New Market Inn

New Market Inn, from the southeast, circa 1950.

During the winter months I try to get out and investigate the parts of Randolph County that are not so accessible when the animal and vegetable elements of creation awake in the spring and summer. Saturday March 30th, 2013, was a beautiful warm and sunny day, and as I was driving down 311 I steered through that odd left-hand crook in the road in Sophia that I’ve wondered about a thousand times. Whether going north just past New Market Elementary School or south just past Marlboro Church Road, cars must jog left as 311 for some unexplained reason swerves in its path beside the railroad. As a historian I’ve long been aware that this is the site of the New Market Inn- the one colonial or federal inn that retained its identity into my generation. For some reason I’d decided or been told ages ago that the inn itself was on the lot where a garage and auto salvage yard now covered all the acreage, but this last Saturday B.U. (Before Undergrowth) seemed like a good reason to double back and check out what my friend Colon Farlow recently asserted to me: that the inn wasn’t on the garage lot, but on the adjacent lot just to the west, a wooded lot now for sale. Not only did I stop and hike that lot, I got the first tick of spring for my efforts, so here’s the story.

New Market Inn, circa 1940.

In my book Randolph County: Images of America, the New Market Inn is illustrated on page 70 (and shown above) in a photo taken in 1935. This and one other image of the building in the historic photo database at the county public library document the house after its demotion in status into use as a barn, and before it collapsed or was demolished circa-1960. They show a house that architectural historians would term “Georgian,” the style that takes its name from the 18th century kings of England and is usually reserved to structures built before 1810. Georgian style houses show a strong formal symmetry, often with a five-bay center-hall plan. Georgian proportions emphasize verticality, with tall, narrow windows and steep roofs and boxed cornices which are cut flush to the gable ends. In Piedmont NC such houses were always of heavy timber construction, as brick was too expensive to use for residential bearing walls until the 1830s. Interiors would have had simple finishes, with exposed floor joists, raised panels on doors, mantels and wainscots, and enclosed “dogleg” or “boxed” stairs.
Conversion of the house into a barn has removed most of the decorative information I usually use to date a structure, and there are no photos of the interior known, but exterior photos of the New Market inn definitely exhibit the Georgian vertical emphasis and the symmetrical five-bay plan. The entrance door has been expanded into a barn door, but on the second floor what appears to be an original door opening suggests that the house had a center-hall plan. Most of the windows have been removed and boarded up; the two remaining may have been reused from other locations, as they appear to be short 6×6 sash. Visible through the open center door is another window on the far side of the house; it is located where a door should be, but the shadow appears to indicated a repurposed 9×9 sash. At the lower southeast corner an assymmetrical door and window could be later changes to the original plan; they may also mark the location of a separate entrance to the inn’s tap room.

Sketch of the stone foundations

The second, slightly later photo is a valuable view of the eastern side, showing the steep roof pitch of 10 or 12 inches of rise to every foot of run. The attic floor has two narrow windows crowded into each side gable, leaving space for a large end chimney which, if it existed, has been removed. A shed-roofed one-story addition is visible to the north side; the large barn-like additions on the west which were visible in the previous photo are here hidden behind a large cedar tree. The later photo documents a catastrophic structural failure progressing in the west-central portion of the house, where the inward slump indicates that the floor joists have rotted or been removed.

Corn Crib

On my exploratory hike, the only standing structure I found was this corn crib/ tractor shed combination, probably dating to the 1930s or 40s and of little interest. Much more unusual was the blooming carpet of purple “Grape” or “Roman” hyacinth, which covered at least an acre southwest of a stone foundation. The briars, brush and vines, even in their temporarily leafless state, did not allow close inspection, measurement or adequate photography of the foundation. By my analog paced measure, the fieldstone foundation is 10-12 inches above grade and measures approximately 30 feet wide by 45 feet long. A water-filled depression indicates a cellar under the western end of the structure, at least 15 by 30 feet. A flat 4 by 5-foot rectangular stone a foot thick lies near the center of the façade, and another one approximately 2 by 4 feet lies at the southeast corner. Both may have been step stones to the doors shown on the photos. Chimney bases are not discernible to the east or west, but a large pile of brick and stone inside the foundation could be the remains of a chimney positioned either at the west end or at the center of the house.

Foundation stones

Like much 20th-century journalism, newspaper accounts of the house sell romance and nostalgia over actual history. “YE OLD TAVERN, LANDMARK OF PIONEER DAYS, STILL STANDING IN NEW MARKET,” spins an article dated April 24, 1938 from The Randolph Tribune:

A few miles above Randleman on the High Point Road in New Market Township stands one of the earliest landmarks of pioneer days in Randolph County. It is a symbol of the sturdy and cultured type of pioneers who set up well-built homes in a country hitherto uninhabited except by Indians. There is something about this old landmark that seems to shout, “Mine is an interesting story.”

Today the old tavern, known formerly as one of the best on the Plank Road, is a barn, sheltering the owner’s stock and housing the hay and fodder. The chimneys have crumbled to dust, the front door has been replaced by a big swinging barn door, and the steps are gone. An investigator will find that there were eight rooms downstairs besides the dining room and kitchen. On the second floor were a large hall and six bedrooms. At the top of the narrow stairway the third floor consisted of two big loft rooms. The remaining windows are very narrow, the ceilings are low, and the wood has been painted several different colors. There are several original handmade doors. The fireplace used eight-foot logs.   At one corner of the house is a huge, long rock which some say was an “upping block,” others a doorstep.

Hearthstone, Doorstep or Upping Block?

This is the only description of the interior, but the writer evidently included the additions and expansions of the house in his room count, as the original block could not have had ten rooms downstairs and six bedrooms on the second floor. It is also interesting that the writer notes only one fireplace.    The article goes on to state: “Just who built this huge house is uncertain, but the earliest known occupants were Sidney Porter and his wife, Ruth Worth Porter, who later removed to Greensboro.” Addison Blair’s 1890 history doesn’t discuss the house in particular, but of New Market itself he writes

This is an old settled place, and was the home of Capt. John Bryant, a Whig, who was shot in his old house by Colonel Fanning. The place afterwards came into the possession of Shubal Gardner, who had a store there and was regarded as a big man. He owned a number of lots in Johnsonville and at one time drove a heard of beeves to Philadelphia. Joseph Newlin bought the property in 1840 and called it New Market and for many years carried on an extensive store and tin shop.

(J.A. Blair, Reminiscences of Randolph County, Asheboro, 1890; p. 49)

In the 1960s, local historian Addison Wall (who lived only a half mile from the site) wrote The Randolph Story for the Randleman Rotary Club, and noted on page 106 that “The inn closed down some time after the Civil War and was converted into a barn.  The lower floor was used as a granary and storage by Mr. Snider who bought the farm seventy-five years ago.  The New Market elections were held for a number of years in the building…. The building was torn down about 1950.”

To fully examine all these personalities involved with the property will take additional posts!

The Asheboro Sit-Ins

On February 1,1960, four freshmen students from N.C. A&T asked for coffee at the lunch counter in the Woolworth’s “dime” store in downtown Greensboro, just 25 miles north of Asheboro. When they were denied service, they refused to leave, in a nonviolent protest that became known as a “sit-in.” The next day they were joined by twenty more students; on the third day there were more than 60 demonstrators, and on the fourth day, more than 300, as the protest spread down the street to the nearby Kress lunch counter. Within a week, the protest was joined by other cities in North Carolina; within a month, sit-ins were occurring all over the South. On March 16^th, President Eisenhower supported the students, saying that he was “deeply sympathetic with the efforts of any group to enjoy the rights of equality that they are guaranteed by the Constitution.”

The first sit-ins, sponsored by the NCAACP Youth Council in 1958, had desegregated lunch counters in Kansas and Oklahoma. The Greensboro protests gathered wide media attention and resulted in the tactic spreading all over the South. Success came faster in some places: students in Nashville, TN achieved citywide desegregation in May, 1960. In Greensboro the black employees of Woolworth’s were the first to be served at the store’s lunch counter, on July 25, 1960. The entire Woolworth’s chain was desegregated the next day.

What is the history of the civil rights movement in Randolph County? With our history of Quaker anti-slavery activism and the Underground Railroad, was Randolph out in front of desegregation? Nothing has been published on this subject, and little research has been done. One exception can be found through the website of the Southern Oral History Project interview database, at http://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/ref/collection/sohp/id/4046 . This is a recorded interview of Melvin Benjamin Marley, born in Ramseur in 1943, by Sarah McNulty, a senior at UNC-Chapel Hill. Marley was a participant in a series of sit-ins that took place at businesses along Sunset Avenue that finally resulted in the desegregation of public eating establishments in Asheboro.

This is a uniquely valuable primary source document, available in a uniquely modern way, but it well illustrates some traditional challenges in taking oral history alone as the last word in research. Marley, as a freshman at NC A&T, also participated in the Greensboro sit-ins. He remembers the Asheboro demonstrations as part of the same continuum of social protest.

“So me and my brother was in college at A&T State University in Greensboro and the sit-ins there was going on at the same time, so we would actually go to jail up there through the week and come home on the weekend. So we was home one weekend and they were having demonstrations in Asheboro so some people approached us and said, since ya’ll… were in those in Greensboro, would you like to come help us organize? So we came over and organized with them…”

Newspaper accounts actually show that the Asheboro sit-ins were nearly four years after the Woolworth sit-ins in Greensboro, beginning Saturday January 25^th, 1964, and still going strong as of February the 17^th, 1964. While the Marley brothers may have joined the original sit-ins as freshman, Asheboro’s eating establishments remained segregated well into the end of their senior year. I think this is an example of the passage of time telescoping the time frame of history- fifty years later, the four-year time frame seems almost simultaneous in memory.

Burrell Hopkins

Melvin’s memory of the details seems unclouded, however. Two NAACP organizers, a Reverend Banks and a Robert Blow, of Thomasville, conducted meetings at the Greater St. John’s Baptist Church to map out the protests. Groups were sent to the Walgreen’s soda fountain, the Little Castle sandwich shop, and to Hop’s Bar-B-Que. Melvin and his twin brother Elvin were assigned to Hop’s, a restaurant in a converted taxi stand seating just 21 stools at a counter. Hop’s was the eponymous establishment of Burrell “Hop” Hopkins, who opened it in 1954 after four years as a cook at the StarLite Drive-In on Salisbury Street near Bossong Hosiery Mills. When Hopkins died in 1986, the community remembered him fondly. “He was one of the free-heartedest men you ever meet,” said Leon Strickland, an employee for 28 years. “He wanted to give folks the impression he was mean as hell, but he was 100 percent the opposite,” said Hal York, a long-time customer. (See article by Chip Womick in The Courier-Tribune, November 28, 1986). But whatever his eulogy, Hopkins was cast in the black hat role in this historic drama. He barred the door of his restaurant, saying, according to Marley, “No, you can’t be served here!” [Katie Snuggs, also arrested that day, remember Hopkins saying "You niggers can't eat here!"]  In response, the demonstrators” just lay down in front of the door where nobody could go in… laying down at arm’s length, everybody touching the tip of the other’s hand, forming a big circle [around the building] where nobody could get through.”

The protest quickly attracted white bystanders. Marley recalled that the demonstrators took “a lot of abuse, just laying there. It was a really, really hard job to keep everybody under control, not to show anger or not to say anything to anybody… just lay there, a peaceful-type demonstration. My twin brother was laying beside of me and a lady came up and talked real big and spit in his face and when she spit in his face, I caught a’hold to his hand because he was about to get up and I held him down and I said, “No, No, No!” And while we were laying there, there was another incident; a lady walked up with her high heels on and took the shoe and started beating on one of the demonstrators…”

They didn’t react, said Marley, because “we had something in mind. It had to be nonviolent because you couldn’t accomplish anything by rolling up your sleeve and taking someone on. The hecklers called us many names, the one that was the most devastating to us was to be called niggers; niggers, go home, such as that was being said…. And with the name calling, it hurt to a point that you would want to do something, but you would realize that this was nonviolent and that was the only way it would work because these individuals that came to Asheboro were playing under the Martin Luther King system. And so… we took the abuse and laid there, spit upon, kicked, hit and stuff. It was hard, but we had a goal in mind… because we didn’t want anybody hurt, but we wanted justice.”

When the police came the demonstrators were arrested, but refused to walk to the police cars. “We tried to get as many people of size to help because that would not only make the lines larger but also the police would have a hard time picking them up; because we wouldn’t get up, we’d lay there; they’d have to bodily take us to the car to put us in. And we’d just lay limp and wouldn’t cooperate with being led from laying down to be put in police cars.” With the Marleys at Hop’s was “a lady named Emma Jean Stinson, she weighed somewhere about three hundred and some pounds… so they said, “Mrs. Stinson, will you please get up?” And she said no, and it took about four of them to get her up and put her in the car. And you know, by the time they had put all of us in the car the policemen were sweating and tireder than we were and probably wanted something to eat.”

“So they took us to jail, to the old Randolph County jail… And they would lock us up in cells that usually hold ten or twelve people, but at one time there was something like thirty-five of us in one cell… the women were downstairs and the men were upstairs. So the organizers were out in the parking lot and we would…call off our names, who all was in jail. And… they would go back and get people with property to come and sign our bonds so we could get out of jail…. our parents that had property would come and get us. And then other people that didn’t have kids, there was a man in the city back then named Mr. Tom Brewer and Mr. Lon Strickland who owned right much property on the east side… and they signed a lot of bonds.”

Almost Fifty Years Later

For an “objective” account of the event described by Melvin Marley, see the entry on this blog “60 Negroes Arrested in Sit-In Incidents,” from The Courier-Tribune, Monday, January 27, 1964.

What the Newspaper Had to Say…

the original article

60 Negroes Arrested in Sit-In Incidents

The Courier-Tribune, January 27, 1964.

There were 60 Negroes—24 juveniles and 36 adults—arrested here Saturday at Hop’s Bar-B-Que and the Little Castle in the first wave of sit-ins.

All 60 were charged with breaking a local ordinance dealing with congregating in the doorway of a business.

The Negroes posted bond Saturday night of $25 each to appear in Recorder’s Court Feb. 13.? A sheriff’s department spokesman said most of the Negroes posted bond on an individual basis, but that Rev. I.C. Everett and Mabel Haskins posted bond for some members of the group.

The names of the 36 adults are as follows:

Russell Siler, Ramseur; Archie C. Leak, 411 Woodlawn St; Mackie Lewis, 621 Loach St; Queenie Greene, 823 Cross St.; Dexter L . Trogdon, Rt. 1, Asheboro; Grady Ritter, Jr., 728 Frank St.; Tommy McMasters, 503 Loach St.; Melvin Marley, Rt.2, Ramseur; Robert Lee Bostic, 706 Tucker St.; and Shelly Manuel, Rt. 1, Asheboro.

Also, Elvin L. Marley, Rt.2, Ramseur; Edward McNeil, 426 N. McCrary St.; Joe Bell, 608 Greensboro St.; Archie Lee Little, 534 Greensboro St.; Woodrow Everetts, 501 Washington Road; Clinton McQueen, 460 Glovenia St.; Charles Farr? 1316 Forest St.; James Freeland, 508 Cross St; Lionel Baldwin, 443 Watkins St.; and Thomas Timmons, 427 N. Spring St.

Also Troy Franklin, Rt.1, Asheboro; Joe Morrison, 502 Cross St.; Macy Holley, Thomasville; George Lowery, 818 Brewer St.; Floyd Chalmas Thomas, Jr., 429 Loach St.; Ann Ledwell, 511 Loach St.; Barbara Ann Bostic, 706 Tucker St.; Brenda Ewing, 161 Greensboro St.; Grace Massey, 103 Washington Road; and Lille Mae Snuggs, 544 Loach St.

Also, Penny Bennett, Cedar Falls Road; Barbara Massey, 100 Washington Road; Earlene Crowder, 827 Railroad St.; Ollie Mae Little, 534 Greensboro St.; Clara Davis, 402 Loach St.; and Daisey Crump, 823 Cross St.

Benjamin Swaim and the “Man of Business”

[A comment on this blog last month asked for information on Benjamin Swaim.  I have written about him twice; the biogrpahy of him in Volume “S” of the Dictionary of North Carolina Biography is by me, and actually contains a portion of the following paper.  This study of his life and one of his books was originally written in 1981 as an assignment for my Masters Degree courses at the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Library and Information Science.  For Mr. Powell at DNCB I abstracted the basic biographical information about Swaim.  The bibliographical information is here presented to the public for the first time.  One thing I realize is not clear from this paper is that Benjamin Swaim's legal books are the first known Randolph County imprints-- that is, they are the first books printed in the county.]

 
SWAIM, BENJAMIN (13 May 1798 – 23 Dec. 1844), lawyer, printer, author and newspaperman, was almost certainly the son of William (10 March 1770 — 1 June 1850), and Elizabeth Sherwood Swaim (8 Nov. 1773 — 14 Aug. 1835).  They and several other branches of the numerous Swaim clan were residents of the Timber Ridge Community, east of Level Cross in Randolph County. [i]

Life and Career.
Benjamin’s early life and education are obscure, although he perhaps attended schools taught by his uncle Moses Swaim.  Benjamin first appears in the records of the North Carolina Manumission Society, when, on August 27, 1819, he attended the society’s convention and began a sixteen-year association with the abolitionist group.[ii]   In the fall of 1822, he was hired to teach day classes of Mt. Ephraim schoolhouse in Guilford County.  Swaim, a law student at the time, was considered to be a teacher of great ability.  The number of students attracted to this school was so large that an assistant teacher was needed, and his second cousin William Swaim was hired for the position.  Benjamin and William organized a debating club at the school known as the “Polemic Society,” which became a forum for local men of all ages to join in oratorical contests.   In 1823, Guilford County Sheriff and state legislator Col. William Dickey asked Benjamin to take over Dickey’s private school.  Swaim instead successfully recommended cousin William for the job.

Benjamin Swaim then relocated to the Randolph County town of New Salem, where he opened a law practice.  New Salem was (and is) located about a mile southwest of the Swaim family farms at Timber Ridge.  It was a crossroads community located at the point where the road between Asheboro and Greensboro intersected the ancient Indian Trading Path.  Land was conveyed to trustees of a Quaker meeting house there in 1815, but an informal group had probably met there as early as 1792.  New Salem was the commercial hub of Randolph County during the first quarter of the Nineteenth Century, hosting more stores and businesses than Asheborough.[iii]  The state legislature chartered town government in New Salem in 1816, appointing commissioners Benjamin Marmon, Jesse Hinshaw, Peter Dicks, William Dennis and Moses Swaim.

Moses Swaim, a brother of Benjamin’s father William and the only non-Quaker on the board, was the first president of the North Carolina Manumission and Colonization Society.[iv]    Benjamin, also a charter member of the organization, was in 1827 elected its President as well as delegated to attend the National Convention of the Abolition Society.  His opinions on the subject of slavery are revealed in his 1829 “Report of the President”, as printed in the Greensborough Patriot.  In it, he declares that “…the hour of Negro Emancipation is fast approaching.  It must and will assuredly come.  And all that we can do is prepare for its approach by a timely and gradual improvement of their debased condition….  Aided by Divine assistance, we may fearlessly encounter all the opposition of our enemies and confidently stand forth, the advocates of truth and justice, with such unyielding firmness and determined purpose as no earthly Interest, power or prejudice can successfully resist.” Swaim was reelected President of the Manumission Society until its discontinuance in 1835.

Perhaps as early as May, 1831, Swaim began planning a serial law publication, The Man of Business or Every Man’s Lawbook , a pioneer reference work of business law and legal forms.[v]   Swaim called The Man of Business “new in character and design’, and publicly appealed for the approval of other lawyers, since “the prudent and seasonable prevention of ruinous litigation is no less a professional duty than the skillful management of it.”  Benjamin’s partner in this venture was his cousin William, had founded The Patriot, Guilford County’s first newspaper in 1829.[vi]  William Swaim printed the first volume in 1833-31.  However, the successful reception of The Man of Business , and the trouble involved in traveling repeatedly from his home to the printing office in Greensboro, led Swain to open his own shop in October, 1834.  The New Salem operation was staffed by R.J. West, printer, and John Sherwood (a cousin)[vii].  Volume II of The Man of Business was produced there in 1834-35.
In February, 1836, Swaim began editing and publishing a newspaper from his office in New Salem.  Titled Southern Citizen, it had been proposed in November, 1834 by William Swaim. [viii]  William’s prospectus, published in the Patriot, lamented the low esteem in which Southern newspapers were held, and sought to supersede his Patriot with a new “splendid, superfine” publication, “the largest and most usefull family newspaper… devoted to the interest, amusement, and edification of the American people Swaim was roundly abused in the state’s periodical press for his pretentious statements, but within a year he had attracted enough subscribers to begin preparations for publication.  His death age 33 in December, 1835 threw these preparations into disarray.  The Patriot continued to be published for the benefit of William’s estate, while Benjamin took up the challenge of publishing the Southern Citizen.

The first issue of the Southern Citizen appeared in February, 1836.  The editorial content was of an uncompromising Whig political persuasion, promoting agriculture, internal improvements, universal education, and literature. (Its motto: “What do we live for but to improve ourselves and be useful to one another?”) An unusual feature was the “Legal Department,” subtitled “Ignorance of the Law Excuseth No Man.” Here Swaim, obviously inspired by the success of The Man of Business, answered the questions of subscribers on various points of law.

In December, 1836 Swaim moved his newspaper, printing business and law office to Asheboro, the Randolph County seat.  The Southern Citizen was issued from there weekly without interruption until April of 1842, when publication was suspended.  Either debt and financial instability or the recent death of Swaim’s wife following the birth of a daughter may have contributed to the shut-down.  Publication was resumed on 14 October 1843, and continued until 17 October, 1844, when Swain sold the newspaper and printing office to John Milton Sherwood.[ix]  Whether the newspaper continued after that date is unknown.

On 7 Feb. 1829 Swain married Rachel Dicks (Aug. 1808 – 3 March 18141), daughter of Peter and Rachel Seals Dicks. They were the parents of five children: Anna Dicks (b. 17 Apr. 1830), Thomas Clarkson (10 May l832- 1 March 18kb), Matilda Rosalie (8 March 1835 — 26 Feb. 1837), Charlotte (b. 9 Dec. 1837), arid Rachel Dicks (b. 21 Feb. 1841). Benjamin Swaim’s sudden death while on a trip to Raleigh revealed the fact that he was “indebted beyond the account of his personal assets.”[x](x)  Although his executors discovered more than 300 debtors owing money to Swaim’s estate, very little money could be collected and his property was sold in a futile attempt to pay his creditors.

Publications.

Swain’s legal career after 1836 consisted mainly of writing and publishing form-books and digests of North Carolina state law.  A proposed third volume of The Man of Business grew into Swain’s 540-page opus The North Carolina Justice, printed in Raleigh in 1839 [The North Carolina Justice:  containing a summary statement of the statues and common law of this state, together with the decisions of the supreme court, and all the most approved forms and precedents relating to the office and duty of a justice of the peace and other public officers].  In 1841 Swain published, “at the Southern Citizen office” in Asheboro his The North Carolina Executor . . . a safe guide to executors administrators in their practical management of estates. . .   And in 1842, Swaim likewise published  The North Carolina Road Law… with all the necessary forms and practical observations pertaining to the… responsibilities of overseers and road hands.

Swaim therefore made a career of writing and publishing form-books and digests of North Carolina state law related to various public offices and private professions.  All of his works seem to have been relatively popular;  The Man of Business was still in print in 1841 and offered for sale (along with Swaim’s Justice and Executor) in the catalog of law books of the Raleigh bookseller Turner and Hughes.  A second edition of the popular North Carolina Justice was updated by Swaim and published posthumously in 1846.  Another purported revision of The North Carolina Justice was edited by an Edward Cantwell and published by Henry D. Turner of Raleigh in 1856; although titled “Swaim’s Justice—Revised,” it was subtitled The North Carolina Magistrate, a practical guide to the laws of the state…under the Revised Code, 1854-55, and its preface states that the work is not a revision of Swaim, but a “new and original publication.”  That a “new and original publication” would wish to trade on Swaim’s name in its title twelve years after his death suggests that his reputation as a North Carolina legal authority was high.

Precedents.

The author of “Legal Practice and Ethics in North Carolina, 1820-1860” muses that “when one remembers that he was a lawyer, one is amazed that Swaim was eager to help the common man and to assist him in being his own attorney.”   Yet to some extent Swaim was following in the footsteps of legal predecessors in the state.  North Carolina’s first printer, James Davis, published in 1774 his  Office and Authority of a Justice of Peace.  And Also, the the duty of Sheriffs, Coroners, Constables, Churchwardens, Overseers of Roads and other Officers, Together with precedents for Warrants, Judgements, Executions and other legal process….  New editions by different authors appeared in 1791 and 1800 which were also subsequently revised and reprinted[xi]; Swaim’s North Carolina Justice therefore had a long pedigree.   Likewise, his Executor was preceded by Francois-Xavier Martin’s Treatise on the Powers and Duties of Executors and  Administrators according to the Law of North-Carolina, published in Raleigh by J. Gales in 1820.  However,  Swaim’s Road Law does not seem to have had North Carolina antecedents, and The Man of Business appears to have been a completely original conception.  An 1819 self-help book which could represent a parallel idea was J.H. Conway’s The North Carolina Calculator; or New Practical Arithmetic…  of utility to merchants, traders and others, in their general occupations; this was a prototype small-business accounting treatise.

Swain asserted, however, that The Man of Business was “new in character and design,” and worried that those in the legal fraternity might protest the popularizing of the law.  Though the work was “calculated to render every man his own counsellor in matters of ordinary business,” Swaim declared himself motivated by the desire “to improve the modes of doing business, and thereby to render the ends of justice more easy and accessible to all classes of the community…”  While today every state (except Louisiana) operates under the Uniform Commercial Code (a model state law package governing all commercial transactions), the nineteenth century operated under the burden of a bewildering array of local laws regulating business. Although business law is taught as a separate curriculum in modern business schools and economic departments, Swaim may have been an originator of the concept of uniform laws as a vital part of business administration and financial efficiency.  His most direct influence lay in the inspiration of imitators such as Franklin Crosby, who in 1860 in Philadelphia published Everybody’s Lawyer and Counsellor in Business:  containing plain and simple instructions to all classes for transacting their business according to law…. [xii]

Vol II Title Page

Characteristics of the Printed Page.
The Man of Business was considered by Swaim to be a periodical “published simultaneously at Greensborough and New Salem, N.C.  It will consist of four hundred and thirty-two duodecimo pages (in twelve monthly numbers) neatly printed, pressed, -folded, stitched and trimmed.”  Each monthly number consisted of 18 leaves or 36 pages made up of 9 signatures of 4 leaves each.  Four pages of type were printed at once on one side of an 8 x 13-inch sheet of rough-laid paper from the Emmanuel Shober paper mill in Salem.[xiii]

The joint publishing arrangement may have arisen from the difficulty of a single press publishing a weekly newspaper as well as a monthly magazine.[xiv]  Although the printing work for volume one was stated to have occurred at William Swaim’s Greensborough Patriot office, four versions of volume one exist.  This physical evidence indicates volume one was set in type by hand and printed four separate times, and perhaps only once in Greensboro.  Two versions of volume one exhibit a simple masthead on page one, and two begin with title pages.

The masthead design resembles a tiny newspaper masthead, with title, editor, and imprint information.  “THE MAN OF BUSINESS./ (motto)/ Benjamin Swain, Editor./ NEW SALEM, N.C. JULY, 1833/ VOL. I NO, 1/ PROSPECTUS…” Version one also includes the “TERMS” at the foot of the page, ending with “…stitched and trimmed.”  Version two does not include TERMS, ending instead with “…ordinary business.”  Version one of the ‘title page’ design ends “VOL. 1/ OCTOBER, 1834-5/ WILLIAM SWAIM, PRINTER,/ GREENSBOROUGH, N.C./ 1834.” Version two of the title page ends “VOL. 1/ OCTOBER, 1833,/ Reprinted,/ New Salem, N.C./ 1836.”

Vol II No. 6 Title Page

The imprint of version one of the title page is obviously incorrect. Volume one, number one is dated July, 1833, not October, 1834. The printer has taken the title page for volume two, printed in 1834, and replace the “II” of that “VOL. II’ with “I’, making no other corrections, This suggests that volume one originally appeared with no title or imprint information other than its masthead.  Moreover, since the title page of the 1836 reprint corrects 1834-5 to 1833, but has not corrected “October” to ‘July”, we may surmise that the type for the reprint was set from a copy of the 1834 title page, with some mistakes corrected and others overlooked. Which one of the two “masthead” versions may be original requires further study.

In volume one, number twelve, Swaim complains of the trouble and expense of traveling back and forth to the printing office, and says “I hope to find some relief in the location of the whole concern in one place… In future it will be printed and published in the town of New Salem, Randolph County, N.C., provided its patronage should be sufficiently increased to justify the purchase of a press, etc.” However, at least volume two, number one must still have been printed in Greenshorough, for in number two Swaim states “Since the appearance of the first number of this volume, I have engaged in the services of a young printer,[xv] who has recently set up, and is commencing business in this place… it is therefore hoped, and confidently expected, that the publication will, in future, go on with more promptness and regularity, as the whole concern is now at home.”

Numbers three through twelve of this volume all bear the imprint “R.J. WEST PRINTER,/ New-Salem, N.C.” No versions of the volume two title page exist. Version one bears the imprint “VOL. II/ NEW SALEM,/ OCTOBER/ 1834’5.” The page is printed in six different point sizes of type, including two versions of an unusual ball-serif italic, one slanting to the left, the other slanting right.[xvi]  Title page version two has already been mentioned, bearing the imprint “VOL. II/ OCTOBER, 1834-5/ WILLIAM SWAIM, PRINTER./ Greensborough, N.C./ 1834.”
Volume one is indexed by a simple contents list following the numbered page sequence. This is complicated by the fact that pages 37 through 48 are misnumbered 1 through 12 (noted in an Erratta on page 72), and by the fact that “Pages from 352 to 417 are erroneously numbered by mistake. The index, however, is made out as the pages are, and not as they should be…” This indexing system cannot have been very satisfactory. Volume two provides a classified alphabetical index to both volumes; it indicates both the true page number and the erroneous page number (bracketted). The mistakes were probably perpetuated due to the exigencies of legal citation, which demands that page numbering be uniform from copy to copy— even uniformly incorrect.
Swaim ends volume two hinting at a third volume which was, however, never published and probably grew into his North Carolina Justice, which appeared two years later.  He indicates throughout volume two that complete files of both volumes could be bought “in good law binding.”  Therefore, in addition to “young printer” R.J. West, Swaim also evidently secured the services of a bookbinder.  A copy of The Man of Business in the Peacock collection at Duke has the damaged label “(torn)/ BOOK BINDER/New-Salem, N.C.”  A copy of Volume 2 now in the possession of the author includes a paper label inside the front cover, imprinted “JOHN SHERWOOD/ BOOK BINDER,/ New-Salem, N.C.”  This is evidently his cousin John Milton Sherwood who was subsequently the purchaser of the Southern Citizen printing office.[xvii]

In view of the numerous pleas throughout the work asking subscribers to pay their bills, and from the fact that none of Swain’s subsequent works appeared serially, it may be assumed that his experience with subscription sales was an unhappy one.  The problems of sale and distribution of such published materials in the early nineteenth century must have discouraged many local printers from even attempting a project of the magnitude undertaken by Benjamin Swaim— nearly 900 pages of material related to the study of business law. [xviii]

Copies Examined.
UNC-CH, North Carolina Collection (call number: C347.05-M26)

Vol. I
(c.i) New Salem reprint, 1836.
Stephen B. Weeks Collection.
Number 1, p.1 ends “…ordinary business.”
(c.2) Greensborough, 1834.
Stephen B. Weeks Collection.
(c.3) No title page (t.-p.); rebound.
Gift of the N.C. Baptist Historical Commission.
(c,4) No t.-p.; ‘S’ dropped from masthead: “PROSPECTU .”

Vol. II
(c.l) Greensborough, 1834.
John Sprunt Hill Collection.
(c.2) New Salem, Oct. 1834’5.
Stephen B. Weeks Collection.
(c.3) Greensborough, 1834.
Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies.

UNC—CH, Law Library (Rare Book Room) (call number: S971m-1834)

Vol.  I
(c.1) New Salem reprint, 1836 (#241180),
Bound in calf; black label; stamped “1” on Spine.

Vol. II
(c.1) No t.-p. (#180548),
Bound in calf; red label; stamped “2” on spine.
Duke University Library, Peacock Collection (call number: 347.6—3971-P)

Vol, I
(c.1) Greensborough, 1834 (#23290)
Rebound in red library bindings
(c.2) New Salem reprint, 1836 (#23291),

Number 1, p.1, ends “…In short it will be calcu-“

Signed on t.-p.: “Wm. M.B. Arendell”

(c.3) No t.-p. (#23292)
Number 1, p. 1 ends “. . .and trimmed.”
“B.F. Swaim/ A.D. 1852” in ink on front cover.

Vol. II
(c.1) Greensborough, 1834 (#23293)
On flyleaf: “B.F. Swaim’s/ Law Book/ May the 2nd. 1852” In ink on cover: “B.F. Swaim/ 1852”
(c.2) Greensborough, 1834 (#23294)
Inside front cover: “(torn)/ BOOK BINDER/ New-Salem, N.C,”

“DICK” stamped (in ink?) on spine.

Bibliography.
1. Arnett, Ethel Stephens, William Swaim, Fighting Editor: The Story of O. Henry’s Grandfather. Greensboro Piedmont Press, 1963.

2. Blackwelder, Fannie M. F. “The Bar Examination and Beginning Years of Legal Practice in North Carolina, 1820-1860.”  North Carolina Historical Review XXIX (April, 1952), pp. 159-170.

3. ——-, “Legal Education in North Carolina, 1820-1860.” N.C.H.R., XXVIII (July, 1951), pp. 271-297.

4. ——-, “Legal Practice and Ethics in North Carolina, 1820-1860.” N.C.H.R. (July, 1953), pp. 329-353

5. Davis, Jewell Faye, Bibliography of North Carolina Imprints, 1801-1820.  Washington, D.C. Catholic Univ., M.S.L.S. thesis, 1955.

6. Fox, Charlesanna M., ed., Randolph County 1779-1979. Winston-Salem: Hunter Publishing Co., 1980.

7. Gibson, Virginia E. Salmon Hall, N.C. Printer, 1800-1840, UNC School of Library Science: MSLS paper, 1967.

8. Gress Edmund F.  Fashions in American Typography, 1780-1930. New York Harper and Bros., 1931.

9.  Hall, Francis H. Public Printing in North Carolina, 1816-1861.  UNC School of Library Science: MSLS thesis, 1957.

10.  Jones, H.G.  Union List of North Carolina Newspapers. Raleigh, N.C., Dept. of Archives and History, 1966.

11.  McFarland, Daniel M, “North Carolina Newspapers, Editors and Journalistic Politics, 1815-1835.” N.C.H.R., July, 1953.

12.  McMurtrie, Douglas C.  Eighteenth Century North Carolina Imprints, 1749-1800. Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 1938.

13.  Paschal, George Washington.  A History of Printing in North Carolina. Raleigh: Edwards and Broughton Co., 1946.

14.  Raleigh Register, 16 Feb. 1836, 16 March 1841, 24 Dec. 1844.

15.  Sherrill, P.M., “The Quakers and the North Carolina Manumission Society,” Trinity College Historical Society Papers, Series X, 1914.

16.  Robert N. Tompkins, ed., “Marriage and Death Notices from Extant Asheboro, N,C., Newspapers, 1836—1857”, N.C. Genealogical Society Journal (Nov. 1978);

FOOTNOTES

---

[i]  Swaim Bible Records, published in Randolph County Genealogical Society Journal, Vol. X, #2, p.28 (1986); Sidney Swain Robins, A Letter on Robins Family History (nd.); Swaim family genealogical records (possession of Mrs. Francine Holt Swain, Liberty, N.C.)

[ii]  H.N. Wagstaff, ed., “Minutes of the N.C. Manumission Society, 1816-1831”, The James Sprunt Historical Studies, Vol. 22 (1934)

[iii]  Peter Dicks was a storekeeper in the Town, as well as the operator of a mill on Deep River some 2 miles southwest. William Dennis was a potter of slip-decorated redware whose home and kiln were sited half a mile east of town. Dr. John Milton Worth, born in the nearby Centre Friends Meeting community just north across the county line, opened his first practice in New Salem.  William Clark, a future organizer of the Union Factory, operated a “flourishing” tannery and store in the town.  (J.A. Blair, p. 50)  The Adams family, who employed Naomi Wise as a servant girl, lived just South of town.

[iv] At that first meeting, says Levi Coffin in his autobiographical Reminiscences, Moses Swaim, “a lawyer of Randolph County, delivered a lengthy and able address, which was afterward printed and widely circulated.  It was a strong abolition speech, and would not have been allowed a few years later.”  (p.74)  Moses Swaim was elected Clerk of Superior Court in Randolph County in 1837 and served for several years.

[v]  The phrase “Man of Business” had come into English writing as early as 1660, but it had only begun to assume its modern form, “business-man,” in 1829.

[vi]  William Swaim also happens to have been the grandfather of novelist O. Henry, and so has merited the monograph William Swaim– Fighting Editor by Ethel Stephens Arnett (1963). William’s cousin Lyndon Swaim later took over editorship of his newspaper. “The Life of William Swaim” was a multi-part biographical series written by Lyndon Swaim and published in the Patriot from May 18 to June 22, 1866. In transmogrified form, the Patriot survives today, becoming the Greensboro Daily News, now known as  The News and Record.

[vii]  John Sherwood (27 Sept. 1806 – 5 July 1895) was the son of Benjamin Sherwood (1783-1865) and Sally Swaim (b. 29 Sept. 1787).  Sally Swaim was the daughter of distant cousin Michael Swaim; Benjamin Sherwood was evidently a brother of Benjamin Swaim’s mother Elizabeth Sherwood Swaim.  On 26 Sept. 1835 John Sherwood was the grantee of a deed of trust (Randolph County Book 20, Page 111) encumbering property described as “one quarter acre lot in New Salem adj. B. Swaim (formerly Jesse Watkins”.  In 1837 John Sherwood was a candidate for Randolph County Clerk of Superior Court, printing circulars on June 10^th , decrying prejudice against candidates who were not Randolph natives and on July 29^th,  printing a diatribe against “racing candidates” and describing himself as a “man in limited circumstances, with an extensive family.”  Moses Swaim was the victor in this contest (see Deed Book 21, Page 151).

[viii]  In October 1834, Williams Swaim proposed merging the Patriot into the Southern Citizen beginning July 4, 1835.  He planned to enlarge the weekly paper with three times the editorial material, “printed in new type, on a new press.”  The prospectus of the new paper was printed Nov. 19, 1834; in it he said 2.000 subscribers would be required to begin publication.  Lyndon Swaim, “The Life of William Swaim,” in The Patriot (Greensboro, NC) published from May 18 to June 22, 1866.

[ix]  From The Southern Citizen, Vol. V, #52 (17 October 1844)—“We have recently sold out to Mr. John Milton Sherwood, a young gentleman who was partly raised in this office, and , for the past year, has been the foreman in the establishment.  He will issue the first number week after next./  This number of our paper concludes the Fifth volume of the Southern Citizen, and closes, for the present, at least and very probably forever, the Editorial Career of its present Editor and Proprietor.”

[x] From the Patriot, Greensboro, 12-28-1844:  “Died/ In Raleigh, on Monday the 22^nd inst., about 12 o’clock, BENJAMIN SWAIM, of Randolph county, counselor at law, and author of several legal works.

“A friend who watched his dying bed informs us that the deceased ‘had been indisposed about two weeks ago, but had got much better, so as to consider himself well.  On Friday night he was taken with a violent cholera morbius, which proved fatal on Monday.  His suffering was intense.  He had the best medical aid, and attentive nursing, but all failed.  He retained his senses in a most remarkable degree, and submitted to his fate without a murmur- observed, after he was conscious of the near approach of death, that he had no disposition to complain of any act of Providence.  He had but few friends present, but these few gave every possible attention that could be bestowed.’

“Always under the depressing influence of pecuniary want, and afflicted from his birth with a radical defect in his sight, he labored under more of the difficulties of life than fall to the lot of most men.  But nature had endowed him with a remarkably clear intellect and a patient disposition, which enabled him to press forward in the attainment of knowledge to an extent highly creditable to himself and useful to the community.  His mind, patient to investigate, delighted to follow the old law writers through the mazes of their learning into the latent recesses of truths and right reason.  The law was his favorite study, and in it he had made uncommon proficiency for one of his age and proscribed opportunities. He enjoyed the reputation of a clear and correct legal theorist and a safe counselor.  And the practical legal works which he compiled and published will long be used and appreciated by the business public.  He was a man of inoffensive manners and most amiable disposition.  Peace be to his ashes!

“We have deemed this meager public tribute due to one who was, during a portion of our youth ‘our guide, companion, and familiar friend.’—EDS. PAT.”

[xi]  i.e., Francois-Xavier Martin, The Office and Authority of a Justice of the Peace of Sheriffs, Coroners, &c., According to the Laws of North-Carolina (1791) ; or The Office and Duty of A Justice of the Peace and A Guide to Sheriffs, Coroners, Clerks and Constables and Other Civil Officers  According to the Laws of North-Carolina (John Haywood, ed., printed in Raleigh by William Boylan in 1806; and Henry Potter, ed., published by J. Gales and Son of Raleigh in 1828 (2^nd ed.).

[xii]  Interestingly, Brantley York (1805-1891), Randolph County native, teacher and founder of Trinity College, is credited with authoring The Man of Business and Railroad Calculator:  Containing such part of arithmetic as have a special application in business transactions (Raleigh: J. Nichols & Co., 1873).  The work contains legal forms edited by Richard Watt York, “A.M. and Counsellor at Law,” but it does not appear to relate to Swaim’s Man of Business in anything but title and subject matter.

[xiii]  On Feb. 7, 1838, in the midst of a financial crisis, Benjamin Swaim mortgaged his house and lot in New Salem, his household property in Asheboro, and “also the printing press, cases, gallies, and all other Materials belonging to the printing office of the Southern Citizen of Asheboro, including the Dog Press, also the Library of books belonging to the said Swaim, consisting of about 200 volumes.”  Swaim owed 4 local businessmen $770, as well as $33.87 to printer R.W. West, and $260 to Salem paper mill owner Emanuel Shober.  “Dog Press” was evidently a generic name for a traditional wooden screw-type printing press.

[xiv]  According to Ethel Stephens Arnett, William Swaim used a Ramage press to print The Patriot (Greensboro, North Carolina, The County Seat of Guilford (1955), p. 240).  Adam Ramage of Philadephia  built wooden printing presses from about 1800 until he died in 1850.  They were available in three sizes: a full-size common press, an intermediate free-standing press which he called his “screw press,” and the smallest, the “foolscap,” named for the size of sheet paper it could print.

[xv] Identified on all subsequent monthly title pages as “R.J. WEST, Printer/ New-Salem, N.C.”

[xvi]  A modern “trutype” version of this typeface is available on computers as Elephant Italic, an adaptation of early 19^th century “fat face” types made by designer Matthew Carter.

[xvii]  Swaim’s reference of October 17, 1844 to the purchase of the Southern Citizen by John Milton Sherwood is the only known use of that middle name, but the buyer appears to be the same as the “John Sherwood, Book-Binder” of the Man of Business.  While Sherwood’s latter career with the Southern Citizen is not clear, he also is apparently the same man responsible for another first in N.C. journalism.  A John Sherwood, editor of The Farmer’s Advocate and Miscellaneous Reporter, published in Jamestown from Aug. 1838 to June 1842, is cited by James Oliver Cathey as publishing North Carolina’s first agricultural journal.  [see “Agricultural Developments in North Carolina, 1783-1860,” published in James Sprunt Studies in History and Political Science, Vol. 38; Chapel Hill, UNC Press, pp. 84, 102-103] .  Says Cathey, “John Sherwood… was one of the leading advocates of greater efficiency in farm operations. ‘What you undertake, do well,’ he urged.  Farmers were encouraged, in the interest of efficiency, to keep business-like records of their activities, to include notations of stock on hand, implements, methods used, weather conditions, time of planting, time and methods of culture, and of all experiments conducted…. Sherwood, in his Farmer’s Advocate, was the most forceful and persistent in advocating this feature of the reform program.”  Sherwood’s program to make farmer’s more business-like seems very much akin to Swaim’s program to codify and demystify business law.

And as regards book binding, Swaim’s estate papers indicate that Daniel Clewell of Salem in 1842 bound 29 copies of the N.C. Executor and 4 sets of the Man of Business.

[xviii] Swaim’s estate papers in the NC State Archives contain records of an auction sale of his assets held in August 1845; for sale were 185 copies of the N.C. Road Law, which sold for 5 cents each; 8 copies of the Man of Business which sold for $1.35; 53 copies of the N.C. Executor, and 1 N.C. Justice.  5 bound volumes of the Southern Citizen were sold to Joseph P. Julian.  At least one of these bound volumes survived into the 21^st century, which the local owner, refusing to sell to the local historical society, auctioned it off to a paper dealer on eBay who cut the pages apart and sold them as “SLAVE ADS!!!”  Among the law books in Swaim’s sale were Haywood’s Justice; Haywood’s Manual; a Revised Statutes (of N.C.); Iredell’s Digest; N.C. Reports; Battle’s Reports; Martin’s Sheriff; N.C. Sheriffs, and “Right’s M of B.”  This last title is intriguing; if “M.O.B.” is short for “Man of Business” then this might indicate some other work related in title or subject to Swaim’s periodical.  But so far nothing under that title or author (either Right or Wright) has been found in union catalogs.

BALLOON BUSTING II

Did a Randolph County artillery gunner really take down a Union observation balloon?  Probably not; but every other aspect of the story can be verified and the characters named in the story are inarguably real:  it shines a light on one of the county’s first and at the time, premier military units: Company I of the 22^nd North Carolina Regiment.

Company I, known as the “Davis Guards,”[i] has not been as well known as Franklinville’s Company M, the “Randolph Hornets”.  But in 1861 the opposite was true:  the Guards, formerly known as the “Asheborough Guards,” were the long-time militia company of the county seat.  The Hornets were newly minted, freshly equipped, and backed by the largest corporation in the county.  The Guards were old school militia, traditionally uniformed, and serving under much of their antebellum leadership.

A notice of one of the quarterly musters of the Guards appeared in 1859 in the local newspaper:

ATTENTION ASHEBOROUGH GUARDS!

You are hereby commanded to appear at Asheborough, on Saturday the 4^th of July next, at 10 o’clock A.M.—armed with Gun, Shot-Pouch, Horn and Six Rounds of Powder.

Also, all persons wishing to join the C Company, are requested to come forward on that day.

By order of the Captain.

June 20, 1859.

S.G. Worth, Sergeant.[ii]

S.G. Worth tombstone in the Asheboro cemetery.

Shubal Gardner Worth (1836- 1864), the company Sergeant in 1859, was elected Captain of the company in 1861.  Worth was the son of Dr. John Milton Worth (1811- 1901) of Asheboro, and the nephew of wartime State Treasurer and future Governor Jonathan Worth.  At the outbreak of the war, S.G. Worth was serving as the Clerk of Superior Court of Randolph County, and resigned that office to raise the county’s first company for service in the Confederate army.[iii]  “Shube” Worth served as company commander for more than eighteen months,[iv] about half of which involved service along a line of hastily-built fortifications along the Potomac River.  The Washington Post recently rated this story of the Potomac blockade, which bottled up Washington, DC for much of the first year of the war, as one of the “most important yet overlooked” stories of the Civil War.[v]

Company “I” took up camp at Evansport, Virginia late in September, and was stationed there during the Autumn and Winter of 1861-’62.  Evansport, today better known as Quantico, Virginia, was the headquarters of heavy cannon batteries established on the west bank of the Potomac from the Occoquan River, just south of Mt. Vernon, to Quantico Creek, about 15 miles.  This series of gun emplacements prevented ships from passing up river to the capital, thus isolating Washington, D.C.  Three batteries were largely built and maintained by the 22^nd North Carolina regiment, mounted with 9-inch Dalghren guns, smooth bore 32 and 42 pounders, and one heavy rifled Blakely gun.[vi] The batteries frequently engaged with federal gunboats and with Union batteries on the Maryland side of the Potomac, but combat casualties were few.

Union soldier posing with the fake cannon after capture of Evansport.

Given the constant observation from the Balloon Corps, the Confederates shrewdly increased the number of visible guns by creating “Quaker Cannon,” tree trucks painted black and carefully situated in gun emplacements to look like additional artillery.  Balloon observers could not distinguish between the fake and the real cannon, and thus reports back to Union command consistently overestimated Confederate fire power.

Company I was detailed to man Battery No. 2 at Evansport during the entire Potomac blockade,[vii]  and once had several men wounded when a 42-pounder Dalghren gun burst.

One of the Gosport Dahlgrens.

Fifty-two 9-inch Dahlgren cannon had been rescued by the Confederates from the burned Gosport Navy Yard at Norfolk and brought to Evansport.  Dahlgrens, by far the most popular gun in the U.S. Navy, were soda-bottle-shaped, smooth-bore, muzzle-loading naval guns.  Commonly designated by caliber using Roman numerals (i.e., “IX”), the most common variety of Dahlgren IX was 108 inches long, weighed more than 9,000 pounds, and could throw an 80-pound solid shot or a 73.5-pound exploding shell.[viii]

A Blakely rifle is also known to have been at Evansport, and this is probably the one which would have been used to shoot at the balloons, as Blakelys were British muzzle-loading cannon which had rifled barrels.  Blakelys were very popular with Confederate artillery, and there were many different designs and sizes.  What they all had in common is that the rifled barrels imparted a spin to the shell which allowed longer and more accurate shots.[ix]

Parents of the Wood brothers, buried in the Asheboro Cemetery.

Randolph County’s lead actor in the balloon drama, Sergeant Thomas Jefferson (records alternatively say “Jones”) Wood of Company I, 22^nd North Carolina Regiment, was born in 1 Mar. 1840 near Asheboro.  He and his older and younger brothers Franklin Harris Wood (1836-1913) and William Penuel Wood (1843- 1924) all served with the 22^nd North Carolina.  The three boys were the only children of Penuel P. Wood (1813-1903) and his wife, Calista Birkhead Wood (1816- 1903) of Randolph County.  Franklin Harris Wood (1836-1913) served as the regimental Chaplain.[x]

W.P. or “Penn” Wood enlisted in January 1862 and joined his brother in Company on March 1^st.  He was promoted to Full Corporal on October 1^st, and to Full Sergeant on May 23, 1864.  Wood represented Randolph County in the state senate in 1901 and in the state house from 1905-1907; he was elected State Auditor in 1911, and served in that office until 1921.  He is buried in the Asheboro cemetery, just across the carriageway from J.M. Worth.[xi]

View of the Potomac from inside the Confederate gun emplacements.

The 22^nd N.C. regiment remained in support of the batteries at Evansport until March, 1862, when the army was abruptly ordered to fall back from Manassas and the Potomac to the line of the Rappahannock at Fredericksburg.  The retreat was both so hasty and so quiet that it was not discovered by the Union spy balloons for almost a day.  When federal troops landed at the Evansport batteries on March 9^th, “Two or three guns of the battery were found bursted.  All of the pieces had been heavily wadded, then crammed to the muzzle with sand and fires built under the carriages with the expectation that they would burn and the heat cause the gun to discharge and burst.  But this failed except in a few instances.  The guns were mostly rifled 7 and 9-inch Dahlgrens with one magnificent 120-pounder Blakely gun, which had been brought from England but a few months before.  This, with its fellows, was subsequently taken to the Washington Navy Yard, where they were all put in good condition and did much excellent service for the Union thereafter.”[xii]

The Confederate departure was so quick and confused that Company M of the 22^nd Regiment, the Randolph Hornets, left its almost-new Company flag flying over its camp, soon to be captured without a shot being fired.[xiii]

T.J. Wood served throughout the war and was with General Robert E. Lee when he surrendered at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, on Palm Sunday, April 8, 1865.[xiv]

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[i] Almost certainly re-named in honor of Confederate President Jefferson Davis.

[ii] North Carolina Bulletin, Asheborough, 27 June 1859.

[iii] S.G. Worth was appointed Clerk of Superior Court for Randolph County for Spring term Superior Ct– just in time for the storied trial of his cousin, State vs. Daniel Worth.  See the Greensboro Patriot, 4-6-60, p.2.

[iv] Appointed Lt. Colonel of the 5^th Battalion of Home Guards by Governor Vance, Worth returned to Asheboro.  He subsequently resigned that command to raise another company, which served with the 19^th N.C. Cavalry, in the brigade of Gen. W.P. Roberts.  Worth was regimental Adjutant when he was killed in the vicinity of Richmond on May 11, 1864 during the Battle of Yellow Tavern, the same day and place General J.E.B. Stuart was mortally wounded.  Worth’s life and career will be the subject of a separate post.

[v] http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/house-divided/post/untold-civil-war-stories-the-potomac-blockade/2011/10/07/gIQAKMLcTL_blog.html

[vi] http://www.22ndnorthcarolina.com/id3.html

[vii] Ibid.

[viii] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dahlgren_gun

[ix] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blakely_rifle

[x] Franklin Harris Wood was born in Randolph County 19 Aug 1836; he died at the home of his son George Thomas Wood (1874-1943) in High Point on 2 Oct 1913.  He married Frances Elizabeth Pearce (1852 – 1936).  F. H. Wood Wood is listed as “D.D.” without further explanation on genealogy websites, which traditionally means “Doctor of Divinity.”  His post-war career as a minister, if any, is not known.

[xi] William Penuel Wood (2 May 1843 –  1 Apr 1924), married Henrietta J. Gunter (1849-1893) and had the following family: Blanche Penn Wood (1873 – 1954) (who married J.O. Redding); John Kerr Wood (1875 – 1939); and Mabel Emma Wood (1879 – 1967) (who married William A. Underwood).  The  W.P. Wood House was located on the north side of the 300 block of East Salisbury Street in Asheboro, currently a playground for an adjacent daycare.

[xii] Pvt. Oliver C. Cooper, 1st Mass. Infantry, quoted in “Annals of the War: Chapters of Unwritten History Blockading the Potomac,” published December 20, 1879 in the “Weekly Times,” Philadelphia, PA.

[xiii] Ibid.  The story refers to a “handsome banner… of satin, bearing on one side the inscription, ‘The Randolph Hornets,’ and on the other, ‘Onward to VICTORY.’”  This is what allowed the identification and return of the flag to the county historical society in the 1960s.

[xiv] He died Feb. 4, 1923 in High Point.  He married Sara Sadie Christian (1843-1900), and had one son, William Marshall Wood (1868-1951), who died in Beaumont, TX.

BALLOON BUSTING

The following story was published in the April, 1898 edition of The North Carolina Home Journal (Vol. I, Number V).  The monthly magazine cost fifty cents a year, and its editorial offices were in Trinity, Randolph County, N.C. [Very little is known about this Randolph County magazine.]

RANDOLPH COUNTY BOY DOWNS BALLOON

 After the battle of Manassas the Confederate troops occupied the southern bank of the Potomac for some time. The 22d Regiment of N. C. Troops were at Evansport between Aquia Creek and Mount Vernon, Federal Troops were encamped on the opposite side of the river, which is at that point about a mile and a half wide. From this camp balloons would ascend every day for the occupants to make observations as to what was doing on the Confederate side. One very large and beautiful balloon was named “The Belle.”  Every strip in the cloth, which seemed to be silk, was of a different color from the others. The Confederates had batteries along the river, and at Evansport was a long range gun which some of the members of the 22d Regiment were trained to handle. Thomas J. Wood, of Randolph County, was the gunner.

He acquired considerable proficiency in firing the gun, and one day asked his Captain to let him try a shot at that big balloon. The Captain could not give the permission, but suggested that he ask General Holmes, who was then in command of the brigade. Accordingly, the first time the General came around Wood sought the desired permission. Holmes after swearing at him awhile, and telling him he would better save his ammunition for he would likely need it in a few days, finally told him he could come down, and he might try it.

 

Two days after, a clear, bright, still evening, the balloon being up, the General came. J. J. Pettigrew, who was then Colonel of the regiment, and had had a splendid military education, was standing near the gun. Wood asked him to pass judgment of the distance. “About four miles,” Pettigrew replied. “Try your fifteen-second shell first, and if it falls short, take your twenty-two-second shell, which is made to go four miles and a half before bursting. Wood fired his first shell, and men with field-glasses watching, observed that it fell short. He then loaded with the twenty-two-second shell, adjusted his gun, and drew the lanyard. As the iron missile went singing through the air, all watched intently the result, and behold, when at last it exploded, the beautiful balloon collapsed and fell, her variegated coat torn to tatters by the fragments of the bursting shell.

This is an intriguing little vignette of the early war, discovered by local genealogist Barbara Newsome (“Bobbie”) Grigg and republished in 1981 in the Randolph County Genealogical Journal.[i]  However, there is a fundamental flaw with the whole story:  I can find no account of any federal observation balloon being shot down by Confederate artillery.  In fact, histories of the Balloon Corps say exactly the opposite.[ii]  But the story provides an entry point into a number of fascinating footnotes to the story of the War Between the States.

First, the United States Balloon Corps, a civilian organization established by President Lincoln in June, 1861 to provide aerial reconnaissance for the Union armies.  While ostensibly under the authority of the Union’s Bureau of Topographical Engineers, the Balloon Corps and its “Chief Aeronaut” Thaddeus S.C. Lowe were never trusted by Lincoln’s mediocre cadre of command generals, and was phased out of use after June 1863, despite providing useful and, sometimes irreplaceable intelligence on southern troop strength and movements.

The primary reason the War Department bureaucrats distrusted the Balloon Corps was probably what caught the attention of the President in the first place:  its flamboyant founder, a character who could have been the model for Professor Marvel, the failed balloonist who became Frank Baum’s Wizard of Oz.  “Professor” Thaddeus Sobieski Constantine (or, sometimes he used the more impressive and mysterious “Coulincourt”) Lowe (1832- 1913), was a self-educated aeronautical enthusiast who made a living in the 1850s demonstrating hot air balloons at county fairs across the country.

Lowe made and wasn’t afraid to make use of influential friends such as Joseph Henry, the Director of the Smithsonian institution.  But what got the attention of the President was a stunt Lowe engineered under the guise of testing atmospheric wind currents for a trans-Atlantic balloon flight.  On April 20, 1861, Lowe made headlines North and South with a storybook aerial journey from Cincinnati, Ohio, flying 500 miles in just nine hours, sailing entirely over North Carolina to land in a field near Unionville, S.C.  Since this was just a week after the fall of Fort Sumter, the startled residents of South Carolina were more inclined to believe that the flying Yankee disguised in a formal Prince Albert tailcoat and silk top hat was some sort of spy.  They packed Lowe and his balloon, the Enterprise, off to the state capital where he finally managed to persuade the authorities to let him catch a train back to Ohio.

Whether or not Lowe started out to spy, by the time he got back to Cincinnati he had a firm grasp of the military value of his hobby, and a burning desire to use it in the service of the Union.  He had an influential friends arrange a meeting with President Abraham Lincoln at the White House on June 11, 1861 where Lowe outlined his vision for the military use of observation balloons.  A week later Lowe not only demonstrated the balloon-ship Enterprise 500 feet above the south lawn of the White House, but sent the President the world’s first telegram from the air to prove how easily aerial intelligence observations could be communicated to the ground.[iii]  Lincoln wasted no time in putting Lowe to work; before the end of June balloons took their place in military history when Lowe and a sketch artist ascended near Bull Run to observe the Confederate Army.  In August General George McClellan authorized Lowe to build seven balloons for the army,[iv] and Lowe invented a portable hydrogen generator to allow the balloons to be filled with gas on the battlefield.

On August 29^th Lowe began providing McClellan with information on the Confederate fortifications being built on the Potomac five miles south of Washington.  Lowe’s daily observations of Confederate activities attracted immediate artillery and rife fire from southern troops, but at their regular altitude of 500 feet, they were usually out of range.  In November Lowe, observing across the Potomac from the airship Constitution,  reported to army headquarters that “We had a fine view of the enemy’s camp-fires during the evening, and saw the rebels constructing new batteries…”[v]   “A hawk hovering over a chicken yard could not have caused more commotion than did my balloons when they appeared,” Lowe wrote.  “As soon as it became inflated so the rebels could see it,” a young Union officer wrote, “they commenced throwing shells at it… [one] shell passed directly over our heads… and exploded the instant it struck the ground.”[vi]  Union soldiers made bets on whether the Southern artillerists would actually hit a balloon, but the closest shots only nicked the observer basket or the tether ropes.[vii]  The balloons were such enticing targets that Lincoln’s biographer Carl Sandburg called Lowe “the most shot-at man in the War.”[viii]  Despite being such a frequent target, there is no evidence that any Confederate shot ever pierced the silk envelope of a balloon; however, it may sometimes have appeared so.  Major Porter Alexander, Chief Engineer and Signal Officer of the Confederate army, wrote on September 8^th that “We sent a rifle shell so near old Lowe and his balloon that he came down as fast as gravity could bring him.”[ix]  Perhaps something like this is the factual basis of the story.

Unfortunately, there is one other major discrepancy.   The federal Balloon Corps never had a multi-colored airship.  Lowe’s silk envelopes were evidently white or gray, emblazoned with the name of each balloon and decorated with appropriate paintings such a bald eagle, the United States flag, or a portrait of George Washington.[x]  Varnished and reflective, a Union balloon “glistened… like a ball of silver suspended in the air.”[xi]   In fact, the only accounts of brightly colored silk balloons are of the two Confederate balloons Gazelle and Nimbus, built in 1862.  The Gazelle was made in Savannah, Georgia by Capt. Langdon Cheves (1814-1863), who purchased silk dress material from local merchants without regard to color or pattern.  Its bright plaids and flowered designs gave the Gazelle a distinctive patchwork aspect that caused General James Longstreet in his war memoir to author the myth that the balloon had been sewn from “all the silk dresses in the Confederacy.”[xii]

Whether or not some important aspects of the story are verifiable, it still opens a window on a barely-remembered aspect of the war, in which Randolph County’s companies in the 22^nd Regiment were heavily involved.  [ To be Continued in the next entry--]

[Jules Verne’s Mysterious Island involved the escape of Union POWs in a Confederate balloon… not made of silk dress material in this illustration!]

---

[i] The Genealogical Journal of the Randolph County Historical Society, Vol. V, No. 4, Fall 1981, p.35.

[ii] Gail Jarrow, Lincoln’s Flying Spies: Thaddeus Lowe and the Civil War Balloon Corps.  Honesdale, Pa.:  Calkins Creek, 2010, p. 70.

[iii] Thus the Enterprise was not only America’s first military airship, but the only Enterprise ever to have been an actual guest at the White House.  If Gene Roddenberry had only known…

[iv] Mixing naval history with pro-Union sentiments, Lowe’s airship fleet was made up of the Union, Intrepid, Constitution, United States, Washington, Eagle and Excelsior.

[v] “TSC Lowe’s Official Report,” in The War of the Rebellion, series 3, Vol. 3, p. 266.

[vi] Letter from Benjamin Steven to his parents in New Hampshire, 30 Nov. 1861.  Benjamin C. Stevens Papers, Duke University Library Special Collections, Durham, NC.

[vii] Jarrow, op.cit.

[viii] Carl Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The War Years, Vol. 1 (New York, 1939), page 493.

[ix] Letter from E.P. Alexander to A.L. Alexander, 8 Sept. 1861, quoted in F. Stansbury Haydon, Aeronautics in the Union and Confederate Armies, Vol. 1., p. 206.  (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1941).

[x] Jarrow, p. 45.

[xi] Gilbert Adams Hays, comp.  Under the Red Patch: the Story of the 63^rd Regiment Pennsylvania Volunteers (Pittsburgh, 1908), p.76.

[xii] James Longstreet, “Our March Against Pope,” in Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, Vol. 2, p.513.  (New York: Century Club, 1888).

The True Lost Cause: The Battle for Peace in February, 1861

Fort Sumter from the Battery in Charleston.

April 11, 1861 was America’s last day of peace.

On April 8^th, President Lincoln’s envoy to the Governor of South Carolina announced the President’s intention to resupply the besieged garrison at Fort Sumner with food and water, threatening to prolong indefinitely the stalemate that had begun the previous December 26^th.  The implication of Lincoln’s action was that, if war was to come, then the Southern firebrands who had advocated for a state’s right to leave the Union would have to turn push into shove.

The cascade of fear and anger that had begun with Lincoln’s election in November had almost run out of steam by April, 1861.  South Carolina, ever fast to take offense, led the way on December 20^th, followed by Mississippi (Jan. 9), Florida (Jan. 10), Alabama (Jan. 11), Georgia (Jan. 19), Louisiana (Jan. 26), and Texas (Feb. 1).   But there the flood tide had run out, and in the months since it seemed that overwrought tempers and heated words had cooled and even begun to recede.

The rock on which the initial secession wave broke was the Upper South, the border states possessing a majority of the southern populace, natural resources and industry.    Even there the vocal minority of men of property and power had advocated for secession.   But Unionists held back the flood, pointing out that the United States had been created by state constitutional conventions, authorized by a vote of the people, which then ratified (or not, in the case of North Carolina), the U.S. Constitution.  They argued that secession, more simply known as “Disunion,’ could only be achieved by following a similar process.  They hoped this delaying tactic would provide time to think, consider the consequences, and allow the possibility of compromise and new understanding.

On February 9, 1861, Tennessee voted on whether to send delegates to a State Convention to decide on secession.  88,803 votes were cast for pro-Union candidates and 22,749 votes were cast for Secession candidates, but the actual proposal for a secession convention was defeated by a vote of 69,675 to 57,798.

On  February  13^th a convention assembled in Richmond to determine whether Virginia should secede from the Union.  More than two thirds of the delegates refused to vote for secession.

On Feb. 18^th, the day that Jefferson Davis was inaugurated president of the Confederate States, the citizens of Arkansas approved holding a convention to consider the question, but when an ordinance of secession was put to a vote on March 16^th, it was rejected by a vote of 39 to 35.

Anyone reading the returns of the election of 1860 could have discerned the pro-Union sentiments of the voters of North Carolina.  When the final vote totals were published in the Greensboro Patriot on February 14, 1861, John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky, the Southern Democratic candidate, had received the most votes (48,533); second was John Bell of Tennessee, the Constitutional Union nominee (44,039); and far behind was the Democrat Stephen A. Douglas (just 2,690 votes).   When their totals are combined, more than 97% of North Carolina voters arguably approved the pro-Union positions of Bell and Breckinridge.  (Abraham Lincoln probably didn’t get a single vote in Randolph County during the election of 1860; the new Republican Party had not garnered enough votes in the previous election to even be allowed on the North Carolina ballot.)

On January 29^th the North Carolina General Assembly scheduled a referendum on whether to call a secession convention.  “Whereas, the present perilous condition of the country demands… that the sovereign people of this State should assemble in Convention to effect an honorable adjustment of existing difficulties whereby the Federal Union is endangered, or otherwise preserve the honor and promote the interests of North Carolina; and Whereas, this General Assembly, on matters of such grave import, involving the relation of North Carolina to her sisters in the Confederacy, is reluctant to adopt any settled policy without the sense of the people in whom, under our governance, all sovereignty resides, being first ascertained.” [The act was  published in the Feb. 14^th edition of the Greensboro Patriot.   The Yoda-like sentence structure of its preamble is a potent combination of florid Victorian language and turgid legalese.]

The act required the Governor “to issue a proclamation commanding the Sheriffs of the respective counties… to open polls… on the 28^th day of February, A.D. 1861, when and where all persons qualified to vote… may vote for or against a State Convention:  those who wish a convention, voting with a printed or written ticket, ‘Convention,’ and those who do not wish a convention, voting in the same way, ‘No Convention.’”

At the same time, potential delegates were to be elected in case the Convention was approved.  Further complicating the process, even if the Convention met and approved an Ordinance of Secession, the bill still would require ratification by yet another vote of the people before it could take effect.

Campaigning against the Convention- against “Disunion”- began immediately in The Patriot, the old-line Whig newspaper serving Randolph and Guilford counties.  On Thursday, February 6^th, the editor wrote “TO THE POLLS!  The bill calling a Convention, having provided that it shall be left to the people to say, through the ballot-box, whether or not they desire said Convention, we hope and trust that every man who loves his country, who desires the perpetuity of this Union, will resolve, if possible, to be at the polls and record his vote against a Convention.  Let no one be deceived:  The real question is Union or Disunion…. Let no one say, that it is useless to vote… It may be, and we think it probably that a majority will be cast for a ‘Convention,’ yet it is of the utmost importance, that as large a vote as possible should be cast against a Convention, for every vote so cast will be a vote for the Union…”

On January 31^st, Jonathan Worth, leader of the Randolph Whigs and newly-elected to represent the county in the state House of Commons, issued “a circular to his constituents” which took a strong stand against the Convention.  “Every artifice will be employed to make you believe that the Convention is to be called to save the Union.  Believe it not…. If war begins, it will probably be brought on during the sitting of the Convention.  It is now the policy of the disunionists to postpone hostilities till President Buchanan goes out and President Lincoln comes in.  They will probably court a fight as soon as Lincoln takes the reins…. Believe not those who may tell you this Convention is called to save the Union.  It is called to destroy it.  If you desire to preserve the Union, vote ‘No Convention.’” [Worth’s Circular was excerpted in the Patriot of Feb. 6, 1861, and printed in full in the Feb. 14^th issue.]

The last issue of The Patriot before the referendum (Feb. 21^st) was full of articles and editorials seeking to get out the vote of faithful Whigs.  “The 28^th of February, the day which perhaps will decide the fate of the Union, is close at hand.… Let every man then who loves his country be at his post… There is a battle to be fought.  A battle upon the result of which hang the destinies of this Nation.  The enemies of our Union have been marshaling their forces.  The hand is already uplifted to strike down the flag of our country!  Union men, to the rescue!  To the rescue!  …Believe not those who tell you, that the question is, whether North Carolina shall go with the North, or the South.  The issue, and the only issue, is Union, or disunion… If we are but true to ourselves, the stars and stripes will yet continue to wave over the freest and happiest people upon whom the sun ever shown.”

The editorial quotes multiple stanzas of a poem,

“Stand like an anvil, when the stroke

Of stalwart men falls fierce and fast,

Storms but more deeply root the oak

Whose brawny arms embrace the blast.

Stand like an anvil, when the sound

Of ponderous hammers pains the ear;

Thine, but the still and stern rebound

Of the great heart, that cannot fear.”

“The Convention will be the first step toward revolution…” another editorial blasted.  “The vote…will be the most important ever polled in North Carolina.  We hope and trust the people will follow the example set them by Tennessee… [and say] in a voice that cannot be misunderstood, that this Union ‘must and shall be preserved.’”

When the great day of battle arrived, the voters of North Carolina joined in electoral combat at the polling places, and the forces of Union achieved a narrow victory, rejecting the Convention by a vote of 47,705 (No Convention) to 47,611 (Convention).   The traditional Piedmont Quaker counties overwhelming voted for the Union and against the Convention.  Chatham County cast 283 votes for the Convention, but 1,795 against it.  In Guilford County, the margin of victory was 25 to 1.  And in Randolph, editor E.J. Hale exulted in the Asheboro Herald of March 3, 1861,  “Listen to the thunder of Randolph!

“Convention…………………..45

“No Convention……………..2,436!

“The honest democracy of this county have showed that they love their country better than their party; and the Whigs, who detest the accursed doctrine of secession, have made their action conform to their principles, by voting against convention—the instrument, solely relied upon by secessionists to make their heresy effectual, and impotent to do anything else.”  [The Asheboro Herald is a newspaper which has not survived, except as copied in the Greensboro Patriot of March 14^th]

Alongside the results of the referendum printed in the March 14^th Greensboro Patriot was the inaugural address of President Lincoln, delivered on March 4^th , and agreeing with the pro-Union sentiments of North Carolina voters in his assertion that “the central idea of secession is the essence of anarchy.”

The final canvass of the Randolph County vote was 2,570 to 45, a ratio of 57 pro-Union voters to every one pro-Confederate secessionist.   That lop-sided proportion struck newspapers in eastern North Carolina as fishy… the New Bern Progress [quoted in the April 11, 1861 Greensboro Patriot], headed its editorial “Something Wrong.”

“There must be something wrong in the vote cast in Randolph county for and against Convention.  In 1856 Randolph cast for Bragg and Gilmer 1842 votes, in 1860 for Ellis and Pool she gave 2015 votes; in November for President she gives 1589; and in February 1861, six months later, on the question of Convention, they run up to 2514, showing a clear gain since August last of 497 votes.  Now when you consider that the vote in August last was by far the largest ever polled in the state and that every county strained its full strength, we come deliberately to the conclusion that there is something wrong about the Convention vote in Randolph… We hope the matter will be sifted and that we will have new light on the subject.”

The editor of the Fayetteville Observer, in a lengthy defense of the Randolph vote, replied [again, quoted in the Patriot of April 11^th], “We have heard what perhaps the Progress has not– the county of Randolph was more thoroughly canvassed, and the people more thoroughly aroused, at the late elections, than ever before.  They are attached to the Union, and they felt that the Union was in danger.”

The terrible irony of this rousing defense of the pro-Union vote in Randolph County is that it was published on the last day of peace.  Early that next morning the hungry defenders of Fort Sumter saw their supply ship approach, and be turned away by the start of a two-day bombardment by the Army of South Carolina.

On April 15, Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation, calling for as many as 75,000 troops to crush the rebellion.  That call to bear arms against fellow Southerners was too much for the upper South states.  On April 17^th, Virginia’s Secession Convention (still in session since January) saw former Governor Wise seize the podium and announce that he had ordered the state militia to capture federal installations in the jurisdiction, and pulling out a pistol, dared the Convention to stop him.  Within minutes the delegates had voted 88 to 55 to recommend disunion to the state’s voters.

Arkansas voted to leave the union on May 6^th.   The last state to join the Confederacy, on June 8^th, was Tennessee, and even then eastern half of the state overwhelmingly voted against it.

On May 1, 1861, the North Carolina General Assembly bypassed the voters to call directly for a Convention.  The Convention delegates passed an Ordinance of Secession on May 20^th, but the eager Confederate Congress, already meeting in Richmond, had “provisionally” admitted the state to the Confederacy three days earlier.

This past February I told a group of local high school students that February 28^th was the anniversary of one of the most important votes ever taken in Randolph County:  to secede and join the Confederacy, or to stay with the Union.  How did they thing their ancestors of 1861 voted? How would they have voted?

Without hesitation, they all voted to join the Confederacy, “of course.”

It is a huge loss when the modern residents of Randolph County have no idea of the true struggles of their forebears during the “Civil War” period.  It is a terrible mis-use of history that teaches children some muddy “big picture” and completely loses the details.

We still fight a war of words over what to call the conflict that began April 12, 1861.  The “winning” side prefers to call it “The Civil War;” unreconstructed Southerners insist it was “The War Between the States.”  The poet Walt Whitman simply called it “The Secession War,” and that best describes what happened in North Carolina.  One of the bravest battles of the war which would last 4 years and kill more than 600,000 Americans  was the very nonviolent, yet very verbal battle for the Union which was fought in Randolph County in the spring of 1861.  As we commemorate the 150^th anniversary of the breakdown of peaceful conflict resolution, no finer memory of the Quaker heritage of our county can be found than in its struggle to preserve, not destroy, the United States of America.

Reuben Wood’s Library III

Reuben Wood’s Library, Listed in Estate Sale

223 titles sold at his auction, November 1812

Transcribed from Randolph County, NC, Will Book 4, beginning at Page 2, by Mac Whatley.

Reference Works -4

Johnston’s Dictionary    0.10.0
[Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language: In Which the Words are Deduced from their Originals and Illustrated in their Different Significations by Examples from the Best Writers;  (London: published 15 April 1755) was the most influential English dictionary prior to the publication of the Oxford English Dictionary 173 years later.]
Atlas                     2.13.0
Domestic Medicine    0.9.0
[Buchan, William. Domestic Medicine, or A Treatise on the Prevention and Cure of Diseases By Regimen and Simple Medicines. Exeter: J.B. Williams, 1785.  Homeopathic remedies and preventative medical practices advocated by a Scottish physician.]
Murrays Introduction             0.5.0
[Lindley Murray (1745-1826), Murray's Introduction to English Grammar: Compiled for the Use of the Youth in Baltimore Academy, Tammany Street: To Which is Added, An essay on Punctuation.  Baltimore: Printed by S. Engles & Co. at the Academy Press, 1806.]
Art of Speaking            0.10.0
[James Burgh, The art of speaking: containing, I. An essay; in which are given rules for expressing properly the principal passions and humours, which occur in reading and public speaking; and II. Lessons taken from the ancients and moderns (with additions and alterations, where thought useful)... Printed by Joseph Bumstead, for Ebenezer Larkin, 1793 (2nd ed.), 322pp.]

English Literature – 23

Akinses Letters    1.0.0
[John Aikin, M.D. (1747-1822), Letters from a Father to his Son, on various topics, Relative to Literature and the Conduct of Life.  London, 1796-1800.  Aikin was a prominent Unitarian-Universalist.  Porc-Aiken's Letters, 12mo.]
Bells Poems                    0.2.1
[George Bell, A collection of poems on various subjects. By George Bell, Wright in Jedburgh.  Edinburgh: printed by William Turnbull, 1794; 34pp. 12mo.]
Blairs Letters                2.0.0
[Possibly Letters on Dr. Blair's sermons.  Edinburgh:  printed for C. Elliot, and W. Coke, Leith, 1779; 35pp. 8vo.  "Dr.Blair" would be Hugh Blair (1718-1800), Scottish professor and Presbyterian preacher.]
Churchills works         0.2.7
[The Works of C. Churchill.  In 4 Volumes.  London: Printed for John Churchill (Executor of the Late C. Churchill) and W. Flexney.  5th ed., 1774.  Charles Churchill, 1731-1764, was an 18th c. poet and satirist.)]
Clarisa Harlow            2.3.0 [probably The history of Miss Clarissa Harlowe, comprehending the most important concerns of private life, and shewing wherein the arts of a designing villain, and the rigour of parental authority, conspired to complete the ruin of a virtuous daughter. Abridged from the works of Samuel Richardson, Esq. Author of Pamela and Sir Charles Grandison. Philadelphia, 1798.  Samuel Richardson (1689-1761) published the very popular early novel "Clarissa, Or, The History of a Young Lady" in 1748 in 8vol,
and there are many editions.  Only those published in the 1780s and 90s appear to use the title "Clarissa Harlowe".]
Critical Essa on poetry        0.5.6
[perhaps William Duff (1732-1815), Critical observations on the writings of the most celebrated original geniuses in poetry. Being a sequel to the Essay on original genius. By W. Duff, A.M.  London, 1770; 372pp. 8vo.]
Eppagoniad             0.4.2
[William Wilkie (1721-1772), Epigoniad (1757), an epic poem on the Epigoni, sons of the seven heroes who fought against Thebes.]
Paradise Lost            0.8.0
[John Milton, Paradise Lost, A Poem in Ten Books. London, 1667.]
Hudibras                1.0.0
[Samuel Butler, Hudibras, In Three Parts.  Written in the Time of the Late Wars. First Ed., London, 1684.  First American edition. Troy (NY): Wright, Goodenow, & Stockwell, 1806. 12mo, 286pp.  CH Phil Soc has "Butler's Hudibras"]
Goldsmiths Essas    0.10.0
[The Bee, A Select Collection of Essays, on the Most Interesting and Entertaining Subjects.  London: 1759.]
The London Magazine        1.1.0
[The London magazine: or, Gentleman's monthly intelligencer.  London: printed by C[harles]. Ackers in St. John’s Street, for J[ohn]. Wilford, behind the Chapter-House in St. Paul’s Church-Yard; .T[homas]. Cox [sic] at the Lamb under the Royal-Exchange; J[ohn]. Clarke at the Golden-Ball in Duck-Lane; and T[homas]. Astley at the Rose over-against the North Door of St. Pauls, 1732-36; 4 vol.]
Peter Pindar            1.0.0
[perhaps John Wolcott, writing as Peter Pindar: Odes to Kien Long, The  Present Emperor of China; with The Quakers, A Tale... London, 1792- price 3 shillings.  Wolcott was a satirical comic author in late 18th c. society.  Uva- Pindar's (Peter) Works, London, 1797, 3 vol. 12mo.]
The Pleasures of Memory 0.8.6
[Samuel Rogers, The Pleasures of Memory with Other Poems. First Ed., London: 1793]
The Rambler           2.2.0
[Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) , The Rambler, 4 volumes, published in London, 1750-52;  perhaps the 1791 London 12vo edition "printed for J. Hodges, W. Millar, R. Tonson, T. French, J. Ottridge."]
The Rambler            0.3.0
[2nd copy?  perhaps an older edition, in bad condition...]
Sterns Works            1.5.0

[The Collected Works of Laurence Sterne (1713-1768) were first published in 1779.  He was best known as the author of Tristram Shandy, but also wrote A Political Romance and A Sentimental Juorney Through France and Italy, as well as multiple volumes of sermons.]

Sheritons Poems        0.6.0

[Richard Brinsley Sheridan, the Irish playwright and author of The Rivals and The School for Scandal, doesn't seem to have written poems...]

Spectator                        0.3.8
[The Spectator, an influential daily literary magazine edited by Joseph Addison and Richard Steele and first published 1711, and reprinted many times later in the century.  Each 'paper', or 'number', was approximately 2,500 words long, and the original run consisted of 555 numbers. These were collected into seven volumes, and a revival published in 1714 was collected to form an eighth volume.]
Thomsons Seasons        0.7.6
[James Thomson, The Seasons (1730), a very popular book-length poem]
Tom Jones            1.18.0
[Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling.  London, 1763.  many editions.]
Temple of Nature        1.0.0
[Erasmus Darwin, The Temple of Nature: Or, The Origin of Society: A Poem, with Philosophical Notes.  1802.  Charles Darwin's grandfather- poet, philosopher, naturalist and one of the leading intellectuals of 18th c. England.]
Tristam Shandy            0.13.0
[Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman.  orig. 9 vol. 1759-1767.  many editions.]
Youngs Knight Thoughts    0.5.3
[Edward Young, The Complaint; or, Night-Thoughts on Life, Death, & Immortality. 1st Ed. 1745; partial 1797 ed. by Richard Edwards was illustrated by William Blake.]

Classical Literature – 16

Ciceros Morals                    0.11.3
[Marcus Tullius Cicero, The morals of Cicero. Containing, I. His conferences de finibus: or, concerning the ends of things good and evil. In which, All the Principles of the Epicureans, Stoics, and Academics, concerning the Ultimate Point of Happiness and Misery, are fully discuss'd. II. His academics; or, conferences concerning the criterion of truth, and the fallibility of human judgment. Translated into English, by William Guthrie, Esq.  London: Printed for T. Waller, at the Crown and Mitre, opposite Fetter-lane, in Fleet-street, 1744; 44pp., 8vo.]
Clarks Nepos               0.5.0
[Cornelius Nepos (c. 100-24 BC) was a Roman writer and biographer. Cornelii Nepotis Vita excellentium imperatorum: cum versione Anglicâ, in qua Verbum de Verbo, quantum fieri potuit, redditur: notis quoque Anglicis, & indice Locupletissimo; Or, Cornelius Nepos's Lives of the excellent commanders. With an English translation, as Literal as possible: with English notes, and a large index. By John Clarke, Master of the Publick Grammar School in Hull. In Pursuance of the Method of Teaching the Latin Tongue, laid down by him in his Essay upon Education.  London, 1734; parallel English and Latin texts, 280pp. 8vo.;15th ed. 1797.]
Clark Salest            0.7.6
[Sallust (86-34 B.C), C. Crispi Sallustii Bellum Catilinarium et Jugurthinum; cum versione libera. Præmittitur dissertatio, ... et vita Sallustii, auctore ... Joanne Clerico. I.E. The history of the wars of Catiline and Jugurtha, by Sallust; with a free translation. To which is prefixed a large dissertation ... as also, the life of Sallust, by ... Mons. Le Clerc. By John Clarke.  London: 1755.  245pp. 8vo. Parallel English and Latin texts.   Part of Benjamin Franklin's printed inventory left with Mr. Hall in 1748 were "Clark's Grammar; Clark's Erasmus; Clark's Esop; Clark's Sallust; Clark's Justin; Clark's Horus.]
?Juvaniles Letters        1.10.0
[Juvenal wrote Satires...
Deonizeas?            0.2.6
[possibly Dyonisus, translated into blank verse, from the Greek of Dr. Wells's edition, containing both antient and modern geography. By B. D. Free, M.A. and a student of Lincoln's-Inn.  London: 1785? 66p. 12 mo.  This is apparently an adaptation of Edward Wells' 'Treatise of antient and modern geography', first published in 1701, however, no Greek language edition is known.]
Duncans Cicero        1.15.0
[(Marcus Tullius) Cicero's Select Orations, Translated Into English with the Original Latin, from the Best Editions, on the Opposite Page; and Notes, Historical, Critical and Explanatory Designed for the Use of Schools as Well as Private Gentlemen.  By William Duncan, Professor of Philosophy in the University of Aberdeen.  New Haven: Sidney's Press, 1811.  Duncan's first edition featuring parallel text was published in Edinburgh in 1801.]
Davidson’s Horace        1.3.6
[The odes, epodes, and carmen seculare of Horace, translated into English prose; with ... notes, and a preface to each ode... London: Printed for Joseph Davidson, 1740.  400pp., 8mo.]
Davidson’s Virgil                1.6.0
[The works of Virgil translated into English prose, As near the Original as the different Idioms of the Latin and English Languages will allow. With the Latin text and order of construction in the opposite page; and Critical, Historical, Geographical, and Classical Notes, in English, from the best Commentators both Ancient and Modern, beside a very great number of notes intirely new. For the Use of Schools as well as of Private Gentlemen. In two volumes. London: printed for Joseph Davidson, at the Angel in the Poultry, Cheapside, 1743.  2 vol. 8 mo.]
Davidson’s Ovid                    0.12.6
[Ovid (43 B.C.-17 or 18 A.D) The epistles of Ovid translated into English prose, as near the original as the different idioms of the Latin and English languages will allow. ... For the use of schools as well as of private gentlemen.  London: Printed for Joseph Davidson, 1746 (et. seq.).  Or an American edition:  Ten select books of Ovid's Metamorphoses; with an English translation, compiled from the two former translations, by Davidson and Clarke; a prosody table and references, (after the manner of Mr. Stirling) pointing out, at one view, the scanning of each verse; and Davidson's English notes.  Philadelphia: Printed by William Spotswood, 1790.  4 vol., 12 mo.]
A Greek Grammar            0.2.0
[perhaps Caleb Alexander (1755-1828), A Grammatical System of the Greek Language, Printed at Worcester, Massachusetts : at the press of, and for Isaiah Thomas, 1796.]
Guide to Classical Learning    0.6.0
[Joseph Spence Spence (1699-1768), A Guide to Classical Learning. London : printed for J. Dodsley, in Pall-Mall, and R. Horsfield, in Ludgate-Street, 1764. (Last ed. 1786).]
Latin Grammar                    0.2.6
[Davidson, James. Short introduction to Latin grammar for the use of the the university and academy of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Exeter, [N.H.]: By and for J. Lamson, 1794. 12mo; 108 pp.  First published in 1781 and the most successful Latin grammar of late 18th-century U.S.; there were ten editions published before 1800.  James Davidson was a professor at the school later known as The University of Pennsylvania. Since Wood owned three other translations by Davidson, I’m hypothesizing this generic title describes the same author’s Latin Grammar.]
Oveds Art of Love        0.12.0
[Ovid, Ars Amatoria ("The Art of Love"), is an erotic tale set in Rome, 8 AD.]
Plutarchs Lives            6.2.6
[Mestrius Plutarchus (circa  45 - 125 A.D.), Priest of the Delphic Oracle, wrote a very lengthy book of "biographies" of Gods and Heroes which is one of the most popular Greek works of all time. The first printed edition of Plutarch was published in Paris in 1572, and was made up of 13 volumes.  Sir Thomas North prepared the first English edition of Plutarch's Lives in 1579, and Shakespeare borrowed heavily from it to write his plays.  Wood's version could be any one of many editions, but the high price paid indicates that it was a complete multi-volume set.
Wartrons Virgil                1.17.6
[Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro) (70 - 19 BC); The Works of Virgil in Latin and English, 4 vols. [vol. i, The Eclogues and Georgics, tr. Joseph Warton], London 1753.  Joseph Warton (1722–1800) translated Virgil’s ten pastoral poems known as the Ecologues into rhymed couplets.] (David Watson was also a mid-18th c. translator…)

Youngs Dictionary            0.15.0
[Rev. William Young (d. 1757), A new Latin-English dictionary: Containing all the words proper for reading the classic writers, with the Authorities subjoined to each Word and Phrase. To which is prefixed, a new English-Latin dictionary, Carefully Compiled from the best Authors in our Language. Both Parts greatly improved, beyond all the preceding Works of the same Nature; supplying their Deficiencies, and comprising whatever is useful and valuable in all former Dictionaries. By the King's Authority. Designed for the General Use of Schools and Private Gentlemen. By the Rev. Mr. William Young, Editor of Ainsworth's Dictionary.  London, 1757; 1,024pp., 8vo.]

Reuben Wood’s Library IV

Reuben Wood’s Library V

Political Economy – 21

Anecdotes of Junias        1.0.0
[Anecdotes of Junius: to which is prefixed the King's reply.  Southampton: 1775; 54pp. 8vo; Dublin, 1788.]
Ans. to Pains Age of R         0.6.0
[Probaby Joseph Priestley, An Answer to Mr. Paine's Age of Reason, Being a Continuation of Letters to the Philosophers and Politicians of France on the Subject of Religion; and of the Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever.  London:  1794.]
Beaties Elements        2.19.7
[James Beattie, Elements of Moral Science, 2 vol., 1790-1793.  Beattie (1735-1803) was another figure in the Scottish Enlightenment.]
Burgh Political Desquisitions        3.0.0
[James Burgh, Political Disquisitions: or, An Enquiry into Public Errors, Defects, and Abuses.  Illustrated by, and established upon FACTS and REMARKS extracted from a Variety of AUTHORS, ancient and modern, CALCULATED To draw the timely ATTENTION of GOVERNMENT and PEOPLE to a due Consideration of the Necessity, and the Means, of REFORMING those ERRORS, DEFECTS, and ABUSES; of RESTORING the CONSTITUTION, and SAVING the STATE. London, 1774.]
Burlemark                1.5.0
[Burlamaqui, J[ean] J[acques].  The principles of natural law…. Translated into English by Mr. Nugent. The third edition, revised and corrected. London: J. Nourse, 1780. 8vo, 312 pp.; Vol. 2 published 1784.  An examination of the philosophy of natural law by a Swiss jurist, first published in 1747 and first translated into English in 1748. The Encyclopædia Britannica says of Burlamaqui that “his fundamental principle may be described as rational utilitarianism” (IV, 836); his works are considered a primary source of the theory voiced by Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence.]
Desertatian                    0.7.6
[could be many things- I picked this one, based on other titles in the collection and Wood's interests: Thomas Paine (1737-1809), Dissertation on first principles of government. To which is added, the genuine speech, translated, and delivered at the tribune of the French Convention, July 7, 1795. By Thomas Paine, author of Common sense, Rights of man, &c. Philadelphia: re-printed by E. Conrad, no. 100, Fourth, the second door above Race-Street, and sold by the booksellers, 1795; 42pp. 8vo.]
Essas on Trade           0.4.0
[perhaps Richard Cantillon, Essay on the Nature of Trade in General, written in French c. 1730 and first published in English 1755.]
Fable of the Bees                0.9.0
[Bernard Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees: or Private Vices, Publick Benefits. London: J. Roberts, 1714.  A very early text on economics and productivity.]
Godwins Political Justice    1.5.0
[William Godwin, Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and its Influence on Modern Morals and Manners.  London: 1793.  The book was another response to Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France (as was Paine's Age of Reason).  It is "a critique of political institutions. Its vision of human perfectibility is anarchist in so far as it sees government and related social practices such as property monopoly, marriage and monarchy as restraining the progress of mankind."]
Junias                0.15.0
[See below.  CH Phil Soc has a copy of "Heron's Junius"; see Robert Heron, Junius, Philadelphia: Published by Samuel F. Bradford, 1804.  (Heron (1764 – 1807) was a Scottish writer and French translater at the University of Edinburgh.]
Juniases Letters        0.10.0
[The letters of Junius: Stat nominis umbra, with Notes and Illustrations; Historical, Political. Biographical and Critical, By Robert Heron, Esq.  London: 1804.  Vol 1: 316 pp.  The Letters of Junius were a series of letters contributed to the Public Advertiser and first published in book form in 1772.  The letters were written to warn the British public that their historic rights and liberties were being infringed upon by the government.  The real identity of the nom de plume "Junius" has never been established.]
Kaimes Criticism            2.12.6
[Henry Home, Lord Kames, Elements of Criticism, 2 vol., 1762.  One of the leading figures of the Scottish Enlightenment, he proposed a "science of criticism" to standardize criticism of art, rhetoric and literature.]
Monroes politics                    0.13.0
[Possibly one of the few books authored by James Monroe and published before his presidency: A view of the conduct of the executive in the foreign affairs of the United States, as connected with the mission to the French Republic, during the years 1794, 5, and 6.... Philadelphia, 1797.  8vo; 400 pp.; or the first British edition: London: James Ridgway, 1798. 8vo (21.5 cm, 8.5"); 126pp. Sabin 50020; Howes M-727.]
Nicholson’s Philosophy        1.18.0
[William Nicholson, An Introduction to Natural Philosophy, 1781.  Nicholson (1753-1815) was an early English scientist, chemist and inventor.  He translated numerous French scientific texts into English.]
Pains Age of Reason        0.5.6
[Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason; Being an Investigation of True and Fabulous Theology.  Paris: 1794.  A critique of institutionalized religion that challeged the legitimacy of the Bible and led to a revival of deism. Published in three parts in 1794, 1795 and 1807, it was one of the first American bestsellers.]
Smiths Wealth of Nations    2.10.0
[Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 1st ed. London 1776.]
Telemachus            1.0.0
[Possibly Francois Fenelon's The Adventures of Telemachus, Son of Ulysses (1699), a scathing attack on the French monarchy.]
Utopia & Government    0.2.6
[Possibly Sir Thomas More, A Fruitful and Pleasant Work of the Best State of a Public Weal, and of the New Isle Called Utopia (1st English ed., 1551).
Wrights of Women            0.7.6
[Probably Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.  1st American Ed. Philadelphia, 1792; 2nd Boston: Peter Edes for Thomas & Andrews, 1792. 8vo (21.6 cm, 8.5"). 340 pp. Evans 25054.]
Federalist                    2.17.6
[,Alexander Hamilton (1757-1804), The Federalist: a collection of essays, written in favour of the new Constitution, as agreed upon by the Federal Convention, September 17, 1787.  Written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay. Each essay signed: Publius. New York:1788, 2 vol. 12mo.  First complete edition in book form.]
Murch’t? Book Keeping    0.5.6
[John London, merchant, A complete system of book-keeping, after the Italian method: in two parts. Part I. relating to theory, contains Rules for that Purpose never printed before in any Language; so few and short as to be learnt almost in an Instant, and retained without burthening the Memory; and so plain and perfect as that three Hours, or less, are sufficient to teach this whole Branch of it by them. - As also an Explanation of the Manner of keeping Accounts in two Sorts of Specie, namely, Domestic and Foreign for one and the same Article: without which neither Merchants who send Consignments abroad, or receive any Goods from thence for their own Accounts; nor Proprietors of Estates in Ireland, or else-where abroad, who reside here, can keep regular Accounts, and vice versa. - To which is added the Manner of keeping Bank, India, and other Stock after the Italian Method. - As likewise some Candid Animadversions on the erroneous and Imperfect Method of Book-Keeping taught and practised among us, contained in an Essay on Book-Keeping, &c. by Wm. Webster. Part II. relating to practice, contains a Plan of Commerce adapted to the Rules aforesaid, giving proper Examples of every Manner in which a Merchant can engage in Trade, and of the various Cases which may occur to him therein. -As also Directions how to apply the Italian Method of Book-Keeping, on the one Hand, to the Use of Warehousemen, Shopkeepers, &c. and of Proprietors of Estates, Stewards, &c. on the other. - Together with the Form of an Epitome, or Monthly Abstract of a Merchant's Books of Account; very proper to carry always about him, not only for disburthening his Memory, and enabling him to carry on his Business with a less Capital, but to shew him the State of his Affairs, if his Books should be destroyed by Fire, or any other Accident. By John London, late of Tiverton, Merchant.  London, 1758; 2 vol. 4o.

Religion -10

A View of the Times            0.5.6
[Philalethes (Charles Leslie), A View of the Times: Their Principles and Practices in the first volume of the Rehearsals. London: W. Bowen, 1750.  The politics of the succession of the house of Hanover and its impact on the Church in England.]
1 Large Bible 1.0.0
Blairs Sermons            0.15.0
[Hugh Blair, Sermons, in 5 volumes published 1777-1801.  Blair (1718-1800) was a Presbyterian preacher and Professor of Rhetoric at the University of Edinburgh, one of the primary figures of the "Scottish Enlightenment."]
Butlurs Analogy            0.12.0
[Joseph Butler (1692-1752), The Analogy of religion; natural and revealed, to the constitution and course of nature; to which are added, two brief dissertations on personal identity and on the nature of virtue. London: 1736.  300pp.]
Christ —–                0.3.6
[could be many things...
Davieses Sermons        2.0.0
[Samuel Davies (1723-1761), Sermons on the most useful and important subjects, adapted to the family and closet. By the Rev. Samuel Davies, ... In three volumes. ... To which are prefixed, a sermon on the death of Mr Davies, by Samuel Finley, D.D. and another discourse on the same occasion, together with an elegiac poem ... by Thomas Gibbons, D.D.  London: 1766.  3vol. 8vo. Philadelphia ed. 1794.]
Evidence of Chris. Religion    0.3.3
[Susanna Newcome, An Enquiry into the Evidence of the Christian Religion; London, 1732;  or, Soame Jenyns, A View of the Internal Evidence of the Christian Religion; London, 1776.]

The Fashionable World    0.6.3
[Hannah More (1745-1833), An estimate of the religion of the fashionable world. By one of the laity.  London: T. Cadell, 1791; 270pp 8vo. CH Phil Soc has a copy; Porcellian Society 1831]
The history of the church    0.1.0
[Probably Joseph Priestly, A general history of the Christian church, from the fall of the Western Empire to the present time.... Northumberland [PA]: Pr. for the author by Andrew Kennedy, 1802–03. 8vo (21.6 cm, 8.5″). 4 vols. I:475pp. II: 539 pp. III:488 pp. IV: 480 pp.   Vol 1&2 were first published in 1790.  Shaw & Shoemaker 2933 & 4913.  The volumes are usually marked on the spine “History of the Church”.]

Phisical theology [Enquiry?]           0.7.7
[Henry Constantine Jennings (1731-1819) A physical enquiry into the powers and properties of spirit, and, how far by analogical inferences resulting from experimental and natural phænomena, the human intellect may be enabled to attain to any rational conception of omnipotence. [Chelmsford] printed by Clachar, Gray, & Co., 1787; 90 pp. 8vo.]

History and Biography – 28

The American Revolution        0.18.0
[(SNOWDEN, RICHARD) The American Revolution; Written in the Style of Ancient History.  Philadelphia Jones, Hoff; Jacob Johnson 1793; 1794 First edition First editions. 2 volumes. 12mo. xii, 226; (xii), 216pp. Sabin 85589.]
Antient Europe        2.0.0
[William Russell (1741-1793). The history of ancient Europe, from the earliest times to the subversion of the Western Empire, with a survey of the most important revolutions in Asia and Africa, in a series of letters from a gentleman to his son, intended as an accompaniment to Dr. Russell's History of modern Europe.   Porcellian Society 1831 has Russell's Ancient Europe, 2 vols. 8vo.]
Baran Trink        0.11.0
[The Life of Baron Frederic Trenk, Containing His Adventures; His Cruel and Excessive Sufferings the Ten Years Imprisonment, at the Fortress of Magdeburg, by Command of the Late King of Prussia; Also Anecdotes, Historical, Political and Personal. Translated from the German by Thomas Holcroft.  Dublin, 1790.  First Biography Franz van der Trenck, 1711-1749, Austrian soldier and father of military music.]
Belknaps History of N.H.    2.10.6
[Jeremy Belknap, History of New Hampshire, 3 vol., 1784-1792.  Belknap (1744-1798) was called American's best native historian by Alexis de Tocqueville.]
Carvins Travels            0.10.0
[Jonathan Carver (1710-1780), Three years travels, through the interior parts of North-America, for more than five thousand miles ... together with a concise history of the genius, manners, and customs of the Indians ... and an appendix, describing the uncultivated parts of America that are the most proper for forming settlements. By Captain Jonathan Carver, of the provincial troops in America.  Philadelphia: Printed by Joseph Crukshank, 1789; 300 pp. 12vo.]
Charles the 12th           0.5.0
[Probably Voltaire's History of Charles XII, biography of the Swedish King, skilled military leader and politician (1682-1719).  The first English translation, by Tobias Smollett, was published in London in 1762.  An American edition was printed in Frederick, MD, in 1808.]
Galery of Portraits        0.7.6
[possibly Mirabeau, Gabriel-Honoré de Riquetti, comte de (1749-1791) Gallery of Portraits of the National Assembly, supposed to be written by Count de Mirabeau. Translated from the French. In Two Volumes.  Dublin: 1790.  2 v. 12 mo.]
Goldsmiths Rome            0.8.6
[Oliver Goldsmith, The History of Rome from the Earliest Times, (2 vol.), 1769.]
Goldsmiths England    0.6.6
[Oliver Goldsmith, An History of England in a Series of Letters from a Nobleman to his Son.  4 Vol. London: 1792.
Guthries Grammar            3.11.0
[William Guthrie, A New Geographical, Historical and Commercial Grammar (1770); "one of the most popular books of any kind published in Britain in the late 18th century.  It went through at least thirty editions....[and] “was known to everyone from the schoolboy to the philosopher.” Laird Okie, Augustan Historical Writing, p. 186.  An octavo size, 1,000 page combination travel book and almanac-like history and geography book.]
History of the Admirals   2.5.0
[possibly John Campbell (1708-1775), Lives of the British admirals: containing a new and accurate naval history, from the earliest periods. By Dr. J. Campbell. With a continuation down to the year 1779, ... Written under the inspection of Doctor Berkenhout. The whole illustrated with correct maps; and frontispieces ... In four volumes. London: 1779; 4 vol. 8vo. First ed. 1742.]
History of Caesar            0.8.0
[possibly, The Gallic and civil wars of Cæsar, translated into English, by the Rev. John Pullein Hawkey.  Dublin, 1788.]
History of Man            1.15.0
[Henry Home, Lord Kames, Sketches of the History of Man. Edinburgh: W. Creech: London: W. Strahan and T. Cadell, 1774. 4to (27.5 cm, 10.9"). 2 vols. I: 519pp. II: 507pp.]
?History of Rome                3.15.0
Humpries Works                0.10.0
[David Humphreys (1752-1818),  The miscellaneous works of Colonel Humphreys, late minister plenipotentiary to the court of Madrid.  New-York : Printed by Hodge, Allen, and Campbell, 1790. 748pp., 8vo; 2nd ed. 1804; Porc- Humphreys' Works, 8vo.]
Jefferson Notes                    1.6.0
[Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia; first ed. Paris 1784; first English ed. London 1787.]Volneys Travels in Amer.            1.7.0V
[C.F. Volney, "Description of the Climate and Soil of the United States of America," 1803 (he visited 1795-1798).
Knoxes Essas            1.10.0
[possibly Alexander Knox (1757-1831), Essays on the political circumstances of Ireland, written during the administration of Earl Camden; with an appendix, Containing Thoughts ON The Will Of The People. And a postscript, Now First Published. By a gentleman of the north of Ireland. Dublin: 1798.  236 pp. 8vo.  Porc. 1831 has Knox's Essays, 3 vols. 12mo.]
The Life of Caesar                0.2.6
[either Samuel Clarke (1599-1682), The life & death of Julius Cæsar, the first founder of the Roman empire. As also the life and death of Augustus Cæsar in whose raign our Blessed Lord, and Saviour Jesus Christ was borne. London, 1665 (100pp. 4vo.); or Charles Coote (1761-1835), Life of Caius Julius Cæsar: drawn from the most authentic sources of information. London:  printed for the author; and sold by T. N. Longman, 1796.  284pp. 12mo.]
The Life of Oliver Cromwell  0.7.0
[Isaac Kimber, Edmund Gibson, Sir Thomas Pengelly and Edmund Waller, The Life of Oliver Cromwell: Lord-Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland.  London, 1743. 407pp.]
Millers Retrospect            1.15.6
[A Brief Retrospect of the Eighteenth Century. Part First; In Two Volumes: Containing A Sketch of the Revolutions and Improvements in Science, Arts, and Literature, during that Period. By Samuel Miller, A. M. One of the Ministers of the United Presbyterian Churches in the City of New-York, Member of the American Philosophical Society, and Corresponding Member of the Historical Society of Massachuesetts. Vol. I. Published According to Act of Congress. New-York: Printed by T. and J. Swords, no. 160 Pearl-Street, 1803.]
Modern Europe        5.5.0
[William Russell (1741-1793). The History of Modern Europe, with an account of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; and a View of the Progress of Society from the Rise of the Modern Kingdoms to the Peace of Paris in 1763, in a Series of Letters by William Russell, L.L.D.  London: 5 vols., 1779-1786. 2nd American Edition: Philadelphia, 1802.  Procellian Society 1831 has Russell's Modern Europe, 6 vols. 8vo.]
Powells history of 20 Months    0.10.0
[Probably Francis Plowden, A short history of the British Empire during the last twenty months: viz, from May 1792 to the close of 1793. Two 1794 editions: G. G. and J. Robinson (London), or Dublin: Printed by P. Byrne, Grafton-Street, both approximately 390pp.]
Robertson’s Antient India       1.0.0
[William Robertson, An Historical Disquisition Concerning the Knowledge which the Ancients had of India (1791).  Robertson (1721-1793) was a Scottish historian and professor at the University of Edinburgh.]
Robertson History of Scotland    1.10.0
[William Robertson, The History of Scotland during the Reigns of Queen Mary and of King James VI... with A Review of the Scottish History Previous to that Period, 2 vol., 1794.  Robertson's best known work.]
Robertson’s Charles 5th    3.15.0
[William Robertson, The History of the Reign of Charles V, 4 Vol., 1792.]
Robertsons History of America        0.18.0
[William Robertson, The History of America (4 vol., books 1-8, 1792; Books 9-10, 1796).]
The United Irishman         0.3.0
[This title appears to be the same as an anonymous work of fiction found in the University of Michigan library: The United Irishman: a tale; founded on facts ...
Printed for the author, 1798.  Although listed as only 17 pages long, a later edition printed in Dublin by J. Cumming and Co. in 1819 appears to have been issued in two 12mo. volumes, copies of which are found at Villanova and the New York Public Library.  OCLC 37303059.   It could alternatively be a pamphlet found at Cornell authored by "Publicola," A letter from a father to his son, a United Irishman: in the barony of Ards, in the county of Down. Printed in the year, 1797 (24 pages).

The Irish Rebellion of 1798 was led by a republican revolutionary group, the United Irishmen, which was inspired by the American and French revolutions to revolt against British rule over Ireland.  Since 1691 a minority of Protestant settlers loyal to the British crown had ruled the majority population of native Catholics.  The Society of United Irishmen was a joint group of protestants and Catholics who advocated for political reform and home rule.  An uprising and bloody guerilla war in the summer of 1798 was suppressed by British troops.  The French revolutionary government provided military support until their supply ships were defeated by the Royal Navy, leading to the collapse of the rebellion.  Sectarian massacres and atrocities were followed by increased political repression and the Act of Union of 1800, which removed the last vestige of Irish autonomy.  The struggle for Irish nationalism was supported by Thomas Jefferson and his "Democratic-Republican" followers, with whom Reuben Wood appears to have sympathized.]

Volneys Ruin                            1.3.0
[C.F. Volney, The Ruins, or Meditations on the Revolutions of Empires, first publ. in France in 1791; repub. in US in 1802]

Philosophy and Ethics -18

Anarcharsies in Greece    1.7.0
[Abbe Jean-Jacques Barthelemy, Travels of Anacharsis the Younger in Greece.  1st ed. 1788 in French; 1799 ed. in English in 8 vol.  An imaginary travel journal of Anacharsis, a Scythian philosopher who traveled through Greece in the early 6th century BC.  The book fueled a passion for all things Greek in the early 19th century.]
Bennetts Letters            0.10.0
[John Bennett, curate of St. Mary's Manchester, Letters to a Young Lady, on a variety of useful and interesting subjects, calculated to improve the heart, to form the manners, and enlighten the understanding.  Warrington, 1789.  2 vol. 12mo.  1st American edition Newburyport [Mass.] Printed and sold by John Mycall, 1792.]
Burke on the Sublime        0.16.0
[Edmund Burke, A Philosophical inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, 1757.]
Chesterfields Letters    2.0.0
[Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl Chesterfield, Letters to His Son on the Fine Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman. 1746.
Condorsett                      0.5.0
[Condorcet, Progress of the Mind, Fr. Paris, 1795- UVa]
Essa on Truth                0.17.0
[James Beattie, An Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth, 1770?)
Edwards on free will        0.11.0
[Jonathan Edwards, An Inquiry into the Modern Prevailing Notions of the Freedom of the Will which is Supposed to be Essential to Moral Agency, Virtue and Vice, Reward and Punishment, Praise and Blame. 1st ed., 1754]
Harrises Hermes            0.12.6
[Hermes: or, a Philosophical Inquiry concerning Language and Universal Grammar. By James Harris, London, J. Nourse and P. Vaillant, 1751.]
Helvisias on Man            1.10.6
[CH Phil Soc has a copy of Helvetius on Man]
Holmes Sketches         2.0.0
[possibly Henry Home, Lord Kames (1696-1782), Six sketches on the history of man. Containing, the progress of men as individuals. ... With an appendix, concerning, the propagation of animals, and the care of their offspring. By Henry Home, Lord Kaims, author of the Elements of criticism.  Philadelphia, 1776.  266pp. 8vo.]
Lavatur                        0.16.0
[Johann Kaspar Lavater (1741-1801), Swiss poet and physiogonomist.  Christian mystic. no editions in English?  Maybe this was another "Dutch book"]
Laille? Locke? on Human Understanding    0.10.0
[John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.  London: 1690; First American edition: "An abridgment of Mr. Locke's essay concerning Human Understanding." Boston: Pr. by Manning & Loring for J. White, Thomas & Andrews, D. West, et al., 1794. 12mo (17.3 cm, 6.8"). 250 pp.  An inquiry into how we acquire ethical knowledge.]
Priestley’s Letters            1.10.0
[Joseph Priestley, Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever, 1780; multi-volume set of books on metaphysics]
Paleys Philosophy                1.10.0
[William Paley, Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy, 1785; very influential and popular (15 ed. before author's death in 1805) work; the author was a strong supporter of the colonies during the Revolution and advocated abolition of the slave trade.]
Senakes? Morals                    0.7.0
[Seneca, Lucius Annaeus (ca. 4 B.C.-65), Seneca's morals by way of abstract: Of benefits, Part I; Of a happy life; Of anger and clemency, Part. II; the third, and last part. Digested into XXVIII. epistles.  London: printed by Tho. Newcomb for Henry Broome, at the Gun in St. Pauls Church-yard, 1678 (3 vol); 1st American ed. Printed at Boston : by I. Thomas and E.T. Andrews, at Faust's Statue, no. 45, Newbury-Street, 1792; 395pp. 12vo.]
Watts Logic            0.4.0
[Isaac Watts, Logic, or the use of Reason in the Inquiry After Truth with a Variety of Rules to Guard Against Error in the Affairs of Religion and Human Life, as well as in the Sciences; 1st ed. 1724.]
Zimmerman on pride            0.15.0
[ZIMMERMANN, Dr J[ohann]. G[eorg]. ESSAY ON NATIONAL PRIDE. To Which Are Added Memoirs of the Author’s Life and Writings. Translated From the Original German of the late Celebrated…By Samuel Hull Wilcocke. London: Printed for C. Dilly, 1797. 8vo, xl, 260, (23 as index)pp. Full mottled calf, red morocco spine label, gilt lettered, ex library, front joint starting, foxing to first and last few leaves, some loss at spine head and tail, otherwise a good copy. $150. ¶ First Edition, second (most desirable) English translation. Johann Georg Zimmermann was trained as a medical doctor; in 1768 he was appointed “His Britannic Majesty’s Physician” at Göttingen. He was later physician to Frederich II of Prussia, and after the death of “The Great” wrote two books concerning him. He was best known, however, as a popularizer of current philosophical and ethical ideas. Originally published in German in 1758 under the title Von dem Nationalstolze, the present volume, written during the Seven Years War, concerns patriotism and well argues a distinction between true and false national pride. A prior unauthorized English translation, issued in 1771, was rejected by Zimmermann; highly inaccurate, Zimmermann considered the translator “not only an ignorant fellow but a cheat” (Preface). Given current events, a most appropriate theme for study. Scarce. Lowndes p.3025.]
Zimmerman on Solitude        0.6.0
[ZIMMERMANN, [Johann Georg von]. SOLITUDE Considered with Respect to its Influence upon the Mind and the Heart, Written Originally in German by M. Zimmermann… Translated from the French by J.B. Mercier. The Second Edition. London: C. Dilly, 1791. 8vo, (4), vii, (1), 380pp. Half calf, red morocco label, marbled boards rubbed, joints weak, edges scuffed, overall very good. $125. ¶ An English translation of Zimmermann’s popular Über die Einsamkeit (1784). A successful physician, appointed in 1768 “His Britannic Majesty’s Physician,” Zimmermann (1728-95) was known as a popularizer of current philosophical ideas. In this work he discusses the edifying aspects of solitude. NUC lists UC Berkeley only.]

Foreign Language -6
Dutch books                0.11.6
A Dutch Book               0.2.6
a French Book              0.2.6
a French grammar         0.1.7
A french Grammar         0.8.0
A Large French book     0.6.6

Miscellaneous -5

1 lott of books                 37.2.6
1 book                             0.5.0
A book                             0.5.0
A Lott of papers                0.4.6
A Lott of News Papers        0.8.1

Unknown- 23

?A Small View                    0.3.0
?Astrolhology                     0.6.2
?Balance Garden [Balancie Garder?]  1.0.0?
Beauties History        1.0.0
[xBeatties? ?UVA, 1828- Le Beau's History of the decline of the Roman Empire, Fr. Moestricht, 1780.
Canderie?  Conderse?  Condense?                0.6.1
[CH Phil Soc has Condorcet on the Mind]  Candide?
Canuclad                1.0.0
[french?]
Cerise? Cevis’l? Travels                0.7.6
[Antoine-Marie Cerisier was a French journalist living in Amsterdam who worked with John Adams in the 1780s, but not sure if this is him...]
?Curvins (Curwin’s?) Speeches    0.17.6
?Davises Researches    0.17.6
?Grolisque ?                     0.7.1
[Grotius?
?History of India            3.15.0
?Loyal Captiene &etc                   0.9.1
?Lysie's Poems        0.3.6
[prob. not the Greek speech writer Lysias... he wrote orations]
Milses Philosophy                                      1.5.0
?Morgans Essas & Robertsons Illuminations    2.12.0
Nickerson Religions        0.7.6
[?nothing before 1800 Nic- / Relgions
?Bye Laws Poetry? Pailny?           0.2.6
?Sarrows overtis? Overtur?           0.10.0
?Spies of Parris?                0.1.0
Sullivants Lectures            1.2.6
?Thistons Memorials                0.7.6 (Whiston? Twiston?
?The Theory of Commerce    1.1.0

SOURCES USED FOR RESEARCHING TITLES:

British Library- English Short Title Catalogue (ESTC) printed items before 1801.

http://estc.bl.uk/

The Law Library of Congress Rare Book Collection

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/awhhtml/awlaw3/rare_book.html

The printed Catalogue of the Dialectic Society Library (1821, at UNC-CH), gives the short titles of 1673 books.
http://docsouth.unc.edu/unc/uncbk1026/uncbk1026.html.

The printed Catalogue of the the Philanthropic Society (at UNC-CH), Printed by J. Gales, Raleigh, 1822.
http://docsouth.unc.edu/unc/uncbk1027/cover.html .

UVA library catalogue, 1828

http://xtf.lib.virginia.edu/xtf/view?docId=2005_Q4_1/uvaBook/tei/b004123185.xml;brand=default;

Porcellian Club Library, 1831

http://www.archive.org/stream/catalogue00clubgoog/catalogue00clubgoog_djvu.txt