Tar Talk – Page 2 – NC Miscellany

Exhibition “Photographs by Hugh Morton: An Uncommon Retrospective” opens in Raleigh

Photographs by Hugh Morton: An Uncommon Retrospective opened this past Saturday at the North Carolina Museum of History in Raleigh. The Museum of History is the sixth venue for the exhibition since its debut in August 2013 at the Turchin Center for the Visual Arts at Appalachian State University in Boone. The Morton photographs will be at the museum for more than a year! Admission is free. If you are looking for ways to beat the triple-digit heat index temperatures we’ve been experiencing in the eastern part of the state in recent days, a visit to Museum of History may be just the ticket. The exhibition looks terrific! The museum’s staff designed the exhibition to flow chronologically and several images sport new descriptive labels, so if you’ve seen the exhibition once before it is worth seeing it again.

There will be several programs at the museum related to the exhibition in the coming months, including “Hugh Morton, More Than Bridges and Bears” with Hugh Morton’s grandson Jack Morton and the exhibition’s curator Stephen J. Fletcher, North Carolina Collection Photographic Archivist, on December 8, 2016, 5:30-8:00 pm.

Bison in North Carolina

The Natural History of North Carolina, by John Brickell, 1743.

On January 30, 1919 the French Broad Hustler reported the shipment of “six head of buffalo –three males and three females –to Hominy, Buncombe County” by the American Bison Society. Their arrival in North Carolina marked the reintroduction of America’s largest big game animal to the state. The experiment was short-lived. Despite the birth of two calves and the addition of bred heifers and a bull, only two members of the herd remained a decade later. The reestablishment of bison into the wild in North Carolina was a failure.

Two centuries earlier, North Carolina was home to a robust number of bison. In 1709, English naturalist and explorer John Lawson described North Carolina as having “Plenty of Buffalos” in his A New Voyage to Carolina. A few decades later, Irish-born explorer John Brickell included an illustration of a “Buffello” in his Natural History of North Carolina. Brickell describes Native Americans’ many uses for the buffalo, including for food, bedding, clothing and housewares. Writing in 1748, German explorer and botanist Pehr Kalm noted, “The wild Oxen have their abode principally in the woods of Carolina, which are far up in the country. The inhabitants frequently hunt them, and salt their flesh like common beef, which is eaten by servants and the lower classes of people.”

Bison disappeared from North Carolina almost a century before they were wiped out in the American West. Joseph Rice, an early settler of the Swannanoa Valley around Bull Creek, is known for shooting that area’s last buffalo in 1799. A plaque at milepost 373 of the Blue Ridge Parkway marks the location.

Bull Creek Valley, Milepost 373 of the Blue Ridge Parkway.

The second edition of the North Carolina Gazetteer includes more than 40 entries for places that bear witness to the once ubiquitous presence of buffalo in North Carolina. They include Buffalo (a community in Cherokee County), Buffalo Creek (a waterway in Ashe County, one of many in the state named after buffalo), Big Lick (a place so named in Stanly County for the salt that attracted deer and buffalo in droves), Buffalo Cove (a place in which many buffalo were killed), and Buffalo Ford (a buffalo crossing along the Deep River in Randolph County).

An Accurate Map of North and South Carolina With Their Indian Frontiers... — An Accurate Map of North and South Carolina With Their Indian Frontiers…

In May, President Obama signed the National Bison Legacy Act, which designates the bison as the country’s national mammal. The next time you picture a wild buffalo, think of it here in North Carolina, grazing in the state’s woods and grasslands and drinking from its streams.

Scotswoman Janet Schaw in North Carolina on the Brink of Revolution

They are tall and lean, with short waists and long limbs, sallow complexions and languid eyes, when not inflamed by spirits. Their feet are flat, their joints loose and their walk uneven. These I speak of are only peasantry of this country, as hitherto I have seen nothing else, but I make no doubt when I come to see the better sort, they will be far from this description. For tho’ there is a most disgusting equality, yet I hope to find an American Gentleman a very different creature from an American clown. Heaven forfend else.–Janet Schaw, on North Carolinians, 1775

In the North Carolina Collection at UNC’s Wilson Library, a fascinating 18th century manuscript contains the first-hand account of a young Scotswoman, Janet Schaw, and her travels across the Atlantic that landed her right smack in the middle, or rather at the absolute peak, of tensions culminating in the American Revolution. The manuscript, which is a handwritten transcription of letters sent from Schaw to an unknown recipient back home, starts from the moment she set foot on the departing ship in Scotland, on to the Caribbean Islands, and then, particularly for those interested in the state’s history, the Cape Fear region of North Carolina.

Janet arrives on the coast of North Carolina in February 1775. Her first stay is in Brunswick, a town that was already in decline at the time of her visit, then razed by British troops the next year and never rebuilt. Her first host was Richard Quince, owner of the ship Rebecca that had transported Janet and her group to the coast. From there, she travels the short distance to her brother Robert’s plantation, Schawfield. During the rest of the summer, she makes short trips to Wilmington and other plantations in the immediate area. Her brother, a Loyalist, with others who supported Governor Martin and the Crown, were finally forced to take refuge off the coast on a British warship by October 1775. For context, note that the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence was signed May 20, 1775.

Plantations on the Lower Cape Fear — H. de W. Rapalje’s map of plantations near Wilmington showing the location of Schawfield, 1725-1760

As the situation deteriorated over the summer and tensions rose, Janet provided sharp political insight to the recipient of her letters, although biased to the Crown and disdainful of the violence already surging in the colonies. She also took the time to include incredibly vivid and detailed observations about her surroundings and environment, from how gardens were kept (or not, in her strong opinion) to the flora and fauna along the Cape Fear that were new to her. Janet’s writing style, tone, and unfiltered opinions indicate an impassioned, engaged, and thoughtful traveler. As a result, the manuscript is not only a pleasure to read, but this first-hand account is incredibly informative for understanding what took place during a tumultuous time in American history.

Schaw excerpt — Page 217 from the original Schaw manuscript describing trees in the Cape Fear area

The manuscript itself has an intriguing story. On page 391, there is a date: 8^th Decr. 1782, indicating when it was created. The copy held by the NCC was bought in the early 1970s, and before that time, only three others were known to exist. To produce the well-known transcription, of which there are a number of editions, Charles and Evangeline Andrews only consulted the copy of the manuscript at the British Museum, which is now understood to be lost.

For those interested in the context of Schaw’s visit and the history of the time period in North Carolina, other writings such as James Sprunt’s Chronicles of the Cape Fear River 1660-1916 would be an excellent resource. There are details about the town of Brunswick, descriptions of prominent members of society, and plantations along the Cape Fear. Janet’s brother Robert Schaw is only mentioned briefly. He was, however, a known and prominent citizen, and close with another distinguished Scottish family, the Rutherfurds, that had settled at the Cape Fear. Janet Schaw traveled to North Carolina with three of John Rutherfurd’s children who had been in school in Scotland. Mentions of Robert can be found in the Colonial and State Records online at Documenting the American South, for example a receipt for a horse used by the army against the Regulators (and never returned) and the Ordinances of the Provincial Congress 1776.

To gain an idea of how a plantation contemporaneous to Schawfield would have operated, the Hayes Collection (in the Southern Historical Collection at Wilson) would be an excellent resource. The North Carolina Collection Gallery also has a replica of the the Hayes Plantation library. Not much criticism of the manuscript has been produced, however the few that have been written are very useful in understanding the text, for example, an analysis by Sue Fields Ross, plus a fascinating analysis of foodways in the Schaw manuscript by Sue Laslie Kimball.

Thanks for the cards, Mr. Barbour

Among the jewels of the North Carolina Collection are more than 15,000 postcards. And we have one man to thank for about 8,000 of those items—Durwood Barbour. For 25 years, Barbour combed through boxes at coin and postcard shows looking for images that told stories of bygone people, places and doings in his native state. His collection, housed mostly in shoeboxes, grew so large and valuable that he worried about keeping it at his home in Raleigh. In 2006, he generously donated it to the North Carolina Collection. We learned on Sunday that Barbour died on March 2. He was 87.

Barbour was born in the Barbourtown section of Johnston County, an area near Four Oaks. His parents were farmers and he grew up helping in the fields. In 1948 Barbour enrolled at UNC-Chapel Hill. He was the first in his immediate family to attend college and he told an interviewer in 2010 that he earned the money for tuition by raising sweet potatoes. Barbour graduated from UNC-CH in 1952 with a degree in geology, and, shortly thereafter, he began work as an asphalt engineer for the state highway department, where he remained for many years. Barbour made his home in Raleigh with his wife and two sons. Later in life, Barbour sold real estate. He was an active member of two Raleigh Methodist churches, including Edenton Street United Methodist, where his memorial service is scheduled for Tuesday. Barbour was also a local historian, working with Todd Johnson, executive director of the Johnston County Heritage Center, to produce a book of images of his native county in 1997.

Barbour’s interest in postcards grew from his hobby of collecting coins and paper money. His wife, Mary Anne, recalled in 2010 that there were frequently a few boxes of postcards at numismatic shows. As her husband perused tables with coins and paper money, she looked at the postcards. Eventually Barbour, too, turned his interest to postcards. And we’re thankful he did.

As a tribute to Durwood Barbour, here are a few postcards of places or activities that represent significant parts of his life. All of Barbour’s postcards—and a few thousand more—are available via North Carolina Postcards.

Barbour's Grove in Four Oaks, NC — Though his relationship to K.F. Barbour is unclear, Durwood Barbour was born near Four Oaks in 1929.

Main Street of Four Oaks — The town of Four Oaks in the early 20th century.

New East at UNC Chapel Hill — New East at UNC-Chapel Hill served as the longtime home for the university’s geology department. Durwood Barbour graduated from UNC in 1952 with a degree in geology.

Postcard of early Mule Days parade — Benson’s Mule Days, which takes place the fourth weekend in September, has celebrated Johnston County’s agricultural heritage since 1950.

Road paving — Durwood Barbour began work for North Carolina’s highway department as an asphalt engineer shortly after earning his undergraduate degree.

Postcard of Edenton Street United Methodist Church — Durwood Barbour was an active member of Edenton Street United Methodist Church in Raleigh.

The Remedy of 100 Uses

Nineteenth century newspapers advertised a host of treatments for illnesses, including one called catarrh. The term is one rarely used today, but in the 19^th century catarrh referred to an excess of phlegm or mucous. Although nasal or sinus congestion is frequently caused by fever or allergies, it also accompanies pneumonia or other afflictions of the immune system that were often deadly during that time period.

Among the products promoted for treatment of catarrh was one from North Carolina—Vicks VapoRub.

vicks_thedailytimes_19220211 — A new way to treat catarrh. The Daily Times, February 11, 1922

The Vicks brand was created by pharmacist Lunsford Richardson in Greensboro in the early 1890s.

There are several stories offered for why Richardson chose the name Vicks. Some suggest that Richardson considered putting his own name on the product, but then rejected the idea because his name didn’t fit on the label. Others say that Richardson chose Vicks to honor his brother-in-law, Dr. Joshua Vick. Vick was a respected and highly in-demand physician in Selma, N.C. He turned to Richardson, who had a love for chemistry, for help with dispensing medicine. Another account suggests that Richardson borrowed the name from a seed catalog with a listing for Vick Seed Co.

In the 1890s, twenty-one home remedies were patented and sold under the Vicks name. Each of these claimed natural ingredients, including nutmeg, thyme, camphor, and eucalyptus oils, imported from around the world. Many newspapers routinely published ads for Vicks tonics and ointments similar to the one shown below from The Watauga Democrat.

vicks_wataugademocrat_19220209 — The Watauga Democrat, February 9, 1922

The best-selling Vicks product was a salve that Richardson created for croup, a product that he marketed as Vicks Croup and Pneumonia Salve. The ointment included menthol.

vicks_goldleaf_19071024 — The Henderson Gold Leaf, December 24, 1907

The operation became Vicks Chemical Company in 1911. At that time, Lunsford Richardson’s son Henry Smith Richardson suggested renaming the product Vicks VapoRub. The company advertised the product as “the remedy of over 100 uses.”

With the Spanish flu pandemic in 1918, the popularity of VapoRub skyrocketed in the U.S. Sales climbed from $900,000 to $2.9 million from 1918 to 1919. Advertisements provided detailed instructions for using Vicks to fight the flu.

vicks_spanishflu_highpointreview_19181107 — The High Point Review, November 7, 1918

Richardson’s company is today a part of Proctor and Gamble, but the Vicks brand remains. VapoRub, in its familiar blue jar, continues to be sold around the world, with users claiming the salve is a cure-all for countless maladies, including sunburn, toenail fungus, cough, warts, chapped lips, dandruff and mosquito bites. The records of Richardson-Vicks Inc. and the papers of Henry Smith Richardson are available in Wilson Library’s Southern Historical Collection.

The Baird Family of Western North Carolina

In 1912, the Asheville Gazette-News reprinted a letter (A portion of which is above. Click on the image to sell the full letter), originally from 1858, from Bedent Baird of Watauga County to Zebulon Baird Vance, who at the time was a very young Congressman. Bedent Baird describes what he knows about his family lineage and wonders if his Watauga County Baird clan was in any way related to the Buncombe County one represented by Vance. The paper itself adds a little bit about the family’s history for context. Unfortunately, the matter could not have been settled with this information, because the family tree described in the article is wrong.

To make a somewhat complicated story (filled with many Zebulons and Bedents) short: the two Baird clans in Western North Carolina are indeed related. Their common ancestor was John Baird, born in 1665 in Scotland. He came over in 1683 and settled in New Jersey. He and his wife, Mary Bedent, had five sons: Andrew, John Jr., David, William, and Zebulon.

The Watauga County Bairds are descended from Andrew. Andrew’s son Ezekiel was the first of that line to end up in North Carolina. They have been quite prominent in the community, particularly for being some of the earliest settlers in Valle Crucis. Bedent Baird, author of the 1858 letter, was also a magistrate and politician, representing the part of Watauga that used to be Ashe County.

The Buncombe County Bairds are descended from John Junior. John Junior’s grandsons Bedent and Zebulon were some of the earliest settlers in Buncombe County, about 1793. The brothers had the first grist mill in the county and they played significant roles in the early days of what is now the City of Asheville. They bought a large amount of land, with Bedent settling on Beaver Dam and Zebulon near the French Broad. Zeb rose to some political prominence, serving as Senator for multiple terms. They also forged a friendship with David Lowry Swain, who helped manage Zeb’s affairs after he died in 1824. Swain also helped his deceased friend Zebulon’s grandson, Zebulon Baird Vance, attend UNC-Chapel Hill.

There are couple things that the article and letter in the Asheville Gazette-News get wrong, therefore muddying the process of answering the question about a common ancestor. The most confusing is in the listing of John Baird’s children. In doing so, they completely skip a generation. Bedent, Samuel, Obadiah, Borzilla, Jonathan, Ezekiel, etc. were the children of John Baird’s son Andrew, and therefore grandchildren of the patriarch. Bedent himself completely forgets to mention his own grandfather, Andrew, the actual son of John and Mary Baird, which is a bit of a glaring omission. The letter also claims that his uncle was the “first Bedent.” As is probably clear, the two Baird families in North Carolina did not seem to know much about each other, and therefore Bedent Baird didn’t know about his own cousin Bedent, son of William, over Asheville-way.

It is unclear if this relationship between the clans was resolved, at least not in the public’s imagination. The article is certainly curious for how much it got wrong. And for featuring a letter over 50 years old that quite possibly never made it into the hands of Zeb Vance. Most importantly, though, it shows the affection and curiosity the readership and citizens had for Vance and for the Bairds. Indeed, the significant roles that both families played in the history of Western North Carolina make them a fascinating study, and not just due to the predilection for naming children Bedent and Zebulon.

For further reading:

Arthur, J. P. (2002). A history of Watauga County, North Carolina : with sketches of prominent families. Baltimore, Md.: Genealogical Pub. Co.

Arthur, J. P. (1973). Western North Carolina; a history, 1730-1913. Reprint Co.

Biddix, C. D. (1981). The Heritage of old Buncombe County. Asheville, N.C.: Hunter Pub. Co.

Blackmun, O. (1977). Western North Carolina, its mountains and its people to 1880. Boone, N.C.: Appalachian Consortium Press.

Dowd, C. (1897). Life of Zebulon B. Vance. Charlotte, N.C.: Observer Print. and Pub. House.

Edwards and Broughton Company (Raleigh, N.C.). (1890). Western North Carolina : historical and biographical. Charlotte, N.C.: A.D. Smith & Co.

Gaffney, S. R. (1984). The heritage of Watauga County, North Carolina. Winston-Salem, N.C.: Heritage of Watauga County Book Committee in cooperation with the History Division of Hunter Pub. Co.

McKinney, G. B. (2004). Zeb Vance : North Carolina’s Civil War governor and Gilded Age political leader. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Sondley, F. (1977). A history of Buncombe County, North Carolina. Spartanburg, S.C.: Reprint Co.

Image:

Episode and Interlude. (February 20, 1912). Asheville Gazette-News. p. 4.

Did some Roanoke Colonists head to Bertie County?

The dig had turned up many Native American artifacts, which are common in the region — but also some European artifacts. At the time, Mr. Luccketti hypothesized that they had been left by later European settlers, from a nearby plantation or the homestead of a trader who arrived in the mid-1600s.

But the recent insights from the British Museum’s analysis of the map prompted the foundation to re-examine the 2007 findings from Merry Hill and other dig sites in the region. A key to identifying the earliest colonial life was a type of ceramic known as Surrey-Hampshire Border ware, which was no longer imported to the New World after the Virginia Company dissolved in the early 17th century….

Slowly, the pits gave up their secrets. In just the small areas excavated, the hillside has yielded an unusually high concentration of Border ware and other colonial artifacts, such as a food-storage jar called a baluster, a hook used to stretch hides, a buckle, and pieces of early gun flintlocks called priming pans. No signs of a fort or other structures have been found, but the aggregate of the artifacts convinced the archaeologists that at least a few of the colonists wound up there.

Mr. Luccketti insists on the caveat that only a small number — fewer than a dozen — were present for an indeterminate amount of time. ‘ It wasn’t the relocated colony — I keep emphasizing that — and we need to do some more work here to understand,’ he said.

–from “The Roanoke Colonists: Lost, and Found?” in New York Times, August 10, 2015. The First Colony Foundation will discuss its latest findings in the Pleasants Family Assembly Room of Wilson Library on the UNC campus at 10 am on August 11.

North Carolina’s First State Park – Mount Mitchell

French Broad hustler and Western Carolina Democrat. volume (Hendersonville, N.C.), 10 Feb. 1916. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress. — French Broad hustler and Western Carolina Democrat. (Hendersonville, N.C.), 10 Feb. 1916. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.

In March 1915, a bill was passed in both houses of the State Legislature naming Mount Mitchell as the first state park in North Carolina. The bill was largely encouraged by Governor Locke Craig, the 53rd Governor of North Carolina. He acted in response to concerns from the citizens of North Carolina regarding deforestation.

The namesake of Mount Mitchell was Dr. Elisha Mitchell. Dr. Mitchell, a science professor at UNC, measured elevations of the Black Mountain region until he met an untimely and unfortunate death after falling off a cliff over a large waterfall. Mitchell is buried on the summit of the mountain. Mount Mitchell is the highest point east of the Mississippi River. The second highest point, Mount Craig, was named in honor of Governor Craig. Read more about North Carolina’s first state park in Chronicling America and on the website of the N.C. Department of Parks and Recreation. Additional information about North Carolina woodlands is available from The Forest History Society.

Weather by Telegraph

How Weather Predictions are Made - An Explanation of the Principles on Which Forecasts are Based. — The progressive farmer and the cotton plant. (Raleigh, N.C.), 18 April 1905. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.

Spring is just around the corner! In the last couple of weeks, Chapel Hill and the East Coast have been abuzz about the weather. With all of our modern day radar and forecasting technology, the elements are still unpredictable. What resources were available 100 years ago to predict the weather? The above article from the April 18, 1905 issue of The Progressive Farmer and the Cotton Plant discusses some of the tools and techniques U.S. government forecasters used to predict the weather in 1905. It touts forecasters’ 80 percent accuracy rate in calling the weather.

Since its inception in 1886, The Progressive Farmer has transformed from a local newspaper to a country life oriented magazine with a strong web presence. The online weather briefing delivered by today’s Progressive Farmer includes numerous forecasts as well as indices for drought and crop moisture.

Cherokee Scout: Published Every Tuesday at Murphy

Regular readers of North Carolina Miscellany are likely aware that the North Carolina Collection in partnership with the North Carolina Office of Archives and History has received two rounds of funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities to scan and make available online through the Library of Congress’s Chronicling America website, historic North Carolina newspapers published from 1836 through 1922. Thus far Chronicling America includes runs of various length of twenty-one North Carolina newspaper titles (and their successor titles). And, over the next two years, we’re scheduled to provide an additional 23 titles. We’ll share the list in a future post.

With each batch of scanned newspapers, we also submit a history of that paper. We drafted them with help from our colleagues in the Office of Archives and History’s research branch. Some of those histories are already posted to Chronicling America. But, as a special service to North Carolina Miscellany readers, we also plan to post them here periodically.

Our first is below.

The casual observer might conclude that the Cherokee Scout is affiliated with the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. This is not the case. Rather, the newspaper serves readers in Cherokee County, from its seat at Murphy, described in its pages as “this pretty town of ours—a city in miniature—situated most delightfully amid the mountains of North Carolina.”

Eugene F. Case (1844-1915), editor and co-owner of the Pierce County Herald in Ellsworth, Wisconsin, bought the Murphy Advance in 1890 and changed its name to the Cherokee Scout. Case sold the paper six months later to Dr. John William Patton (1828-1902) and John Stanley Meroney (1832-1909), Patton’s brother-in-law, and returned to the Midwest, where he eventually became the longtime editor and publisher of the Watervliet Record in Michigan. Early issues of the Cherokee Scout are few and scattered, and the only one marking Case’s ownership of the paper lists his name as F.E. Case.

Patton, the first doctor in Cherokee County, appears to have served as co-publisher only briefly. His name had disappeared from the masthead by November 10, 1891. By contrast with Patton, Meroney had little formal education. His family was among the first non-Indian settlers in the town. They had arrived in 1839, shortly after the federal government’s forced removal of the Cherokee Indians from the area. Meroney shared the masthead with Alonzo Don Towns (1866-1913), a native of Albany, Georgia, who had worked at the Daily News and Advertiser in his hometown and the Murphy Bulletin prior to joining the Cherokee Scout under Case’s ownership.

The early days of the partnership between Meroney and Towns may have proved tumultuous. Towns’s wife died in November 1891 and left him with a baby. Six months later Towns married Meroney’s daughter, Alice. As reported in several newspapers, including the Atlanta Constitution and the Asheville Daily Citizen, Meroney had refused to consent to his daughter’s marriage and ordered Towns to keep away from her. Towns, in turn, returned to Albany, Georgia, where he resumed his duties with the News and Advertiser. But, in April 1892, he headed back to Murphy, visited Alice Meroney, and the two eloped. Towns’s death proved equally noteworthy. He was found dead in his office on December 13, 1913, having killed himself by drinking carbolic acid.

On January 16, 1914, the Jackson County Journal, in Sylva, North Carolina, announced that Tate Powell had assumed editorship of the Cherokee Scout. Powell served as editor and publisher of the paper until November 1917, when he sold the Scout to George Otto Mercer, a resident of Asheville, who had previously edited the Mebane Leader in North Carolina and the Camas Post in Washington.

Crop reports, sermons, humor, and poetry could be found regularly in the Scout. Unusual among North Carolina newspapers, but reflecting the paper’s proximity to the “Peach State,” was the presence of news from Georgia, including market prices in Atlanta. The social notes common in newspapers of the era, indicating who was visiting or sick or out of town, appeared under the heading “Some Scoutlets.” In a typical issue of the Scout, business cards occupied the left column on the front page; advertisements for patent medicines such as “Lydia E. Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound” and railroad excursions via Southern Railway to exotic points in the western United States filled the remainder of the pages. In 1917, schools, including Brevard Institute, the North Carolina State College of Agriculture and Engineering, and the University of North Carolina Law School, took out ads in the Scout.

Today the Cherokee Scout is owned by Community Newspapers, Inc., and remains a weekly, published on Wednesdays. Its readership is 9,600.