John Blythe – Page 15 – NC Miscellany

A rumble in the mountains

The devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan sent us into the annals of North Caroliniana searching for tales of tremors in the Tar Heel state. There we found the story of Rumbling Bald Mountain, a series of tremors in 1874 that led locals to fear a volcano and drew the attention (and skepticism) of the New York press.

In early February 1874 residents near Chimney Rock in western Rutherford County reported feeling the ground shake and hearing loud booms coming from the direction of Bald Mountain, a 3,020 foot peak in the Broad River basin. Some claimed to see smoke and vapors coming from within the earth, giving rise to fears of a soon-to-explode volcano. Panic set in among the locals as tremors continued over the ensuing two months.

As word spread of strange happenings in the mountains, the press descended on the region and wrote of the religious fervor the tremors inspired. J. Timothy Cole, author of The Rumbling Mountain of Hickory Nut Gap: The Story of North Carolina’s Most Celebrated Earthquakes, writes that the most vivid accounts of the Bald Mountain earthquake and resulting panic are found in the Daily News of Raleigh, the New York Herald and the Asheville Western Expositor. Capt. E.C. Woodson of the Daily News reported that on the evening of February 9th a local preacher holding a religious revival prayed that God would move the ” ‘the strong hearts of this wicked people’ ” by causing ” ‘the mountain to shake and tremble beneath their feet.’ ” According to Woodson’s account, the first tremors near Bald Mountain occurred the following day.

Whether coincidence or divine intervention, the earthquake prompted more religious meetings and a revival-like atmosphere. The Western Expositor records that residents stopped work. “Cattle, horses and hogs were turned to the woods,” the paper reported, “And the entire people within range of this awful excitement have concluded that they have but a few more days to live.” The New York Times eventually printed a dispatch from a Knoxville reporter under the multi-line header “A Volcano in North Carolina. Extraordinary agitation of Bald Mountain.Terrible Sights and Sounds.The Terror-Stricken Residents Praying During Sixteen Days.” Harper’s Weekly and Frank Leslie’s Illustrated News also joined in the coverage.

The New York press’s interest in the story may have been little more than an attempt to sell papers or poke fun at the odd mountain folks south of the Mason-Dixon. Within days of running the first article about the tremors and possible volcano at Bald Mountain, the New York Times ran a second article suggesting that “the Bald Mountain Volcano, of North Carolina, has been regarded as a third-rate hoax.” The source of “this new sensation,” the Times suggested, was an Indian legend about “the original formation of the ridge known as Bald Mountain, or of an eruption which occurred many years ago.”

Wofford College professor Warren DuPre was sufficiently intrigued by the reports to mount an expedition to the region. Accompanied by a civil engineer, a preacher and about a dozen students, DuPre interviewed residents and hiked the terrain near Bald Mountain. During the course of its investigation, the team experienced several tremors firsthand. The group found no evidence of “gaping rocks, smoking peaks, sinking caverns, melting snows, etc, with which our newspapers have been teeming for many weeks past.” Eventually DuPre prepared a report for the Smithsonian Institution in which he ruled out rock blasting and electrical storms. But his explanation for the tremors was hardly conclusive. “The phenomena,” he wrote,”must be referred to that general volcanic or earthquake force, which seems as necessary to the economy of nature as light, heat or electricity.”DuPre’s words likely would not have calmed the fears of residents had the tremors not stopped by early May 1874.

Later investigators of the tremors have suggested that the rumblings may have resulted from rock falls occurring in a vast network of caves that lies under Bald Mountain. Scientists continue to investigate the plates and substrata that lie underneath North Carolina’s mountains and debate the seismic risks faced in this part of the country. But there seems little dispute as to the origins of the descriptor that sets Rutherford County’s Bald Mountain apart from similarly named peaks in Avery, Jackson, Wautauga, Yancey, Davidson and Orange counties. Rumbling Bald Mountain claimed its title in the winter of 1874.

NC’s cane product is flying off the shelves

That’s cane, as in sugar cane. But one purveyor of Cheerwine does liken the fizzy beverage to “adult crack.” Salisbury’s gift to the world has experienced a mysterious uptick in sales, so says Wednesday’s New York Times.

Felis concolor: from endangered to extinct

“It is clear why the panther, or ‘painter’ as he was sometimes called, attracted so much unfavorable attention. The Moravians, in recording the wildlife around them in the Piedmont in 1764, described the panther as being ‘the color of a Deer, and is of about the same size, not counting feet. It has large claws, with which it climbs trees, and head like a cat. It is a cruel beast, eating only fresh meat, will not eat carrion, nor what has been dead only a short time. But they are not numerous, and so soon as one is seen it is killed.’ This was, indeed, a strange animal in the eyes of Europeans. From his home at Brunswick in the early spring of 1767, Governor William Tryon wrote the Earl of Shelburne:”

‘As the Panther of this continent I am told has never been imported into Europe, and as it is the King of the American forests, I presume to send a male panther under your Lordships patronage to be presented for his Majesty’s acceptance. He is six months old; I have had him four months, by constantly handling he is become perfectly tame and familiar: When full grown his coat will much resemble that of the lioness. Panthers have been killed (for it is very uncommon to catch them alive) ten feet in length from the nose to the end of the tail. I am very solicitous for his safe arrival, as I am ambitious that he may be permitted to add to his Majesty’s collection of wild beasts.’

“Tryon’s gift from the forests of North Carolina was accepted and became a part of King George’s menagerie at Kew.”

-From William S. Powell’s “Creatures of Carolina from Roanoke Island to Purgatory Mountain,” North Carolina Historical Review, April 1973. Although North Carolina wildlife officials have long considered the panther, a.k.a. the Eastern Cougar or Felis Concolor, extinct in our state, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) did not declare the animal extinct from the eastern United States until yesterday. FWS officials say those who report sightings are likely seeing bears, dogs, the Florida panther, or, perhaps, the Western cougar, which is headed this way.

Remembering a Tar Heel in John Brown’s Raid

State and local officials unveiled a highway historical marker recognizing the life of Lewis Sheridan Leary in Fayetteville yesterday. Leary was among the 21 men who joined John Brown in the raid on Harpers Ferry on Oct. 16, 1859. Leary was born in Fayetteville in 1835. The son of free blacks, Leary worked with his father, a saddle maker, until moving to join family in Oberlin, Ohio at age 21. In Oberlin Leary became heavily involved in the abolitionist movement, which had a large following there. Leary was recruited by John Brown Jr. to join the raid on Harpers Ferry. He and two other men, one of them Raleigh-born John A. Copeland Jr., were assigned to seize a rifle works. They did, but then were surrounded by militia. Leary was shot multiple times as he and his partners fled. He died about 10 hours later.

Little is known about the treatment of Leary’s North Carolina relatives when word of his participation in Brown’s raid reached North Carolina. Year later, during Reconstruction, his father and older brother served as Cumberland County commissioners. Another brother, Matthew, was one of the founding trustees of what would become Fayetteville State University. And Leary’s youngest brother, John Sinclair Leary, earned a law degree and was one of the first blacks admitted to the bar in North Carolina. John Sinclair Leary also served in the N.C. legislature and later founded and served as the first dean of Shaw University Law School.

The North Carolina Civil War Sesquicentennial website (by our friends at state Archives and History) features an informative essay on Tar Heels at Harpers Ferry. The NC Highway Historical Marker program’s essay on Lewis Leary is also a must-read (you’ll have to search for Leary among the Cumberland County markers).

One star (story) among many

This poster (or, at least, a facsimile of it) is one of the many items in our recently opened exhibit “From Di-Phis to Loreleis: A History of Student Organizations at UNC.” And, like many of the items on display in the North Carolina Collection Gallery, there’s an interesting story that goes with it.

The 1897 Commencement Concert marked the debut of “Hail to the Brightest Star,” with lyrics by Glee Club tenor William Starr Myers. The composition would later take its name from the first few lyrics, “Hark the sound,” and, with a few minor changes, become the UNC alma mater. Myers set his lyrics to a popular college tune at the time, “Amici.” The young poet and singer, who would go on to teach political science at Princeton and serve as a speech writer for Herbert Hoover, wrote “Hark the sound of loyal voices. But in the decades that followed those loyal voices became Tar Heel voices. No one is quite sure when that happened. And there’s many a UNC grad who would point out that loyalty to “N.C.U.” (as Myers refers to UNC in a later verse) comes the day an individual first steps foot on campus.

Some have suggested that Myers’ classmate Francis Anthony Gudger wrote one of the verses and that Gudger debuted the song as a soloist. Gudger’s authorship is possible. Myers, Gudger and several others reportedly spent some time at their 50th class reunion in 1947 discussing who penned each verse. But Myers’ diary seems to cast doubt on the song’s debut as a solo. In an entry dated June 2, 1897, Myers wrote “The Glee Club sang a song–‘Hail to the Brightest Star’–the words of which I wrote, the tune being the old college song ‘Amici.’ “

As this first page from the Commencement Concert program reveals (you’ll need to click on the image), the June 2 show featured a mix of musical genres and performance ensembles. The 1897 yearbook, The Hellenian, records that the pairing of the Mandolin and Glee clubs in a concert meant that the Glee Club “could do its part better, while at the same time greater variety and interest were given to the concerts.” In an apparent nod to contemporary music, the Mandolin Club treated concertgoers to a string rendition of John Philip Sousa’s “El Capitan March,” written just a year before, in 1896.

The exhibit “From Di-Phis to Loreleis: A History of Student Organizations at UNC” is on display through May 31 in the North Carolina Collection Gallery.

The Author’s Voice

A few remembrances of Reynolds Price have noted his deep, resonant voice. Those tributes struck a chord with me because my introduction to Reynolds Price came not through his published works, but, rather, through his voice. His essays on National Public Radio always caught my attention. In my bookish family, his name was a familiar one so I took note when the host announced an upcoming essay from Price. Then Price’s rich voice came booming out of the ether. Not surprisingly, his essays were well-crafted. But I was just as impressed by the stylings of his voice.

Digging through our Reynolds Price ephemera here at the North Carolina Collection, I came across an interview writer Daphne Athas, herself a master storyteller, conducted with Price in 1987 for WUNC radio’s monthly program guide Listen. Here’s an excerpt (the first quote is from Athas).

“You know you have a wonderful voice? Did you ever study music?”
“I was a famous local boy soprano in Asheboro and Warrenton. I was always singing solos in church and getting dollar bills thrust at me by local moneybags gents. When I was a senior in high school I had a lot of throat problems, constantly getting what I thought were throat infections. So I finally came to McPherson’s Hospital, in Durham, and Dr. Ferguson there said,’You don’t have throat infections at all. You’re speaking incorrectly like most Americans. You’re speaking with your throat muscles and not from your diaphragm.’ And he said,’Can you take singing lessons this summer?’ I said,’Oh sure,’ and so every morning of that summer of 1951 I drove over to Durham and took lessons with a very fine teacher called George Moore and gradually my voice deepened and I wound up with whatever voice I presently have….It’s sad that in America most people have been taught to ignore the voice as a means of narration and that most people do everything they can to be inaudible, to the point of stuffing their fist in their mouths. Some of our greatest poets like Robert Penn Warren–I’ve seen auditoriums empty themselves within ten minutes after Mr. Warren began his invariably inaudible reading. I was far more influenced by music than by writers. Everyone thinks that everyone born in the South is created by Faulkner. I never even liked Faulkner very much and still don’t. I’m far more influenced by baroque poetry, especially Milton. Baroque poetry and baroque music.”

One of the last times that I heard Reynolds Price’s voice was in 2002 at his induction into the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame. It was just as rich and booming as when I’d first heard it some 30 years before. And by then I’d also come to appreciate his literary voice.

Cussing with Impunity

Cover of Herbert Hyde recording

You may have heard about an Orange County Superior Court judge’s recent ruling that a 98-year-old state ban on profanity is unconstitutional. The news has traveled far and wide. The story has also caused some to recall another time when the state ban came under scrutiny.

In 1973 two state senators proposed an amendment calling for Swain County’s removal as one of two counties exempted from the ban (the other is Pitt County). The possibility that cursing would be outlawed in Swain County led Buncombe County representative Herbert Hyde, a son of Swain County, to take to the floor of the House chamber in defense of his native county’s exemption. Hyde, who was known for his oratorical skills, quoted the Bible and Shakespeare in his 8-minute speech and discoursed on Cherokee culture. The Cherokees, he said, do not curse and their language does not include swear words. But Hyde’s oration is best remembered–and often titled–for words that he didn’t utter: “Mr. Speaker, there oughta be somewhere a person can cuss without breaking the law.”

Nevertheless, when Hyde ran for Lieutenant Governor in 1976 his campaign distributed a recording of the famous speech using the apocryphal lines as its title. The liner notes for the recording point out that “a specific price tag has not been placed on the recording. However, Herbert Hyde will be most grateful for the contributions you make to his campaign.” The flimsy disc itself is attached to the sleeve on top of a picture of Hyde.

The Buncombe County representative’s bid for lieutenant governor was unsuccessful. But his oration may have played a part in keeping Swain County a safe haven for cussin’.

We’ve got Hyde’s full speech digitized and ready for your ears.

A Christmas Carol with a Playmakers’ Flair

“Far away, it seems now, on the winter prairie of Dakota I was impelled with the desire to read again for my own enjoyment Charles Dickens’ immortal ghost story, A Christmas Carol. Fresh from Harvard, I was then a very young instructor at the State University of North Dakota. That was twenty-five years ago, although I can scarcely admit the passing of so many years. In that lonely isolation on the Great Flat I was pretty homesick, I guess, when I thought of the cheerful fireside associations I had left behind me in the sheltered East–of home, and friends, at Christmas time….

“It was a Sunday afternoon that I read the story, and I felt myself greatly cheered by it. So much so, that I mentioned the fact to a little group at supper in the University Commons that evening with the comment: ‘Everybody ought to read Dickens’ Christmas Carol every year before Christmas.’

“The Dean of Women spoke up: ‘Well, if you feel that way about it, you ought to read it for us!’ On the following Sunday afternoon, the last Sunday before Christmas, I read A Christmas Carol, seated in a great armchair beside a crackling wood-fire. Outside the snow was blowing and drifting with a bitter wind, but inside all was warm with the glow from the hearth and from the mellow light of candles. I remember distinctly the big bowl of crisp, green holly leaves some one had brought, and the soft singing of girls’ voices of the old songs we cherish at Christmas: ‘God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen,’ ‘Silent Night,’ and ‘Joy to the World!’

“So it began. The next year, and the next, and the next.”

-Frederick H. “Proff” Koch in an article penned for the December 1931 issue of The Town Hall Crier, a publication of the New York City-based League for Political Education. The article ran in advance of Koch’s reading of A Christmas Carol at Town Hall on December 15, 1931. The League for Political Education built Town Hall, a meeting space and concert hall, on 43rd Street in New York City in 1921.

An editor’s note preceding the article records that Koch, founder of the Carolina Playmakers at the University of North Carolina, had read the Dickens’ classic “to audiences in all parts of America more than one hundred times during the past twenty years.”

Koch’s 11 a.m. reading on Dec. 15 was to precede a lecture by Winston Churchill later in the day. Churchill’s talk was postponed after the British statesman was struck by a car on Fifth Avenue and hospitalized. Koch’s invitation likely came from UNC and Carolina Playmakers alum George V. Denny Jr., Town Hall’s associate director at the time. Denny would eventually assume leadership of Town Hall and also start (and serve as host for) the NBC Radio program America’s Town Meeting of the Air, broadcast live from the 43rd Street venue.

It’s Literarily Cyber Monday

You’ve got the credit card out and you’re ready to do your holiday shopping. You’ve worked your way down the list. Blender for the margarita lover? Check. Leatherman for the handyman? Check. Wii for the kids? Ok, why not? But what should you buy for the dog-loving reader who can’t stop talking about his Tar Heel roots?

No need to take your hand off the keyboard (Okay, maybe you’ll need to click the mouse). Our colleagues at UNC-G have created a Literary Map of North Carolina (their site includes a few more writers than the map above, produced by the NC English Teachers Association in 1950). The rich, searchable database allows you to search in a host of ways, including the author’s hometown, the towns in which her works are set and the genres in which she writes.

Click on “Adventure Fiction.” Ah, yes, there it is. The perfect gift. John Sergeant Wise’s Diomed: The Life, Travels, and Observations of a Dog, (Truth be told, the book’s author was a Virginian and only a small bit of the plot is set in N.C. But when a Virginian deigns to mention the Tar Heel State we like to note it). Originally published in 1897, Diomed has just been reprinted. You’ll find it at your favorite online book retailer. And when the dog lover gives you a big wet smooch as a thank you for your gift, just remember who should really get the credit (no smooch required).

North Carolina remembers Omar ibn Said

“There came to our place a large army, who killed many men, and took me, and brought me to the great sea, and sold me into the hands of the Christians, who bound me and sent me on board a great ship and we sailed upon the great sea a month and a half, when we came to a place called Charleston in the Christian language. There they sold me to a small, weak, and wicked man called Johnson, a complete infidel, who had no fear of God at all. Now I am a small man, and unable to do hard work so I fled from the hand of Johnson and after a month came to a place called Fayd-il [Fayetteville]….”

-From Autobiography of Omar ibn Said, 1831..

Omar ibn Said was brought to the United States as a slave in about 1807. After fleeing Charleston for Fayetteville, he was recaptured and jailed for 16 days. Eventually he was moved to the Bladen County plantation of James Owens, who represented North Carolina in the U.S. Senate from 1817-1819 and served as president of the Wilmington-Raleigh Railroad. Omar, known as “Moro” to the Owen family, remained a slave on the Bladen County plantation until his death in 1863, at about the age of 93. Prior to enslavement, Omar was educated in Koranic schools in present-day Senegal. He gained fame in North Carolina for his distinct dress and intelligence. A devout Muslim, Omar began attending services at a Presbyterian church in Fayetteville with the Owens family and was touted as a convert to Christianity. Scholars now dispute that fact. The English language version of Omar’s autobiography, originally written in Arabic, was published in 1831.

The state recently erected a Highway Historical Marker honoring Omar(after clicking on the link, select “Marker I-89”).

The Museum of the Cape Fear in Fayetteville is presenting an exhibit on the life of Omar ibn Said through Dec. 5.

Scholar Allan D. Austin will speak on African Muslims in the ante-bellum South, including Omar ibn Said, at Davidson College on Nov. 14