Not all Cherokee: Chief Mankiller’s N.C. roots

Death noted: Wilma Mankiller, chief of the Cherokee Nation from 1985 to 1995, at her home near Tahlequah, Okla. She was 64.

Her 1993 autobiography, “Mankiller: A Chief and Her People,” includes this  genealogical aside: “My [Dutch-Irish] mother’s ancestry goes back to North Carolina, where her kinfolk from the Sitton side were some of the first iron makers, while the Gillespies were craftsmen who turned out fine long rifles.

“It is an intriguing family legend that the Sittons were related somehow to Charles Arthur “Pretty Boy” Floyd…. They came from the same county in northern Georgia.”

Babe Ruth pays memorable visit to Charlotte

On this day in 1926: Babe Ruth visits Charlotte for a spring training exhibition and sets the town on its ear.

Before the game he gives the local press a brief hotel-room interview. Reclining nude beneath a sheet and smoking a large cigar, he remarks on Southern women (“all they were cracked up to be”) and the demands of celebrity (“Not exactly annoying. One gets used to it. Doesn’t one?”).

A crowd of 4,000 jams Wearn Field to see the potent Yankees toy with the Brooklyn Robins (later Dodgers). To give Ruth’s legion of admiring kids a better look, the Yankees move him from right field to left. They swarm out of the stands and spill into the outfield.

In the seventh inning Ruth grants the crowd its wish. In the words of Observer sports columnist Jake Wade: “Ruth had previously singled, but that only whetted the appetite of the hungry mob. They had come from miles around to see Babe Ruth knock a home run. Nothing else would satisfy them.

“The Bambino took his stout stand at the plate. With the air tense with excitement, he slammed one of Williams’ fast ones out of the park, bringing home Paschal and Gehrig ahead of him. Immediately after the smash of the Bam, the crowds began to file out of the grandstand. Everybody was happy.”

April 8, 1926: Babe Ruth visits Charlotte for a spring training exhibition and sets the town on its ear.

Before the game he gives the local press a brief hotel-room interview. Reclining nude beneath a sheet and smoking a large cigar, he remarks on Southern women (“all they were cracked up to be”) and the demands of celebrity (“Not exactly annoying. One gets used to it. Doesn’t one?”).

A crowd of 4,000 jams Wearn Field to see the potent Yankees toy with the Brooklyn Robins (later Dodgers). To give Ruth’s legion of admiring kids a better look, the Yankees move him from right field to left. They swarm out of the stands and spill into the outfield.

In the seventh inning Ruth grants the crowd its wish. In the words of Observer sports columnist Jake Wade: “Ruth had previously singled, but that only whetted the appetite of the hungry mob. They had come from miles around to see Babe Ruth knock a home run. Nothing else would satisfy them.

“The Bambino took his stout stand at the plate. With the air tense with excitement, he slammed one of Williams’ fast ones out of the park, bringing home Paschal and Gehrig ahead of him. Immediately after the smash of the Bam, the crowds began to file out of the grandstand. Everybody was happy.”

North Carolina Civil War Image Portfolio

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Over the past few months we’ve been “re-highlighting” digital resources that can be found on the NC Collection’s website. Today’s feature is our “Civil War Image Portfolio,” which can be found at: http://library.unc.edu/wilson/ncc/pcoll/civilwar/index.html.

Images in the North Carolina Collection depicting the Civil War are from woodcuts, engravings, lithographs, and photographs. The overwhelming majority of these were made by persons accompanying Union forces or were made from sketches and other information they provided. Numerous woodcuts appeared in publications based in the North such as Harper’s Weekly and Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper. Lithographers, including Nathaniel Currier and James Merritt Ives in New York City, produced hand-colored prints depicting Civil War events including some in North Carolina. The North Carolina Collection Photographic Archives has twenty-seven carte-de-visite prints attributed to Union photographer O. J. Smith made in New Bern about 1863, following the town’s occupation. Most of the images owned by the Collection, regardless of format, are from a northern perspective and provide limited insight into life within the Confederacy. Even so, the images are significant historical documents.

Captions or image descriptions are grouped in categories by subject. Within each category, they are subdivided by county, town, and chronology.

Prohibition on campus: The roaring drunk ’20s

“By the end of the decade the polls  of the Congressional Hearing on the Repeal of the Prohibition Amendment presented overwhelming evidence that men and women students drank in a proportion close to two drinkers to every non-drinker….. At the University of North Carolina, of the 944 students who voted, 67 percent admitted drinking to some extent…. and 85 percent favored repeal or modification…..

“At Duke, the [campus newspaper] editor casually suggested that the most considerate senior gift to the college might be ‘a large room about the size of the new gym, with several hundred beds in it, where the Saturday night drunks might go when they come in Sunday morning so that they might not disturb their roommates….

” ‘A dance among the younger set can hardly be called a success nowadays unless most of the boys get “high,” not to mention the occasional girl who cannot be outdone….’ ”

— From “The Damned and the Beautiful: American Youth in the 1920s”  by Paula S. Fass (1977)

Easter Monday In North Carolina

For some it is the pinnacle of the church calendar…for others it is a chance for an early beach trip. For children it may be all about the candy, but for our state legislators in the early 20th century, it may have been about the baseball game. For over fifty years (1935-1987), the Monday after Easter–rather than the Friday before in most states–was the legal holiday in North Carolina. According to tradition, this was to give more fans an opportunity to attend the NCSU vs. Wake Forest baseball game, which was traditionally played on the Monday after Easter.

A longtime reader of the NCM blog suggested that today would be a perfect day to recreate the tradition….it’s in the mid-80s in Raleigh, the sun is shining, but, alas, there is no game scheduled!

North Carolina Books, Which Ought To Be In The Library Of Every North Carolinian

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The advertisement above claims that these books should be in the library of every North Carolinian. Well, I can imagine that the vast majority of our state’s fine citizens do not have these titles in their personal library (I know I don’t), but I can assure you that the North Carolina Collection does. I’m including links to the online catalog description of the items below. In fact, the top three items have been digitized by the Internet Archive, so if you have a computer and an internet connection in your residence, maybe you do have some of the titles in your personal library.

A defence of the Revolutionary history of the state of North Carolina : from the aspersions of Mr. Jefferson

Historical sketches of North Carolina : from 1584 to 1851, compiled from original records, official documents and traditional statements : with biographical sketches of her distinguished statesmen, jurists, lawyers, soldiers, divines, etc.

History of North Carolina : with maps and illustrations

Proceedings and debates of the Convention of North Carolina : called to amend the constitution of the state, which assembled at Raleigh, June 4, 1835, to which are subjoined the convention act and the amendments to the constitution.

A new and complete North Carolina form-book : containing forms of all those legal instruments which the people have occasion to use ; and furnishing, also, a guide to justices of the peace, sheriffs, clerks, constables, coroners, school-committees, &c. : compiled from the best sources, being an improvement on all works of the kind formerly in use, and intended as a companion to Cantwell’s N.C. Justice : to which are added the Constitution of North Carolina and of the United States, an account of the principal officers of the state, and of the counties, titles of address, &c., &c.

In mountains, ‘lineage of England’s pauperism’

“Anthony Stokes [a Loyalist refugee from Georgia in 1783] spoke for many when he wrote of ‘a swarm of men’ he called ‘Crackers,’ who were overrunning western Virginia and North Carolina. ‘Many of these people are descended from convicts that were transported from Great Britain to Virginia at different times and inherit so much profligacy from their ancestors that they are the most abandoned set of men on earth….’

“David Starr Jordan [author of “The Heredity of Richard Roe, a Discussion of the Principles of Eugenics,” 1911] wrapped himself in the mantle of dispassionate fact as he dissected a mass of degenerate Anglo-Saxons. Pity, for example, the poor whites of the North Carolina mountains consigned by Jordan ‘to the lineage of England’s pauperism transported first to the colonies, afterward driven from the plains to the mountains.’ ”

— From “The History of White People” by Nell Irvin Painter (2010)

Although his advocacy of eugenics hasn’t aged well, Jordan (1851-1931) did compile quite a resume: College president (Indiana and Stanford).  Influential ichthyologist (he and his students discovered more than 2,500 species of fish). Early proponent of evolution, pacifism and Unitarianism. And then there’s this from the “Dictionary of Unitarian and Universalist Biography”: “In 1909, after he addressed the California Socialist Party, a scheduled lecture at the University of North Carolina was canceled.”