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.

The Sunset Theater Incident

The “Little Castle,” 232 Sunset Avenue, Asheboro, date unknown.

Despite his detailed memories of the Hop’s Barbecue Sit-In, Melvin Marley said that the most memorable event of the Asheboro sit-ins was the night “when they would not let the young girls out of the Sunset Theater.”   His interviewer (who was actually the grand-daughter of Burrell Hopkins) didn’t question him about that incident, which was evidently the one time where the peaceful protests threatened to get out of control.

“It was nonviolent for a long time until one day some black girls went to the Sunset Theater, which is right beside of Little Castle and Hop’s, in that area.  And they went upstairs, you know [Negroes could only sit in the balcony], to see a movie, and when they got ready to come out, they wouldn’t let them out.  They [white people] had them surrounded and said they were going to kill them and all that stuff, and called them all sorts of names, and so somehow the word got back to the church that they were being held and the police wasn’t doing anything about it.  And so that’s when, actually a little bit of violence came into play.  The way they had them get out of the theater was that somebody went up and shot a shotgun in the middle of town and fled, and so they came out running and just kept on running and they were hitting them and kicking and all that, but they got away.”

That’s all of Marley’s account, but the next day’s local newspaper adds some detail to this or a similar incident:

[The Little Castle was under the canopy to the right.  The roof of Hop's is visible to the left.]

Drug Store, Theater hit By Sit-In Wave

Courier-Tribune, Feb. 17, 1964

Arrests continued here this weekend as Negroes sat-in at the Little Castle, Walgreen’s Drug Store and the Carolina Theatre.

There were 52 Negroes arrested and charged with trespassing and resisting arrest.

Two white men were also arrested and charged with carrying a concealed weapon, interfering with an officer performing his duty, inciting a riot and one of the men was charged with using indecent and profane language.

These arrests came at 4:10 p.m. in front of the Little Castle and the men arrested are Charles Douglas Deese of Salisbury and Edward Donald Powell of 416 Levairn Drive. Deese is 32 years old and Powell, 29.

Sgt. B.S. Cagle reported that “while I was assisting in the arrest of demonstrators… [Deese] called [the demonstrators] s.o.b.’s…”

Deese was arrested, and while he was being placed in the police car, passed a .22 caliber pistol to Powell. There were approximately 120 persons in the area at the time.

Both men were placed in Randolph County jail and later released on $1000 bond each for appearance in court March 17.

Of the 51 Negroes arrested, 40 were adults (19 females and 21 males) and 11 were juveniles (8 males and 3 females). One person was arrested three times.

The names and addresses of the adults are as follows:

Sandra K. Nicholson, Rt. 4, Asheboro; Phyllis Ann Lineberry, 327 Dunlap St.; Irlean Williams, Rt. 1, Siler City; Helen Fox, 814 Frank St.; Queenie Green, 623 Cross St.; Pauine S. Laughlin, Rt. 1, Asheboro; Gracie Massey, 109 Booker Washington Road; Rosa Marie Siler, Siler City; Barbara Ann Massey, Rt. 4, Asheboro; and Judy Brooks, Siler City.

Also Mattie R. Laughlin, 107 Booker Washington Road; Annie Ruth Laughlin, Randleman; Katie Snuggs, 544 Loach St.; Ann Ledwell, 511 Loach St.; Callie Lowery, 818 Brewer St.; Christine Hallmon, 815 Brewer St.; Elzie Coble, Rt. 4, Asheboro; Pauline Coltrane, Rt.2, Asheboro; Cacille McMaster, 503 Loach St.; and Russell Lee Siler, Ramseur.

Also William Percy Shoffner, 610 Greensboro St.; Elven L. Marley, Ramseur; Thomas Lee Timmons, 422 Spring St.; Tommy Lee McMaster, 503 Loach St; Macy Holly, Thomasville; Howard Junior Spinks, Siler City; Lionel Baldwin, 443 Watkins St.; Edward McNeil, 426 N. McCrary St.; and Eugene Hoover, 730 Tucker St.

Also Harry D. Laughlin, Rt. 1, Randleman; Charlie Harrison Laughlin Jr., Rt. 1, Asheboro; Wilber Franklin JR., Rt.1, Asheboro; Lemuel C. Brady, 451 Loach St.; Charlie Leak Jr., 411 Woodlawn St.; Charles Wilson Harris, 410 Spring St.; Eddie Tom Horton, Siler City; Lindo O. Mason, Siler City; Shelton Rogers, Siler City; and Floyd C. Thomas Jr., 429 Loach St.

All the demonstrators were detained in jail overnight and released on bond between 3 p.m. and 8 p.m. Sunday.

 

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.

Lyndon Swaim

[This is my entry on Lyndon Swaim, as I wrote it for the Dictionary of North Carolina Biography in the early 1980s.  It can be found under the S’es in the next to last volume.]

SWAIN, LYNDON (1 Dee, 1812 26 March 1893), printer, newpaperman, and architect, was the oldest of eleven children.   His father Moses Swaim (31 Dec. 1788—25 April 1870) married Adah Swindell (17 April 1791 2 May 1866) of Hyde County on 13 Feb 1812. The family’s farm was on Deep River, in Randolph County’s Timber Ridge community. The nearby village at New Salem was incorporated by legislative act in 1816, and Moses Swaim had been appointed one of the five town commissioners.   The same year the elder Swaim had helped to found the North Carolina Manumission Society, and was elected its first President.  Whether Moses practiced law in addition to farming is unknown, although he was elected Clerk of the Superior Court in Randolph County from 1837 to 1840. In the 1850s Swaim emigrated to Indiana, where he settled on the St. Joseph River, north of South Bend.  His death occured during a subsequent visit to North Carolina.
Lyndon Swaim left home in 1834 at the age of 22 to work for his cousin WillIam Swaim, in the printing office of the Greensborough Patriot.  After William’s death in 1835, Lyndon returned to New Salem to work in the printing office of another cousin, Benjamin Swaim, editor of the Southern Citizen.   In 1839, a delegation of Greensboro citizens contacted Lyndon Swaim, urging him to take charge of the moribund Patriot.   “We need a paper amongst us that will be regularly issued, that will be fixed in its Whig principles and that will advocate with spirit and fearlessness the Whig cause,” they frankly admitted.  Swaim decided to return to Greensboro, and in partnership with yet another cousin, he bought the ailing newpaper.   Michael Swaim Sherwood (b.1816), son of Benjamin Sherwood (1783-186g) and Sally Swain (b. 1787), were to handle the mechanical and business affairs of the printing office, while Lyndon attended to the editorial duties of the paper, In accordance with the call far a strong Whig point of view, Swain promised in his first editorial to “advance all well-judged plans for the improvement of the internal commerce of the state and that system of school education which may reach every child in the land.”
Swain devoted the next fifteen years to the Patriot, selling out to Sherwood in 1854 only to devote full time to his official duties as clerk of the county court. He held that office continuously from his initial election in 1853 until it was abolished by the new state constitution of 1868. He additionally served as one of the commissioners of Greensboro in the years l846, 1850-1852, and 1859-1862, and was appointed one of the town commissioners under the provisional government of Governor Holden.  Swaim’s final public service occured in 1876-77, when he served as a Guilford County representative to the State Legislature.
Swaim temporarily took over the editorial helm of the Patriot once again in 1869, counselling moderation and reconciliation in the race of Reconstruction turmoil.  At the same time, he began the study of architecture and subsequently left the newspaper to begin professional practice.  Swaim was successful in his new career, becoming known as the town’s leading architect of the 1870’s and 1860’s. Although the facts of this stage of his life are as yet unclear, he is said to have designed residences as well as commercial buildings in Greensboro and surrounding communities.

On 3 Jan. 1842 Lyndon Swaim married Abiah Shirley Swaim, widow of his former employer William Swaim.  The only child born to this marriage died in infancy. Swaim’s step-daughter, Mary Jane Virginia, became the mother of William Sidney Porter (O. Henry).   Abiah Swain died in January, 1858; on 25 Oct 1859 Swaim married Isabella Logan (d. 9 Feb. 1900), daughter of General John N. Logan of Greensboro.  Four children, Isabell, Mary, Lyndon and Logan, were born to them; none married. In addition to his other activities, Lyndon Swain was one of the ruling elders of the First Presbyterian Church in Greensboro from 1872 until his death at the age of eighty, following several years of declining health.
SEE: Ethel Stephens Arnett, Greensboro, North Carolina: The County Seat of Guilford (1955);  Bettie O. Caldwell, ed., Founders and Builders of Greensboro, 1808-1908 (1925 [Portrait]); Deeds (Randolph County Courthouse, Asheboro, N.C); Swain family genealogical records (possession of Mrs. Francine Holt Swain, Liberty, N.C.).

L. McKay Whatley

[The biographical sketch of Lyndon Swaim, architect, which appears in North Carolina Architects and Builders, (see http://ncarchitects.lib.ncsu.edu/people/P000115) evidently appropriated much of my DNCB entry without attribution. Here is the only part that is new or different:   

 

“Around 1869, as postwar construction picked up, he made a serious study of architecture, and became Greensboro’s leading architect during the 1870s and 1880s. Although many men in this period moved from being artisans or contractors to taking on the title of architect, Swaim was unusual in entering the field from a background of journalism. In 1880, the 67-year-old Swaim identified his occupation to the census taker as “Architect.” William T. Comstock’s Architects’ Dictionary (an erratically updated publication) listed “L. Swain” (who died in 1893) along with Epps and Hackett (see Orlo Epps) as Greensboro’s only architects in 1894 and 1896.

“Details of Swaim’s architectural work are few, and none of the buildings documented or attributed to him still stands. He is said to have planned residences as well as public buildings. In Greensboro, his principal projects were designs for two civic edifices at the center of town: the Guilford County Courthouse (1872), an Italianate style building that copied much of the form of its 1858 antebellum predecessor, which had burned; and the United States Post Office (1883-1885), considered “a very fine and expensive building in its day.” Swaim also gained commissions for public buildings in nearby counties, including the eclectic Person County Courthouse (1883) in Roxboro and remodeling of the Rockingham County Courthouse in Wentworth. Farther afield, he provided drawings and specifications for the Pender County Courthouse and Jail (1882-1883) in Burgaw, an Italianate building with tower, similar to that in Greensboro.”

Hoover’s Mill (aka Rush’s Mill, Arnold’s Mill, Skeen’s Mill)

Every historic site has both a public and a private history.   In the case of this mill site on Covered Bridge Road in Tabernacle Township, I have a thirty-year personal association that gives me an intimate knowledge of it.  In the summer of 1975 I participated in the archeological excavation of the Mt. Shepherd Pottery which is located about a mile southeast of this site.  At that time the Skeen’s Mill Covered Bridge still stood on Covered Bridge Road, and I convinced some friends to join me in an expedition up the Uwharrie to see if we could discover if there was actually a mill anywhere around the Skeen’s Mill Bridge.  Over the course of an afternoon we not only found a site of surprising natural beauty, but well-preserved evidence of an elaborate mill seat.  And a “For Sale” sign.

Not knowing anything more than that, I convinced my parents to return with me the next weekend, and eventually prevailed upon them to purchase the tract which included the entire junction of the Uwharrie and Little Uwharrie Rivers.  After graduating from college and returning home, I actually lived in a trailer perched high above the site of the dam for two years while researching and writing my architectural history of Randolph County.   The property is still owned by my family.  But for two hundred and thirteen years previously, it had been owned by a parade of other people, and it has taken me years to piece together not just the history of this one tract of land, but the story of the surrounding neighborhood, part of what has been called the “Uwharrie Dutch” community, where this mill and the Mt. Shepherd Pottery were commercial landmarks.

Map of the "Uwharrie Dutch" region from MESDA Journal

The historic layout of the property took some time to puzzle out.  State Road 1406 runs from Hoover Hill Road on the East to Tabernacle Church Road on the West; and the one-hundred-foot-long Skeen’s Mill Covered Bridge (Tabernacle Township Site 18 in my architectural history) spanned the Uwharrie River about twenty feet north of its modern replacement.  It was built before March 1900, when C.T. Hughes was paid $11 for “repairing the bridge at N.R. Skeen’s.”  The bridge was one of only three remaining in North Carolina when it was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in the 1960s, but it was unappreciated and neglected by its nonresident owner and was destroyed by high water about the year 1984.

The mill was located to the South of both the covered bridge and modern bridge, about 150 feet from the road.  The foundations trace the footprint of a building thirty by fifty feet in plan, with its western side built into the side of a hill where the miller’s house  stood about fifty feet above and 200 feet southwest.  What was initially very confusing is that the mill race ran in the opposite direction that it should have if the dam was located anywhere near the covered bridge.  The tail race obviously flowed back into the Uwharrie River downstream from the bridge, but the head race was dug into the side of the hill, ending at least twenty feet above the mill perfectly situated for an overshot water wheel.  But the race ran south, curling around the hill at the foot of the miller’s house until it bent into a horseshoe shape and began running in a canal paralleling the Little Uwharrie River, where we finally found the evidence of head gates and a dam.

Only iron bolts drilled into the river bed indicate the location of the dam, which ran diagonally across the Little Uwharrie at a 50-degree angle to the flow.  Water was funneled into the head gates, and then ran in a horseshoe-shaped canal approximately 1,340 feet around the hill to the site of the mill, a very impressive engineering achievement for some unknown millwright.   Parts of two sets of mills stones were then in evidence, made of the individually-quarried blocks set in plaster that were characteristic of “French Buhr” stones.   The road which crossed the Uwharrie at the covered bridge stopped at the mill and then continued South, parallel to the river, in deeply-cut double tracks, one wide enough for a horse and wagon, the other just wide enough for a horse.  The tracks converged to cross the Little Uwharrie at a ford just northwest of the confluence, and then continued south west.

Research into previous ownership was the first order of research, beginning with the most recent and going backwards.  The recent history of the entire neighborhood was clear:  the surrounding lots had first been sold  in 1963 as part of the “Thayer Plantation” subdivision (See Plat Book 10, Page 116, Randolph County Registry).   Lee C. Thayer was the operator of a sawmill located on the railroad in Trinity, and owned hundreds of acres in Trinity and Tabernacle townships.  He lived in the Queen Anne style Victorian house at the northwest corner of Covered Bridge and Thayer Roads which was the center of a tract totaling more than 350 acres.  When the business hit bad times, the land was sold , roads were pushed out into the woods and hundreds of small lots were sold at auction.

The Thayers acquired the mill tract in 1943 (DB 386/PG 340); for the previous  thirty years it had been owned by the family of Julian Pearce, who bought it at auction in 1910 (DB134/PG276).  The auction had settled the estate of J.R. Skeen, son of Noah R. Skeen for whom the covered bridge was named.   The Skeen Mill tract consisted of 52 acres on both rivers, and included a tract “bought by N.R. Skeen from John Hill known as Boy Hill in the forks of the two prongs of Uwharrie River just below the Skeen Mill…”

Reaching back into the 19^th century the information grew sketchier, but Skeen acquired the mill about 1890 from Penuel Arnold, who bought “Rush’s Mills” from the Estate of Nineveh Rush in 1881 (DB58,P352).  An article from The Courier of 1934 described Rush’s Mills: “the Little Uwharrie came down on the top of a hill just west of Big Uwharrie.  And 120 rods before it emptied into the bigger river it was forty feet higher on a level than the big river.  So Rush, with the help of his slaves, built a small dam on the hill, plowed and shoveled a canal or race around the hill and landed the water on a 20-foot wheel which operated a long saw placed so as to give it speed up and down.”  The grist mill was forty feet further down the race, where “two sets of stones were put in, one for wheat and one for corn.  When it rained enough they could run the saw and the grist mill at the same time.  When rains let up they could not run either one.”  (R.C. Welborn, “First Saw Mill in Tabernacle Dates Back to 1820”)

Rush bought the mill and 300 acres in February 1826 from the Estate of Jacob Hoover (DB16, P319).  Jacob Hoover (b. 1754) had acquired 35 acres, including “the mill seat where Jacob Hoover now lives… in the fork of the Uwharrie”  in October 1794 from the estate of his father Andrew Hoover (DB7, P263).  Andrew Hoover was the anglicized name of Andres Huber, who had purchased 275 acres on both forks of the Uwharrie from Henry Eustace McCulloh in February 1763, when the area was still part of Rowan County (see Rowan DB5, P343).

Andreas Huber was born January 23, 1723 in Ellerstadt, now part of the German Palatine.  As the ninth child of a vintner, Huber saw little opportunity at home, and at age 15 he arrived at Philadelphia.  He lived with a brother in Lancaster County until age 22, when he married Margaret Pfautz and moved to Carroll County, Maryland.  By 1763 he and his large family had settled on the Uwharrie.   After the Revolution he turned the mill at the forks over to son Jacob and moved further down the Uwharrie to the Jackson Creek area, where he died and is buried in the Hoover cemetery. (See Genealogy of the Herbert Hoover Family by Hulda Hoover McLean, published by the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, 1967).

Nothing much was heard of Andrew thereafter until 1928, when his 3^rd great- grandson Herbert Clark Hoover was elected President of the United States.  Though Herbert Hoover had been born and bred in Iowa, his distant cousins and proud Republican brethren of Randolph County didn’t miss the opportunity to turn the President’s ancestor into a modern folk hero.  A 1928 story by T.M. Pridgen published in the Charlotte News (“Myths of Prowess of early Hoovers along Uwharrie”) declared that Andrew Hoover was a Quaker and neighbor of Daniel Boone, and Hoover’s mill was “an important granary of the Revolution.”  “The story goes that Andrew Hoover was not afraid of man, beast or devil; that he climbed to the top of Eagle Nest Rock when others were afraid to; that he swam the raging Uwharrie to save the lives of his horses; and he set out to face the headless horseman on the Uwharrie trails, and braved the other ghostly figures that moved like lost souls down the valley.”

It is doubtful whether any of those florid claims are real.   Far from being supporters of the Revolution, the Hoovers were part of the German Pacifist community that clustered around this area of the Uwharrie during the 18^th century.  I have written about this before in my article on the Mt. Shepherd pottery [http://www.archive.org/stream/journalofearlyso0601muse#page/20/mode/2up/search/21 ]  Historian John Scott Davenport has extensively researched the area, and asserts that though President Hoover was a Quaker, “the Uwharrie Dutch were predominately Dunker and Mennonite.  The Uwharrie Dunkers [German Baptists] were the largest settlement of that sect in North Carolina, 1778-1782.  Their minister was Jacob Stutzman, who bought Ramsey’s Place from Henry Eustace McCulloh in 1764, and led the congregation until he moved to Clark County, Indiana Territory, in 1801…. Dunkers did not have meeting houses until the mid-19^th century; hence Mast’s Old Meeting House [across the Uwharrie just east of Hoover’s Mill; see DB10, P5) was a Mennonite church.  Mennonites, called “Dutch Friends” by the Quakers, fellow-shipped with Quakers, appeared occasionally as witnesses to Quaker weddings.  The Dunkers would have nothing to do with Quakers.  Land problems, brought about by their rigid pacifism during the Revolution, and the influx of Quakers into the Uwharrie following the Revolution, were largely responsible for the removal of the Dunkers from Randolph County.”  (Letter dated November 12, 1976, in the Hoover files of the Randolph Room)

Jacob Hoover (1754-1821) married Elizabeth Stutzman, a daughter of the Dunker minister, and it is likely that his mother Margaret Pfautz was also a member of the congregation.  But Andrew’s family must not have been as strict as others, as their numerous deeds were all properly sworn to and recorded.  It is said that disastrous floods in 1795 and 1798 caused all of Andrew’s children but Jacob and Jonas to move west to Indiana.  Jacob ran and rebuilt the mill, which was alternately washed away by a flood and destroyed by fire, until he was crippled in an accident during a flood.   It seems likely that the unusual configuration of the present mill race stems from a desire to protect it from flood waters; a breach of the dam on the Little Uwharrie would never wash away the mill on the other side of the hill.

Finally, we can take one additional step further back into history:  the 1733 map of North Carolina by Surveyor General Edward Moseley (A New and Correct Map of the Province of North Carolina) depicts both Deep River and the Uwharrie, but the only landmark noted in the whole area of the county is in the forks of the Uwharrie: “Totero Fort.”  This is a reference to the Tutelo Indian tribe, which appears to be far south of where they had been visited in September 1661, when Thomas Batts and Abraham Wood led an expedition from Fort Henry (Petersburg, VA) to Totero Town (approximately where present-day Salem Va. is located).   In 1701 John Lawson visited the Keyauwee tribe living nearby on Caraway Creek at Ridge’s Mountain, but said nothing about any Tutelos.   It may be that attacks by the fierce Iroquois tribe forced the Tutelos to move South, but in 1714 the Occaneechi, Saponi, Eno, Totero and others relocated to Fort Christanna in Lawrenceville, Va.   More research is needed to confirm or deny this single tantalizing reference, but the location- the hill above the bottomland in the forks of the rivers- would be a natural defensive position for a palisaded village.

With a variety of documented stories spanning nearly 300 years, the Hoover Mill site is certainly a landmark of Randolph County history.

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!]

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[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.

Confederate Christmas in Randolph County

This is best-known of the autobiographical reminiscences of Nancy (“Nannie”) Steed Winningham.  It is been reprinted over the years in various sources, without much editing or explanation.  Once it was erroneously reprinted as “A Confederate Christmas in Asheboro,” despite the fact that Mrs. Winningham clearly recites the wagon ride to her grandparents home in the country.  As a “Christmas Gift” to you blog readers I am offering the original text here, and will serve up footnotes and explanations in another post.  I hope to track down the rest of the Winningham letters and publish them here, with annotations.

This illustration by Thomas Nast, entitled “Christmas Eve, 1862” appeared in the January 3, 1863 issue of Harper’s Weekly, published in New York City.  The appearance of our modern American “Santa Claus” was largely the pictorial creation of Thomas Nast, and this engraving includes two of his earliest depictions of him and his reindeer in both upper corners.

A CONFEDERATE CHRISTMAS IN 1864

By Mrs. James Lafayette Winningham

Note to the original from Miss Laura Worth:  “Mrs. James Lafayette Winningham was the daughter of John Stanley Steed and Rachel Director Swaim. She wrote several letters in 1919 about old Asheboro which were published in the Courier in response to other reminiscences. Her daughter brought the original letters to the Historical Society in 1959. During her last years she lived in Greensboro.“

As I was born in 1857, I can remember Christmas of 1862-3-4. The first two were much the same. My mother always took the children home to her father’s for the holidays. In their home were our three young aunts and a young uncle, all full of life and fun, and about ten grandchildren. Of us there were my three brothers and myself.

On the morning of Christmas Eve what a scurrying there was to get our home-made things packed. A hasty lunch and by the time one of my married uncles came with his team, everything was ready and we arrived in good time for supper, which to us children was a feast indeed, but I suspect it was a little of the pig killed for Christmas, if one was left by that time; lye hominy, sweet potatoes, persimmon pudding, pumpkin fried in pork gravy with maybe a taste of “good coffee” for the elders. This was kept carefully hidden away in Grandmother’s lowboy. The young people had wheat or potato coffee and the children mugs of milk.

Grandmother owned a little black girl who was a year or two older than I. Her mother, a young slave girl, had died at her birth and Grandmother had reared her on a bottle, and kept her for her personal waiting girl. Like most southern children, I loved Harriet as much as if she had been my own sister.

At last, after much excitement, the stockings were all hung — Harriet’s too with the rest, and the sand man came along. Then in about seventeen seconds the pine knots were blazing in the big fire-place and Santa Claus had been there, for wasn’t there the tracks of his sleigh in the big, wide chimney — made by my uncle with the poker “as was a poker”.   In our stockings were “goobers”, as we called the peanuts, walnuts, ginger cakes and Oh Joy! two or three sticks of striped candy. I’m wondering to this day where it came from for we had not seen a stick of striped candy in a year.

After breakfast my aunties started the eggnog; then about ten o’clock their friends, mostly young boys, came in to wish all a merry Christmas, but expressed in those days as “Christmas Gift” and to get a drink of eggnog.  It was there in the big bowl all the morning and we were all given a generous taste.

Just before the one o’clock dinner we were playing in the yard, when from the front porch my aunt Sue exclaimed: “Oh, Look! There they come!” I looked and until my dying day I shall never forget the fear and horror that filled me. There were sixteen or eighteen old bony horses with trappings of anything that could be found, with strings of rags of black, blue, red or white. The riders were young boys, with their coats turned wrong side out and wearing horrible—looking false faces, singing and making all kinds of discordant noises. I made one dash to the side of my boon companion, Harriet, and asked in a trembling voice: “Which is it, the old bad man or the Yankees?” which to a southern child at that time meant much the same thing, the bad man, if anything, playing on the winning team. Being assured it was only the boys, my fears were allayed and I enjoyed the strange spectacle. They rode around the village several times and disappeared. As I look back upon it, I suppose it was a scraggly, pitiful attempt to carry out the old English custom of the waifs of England, which had been handed down from their English ancestors.

After dinner some old men and boys came in with flutes, banjos and fiddles (not violins) and played for an enthusiastic house full of friends and neighbors. Sometimes I almost seem to hear now the sweet, sad music played so martially – “The Bonnie Blue Flag”, “The Girl I left behind me”, “Hurrah for the Southern Rights, Hurrah! Hurrah!” and “Hurrah! for the Homespun Dress the Southern Ladies Wear”.

Through all this trying to have a little fun ran an undercurrent of solemnity and anxiety, and many questions of “Have you heard any more from husband, father or son?” were heard.

Late in the afternoon I passed the open kitchen door and Grandmother stood leaning against a cupboard with her head in her arms crying as if her heart would break and it almost broke mine. I asked Harriet why she was crying and she said, “Mars Luther Clegg had drinked too much eggnog” — her baby boy, just a youth. I wondered why she allowed them to make it but it was a Southern custom hard to break.

My father and my uncle owned and operated a large tannery, shoe and harness shop. They had a contract with the Confederate government to furnish shoes to some of our soldiers and that kept them in the service at home.  Early in 1864 my father sold his interest in the business to my uncle and in a few months was drafted and sent to eastern Carolina, where he was in the service, though not in the line.

It seemed to me that Christmas in 1864 began about December 10. We were told on getting up in the morning, that our mother was sick and during the day she became much worse. One of our kind neighbors brought her black woman, “Aunt Patsy”, and they stayed through the night. Soon they sent for our faithful family physician, who on account of advancing years bad about given up his practice until the war began and the younger doctors were all in the service of their southland. He gave my mother tender care and attention, with no thought of ever rendering a bill- his payment being the service of my father to the flag. On the morning of the 10th we were told we had a little brother named for his daddy. Oh! I suppose he was welcome but Christmas loomed darkly ahead. No daddy, no trip to “Grampys”, no shoes, no clothes hardly, no picture books, no dolls, no candy and just no “nuthin”.

On Sunday morning my uncle rode by while we were playing in the road, and be asked: “Boys, where are your shoes?” “We haven’t got any”, my brother answered. He told them to go to the shoe shop Monday and be measured for shoes. I was sorry my own were not a little better or else worse so that I could have a new pair.

There was a man in our town called Captain Pragg, who owned a dry goods store. A few days before Christmas he sent one of his men to the house to tell my mother that if she would send for it he would give her a nice ham for a present. She was very pleased and never forgot the courtesy.

My aunt from the country came and brought us all something for Christmas.  My present was a balmoral (petticoat) which she had carded, spun and. woven herself. I never told anyone but I could never drum up enough patriotism to like that coarse, scratchy petticoat. And that wasn’t the only thing I could never learn to like.

To this day when my husband occasionally likes a supper of milk and mush or corn bread and milk, the vision of a big, grayish-brown earthenware jar of milk and a bowl of mush or the plate of thick corn pones, with perhaps smudges of ashes on the brown crust, that depending on the skill of the one who lifted the lid with its burden of coals and ashes from the skillet, comes to me and I say “You may have it all,” I’m afraid it will give me indigestion.

And the Christmas baby — well, his father never saw him until he came home after General Lee’s surrender and by that time he was almost five months old.