The Conjurer

June 19, 1865, “Juneteenth,” was the day freedom finally came to the enslaved people of Texas, and is now celebrated as our second American independence day.   But African Americans in eastern North Carolina, in counties already occupied by Federal troops, heard the news of the Emancipation Proclamation immediately, on January 1, 1863. Up into the 20^th Century “Watch Night” church services were held in black communities in the place of New Year’s Eve parties, with the congregation ready to welcome freedom at the stroke of midnight.  Newspaper articles show that this was actually the tradition in Asheboro. [“The following is the program prepared for the celebration of Emancipation Day to be held in Asheboro Saturday by the colored people of the town and county:” The program included “Five-minutes talks from ex-slaves.” The Randolph Bulletin, Wed. Dec. 29, 1915, page 4.]

Not much survives about Watch Night traditions here, but Juneteenth has a long and colorful cultural history out west. A hallmark of those celebrations has been the food, with barbecue, watermelon strawberry soda, red punch and Red Velvet Cake always on the table.  [https://www.oprahdaily.com/life/a36479941/juneteenth-food-traditions/] While some articles said that red food symbolized the blood of the past generations of the enslaved, culinary historians now think the practice was brought to Texas by enslaved people from Nigeria, Ghana, Benin and the Congo, where Asante and Yoruba traditions included offerings of the red blood of white birds and goats to their ancestors and gods. There are stories of red trinkets and red flannel cloth being used to lure Africans onto ships bound for America, which also figure into Juneteenth traditions. [https://blogs.loc.gov/loc/2018/04/inquiring-minds-uncovering-the-many-meanings-of-slave-narratives/ ]

“Red, in many West African cultures, is a symbol of strength, spirituality, life and death.” Moreover, two West African plants, hibiscus and kola nuts, were powdered and used to make red herbal teas by Caribbean and plantation communities.  {See https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/what-is-juneteenth? for much more information on those food traditions.] 

This reminded me of a unique episode of Randolph County history that opens up a window into the cultural life of local African Americans in colonial times. Very little information survives about individual Randolph County’s black population before 1800, but the most interesting fragment is found in an unusual place- the Narrative of Colonel David Fanning, the leader of the pro-British forces that waged a deadly guerrilla war in Randolph county in 1781 and 1782,

In May 1781 Fanning attacked a column of NC Dragoons under a Colonel Dudley, coming up the PeeDee Road from Camden, killing several men, taking prisoners and stealing their baggage train.  Colonels Collier and Balfour tracked Fanning back to his headquarters at Cox’s Mill on Deep River, and “kept a constant scouting” to provide information back to the colonial forces.  Several months later, Colonel Dudley with “300 men from Virginia” attacked Fanning’s fortified position at the mill, scattering the loyalist forces and taking control of Fanning’s supplies.  Writes Fanning, “He took a negro man from me and sold him at public auction for 110 pounds; the said negro was sent over the mountains, and I never saw him since.”  [The Narrative of Colonel David Fanning (1865), p. 17] 

Fanning mentions owning a number of Negroes but this one was particularly important to him.  An offhand mention in a report to General Butler, commander of the state militia, may indicate why. “Captain Henley… was in action with Fanning. Twelve surprised eighteen, killed six, and took three prisoners and a Negro, the Conjuror.”  [Executive Letter Book, March 1^st, 1782]

Very few enslaved people are known by name from the 18^th century, but even fewer are known by a title. This title, “the Conjuror,” seems simple but provides a window into the African heritage of the enslaved in this county that has never before been opened.

In the Bible, “to conjure” means to summon or invoke a spirit or devil by magic or sorcery. The online Free Dictionary goes on to state that a conjuror, also called a witch doctor, root doctor, jujuman or obeaha, “is a priest   and physician called upon by African tribal members and followers of religions such as voodoo, Santeria and macumba.” [https://www.thefreedictionary.com/conjure+man]  It is based in the belief that psychic powers can be used in a way to cast spells, make enchantments, find lost items, detect thieves, tell the future, create good or bad luck, and even heal or kill. 

Native conjurers were present in 1585 when the men of Sir Walter Raleigh arrived in North Carolina.  Visiting the town of Secotan on the Pamlico River, the artist John White painted a dancing native he named “the flyer,” “the magician,” or “the sourcerer.”  A 2008 article by George Stevenson [ https://www.ncpedia.org/conjure] cites a 1767 record from Johnston County where slaves travelled to Dobbs County to consult a conjurer named Quash, and later another in Smithfield called “Old Bristow,” to obtain powders to add to their owner’s food. The conjure was discovered when the white families became ill, and the slaves were tried and sentenced to public whippings, and to have their ears cut off at the pillory.

Most conjures do not seem to have had an evil purpose; many practitioners functioned as doctors or nurses to the enslaved community using elements of African and European folk medicine and native herbal lore. The tradition of “working the roots” was common in rural North Carolina up into the 21^st century, although not commonly known to white Southerners. Like the red foods of Juneteenth, it is believed to have its origins in the folk beliefs of West Africa, home of many in the enslaved population. [https://www.ncpedia.org/root-doctors]

The conjure culture of Piedmont North Carolina also inspired one of the first popular works of African-American literature. Charles Waddell Chesnutt (1858-1932), a son of free people of color from Fayetteville, NC, began writing short stories in 1887. His “The Goophered Grapevine” was the first work by an African American to be published in The Atlantic Monthly. His collected stories were published in 1899 as The Conjure Woman, which was adapted at a motion picture in 1926. He contributed to The Atlantic for more than 20 years, also writing a biography of Frederick Douglas and a novel based on the Wilmington Massacre of 1898.

It’s hard to draw a full portrait of a man with no more information than his title “Conjuror;” but much of early African American culture is based on such bits and pieces of surviving facts.  Without this tidbit, we would have no way of knowing that the enslaved peoples of Randolph County shared the conjure culture rooted in West Africa.

Monuments and Memorials in Randolph County

Original 1946 plan of War Memorial Park in Asheboro; none of the features shown were built as designed.

[The following was part of the report I gave to the county commissioners at a public hearing held Aug 30, 2017. The other two sections, dealing with the Confederate monument, I put on my blog soon after. For some reason this first section never made it here until now. -Mac Whatley]

Randolph County has a rather meager history of any kind of monuments or war memorials.

Faith Rock DAR plaque 1928

The oldest privately-erected marker in the county dates from around1928 and commemorates Andrew Hunter’s Revolutionary War-era ride down Faith Rock in Franklinville. It consists of a bronze tablet installed by the Guilford Battle Chapter of the D.A.R. on the concrete bridge across Deep River built in 1925 just north of the rock. When a new bridge was built in 1986, the plaque was moved to a stone at the footbridge across the river south of the upper mill. It is inscribed “In Memorial, Randolph County Patriots. Faith Rock, 200 yards down the river is where Andrew Hunter in 1781 escaped from David Fanning, Tory, rode Fanning’s horse, Bay Doe, down the rock into the river and to safety.”

Daniel Boone marker, Staley

Another from the early 1930s commemorates Daniel Boone, who otherwise has no known connection to the county. Between 1913 and 1938 J. Hampton Rich of Davie County established the Daniel Boone Trail Highway and Memorial Association to raise awareness of the need for better roads in North Carolina, educate the public about the pioneer era and promote patriotism. Rich erected more than 350 stone markers across the state with an plaque inserted of Alonzo Chapel’s illustration of Boone and his hunting dog. Every plaque included some bronze from the battleship USS Maine, the sinking of which in Havana Harbor in 1898 triggered the Spanish-American War. Only about 100 of Rich’s markers still exist. At least two were once in Randolph County, both located on the route of US 421. Marker 32 was located in Liberty until destroyed in a traffic accident in 1959, and never replaced. The other still stands in the center of Staley, near the railroad tracks. [See www.danielboonefootsteps.com and www.ncdbht.org. ]

About 1950 the Randolph County Historical Society erected a series of painted wooden markers at sites around the county, but none still exist.

Dedicating the marker to Gov. Worth, 1937.

There are at least 12 state Highway Historical Markers, including one to Governor Jonathan Worth, which is on the Salisbury Street right of way on the courthouse property.1 This program has been operated since 1936 by the Office of Archives and History in the Department of Cultural and Natural Resources, and has no connection with and requires no input from the county.

Randolph County Commisioners 1993

The Sheriff’s Department has a Memorial Wall listing every Randolph County Sheriff. There are no memorials or even public lists anywhere on county property of the names of county commissioners, justices of the peace, Clerks of Court, Registers of Deeds, or other elected officials. Group photographs of the boards of county commissioners since 1984 are displayed on the wall leading to the county manager’s office at the Randolph County Office Building so that visitors will have a historical image of those who made the decisions that have helped Randolph County get to where it is now, but no group photographs of the boards of commissioner prior to 1984 have not been found.

There are and have been a number of Veteran’s Memorials erected in the county both on public and private property. There are no known memorials or monuments to veterans of the Revolutionary War, War of 1812, Mexican War, or Spanish-American War (although there is, on the grounds of the State Capitol, a monument to the first casualty of the Spanish-American War–Worth Bagley, the grandson of Governor Jonathan Worth). There are, or have been in and around the Randolph County Courthouse, monuments and memorials to veterans of the Civil War, World War I, World War II, Korean War, Vietnam War and subsequent national conflicts.

The Randolph County Veterans Memorial

For many years the Pilot Club of Asheboro honored county veterans by placing paper bag luminaries on the sidewalks in front of the 1909 Courthouse. Beginning around 1993, Frank Rose,organizer of the Randolph County Veterans Council, together with members of the local Vietnam Veterans chapter, proposed building a Randolph County Veterans Memorial on the courthouse grounds. This was evidently triggered by the emotional popularity of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall which opened on the National Mall in Washington, DC, in 1982. This was one of the first war memorials in the United States to list the names of all servicemen and women who were casualties of a war.

Their original plan of the local veteran organization was that donations from the public and contributions from family members could fund the memorial, but this did not prove feasible. At the Randolph County Commissioners’ meeting held in January, 1995, the commissioners approved spending $31,700 for construction of a granite monument to be built on the courthouse lawn. At the request of County Commission Chair Phil Kemp and County Attorney Alan Pugh, Superior Court Judge Russell G. Walker, Jr. approved the final placement of the 900 square-foot memorial in a grassy area at the entrance to Courtroom C. Rose stated that the memorial was “open to all honorably discharged Randolph County veterans who served in any branch of the military since 1898 during war or peace.” At that time Rose stated that there were 11,310 living veterans in Randolph County, comprising more than ten percent of the population.

The monument was designed to look like the veterans memorial in Hillsville, Virginia, and was built by Wiley Brothers Marble and Granite Works. When dedicated on Veterans’ Day1995, it included the names of 3,333 living and deceased Randolph County veterans whose families or descendants applied for inclusion and paid a fee to have the name engraved on the granite panels. Four hundred additional names were added on Memorial Day, 1996. In 2003 the names of some 20 soldiers killed in action were added, and in 2004 two additional granite panels were added to provide space for as many as 1800 more names.

The Randolph County Commissioners approved spending $8,439 for the expansion in November 2004. At that time it was clarified that to be added to the wall a veteran“must be a native of Randolph County, a county resident for at least two years, or have been inducted locally with active military service of at least two years;” members of the National Guard and Reserves are eligible only if called to active duty. The new panels were dedicated with 544 new names on Memorial Day 2005. Frank Rose stated at that time that the memorial honored 3,899 military personnel. Names have subsequently been added so that the memorial currently honors more than 3,900 persons, including the names of 165 service men killed in action. It is recognized that this does NOT include the name of every Randolph County casualty of war since 1898.

Rotary WWII Plaque

World War II

A concerted effort was made by North Carolina during World War II to keep track of service men and women and of the casualties of war. A War records committee was appointed with representatives from every county. In 1942 Mrs. Laura Worth, the county historian, was appointed War Records Collector for Randolph County, and Dr. C.A. Barrett, Principal of the Randolph County Training School,was appointed to collect “Negro War Records.” Worth and Barrett regularly forwarded materials to the state archives.

Every town had a Wall of Honor; in Liberty and Asheboro, pictures of servicemen were posted in storefronts. In Franklinville a large wooden sign was erected on the baseball field. In Asheboro the names of everyone in service were painted on 4×8’ sheets of plywood erected in a grove of oaks at the present location of Wachovia/ Wells Fargo. The newspapers of the time printed short biographies of every serviceman, particularly when killed or wounded, and Miss Worth clipped those and created scrapbooks for the Army, Navy/ Marines and other topics.

There are also handwritten casualty cards for 113 men and women reported killed or missing in action. Reports of deaths were slow to be released by the military, and trickled out into public knowledge. By late 1943 enough deaths had accumulated that the Asheboro Rotary Club decided that some official memorial needed to be erected, and the club paid for a wooden plaque to be constructed by Lucas Industries, builder of furniture for the army. That plaque was dedicated at the courthouse in a public ceremony on April 28, 1944. Names of those who died in service were engraved on bakelite plates and affixed to the plaque, which was inscribed– “IN MEMORIAM: Dedicated to those men and women from Randolph County who have given their lives in service of our country during World War II. Erected by the Rotary Club of Asheboro.”

The Courier Tribune article about the plaque stated that it would be updated to “contain the county’s war dead to date.” But as the war continued, the names outgrew the space on the plaque. So another, larger plaque was made, and it was suggested that the smaller plaque could be converted into a memorial for the dead of the First World War (this was evidently never done). By the end of the war the plaque had 75 names affixed to it; but the official count as released by the Army and Navy lists in 1946 showed that there were at least 135 Randolph County residents killed in action or who died in service. And that list evidently did not include all of those missing in action. But evidently there was little interest in finalizing the list of war dead, and neither plaque was ever completed as a World War memorial. When the court house was renovated in 1964, the plaques were given back to Joe Ross, historian of the Asheboro Rotary Club. He stored them in the basement of his building at 100 Sunset Avenue. These plaques are now located in the lobby of the Historic 1909 Courthouse.

Several other projects began locally immediately after the war to memorialize those who fought and died in Europe and the Pacific.

Ramseur Ranoca Garden Club at Blue Star Highway plaque

Blue Star Highways

During World War I, families with relatives in service flew flags with a gold star for each loved one fighting overseas. In World War II (and still today) a blue star is used to designate a home with active military members; a gold star replaces the blue star to indicate the home of immediate relatives who die in service. In 1950 the Garden Club of North Carolina designated US 64 as a “Blue Star Memorial Highway,” in “tribute to the National Armed Forces who served in World War II.” Two Bronze markers designed by the National Council of Garden Clubs were erected in the county. One in Asheboro is in Oak Lawn municipal cemetery beside Asheboro Middle School; the other now stands near Fidelity Bank in Ramseur, its third location since it was erected in 1950. That marker was just the fourth erected in North Carolina.

future site of War Memorial Park, Asheboro, 1946

Asheboro Memorial Park

Construction of the swimming pool, Memorial Park

The Asheboro Memorial Foundation, Inc. acquired 12 acres of property in 1945 to build “An Everlasting Memorial to our Service Men and Women;” promoted to be “A Tribute to Our Heroes of World Wars I and II.” Officers of the foundation were W.C. Lucas, President; A.I. Ferree, Vice President; Cleveland Thayer, Secretary; H.A. Millis, Jr., Treasurer; Roy Cox, Fundraising Campaign Chair; C.C. Cranford, D.W. Holt, J. Frank McCrary; S.B. Stedman; and W.L. Ward, Directors.

In a radio address, Idol Ferree announced that the Foundation would build “a recreational park consisting of a swimming pool, softball and tennis courts and grounds adequate for outing and picnicking. It will be a memorial to all ex-servicemen and women.”

the Never-built community building, now the site of tennis courts

Grand plans were made for the park, but fundraising difficulties required these to be severely curtailed. Initial development was limited to the pool and two clay tennis courts. A substantial element of the fundraising campaign were the proceeds from the annual Kiwanis Easter Monday Horse Show at the county fairgrounds.

Construction of Church Street extension to the park

Breaking Ground, 1946

Groundbreaking was held June 15, 1946, and grading work on the $100,000 project began in August. The contractor was A.H. Guion Co. of Charlotte, with concrete provided by the Cox-Lewis Hardware Company. Fundraising for the construction of the bath house, built by S.E. Trogdon, delayed the completion of the facility. The T-shaped, 82-foot long, 235,000-gallon pool opened in June 1948, and featured a three-meter diving board and 70-foot lap lanes in the deep end.

Dedication of the pool, 1948

A “kiddie” or wading pool was completed in 1949, and a bronze plaque in honor of World War veterans installed there, but when that feature was later removed, the plaque disappeared.

A miniature railroad, the “Asheboro Flyer,” was opened in May 1955, circling the park on a 1300-foot track. Three passenger cars capable of seating 45 children or 35 adults were pulled by a gasoline-powered engine. Within ten years the train and tracks had been removed for the construction of additional tennis court, but the curved “round house” were it was stored survived until the 1970s.

For a quarter century this was the only “public” pool in the county. The smaller pool at the Acme-McCrary gym, built about the same time, was normally limited to employees of the company, not the general public. Asheboro Country Club, also founded in 1946, did not built a pool until 1964, and Pinewood Country Club was opened with its own pool in 1971. The Asheboro Memorial Foundation transferred officially transferred ownership to the City of Asheboro in September 1968; at which time the use of the pool was also opened to black citizens.

the finished pool

In his 1949 radio address, A.I. Ferree recalled that “When I was a boy, Henley’s swimming hole, a typical one, was the most popular place to go swimming in the summertime. Sundays, holidays and many week days found us paddling around in an attempt to satisfy that desire in man to go swimming in the summertime…. A swimming pool is something that every boy and girl is interested in. there was a time when only boys frequented the old swimming hole. The girls were left out of the picture. We have long ago abandoned that idea and custom. Today we are building for the enjoyment and development of the boys and girls.”

Summer Fire Hydrant Day at Central School, circa 1955.

In practice that meant the enjoyment and development of Asheboro’s white boys and girls, although I have not found that stated in print. The Memorial Park Foundation was set up to own and raise money to build the park, while the Town (now City) of Asheboro was responsible for its upkeep and operation. This created the legal fiction that the park was a private club, which made it easier to exclude African-Americans from using the facilities and give the City plausible deniability. While the plans for the park may have been progressive in the sense of allowing coeducational use by males and females, it would be twenty years before black citizens could use it, and still longer until private clubs accepted minority members.

World War I and the First National Bank Veterans Clock

Belk Department Store Windown, Asheboro ca. 1943

The first veteran’s memorials listing the names of veterans were erected privately during World War I. In Asheboro a list of the members serving in Company K, the local National Guard unit, was displayed on a painted wooden sign erected in the small park facing Fayetteville Street north of the Bank of Randolph. When a soldier was reported killed, a star was painted by his name. This list did not include all of the more than 1600 Randolph County men who served in World War I, but only those in Company K. Similar public lists were maintained by local municipalities such as Ramseur and Franklinville. When the war ended, these sign boards were not maintained and eventually were taken down.

Liberty store window, ca. 1943

During World War II, an elaborate window display of the photographs of servicemen was maintained by Belk Department Store on Sunset Avenue in Asheboro. A similar exhibit was erected in a store window in Liberty. These also were removed at war’s end, but efforts for a more permanent monument were soon begun by veterans of the first war through their “American Legion” and “Forty and Eight” organizations.

On July 4, 1946, a bronze clock mounted on the corner of First National Bank at the southwest intersection of Fayetteville Street and Sunset Avenue was dedicated as a World War II Memorial. The dedication brochure states that“This beautiful and very living Memoral we are unveiling today was made possible by the graciousness of Mrs. J.B. Ward, Jr.”

The clock was made by the O.B. McClintock Company, which made street clocks, but specialized in bank clocks because they also made bank alarm systems. There was a mahogony Seth Thomas master clock inside the bank, and the mechanism of the clock repeated that time, with Westminister chimes striking each quarter hour. The iron frame of the clock was covered by a bronze and copper skin, with stained glass panels were customized for each locality. The four faces of the Asheboro clock had three slogans: “Honoring All Who Served”/ “Lest We Forget”/ “It’s Later Than You Think”. [The fourth side

The last was from a poem by Robert W. Service, published in 1921 about an author in Paris–

Lone amid the café’s cheer,

Sad of heart am I to-night;

Dolefully I drink my beer,

But no single line I write.

There’s the wretched rent to pay,

Yet I glower at pen and ink:

Oh, inspire me, Muse, I pray,

It is later than you think!

The dedication brochure goes on to state–

“Lest We Forget Those Who Served… This big and useful clock is dedicated to those who served in World War II in any capacity whatsoever. As the years go by, may its chimes bring comfort to those whose sons did not come home. The victory is won. Now, we must not forget our obligation to those who shared in its cost.

The ideals on which America was founded still oppose aggression. Our sons and daughters of Randolph County took a large part in preserving America’s freedom. We still believe that all men are created equal. To pay tribute to them, we regard as a privilege.”

Asheboro and Randolph County’s memory for this kind of thing being not much more than a generation long, the clock was dismantled in 1968 when First National Bank was rebuilt. The clock was given back to the American Legion, where it lay outside until it was vandalized and stolen by metal scavenger thieves. The wooden master clock hangs on the wall of the bar inside the Legion “Hut”.

Civilian Casualties of War, 1863

[Public Domain clip art from

https://www.wpclipart.com/American_History/civil_war/Various/hanging_during_civil_war__by_Pyle.jpg.html%5D

     The history of Randolph County’s turbulent civilian life from 1861 to 1865 is an aspect of North Carolina’s Civil War history that was first explored by Bill Auman in his meticulous and influential research, sadly only published after his death.  Auman recounted numerous stories of organized resistance to the war effort, often amounting to civil insurrection, that plagued local and state government all through the war.  Examples that made it into publication in contemporary newspapers have been known for many years; the well-known episode of Deputy Sheriff Alfred Pike’s torture of William Owen’s wife to find his hiding place has recited and published in numerous articles and books- perhaps the county’s best-known example of poor behavior during the war.

    Asheboro was the headquarters of the government and the military during the war, and Asheboro at the time had no local newspaper.  Events are only known when residents wrote to other newspapers, in Fayetteville, in Greensboro, or in Raleigh. Most events were never recorded in the news at the time they happened, and many stories are virtually impossible to confirm.  Such stories survived, if at all, as oral history.

    Local writer Ralph Bulla recorded one long after the event, the death of Alson Allred in 1863.  Bulla heard Allred’s story and was guided to his grave by elderly residents of the Coleridge area 113 years after it happened.  Alson, supposedly “hiding out” from the Confederate draft, was captured near Deep River South of Coleridge, taken to Buffalo Ford, tied up, stood on horseback, and hanged from a large maple tree.  Allred’s 17-year-old wife arrived after the execution, and members of the local Bray family who witnessed it could not forget her “hollering and screaming.”  Allred’s crime was said to be that “He laid out, they caught him and killed him,” and so it was justifiable.  [“Civil War Hanging Recalled,” by Ralph Bulla. The Courier-Tribune, Asheboro N.C., 2 June 1976, p10A.]

The basic facts of the story are easy to confirm. Alson G. Allred’s grave is to be found in the Gardner-Moffitt Graveyard, Brower Township, on the East side of Riverside Road, just past 5151 Riverside Rd., about 0.3 mile south of the bridge over Richland Creek.  The location is about a mile and 3/4 east of Moffitt’s Mill, the local post office located where SR 1004 crosses Richland Creek.

His tombstone shows that he died January 5, 1863, and was 20 years old (born 18 August 1842).  The graveyard is apparently in the close vicinity of what was the Elisha Allred homeplace.  Allred’s parents and close family members are buried here. In the 1860 census, the Elisha Allred family were neighbors of James and Louisa Gardner, who are also buried here. (Louisa or Levisa Allred, b. 1826, was Alson Allred’s oldest sister).

[Randolph County, 1865]

According to the story, Alson Allred was captured at or near the present site of 5795 Riverside Road, about a mile further South from the cemetery. The site is some 3.5 miles south of Coleridge, which didn’t exist in 1860, and about 6 miles south of Buffalo Ford as the crow flies.  Although I have yet to find official confirmation, the school house at Buffalo Ford was apparently used as a regional headquarters for the Home Guard, a base for their searches for conscripts and deserters, and a detention center for those captured.  After his arrest, Allred must have been taken directly past his own home on the way to Buffalo Ford.

    There is no record of Alson Allred’s wife’s name, or indeed of his ever being married.  There is no record of his service in the Confederate military, nor any record of his desertion.  Ralph Bulla’s record of the local oral history is literally the only record of Allred’s life and death that has been found.  Since no official record of his execution has been found, a fundamental question must be raised: was Allred’s death a legal execution, or an extrajudicial lynching?  Was he a civilian casualty of the war, or a harsh example of military discipline?

    The first step in answering the question lies in understanding the Confederate conscription system. In the federal system, devised for the Union army and used in every war since, men subject to “the draft” received a number chosen at random, and those lottery numbers are used to induct only the selected men into service.  The Confederate system was oddly and radically different.  In April 1862 the Confederate Congress created a program of compulsory national military service for all white males which required an elaborate, centralized governmental enforcement effort.

    Every white male within a stated age range was automatically considered to be in Confederate service unless released by a medical board or exempt as a public official (Justices of the Peace, Sheriffs, Constables, Coroners, Clerks of Court, judges, postal clerks, ministers, etc.)  Quakers were not exempt as conscientious objectors (they could pay a fee or hire a substitute). Men engaged in businesses or industries considered vital to the war effort were not exempt, but were considered soldiers “detailed” to work in their usual jobs unless and until called up for actual military service. Thus supervisors in cotton mills, millers, miners, blacksmiths, foundry workers, coopers, and etc. were “Detailed Men,” working at their prewar occupations.

[New York City draft riots, 1862]

    Randolph County is fortunate in that voluminous records of the 7th Congressional District Home Guard have been preserved in various institutions, and this gives us names of hundreds of “recusant conscripts” (what we now call ‘draft dodgers’) and deserters. Most of these relate to later periods of the war, 1864 and 1865, and nothing has yet appeared that relates to the possible capture, court martial trial or execution of Alson Allred.

    One fact argues that his death was in fact an execution: no records of an inquest into his death can be found in the Randolph County court records in the State Archives.  The Coroner or his deputies were legally required to assemble a jury and review the circumstances of any “unnatural death” in the county.  Two examples from the period are illustrative:

    When D.F. Caudle of Yadkin County died at the home of Claiborne Allred in Franklinville in September 1863, Acting Coroner Alfred Pike held an inquest, assembled a jury of prominent local men (headed by George Makepeace, the superintendent of the cotton mill), who heard evidence and determined that Caudle met his death “by exposure.”  [The legal record is bare of some of the most interesting facts: David F. Caudle married Mary Cooper in Yadkin County on 18 Sept. 1856. A conscript into service, he was listed as serving in the Confederate Navy in Wilmington as of 19 July 1863, yet within 6 weeks he is dead in Randolph County.  I believe that “death by exposure” during one of the warmest times of the year means that Caudle deserted his post in Wilmington, and on his way back to Yadkin county, contracted pneumonia walking home and was probably suffering from malnutrition which led to his death in Franklinville.  See Yadkin Men in the Military, 1861-1865, p 197; RC Gen. Journal Fall 1997, p 25.]

    When word of the death of Peter Garner was received by Coroner Ransom Lowdermilk, apparently weeks after the event, his body was exhumed on May 13, 1864 and a jury of southern Randolph County men assembled to view the cause- “Various gunshot wounds to the left side of head and body,” and to bring in a verdict of murder by person or persons unknown. [On April 24, 1864, Garner (“a detailed soldier from the army”) guided the Sheriff’s posse to arrest the leader of an outlier band (“the notorious Bill Owens has at last been captured,” said the Fayetteville Observer.)  Garner, born in 1833, was listed as an “overseer” in the 1860 census, and was known by the nickname “The Hunter” for his work in finding and capturing outliers.  Within a week of his assistance in the capture of Owens, he was assassinated while fishing in Richland Creek by some of Owens’ men.]

    When no inquest is conducted into the circumstances of a death, the assumption is that it occurred by natural causes– unless it was a public execution.

    A deeper examination into the family of Alson Allred also raises questions.  His parents Elisha and Barbara Allred had a family of five boys and four girls.  One other boy is buried in the Gardner-Moffitt graveyard, James M. Allred, born 6 October 1845, died 4 April 1865. What was a twenty-year old white male doing home in April 1865? There is no record of a Coroner’s inquest into his death, either- was it from natural causes? A note on his tombstone in the online service “Find a Grave” erroneously reports that he was a member of Company M in the 22nd NC Regiment- that is James A. Allred, who survived the war. The only record of a “J.M. Allred” among North Carolina troops is on the list of “Major Hahr’s Battalion” published in Walter C. Hilderman, They Went into the Fight Cheering: Confederate Conscription in North Carolina (Boone: Parkway Publishers, 2005), pp233-234).  Major Frank Hahr’s two companies of “light duty men” were part of Colonel Peter Mallett’s conscription bureau. In October 1864 they were sent to Wilmington, where they were stationed during both attacks on Fort Fisher, in December 1864 and January 1865.  The roster of Company B contains the name of “J.M. Allred,” listed as “Deserted.” If this is our James M. Allred, he must have made it back to Randolph County by April 4th, when he died- whether of disease or by execution, can’t be determined.

    In fact, a military service record can be found for only one of Alson Allred’s four brothers: William Harrison Allred, born 11 June 1840.  He is listed in Confederate payroll records as a teamster in Tennessee and Georgia in the fall of 1863, but on May 16, 1864 he was wounded in the shoulder at Petersburg, Virginia and taken prisoner.  He was sent to the military prison in Alton, Illinois, where he signed the Oath of Allegiance. He married Martha Moon in Randolph county in 1868, and died in 1925 in Benton County, Arkansas. [Fold3, Confederate conscript records. There appear to be two different Oaths signed, which may indicate that there are two different William H. Allreds  in the file.]

    None of Allred’s other brothers (Henry Branson Allred, b. 1825; Clarkson L. Allred b. 1827; and John Tyson Allred, b. 1831) have military service records.  Clarkson Allred is listed on a list (attributed to the Fall of 1864) of the hands detailed to work at the Salt Works near Wilmington.  Were the others “hiding out” from the army? Was Alson the only one caught, and executed as a lesson to his brothers?  Was James also caught and executed?  None of these questions have easy answers.

    One final quirk to the story of Alson Allred: on March 24, 1865, two weeks before the death of his son James, his father Elisha Allred committed suicide.  We know the facts, because, once again, Coroner Ransom Lowdermilk conducted an inquest. The body of 62-year old Elisha Allred was found hanging in his barn, his mouth filled with cotton. His wife Barbara testified that he left the house to feed their stock, “after having expressed the previous night his indifference to living.” Their daughter-in-law (perhaps Naomi Moffitt, who married Clarkson Allred on August 7, 1855) discovered the body.  The verdict was “death by hanging, having jumped from the tailgate of his wagon.”

    What made Elisha Allred so despondent that he took his own life? Why put cotton in his mouth- the rope around his neck would make it impossible to cry out. Was it because he had said something he felt remorse over?  There is only so much we can do to fill in the blanks around the life of Alson G. Allred- but the real story is no doubt much deeper and richer, and more sad, than the single newspaper account we have.

    And I believe that there were dozens of similar stories in Randolph County between 1861 and 1865, most of which we will never see even this much evidence to document. Randolph County during the Civil War was itself a battlefield, and there were dozens of casualties, whether civilian or military.

Randolph County’s First Christmas Tree?

Godey’s Lady’s Book, 1850- a revised version of the Illustrated London News, edited to Americanize Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.

North Carolina in 2014 ranks number two in the nation in Christmas tree production, right after Oregon.  Every year the state’s 1600-odd tree farms produce some 50 million Fraser Firs, the most popular type of Christmas tree, worth about $100 million dollars.[i]  Add that to the relentless drumbeat of Christmas music and lights and shopping, it is hard to realize that Christmas wasn’t always the way it is today.

If you flip back to my 2010 post of Nannie Steed Winningham’s reminiscence of the Confederate Christmases of 1862, ’63 and ’64,[ii] you will note that there is no mention whatsoever of Christmas trees.  Santa Claus came down the chimney, as usual, and filled up the family’s stockings with gifts.  There was too much eggnog, and there was a visit by the scary “Christmas Waifs” demanding hand-outs.  But no tree.

In fact, Christmas was not at the time of the Civil War an actual official holiday.  As Dickens had Scrooge point out in A Christmas Carol, it was up to an individual’s employer whether to give the day off from work.  The City of Asheboro itself was created on December 25, 1796, when the state legislature, meeting for a regular work day, passed “An Act to Establish a Town on Lands of Jesse Henley, in the County of Randolph, at the Court House of said County.”  Not until 1870 did Congress establish Christmas as a federal holiday.

Illustrated London News, 1847.

The modern American versions of both Thanksgiving and Christmas began to take shape during the Civil War period, and both traditions owe much to the editor of Godey’s Lady’s Book, who lobbied regularly for Americanized holidays.   The magazine at Christmas, 1850, printed the first widely-circulated picture in America of a decorated Christmas evergreen; it was a repurposed 1848 engraving of the British Royal Family with their tree at Windsor Castle which had been published in The iIllustrated London News.[iii]  Reprinted throughout the 1860s, the image became the iconic picture of an American Christmas tree.

Another influential magazine, Harper’s Weekly, is largely responsible for our modern image of Santa Claus himself.  Cartoonist Thomas Nast, a sketch artist for the magazine, created an illustration for the Christmas, 1861 issue to accompany the Clement Clarke Moore poem, “’Twas the Night Before Christmas.”  That was the first published image of Santa in a reindeer-drawn sleigh with a bag full of gifts slung over his shoulder.

Federal Santa

However, the fact that Nast also showed Santa delivering copies of Harper’s as gifts to Union soldiers on the war front soured the picture for Southerners.     The Richmond Examiner editorialized that this Northern image of Santa Claus was nothing more than an “Dutch toy-monger,” a “transflated scrub” from New York and New England “who has no more to do with genuine Virginia Hospitality and Christmas merry makings than a Hottentot.”[iv]

Christmas Tree at Windsor Castle, 1857

It wasn’t that Christmas trees were unknown in America at that time.  The British Royal Family brought the custom into England, and in a backhanded way North Carolina has a tie to that.  The wife of George III, Princess Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz (the namesake of Charlotte and Mecklenburg county), set up a Christmas tree at a party she gave for children in 1800.  Princess Victoria liked the custom and a tree was placed in her room.  In her journal for Christmas Eve 1832, the 13-year-old princess wrote:

“After dinner… we then went into the drawing-room near the dining-room… There were two large round tables on which were placed two trees hung with lights and sugar ornaments. All the presents being placed round the trees…”[v]

The custom became even more widespread after Victoria’s marriage to her German cousin Prince Albert, and by the early 1840s there were newspaper ads for Christmas trees that promoted their fashionable German origins and their popularity with children.  The Moravians of Salem are thought to have brought the custom of Christmas trees to North Carolina.  Randolph County had its few Moravians, but even more Lutherans, Amish, Dunkers and other German sectarians.  But I have seen no record of their Christmas celebrations.

Christmas Tree in Church

The first reference to a Randolph County Christmas tree that I know about comes from the manuscript “Reminiscences” of W. M. Curtis, a carbon typescript dated 1940.  Walter Makepeace Curtis (1867-1955), a Methodist minister, was Secretary-Treasurer of Greensboro College for 34 years.  His autobiography begins,

“I was born on February 18, 1867, in Franklinsville, Randolph County, North Carolina.  My home was on an island with Deep river on the south and a mill race on the north.  This race began at a dam across the river at the west end of the village and emptied into the river at the Franklinsville cotton mill.

… My father, Dennis Cortes Curtis [1826-1885] (he always signed his name D. Curtis) was the son of James Curtis, a farmer who lived a few miles south of Franklinsville….

“There was a public schoolhouse for the children of the village near the Methodist Church, but the school was in session only three months of the year, and my father was anxious for his children to have better educational opportunities so he employed a governess… My father was superintendent of the Sunday School in the Methodist Church, and he took me to Sunday School when I was quite small….

 

“At Christmas we had a Christmas tree in the Sunday School.  The tree was always a large holly with red berries.  Some time before Christmas my father would drive to Greensboro and purchase presents and decorations for the tree.  On the night before Christmas, as soon as it was dark, my little four-wheel wagon was loaded with Christmas things and I, with some help, pulled the wagon up to the church, where my father and others arranged the decorations and presents on the tree.  Individuals were permitted to have their presents, with the name of the recipient on each one, hung on the tree.  There were a good many of these, and it was interesting to hear the names called out.  Each one receiving a present would go forward and get the gift.  This Christmas tree celebration was always held on Christmas Eve, and was quite an event in the village.”

Although Curtis doesn’t give a specific date for this tree, it had to date from before the Curtises moved to Greensboro in 1880, and probably can be attributed to the period around 1875.[vi]

The first published American illustration of a Christmas Tree, from The Stranger’s Gift, printed in Boston, 1836.

This is in accord with the introduction of trees into Christmas celebrations; they often were introduced to the public places at churches, hospitals and charity bazaars, and their familiarity there slowly led people to set up private trees at home.  It also seems to have been understood that Christmas trees were used to provide gifts for the underprivileged.  Varina Davis noted in her 1896 recollection of Christmases in Richmond during the war years, ” like a clap of thunder out of a clear sky came the information that the orphans at the Episcopalian home had been promised a Christmas tree and the toys, candy and cakes must be provided…” [http://www.civilwar.org/education/history/on-the-homefront/culture/christmas.html]   As late as 1906 a charity was set up specifically to introduce decorated trees to poor children in London slums ‘who had never seen a Christmas tree’.[vii]

Handrawn sketch from 1812 or 1819 by John Lewis Krimmel of Philadelphia.

The first Yule trees were small ones that sat on a table, decorated with dried fruit, popcorn, pine cones and homemade paper chains and baskets for nuts.  A tree was not brought into the house and decorated before December 23^rd, “the traditional “First Day of Christmas,”  and the beginning of the 12-day Christmas season that ended on Twelfth Night (January 5^th).  To have a tree up before or after those dates was considered bad luck.

A non-evergreen Christmas tree from the 1850s.

Not all Christmas trees were evergreens.  In the late 1800s and, most probably, long before, home-made white Christmas trees were made by wrapping strips of cotton batting around leafless branches creating the appearance of a snow-laden tree.  Only those presents too large to be hung on the tree were placed on the tree skirt underneath the tree.  Most presents were small, and edible gifts were among the most highly prized gifts hung in small baskets on the tree.  During the war, one soldier from a New Jersey regiment recorded in his diary, “In order to make it look much like Christmas as possible, a small tree was stuck up in front of our tent, decked off with hard tack [a hard cracker] and pork, in lieu of cakes and oranges, etc.” [viii]

Thomas Nast, from Harper’s Weekly, Jan. 3, 1863

(Even in the early 1960s, those of us who watched “The Old Rebel and Pecos Pete” on WFMY Channel 2 knew that the only proper ending of our answer to the question “What do you want for Christmas?” was “X,Y,Z, -and Nuts and Fruits and Candies.” As late as 1943, the singer of the wartime song “Ill Be Home for Christmas” was longing for “presents on the tree” (not under the tree).

This was a survival of the ancient European tradition.  Decorated trees were part of the stage sets for medieval religious mystery plays that were given on December 24^th on the “name days” of Adam and Eve.  Those trees were hung with apples (the “forbidden fruit”) and wafers (representing the Eucharist and redemption).  Bakers made pretzels and gingerbread cookies for the tree that people took home as souvenirs. In 1570 a small tree set up in the Guild-House in Breman, Germany was decorated with “apples, nuts, dates, pretzels and paper flowers”.  In 1605 a German visitor wrote: “At Christmas they set up fir trees in the parlours of Strasbourg and hang thereon roses cut out of many-coloured paper, apples, wafers, gold foil, sweets, etc.” The many food items were symbols of Plenty, the flowers, originally only red (for Knowledge) and White (for Innocence).

The 2012 White House tree in the Blue Room.

Americans did not take easily to the foreign custom of Christmas trees.  Franklin Pierce had the first Christmas tree in the White House in 1846.  But President President William McKinley reportedly received a letter in 1899 saying Christmas trees “un-American,” and his successor Theodore Roosevelt banned Christmas trees from the White House because he feared that Christmas trees would lead to deforestation.  Roosevelt, however, was undercut by his own youngest sons, Archie and Quentin, who in 1902 went outside and cut down a small tree right on the White House grounds and hid it in a White House closet.  Roosevelt acknowledged the event in a letter in which he wrote:

Yesterday Archie got among his presents a small rifle from me and a pair of riding boots from his mother. He won’t be able to use the rifle until next summer, but he has gone off very happy in the riding boots for a ride on the calico pony Algonquin, the one you rode the other day. Yesterday morning at a quarter of seven all the children were up and dressed and began to hammer at the door of their mother’s and my room, in which their six stockings, all bulging out with queer angles and rotundities, were hanging from the fireplace. So their mother and I got up, shut the window, lit the fire (taking down the stockings of course), put on our wrappers and prepared to admit the children. But first there was a surprise for me, also for their good mother, for Archie had a little birthday tree of his own which he had rigged up with the help of one of the carpenters in a big closet; and we all had to look at the tree and each of us got a present off of it. There was also one present each for Jack the dog, Tom Quartz the kitten, and Algonquin the pony, whom Archie would no more think of neglecting that I would neglect his brothers and sisters. Then all the children came into our bed and there they opened their stockings.[ix]

It sounds to me as though Teddy’s idea of Christmas was not very different from Nannie Winninghams- stockings were the place Santa left the presents.  More than 100 years later, what we think is our “traditional” Christmas has been shaped by the media, retailers, film and recorded music of the 20^th century more than we ever realize.

[i] WUNC TV website data.

[ii]  https://randolphhistory.wordpress.com/2010/12/10/confederate-christmas-in-randolph-county-2/

[iii] Karal Ann Marling (2000). Merry Christmas! Celebrating America’s greatest holiday. Harvard University Press. p. 244.

[iv] Marten, James (2000). The Children’s Civil War. University of North Carolina Press. P120

[v] The Girlhood of Queen Victoria: A Selection from Her Majesty’s Diaries, p.61. Longmans, Green & Co., 1912

[vi] The obituary of Curtis’s mother in the Greensboro Daily News of 23 August 1918 gives frame for this assumption-

“Mrs. Lucy Ellen Makepeace Curtis died at her home, 108 Odell Place, yesterday afternoon, at 4:15 o’clock. For a number of years, Mrs. Curtis had been living with her son, Rev. W.M. Curtis, of this city. Mrs. Curtis was born at Petersburg, VA, December 25, 1839. Soon after her birth her parents, George Makepeace and Mrs. Luc Makepeace, settled at Franklinville, where she grew up. She was married to Dennis Curtis, of Franklinville, October 11, 1860. Dennis was a native of Randolph County and was prominently connected with the Franklinville Manufacturing Company, the Deep River Manufacturing Company, and later with the mercantile business firm of Odell and company of this city.  In 1880 Mrs. Curtis moved from Franklinville to Greensboro when Mr. Curtis became personally associated with the firm of Odell and company….”

[vii] http://westminsterabbeyshop.wordpress.com/2014/12/12/the-history-of-the-christmas-tree-in-britain/

[viii] http://www.historynet.com/christmas-in-the-civil-war-december-1998-civil-war-times-feature.htm

[ix] http://www.ncregister.com/blog/matthew-archbold/the-president-who-banned-christmas-trees-and-the-boy-who-snuck-one-in#ixzz3MVw7I6Qj

More on Charlie Poole and Daner Johnson

I have recently had several inquiries regarding Charlie Poole and Daner Johnson from people who have read my previous posts.  I purposefully didn’t include a lot of genealogical material there, but as usual, many of the interesting details of the lives of local people relate to their families.

Since Daner is supposed to have been the teacher of Charlie, I decided to go back and unearth as many facts about their family connections as I could find.

The Pooles.

There are a couple of direct entries on Charlie Poole in ancestry.com, but all entries have issues, especially with dates of birth and death.  I prefer to fall back on what census takers recorded first hand at the time.

There is a lot of understandable confusion over when Charlie Poole’s  mother may have died, stemming largely from the fact that his father John Philip Poole supposedly married two sisters with very similar names.

John Phillip Poole and wife appear in both the 1900 census of Randolph County and the 1910 census of Alamance as just “John Poole” and spouse “Bettie.” Ancestry.com entries list his birth year as 1853, but the 1900 census says he was born in March 1850 in NC, and his father was born in NC.

John Poole’s occupation in 1900 is listed as “Cotton Mill Spinner;” in 1910 it is listed as “Cotton Mill Lapper.”  [The Lapper Room was part of the process of opening bales of cotton and making flat sheets or laps of cotton which would then be sent to the Carding Room.  From the Carding Room, roving bobbins would go to the Spinning Room.]  Both censuses says that John Poole cannot read or write, and is a renter of a house (not a farm) in each place.  Franklinville Township included the mill villages of Franklinsville, Island Ford, Cedar Falls, Central Falls and Worthville, all within a 9-mile stretch of Deep River.

1900 Census Randolph (Fville)

 

Bettie Poole is listed in both censuses as a house keeper.  The 1900 census says she is the mother of 9 children, 8 of whom are living.  The 1910 census says she is the mother of 13 children, 8 of whom are living.  The 1910 census says that only she and her son “Ralf” can read and write.  In the 1900 census, only son Lea had attended school that year.

The following children of John and Bettie Poole are listed in 1900 (birth dates from census; death dates from ancestry.com)

Sarah E (b Oct 1878) d 1933 (occupation 1900, “Cotton Mill Spinner”)

Leroy (Lea) R (Jan 1884- 1957)  (1900- “Cotton Mill Spinner”)

Ralph (Aug 1889-  )  (1900- “Cotton Mill Spinner”)

Charlie C (March 1891) (different birth year from most listings) (no occupation)

James (Feb 1894)  (no occupation)

Giles (Jiley) M. (Aug 1896)  (no occupation)

Henry M (Aug 1897)  (no occupation)

In the 1910 Census the family has moved from Franklinville TS in Randolph County to Faucette TS in Alamance County [The Haw River mill village is partially in Faucette TS and partly in Haw River TS.  The villages of Glencoe and Hopedale are also in Faucette TS].  Sarah is no longer listed in the family, and Lea lives in a neighboring house with his wife Julia, age 21, whom he married in 1906.  They have a daughter Mary E., age 2.  Lea’s occupation is listed as “Cotton Mill Spinner” in 1900 and “Cotton Mill Slubber” in 1910.  [A Slubber was one of 3 different roving frames used in the Carding Room preparing cotton for spinning].

In 1901 Ralph’s occupation has changed to “Carder,” so he worked in the Card Room with Lea.  “Charley”’s occupation in 1910 is  “Cotton Mill Oiler.”  This was necessary to keep the machinery in good operating condition, and there may have been oilers in each separate “Room,” or they may have been sent where ever they were needed.  In 1910, James, “Jiley” and Henry all worked as “Cotton Mill Doffers.”  Charlie’s job as an oiler could be seen as a step up from doffer, but didn’t require particular speed or skill, as a doffer might.

In 1910 the Pooles obviously live in an Alamance County mill village, as they are surrounded by mill occupations.  In 1900 one neighbor, Anderson Diffee, is a “Cotton Mill Bailer” [i.e., employed in the Cloth Room, baling cloth for shipping].  The next neighbor, Jessie Bonkemeyer, is a farmer.  On the pages before and after the Poole entry, there are 5 weavers and  two spinners listed in 4 families among numerous farmers.

1910 Census Alamance

The Johnsons.

Sorting out the Johnson family is not so straight-forward, but I think I have put something together from assorted ancestry.com records and census records.

Hiram Johnson, age 55, is listed as a Miller in the 1870 census of Surry Co, NC (Mt. Airy vicinity).  His wife is Lydia Shields, age 54, born in Moore County, NC, near Carthage.  The 1870 census lists their children as follows:

Elizabeth, age 24, “House Keeper” [born circa 1846]

Lydia, age 23, “At home”

Elizabeth, age 15, “At home”  [born circa 1855)

Hiram, age 15, “At school”

Cindee, age 10, “at home”

Louisa, age 4, “At home”

The Charlie Poole listings on ancestry.com list what may be the two Elizabeths as-

“Betsy Ann, 1850-1896)” and

“Bettie Ellen, 1850-1911”

Obviously these dates don’t fit, but the nicknames might.

Ancestry.com lists the father of Hiram Johnson as Ransom Johnson, c1790-1852

Ransom is listed as having two children with Susan (unk. Last name)-

Hiram,

Acquilla (3-3-1813 in Alamance County -1869)

Acquilla Johnsonmarried Philipena Cornelia Moser (1815-1910) in Alamance County.

They had at least seven children (one of which, another Elizabeth ‘Betsy’ Johnson, married Samson Bunting in 1861 and died in 1876, so thankfully doesn’t muddy the already murky Bettie/Betsy Johnson waters).

One of their daughters, Nancy Lou Johnson, apparently had 4 children, at least 3 of whom are listed as “unknown father.”

Dora E. Johnson (1864-1958, father David Breedlove)

William Arthur Johnson, 1883-1948 (he later had 13 children of his own)

Napoleon P. Lusien Johnson (1870-1955), who married twice and may still have living children)

Daner Gordon Johnson, 1879-1955.

So, Daner Johnson’s paternal grandfather Acquilla Johnson and Charlie Poole’s maternal grandfather Hiram Johnson were brothers.

That means their parents (Bettie Johnson, whichever one, and Nancy Lou Johnson) were first cousins, and Daner and Charlie were second cousins. (Not first cousins, as I said in my original blog post)

Here is what I have found specifically regarding Daner in the public records:

In 1870 census takers found Nancy Johnson, a “seamstress” aged 30, living in the home of her sister Harriet Johnson, age 34.  Her daughter Dora E., 6 and Thomas, age 2, were “at home.”  The Johnson sisters lived next door to Anthony Moser, age 46, a farmer with 7 children, who was also their uncle, brother of their mother Philapena.

In the 1880 Census Nancy Johnson, aged 41, is listed as a single head of household living in “Randleman Mills” NC.  Her daughter Dora E., age 16, is employed in a cotton mill.  Nancy has sons Napoleon P., aged 9; William A., aged 4, and Danie G., 8 months.

The 1900 census shows 62-year-old Nancy as the head of her household, a farm in Cedar Grove township of Randolph County.  She owned the land subject to a mortgage, and had 15 animals.  Her son Napoleon L. Johnson, 29 and single, farmed the land.  Her son Dannier G. Johnson, single, had “no occupation.”  Daner and his mother could not read or write, though Napoleon (known as “Nep,”) could.

In 1910 Napoleon, 39, is married to Jennie, 34, and they have a daughter Lora, 6 months old.  Jennie Trotter is listed in genealogy indexes as dying in 1915.

The 1910 census found Daner Johnson living in Siler City, NC, boarding in the home of John J. Foster, age 54.  Johnson, aged 29, is living there with his wife Lilian, age 18.  They have been married one year.  Daner’s occupation is listed as “self-employed automobile mechanic,” and he had been out of work for 8 weeks in the previous year.  According to the census, he can read and write.

In 1920, Napoleon, 49, is single and Minnie Underwood, 32, is living in his house with daughter lora, 10, and James Johnson, age 8.  Minnie (1887-1965) at some point married Napoleon and they are both buried in the Holiness Church cemetery in Randleman.  Their daughter Lora or “Loray” never married and was still living with them at the time of the 1940 census.  Loray Johnson was the informant providing information for the death certificates of both her father and her uncle Daner in 1955.

Daner and his mother Nancy are both buried in the Melanchthon Lutheran cemetery west of Liberty in Randolph County.

 

Mac Whatley, 7-15-14

“Blockading”: The oral autobiography of Dove Coble

Ready to Run the Blockade, from http://www.louisville.com

This is about half of an oral history interview I recorded with Dove Coble (1900-2000) at his daughter’s house on 1 March 1997.  Dove was a delightful fellow who remembered just about everything that had ever happened to him.  I had a great time talking with him, and it was the only interview I ever did with someone willing to talk about the business of running moonshine, a big part of the economy of the county in the late Nineteenth and the first half of the Twentieth centuries.

The long and colorful tradition of moonshining in Randolph County ran from Black Ankle on the Montgomery County border, through Seagrove and Millboro all the way north to Level Cross.  After the Civil War the federal government established a system of licensed distilleries in which Treasury Agents would collect a tax on each gallon of whiskey produced.  There were many “Government Stills” established across Randolph, but for each legal still there were at least two illegal producers.  Moonshiners refused to run a “government still” and pay the excise tax.  In Prohibition days (and afterwards) running the illicit liquor from the stills deep in the Randolph County countryside up to the thirsty markets in the North was a major source of cash income.  Though glass “Mason” jars were invented before the Civil War (many were produced up into the 1900s with the mark “Patent Nov 30th 1858”), moonshiners kept many a Randolph and Moore county potter in business up until World War II.  And transporting those containers to the ultimate buyers was the province of the “Blockade Runner,” or “Blockaders,” a very conscious reference to the Civil War “greyhounds of the sea” which ran the federal blockade of southern ports to supply the Confederate war effort. 

Dove Coble died just a few weeks short of his 100^th birthday, and was buried in Gray’s Chapel, or “York Town,” as he called it.

My name’s William Dove Coble.  Senior.  That’s my boy at Eastern Randolph [his son, Dove Coble Jr., was a teacher at ERHS].  I was born the 11^th of June, 1900.  If I live to see June I’ll be 97.   I was born over there on Sandy Creek; Brower’s Mill.  It’s Kidd’s Mill now, on Sandy Creek, back in the woods there. My daddy, Rossie Coble, died in 1917, and was buried over at Gray’s Chapel, and I’ve been there ever since.  There was five of us boys and three girls.  I was the oldest child.  They’ve all gone but me and my youngest brother, Truman Coble, lives there in Ramseur.  Seventeen years younger than me.  My daddy died in March, and in June I was seventeen, and then Truman was born after that.  My father lived in the country.  Shelly Coble was my daddy’s brother, and Will Coble, and Clem Coble, they’re buried this side of Town, there where Joe Buie’s father is buried.  Charlie Coble and Ham Coble, they’re my closest kin.  I lived over here at Gray’s Chapel, not at the schoolhouse, but on up the road where that dairy barn is, at the rock wall.  Hackett Road.  That’s where Dove Jr. lives.  My wife passed away and I’ve been over here at Opal’s [his daughter in Asheboro] since ’82, when Curtis Coble passed away….

I never did get no education, never got to seventh grade.  I get more now out of the Upper Room than I can the Bible.  The stories, you know; I ain’t got no education.  I can read, and write my name.  I started off at Patterson’s Grove.  The schoolhouse was on what you called the Ferguson road, the road from Ramseur to White’s Chapel.  I went there four years, and then over to White’s Chapel, at a little schoolhouse there, didn’t go there but one.  Just five or six years.  I moved all over the country.  I wasn’t doing nothing but running around.  We just drug up, to tell the truth about it.  I’m lucky to be here.  I lost my daddy, and I wasn’t 17; there was nine of us, and no welfare nor nothing.  It was Hoover days.  Can you imagine how I lived?  Just drug up.

I lived over there in the country when the war ended, close to Brower’s Mill.  My daddy died in 1916, and the next year I had to register.  I was up plowing corn there in the back yard, plowing around saw logs in the field.  Momma come out in the field and waved at me; we heared the bells and whistles blowing at Franklinville.  We didn’t have any telephones.  They tied them whistles down; you can imagine the racket.  Both mills sounded the same; they both had whistles; you couldn’t tell one from the other.  I registered for the war in Ramseur.  I.F. Craven ran the draft board.  He lived in a big house behind the drug store beside Fred Thomas, who run the broom shop.  I’ve got that little card; it’s the only thing I’ve got to know when I was born; didn’t get no birth certificate.

My grandpaw W.H. Coble, William, is buried right there in that old cemetery, Old Salem.   I never remember any church there, I don’t know where it fell down or what.    He’s where the William come from.  Leeshy, my grandmaw, that’s where they got the Dove;  from Dunc Dove’s crowd; my grandmaw was his sister.  They lived up towards White’s Memorial.  Dunc and his son Tracy lived there on the hill next to Dr. Fox, on that street above Burnice Jones.  My grandpaw come down on a wagon and we went to that old wooden store [the lower company store]; went and got molasses out of a fifty-gallon drum with my grandpaw.  That was back before I went to school, Nineteen Five.  The Company stores were just old country stores.  They had everything in the world you wanted in there.  But I didn’t buy nothing.  Didn’t have to buy nothing.  Wasn’t nothing I could buy.  I didn’t have no money; what could I buy?

1924 Open Cab Express Body Model TT- Ford’s first pickup. Before that model year Ford only provided the truck chassis, and local wagonmakers purpose-built the bodies.

I come there to Franklinville in Twenty.  Ed Routh, Ernest’s daddy, and Paul, and Iula, found out I needed work.  I drove a truck, the first one they ever had in Franklinville.  One ton Ford truck, open bed, to haul flour and feed and everything they made.  Had a cover for it, but it was open, open bed.  Open cab, no glass.  I hauled flour to Seagrove and Siler City, and loaded it on the train.  They shipped it to the college up there.  Women’s College bought the flour direct from the mill, and had it shipped up there.  It was too far to drive then.  Wasn’t no such thing as a hard surface.  64 wasn’t built.  No road down to Ramseur, or anywhere.  Did without ‘em.  Parks Buie told me that Joe would order five gallons of oysters of a morning, tell them to put them on the train down on the coast, and they’d come to Greensboro and down to Franklinville on the second train, that run after dinner, and he’d get it of an evening.  Five gallons of oysters for a dollar and a quarter.  The train went up in the morning, met the trains and stuff in Greensboro, and come back after dinner.

Guess how much I made in six days.  Ten dollars a week for six days, ten hours a day.  All day.  Went in six in the morning, stayed till five in the evening.  An hour out for dinner.  If they didn’t fix for me I walked back to the house for dinner, next door to Burnice Jones, where he lives now.  That house above it.  I lived with my great aunts, Bell and Lizzie and Effie Luther.  They’re all buried around there.  They worked in the mill before I went down there. My aunts were fine people, but they was old then.  They was retired.  Two of them never married.  Old widow women.  They looked after me, they was good. I maybe paid $5 a week; if I wanted to pay them anything I did, but I didn’t have to.

Ed Routh was the head knocker and manager.  He was the flour man.  Bascom Kinney ground the corn meal.  Old Davis, across the river, he was there part of the time.  They’re all gone.  They bought the truck while I was there.  I was the first driver they had, anyway.  I could drive anything then.  The first job I had, I helped put flour in the sacks, meal, flour and everything.  Corn meal went in little bitty bags, ten pounds.  Plain corn meal. They didn’t have no self-rising to start with; they put it in after I went down there. Excelsior was the plain flour; Dainty Biscuit was the self-rising.  I bagged that flour, and Ernest helped before he went on the road.  Ten pound bags; twenty-five; and them big bags is what they shipped.  They put ninety-eight pounds in them.  The college got maybe ten bags in a shipment, every week, or whenever they needed it.  I first hauled stuff through the wooden bridge, the covered bridge.  Mr. Routh lived right up there by the mill.  Basc Kinney lived next door, that worked for Ed as a miller.…

[I] Went to work in the roller mill.  Me and Ernest worked there, and his daddy.  Ed Routh done the most of the work.  He could do most anything, kept everything just as clean as a woman.  He kept us wore plumb out to keep the spider webs and things cleaned up. That mill, it run by water then.  The water wheel was in the lower end, the back end.  The race run around behind the mill, and a chute come out of there, going under to the water wheel, and the shaft run back under the mill and the belts went on up.  All of it was ground by water then.  Didn’t have no lights to start with; they finally got up to date, and got electricity.  And the cotton mill run by water then, too….

I had an old T-model, $150 copper head T-model, ‘Fifteen.  I got Joe Buie to let me have a little money, maybe a hundred dollars, and my aunt give me some. There wasn’t no bank, they put that in after I went there.  That store opened up, and the office for both mills.  I didn’t have to have but two or three hundred dollars, but I didn’t have none.  I got it the first year I was down there.  Twenty-one.  $150; drove it; kept it for five years, and I got that much out of it when I sold it.  Then when the A-Models come out, I got another one.  I had a A-Model when I got married….

1927 was the first production year for the Model A Ford.

[John] Clark changed everything [about Franklinsville in 1923].  But of course I was blockade running around all over the country, wasn’t married or nothing; didn’t stay down there much.  I was maybe in Siler City one night and somewheres else the next.  But I still worked every day, ten hours a day.  Back then, the hours weren’t nothing. Bob Craven, who lived in that last house by the trussell, said he could remember me going by there of a morning at daylight, going to the mill.  He said, “You was crazy as hell, then.”  I said, I didn’t have no choice.  I stayed at home there, piddled around so we didn’t starve.  You know what we had.  Just nothing.  Hoover Days.  I don’t care what your politics are. If you lived through Hoover Days, you won’t forget it, if you live to be a hundred.  I sold liquor of a night, when I was driving the truck [for the roller mill]; me and Benton Moon.  Did you know him?  Fanny Burke was his wife, and Roy Holliday married her later.  Me and Benton would go over in York Town and get a case every night.  All of them around there, Doc Cheek, that run the drugstore, he’d drink it just like water.  That’s what Franklinville was like when I went down there.

You could buy liquor anywhere you wanted it. There were a few government stills around, but I never did go to none of them. Over here in Lineberry where I live now, George Allred had one back up in the woods there.  And there was one there at Shady Grove.  Sharp Kivett, he’d give you the history of that.  Fletcher Pugh, owns that sawmill on that road, he could tell you the truth about it.  Sharp Kivett and George Allred, that’s the only two government-mades I ever went to, knew where the places were.

From the New Georgia Encyclopedia

But I went to all these others, all over the country.  We had plenty of it around White’s Chapel. York Town, or White’s Chapel, it’s all the same to me.  People there made blockade whiskey, it wasn’t government liquor.  My daddy made liquor all his life.  Old man Warren Langley over here at Staley, down close to the government still at Staley; his boy Clarence died here last year;  Warren Langley was number one.  The Toomeses were good up in Level Cross.  But if you wanted good liquor, back in below Seagrove, down towards the river, old man Lucas was the one. Cross the railroad and go back down there by Luck’s, and wind around not more than a mile back over in there.  If he had bad liquor he’d tell you so.  He’d say, “I ain’t got nothing for you this week.”  I wouldn’t buy no burnt liquor.  And he

had enough sense, if had a little burnt liquor, he wouldn’t put it off on one of his customers.  You know, the mash, what makes the steam off the whiskey, if it stuck to the bottom of your still, it burnt.  It ain’t nothing to brag about, but they’d take me when I was little, and they’d poke me there after the fire was took out, and have me clean that still out.  I’ve been in one many a time.   If you make it right, you had copper from where you put it in the still.  Then it went to the wooden doubler, and then it went up in the cooler, and when it went on out down there where you catch it in a jug, it was liquor.  If it come out there, and there weren’t no bead on it, they wouldn’t save it.  You’d check the temperature by looking to see if it beaded up on the copper.  You’d shake it.  If it’s right fine on you, it ain’t rig

ht.  It all used to be made out of corn; they made out of sugar later.  That man in Staley, to start off with, he wouldn’t have no sugar liquor.  He made corn liquor.  Oscar Langley was one of Warren’s boys.  He used to play ball in Ramseur and he was drunk as a fool, and they couldn’t tell it.  He was a pitcher, I believe.  It’s all behind me, but I’ve seen lots of things in my time.   There ain’t a place between here and Staley, creek or branch or road nor nothing else that I ain’t been.  I’ve been down to a still on that Hickory Mountain road, from Siler City to Pittsboro.  It ain’t nothing to brag about, but I’ve been there.  It was the way to make money.  But I didn’t drink none of it.  I found out, it was to sell, not to drink.  I’ve never been drunk in my life.  My brother, he took enough for me and him both.  It just ruint him.  But you can’t convince him of that, even now.

Not many people would fool with brandy.  Some of them made it, and some didn’t.  I had the most brandy that’s ever been over in there.  I had twenty gallons up there in Lineberry, in the barn.  Clark Millikan made it for me, the first brandy he ever made in his life. That was R.C. Millikan, who died here recently.  I went to the mountains and got a whole load of apples, put it in the barrell, and kept it till it worked over.  Made cider.  Put them in a barrell, put your sugar in it, or after it sours you can make it without if you clear it up.  While it’s working you can’t still it.  It’s got to work over.  Clark made a little money.  But he died over here with his britches open [in the nursing home], just like me and you’s gonna do.

Moonshine run, from serbianforum.org

I could make $10 in a night.  That’s the reason I went home; I told Ed Routh I could make more than that by going to York Town one day a week.  Well, he said, you just come on and work for me while you’re here, and I’ll pay you as much again as you’re getting.  They paid me five out of the mill and five out of the Company.  It all went to different names.  Roller mill got credit for this; the mill got the other.  I still run around everywhere, but he didn’t know it.  I didn’t ever fool with it around there [the roller mill].  Ed would take a drink, but I didn’t know till after he was Register of Deeds that he ever did.  He wasn’t a drunkard, but after he’d come back to Ramseur, he told me, when you get some good, you can bring me half a gallon once in a while.  But politics didn’t change that man.  He didn’t change because he had an office job.  If you’d started down there where I did, barefooted, no daddy, you’d know about how you’d feel.  Then when you’d get up a little, you’d get above it.  But Ed was number one, and Joe Buie was just as good.  He wouldn’t tell you no lie, nor cheat you either.  And that old Spoon boy, one armed man, the banker there, run the bank beside the office; if I didn’t have a dollar I could go in there and get it.   The Sumners lived in that house across the road.  John, and George, the county doctor.  And two girls.  Dave Sumner let me put my new car in that shed behind the house, wouldn’t charge me a cent.  Edison Curtis lived up on that hill on Depot Street, and Henry Curtis, and Polly Newsom, and Will Thomas lived down through there.  There wasn’t anybody in Franklinville or between here and Staley I didn’t know.

A quart Kerr jar of white liquor.

Sometimes you’d pay $5 for six gallons; you’d take it and peddle it out; people would buy it, and you could double it.  I took it right down town there [Asheboro], where the bank used to be [Bank of Randolph], and people would give me orders to take some to Greensboro.  They couldn’t get blockade liquor in Greensboro.  They had to come out somewhere else and get it.  They could buy liquor, but they didn’t want that.  That man at the bank would say, “You go take Ben Cone five gallons.  He lives out there toward White Oak.  Just drive on out there like you own the place.  Drive in there like you have groceries.”  I had pretty good nerve then.  But they never caught me.  Tommy Brookshire that lived at Randleman was the deputy here one time.  I was going to town one night, right down here where the hospital is; I was in one of those A models.  Well, he just drove up to me and was gonna stop me, and I just turned round and went down that side street, and didn’t see him any more that night.  And he didn’t see me.  That’s as close as anybody ever caught me, but I didn’t stop.  Them days is all gone.

I stayed there till the last day of Twenty-five.  Got married, and never did work any more down there.   I moved up here to Lineberry, Acie’s Store up above Gray’s Chapel.  I didn’t have no land, and I bought that schoolhouse for $200.  Put a new roof on it, and rented it since I’ve been over here.  I give it all to the young’uns, where Acie Lineberry’s store was.   And that Highway from Asheboro to Liberty wasn’t built then.  They built it with horses. That’s how long I’ve been there.  I met my wife over here at Grays Chapel.  She was a Hackett.  She come from over at White’s Chapel.  I got married the last week of the year.  Went up there and still run around all over the country and everywhere else after I was married.  Siler City and Seagrove, or below Seagrove, was as far as I ever went.  You know what they call Black Ankle?  I used to take to a store back in there, ten miles back on that river.  Mandy’s Store.  I’ve been in there and bought liquor since I been big enough to go back.  See, I stayed down there, sold liquor, peddled liquor, and everything else.  I don’t mind telling you.  All around Franklinville, and Black Ankle, and everywhere else.  I got pretty good on my feet then.  In 1928,  I had a little money I’d saved, and I got an A-model.  Paid for it peddling liquor.  But I went in debt building this bridge here in Central Falls in Twenty-eight.  That’s where I went in debt.  I made enough to get out there, but went in debt $500, and had to give my bootlegging car away.

But I had an old truck. Do you believe I drove an A model from Greensboro to Lancaster, Pennsylvania in one day?   I had that truck, and I knew a boy that had business up there, and he helped me buy a new truck here, and I went to South Carolina and sold liquor; earned enough to pay for my land over yonder in two years.  Now, then, what can you do in two years?  Go in debt, that’s all you can do. But there was money in trucks, if you worked it out.  I had to work it out; it wasn’t give to me.  I went to Greensboro and I told them, I gonna mark me a route to Pennsylvania.  He laid down a sheet of paper and said you just follow this highway till you hit the mountains.  You don’t go round them mountains, go right on through them till you get to Pennsylvania.  It’s seventy miles from where the President is over to Lancaster.  I drove up there from 8:00 till 9 that night.  I went by myself.  My old truck was up there; kept my new one here, and went to South Carolina.

When I got out of debt I quit fooling with it.  Old man Jewell Trogdon, a preacher here in town, he was the one caused me to get out.  He just told me, over here in Gray’s Chapel Church, “What if the Lord would take these two girls away from you?”  He knowed I was running around here and yonder and everything else.  Old man Trogdon showed me where I was wrong.  So I told the man over here who built this bridge, “Ed, you better make good of this liquor.  These two cases is the last.”  He said, “What do you mean?  You can’t quit!”  I said, “Yes, I have, I’ve done quit. You can drink it, but I ain’t even gonna sell this.”  I stayed and got enough to pay for my land off what I done that year.  I had $2,000 when I got done.  I got my first truck in ’28, over here at Central Falls.  And then went down there and got enough to pay for my land.  And I went on to carpentry work, and never fooled with no more liquor.

I know time changes everything, but I’ve seen a lot of things since ‘seventeen.

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.

Notes on A Confederate Christmas

“Santa Claus in Camp, 1864” by Thomas Nast in Harper’s Weekly.

Introductory Note:
“Mrs. James Lafayette Winningham…”
On 24 May 1876 Nancy Hannah Steed married James Lafayette Winningham (ca. 1853- 1930), the son of Siebert Francis Marion Winningham and Laura Ann Lyndon.  Winningham was born at Union Factory, now Randleman, North Carolina.  [Internet geneaological research on the Winningham and Steed families was largely posted by Donald Winningham.]

“…was the daughter of John Stanley Steed and Rachel Director Swaim.”
John Stanley Steed (22 Feb 1829 – 3 May 1899) was the son of Charles Steed (15 May 1782- March 1847), who served Randolph County both as a member of the North Carolina Senate and as a member of the North Carolina House of Representatives.  His mother Hannah Raines (born circa 1788- died after 1850) married Charles Steed on 25 Jan 1806.  John Stanley Steed married Rachel Director Swaim (15 Nov 1835 – 27 Nov 1880) about the year 1852.

Paragraph 1:
“As I was born in 1857…”
Nancy “Nannie” Hannah Steed was born 14 June 1857.

“My mother always took the children home to her father’s for the holidays”
Rachel Steed’s parents were Joshua Swaim (1804-1868) and Nancy H. Polk (1808 – 14 April 1865), who married in Guilford County on 1 September 1824, but lived in the Cedar Falls area (the area west of Franklinville, south of Grays Chapel, and east of Millboro).  The Christmas of 1864 may have stuck in Nannie Steed’s memory because it was the last she would have with her maternal grandmother Nancy Polk Swaim.

Maternal grandfather Joshua Swaim was the son of William Swaim and Elizabeth Sherwood, and nephew of the Clerk of Court Moses Swaim (1788-1870).   Joshua and Nancy Swaim were buried in the old Timber Ridge cemetery near Level Cross.  Here is a link to photographs of their tombstones: http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~davidswaim/TimberRidge.htm

“In their home were our three young aunts and a young uncle, all full of life and fun, and about ten grandchildren.”
Nancy and Joshua Swaim of Cedar Falls had the following children, several of whom had moved West before the time of the Civil War.  Numbers 7 through 10 are Nannie’s “young aunts and uncle”:
1.  James Polk Swaim (November 21, 1825 – February 04, 1890); m. Sarah McDonald about 1848; died in  Franklin County, Ark.
2.  Elizabeth Swaim (September 30, 1827-  June 28, 1846).
3.  Margaret J. Swaim, b. March 22, 1829- February 29, 1848.
4.  Mary Swaim (b. ca. 1831); md. Mr. Glass before 1854.
5.  William Walter Swaim (February 10, 1833 – died October 17, 1905 in Eldora, Hardin County, Iowa); m. Mary Ann Davis, ca. 1859, in Hamilton Co., Indiana.
6.  Rachel Director Swaim, (November 15, 1835 – May 27, 1880); m. John Stanley Steed on October 07, 1852.  [Nannie’s Grandma Swaim]
7.  Luther Clegg Swaim (b. ca. 1837, d. ca. 1868) [Nannie’s Uncle “Luther Clegg”]
8. Susannah Swaim (b. ca. 1840); m. J.L. Coble, September 04, 1862.
9. Hannah Swaim (b. ca. 1841); m. Henry C. Green, October 06, 1864.
10. Martha Swaim (b. ca. 1847).

{The family information is Included in the Polk family genealogy, posted by Kathy Parmenter at http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/POLK/1999-07/0931116431 }.

“Of us there were my three brothers and myself.”
As of this time in the story, John and Rachel Steed had the following children:  Emily, born 1853, who died in infancy; Wiley Franklin, born 1855; Nancy Hannah, born 1857; Henry Luther, born 1860; Joshua Nathaniel, b. 1862.

Paragraph 2:
“The young people had wheat or potato coffee…”
Imports of coffee and other delicacies were reduced almost to the point of nonexistence by the federal blockade of southern ports.  According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee_substitute ), Roasted acorns, almonds, barley, beechnuts, beetroots, carrots, chicory, corn, cottonseed, dandelion root, figs, okra seed, peas, Irish potatoes (but only the peel), rice, rye, soybeans, and sweet potatoes have all been used as coffee substitutes.  Roasted and ground wheat as a non-caffeinated substitute for coffee was popular again in the United States during both World War I and II, when coffee was sharply rationed.   “Postum”  was the brand name of an instant-style coffee substitute made from wheat bran, corn and molasses which was popular in North Carolina in the 20th century, but production was discontinued in October, 2007.

Paragraph 3:
“In our stockings were…ginger cakes…”
Ginger is a tropical root imported from Africa, Jamaica, India or China.  It was a much-loved spice during the Civil War era; ginger beer, ginger ale, and all sorts of ginger cakes and breads were popular.  Some recipes could be rolled out, cut into shapes and hung on the tree; some were soft like bread and others were hard and crisp.  The following recipe from a Civil War reenactor group makes crisp, sugar- coated cookies suitable for putting in a stocking:

3/4 cups shortening

1 cup sugar

1 beaten egg

1/4 cup molasses

2 tsp. soda

1 tsp. cinnamon

1 tsp. ginger

2 cups flour

Combine shortening and sugar into a cream; add the egg and molasses and mix well. Sift together the dry ingredients and add to the shortening mixture. Mix until combined. Roll into walnut sized balls and roll in sugar. Bake at 350 degrees for 7 – 10 minutes.

Paragraph 4:
“…my aunties started the eggnog…”
Various milk punches were known in Europe and brought to America, so the exact orgin of Egg Nog is obscure.  “Nog” is an old English word with roots in East Anglia dialects that was used to describe a kind of strong beer which was served in a small wooden mug called a “noggin”.   “Egg nog” is first mentioned in the early nineteenth century but an alternative British name was “egg flip,” a punch made with milk and wine, particularly Spanish Sherry.
Internet sites repeatedly cite an unnamed and unsourced English visitor who wrote in 1866, “Christmas is not properly observed unless you brew egg nogg for all comers; everybody calls on everybody else; and each call is celebrated by a solemn egg-nogging…It is made cold and is drunk cold and is to be commended.”
The English author Elizabeth Leslie regularly published cookbooks on both sides of the Atlantic from 1837 to 1857.  Her Directions for Cookery, published in 1840, introduced the concept of the “sandwich” to America.  This recipe for Egg Nogg comes from the edition of 1851:
“Beat separately the yolks and whites of 6 eggs. Stir the yolks into a quart of rich milk, or thin cream, add half a pound of sugar. Then mix in half a pint of rum or brandy. Flavor with a grated nutmeg. Lastly, stir in gently the beaten whites of three eggs. It should be mixed in a china bowl.”

Perhaps the last word on Confederate egg nog would be the recipe of Mary Custis (Mrs. Robert E.) Lee herself::

-10 eggs, separated

-2 c. sugar

-2 1/2 c. brandy

1/2 c. and 1 tsp. dark rum

-8 c. milk or cream

Blend well the yolks of ten eggs, add 1 lb. of sugar; stir in slowly two tumblers of French brandy, 1/2 tumbler of rum, add 2 qts new milk, & lastly the egg whites beaten light (very fluffy).  Allow to “ripen” in a cold but not freezing place; an unheated room or porch was the common location for Mrs. Lee.

From The Robert E. Lee Family Cooking and Housekeeping Book (UNC Press, 2002), by Anne Carter Zimmer.

Paragraph 5:
“…expressed in those days as ‘Christmas Gift’…”
The phrase “Merry Christmas” was popularized around the world following the appearance of the Charles Dickens’ story, A Christmas Carol in 1843.  Robertson Cochrane, Wordplay: origins, meanings, and usage of the English language, p.126. (University of Toronto Press, 1996).  “Christmas Gift!”  is an earlier Southern tradition, used as a greeting.   The first person saying it on Christmas morning traditionally received a gift.  See “Whistlin’ Dixie: A Dictionary of Southern Expressions” by Robert Hendrickson (Pocket Books, New York, 1993).

Paragraph 6:
“Which is it, the old bad man or the Yankees?”
She is using a euphemism for “the Devil,” a word considered to be so much a curse word at the time that a well-bred young lady was not allowed to use such language.  The Devil was on the side of the Yankees, just as God was supposed to be on the side of the Confederacy.

“Little Christmas Waifs Are We”- 19th century Christmas Card

“…the old English custom of the waifs of England.”
It is unclear whether Nannie has here conflated two distinct Christmas rituals from medieval England, or whether the traditions had previously merged in the antebellum South.
The surviving English tradition is of the Christmas “Waits,” musicians and singers who go from door to door “waiting,” or caroling.  According to the 11th edition of the Encyclopedia Brittanica, “wait” is the name of a medieval night watchman, who sounded a horn or played tunes to mark the hours.  By the 15th century waits had become bands of itinerant musicians who paraded the streets at night at Christmas time, and became combined with another ancient tradition, “wassailing”.  It gradually became expected that the musicians would receive gifts and gratuities from the townspeople, and often “those who went wassailing would dress up like street waifs or ragamuffins.”  http://www.cafepress.com/+christmas_waifs_sticker,320599343
One other British custom of the Christmas season was specifically aimed at soliciting alms.  “Thomasing” anciently occured on 21 December (St Thomas’s Day) when the village poor people visited the homes of their better-off neighbours soliciting food and provisions to help them through the winter. Also called “Gooding,” “Mumping,” and “Doleing,” the earliest reference is from the year 1560, but the custom gradually declined through the 19th century as poor relief was institutionalized, and laws were passed against ‘begging’.
In the South this tradition may have inspired a tradition of inviting local orphans or “waifs” to spend Christmas afternoon with rural families or in urban church socials. [books.google.com/books?isbn=0253219558 ]  In 1864 the “ crowning amusement” of Christmas day for the Davis children in Richmond was “the children’s tree,” erected in the basement of St. Paul’s Church, decorated with strung popcorn, and hung with small gifts for orphans.   (First Lady Varina Davis’s 1896 article “Christmas in the Confederate White House” makes an  interesting contrast to Nannie Steed Winningham’s story of Christmas in rural Randolph County;
http://www.civilwar.org/education/history/on-the-homefront/culture/christmas.html ).

The First Confederate States Flag

Paragraph 7:
“ The Bonnie Blue Flag”
-is a marching song associated with the Confederacy.   The song was written to an Irish melody by entertainer Harry McCarthy during a concert in Jackson, Mississippi, in the spring of 1861 and first published that same year in New Orleans.  The song’s title refers to the unofficial first flag of the Confederate States, the symbol of secession from the Union bearing the “single star” of the chorus.   The “Band of Brothers” mentioned in the first line of the song is a reference to the St. Crispin’s day speech in Shakespeare’s play Henry V.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bonnie_Blue_Flag]
Here is the song:  http://www.gutenberg.org/files/21566/21566-h/music/bonnie.midi

“The Girl I left behind me”
-is a popular folk tune.  The first known printed text appeared in an Irish song collection in 1791; the earliest known version of the melody was printed in Dublin about 1810.   It was known in Britain as early as 1650, under the name “Brighton Camp”.  It was adopted by the US regular army as a marching tune during the War of 1812 after they heard a British prisoner singing it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Girl_I_Left_Behind
The song can be heard here:  http://www.contemplator.com/england/girl.html

“Hurrah for the Southern Rights, Hurrah! Hurrah!”
-Hurrah! Hurrah!/ For Southern rights, hurrah!” is actually the first two lines of the chorus of  “The Bonnie Blue Flag.”  ‘Hurrah! Hurrah! For the Southern Rights, hurrah!’ is an alternative reading of the line that is only found in Gone With The Wind, page 236.  Both undoubtedly reflect the way singers at the time added ‘the’ to mirror the same article in ‘the’ Bonnie Blue Flag.

“Hurrah! for the Homespun Dress the Southern Ladies Wear”
-”The Homespun Dress,” also known as “The Southern Girl,” or “The Southern Girl’s Song,” is a parody of The Bonnie Blue Flag that oral historians have found in variant versions all over the South.  Most authorities attribute the words to Miss Carrie Belle Sinclair of Augusta, Georgia.  See Songs of the Civil War, by Irwin Silber, Jerry Silverman; Dover, 1995, p.54.  The lyrics can be found at http://www.lizlyle.lofgrens.org/RmOlSngs/RTOS-HomespunDress.htmlv

Oh, yes, I am a Southern girl,

And glory in the name,

And boast it with far greater pride

Than glittering wealth and fame.

We envy not the Northern girl

Her robes of beauty rare,

Though diamonds grace her snowy neck

And pearls bedeck her hair.

CHORUS: Hurrah! Hurrah!

For the sunny South so dear;

Three cheers for the homespun dress

The Southern ladies wear!

Paragraph 8:
“…Mars Luther Clegg had drinked too much eggnog.”
“Mars,” short-hand for “Master,” was used by enslaved people as a general title of respect, in the same way that white people would use “Mister.”
Luther Clegg Swaim was born in Cedar Falls in 1837.  On February 1, 1866 he married Dorcas Aretta Odell (1828-1918), daughter of James Odell and wife Anna Trogdon.  This was the second marriage for Dorcas Odell, the sister of J.M. Odell and J.A. Odell who worked for George Makepeace in the factory stores at Cedar Falls and Franklinsville.  John M. Odell was the first Captain of the Randolph Hornets, Company M.  Her brother Laban Odell became Major of the 22nd Regiment, and was killed at Chancellorsville.  Her first husband was her second cousin, Solomon Franklin Trogdon, who died in 1860.  She had two sons in the first marriage, and a daughter with Luther Clegg Swaim before he died in 1868.  Dorcas’s son Williard Franklin Trogdon became the original geneaologist of the Trogdon family, publishing the family history which provided this information in 1926.

Paragraph 9:
“My father and my uncle owned and operated a large tannery, shoe and harness shop.”
The J. S. Steed family is the very first one listed in the Western Division of Randolph County’s 1860 census; his occupation is listed as “Tanning,”  and a 17-year-old boarder living with them is listed as “Apprentice Tanner.”  Family #2 in that census is David Porter, a buggy manufacturer and grandfather of author William Sidney Porter.  I believe the Porters lived on the southeast corner of the intersection of Salisbury Street and the Plank Road (Fayetteville Street)- where First Bank is today.

The 1860 Census  of Manufacturing for Randolph County lists “J.W. & J.S. Steed” as engaged in “Tanning… Boot and Shoe Making…[and] Harness Making.”  6 employees in 1859 cured “1400 sides of harness, sole and upper leather” worth $2000; made 40 pair of boots worth $300; 250 pair of shoes worth $500; and 50 setts of harness worth $900.

The Steeds probably lived on Salisbury between Cox and the Plank Road, but the location of his tannery is unclear.  The only tannery I am aware of that was ever located in or around Asheboro itself is the one located on the site of the present-day Frazier Park, across Park Street from Loflin Elementary School.  The branch that heads in a spring (now piped underground) on that site is called Tan Yard Branch.

“My uncle” refers to the “J.W. Steed” listed on the Census of Manufacturing; this was Joseph Warren Steed (1815-1873), who was elected Sheriff of Randolph County in 1848 after having served as Deputy to Sheriff Isaac White. Sheriff Steed, in politics a Whig, lost the election in 1864 to Zebedee Franklin Rush, the Peace Party (or “Red String”) candidate.   The oldest of Charles Steed’s three sons was Nathaniel Steed (3 May 1812 -10 Nov 1880).  In 1832 Nathaniel married Sarah (“Sallie”) Redding (9 Oct. 1811 -10 Aug. 1852), daughter of John Redding and Martha Jane Swaim.  They are buried at Charlotte Church, on Old Lexington Road west of Asheboro.  B.F. Steed, the eldest son of Nathaniel, served as Deputy to his uncle J.W. Steed.  The Steeds and Reddings were known for being very tall men, some more than six and a half feet tall.

“Early in 1864 my father… was drafted and sent to eastern Carolina, where he was in the service..”
[Some of you Civil War experts, trace his service record, please.]

Paragraph 10:
“…our faithful family physician, who on account of advancing years bad about given up his practice until the war began…”
Could this have been Dr. John Milton Worth, (28 June 1811 -5 April 1900), who studied at the Medical College in Lexington, Kentucky and practiced in Asheboro up to the time of the war?  A substantial part of Dr. Worth’s war years were spent overseeing the Salt Works near Fort Fisher, so this may be some other faithful family physician.

“On the morning of the 10th we were told we had a little brother named for his daddy…”
John Stanley Steed, Jr., born December 1864.  The Steeds would have five more children over the next 15 years.  Rachel Steed evidently died during childbirth in 1880.

A view of antebellum New Bern from the Neuse River

Paragraph 12:
“There was a man in our town called Captain Pragg, who owned a dry goods store…”
The name “Pragg” is not found in the Randolph County census records for 1860 or 1870, but “Isaiah Prag” does appear in Randolph County marriage bond records for April 19, 1865, when he married “Mrs. Jane Sugg.”  This was apparently the second marriage for each of them, as according to family genealogical records “Mrs. Sugg”‘s maiden name was Jane Adaline Andrews (1841-1907).  She may have a family connection to Lt. Col. Hezekiah L. Andrews of western Randolph, who was killed at Gettysburg.
Isaiah  Prag was born 20 October 1824 in the town of Hadamar in the state of Hesse, Germany.  He first appears in America in the 1850 census of Annapolis, Maryland, with wife Rose Adler (1827-1864), and a new baby, Mary.  Prag would ultimately have 8 children by his first wife, and 7 by his second.  By 1860 Isaiah and family have relocated to New Bern, NC, where he is in business as a “merchant.”   From June 1, 1861 to February 10, 1862, the state Quartermaster’s office paid receipts totalling $13,113.20 for purchases from Isaiah Prag.  He evidently provided most of the “dry goods” or clothing needed to equip at least two companies of Craven County volunteer troops: Company F and Company K (The Elm City Rifles):  98 suit coats and pants; 74 flannel shirts and 199 striped shirts; 218 caps, 141 pairs of “drawers” and 160 pairs of “pantaloons;” not to mention 556 overcoats- enough for 5 companies!
Isaiah Prag is also listed as an “Ordinance Sergeant” in Company B of Clark’s Special Battalion of the North Carolina Militia, but further details of his military service are not yet known.
Prag’s initial connection to Randolph County is also unclear.  It is possible that he was involved with the local factories in the production of underwear under contract to the Quartermaster.  His work supplying the army may have forced him to leave New Bern after its capture by federal forces on March 14, 1862.  It doesn’t seem likely that Prag would have been allowed to frequently cross enemy lines if his family remained in New Bern, but  Rose Adler Prag is said to have died in New Bern on July 20, 1864.
The 1870 census finds Isaiah and Jane Prag in Calvert County, Maryland.  The 1879-80 city directory of Baltimore (p. 625) lists 6 separate families of Prags, with Isaiah listed as selling furniture.  The 1880 census finds him settled in Cambridge, Maryland, the seat of Dorchester County on the eastern shore of the Chesapeake Bay.  This is where family records place him at the time of his death, April 18, 1889.
It appears that Isaiah and Rose Adler Prag were Jewish, and may have been one of the first Jewish families to reside in Randolph County.  That may be why Isaiah gave the Steed family as valuable a gift as the ham would have been in 1864- religious dietary laws would have prevented him from eating it.
[Sources:  US Census records for the years cited; Randolph County Marriage Bonds; Miscellaneous Records of the North Carolina Quartermaster’s dealings with Isaiah Prag or Pragg, preserved in the National Archives at Confederate Papers Relating to Citizens or Business Firms, 1861-65 ; the Park Service online list of Civil War Soldiers and Sailors System, at http://www.itd.nps.gov/cwss/>; Prag family geneaology records on Ancestry.com at http://trees.ancestry.com/pt/person.aspx?pid=1078239925&tid=16758860&ssrc= .]

Paragraph 13:
“My present was a balmoral (petticoat) which she had carded, spun and woven herself…”
A Balmoral was a long woollen petticoat which was popularized by Queen Victoria at Balmoral Castle in Scotland.  Usually of striped fabric, it was worn immediately beneath the dress so that it showed below the skirt.

The woman wearing a Balmoral in this “carte de visite” is Rachel Bodley (1831-1888), the first female chemistry professor at Philadelphia’s Women’s Medical College from 1865 to 1873.

Paragraph 14:
“…a bowl of mush or … plate of thick corn pones.”
Corn Meal Mush was made two different ways, and it appears that Mr. Winningham liked both of them.  The first was prepared in rolls like sausage or in loaf pans like modern liver pudding.  The cook would cut it in slices, dredge in egg yolk, dust in flour, fry and serve with butter, molasses, syrup or powdered sugar.  The second method was to boil the corn meal in a saucepan just as if preparing raw oatmeal or grits.  It was then served hot in a bowl topped with milk, sugar, fruit, raisins, nuts or ice cream.
“Corn Pone” is corn bread made without milk or eggs, and either baked in hot coals (as described by Nannie Winningham) or fried.

Modern Corn Pone Recipe (makes 4 servings):

Ingredients:  3 cups cornmeal; 3 teaspoons salt; 2-3 cups water; 3 tablespoons lard

Directions:  Bring water to a boil in a medium sauce pan. Add cornmeal and salt and immediately remove from stove. Mix well.  Melt half of lard in a baking pan to coat. Stir remaining lard into corn meal mixture. Pour mixture into baking pan.  Bake at 350 degrees for about 50 minutes, or until golden brown.

Ches Thrift’s Pickling Pear Tree

[Chess Thrift, date unknown, from Robins, Reminiscences of My Asheboro.]

Researching and writing local history often runs up against the veil of Time, which is often much more of an iron, not a lace, curtain. We have no real idea of the aboriginal name of Deep River, for example, and no real way to ever find out. Agricultural history is another area where information was such common knowledge it was seldom written down. One of these days I’ll write here about Greeson Wheat, our once-premier local variety of winter wheat. But here’s the story of one adventure in identification: Chester Thrift and the Pickling Pear Tree.

For many years my way to and from work took me past an elderly and not-very-healthy-looking tree growing on the north side of Old Cedar Falls Road in Asheboro. For most of the year it was nondescript and virtually invisible, but for a couple of weeks in late March it sported a striking cloud of white blossoms; and I confess I ignored it because I thought it was yet another Bradford Pear, that darling of 70s and 80s landscapers. I call them lolly-pop trees, because they have that perfect shape for preschool artists; they’re pretty twice a year, when they flower and when the leaves turn red in the fall, and they are sterile so they never have fruit. Bradford Pears are originally native to Korea and China, grow really fast, and rarely live more than 25 years without limbs splitting off. Plant a real tree, people, not Bradford Pears.

But then one September I noticed the tree was raining hundreds of mottled yellow fruits the size of ping pong balls.

The first time I stopped to investigate this phenomenon, I discovered that what I thought were yellow crab apples were actually some kind of pear: exquisitely sweet, miniature round pears profusely dropping from a scrawny, thorny tree. I never knew there were such things, and when I investigated, I found that the tree shouldn’t exist. Only wild pears have thorns, I discovered; they taste bitter and are only used to provide the rootstock for the usual named varieties: Bosc, Seckel, Keifer, etc. Because, like roses and apples, all of the historic named varieties of these plants are perpetuated by grafts, so that each Old Blush rose and each Macintosh apple is literally a clone of the ancient original of that name.

My tree on Old Cedar Falls Road was too elderly to tell if it had once been grafted; it had been cut back and pruned repeatedly, and had sprouted out time and again from an old stump. I asked the neighbors, but that intersection was in transition, and no one knew the story of the tree, but they did know its name: The Pickling Pear Tree.

Another gap in my knowledge revealed: I’ve seen plenty of pickles from cucumbers; I’ve heard of pickled peppers, pickled beets, pickled eggs; pickles from watermelon, okra and crabapples—lots of odd things, but never pears. But there it was on the internet: not just one but many recipes for pickling pears [http://www.cooks.com/rec/search/0,1-0,pickle_pear,FF.html ], especially Seckel pears, which are usually considered the smallest variety of pear (about the size of a tulip blossom). The end result was a sweet, spicy dessert treat that I’m told people ate like candy.

The whole point of pickling, historically, was to preserve perishable food so that it was available in some form during the winter months. Without refrigeration or freezing, drying and canning were the best ways to make the glut of the summer vegetable and fall fruit harvests last until the next year. Pickling can be accomplished by anaerobic fermentation using salt or salty water, which is how beef and pork were pickled to feed sailors on long voyages. Fruits and vegetables are usually pickled by marinating them in vinegar, often with added herbs like garlic, mustard seed, cloves and cinnamon, which have antimicrobial properties. Any kind of pear could be pickled, but larger pickles required peeling and slicing, which makes the finished product fragile and mushy, and reduces the shelf life. So these tiny bite-sized pears would have been the perfect size to core and pickle like crab apples.

It was only by chance that I found out anything more. One day while talking with Miss MacRae, an elderly teacher I had known since elementary school, I mentioned my pickling pear tree. “I don’t know about that tree,” she said. “People used to have pickling pears, used to put up quarts and quarts of them. But the only one around here who had pickling pear trees was Ches Thrift. He had apples, pears, peaches, all sorts of trees in his garden. He had a pickling pear tree.”

What little I knew of Chester Thrift (c.1853-1929) came from Sidney Swaim Robins, the first boy from Asheboro to go to Harvard, back before World War I. When I went to Harvard he was still living in Wayland, Massachusetts, and several times I went to dinner with Sidney at the instigation of Marion Stedman Covington, his cousin. Sidney was the author of a number of books, most of them related to his profession as a Unitarian-Universalist minister. His little book, “Sketches of My Asheboro, 1880-1910,” (published by the Randolph Historical Society in 1972) is an invaluable source for anyone interested in the daily life of 19^th century Asheboro. “…’Chess’ Thrift was a mighty cook, often sent for to help in putting on and serving banquets. You often saw him around with white cap and apron, dressing the part of a chef. For a considerable time he served as major domo for Hal M. Worth” [p.37]. “Cooks were known and appreciated in Asheboro. It seemed that each one had a special receipt and routine to be famous for. And of course they ran loose in the branch of famous desserts. I have spoken of Chester Thrift as a famous cook (I wondered if Chess cakes were named for him), and I guess there were as many well-known ones among the colored people as among the whites. In fact, they had the more professional cooks anyhow” [p. 40].

An unpublished source has even more information. Walter Makepeace Curtis (1867-1955 ) was born in Franklinville and served as the President of Greensboro College in the 1940s.  His grandfather, George Makepeace, lived in my house. In 1940 Curtis wrote his autobiography, a manuscript copy of which was given to me by his daughter Marion Moser.   On page 9 of the manuscript, Curtis writes:

“One of my Negro friends during my boyhood days was ‘Ches’- Chester Thrift. He worked for my uncle, G.H. Makepeace, and I often saw him when I was with my cousins, which was a good deal of the time. Ches was also frequently at my home. He was easily amused, and his laugh was hilarious. He would often lie down on the floor and roll over several times with uncontrollable laughter. Ches was a good cook and was famous for his cakes. He was often called upon to bake cakes for weddings, and years later when his home was in Asheboro, scarcely a wedding occurred there without cakes furnished by Ches. Years later when my oldest daughter graduated at Greensboro College, Ches, then an old man, was there. Lucy had sent him a commencement invitation and he came up from Asheboro, bringing with him cakes which he make especially for the occasion. Lucy invited her classmates into our home, Ches served, and all present had a good time. Ches preached occasionally, but I never had the pleasure of hearing him. His hobby was educating young Negro girls who never could have gone to school without his aid. A large number of girls were recipients of his generosity.”

I discovered even more in a circa-1913 Courier note entitled “Uncle Chester Thrift Gives Interesting Item of History.”

“Uncle Chester Thrift, one of the town’s oldest and most respected colored citizens, was in The Courier office last week and told of some interesting bits of old history.  Uncle Ches went to Franklinville last August, where he lived in childhood.  His mother, Annie Thrift, belonged to Isham Thrift, who lived where the hotel now stands [the Grove Hotel, or “The Teacherage,” stood facing Deep River in Franklinville just north of what was the Randolph Mills Office building].  Aunt Annie took her two sons, Solomon and Chester, to a secluded place there each Sunday morning to pray.  The place then used for her ‘prayer spot’ is now the site on which Franklinville’s new M.E. church stands [built 1912].  Uncle Chester feels very kindly toward the church and feels it was built on holy ground.  It would be well if more of the mothers in this day and time would take time to teach their sons to pray.”

And my final discovery was his obituary, published in the Greensboro Daily News on December 24, 1928:

HEART ATTACK CLAIMS “UNCLE” CHES THRIFT /  Former Slave Negro Had Been Servant to Many Prominent Families/ RESPECTED BY WHITES.

“Asheboro, Dec. 23.– ‘Uncle’ Chester Thrift, ancient, honorable and much beloved negro man of Asheboro, died in his home here last night from a heart attack.  He was a familiar figure on the streets, and was out yesterday afternoon greeting his white friends, and carrying a large split basket that he always had with him.

“Uncle” Chester was born about 75 years ago in New Orleans, he and his mother being bought in Louisiana by Isham Thrift of Franklinville Township, and brought here just prior to the Civil War.  After the war was over and the negroes were freed, Chester’s mother lived with the Makepeace and Curtis families of Franklinville until Chester was 15 or 16 years old.  When Chester was just a boy, he went into the homes of the Worth and McAlister families of Asheboro, serving them almost continuously until his death.  He was the servant of H.M. Worth for more than twenty years on a stretch.  He also served the families of Curtis, Foust, Penn, Kelly and McAlister of Greensboro, and the Worth families now of Durham.

“He was one of the most expert cooks North Carolina ever produced, especially being noted for his cakes, persimmon puddings and pies.  He was an authority on cooking possum.  He has probably baked more wedding cakes than any other cook, his services being in demand in many cities of the state when a fine meal was to have been prepared.  His cakes and persimmon puddings have been sent all over the United States.

“Uncle Chester was one of the few of the old school, and was a welcome visitor in any home in Asheboro, or elsewhere where he was known.  He was deeply religious and philosophical, and gave much sound advice to the younger generation, both white and colored.  He lived in North Asheboro [north of Salisbury Street and east of Fayetteville Street] in a comfortable little cottage that was kept immaculately clean, and was nicely furnished with things that his white friends had given him.  At Christmas times “Uncle” Chester was the recipient of loads of gifts from his innumerable white friends.  He went home last night with a load that had been given him while he was down town.  He lived alone, with the exception of a negro boy that he furnished a room for company.

“Funeral services will be held Christmas day at two o’clock and interment made here [Asheboro].  Services will be in charge of the local negro Odd Fellows, of which he was a member, together with his white friends.  He had always requested that he be buried three days after his death, as the Saviour rose the third day, and he expected to.  The third day now falls on Christmas.”

That’s quite a tribute, especially for a black man in the 1920s, published in an out-of-town newspaper.  There’s no doubt Chester Thrift was one of the most respected members of the entire Randolph County community.

I can’t say that my Cedar Falls Road pickling pear tree was actually one of Chester Thrift’s pickling pear Trees. But it was someone’s, because fruit trees only survive if someone grafts new ones before they die. That’s why, last fall, I got some water sprouts from the tree and sent them off for grafting. This spring, I’ll be able to plant my own Pickling Pear Trees at the house where Chester Thrift once worked for G.H. Makepeace, and when I do, I’m calling them Ches Thrift’s Pickling Pears. You can’t tell me I’m wrong.

Rabbit Gums

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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