Happy Birthday to The News & Observer. Although the paper’s roots date back to the 1880s, the first issue under publisher Josephus Daniels rolled off the presses on this date in 1893. And since then, the paper has operated continuously under its current title. The print version of today’s paper features a front page mocked up in the style of the 1893 paper.
We’re marking the occasion by providing you with a look at the full first issue. To take a closer look at the individual pages, click on one of the images below. You’ll be taken to a new page. Click on the image on that page and you can view the full page.
I was searching for some information on the Remember Cliffside website several days ago when I stumbled upon a story about the Goat Man. Reno Bailey, the creator of Remember Cliffside, recalls from childhood a man who used to pass through town with a wagon pulled by goats and made money by taking photographs of children posed in his wagon. Bailey described how his young imagination had added a few details to the Goat Man’s biography. In his mind, the itinerant goatherd was a Nazi spy taking photographs of the town’s power plant and other installations. Of course, as an adult, Bailey learned that the Goat Man was not a spy. Instead he was a man who traveled the South’s backroads with his goats and, occasionally, some two-legged companions, preaching and living off the land and the kindness of strangers.
I probably wouldn’t have given the story much more thought if I hadn’t come across these two images of the Goat Man in the North Carolina Postcards online collection yesterday.
I figured if there were postcards of the Goat Man and if he drew such large crowds when he preached, then someone must have written about him. Heck, I thought, maybe there’s even a Wikipedia page about him. Indeed, there is. There’s also a book and a song about the Goat Man, whose real name was Charles “Ches” McCartney.
According to several biographies on the web, including one in the New Georgia Encyclopedia, McCartney was born on an Iowa farm in 1901. At 14 he left home and headed for New York City. There he met and, eventually, married a Spanish woman who had a knife throwing act. McCartney, who was allegedly 10 years his wife’s junior, served as her knife throwing target. When the couple had a son, they left the city and began a life of farming. The Depression hit the couple hard and McCartney searched for other work. In 1935 McCartney was injured while cutting timber as part of a Works Progress Administration project. Some accounts suggest that a tree fell on him and several hours elapsed before he was found. According to those stories, McCartney was pronounced dead and taken to a mortuary. As the undertaker inserted a needle with embalming fluid into his arm, McCartney stirred.
Whether because of this supposed near death experience or for other reasons, McCartney underwent a religious reawakening. He hitched up a wagon to a team of goats and, accompanied by his wife and son, he took to the road preaching. Wearing goatskin clothes fashioned by his wife, McCartney called for sinners to repent or face eternal damnation. He marked his path with signs bearing such messages as “Prepare to Meet Thy God,” with the fires of hell painted at the bottom. Eventually McCartney’s wife tired of the itinerant life and she left, taking their son with her. McCartney continued his travels, inspired, he said, by Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and the Bible, two books he carried with him. Along the way, McCartney married two more times and may have fathered several more children. At some point his son, Albert Gene, joined him on the road.
Portrait of Charles McCartney, the Goat Man, from the 1950s. Image from Davie County Public Library
McCartney established a base in Twiggs County, Georgia, calling his home the Free Thinking Christian Mission. From there, he continued his travels, claiming to visited all of the lower 48 states as well as Alaska and Canada during almost 50 years on the road. Although he eventually forsook goatskin clothing for denim overalls, his fiery sermons and eccentric appearance left strong impressions on those whom he encountered. Flannery O’Connor mentioned the Goat Man in letters and may have incorporated some of his ways into her characters. It is believed that Cormac McCarthy’s novel Suttree includes a character based on McCartney.
McCartney retired from the road in the late 60s or early 70s, shortly after a mugging during which three of his ribs were broken and two goats killed. When his mission building burned in 1978, McCartney and his son moved into a broken down school bus. He made one last road journey in 1985 when he set out on foot toward Los Angeles in hopes of meeting and marrying the actress Morgan Fairchild. After a mugging on that trip, he returned to Georgia and lived in a nursing home until his death at the age of 97 in 1998.
If you met the Goat Man along the way, please share your memories with us.
The 1903 meeting of onetime foes on the Gettysburg battlefield sparked interest among North Carolina Miscellany readers. So today’s post provides a few more details on the first encounter between Lt. Colonel John R. Lane of the 26th North Carolina Regiment and Sgt. Charles H. McConnell of the 24th Michigan Regiment of the Iron Brigade (note the previous post incorrectly described McConnell as a colonel).
Photograph from George C. Underwood’s History of the N.C. 26th RegimentPhotograph from George C. Underwood’s History of the N.C. 26th Regiment, 1901
Lane, a native of Chatham County, and McConnell, a Chicago native, faced each other in battle during the first day of fighting at Gettysburg. The 26th North Carolina was charging the Union lines in McPherson’s Woods. They were met with strong resistance by the 24th Michigan and suffered numerous casualties. The flag of the 26th had fallen 11 times as successive color guards were killed or wounded. As Col. Henry K. Burgwyn rescued the colors and prepared to hand them off to a private, he was shot in his left side and fell. Shortly after taking the flag, the private, too, was shot. Lane stepped up to serve as the 14th standard bearer. As recounted in the 26th’s regimental history, Lane shouted at the top of his voice, “Twenty-sixth follow me.”
The men answer with a yell and press forward. Several lines of the enemy have given away, but a most formidable line yet remains, which seems determined to hold its position. Volleys of musketry are fast thinning out those left and only a skeleton line now remains. To add to the horrors of the scene, the battle smoke has settled down over the combatants making it almost as dark as night. With a cheer the men obey the command to advance, and rush on and upward to the summit of the hill, when the last line of the enemy gives way and sullenly retires from the field through the village of Gettysburg to the heights beyond the cemetery.
Just as the last shots are firing, a sergeant in the Twenty-Fourth Michigan Regiment (now the President of the Iron Brigade Veteran Association, Mr. Charles H. McConnell, of Chicago), attracted by the commanding figure of Colonel Lane carrying the colors, lingers to take a farewell shot, and resting his musket on a tree, he waits his opportunity. When about thirty steps distant, as Colonel Lane turns to see if his regiment is following him, a ball fired by this brave and resolute adversary, strikes him in the back of the neck just below the brain, which crashes through his jaw and mouth, and for the fourteenth and last time the colors are down. The red field was won, but at what cost to the victor as well as the vanquished.
The cost of the battle to Lane may have been his ability to clearly communicate. Lane was among the speakers at the 1903 Gettysburg commemoration, the same event during which he was photographed with McConnell. His talk included a recitation of the battle, drawn, he said, from the regimental history. But before detailing his actions and those of his comrades in arms, Lane offered an apology.
I must warn you that you must not expect a highly wrought oration from me. I was once a soldier, never a speaker. Besides, our good friends, the enemy, took care on this field of Gettysburg that I should never become an orator, for a Yankee bullet ruined my throat and took away a part of my tongue and deprived me of my teeth.
After fighting ceased at Gettysburg, Lane was among the wounded placed on a southbound wagon train. The caravan had not ventured far when it was attacked by Union cavalry. According to the regimental history, Lane “at once got out of the wagon, mounted his horse and made his escape, though he was at the time unable to speak or to receive nourishment in the natural way. He was unable to take any nourishment for nine days, owing to the swollen and inflamed condition of his throat and mouth, and it was thought impossible for him ever to get well.”
But Lane did get well. And he continued to fight with the 26th North Carolina, sustaining three more severe wounds before finally being hospitalized in Greensboro. He was there when his unit surrendered at Appomattox on April 9, 1865. Photo from George C. Underwood’s History of the N.C. 26th Regiment, 1901.
Col. John R. Lane (left) poses with Sgt. Charles H. McConnell by monument to 24th Michigan at Gettysburg in 1903.
Within these woods on that fateful afternoon of the first day of July 1863, perhaps in less than an hour, the 26th North Carolina of Pettigrew’s Brigade suffered more casualties than any regiment on either side, in any battle, during the entire Civil War. But the 24th Michigan and the other regiments of Meredith’s Iron Brigade, standing in the path of the 26th, yielded ground just as stubbornly as the aggressor fought for it. During their bitter fight to the finish courage knew no bounds. Both sides were American to the core.
Therefore, in honoring one we honor the other, and we do so in the same spirit in which Colonel John Randolph Lane of the 26th North Carolina and Colonel Charles H. McConnell of the 24th Michigan exchanged greetings on this battlefield eighty-two years ago. It was their second meeting, and the [photo above] bears faithful witness. They first met 40 years earlier, in this immediate vicinity, on the first day of the Battle of Gettysburg when McConnell shot and severely wounded Lane, leaving him for dead on the battlefield. Only moments earlier, the gallant Colonel Henry King Burgwyn, Jr., had been mortally wounded. Major John T. Jones succeeded Lane in command of the 26th. The command of this regiment changed hands three times before Meredith’s Iron Brigade finally abandoned those woods and fell back on Seminary Ridge.
Former Gov. James E. Holshouser Jr., the first Republican to be elected the state’s chief executive in the 20th century, died earlier today. Holshouser was 78.
A native of Boone, Holshouser earned his undergraduate degree from Davidson College. After earning a law degree from UNC in 1960, he returned to Watauga County to practice there. In 1962 Holshouser was elected to the N.C. House, where he served four terms. When he won the governorship in 1972, at the age of 38, Holshouser became the nation’s youngest chief executive in the 20th century.
Over the course of his political career, Holshouser found himself the subject of photographer Hugh Morton. James E. Holhouser Jr. with his father, James E. Holshouser Sr. Probably taken at Grandfather Golf and Country Club, Linville, N.C.
James E. Holshouser with Hugh Morton, possibly at an event tied to James B. Hunt’s succession as Governor.Holshouser at dedication of N.C. Highway 321 near Boone, also named Holshouser Highway. Then-Governor James G. Martin is second from left.
My first recollection of The State magazine was around Christmas time 1948 when I was visiting my grandmother. She knew that Charlie Justice was my hero, so she had saved for me her copy of the December 4th issue, which featured a Hugh Morton cover picture of Justice following the ‘48 UNC vs. Duke game. I have been a fan of the magazine ever since that day.
At that time, the magazine was already 15 years old, but it was new to me and I didn’t know that there had been a previous cover with a photograph of Justice by Morton about a year before. (I was able to get that earlier issue about 5 years later when I was working on a fund-raising scrap paper drive)…
–from Jack Hilliard’s remembrances of Our State magazine. The magazine is celebrating its 80th year of publishing. Hilliard is a former director for WFMY-TV in Greensboro and a frequent blogger on the North Carolina Collection Photographic Archive’s View to Hugh blog. You can read Hilliard’s full post, complete with many cover images from Our State, here.
The Alumni Association of the University was organized on the 31st of May, 1843. The following were present, being the first members:
John D. Hawkins, Franklin, Class of 1801.
John Hill, Wilmington, Class of 1814.
Charles Manly, Raleigh, Class of 1814.
Charles Hinton, Wake County, Class of 1814.
John M. Morehead, Governor, Greensboro, Class of 1817.
William M. Green, Chapel Hill, Class of 1818.
Hugh Waddell, Hillsboro, Class of 1818.
William H. Battle, Chapel Hill, Class of 1820.
William A. Graham, Hillsboro, Class of 1824.
John W. Norwood, Hillsboro, Class of 1824.
J. DeBerniere Hooper, Chapel Hill, Class of 1831.
Cadwallader Jones, Jr., Hillsboro, Class of 1832.
Wm. H. Owen, Chapel Hill, Class of 1833.
Harrison Covington, Richmond County, Class of 1834.
Wm. W. Hooper, Chapel Hill, Class of 1836.
Benjamin I. Howze, Haywood, Class of 1836.
Ralph H. Graves, Chapel Hill, Class of 1836.
Henry K. Nash, Hillsboro, Class of 1836.
Pride Jones, Hillsboro, Class of 1837.
Alpheus Jones, Wake County, Class of 1839.
Thomas D. Meares, Wilmington, Class of 1839.
William S. Green, Danville, Va., Class of 1840.
Benjamin F. Atkins, Cumberland County, Class of 1841.
Robert R. Bridgers, Tarboro, Class of 1841.
John W. Brodnax, Rockingham County, Class of 1841.
Wm. J. Clarke, Raleigh, Class of 1841.
John D. Hawkins, Jr., Mississippi, Class of 1841.
Charles Phillips, Chapel Hill, Class of 1841.
Samuel F. Phillips, Chapel Hill, Class of 1841.
Richard J. Ashe, Hillsboro, Class of 1842.
Stephen S. Green, Chapel Hill, Class of 1842.
Governor Morehead was called to the chair. Messrs. Wm. A. Graham, John D. Hawkins, John Hill, Charles Manly, Wm. M. Green and William H. Battle were appointed a committee to report a constitution to the meeting in 1844 at Commencement. Thomas D. Meares was appointed Secretary.
President Taft’s visit to Charlotte on May 20, 1909 not only spawned the term “Taft rain,” it also served as occasion for debut of the “Mecklenburg March.” Our colleagues at the Charlotte & Mecklenburg public library have a 2009 recording of the march online (though it doesn’t seem to working right now). No doubt many Mecklenburgers (especially those whose roots lie near the spring where the supposed signers met) echo the sentiments found in the march’s only lyrics. This copy of the sheet music is from the papers of a proud Mecklenburger and staunch believer in the Meck Dec. We’re still looking for a little more information on Janie Alexander Patterson. We know that she was a “Miss” when she wrote this composition. And that she later became Janie Alexander Patterson Wagoner.
The North Carolina Collection Gallery proudly announces the launch of Carolina Keepsakes, a digital collection of some of the Gallery’s most interesting and significant items.
As the main photographer for this project, one of my favorite items is the shaving kit of David L. Swain, president of UNC and former governor of North Carolina. This polished and engraved wooden box opens with a tiny key. What must have been routine for Swain felt like opening a treasure chest to me. You can see photographs of all the delicately crafted razors and glass jars nestled in their individual compartments. One hollow spot in the box did not have a handle. I thought I must have found a secret compartment! I used a delicate tool to lift up the wooden piece, but, alas, there were no hidden messages or shaving secrets that had lay dormant for 145 years. Chang and Eng engraving
Another item I encourage you to view is the watercolor portrait on ivory of Chang and Eng Bunker. The image has been reproduced many times, but never before has it been available in such a high-quality format. We have two images online. If you click on the thumbnail of the second image (without the frame) and use the slider to zoom in, you can see how the artist painted fine details in the eyes and hair. This souvenir of the twin’s trip to Paris ca. 1835 is definitely a significant Carolina Keepsake.
We hope you enjoy browsing Carolina Keepsakes as much as we enjoyed working on it.
For decades, patriotic souvenir hunters have chipped away at Plymouth Rock and cut fragments from White House curtains. Less exuberant collectors satisfy themselves with the mass-produced trinkets available at historic sites. In a recent article on Smithsonian.com, curator Larry Bird attributes this behavior to our desire to “touch” the past by owning a piece of our nation’s history.
The “souvenir mania” he describes inspired us to look through the Gallery’s own collection of relics. One of these keepsakes is a rifle ball embedded in a piece of wood. Inscribed on the back of this piece is “Rifle Ball, Battle at Bentonville, the Last Battle of the War between the States.” This 2 x 2.25 inch fragment was taken from a structure at Bentonville Battlefield as a memento of North Carolina’s largest Civil War battle.
Some relics are associated with revered historical figures, such as this unassuming half-inch piece of fabric, a fragment of the braid from General Robert E. Lee’s dress uniform donated in 1930 to the Library by one of Lee’s cousins.
The Gallery holds a number of souvenirs and relics, and most of these are related to the Civil War. The collection of these is a testament to a universal human desire to connect with monumental events and historic personages of the past.
What relics or souvenirs have allowed you to touch the past?
