What’s in a name? Durham’s Hayti

“The first documented use of the name Hayti in Durham is found in a deed of 1877 in which a lot was sold ‘near the town of Durham in the settlement of colored people in the South East end of the corporation of said town known as of Hayti.’

“The origin of the name in this context is a mystery. Conjecture has attributed it to whites as a name for any black settlement, and to blacks as an expression of their admiration of and hope of emulating the independent island nation.

“The use of the term as a convention of mapmakers for any predominantly black community was current as early as 1867. A map of New Bern and vicinity in that year identified the black settlement across the Trent River from the town proper as Hayti, even though it had a name, James City.”

— From “Durham County: A History of Durham County, North Carolina” (1990) by Jean Bradley Anderson

Isothermal Belts in North Carolina

A longtime NC Collection researcher sent me an email recently pointing out that North Carolina’s “isothermal belts” would be a great topic for the Miscellany blog.

Ever heard of them? I had, but I couldn’t come up with a good definition, so I consulted William Powell’s Encyclopedia of North Carolina. Here’s what it had to say:

Isothermal Belt is a zone in western North Carolina, primarily in Rutherford and Polk Counties, in which temperature inversion resulting in milder temperature contributes to longer growing seasons than in the immediate surrounding region…”

[Interestingly, the entry was written by my high school history teacher, Paul L. McCraw, who taught at Davie County High School.]

How Arthur Smith (cont.) made Willie Nelson

“[In 1975 Willie Nelson] pushed all his chips to the center of the table. The bet was on cowboy mythic, based on the song made popular by Arthur ‘Guitar Boogie’  Smith, the Charlotte, North Carolina, singer and pioneering country music television star in the early 1950s.

“It was the same song Willie used to sing on his radio program on KCNC in Fort Worth when it was nap time for the children listening at home…. Willie would play the song for his daughter, Lana, and say hi to her on the air. At home, she’d have him sing ‘Red Headed Stranger’ to her at bedtime….”

— From “Willie Nelson: An Epic Life” (2008) by Joe Nick Patoski. The concept album “Red Headed Stranger” — sparely produced, widely doubted and hugely successful  —  not only became a career breakthrough for Nelson but also redirected the course of country music for more than a decade.

 

NC’s Own Lil’ Wayne

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A while back we uploaded a postcard of Little Wayne Hass.  The card was printed from one of Hugh Morton’s photos, and the caption mentions that Hass was “Featured with Arthur Smith & Crackerjacks WBTV-WBT-MGM Records.”  (And yes, this is the Arthur Smith that wrote the dueling banjos theme that was ripped off in the 1972 movie Deliverance.  Smith sued and won.)

WBTV is the call number for the Charlotte television station, which first aired in 1949.  It appears that Arthur Smith and the Crackerjacks performed in Charlotte (perhaps regularly?) on the station, but I can’t seem to find out much more about the band or their NC roots.  Do you know anything?

The Hugh Morton Collection of Photographs and Films has several other images of Arthur Smith and the Crackerjacks, which you can view here.

In the photo below, Wayne Hass is in the back row, second from the left.

crackerjacks

Hatteras Inlet, 1862: Bad water, bad pork

On this day in 1862: Private D.L. Day, Co. B, 25th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, writes in his diary at Hatteras Inlet:

“A schooner came alongside today and left us rations of steamed pork, hardtack and condensed sea water. This was a very timely arrival as we have been very short of water for two or three days and pretty much everything else. Rattlesnake pork will taste pretty good again after a few days fast. Condensed sea water is rather a disagreeable beverage, but still is a little ahead of no water at all. I think, however, it might be made palatable by adding about nine parts whiskey to one of water.

“This water and pork is all manufactured here on the spot. They have a sort of rendering establishment where they make it, but I cannot believe that the pork would take a premium in any fair in the country unless it was for meanness. … “

Gaston B. Means (1879-1938)

This guy is high up in the running for North Carolina’s most notorious character. Born near Concord in 1879, Means died a guest of the federal government in prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, in 1938. He once bragged that he had been accused of every felony in the book, including murder. At one time he worked for the FBI, although J. Edgar Hoover later called him “the most amazing figure in contemporary criminal history.” He had an uncanny ability to inspire belief in the tall tales he told and convinced many people to entrust him with money which they never saw again.

100 Years of UNC Basketball

UNC-Chapel Hill celebrates 100 years of basketball this year. I found this photo in the 1911 Yackety Yack, the student yearbook, showing the first varsity “Basket Ball Squad.”

basketball1911

There wasn’t anything else about them in the yearbook – no comments, no scores, not even a list of their names. UNC was still very much a football school at the time.

The team has worn throwback uniforms a couple of times this season. I hope, before the year is over, they bring back the sashes.

Charlie Daniels went up to Washington

cdb_inaug

On this day in 1977: Wilmington-born Charlie Daniels joins the more traditional Guy Lombardo at Jimmy Carter’s inaugural ball.

Two years later the Charlie Daniels Band will hit No. 1 on both country and rock charts with the fiddle tour de force “The Devil Went Down to Georgia.”

Pictured: A CDB crew member’s security tag from the Lew Powell Memorabilia Collection (CK.1287.3099).

And this just in… According to his Web site, the 73-year-old Daniels suffered “a mild stroke” Friday while snowmobiling in Colorado and was released from a Denver hospital Sunday. No plans to cancel his next tour, which begins Feb. 27. 

In sync with the ‘inner rhythm’ of Thomas Wolfe

“The little town of Monroe [Georgia], where I spent my 14th summer, seemed miles from everywhere….It was there one morning that my older cousin gave me ‘Look Homeward, Angel’ by Thomas Wolfe and insisted that I begin reading immediately.

“Four hours later, at the height of the afternoon heat, I let go the book, hands trembling, face flushed. I had finished only some 50 pages and my life had been changed. I was shaken, not so much by the specific content of the writing as by the  quality — the rhythm if you will — of the experience….

“Years later, on a trip to Asheville, North Carolina, I visited Wolfe’s home and grave. I met people who had known him intimately and had lunch and dinner with his sister.  But his personal presence was not so well rounded and clearly defined on that trip as it had been on those long, hot days and magical nights when I first read ‘Look Homeward, Angel.’ ”

— From “The Silent Pulse: A search for the Inner Rhythm that Exists in Each of Us” (2006) by George B. Leonard (UNC Chapel Hill ’48).

Leonard, an accomplished journalist but better known as a founder and popularizer of the human potential movement, died Jan. 6 in Mill Valley, Calif. He was 86.