring Randolph County servicemen which now fill up a good portion of the Worth Street lawn of the courthouse are only the county’s most recent memorial to its war dead. The Confederate monument, dedicated in 1911, may have been first. The clock at the southwest corner of Sunset and Fayetteville Streets (formerly attached to First National Bank) honored World War I “doughboys”. The swimming pool and tennis courts of Memorial Park, at Church and Lanier Streets in Asheboro, honored World War II and Korea servicemen. But the smallest memorial was one that once hung in the lobby of the courthouse.

In an issue of The Courier from April 1944, the following article can be found:

“Asheboro Rotary Club Plans Memorial Service for World War Dead Friday, April 28/ To Unveil Plaque in Hall of County Court House [in] Honor of County’s Dead

“Randolph County’s war dead will be honored at memorial exercises to be held at the Randolph County court house in Asheboro on Friday, April 28^th, at 2:30 p.m. The event will be the unveiling of the memorial plaque in the hall of the court house by the Rotary Club of Asheboro. The plaque will contain the names of the county’s war dead to date.

“Relatives of these men will be guests of honor on the occasion, seats having been reserved for members of their families. Representatives of the following organizations also have reserved seats for the occasion: Asheboro, Randleman and Ramseur Lions clubs; Randleman, and Liberty Rotary clubs; Kiwanis Club; Business and Professional Women’s Club; American Legion and Auxiliary; War Mothers; Daughters of the Confederacy; Randolph Ministerial Association and others. The public is also extended an invitation to attend.

“Principal speaker on the occasion will be Lt. Col. Charles C. Bowman, Chief of Staff Intelligence, First Troop Carrier Wing, at Pope Field.”

The plaque served for many years at the county’s only recognition of local residents who make the supreme sacrifice in the war. Eventually it accumulated 51 small Bakelite plaques inscribed with the names of 50 men and 1 woman; so many names in fact that they filled the original plaque and overflowed onto a small plywood board attached to its bottom.

The plaque was commissioned by the Asheboro Rotary Club and its creation supervised by Joe Ross, a former President of the club and subsequently its lifetime historian. It was evidently built by Asheboro Mayor Clyde Lucas in his shops at Lucas Industries on South Fayetteville Street, in a building that subsequently housed GE, Black and Decker, and is now Wells Hosiery mill. Stylistically it is identical to a larger plaque which hung in the lobby of Lucas Industries and exhibited the names of plant employees who were in service during the war. The Asheboro Rotary/ World War II Dead memorial was removed from the lobby of the courthouse during the 1964 renovations. The Rotary plaque and the Lucas Industries plaque were saved by Mr. Ross and preserved in the basement of his building at 100 Sunset Avenue, where they were found (by me) in 1998.

The Asheboro Rotary Club paid for both plaques to be cleaned and refinished, and the names of the World War II dead were moved to the larger plaque, where they now fit without the extra sheet of plywood. It is hoped that the original smaller plaque can now be used to honor World War I dead, and both plaques displayed in the lobby of the restored courthouse.

Note that the Home Lee Cox name plate is missing—the story is that Joe Ross gave the plate to a family member at some point. One of my real estate clients, LaRue Cox, was the brother of Homer Lee Cox and sent me a tiny newspaper clipping which records his death. Homer Lee Cox was killed in the Philippine Islands at age 19, on May 6, 1945. Robert McGlohon, the 23-year-old brother of former Asheboro Fire Chief John McGlohon, was a bombardier on a B-17 based in England when he died. Chief McGlohon remembers that Robert “and his crew crashed in 1943, leaving the little town of Polbrooke [England] on their way to the continent. Apparently the plane iced up and spun in and all but one of them were killed.”

John McGlohon remembers another, temporary memorial to soldiers serving during the war. A sign made up of 4×8 sheets of plywood nailed to posts stood at the corner of Worth and Fayetteville Streets, beside the Red Ball gas station. “Everytime somebody went into service Edgar Cheek [the local sign painter] would go down there and paint their names on the list. When somebody got killed, he’d go down and paint a star by their name.”

I don’t know the story behind each name, or the circumstances of any other person’s death. That would be a great research project for someone!

Below are the names listed on the Rotary World War II memorial:

W. Fred Allen

Robert E. Andrews

Archie L. Ashworth

Max C. Auman

Leslie E. Bean

William G. Boone

Willie H. Bouldin

William M. Buie

Walter A. Bunch, Jr.

Hartwell L. Byrd

Robert E. Cagle

David Henry Cline

Julius D. Copple

Billy S. Coward

Homer Lee Cox

James D. Crowell

Linwood Deaton

Louis D. Demarcus

Neal W. Dennis

Thomas H. Dixon

William D. Dunham

Charles T. Ferree

Williams A. Grimes

John V. Greeson

Harvey L. Hemphill

Virgil F. Hill

Carl R. Holmes

Arthur L. Hoover

Willie E. Hudson

Calvin S. Jarrell

Howard L. Jessup

Howard R. Jones

Lonnie L. Jones

Sylvester V. Kennedy

John F. Kime

Boyd R. Kimrey

James L. King

Richard W. Kirkman

Truman W. Langley

Clifford G. Lassiter

Caleb D. Marion

Alfred McElhannon

Robert A. McGlohon

Clarence R. McRae

E.K. McArthur, Jr.

Winfred C. O’Briant

Carlie B. Odom

John C. Odum

Earnest O. Nance

Robert H. Newton

Edgar L. (Joe) Pierce

Colon A. Pilkenton

Maurice M. Plummer

Jefferson D. Potts

Mildred Coleen Presnell

Glenn Fox Pugh

Caleb R. Redding

Dewey R. Reeder

Thomas J. Rierson, Jr.

Bruce L. Rich

John B. Richardson

John W. Salmond

William M. Smith

Walter D. Staley

Earnest C. Smith

Samuel W. Sechrest

Claude R. Stafford

Clarence T. Summey

Kester L. Tucker

Junior Voncannon

Harold M. Walton

Guy E. White

Clifford H. Walker

Haywood G. Walden

Charles Wood

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Howell Gilliam Trogdon

[The Congressional Medal of Honor- U.S. Army version.]

Howell Gilliam Trogdon, born in Randolph County in 1840, was the first North Carolinian to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor. There is no better illustration of the ever-divided loyalties of Randolph County than one of its native sons, born in the last state to join the Confederacy, would receive the highest award for valor in action which can be bestowed upon an individual serving in the Army of the United States of America.

[Howell G. Trogdon, ca. 1890]

Born on the south side of Deep River between Cedar Falls and Franklinville, Trogdon (24 Oct. 1840 – 2 Dec. 1910) was one of eleven children of John Trogdon and his wife Isabella Hardin. Before he was twenty years old he had moved to Missouri; he was working as a cabin boy on a steam boat when he enlisted in the US Army in St. Louis on May 28, 1861.

He was mustered into Company B (“the American Zouaves” ) of the 8^th Missouri Volunteer Infantry on June 12, 1861. He was placed on “detached service” from June 28, 1862, probably detailed to serve as a courier and spy. In July 1862 he was captured near Ripley, Mississippi bearing dispatches from General William Sherman to General Schuyler Hamilton. He was tried and condemned to death, but the sentence was commuted to incarceration at federal prison camps in Tupelo, Miss., Mobile, Ala., Montgomery, Ala., and Richmond, Va.

He finally was paroled on November 19, 1862, and somehow found his way back to his regiment in western Tennessee, where Grant’s forces had been trying cut the Confederacy in half by gaining control of the Mississippi River. The key to that strategy lay in occupying Vicksburg, “the Gibraltar of the West,” a heavily fortified city on a high bluff whose guns prevented the US Navy forces from advancing any higher up the Mississippi.

[Vicksburg from the Mississippi]

After burning Jackson, Miss., on May 15, 1863, Grant’s army battled towards Vicksburg, hoping a quick and powerful advance would keep the retreating Confederate forces off balance and disorganized. By the time General Pemberton’s forces arrived in Vicksburg, the Confederate retreat threatened to turn into a rout, stopped only by the relative safety provided by the trenches and earthwork fortifications built to protect the city in the fall of 1862. A 12-mile-long line of forts and earthen embankments protected Vicksburg on the North, East and South; the Mississippi River was its moat to the west, where Admiral Porter’s blockading forces had bombarded the city for the past year.

Approaching Vicksburg on the road from Jackson, a Union officer observed “A long line of high, rugged, irregular bluffs, clearly cut against the sky, crowed with cannon which peered ominously from embrasures to the right and left as far as the eye could see. Lines of heavy rifle-pits, surmounted with head-logs, ran along the bluffs, connecting fort with fort, and filled with veteran infantry…. The approaches to this position were frightful- enough to appall the stoutest heart.” [Carter, The Final Fortress: The Campaign for Vicksburg, p. 211.]

Grant felt that a quick strike into the heart of the city could cause the collapse of the Confederate lines and preclude a lengthy siege. Even though attacks on the 19^th and 20^th of May failed to break through the Confederate fortifications, Grant decided to try one last massive assault. A perceived weak spot was identified near one fort, called the “Stockade Redan,” where the 10-foot-tall embankment was protected by a ditch 12 feet wide and 5-6 feet deep. To cross this ditch and breach the wall of the fort, Grant ordered a “forlorn hope,” an advance guard of 150 volunteer troops, sent on what was probably a suicide mission.  The advance party would carry heavy logs toward the bluff, 2 men per log, and throw them across the ditch to create the foundation for a bridge. The second detachment would closely follow with lumber to create the deck of the bridge, and a third detachment would rush across the bridge and plant scaling ladders against the face of the embankment so that the supporting brigades could carry the fort in a grand assault. Most of the first wave of attacking soldiers, the “forlorn hope,” would probably be killed or wounded; others might survive long enough to seize a foothold and occupy the Confederate defenders while the final wave with better prospects could punch through the weakened defenses.

[The modern-day Stockade Redan in the Vicksburg National Battlefield Park. Photo by Michael Noiret.]

Howell G. Trogdon wrote the following sketch in explanation of his Medal of Honor award:

“On the 22 of May ‘63 a detail was called for out of our Regiment, but for what we did not know. There were 22 volunteers from our Regiment. We were ordered to take a hundred rounds of ammunition, 40 in our cartridge box and 60 in our pockets. We were then marched in front of General Grant’s headquarters where we stacked arms. We here met details from other Regiments which swelled the number to 250 all told. Generals Grant, Sherman, Cogan, Morgan and Smith, Jiles A. Smith, Ewing, Oustenhouse, Steele, F.P. Blair and others were there. Attention was called and Gen. Sherman made a short speech. Pointing to the front he told us that we were there as a forlorn hope to the front, that we were to file to the right and go into the mouth of a cut where we would be provided with the scaling ladders.

“I noticed here that there was no one bearing the flag. Then I cried out to General Sherman, ‘Say, General, won’t it be advisable for some one to carry the flag so if we get scattered we will see something to rally to?’ About twenty yards from us there was a fine silk flag set in the ground in front of some general’s headquarters. General Sherman walked over and taking the flag brought it to me saying in a jovial manner, ‘It’s a dangerous job my boy to try to put that flag on the fort.’

[Contemporary newspaper illustration of the Forlorn Hope storming the Stockyard Redan.]

“We then marched on into the cut and awaited the signal for the charge on the fort with our improvised scaling ladders. At 10 o’clock [A.M.] we heard the boom of the cannon which was our signal to charge. Then we swept forward and were met by a terrific fire from the enemy so deadly that our little band was almost annihilated. At this moment I ran forward waving the flag and rushed on toward the fort. A canister struck the staff a few inches above my hand and cut it half in two. Then they depressed their guns and a cannon ball struck the folds and carried it half away, knocking it out of my hands. I got down off of the fort and picked the flag up and rushed back and flaunted it in the faces of the rebels and said, ‘What flag are you fighting under today, Johnny?’” [Quoted in The Randolph Guide, April 15, 1970," Cedar Falls Man Fought for Yanks," Trogdon's statement was provided by his great-grandaughter Mary P. Johnston.]

The “forlorn hope” was doomed from the outset by the plan to carry the bridge materials more than a thousand feet across an open “no man’s land” in full view of the Confederate fort. Says one analysis of the action:

“The moment the ‘forlorn hope’ emerged from the ravine, they came within view of the enemy, who opened so heavy a fire on them that their works were covered with clouds of smoke. The gallant little band advanced at a dead run, but in the eighty rods [1,080 feet] of open ground which lay between them and the fort, about half of them were shot down. When the survivors arrived at the ditch, they found it impossible to build a bridge, as so many of the logs had been dropped by the way, and it was equally impossible to remain where they were, exposed to the enemy’s fire. There was nothing for it but to jump into the ditch and seek shelter. Private Howell G. Trogden [sic], who carried the flag of the storming party, planted it on the parapet of the fort, and dropped back into the ditch, where he kept up a fire on the Confederates whenever they attempted to reach it and take it in.” [W.F. Beyer and O.F. Keydel, eds., Deeds of Valor: How America's Civil War Heroes Won the Congressional Medal of Honor, 1903, p. 191.]

[Detail of the above. Howell Trogdon, at the far left, is planting the flag on the parapet of the Redan.]

“After Trogden had planted his flag on the parapet, the Confederates tried to capture it by hooking it with the shanks of their bayonets, but failed, owing to the hot fire kept up by the sharpshooters. Thereupon Trogden asked me for my gun to give the enemy a thrust. This was a very foolish request, as no soldier ever gives up his gun, but I concluded to try it myself. I raised my head up about as high as the safety of the case would permit, and pushed my gun across the intervening space between us and the enemy, gave their bayonets a swipe with mine, and dodged down just in time to escape being riddled. I did not want any more of that kind of amusement, so did not undertake to force the acquaintance any further. After we had been in this predicament about two hours, they sent over a very pressing invitation to ‘Come in, you Yanks. Come in and take dinner with us.’ We positively declined, however, unless they would come out and give us a chance to see if the invitation were genuine. This they refused to do, but agreed to send a messenger. By and by it arrived in the shape of a shell, which went flying down the hill without, however, doing any damage.” [Statement of Corporal Robert Cox, Company K, Fifty-first Illinois Infantry, quoted in Beyer and Keydel, p. 196]

[Federal advance at Vicksburg]

“The other brigades advance to the support of the stormers, but were driven back by the heavy fire, and all that reached the ditch were thirty men of the Eleventh Missouri… They planted their flag along side that of the storming party, and sought shelter where they could, in the ditch, or in holes dug in the embankment. The Confederates finding it impossible to depress their guns sufficiently to reach them, dropped 12-pounder shells among them, but the fuses were cut too long, and consequently did not explode for about ten seconds. This gave the stormers time not only to get out of the way, but even to toss some of the shells back over the parapet, otherwise not a man would have survived. As it was, the bottom of the ditch was strewn with mangled bodies, with heads and limbs blown off.” [Beyer and Keydel, p. 192]

["This gave time to toss some of the shells back." From Beyer and Keydel.]

“All day long, from 10 o’clock in the morning until darkness fell, the unequal fit went on; then the little body of survivors crept out of the ditch, carrying with them their flags, riddled with bullets, and made their way back to their own lines. Of the storming party eighty-five per cent were either killed or dangerously wounded, and few of them escaped without a wound of some kind.” [Beyer and Keydel, p. 194]

“When the storming party withdrew, they left behind them William Archinal, who had been stunned by a fall, and who was afterwards captured by the enemy… [Archinal stated] “When I was taken into the fort, a rebel officer came up to me, slapped me on the shoulder, and said: ‘See here, young man, weren’t you fellows all drunk when you started this morning?’ I replied, ‘No, Sir!’ ‘Well, they gave you some whiskey before you started, didn’t they?’ he said, and I answered, ‘No Sir, that plan is not practiced in our army.’

“‘Didn’t you know it was certain death,’ he asked me again, and I replied, ‘Well, I don’t know, I am still living!’

“‘Yes,’ he said, ‘You are living, but I can assure you that very few of your comrades are.’” [Beyer and Keydel, p. 194]

[Vicksburg National Cemetery]

Howell Trogdon closes by saying :

“Only three of my comrades succeeded in reaching the fort with me: Sergeant Nagle who was killed on the spot and a Private from 54 Reg. who shared the same fate. The reply to my question to the Reb ['What flag are you fighting under today, Johnny?"] was, ‘You’d better surrender Yank.’ ‘Oh no Johnny, you’ll surrender first,’ was my answer.

“I never left that place of death until after midnight. My canteen was shot away, my clothes was full of holes and the banner was hardly recognizable. Then I crawled back over the corpses of the Forlorn Hope over dead and through the cane and back into our lines with the remnant of the Flag.” [From his statement in The Randolph Guide.]

[Admiral Porter's bombardment]

The siege of Vicksburg lasted until the Fourth of July; its starving citizens lived for months in caves dug out of the high banks along the Mississippi while Union gunboats shelled the city. Grant finally captured 29,500 prisoners while losing about 5,000 of his soldiers killed, wounded or missing. He would later write, “the fate of the Confederacy was sealed at Vicksburg.” Control of the Mississippi would never return to Confederate hands, and the states South and West of the river were cut off from the rest of the Confederacy. “The Father of Waters,” said Abraham Lincoln, “again goes unvexed to the Sea.”

Howell Trogdon was honorably discharged May 22, 1864. He and the other 50 survivors of the forlorn Hope were awarded the Medal of Honor by Act of Congress on August 3, 1894. Trogdon settled in Chicago, where he married and raised a family. He died in Los Angeles in 1910.

WAR DEPARTMENT INFORMATION

BIRTH 1840 at Cedar Falls, North Carolina

ENTERED SERVICE AT St. Louis, Missouri

RANK/ORGANIZATION Private, Company B, 8th Missouri Infantry

MOH CITATION Gallantry in the charge of the “volunteer storming party.”   He carried his regiment’s flag and tried to borrow a gun to defend it.

PLACE/DATE At Vicksburg, Mississippi; 22 May 1863

DATE OF ISSUE 03 August 1894

[extracted from www.army.mil and http://www.cmohs.org/recipient-detail/1399/trogden-howell-g.php ]

Sources:

W.F.Boyer and O.F. Keydel, eds., Deeds of Valor: How America’s Civil War Heroes Won The Congressional Medal of Honor (Detroit: Perrien-Keydel Company, 1903).

Samuel Carter III, The Final Fortress: The Campaign for Vicksburg, 1862-1863 (NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1980).

The Randolph Guide, April 15, 1970,” Cedar Falls Man Fought for Yanks.”

Randolph County Military History

[An unknown Randolph County Civil War soldier. This ambrotype was sold at an estate auction in Grant Township in 2001.]

The following overview of Randolph County’s involvement in the military history of the United States was written in 1936 by Tom Presnell. I copied it from a typescript in the files of the Randolph Room which had his handwritten corrections, which are made as indicated.

I always think of the author as “Colonel Tom Presnell,” because that is how my father Lowell Whatley invariably referred to him. Presnell (b. 5-11-1908 – d. 8-9-1973) was my father’s predecessor as commander of the Randolph County National Guard unit, and they had collaborated closely over the new National Guard Armory on South Fayetteville Street, designed under Colonel Tom and built under my father’s supervision. Tom Presnell had been a Major in command of the Asheboro guard unit when it was activated in 1941.

After World War II Presnell worked as one of the county’s first probation and parole officers. In retirement Colonel Tom became the most active advocate for the preservation of local history. When I became interested in history in the 1960s, I was directed to Miss Laura Worth, the nonagenarian county historian (she’ll be subject of a future post) who operated out of a vault in the basement of the courthouse, and Colonel Tom Presnell, who ran the Randolph County Historical Society and wanted to build a museum in the Armfield House on the corner of Fayetteville and Salisbury Streets (now the site of Randolph Bank). The Armfield House museum ran afoul of the need for sprinklers in a frame structure, and the best compromise that could be made was that the Historical Society was given the Armfield Kitchen, formerly the Asheboro Female Academy. Colonel Tom moved the Female Academy to a borrowed lot facing the Junior High School, and began its restoration. Presnell died in a freak accident in the summer of 1973, when his parked car was demolished by a runaway tractor-trailer truck.

[Major Tom Presnell in 1940.]

“Randolph Military History Shows Her Son’s Bravery in Wars of Many Decades,” by Tom Presnell.

From Revolutionary days to the present, in time of stress, Randolph sons have poured forth to war. At the battle of Guilford Court House, Randolph Militia units under command of Lieutenant John Collier, took part in the battle at that place. Of course records are scarce and vague as to this period but it is known that Thomas Dougan, Col. Andrew Balfour, Captain William Clark, Hugh McCain, Alexander Gray and others fought valiantly for liberty and were leaders in the fight against the Tories in this county and surrounding section. Few of them were in the Continental army but from 1775 to 1783 there was practically continuous fighting [with] marauding bands of the organized [Tories] in this and Chatham counties.

In the war of 1812 with Great Britain, the militia of Randolph again went to war but saw little action because this war was fought mostly on the seas and in the northern part of the United States— far from their homes.

During the Civil War the county contributed the full quota to the Confederate cause. Over 3000 boys left Randolph in 1861 to fight for the protection of their homes and property. Randolph sent to the front nine full companies, all commanded by Randolph men. These companies were: I, L, and M, of the 22nd N. C. Regiment; F and G of the 46th N. C. Regiment; B, of 52nd N.C. Regiment; F, of the 70th N.C. Regiment; A and D, of the 8th Battalion; and numerous other soldiers scattered over other regiments.

[Flag of the "Randolph Hornets" (22nd Regiment, Company M, North Carolina Troops), taken in the 1970s in the old Randolph Room of the Asheboro Public Library. The deteriorated silk flag is now in dire need of restoration.]

Near the last of the war the Junior Reserves were organized, and saw some active service. They were boys of about sixteen to seventeen years of age and commanded by C served throughout the war in the army of northern Virginia and in the eastern Carolina. They were in all the principal battles except the first battle at Manassas. At Gettysburg under Pettigrew, and at Seven Pines their losses were severe.

Only a few returned from this gigantic conflict that raged for four years. Many rested in Soldier’s graves; several had died of disease, but many more of them had died fighting for their land. Returning home they encountered hardships that weak men could not face. The country was overrun with deserters. Robbery and pillaging was prevalent over the county.

In the war with Spain, in l890, few Randolph men saw action, mostly because it did last long — only about ninety days.

In 1911 a call was issued through the columns of the Courier, stating that “all citizens interested in organizing a company of infantry in the State Guard meet at the court house…” The notice was signed by James Kivett and George Ross. James Kivett became the first officer in Germany K, Third Regiment of Infantry . The company changed officers several times, T. Fletcher Bulla at one time was Captain, B. F. Brittain, C.E. Elmore, Ed Mendenhall and others were Lieutenants at different times. Dozens of men in all walks of life now living in Asheboro and elsewhere, at one time and another joined the guards for the annual two weeks encampment.

[Members of Company K digging trenches at Camp Sevier, SC. Randolph Room Photo.]

Returning to Asheboro early in 1917 with 53 men and three officers, saw another crisis and recruiting for overseas service began. A reorganization occurred about this time; the Third Regiment became the 120 Infantry and assigned to the 60th Brigade, 30th (Old Hickory) Division. In September, 1917 Company K was sent to Camp Sevier, S. C. to become acquainted with the officers of the company. The officers at that time were Capt. B. F. Dixon and Lieutenants Hal M. Walker and Everett Luck; and about 150 army personnel.

The infantry spent about nine months training at Sevier, the company with the infantry of the 30th Division, composed of the troops from North Carolina and Tennessee, embarked for France. Landing in France in June, 1918, The Division, along with the 27th Division was attached to the British Division in Belgium. On September 29, the Division did some of the most courageous fighting of the entire war.

During the war these two divisions gained fighting glory by successfully assaulting the Hindenburg Line— an assumingly impregnable fortress. Company K going into the assault with 208 men, only 67 emerged living or unwounded. They had fought in the fiercest part and had accomplished their objective, but only at the cost of supreme sacrifice. Capt. Dixon, Sergeant Tom McDowell, Private John Kivett and many other Losing their lives.

[Private J.A. Long of Company K]

After a few days rest, October 10 saw this outfit back in the lines engaged in another fierce battle.

In addition to the National Guard Company, Randolph furnished many men for all branches of the service during the war. Most of the Randolph men who entered the army by way of the selective draft were sent to Camp Jackson, S.C. for training, being assigned to the 81st division. They too went to France and saw action in battle.

After the Armistice was signed, American troops in France wore sent home as fast as possible, The 120th infantry landing in Charleston, S.C. in April, 1919, and Company K was mustered out of service, the boys returning home and Company K was disbanded.

In 1921 the National Guard was reorganized but Asheboro did not get one of the companies. However in 1928 Headquarters Company 3rd Bn., 12 Infantry, a unit of the North Carolina National Guard was secured for the town, being organized by C.J. Lovett and Roy Cox, Lt. Cox his junior officer.

This company is now composed of two officers and 28 enlisted men. Cox is 1st. Lieutenant in Command and Vance Kivett is 2nd lieutenant. The armory is located on N. Church Street and was built only some forty years ago. The large drill room, besides being used for military purposes, is often converted to a dance hall and a meeting place for various civic organizations.

Rabbit Gums

When I was growing up and visiting my mother’s family near Union Grove Church on the border between Moore and Randolph counties, I sometimes would stumble across one of these odd contraptions set up in the edge of one of the distant fields: “Rabbit Gums” my uncles and Grandfather set out to catch dinner. I never developed a taste for bunny, but I was fascinated with their traps.

The Chriscoe rabbit gums were wooden rectangular boxes made of thick sawmill plank, with the far end closed and a trap door at the other that slid down like a guillotine. The top of the door was tied to a stick balanced on one end; a notched trigger clipped into the box and held the door open. Rabbit food (apples/ carrots/ turnips/ etc.) was put inside the closed back end; when an animal (not always a rabbit- I remember hearing stories about angry possums and skunks caught in rabbit gums) crawled in the box and nibbled on the food, the trigger would pop loose and slap the trap door down to catch the rabbit. Most of the time.

The “gum” part of the name Rabbit Gum is a holdover from farther back in history, when black gum trees were burned to hollow out the center, making natural boxes for bee hives, chicken nests, rabbit traps and etc. “Gum” became a generic term for whatever served the same purpose as that original hollow block of Gum wood. This internet hunting forum page has pictures of a natural black gum rabbit trap. [Here's the link unembedded- http://www.huntingenthusiast.net/viewtopic.php?t=2917&sid=9a46a54fca77896678c6bbcef9df44cb ]

Local historian Frank L. FitzSimons of Henderson County, NC, wrote here of rabbit gums-

“In early days the fall of the year was the season to set rabbit gums. This was before rabbits were protected by stringent game laws and wild rabbits supplied a sizeable portion of the fresh meat eaten during the winter months. At that time it was not against the law to sell wild game in our stores and meat markets. It is rarely done now but in the days of another generation practically every boy on a farm in Henderson County had a string of rabbit gums …

“Every farm boy used his own favorite bait in the traps … Some held to apples. Others claimed that onions were better than apples. Some boys baited their gums with salt. Then there were those who argued that the best bait of all was a combination of cabbage leaves, onions and salt.

“My uncle taught me to bait traps with apple slices. This was his preference because apples were readily available that time of the year and would keep in the trap for a long while. In addition to placing a large slice in the trap behind the trigger, he also placed tiny bits of apple in a pathway leading to the entrance.

“At the beginning of one winter a rumor spread through town that some boys were killing and skinning cats for rabbits. The market for rabbits was completely wiped out until some wise person came up with the idea of leaving the fur on one hind foot for identification…. When a boy caught a wild rabbit, skinned and dressed it for sale, [and] the fur was… left on one of the hind feet… the purchaser could know the animal being sold was actually a rabbit.”

I discovered these homemade rabbit gums in a former parking lot next to a textile mill in Salisbury that was being torn down. They gently reminded me of the 1950s in rural Randolph. But an April 2007 Craigslist post from Morehead City announced a bigger business:

“I HAVE JUST FINISHED BUILDING OUR 2007 STOCK OF RABBIT GUMS….AKA RABBIT TRAPS……ALL HARDWOOD CONSTRUCTION FROM AGED USED PLANKING! WE HAVE 3,652 NOW IN STOCK AT 39.95 EACH PLUS SHIPPING & HANDLING— FIRST COME FIRST SERVE………..”

Obviously rabbit gums haven’t vanished into history quite yet!

“Rebecca” Pitchers

1930s Rebecca Pitcher by Log Cabin Pottery (signed). The tall narrow shape and flared spout identifies it; the handle is more practical than most, and would have fit into the kiln much better than the J.B. Cole-style exaggerated loop handles..

The blog “Potters for the N.C. Pottery Center” has an interesting and useful new post about “Rebecca” pitchers, which were one of the most popular products of local potters during the “art pottery” era of the 1930s and 40s.  Go to their blog entry here.

The name comes from the Biblical story of Rebecca at the well of Nahor in Genesis, Chapter 24.   Isaac, son of Abraham, was old enough to marry, and Abraham sent a servant to the city of Nahor in Mesopotamia to find a suitable young woman.  The servant arrived at the local well with ten of Abraham’s camels, and planned to ask the young women of the city for a drink of water.  Any one who not only gave him a drink, but poured water for the camels, would be the one sent by God for Isaac’s wife.

“Rebecca, who was born to Bethuel… came out with her pitcher on her shoulder… And she went down to the well, filled her pitcher… And the servant ran to meet her and said, “Please let me drink a little water from your pitcher.”  So she said, “Drink, my lord.”  Then she… let down her pitcher and gave him a drink.   And when she had finished… she said, “I will draw water for your camels also, until they have finished drinking.”  then she hastened and emptied her pitcher into the trough, ran back to the well to draw water, and drew water for all his camels.  [verses 15-20]

Rebeccas from the 1940 JB Cole catalog.

The form was one of the most popular products of the J.B. Cole Pottery on the border between Randolph and Montgomery counties.  Their 1940 catalog displays many different sizes and several different forms of Rebecca pitcher (see the catalog here).   The children of J.B. Cole, Waymon and Nell, both lived in Randolph county and were familiar figures at the pottery for more than 60 years; they both made Rebecca pitchers large and small and in a myriad of different glaze colors.

Rebecca jugs were one of the first forms which were “just for show,” meaning that they had no day to day use.  The tall, narrow shape and impractical tall looped handle of the jugs were impractical for almost any method of dipping and carrying water in rural North Carolina.

Stoneware milk pitcher (signed), made by my great-grandfather W. Henry Chrisco.

The standard utilitarian forms were pitchers and jugs.  Pitchers were short and fat, with wide mouths, usually used to serve milk;

Stoneware jug made by the Taylor pottery in Petersburg, VA.

Jugs were round and bulbous with narrow mouths, usually used to store and transport liquor.

Islamic ewer from Iran, ca. 700 AD. Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The shape of a Rebecca pitcher is that of a “ewer,” an ancient ceremonial form with a single tall handle and a flaring spout.  This was definitely NOT a traditional North Carolina form, and was probably copied from Sunday School literature which illustrated archeological forms.

Modern Rebecca Pitcher by King's Pottery.

The form is still offered in some fashion by most of the Seagrove area potters.  Here’s one from King’s Pottery, which has their website here.

Carrara Glass

A lot has been happening lately that has gotten in the way of me writing here, so I’m posting this entry while I finish up some longer ones…

[Jones Dept. Store, 108 Sunset Ave; the building now houses Republican Headquarters. To its right is Baker's Shoe Store.]

[The squares of black glass are striped with duct tape to prevent breaking.]

Late this summer as we moved back into my office at 19 S. Fayetteville Street, I found a workman removing the last pieces of broken tile from the entrance of the restaurant next door.

[Broken black Carrara glass, looking like a mirror.]

That wasn’t just any tile, however; it was a half-inch-thick reflective glass, technically called “pigmented structural glass” and called here locally “Carrara Glass”. Asheboro’s Sunset Avenue was once covered with the stuff. The photo at the head of this post shows Jones Department Store (probably taken in the early 1960s), and not only that store but the storefronts to both sides are covered in black Carrara Glass.

[The round dollops of glue visible on the back of the panel below kept the tile adhered to the brick wall.]

Pigmented structural glass seems to have been first produced in 1900 by the Marietta Manufacturing Company as a “substitute for marble.” Marietta’s product was called “Sani Onyx,” and was used as a hygienic lining for refrigerators. Penn-American Plate Glass Company rolled out a white and black product in 1906 they called “Carrara Glass,” named for the glass’s close resemblance to marble mined in the Carrara quarries of Italy. Before 1910 Libby-Owens-Ford Glass began production of their own version called “Vitrolite.” The first prominent interior use of pigmented structural glass was in New York’s 1913 Woolworth Building, where architect Cass Gilbert sheathed the restrooms with Carrara Glass.

Pigmented Structural Glass hit its popularity height during the 1920s and 30s, when it became synonymous with the streamlined Art Deco and Art Moderne architectural styles. From the sleek Hollywood musicals of the 1930s, to storefronts all across American Main Streets, Carrara Glass and its siblings fit the bill for slick, streamlined, shiny, materials suitable for interior and exterior use. Asheboro’s Belk Department Store, the largest commercial building built downtown in the 1930s, used Carrara glass exclusively on its façade (destroyed in a 1962 fire).

The many smaller Asheboro storefronts which exhibited Carrara Glass in various colors and shades (though Black and White were always the most popular) speak to the versatility of pigmented structural glass for updating older commercial buildings. By 1940 the commercial buildings in downtown Asheboro were all between 25 and 40 years old; as they were remodeled, each began to sport modernized street level facades using chrome, stainless steel, and Carrara Glass. This transformation was encouraged by New Deal programs from the Federal Housing Administration which granted low-interest insured business loans for remodeling, and structural glass veneers became synonymous with a desirable “modern look”. This uniform Art Deco “look” or design style grew out of a “Modernize Main Street” competition sponsored in 1935 by the Architectural Record magazine and Libby-Owens-Ford Glass, and judged in part by architect Albert Kahn.

Almost all of Asheboro Carrara glass has been lost in the last 20 years; those Art Deco/ New Deal remodeled facades have been been remodeled again and again. Though the original buildings have been preserved and reused, the “contemporary” style familiar to several generations of county residents has vanished.

For much more information, see the National Park Service Preservation Brief on “Preservation of Historic Pigmented Structural Glass” and “Our Vanishing Vitriolite”.

American Banjo Museum

This certainly isn’t in Randolph County, but it fits well with the previous two posts.

While the good people in Rockingham County may be working hard on the “National Banjo Center,” the citizens of Oklahoma City already have the American Banjo Museum. It moved last week from a temporary home in Guthrie, OK, to a 21,000-square foot, $5 million home in Oklahoma City’s “Bricktown” historic district.

The museum collection includes more than 300 instruments, from primitive African gourd contraptions to the banjos of modern Bluegrass legends. It also includes the “National Four-String Banjo Hall of Fame.”

Here’s a link to a newspaper article on the opening from September 11^th: http://www.newsok.com/article/3400062 .

And another: http://www.examiner.com/x-3814-Oklahoma-City-Day-Trips-Examiner~y2009m9d9-Grand-opening-of-the-American-Banjo-Museum-in-Oklahoma-City-Bricktown-September-11 .

And here’s a direct link to the TV news report http://feeds.newsok.tv/services/player/bcpid4659235001?bctid=38885403001 .

Maybe some day Randolph County will get its due mention one place or another.

Manly Reece

Manly Reece, circa 1855.

In my entry on Charlie Poole I mentioned the Charlie Poole Festival, which is held each year in Eden, NC, the combined town in Rockingham County formerly known as Leaksville, Draper and Spray. Charlie Poole lived and worked in Spray in the second half of his life, and now there is an effort to create the “National Banjo Center” on the Dan River there. The banjo museum would highlight Poole’s contributions to American musical history at or near the Spray Cotton Mill site, “ground zero” or “hallowed ground, as far as the music world is concerned,” said one of the promoters. (see March 26, 2009 article at http://www2.godanriver.com/gdr/news/local/rockingham_news/article/eden_strums_closer_to_housing_national_banjo_museum/9995/ ).

Not to take anything away from Charlie Poole or the economic development activities of Rockingham County, but southern banjo history- even North Carolina banjo history- has a much wider sweep and deeper pull than is found just along the Dan River. Here locally, Charlie Poole’s teacher and mentor Daner Johnson (mentioned in the previous article) not only taught Charlie but a generation of other local banjo pickers. No recordings of Johnson are known, but his Randolph County pupils Kelly Sears and and Glenn Davis are both featured on “The North Carolina Banjo Collection,” musician/ folklorist Bob Carlin’s excellent 1998 Rounder double-album which demonstrates the evolution of banjo-picking through 20^th-century recording history.

However, the history of the banjo didn’t start with Charlie Poole or Daner Johnson. The roots of the instrument are agreed to be found in Africa and the transplanted traditions of African-American enslaved people in the antebellum American South. Less certain is how the instrument made its way into white southern culture. Joel Sweeny (1810-1860) of Appomattox County, Virginia, is the earliest documented white banjo player, and popularized the instrument in New York with his group of blackface minstrels at least by April 1839 (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joel_Sweeney ).

Sweeny’s tour of England, Ireland and Scotland in 1843-44 is credited with introducing the banjo to Europe. (Bob Carlin recently wrote a book about Joel Sweeney, too- http://www.minstrelbanjo.com/SWEENEYindex.html ).

But in Randolph County, the roots of the banjo can be traced to Manly Reece (1830-1864), a native of the area between Franklinville and Liberty. For almost everything I know about Manly Reece I must give credit up front to Andy Cahan, musician, historian, antiquarian bookseller and former Chapel Hill resident.  Andy came South from New York where he had been a featured artist (along with Bob Carlin) on the influential Kicking Mule album “Melodic Clawhammer Banjo” (http://www.amazon.com/Melodic-Clawhammer-Sapoznick-Carlin-Perlman/dp/B001HGPTNY ). As a young music historian and grad student Andy conducted oral history interviews around Galax in the 1980s on Manly Reece that led him directly back to Randolph County. His research paper “Adam Manly Reece: An Early Banjo Player of Grayson County, Virginia” was written for a class at UNC in 1987, and I am much obliged to Andy for sharing the paper and accompanying photographs with me. [It is one of the most valuable works of Randolph County and southern banjo history that has never been officially published, and I hope that is remedied soon!]

Banjo built by Manly Reece ca. 1848.

Through born in Randolph County, Manly Reece introduced the banjo to the Galax, Virginia area. His father George Reece, a blacksmith, was one of the twelve children of William Reece and Elizabeth Lane, who are buried in the Sandy Creek Baptist Church cemetery (see the church’s prior entry). George’s sister Agnes was the second wife of Elisha Coffin, underground railroad conductor, builder of my house and the 1838 cotton mill in Franklinville (see his prior entry), making her the aunt and Elisha the step-uncle of Manly (all history is genealogy!).

Detail of Manly Reece banjo- the back of the neck.

George Reece is remembered by his descendants to have played the fiddle, and Manly is said to have learned to play the banjo while just a boy. Manly’s own banjo, which is still in the possession of family members, is said to have been built by him before the family moved to Virginia between 1846 and 1848. Once settled in Galax, Manly played with the legendary fiddler Greenberry Leonard (1810-1892), who trained Emmet Lundy, one of the earliest recorded fiddlers in the area.  Manly’s banjo originally had 4 strings, but before he went into the army he’d converted it to 5 strings.  The family remembers that Manly played first in the clawhammer style, and later learned to fingerpick.  He could play many Stephen Foster songs, so Andy theorizes that Manly could have learned from a passing minstrel show (though I’ve found no references to those playing the Randolph County area).  Andy believes that Manly introduced the banjo to the Galax area, partly based on letters written to Manly after he went into service with the Confederate Army, where women write that they miss him and haven’t heard the banjo played since he left. His banjo was returned to his family after Manly was killed in March, 1864, while riding on top of a troop train in the Petersburg area.

Julia Reece Green and unknown fiddle player (original from Kahle Brewer)

Manly’s sister Julia Reece Green (1842-1911) learned to play the banjo from Manly, and passed the skill to her grandson Kahle Brewer. Kahle Brewer was a well-known old-time musician in Galax of the 1970s and 80s, and became a mentor to Andy Cahan and other expatriate students of southern musicology.

L-R: Allen Hart (banjo); Wayne Martin (fiddle); Kahle Brewer (fiddle); Alice Gerard (guitar); at Brewer house in Galax, VA, August 1988.

[From Kerry Blech website, http://home.comcast.net/~blechfam/gallery3.html .]

Andy Cahan’s initial research is still the last academic look into the antebellum roots of Randolph County music.  We’re missing fifty years or more from the story of 19^th century music in the county, and perhaps some day that link can be uncovered. Between the time the Reeces moved to Galax in 1848 and the time a young Daner Johnson began to play circa 1890, at least a generation or two of musicians passed their banjo knowledge along. Whoever that was-–Daner Johnson’s teacher and mentor– is currently unknown. But Manly Reece, Daner Johnson and Charlie Poole were all born in northeastern Randolph, within a 5-mile radius of each other, so it is obvious that “ground zero” for the Johnson-Poole banjo tradition rightfully can be located somewhere just north of Franklinville, in Randolph County.

Charlie Poole

[Charlie Poole- in his early twenties.]

The last week has seen a flurry of news and reviews that concern the man who may be Randolph County’s most famous native musician. All the publicity arises over the release of Loudon Wainwright III’s excellent new album, “High Wide and Handsome: The Charlie Poole Project.”

I first read the story in the Washington Post [Charting the Deep Waters of Old-Timer Charlie Poole], and then heard a really great interview with the singer by Terry Gross on NPR’s Fresh Air [http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=13 ].

Courtesy of my friend Tom Hanchett, music historian and a curator at the Levine Museum of the New South in Charlotte, here are a couple of more story links: Rogue State: High Wide & Handsome: The Charlie Poole Project and I … [from the Washington City Paper]; Loudon Wainwright III leads salute to bluegrass legend Charlie Poole [New York Daily News]; Loudon Wainwright dives into country music’s past [The Tennessean ].

But this story is new only in that Loudon Wainwright’s double-CD album is new. Back in 2005 the excellent 4-disc box set “You Ain’t Talkin’ to Me: Charlie Poole and the Roots of Country Music” (Legacy/Columbia Records) was produced by old-time banjo player Henry “Hank” Sapoznik, and Charlie Poole was the subject of symposium at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is also remembered annually at the Charlie Poole Music Festival in Eden (www.charlie-poole.com), so it appears that we’re in the midst of a full-blown Poole revival.

On September 28, 1985, the first (and only) Mill Village Music Festival was held in Franklinville, as part of the Franklinville Fire Protection Association’s annual “Fun Day.” (That was something volunteer fire departments used to do before tax support meant they didn’t need to raise money the hard way anymore). Local musician Gary Lewis produced the show, which had a number of bluegrass and old time musicians playing, including Poole biographer Kinney Rorrer’s group the Sweet Sunny South String Band. (Rorrer’s 1982 book Rambling Blues: The Life and Songs of Charlie Poole is the definitive biography.)

[Bob Johnson of Millboro showing the Poole house to a Greensboro News and Record photographer in 1984).

The reason I engineered this special event in Franklinville was to call attention to the fact that Charles Cleveland Poole was born March 22, 1892, in Millboro, part of Franklinville Township, in a tiny house still standing on the south side of the road from Millboro to Worthville.   Poole's Wikipedia entry [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Poole ] is actually incorrect on this point, but his Dictionary of North Carolina Biography entry [ http://docsouth.unc.edu/nc/movingday/bio.html ] gets it right.

With all this awesome documentation available, I won’t run through his whole life story, but I will sum up the significance of Charlie Poole like this:

Charlie Poole (L) and The North Carolina Ramblers.

After Poole and his band “The North Carolina Ramblers” went to New York in 1925 and recorded “Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down Blues” for Columbia Records, American popular music was never the same. At a time when there were no more than 600,000 record players in the south, their recording sold 102,000 copies—five times more than any other record that year. Up until that time, “hillbilly music” had never sold more than 20,000 records, and Poole’s success led the music industry to seek out new performers such as Jimmie Rogers and the Carter Family. Poole didn’t write his own songs, but combined elements of ragtime, blues, Victorian parlor songs, and even the old minstrel music popular before the Civil War, with his own unique three-fingered style of banjo picking.

[The Charlie Poole bithplace in Millboro, Randolph County, 2009.]

Poole is identified with the mill village of Spray in Rockingham County, where his family moved in 1916, but his formative years were without doubt spent in Randolph County. Both his father Philip Poole and mother Betty Johnson Poole had been mill workers at Haw River in Alamance County, and their relocation around 1890 put the family in the center of the Deep River mill villages.  The house is more or less equidistant between the Worthville mill to the west (with the Randleman mills another 2 mills west) and the Cedar Falls mill to the southeast (with the Franklinville mills another 2 miles east).

Millboro had just been created in 1889 when the “Factory Branch” of the Cape Fear and Yadkin Valley Railway had reached that point from Climax.

[The last remaining early store in Millboro]

For several years while construction of the line continued towards Franklinville and Ramseur, Millboro served as the shipping point for all the mills in the area, and a number of stores and boarding houses grew up in the area.

The Halliday hunting lodge in Millboro was a prominent draw for sportsmen, and featured its own shingle-style water tank above the tracks (see entry FT:10 in my book, p. 93).

By all accounts, Charlie Poole was already playing the banjo before 1900.  Poole’s first wife said she once had a photograph of him as a child, playing a banjo made out of a gourd. Only after Poole began work in one of the mills could he buy himself a real banjo for $1.50.

One story has Poole’s distinctive banjo-picking style growing out of a childhood accident where Poole caught a baseball bare-handed, breaking his thumb and permanently deforming his dexterity and grip.

Daner Johnson

But another story, from Homer Johnson and Loray Allred of Randleman, says that their uncle Daner Johnson taught Charlie Poole to play the banjo in Johnson’s own distinctive style.

Daner Johnson and his brother “Nep” (Napoleon P.) Johnson were first cousins to Poole’s mother, and Daner Johnson was 13 years older than Poole. According to Homer Johnson, Daner Johnson told Charlie Poole to “throw away them finger picks—anybody who has to use a pick can’t play a banjo.”

Daner Johnson popularized banjo-picking not just in Randolph County, but all over the region.  It was said that at age 25 Johnson won a gold-plated banjo by beating banjo recording star Fred Van Eps in a competition at the 1904 World’s Fair (officially, the “Louisiana Purchase Exposition”) in St. Louis. (As an aside, the St. Louis World’s Fair created the 20^th century American diet: among the foods first popularized at the Fair were hamburgers, hot dogs, the ice cream cone, peanut butter, cotton candy, Dr. Pepper and iced tea!)

Daner Johnson must have been a major influence on Charlie Poole’s ability to play their shared favorite instrument. Johnson and Poole continued to play together as adults, on visits to Poole’s sister’s home in Spray, or Johnson’s brother’s home in Draper.

[Daner Johnson tombstone at Melanchthon Church, Liberty, NC.]

Daner Johnson was almost as much a “rambling man” as Charlie Poole; he never remarried after the death of his second wife Pearl from pneumonia, and wandered from friend to friend, playing music, doing farm work and drinking heavily. He died in 1955 and is buried in the cemetery at Melancthon Lutheran Church near Liberty.

[Addendum:  I'm indebted to a post at banjohangout.org [http://www.banjohangout.org/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=155578 ] for a reference to Patrick Huber’s book “Linthead Stomp,” which features Charlie Poole’s photo on the cover.  Says Barnes and Noble, “Linthead Stomp celebrates the Piedmont millhand fiddlers, guitarists, and banjo pickers who combined the collective memories of the rural countryside with the upheavals of urban-industrial life to create a distinctive American music that spoke to the changing social realities of the twentieth-century South.”   Huber explores how the culture of industrial work and mill village life contributed to the music of Poole, Fiddlin’ John Carson, the Dixon Brothers, and other pioneers of the mis-named “hillbilly music.”  Finding the roots of old time string bands in mill village culture fits right in with Randolph County’s pioneer contributions to cotton mill village life.]

McCrary Eagles II

Sometimes when I try to put everything I know into one post, it gets w-a-y t-o-o l-o-n-g (See textile processes, above.)

So last time I refrained from putting in those photos I mentioned of the 1935 Eagles game in Randleman.

The seven pictures I have came with the three Bud Scarboro photos, which all seem to date from 1934 or 1935.

Dates are written on the backs of the photos, but are confusing. For example, the photo above is captioned “Clark Thornburg catching; Bright Holland batting, made at Randleman, N.C. 1934″

But the photo is all but identical to this one, captioned “Press Burge in action, 1935.” The tin roof over the dugout, the wooden cage protecting the crowd from foul balls, the women in white dresses behind the catcher, the boys in overalls- all appear to be the same, though labeled a year apart.

The owner wrote “Jack Cox, 1935″ on this view.

This one just says, “Monk Davis, 1935″. Monk Davis was the uncle of J.B. Davis, the current CEO of Asheboro furniture manufacturer Klaussner Furniture Industries.

Here is the only photo of a pitcher in action, labeled “Grant- Pitcher, 1935;” behind him in the outfield distance is the scoreboard.

And the scoreboard is shown in detail here, the most visually-interesting photo, and of course it’s the only one where the subject is not identified. But the 1935 chalk board/ scoreboard couldn’t be much different from modern Major League electronic scoreboards… The Home Team evidently won this game 3-1, so given this McCrary Eagle’s happy aspect- looking for all the world like he hit a game-winning home run- this scoreboard may not have been in Randleman. Unless, that is, the Eagles at the time played their home games where ever they could find an empty ball park- a problem not unknown to new teams.

The last photo is the only one in the collection of a non-Eagle. The Oak Ridge player is captioned on the back of the photo “J.O. Scarborough- Oak Ridge Left fielder. He, leading his club in batting in 1925 [sic- 1935?], batted .439 with five homeruns. Miller- at bat; Bruton- catching.” I assume that the name refers to the Oak Ridge Military Academy, located in northwest Guilford County, NC [www.oakridgemilitary.com]. FYI, in one of the many ironic paradoxes of Piedmont history, Oak Ridge Institute was founded in 1852 as a Quaker boarding school. During World War I, the ROTC came to campus, and by 1929 the school had been transformed into a full-fledged military academy- since 1991 the “Official Military Academy of North Carolina.” The paradox, for those who are still stopped a few phrases back, is that Quakers historically have fervently held to the so-called “Peace Testimony,” putting them on the exact opposite side of the spectrum from war and the military. For further information, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oak_Ridge_Military_Academy , since the school’s own history link doesn’t appear to be working. They have been nearly sunk by financial troubles this summer, after all.