Bridget Madden

New Towns Added to NC Postcards

This past month, we’ve added images from several new towns to the North Carolina Postcards online collection.  New towns include:

Micro, Johnston County
Jonesboro, Lee County
Ruffin, Rockingham County
King, Stokes County
Fuquay-Varina, Wake County
Elm City, Wilson County

My favorite new town name is that of Micro – according to Powell’s North Carolina Gazetteer (p. 321), the town was incorporated in 1899 under the name Jerome.  In Bladen County, there is another town named Jerome, so in 1905, Johnston County’s Jerome was renamed to Micro in order to avoid confusion.

According to Powell’s Gezetteer, the name Micro is explicitly referring to the town’s geographic size and population.  The 13th Census of the United States, Abstract with Supplement for North Carolina lists the town’s population as 61 in 1900 and 74 in 1910.  The United States Census Bureau lists the 2007 population as 514.

The Goose Wing Club

We recently uploaded the above postcard to the North Carolina Postcards website.  The card is titled, “Start of Hunt, Goosewing Club, Manteo, N.C.,” and shows a partial view of a hunting lodge and two men on a cart getting ready to head out for the day’s hunt.  This is the only image of the Goosewing Club in the Durwood Barber Collection of North Carolina Postcards, and I was curious to find out more about this group.

The Southern Historical Collection holds some of the Goose Wing Club Records (3951-z) from 1931 and 1933, which detail the group’s by-laws and meeting minutes.  The Goosewing Club was incorporated in New York in 1931 in order to purchase and develop land in North Carolina for hunting, fishing, and other forms of recreation.  The group chose two locations in North Carolina that we know of – they purchased 1,440 acres of land on Bodie Island, Dare County, in 1931, and in 1933 they purchased 46.9 acres at the Skyco Lodge in Nag’s Head.

According to Article III of the group’s 1931 By-Laws, the initiation fee for annual members was $2,272.73 with annual dues set at $150, making it quite an expensive (and by extension, exclusive) club to join.  I was unable to find any information as to whether the Goosewing Club is still active, and if not, when they disbanded.

This postcard from the Skyco Lodge is dated ca. 1928, which predates the Goosewing Club’s ownership of the property.  It is possible, however, that the building behind the horse and cart is the lodge on the land they purchased in 1933.

The County Collection (P3) in the North Carolina Collection’s Photographic Archives had several negative images of the Goosewing Club in Manteo, Dare County.  One of the negatives appears to be what the “Start of Hunt” postcard was printed from.  Below are a few selected images that provide a clearer sense of what the land and lodge looked like in the 1930s.

Flirtatious Postcards

In the spirit of Valentine’s Day I thought I would share a few of our more flirtatious postcards.  These cards present humorous images of couples as well as some fairly witty innuendos, but none of the cards carry any amorous messages written on the backs of the cards!  Instead, the messages give updates on the weather, business, errands to the drugstore, etc.  An excerpt taken from the card above, “There’s Someone I Look Up To in Mt. Pilot,” reads, “Business slow and weather Bad and I feel very much like going home.”  It sounds as though things were not as steamy in Mt. Pilot as the card’s image suggests, but I think the medium of the postcard typically discourages romantic declarations.

Biographical Notes on E.C. Eddy, Photographer


There are quite a few real photo postcards by E.C. Eddy on our North Carolina Postcards website. I was curious to find out more about him, and the only mention I could find was in an edition of the “Images of America” series titled, “Around Southern Pines: A Sandhills Album, Photographs by E.C. Eddy,” by Stephen E. Massengill, 1998.

E.C. Eddy was born in New Hampshire in 1882 and moved to Pinehurst, N.C. in 1907 to assist the photographer Edmond L. Merrow in taking pictures of travelers at a resort. Eddy eventually set up his own studio, and would travel with his family back and forth between North Carolina winters and New Hampshire summers in order to catch both locations during their peak tourist season.

The image below is taken from Massengill’s book, and shows the type of scaffold system Eddy used to take bird’s-eye view photographs. It is likely he used a similar set up to photograph the downtown scene of Southern Pines shown above.

Eddy had a 38 year career as a photographer in North Carolina, and we know many of his surviving photos because local merchants frequently bought the images in order to reproduce them as postcards.

Laurinburg’s Modern Mummy

A recent segment of WRAL’s Tar Heel Traveler recaps the story of a mummy nicknamed “Spaghetti,” that became a bit of an institution in Laurinburg, North Carolina. Spaghetti was the name posthumously given to the mummy of Consetto Formico, a carnival musician murdered in 1911 during the carnival’s visit to nearby McColl, South Carolina, just under 8 miles away from Laurinburg.

Cansetto’s father brought his son’s body to McDougald funeral home in Laurinburg where it was embalmed. However, the body was never buried because Formico’s father did not return with the rest of the bill he had promised to pay. The body was eventually moved to the garage of the funeral home, where it became a local (and macabre) tourist attraction.

In the early 1970s, the sensational story made its way to Congress, and two representatives attempted to pressure the funeral home, still owned by the McDougald family, into burying the body. The WRAL segment credits Congressman Biaggi with the final burial of the mummy, but an article from the Greensboro Daily Times October 12, 1978 gives the impression that the funeral home resented the intrusion of Congress. Two years later, the body was finally buried after members of the local community offered to pay for it. The article states:

“The politicians became interested, particularly an Italian congressman from New York. He and Rep. Charles Diggs (D-Michigan) tried to pressure Hewitt into burying Spaghetti. At one point, representatives of the state attorney general’s office came around. Then the Italian congressman sent $15 by mail (postage paid by the U.S. government) to pay for the burial. Hewitt [McDougald] sent it back. The only message was ‘This stamp paid for by McDougald’s.’ Finally, in 1972, a group of townspeople headed toward the aging brick mansion which serves as a funeral home. They wanted to buy the top of the line, put Spaghetti in it and bury all the publicity.”

Spaghetti was buried in Hillside Cemetery, Laurinburg, but unfortunately, all the publicity was not buried. According to the Greensboro Daily Times article, Spaghetti’s corpse was listed for sale in a 1978 catalogue put out by a Wisconsin company called Freak Enterprises.

Snow Scenes in Real Photo Postcards

The latest forecast has it at rainy and 68 degrees on December 25. Since it doesn’t look like Chapel Hill is going to have a White Christmas, let’s enjoy snow in another way.

This photo shows several people gathered in a snowy downtown Hamlet street.

Hamlet must have had quite a winter in 1910.  Here is another snowy scene showing a railroad depot with snow between the tracks and billows of steam from the trains and the station’s chimney.

Most likely photographed in Chapel Hill, this 1924 postcard shows two monumental piles of snow.

Did you see that?

After describing dozens and dozens of street scenes in rendered sepia or black and white, I often worry that I’m going to miss something significant because I’m so familiar with the images.

However, after noticing the man working on the utility pole at the left, I decided that my “I Spy” skills are still pretty sharp.

Tryon Over Time, as Seen Through Postcards

Tryon, 1913

Not too long ago we came across this booklet of postcards titled “Tryon, N.C.: ‘Switzerland of America’, Watch Us Grow.”  The bird’s eye view of Tryon above is an image taken from the booklet. All the images are printed in black and white on thin paper and are all connected to one another, folding like an accordian.  It appears that the booklet was intended to be mailed as a postcard, showing address lines and a spot for a one cent stamp.

The booklet was published in 1913 by E.E. Missildine, and provides a visual documentation of growth and development in the city, including bridges, railroad depot, churches, a mill, library, a pharmacy, and scenes of agricultural labor.  The card below shows a crudely constructed wood house dated 1813 and a large, two-story ivy covered brick house with lots of windows dated 1913.

The North Carolina Postcards Website has two other postcards of interested related to Missildine and the city of Tryon.  Both are downtown street scenes, with one showing Missildine’s Drug Store and another street view published by Missildine’s Pharmacy in Tryon.  These cards were published several decades after the booklet was printed and show the further urbanization of the area.