Kerr, John Hosea, Jr.

19 May 1900–28 May 1968

John Hosea Kerr, Jr., attorney and legislator, was born in Warrenton, the son of John Hosea and Ella Foote Kerr. He received his early education in the schools of Warrenton where he was an honor graduate and valedictorian of the Graham Academy in 1917. During the latter year he entered The University of North Carolina, from which he received the A.B. degree in 1921. In Chapel Hill, Kerr distinguished himself as a debater in the Philanthropic Literary Society and served as business manager of the Tar Heel while Thomas Wolfe was editor.

Kerr studied law at Wake Forest College (1922–23) and was admitted to the bar in 1923. After an additional year of legal study at George Washington University, he began a practice in Rocky Mount. In 1928, he was elected to his first term in the General Assembly as a member of the house for Edgecombe County. He returned to Warrenton in 1931 and established a permanent practice. In 1938 Kerr was again elected to the house, now representing Warren County, and was continuously reelected until 1949; for the 1943 session he served as speaker. After a single term in the state senate (1955–57), he served three more terms in the house (1957–63) before declining to seek reelection.

The legislator from Warrenton was the most noted orator and one of the most influential members in the General Assembly of his day. His speeches were presented ex tempore and none of the major addresses survive in recorded form. The most famous was delivered during the 1947 session in support of the Humber bill to establish the North Carolina Museum of Art. This bill, which sought an appropriation of one million dollars, had not previously attracted significant legislative support. Kerr's speech began: "I know that I am facing a hostile audience, but man cannot live by bread alone." The address was commonly credited with securing passage of the bill; among significant speeches in the state's legislative history, it was perhaps equaled only by the James C. Dobbin speech in support of the state mental hospital.

Despite extreme conservatism in fiscal and social matters, Kerr achieved a considerable record in support of innovative state programs. It is said that he obtained the initial state appropriation for the North Carolina Institute of Government, and he was an influential supporter of the North Carolina School of the Arts.

In addition to his legislative service, Kerr was an official of the state Democratic party, a trustee of The University of North Carolina, and a promoter of local improvements in Warrenton.

On 12 Nov. 1932 he married Mary Hinton Duke of Richmond, Va., and they had one child, John H. Kerr III. He died at age sixty-eight and was buried in Fair-view Cemetery, Warrenton.

Kerr, John Hosea

30 Dec. 1873–21 June 1958

John Hosea Kerr, lawyer, Superior Court solicitor and judge, and congressman, was born at Yanceyville, the son of John Hosea McNeill and Eliza Catherine Yancey Kerr, great niece of Bartlett Yancey and granddaughter of James Yancey. His father was an officer in the Confederate Army and served for a number of years as clerk of court in Caswell County. Young Kerr was educated in the Yanceyville schools and Bingham School at Mebane; he received the bachelor of arts degree from Wake Forest College in 1895. One of the early students of law at Wake Forest, he was awarded the honorary doctor of law degree from the college on 4 June 1945.

In the fall of 1895, Kerr received his license and began to practice law in Warrenton. He served as town attorney and for two terms as mayor (1897–98). In these positions he was instrumental in having the Warrenton charter amended to permit the municipality to own and operate businesses, including a dispensary for the sale of spirits, wine, and beer; a telephone company; a hotel; and a railroad. This policy brought Warrenton to the attention of local governments nationwide. In 1905 Kerr was elected solicitor of the Third Judicial District, a post he held for ten years. In November 1916 he was elected judge of the Superior Court and served until 1923. On the death of Claude Kitchin in 1923, Kerr was elected as a Democrat to Congress where he served fifteen consecutive terms until 1952. He was the third generation of his family bearing the name John Kerr to be elected to Congress.

While in Congress, he took a deep interest in the agricultural life of his district; he was particularly active in legislation affecting the cotton, peanut, and tobacco crops. Among his committee assignments, he was a member of the Public Buildings Committee, which was instrumental in the erection of many government buildings in the 1930s and 1940s—including the United States Supreme Court Building. On the Appropriations Committee, he served as vice-chairman of the subcommittee that handled military appropriations during World War II, and he was chairman of the Subcommittee on Subversive Organizations. Kerr was coauthor of the Kerr-Coolidge Immigration bill and the Kerr-Smith Tobacco Act of 1934. The latter legislation evolved into a governmental program of price supports and allotments for tobacco farmers, which proved to be of tremendous economic benefit to North Carolina and other tobacco-producing regions.

During the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Kerr was a close personal friend of Secretary of State Cordell Hull and was sent on diplomatic missions to Hawaii, Central America, and Europe. He served as chairman of the U.S. delegation to the Inter-America Travel Congress at Mexico City in 1941.

The Second Congressional District, which Kerr served for twenty-nine years, was traversed by the Roanoke River. The Roanoke had a history of severe flooding, and in 1940 the waters produced by a devastating flood crested at Weldon at fifty-eight feet, six inches. In this thirtieth major flood along the Roanoke River basin since the Civil War, the entire crop in the Roanoke Valley was destroyed. The frequency of damaging floods caused Kerr to begin action for the location of a flood control project on the Roanoke River. Against the resistance of many, he secured passage of a congressional appropriation authorizing the investigation of such a project and a survey. Kerr secured the assistance of several colleagues from Virginia and North Carolina, and a flood control and hydroelectric source dam was erected at Buggs Island, Va., at a cost of $100 million. Members of Congress paid tribute to his efforts by naming the facility, which was dedicated on 3 Oct. 1952, the John H. Kerr Dam and Reservoir. This project led to construction of Gaston Dam near Roanoke Rapids by the Virginia Electric and Power Company. The recreational features alone of the two projects (Kerr Lake having 880 miles of shoreline) has produced an economic revolution in the Roanoke Valley, which runs through northeastern North Carolina and southside Virginia.

On 15 Feb. 1899 Kerr married Ella Lillian Foote, the daughter of Henry Alexander and Minnie Young Foote of Warrenton; her father was an attorney and the owner and publisher of the Warrenton Gazette. They were the parents of two sons: John H., Jr., an attorney and a member of the North Carolina House of Representatives and Senate for twelve terms (speaker of the house, 1943); and James Yancey, an attorney and tobacconist. Kerr was a Mason, a member of the Warrenton Baptist Church, a trustee of The University of North Carolina, and a member of the Board of Visitors of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. He died in Warrenton, where he was buried in Fairview Cemetery.

Hyman, John Adams

by Joseph E. Elmore, 1988

23 July 1840–14 Sept. 1891

John Adams Hyman, politician, state senator, and congressman, was born a slave near Warrenton, Warren County. Sold and sent to Alabama, he returned to Warren County in 1865 a free man. With the rise of African American participation in North Carolina politics, Hyman became a delegate to the second Freedman's Convention held in Raleigh during 1866. The following year, he was a delegate to the first Republican state convention and attended the Republican state executive committee meeting. With North Carolina a part of Military District Number Two, under E. R. S. Canby, he also was chosen a "Register" for Warren County to assist in the registration of voters in 1867. In 1868, he became a delegate to the North Carolina Constitutional Convention.

Also in 1868 Hyman, together with three other African Americans, was elected to the North Carolina Senate. Representing the Twentieth Senatorial District (Warren County) from 1868 to 1874, he supported civil rights for African Americans during both his terms. However, his efforts were clouded by his involvement in frauds and payoffs of significant proportions: irregular activities as a member of a committee to locate a site for a penitentiary, accepting money from lobbyists during the Milton S. Littlefield-George W. Swepson railroad bond scandal, and demanding money from a congressional candidate in return for his support. Aside from these episodes, Hyman's participation in legislative matters was minimal.

Hyman was a strong political campaigner. With Warren County a part of the gerrymandered Second Congressional District, also known as the "Black Second," he decided to run for Congress. Although defeated in 1872, he was elected in 1874, thus becoming the first black to represent North Carolina in the U.S. House of Representatives and the only Republican to represent North Carolina in the Forty-fourth Congress (1875–77). Hyman supported all legislation to secure and protect the rights and privileges of African Americans, and he strongly supported suffrage rights. His votes on issues arising from the Civil War and Reconstruction reflected his Republican sentiments. For example, he opposed the appointment of former Confederate officials to federal posts, as well as the removal of disabilities imposed on southern leaders by the Fourteenth Amendment. His stand on the main issues confronting the Congress also demonstrated his party affiliation. He supported Rutherford B. Hayes over Samuel J. Tilden in the disputed presidential election of 1877, which was decided by Congress; he favored a third term for Ulysses S. Grant, whom he avidly supported; and he opposed the resumption of specie payments.

After serving one term in the House, Hyman failed to obtain his party's nomination in 1876. This was due in part to his limited participation in Congress, an unwillingness of white Republicans to support him, a factional split among the African Americans in the Black Second, and the old accusations of fraud and corruption that still haunted him from his days in the state senate.

In private life, Hyman worked as a farmer and ran a combination liquor-grocery store in Warrenton. In 1872 he began to mortgage his real estate, and by 1878 he had disposed of all his land. Undoubtedly, campaign expenses contributed to his financial reverses, but his extravagances in the nation's capital were his undoing. He was constantly in debt. Writing to Judge Thomas Settle in March 1877, Hyman said that he was in "desparate need." An appointment by President Hayes to the post of collector of internal revenues at New Bern was withdrawn when town residents rallied on behalf of the collector already in office. In 1879, Hyman was accused of using funds from the treasury of the Negro Methodist Church in Warrenton. Shortly afterwards, he left Warrenton for Washington, D.C., to become an assistant mail clerk. He remained an employee of the Post Office Department until 1889, when he obtained a minor position in the Agriculture Department.

Hyman spent his last years in Washington, D.C., where he died of a stroke. He was survived by his widow, two sons, and two daughters.

Hines, Peter Evans

28 July 1828–14 Aug. 1908

Peter Evans Hines, physician, was born in Warren County, the son of Congressman Richard Hines and his second wife, Ann Edmunds Spruill. He was named for his mother's older half brother, Peter Evans of Old Sparta, Edgecombe County. Hines was prepared for college at Lovejoy's Academy in Raleigh and in 1849 was graduated from The University of North Carolina, where he received an M.A. degree in 1852. In July 1849, he began to study medicine under Dr. C. E. Johnson of Raleigh. He was graduated with high honors from the medical school of the University of Pennsylvania in 1853. The following year he was an intern at St. Joseph's Hospital in Philadelphia.

During 1854–55 Hines continued the study of medicine in the great hospitals of Paris. He then established a practice in Raleigh. When the Civil War broke out, Governor John W. Ellis appointed him surgeon of the First Regiment of North Carolina Volunteers, the famous Bethel Regiment. In 1862 he was named medical director of all the hospitals in the Petersburg, Va., division. Later that year he was made medical director of the general hospitals of North Carolina, a post he held until the war ended.

After the war Hines was president of the Wake County Medical Society, of the Raleigh Academy of Medicine (1876–95), and of the North Carolina Board of Medical Examiners (1878–84). From 1894 until his death he was superintendent of health of Wake County, and for many years he was city physician of Raleigh.

A devout Episcopalian, Hines served in 1890 as a vestryman of Christ Church, Raleigh, and as a member of the Standing Committee of the Diocese of North Carolina. He filled both of these positions at the time of his death. In 1882 he married Frances Iredell Johnson of Raleigh, but they had no children. Hines was buried in the family plot in the Old City Cemetery, Raleigh. His widow gave his medical library of 500 volumes to the library of The University of North Carolina.

Hill, Theophilus Hunter

31 Oct. 1836–29 June 1901

Theophilus Hunter Hill, poet and librarian, was born near Raleigh at Spring Hill plantation in the home of his maternal grandfather, Theophilus Hunter, Jr. His great-grandfather was the Reverend William Hill, a chaplain in the American Revolution; his grandfather, also William Hill, was North Carolina's secretary of state for more than forty years; and his father, Dr. William G. Hill, was an eminent physician. His maternal great-grandfather was Theophilus Hunter, pioneer Wake County settler. Hill's mother, Adelaide, was the daughter of Theophilus Hunter, Jr. Young Hill received his early training from an aunt, Eliza Hill, who later conducted a private school in Raleigh. He then attended the Raleigh Male Academy while it was under the direction of J. M. Lovejoy. In 1852 he entered The University of North Carolina but because of family financial reverses was obliged to complete his studies at home.

In 1853 Hill became editor of a Raleigh newspaper, The Spirit of the Age. At the time he was encouraged by Judge Daniel Fowle, who later became governor, to take up the study of law. Having read law under Fowle, Hill was licensed in 1858, but because he did not care for the law he never opened a practice, preferring instead a literary life. In Raleigh in 1861 his first volume of poems, Hesper and Other Poems, became the first book published under the copyright laws of the Confederate States. His second volume, Poems, was published in New York in 1869, and his final volume, Passion Flower, was published in Raleigh in 1883. Other poems appeared in newspapers and periodicals.

From 1871 to 1873 Hill served as state librarian until he became editor of The Century, published in South Carolina although he remained in Raleigh. He also represented several book concerns and insurance companies. Hill was a lifelong Democrat and kept fully informed on political issues, but he never ran for public office.

His first wife, whom he married on 22 Jan. 1861, was Laura Phillips of Northampton County; she died in 1878. Their children were Theophilus Hunter, Frank E., and Rosa. In September 1879 he married Mattie Yancey of Warren County, and they had one child, Tempe. She painted a portrait of her father for the State Library. Hill died of a fever in Raleigh at age sixty-four. He was buried in Oakwood Cemetery.

Henderson, William B.

Fl. 1892–98

William B. Henderson, African-American state senator, farmer, and resident of Middleburg, was elected to the North Carolina General Assembly in 1892 as a Republican representative from the Eleventh District (Vance and Warren counties). Almost immediately, on 24 Jan. 1893, Henderson's seat was challenged by his recent opponent, John P. Leach of Warren County. Leach claimed that he was the "legitimate" candidate. Henderson and several other Republicans found themselves displaced by legislative action. He appealed to Congressman Thomas Settle, pointing out that his election had been certified by the Democratic Canvass Board and that he had defeated Leach by 653 votes.

The appeal was unsuccessful. The era was one of great emotion, rivalry, and charges by the Democrats of collusion between the Populists and the Negro Republicans. Henderson ran again, was elected, and served in the North Carolina Senate in 1897 and 1898. He was not active and seldom spoke, although on occasion he proposed measures pertaining to fences and livestock as well as the desirability of a register of deeds and a dispensary for Vance County. He served on committees dealing with penal institutions, public roads, the insane asylum, and claims. In 1898 Governor D. L. Russell named Henderson to be chief fertilizer inspector, replacing James Young.

Haliwa Indians

The Haliwa Indians were recognized as a tribe by the North Carolina legislature in 1965. The tribal name is a combination of Halifax and Warren Counties, where the majority of the Haliwa live. One tradition relates that the present Indian communities in this area were founded by wounded survivors of the Tuscarora War and other colonial conflicts who were unable to rejoin their original tribal groups. In addition to North Carolina coastal tribes, Accomac, Cherokee, Nansemond, Occaneechi, Saponi, Tuscarora, and Tutelo Indians are claimed as Haliwa ancestors. Since 1975, the Haliwa have referred to themselves as the Haliwa-Saponi.

Although Indians were living in this area before the American Revolution and some served as soldiers in that war, the emergence of the Haliwa with a collective Indian identity has been relatively recent. The Haliwa Indian Club was organized in the 1950s, and its membership roll became the arbiter of Indian identity. As they were for other state-recognized tribes in North Carolina, schools and churches were important in strengthening Haliwa group identity, although a separate Haliwa school was not established until 1957.

In 1965, when the Haliwa became a state-recognized Indian tribe, nearly 400 persons successfully brought suit in Halifax County court to change the racial designation on their birth certificates, marriage licenses, and driver's licenses to "Indian." In the early 2000s there were approximately 3,000 Haliwas living in Halifax and Warren Counties. The tribe holds an annual powwow in April and conducts a number of economic and educational programs for its members.

Image Credit:

"Haliwa-Saponi Tribe  In NC." Photo courtesy of Flickr user Neil Smith, taken on May 20, 2009. Available from http://www.flickr.com/photos/crowdive/3552177043/ (accessed May 23, 2012).

Green, Wharton Jackson

28 Feb. 1831–6 Aug. 1910

Wharton Jackson Green, lawyer, soldier, planter, politician, congressman, and author, was born near St. Marks, Leon (now Wakulla) County, Fla., the only child of General Thomas Jefferson Green of Warren County and Sarah Angeline Wharton, daughter of U.S. senator and congressman Jesse Wharton of Nashville, Tenn. His maternal grandmother, Mary Phillips, had migrated to Tennessee from Edgecombe County with her parents. Young Green was named for his father's old and honored friend Andrew Jackson, his mother's maiden name being added later. After her death when he was four years old, he lived for ten years in the family of his maternal uncle, Joseph Wharton, on his plantation in Middle Tennessee where Green's education was started in a neighborhood school. When he was about fourteen, he spent a few months at the home of his eighty-year-old paternal grandmother near Ridgeway, Warren County, and studied Spanish under his father's old prisonmate, Captain Dan Henrie. He then accompanied his father as far as Washington, D. C., in 1845 on General Green's way to New York in connection with the publication of his book about the Mier Expedition. After introducing him to his many friends in Washington (including President James K. Polk), the general left his young son at the old United States Hotel to share a room with Dr. Branch T. Archer, "the father of the Texas revolution." Later Green was placed under the supervision of Jefferson Davis at a boarding house where a number of members of Congress lived, including John C. Calhoun.

In 1846, he entered Georgetown College as a boarding student. From 1847 to 1848 he attended the classical and English academy in Raleigh, N.C., operated by J. M. Lovejoy; and in 1849, Stephen M. Weld's select preparatory school near Boston, Mass. Green's appointment to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point was approved simultaneously with the admission of California as a state (September 1850), at which time his father's address was given as Sacramento. After three years at West Point, where the alumni records list him as Jackson Wharton Green, he studied law at the University of Virginia (where he was a member of the Jefferson Literary Society) and at the newly established Cumberland University at Lebanon, Tenn. On admission to the bar in 1854, he began practicing in Washington, D.C.; he was admitted to practice in the United States Supreme Court, and became a junior partner with the law firm of Robert J. Walker (former secretary of the Treasury) and Louis Janin.

After Green's marriage—at Montmorenci, Warren County, on 4 May 1858—to Esther Sergeant Ellery, the only child of his stepmother, he and his bride spent over a year traveling in Europe and Africa. Upon their return, they went to their country place in Jamaica Plain near Boston where their oldest child, Sarah Wharton, was born on 19 July 1859. When they settled at Esmeralda, their North Carolina home, with their one-month-old baby, Green engaged in agricultural pursuits and bred racehorses. Sarah Wharton Green later married Pembroke Jones and, secondly, Henry Walters, both of Wilmington. Their second daughter, Adeline Caroline, never married and their youngest daughter, Mable Ellery, married George Blow Elliott, also of Wilmington. Their only son died in infancy.

At the outbreak of the war, Green enlisted in the Warren Guards, Company F, Twelfth Regiment, North Carolina Troops, C.S.A. (Second Regiment, North Carolina Volunteers), which was one of the first three companies to report to the camp of organization in Raleigh. In two months he was appointed colonel in General Henry A. Wise's legion and raised and equipped a regiment. On 8 Feb. 1862, he was captured on Roanoke Island and paroled at Elizabeth City the same day. He later served as a volunteer aide on the staff of General Junius Daniels and as lieutenant colonel of the Second Battalion of North Carolina Infantry. Green was wounded at Washington, N.C., and again at Gettysburg where he was captured and detained at Johnson's Island, Ohio, until within a week of the surrender.

Returning to Esmeralda, Green renewed his interest in agriculture and became involved in politics. He was the first president of the Society of Confederate Soldiers and Sailors in North Carolina, and was a delegate to the Democratic National conventions in 1868, 1872, 1876, and 1888. In 1879, he bought the 469 acres of Tokay Vineyard near Fayetteville and moved there the next year, becoming deeply interested in viticulture. His wife did not live long in their new home, dying on 15 June 1883. The same year he was elected to represent the old Third North Carolina district in the Forty-eighth Congress. During that session two of his daughters lived with him at the hotel in Washington. On his reelection to the Forty-ninth Congress, Green rented a house in Washington where his oldest daughter, then Mrs. Pembroke Jones, kept house for her father and sisters. On 29 Oct. 1888, the year after completing his two terms in Congress, he married, at Tokay, Mrs. Adeline Currier Davis, widow of Judge David Davis and first cousin of his previous wife. There were no children by this marriage. Thereafter Green devoted his energies to the cultivation of his vineyard and to literary pursuits. During this time he published his Recollections and Reflections. He died at Tokay Vineyard and was buried in Cross Creek Cemetery, Fayetteville.

Green, Thomas Jefferson

14 Feb. 1802–12 Dec. 1863

Thomas Jefferson Green, planter, legislator, soldier, and author, was born near Ridgeway, Warren County, the son of Solomon and Frances ("Fanny") Hawkins Green. His father was a lifelong resident of Warren County, which he represented in both houses of the legislature and in the second (ratifying) constitutional convention (1789). Both of his grandfathers, Captain William Green and Colonel John Hawkins, as well as his great-grandfather, Colonel Philemon Hawkins, were officers in the American Revolution. Green was a student at The University of North Carolina in 1819–20. His appointment to the U.S. Military Academy in 1822 is not surprising as the then U.S. Senator Nathaniel Macon was his great-uncle; however, he was not graduated from the academy.

After representing Warren County in the House of Commons in 1826, Green moved to Florida, then a territory, where he was listed in the earliest tax roll for Leon (now Wakulla) County in 1829. By 1831 he was justice of the peace, and in 1834 he represented Leon County in the territorial legislature. In the account of his marriage in a Nashville, Tenn., newspaper in 1830, he is called "Major Thomas J. Green of Tallahassee, Florida," which suggests that he held a commission in the territorial militia. He was married in Davidson County, Tenn., on 8 Jan. 1830, to Sarah Angeline Wharton, daughter of Jesse Wharton, a U.S. senator and congressman. Their only child, Wharton Jackson Green, was born near St. Mark's in Leon County, Fla., on 28 Feb. 1831.

Green left Florida soon after the death of his wife on 11 Mar. 1835. After leaving his young son in Tennessee with the family of his maternal uncle, Joseph Wharton, he traveled to the then Republic of Texas. There he organized the Texas Land Company and, along with Dr. Branch T. Archer and the Whartons, purchased and laid out the now extinct town of Velasco at the mouth of the Brazos River. Soon after his arrival in 1836, he was commissioned brigadier general in the Texas army and returned to the United States to recruit men and collect money and ammunition for the cause of the Texas revolution against Mexico. He took his private fund of ammunition to Houston in the early part of 1836, when immigrants to Texas were raised from North Carolina, South Carolina, Mississippi, Georgia, Virginia, Louisiana, Kentucky, and perhaps other southern states. On 3 Oct. 1836, General Green represented Bexar County in the house of representatives of the first congress of the Republic of Texas. The following year he was elected to the senate of the second congress, but his seat was declared vacant twenty-five days after the session opened.

When a counter invasion to Mexican attacks was opposed by Sam Houston, Green was among the 304 men under General Alexander Somervell who remained in Mexico and thus precipitated the ill-fated Battle of Mier on 25 and 26 Dec. 1842. As commander of the Mier Expedition, Green surrendered to General Pedre Ampudia; he was held at Perote prison from which he, with fifteen others, escaped in the spring of 1843 after spending six months digging through a wall of volcanic rock eight feet thick. Returning to Velasco, Tex., he was elected in June 1843 to represent Brazoria County in the eighth Texas congress, where he introduced the bill that established the Rio Grande as the boundary line between Texas and Mexico. Green was one of the original organizers of the Texas Railroad, Navigation and Banking Company, the first chartered railroad in Texas, and was an early advocate of a railroad to the Pacific. Before leaving Texas he became a noted breeder of racing stock. During the pending negotiations for the annexation of Texas, Green was offered the post of confidential agent in the matter by President James K. Polk's administration, but he declined the position on the ground that he was then a citizen of the other contracting power.

In 1845, Green spent some time in New York in connection with his book, The Texian Expedition Against Mier, published that year by Harpers. There, on 24 Oct. 1846 in Grace Church, he married his second wife, Adeline Burr, the widow of John S. Ellery of Roxbury, Mass. She survived him, but the only child of their union died as an infant.

Four years after the annexation of Texas, Green went to California where, in the first election in November 1849, he was elected state senator from Sacramento County—having worked there for a short while in the mines. In this first California legislature he sponsored the bill for the establishment of the state university at Berkeley. On 11 Apr. 1850, the legislature elected him major general of the First Division of the California militia. Soon afterwards he was sent with an adequate force to suppress Indian disturbances in the interior. The mission succeeded. Later Green founded the town of Oro (which has since vanished) on land purchased from John Augustus Sutter in Sutter County, Calif.; he also helped lay out the town of Vallejo, the first county seat of Placer County.

Returning to North Carolina in 1857 to live in Warren County, Green engaged the famous Montmorenci plantation before purchasing Esmeralda, a 900-acre plantation on the south side of Shocco Creek, from Dr. Alexander B. Hawkins. At Esmeralda, his home for the rest of his life, Green farmed, bred blooded racehorses, and extended lavish hospitality to his friends and relations.

Green was a lifelong Jefferson-Jackson Democrat, bearing the name of the first and bestowing the name of the latter, his friend and mentor, on his only child. He was a delegate from North Carolina to the 1860 convention in Charleston. Green wanted to enlist in the Confederate Army but was prevented from doing so by the chronic affliction of gout. His will, written on 24 May 1862 "at home, near Shocco Springs," contains this characteristic item: "If this terrific and unholy war continues, it is my purpose to go into the service and should my son Wharton survive me, that he make such disposition of my body as he may prefer, with this exception, that he will not permit my wife to send it to Yankeydom." According to the biographical account of his son, Green's death at Esmeralda was caused by heartbreak over the reverses of the Confederacy. He was buried in his garden while his son, Colonel Wharton Jackson Green, was a prisoner of war at Johnson's Island, Ohio. In 1905, his remains were moved from the plantation to Fairview Cemetery, Warrenton.

Green's Path

by George Stevenson, 2006

See also: Footpaths

Green's Path was one of the principal routes used during the second and third quarters of the eighteenth century by settlers moving south from Virginia into those sections of the Roanoke, Tar, Neuse, and Cape Fear River basins that lay in the inner coastal plain of North Carolina. The path ran southwest between the Western and Eastern (or Tuscarora) Trading Paths, parallel to both. On Collet's 1770 map of the colony (which is essentially the work of William Churton and reflects information that had been current around 1764), Green's Path is shown as a route leading from Surrey and Brunswick Counties in Virginia into North Carolina, crossing the Roanoke River at Eaton's Ferry (now covered by Lake Gaston in northeastern Warren County). From there the path ran south-southwest into modern western Nash County and then into eastern Johnston County, where it shifted to a southwest course, crossing the Lower Little River at the old Cumberland County Courthouse at Chafferington. The path continued to Cross Creek, where it intersected an east-west path connecting the section of the Western Trading Path on the head of the Rocky River with the Eastern Trading Path near Nahunta. It then merged with a road following a south-southeast direction along the western side of the Cape Fear River to settlements in Bladen County.

Edgecombe County court records from the 1730s and 1740s speak of persons using "John Green's Path" to travel from Contentnea Creek to the Tar River and up the Tar to the Western Trading Path. Those records also include testimony reporting the passage of a family that had set off for Green's Path on their departure from Edgecombe County to South Carolina and Georgia. Presumably these references are to the same path. If so, the path assumedly took its name from John Green, whose family accompanied him from Virginia to the Roanoke River settlements around 1715, moving down to the Tar River around 1730 and on to Bladen County around 1740. None of the original route of Green's Path appears to have survived in the state's modern road system, but the road leading south-southeast on the west side of the Cape Fear River from Cross Creek (modern Fayetteville) through Elizabethtown before reaching Wilmington appears to have survived in large part as State Highway 87.

Thomas Day

by LeRae Umfleet
Research Branch, NC Office of Archives and History
http://www.ncmarkers.com

Thomas Day, a cabinetmaker by trade, is the most celebrated of North Carolina’s antebellum craftsmen. He was born in Dinwiddie County, Virginia, in 1801 to a family of free, landowning African Americans. His father, John Day, was a skilled cabinetmaker who plied other trades, as well, but always relied on woodworking to bring in money. Thomas and his brother John were well educated. John’s education, boarding with prominent whites and attending their schools, is documented in his later correspondence; it is assumed that Thomas was offered the same opportunities. Both of the Day sons followed in their father’s footsteps initially, learning the skills of a cabinetmaker. John Day eventually left the trade to study theology and later moved to Liberia, becoming one of its founders by signing their Declaration of Independence.

John Day moved to Warren County by 1820 and it is believed that Thomas was with him. Thomas Day and his brother had established themselves in the furniture business in Milton by 1823. Thomas Day became a prominent and well-respected citizen of the community. In response to an act of 1826 that prohibited free blacks from immigrating into the state, Milton’s white leaders petitioned the General Assembly in 1830 to allow Day’s bride, Aquilla Wilson, a free black from Virginia, to join her husband in North Carolina. They would raise two sons and a daughter. In his almost forty years in Milton, Thomas Day built an extraordinary business, employing freedmen and slaves alike to craft stock lines of furniture and to fill custom orders for furniture and interior woodworking. By 1850, Day had the largest cabinetry shop in North Carolina. He is believed to have died in about 1861, after having suffered financial losses due to the national panic of 1857. The extant examples of his work are tangible evidence of Thomas Day’s accomplishments.

References:

Marshall, Patricia Phillips, and Jo Ramsay Leimenstoll. 2010. Thomas Day: master craftsman and free man of color. Chapel Hill: Published in association with the North Carolina Museum of History by the University of North Carolina Press.

Rodney D. Barfield, “Thomas and John Day and the Journey to North Carolina,”North Carolina Historical Review (January 2001): 1-31

Patricia Phillips Marshall, "The Legendary Thomas Day: Debunking the Popular Mythology of an African American Craftsman,”North Carolina Historical Review (January 2001): 32-66

Powell, William Stevens. 1986. Dictionary of North Carolina biography. Vol. 2, D-G. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. http://www.netlibrary.com/urlapi.asp?action=summary&v=1&bookid=47800.

Thomas Day Education Project website: http://www.thomasday.net/

ELIAS CARR

Governor: 1893-1897

by Jerry L. Cross
Research Branch, NC Office of Archives and History, 2005.
http://www.ncmarkers.com

See also: Elias Carr, Dictionary of North Carolina Biography

Elias Carr (1839-1900), leader of the statewide Farmers’ Alliance and the broader agrarian movement, exemplified the fading tradition of the planter-governor. The son of Jonas and Elizabeth Hilliard Carr, he was born on February 25, 1839, at Bracebridge Hall, the 2,000-acre family plantation in Edgecombe County. Orphaned by the age of four, young Carr grew up in the home of his uncle and aunt in Warren County. There he attended a local school before leaving for the Bingham School in Orange County. He completed his education at the University of North Carolina (1855-1857) and the University of Virginia. In 1859 he married Eleanor Kearny; they would have six children.

Carr bought his brother’s interest in Bracebridge Hall and prepared for the life of a planter, but the Civil War interrupted his plans. He enlisted in the Forty-first Regiment (Third Cavalry) in 1861. Nine months later he received a planter’s exemption and returned home. Carr applied progressive farming techniques and sound business practices.

Consequently, he suffered fewer losses than most of his contemporaries during the war. He was community-oriented and civic-minded, as shown by service on the Edgecombe County board of commissioners, Sparta Township school commission, and as first president of the North Carolina Society of the Sons of the Revolution. Yet, he lacked political ambition and, prior to 1892, never sought a high elective office. He was most comfortable in his agricultural work.

Carr served as the first president of the Farmer’s Institute of Edgecombe County. In 1887 Governor Alfred M. Scales commissioned him to attend the National Farmers’ Conference and the following year he was elected the first president of the North Carolina Farmers Association. He served on the first board of trustees of the North Carolina College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts (present-day North Carolina State University). Nonetheless, the Farmers Alliance was the vehicle that cast the spotlight on Carr. Organized in North Carolina in 1887, the Alliance soon absorbed the Farmers’ Association. Two years later Carr was elected president of the state Farmers’ Alliance and was re-elected in 1890. He led the group’s effort to secure legislation increasing the school tax to improve rural schools. Ever increasing political activity by farmers forced Carr into the arena that he had long avoided.

A growing disenchantment within the Democratic Party between supporters of agricultural interests and those favoring business and industry threatened to split the party in 1892. Carr, a steadfast Democrat but with strong ties to the farmers’ movement seemed the most likely gubernatorial candidate to hold the sparring factions together to prevent a Republican upset. Though a splinter group did run a third party candidate, the Farmers’ Alliance threw its support to Carr and, along with the conservative Democratic vote, provided a comfortable margin of victory.

Considering his lack of political experience and the polarized factions surrounding his administration, Carr had a successful governorship. He recommended legislation to improve the notoriously bad road system; enthusiastically supported the geological survey; and campaigned for better rural schools. In calling for the latter, Carr urged the passage of a compulsory attendance law and advocated a tax increase during a period of depression to fund school improvements. The governor preferred to see things firsthand so he made occasional, unannounced visits to the state’s educational, charitable, and penal institutions before making recommendations. Carr’s ninety-nine year lease of the North Carolina Railroad to the Southern Railway in 1895 engendered massive criticism, much from his own party. That and the Fusionist-controlled legislature (a loose coalition of Republicans and Populists) virtually handicapped him for the last two years of his term. Carr retired to the peaceful farm life at Bracebridge Hall after his service as governor. He died on July 22, 1900, and was buried in the family cemetery on the grounds.

References and additional resources:

Elias Carr Papers, Special Collections Department, J. Y. Joyner Library, East Carolina University, Greenville, North Carolina, USA.

Henderson, Archibald. 1941. North Carolina, the Old north state and the new. Chicago: Lewis Pub. Co.

John Buxton Williams Papers, Special Collections Department, J. Y. Joyner Library, East Carolina University, Greenville, North Carolina, USA.

Johnson, Allen W. 1929. Dictionary of American Biography. 3, Brearly-Chandler. London: H. Milford.

Powell, William Stevens. 1979. Dictionary of North Carolina biography. Vol. 1, A-C. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Steelman, Lala Carr. 1980. Role of Elias Carr in the North Carolina Farmer’s Alliance. North Carolina historical review. 57 (April): 134-158.

Turner, J. Kelly, and Jno. L. Bridgers. 1920. History of Edgecombe County, North Carolina. Raleigh: Edwards & Broughton Print. Co.

WorldCat (Searches numerous library catalogs)

Image Credits:

"Elias Carr." Photograph no. 53.15.1546. From the Audio Visual and Iconographics Collection, Division of Archives and History Photograph Collection, State Archives of North Carolina, Raleigh, NC, USA.

Burke, Mary ("Polly") Williams

By Mary Claire Engstrom, 1979

See also: Govenor Thomas Burke

1 Feb. 1782–31 Jan. 1869

Mary "Polly" Williams Burke, educator, was the only child of North Carolina's third governor, Dr.Thomas Burke (1747–2 Dec. 1783) of Hillsborough, and Mary ("Polly") Freeman (1752–23 Mar. 1836) of Norfolk, Va., a pioneer Presbyterian educator in North Carolina and Alabama in her own right. Mary Williams Burke was born in Warren County, the granddaughter of Ulick Burke and Letitia Ould (sister of Sir Fielding Ould) of County Galway, Ireland, and of the eccentric Englishman William Freeman and Tabitha Wilson of Norfolk. Miss Burke is thought to have been named for her father's friend, Colonel John Williams, in whose household Mrs. Burke had taken refuge for some time before the birth of her daughter.

Nothing is known specifically about Mary W. Burke's childhood years in Hillsborough. It seems likely that she lived but a short time, if ever, at her father's plantation Tyaquin, northeast of Hillsborough. By the terms of Governor Burke's will, her education was to have been supervised by his executors, Willie Jones (who did not serve) and James Hogg, but no record touching the matter has survived. Her girlhood was apparently spent at her mother's home on Churton Street in company with her two half-sisters, Frances Wilson Doherty (later Mrs. William H. Bond) and Helen Mason Doherty (later Mrs. David Yarbrough), children of her mother's second marriage, which took place on 25 Apr. 1785, to Major George Doherty (d. 1792). Her mother's older sister, Mrs. Frances Freeman McKerall Child, widow first of Captain John McKerall and second of Comptroller Francis Child, had lived in Hillsborough since 1769 and was almost certainly the reason the Thomas Burkes had settled in Orange County. The large McKerall-Child connection, together with her Doherty half-sisters, then and in later years constituted Mary W. Burke's family.

On 5 June 1810, Miss Burke, then twenty-eight years old and in command of virtually all of her father's estate, purchased for four hundred dollars her own modest home (now enlarged and known as Heartsease) on East Queen Street, Hillsborough. No earlier record associates the house with Governor Burke. On 6 Nov. 1817 her friend and neighbor Dr. James Webb deeded to her, for twenty-five dollars, a twenty-five-foot wide strip of land from the western side of his adjoining Lot 63. Here a log schoolhouse was built, in which Miss Burke was to teach the Webb children. It has been suggested, and seems likely, that she may have been teaching the young Webbs in her own home as early as 1812. In any case, the new schoolhouse, known as "Miss Polly Burke's School" from about 1818 to 1834, was opened to neighborhood children. No formal records remain of the little grammar school, usually cited in Presbyterian records as a significant forerunner of Mrs. Burwell's Female School (1837–57) and the Nash and Kollock Select Boarding and Day School for Young Ladies (1859–90).

An unpublished volume of reminiscences by Margaret Isabella Walker Weber, a former Burke student, noted that little five-year-old girls in bibs and pinafores were set to hemming sheets and towels before they could read, and that one of her own public appearances as a small child involved the difficult reading of Beattie's Hermit, printed with the old-fashioned long s's. Local tradition still has it that discipline within the school was severe. Students included Strudwicks, Nashes, Phillipses, Kirklands, the Carleton Walker children, and various daughters of Presbyterian families. The log schoolhouse still stands as part of the John Graham Webb house.

In September 1816, Miss Burke joined with eight other persons and the Reverend John Knox Witherspoon, pastor, to organize the Hillsborough Presbyterian Church. The first pew rental list of 1816 shows that she rented Pew 13 on the north side of the new brick church, and preserved sessions books and other church records disclose that she was a steadfast supporter of church activities for the next eighteen years.

In August 1834, Miss Burke sold most of her household goods and joined the considerable exodus of Hillsborough citizens to Alabama, a curious migration still not fully explained, but animated in part by a desire to escape the mounting local controversy over slavery. Mary W. Burke accompanied her niece, Eliza Mary Bond Johnston, Eliza's husband, George Mulholland Johnston, and their two-year-old son, George Doherty, to Greensboro, Ala., where she apparently planned to make her permanent home with the Johnstons. George Mulholland Johnston died on 5 Sept. 1834, however, after only two weeks in his new Greensboro home. Miss Burke, together with her niece and grandnephew, thereupon removed to nearby Marion, where her half-sister, Helen Mason Doherty Yarbrough, and her brother-in-law, David Yarbrough, were already established. Various Strudwicks, Webbs, and Youngs also lived in the area. The Perry County Court appointed Miss Burke guardian of little George Doherty Johnston, and she took complete responsibility for the boy's education and inheritance as well as temporary charge of Eliza Johnston's affairs.

On 4 May 1837 she sent her "unconditional" power of attorney to Dr. James Webb to dispose of her remaining Hillsborough property, excepting only her father's mahogany bookcase and a few oddments. In the 1840s she further directed Dr. Webb to present Governor Burke's papers to the North Carolina Historical Society; these became the Burke collections now in the North Carolina Division of Archives and History, Raleigh, and in The University of North Carolina Library, Chapel Hill. A small group of illuminating letters from Miss Burke to Dr. Webb has been preserved, demonstrating her own very considerable business ability and her constant reliance on Dr. Webb's judgment and advice.

Miss Burke began immediately to teach again, purchasing a schoolhouse of her own, where she welcomed the children and grandchildren of her relatives and old friends. Somehow, also, she managed to teach black children, especially the descendants of the remarkable Freeman servants. General George Doherty Johnston, her ward and himself a testament to the efficacy of her teaching, wrote after her death that she had taught "many hundreds of students" and four generations in one family (probably his own). He noted, too, that she had virtually educated herself out of her own hunger for knowing, and that her remarkably retentive memory had stood both herself and her pupils in good stead. Her lengthy teaching career, over half a century, extended almost to her last days and encompassed the teaching of both females and blacks in an era when neither was usual.

When Miss Burke was seventy-nine, she suffered a fall resulting in a serious hip injury that confined her to her bed and an "armed chair" for the last eight years of her life. Even so, and in spite of exhausting bouts with asthma, she persisted in giving Latin lessons to a neighboring boy. She died at the home of her niece Eliza (then Mrs. Leonard A. Weissinger) and was buried in the Marion Cemetery in the Johnston lot. A photograph of a crayon portrait of Miss Burke in her later years is in the possession of the North Carolina Division of Archives and History, Raleigh.

Blount, Mary ("Jackie") Sumner

By Jaquelin Drane Nash, 1979

1777-1822

Mary Blount, daughter and wife of revolutionary generals, by whose benefaction Christ Episcopal Church, Raleigh, was built, was born in Warren County at the home of her father, General Jethro Sumner. Her mother, before her marriage to General Sumner, had been the widow Heiss of New Bern. The Sumners were of English blood, Sumner's father, William, having emigrated from England about 1690 to settle near Suffolk, Va. General and Mrs. Sumner had a son, Thomas Edward, who, like his sister, died without leaving a family.

In November 1796, Mary Sumner became the second wife of General Thomas Blount of Edgecombe County. Their large plantation adjoined the town of Tarboro, and their handsome house is still standing. Blount was North Carolina's representative in Congress at the time of their marriage and for sixteen years thereafter, until his death in office in Washington, where he was buried in the Congressional Cemetery.

Mrs. Blount's substantial fortune was distributed at her death to many relatives and friends. The most interesting bequest in her long and detailed will has as its object the "Building of a Protestant Episcopal Church in the City of Raleigh." The means was to be "a large sum of money now due to me by virtue of the will of my late husband," estimated to have been between ten and fifteen thousand dollars. Duncan Cameron, Esq., of Orange County and the Reverand William Hooper, "now of Fayetteville," were named agents to collect the money and carry out the intent of the will. "And whereas doubts have been entertained whether a bequest of this nature cannot be defeated by the interference of those on whom the law would cast the Estate in case of an intestacy, I do further will that the said Duncan Cameron and William Hooper . . . shall have the said legacy, stripped of any trust which can result to the benefit of my next of kin, and unfettered by any trust which can be enforced by any earthly tribunal: leaving the disposition of the said legacy to their consciences." Happily, the executors secured the money for the stated purpose, and in 1826 the present church lot was purchased and a frame building erected, the predecessor to the present handsome building.

Mrs. Blount's interest in building the Raleigh church was inspired by her rector in Tarboro, the Reverend John Phillips. As a missionary, he was credited with having revived the Tarboro church and with having started churches in Washington and Warrenton, in addition to the Raleigh church.

Mrs. Blount was buried in Calvary churchyard, Tarboro. A bolt of lightning, tradition says, destroyed her tombstone. It was replaced by a handsome stone, the gift of the congregation of Christ Church, Raleigh.

Mrs. Blount's portrait, painted in Washington, D.C., in 1820 by the Italian artist Pietro Bonanni, was bequeathed by her to her long-time friend, Moses Mordecai of Raleigh. It now hangs in the Mordecai House, a museum property of the city of Raleigh. The granddaughter of Moses Mordecai intended to give the portrait to Christ Church, and so stated in her will, but later revoked her intention.

Mrs. Blount died suddenly in Tarboro at the home of a friend.

American Indian Storytelling

By Jefferson Currie II
Reprinted with permission from the Tar Heel Junior Historian, Spring 2002.
Tar Heel Junior Historian Association, NC Museum of History

"Shhhhhhhh!" Legend has it that Coharie Indian mothers would make that sound when outsiders would approach their village, hoping to quiet their children until the strangers passed. The Coharie were trying to stay on the fringe of European settlement, maintaining anonymity from the larger outside community. The "shhhhhhhh" sound is also the sound of wind whispering through the pine trees of eastern North Carolina. To this day, when the wind blows through the trees, Coharie people hear two things—the wind and their past. This story uses the environment to tell us part of the history of the Coharie people, but the story also has another meaning. When passed down from parent to child to grandchild, this story affirms Coharie cultural identity. It says, "This is who we are."

In American Indian communities, people tell legends, folktales, and fables. They tell these stories for many reasons: to recount the history of the people, to tell where they came from, or to relate the exploits of a particular hero. Often stories are told to educate children about cultural morals and values. Stories also help to explain the supernatural and peculiar aspects of animals and the environment.

The stories of an Indian group make that group unique, but stories will be known only as long as they are told. When someone ceases to tell a story, part of the cultural knowledge is gone.

Storytelling also allows people to get to know one another. Cherokee storyteller Freeman Owle says that storytelling is "two-way interaction" between the listener and the storyteller. He says that when the children of today watch television, they get only oneway interaction. "They have no input, they have no identity, they have no place, and they have no one there with them." In American Indian communities, as long as the stories are being told, that identity will exist, that sense of knowing who you are and where you came from.

Tribal history is important to the Haliwa-Saponi Indians in Halifax and Warren counties, and they have a story that tells how the people came to live in an area that they call the Meadows. After the Tuscarora fought a war with the North Carolina colonists in the early 1700s, many of the defeated Tuscarora started moving north to join other Iroquoian tribes in New York. On their way to New York, some of the Tuscarora camped near Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina. With many of their people wounded and sick, and their children crying, the Tuscarora decided not to go north. These people moved to the Meadows, a place where they would be away from the colonists, a place where they could live in peace. Over time, more Indian people moved into the Meadows area, forming what is today the Haliwa-Saponi Tribe. Such stories help children to know who they are and where they came from. The story shows the long history of the people and makes the bonds within the community stronger.

Stories can also teach strength of character, as in the many fables (morality tales using animals) from the Cherokee of western North Carolina. One of these fables, told by Kathi Smith Littlejohn, describes how the opossum lost its tail.

Back many years ago, the opossum had a very beautiful tail, but he loved his tail too much, not noticing that other animals had tails just as beautiful. The other animals didn't like how the opossum acted, so they decided to get rid of his tail. The opossum was chosen to be the lead dancer at the next dance, so he went to the cricket to get his tail made more beautiful. The cricket started to comb the opossum's tail, and the opossum fell asleep. As the opossum slept, the cricket shaved his tail and put a big bow on the end of it, telling the opossum to remove the bow at the dance, and the tail would be beautifully done. When the opossum started dancing, he removed the bow, and all the other animals laughed at what was now a very ugly, bony tail. The opossum was so embarrassed that he rolled over and played dead.

The story above offers a lesson. It indicates that conceitedness is not a good characteristic to have and that it will ham us if it continues. Such stories are told purposely but are often dropped into the middle of a conversation so that a person will not be embarrassed by his or her behavior.

Cherokee stories often discuss spirit beings called the Little People. The Little People, or Nunnehi, are, in the words of Robert Busyhead, protectors. Kathi Smith Littlejohn describes the Nunnehi as being like us but smaller. The Nunnehi help us, but they also play tricks on us, "so you'll laugh and keep young in your heart."

In the Lumbee community in Robeson County, many stories concern the legendary folk hero and outlaw Henry Berry Lowry. Lowry disappeared in 1872, but many stories say that for years after his disappearance, Lowry would often be seen visiting friends or going to funerals. Because no one knows what became of Lowry (although some say he was killed, and some say he just left the area), the stories of his appearances in the community make his legend even more impressive.

Throughout North Carolina's American Indian communities, stories are being told. Passed down from generation to generation, these stories serve to strengthen the bonds within the community. We hope that, through the stories of their elders and their own eyes on the world around them, North Carolina's American Indian people will continue to keep alive the old tales and to create new ones.

At the time of this article's publication, Jefferson Currie worked as an assistant curator at the North Carolina Museum of History.

Additional resources:

Eagle Walking Turtle. 1997. Full moon stories: thirteen native American legends. New York: Hyperion Books for Children.

Macfarlan, Allan A. 2001. North American Indian legends. Mineola, N.Y.: Dover Publications.

Schwartz, April, and Tim Tingle. 2004. American Indian story telling protecting, preserving, and sharing the flame. [La Crescenta, Calif.]: Content Management Corp.

Brehon, James Gloster

ca. 1740–8 Apr. 1819

James Gloster Brehon, Revolutionary War surgeon, was born in Ireland and there received a liberal education. On arriving in America, he first settled in Maryland. In the records of Maryland's Committee of Safety is an order of October 1776 for Brehon to deliver up all the books on physic taken on board any of the captured vessels at St. George Island.

Brehon removed to Warrenton and began to practice. He soon entered the service, however, and was appointed a surgeon in the navy. After serving at different posts until the end of the war, he returned to Warrenton to practice. In July of 1783 he married Mildred, the daughter of John Willis and Mary Hayes Plummer of Warren County. Mrs. Brehon died without issue in June 1803.

Brehon died in Warrenton. According to his obituary in the Raleigh Register, he was a prominent physician, had accumulated a large estate, and was well known as a student of botany. The historian John H. Wheeler described him as distinguished for his skill as a surgeon and for his learned scientific researches, adding that his "colloquial powers" were unrivaled. Brehon's large estate was inherited by his nephew, who was the son of James Somerville and Catherine Vekes and who had been adopted by Brehon. The adopted son took the name James Gloster Brehon, also became a physician, and died relatively young in Warrenton, 2 Oct. 1839; he donated the land for the Warrenton Male Academy (the site later occupied by the Graham School and eventually by Warrenton High School), and Brehon Street in Warrenton was named for him.

Another prominent early Warrenton physician, Thomas Benn Gloster, may well have been a relative of Brehon. According to family Bible records, Gloster was born in Limerick, Ireland, in 1763, left Limerick 1 July 1785, and on 20 Feb. 1786 "arrived in Warrenton, North Carolina, one of the United States of America." The records imply that he left Ireland with Warrenton as his goal. Gloster married, in 1795, Mary Hayes Willis, the younger sister of Brehon's wife, Mildred Willis. Gloster died in Warrenton 12 Jan. 1819, leaving two children, Arthur Brehon and Elizabeth Willis, who married John Anderson, a native of Scotland.

Heck, Jonathan McGee

5 May 1831–10 Feb. 1894

Jonathan McGee Heck, businessman and developer, and Baptist layman in the post-Civil War era, was born in Monongalia County, Va., located in that part of the state that became West Virginia, the son of George and Susan McGee Heck. He attended Rector College and studied law in Morgantown, Va. Admitted to the bar, Heck soon established a large practice and served briefly as justice of the peace and commonwealth attorney. As early as 1855 he bought property along the Monongahela River; he continued buying land in the region until 1866 and owned property there as late as 1892. In 1859, Heck and an associate contracted to furnish gas and water to the city of Morgantown for fifty years, but the project was abandoned after one gas well was dug. On 10 Mar. 1859 Heck married Mattie A. Callendine.

As civil war threatened, Heck found that his loyalties lay with Virginia and the South: "Leaving his young wife and child and the handsome home which he had provided for them, renouncing all his former ambitions and accumulated wealth, he came to Richmond, and once and forever cast his lot with that of the southern states." On 10 May 1861 he was commissioned colonel of the Thirty-first Regiment of Virginia Volunteers, which he was to raise and equip. At the Battle of Rich Mountain against the troops of General George B. McClellan, Heck was captured and paroled with others; "for some unaccountable reason, [he] was held under parole long after those with him were allowed to return to active service." One account suggests that he was "cheated out of his command at Rich Mountain." As a parolee, he was nevertheless elected to serve in the Virginia General Assembly. As soon as permitted, Heck returned to active service in the Confederate cause—not as a soldier this time, but as a "purchaser of materials for the manufacture of implements of war."

During the war his growing family moved several times, settling briefly at Staunton, Va.; Raleigh, N.C.; and Buffalo Lithia Springs, Va. The family was to locate finally in North Carolina, living first in Warren County and later in Raleigh. On 25 Aug. 1863, Heck (still identified as a citizen of Monongalia County, Va.), bought from William D. Jones of Warren County, N.C., 2,012 acres on Shocco Creek in Warren County for $45,000. As the owner of the "large and then far-famed health resort, Jones's Springs, . . . he with generous-handed liberality threw it open to the many homeless refugees, who were then seeking refuge in North Carolina." Among those who had taken refuge at Shocco were the wife and children of General Robert E. Lee; Lee's daughter, Annie Carter, died there in 1862 and was buried in the Jones family cemetery. When in 1866 Warren County citizens arranged for a monument to be erected there for Annie Carter Lee, Heck wrote to the former general, who responded from Lexington, Va., that "when able to visit the grave of my daughter, for which I have a great desire, I will remember your kind invitations [to] go to your house."

Evidently through his experience as purchaser of materials for the Confederacy and as contractor for making war materials, Heck developed both a familiarity with North Carolina's industrial potential and perhaps much of his substantial personal capital—resources that would stand him in good stead after the war. He traveled far and wide to acquire goods for the war effort, and he was involved in several enterprises, among them a bayonet factory in Raleigh and the firm of Heck, Brodie, Inc., which manufactured bayonets using the rich mineral deposits along the Deep River in Chatham County. In October 1864, Heck, Brodie & Co., "Government contractors," were authorized to "select from the military prisons at Salisbury, N.C., and Danville, Va., sixty prisoners who may volunteer to work in their bayonet factory on Deep River, N.C."

Unlike many of his contemporaries, Heck emerged from the war with energy and investment potential, ready to expand his fortune and that of his adopted state amid the new order—in contrast to many whose fortunes had depended on a slave-based agricultural system. Colonel Heck, as he was consistently known, was, recalled his associate Kemp P. Battle, "the first man in Raleigh to endeavor to break up the business lethargy prevailing after the surrender." He was, another author stated, "one of the men who built the New South, and was extraordinarily successful in promoting the industrial and agricultural development of the State." At thirty-four, six feet tall, with black hair and beard and eyes, Heck was a strikingly attractive young man, and he combined undeniable southern credentials and connections with useful northern associations and a supply of capital. Whether his capital derived from retained West Virginia holdings, profits made during the war and invested in other than Confederate currency, or other sources is not certain.

Heck's first project after the war was remarkable more for the promptness of organization and spirit of enthusiasm amid prevailing discouragement than for long-term success. He joined with Kemp Battle, William J. Hawkins (president of the Raleigh and Gaston Railroad Company), and Bailey P. Williamson to form Battle, Heck, and Company, whose goal was to "make known in all feasible ways the lands in North Carolina for sale and to induce Northern people to buy and settle among us." Losing no time after the surrender, Heck obtained in June 1865 the necessary warrant of pardon and by 8 July the company's first issue of the North Carolina Advertiser was out.

The Advertiser, notable in its positive approach to the new day so soon after the surrender, is an interesting document of a very early attempt to promote immigration and investment into the South—a precursor of many such projects in the years that followed. The Advertiser analyzed and described in glowing terms the state's wealth of development potential—its temperate climate, wide range of possible crops, rich mineral deposits, sources of waterpower, and forest resources. The North Carolina Land Agency, as the firm's real estate arm was titled, offered for sale a multitude of properties ranging from William S. Pettigrew's 7,000-acre Magnolia Plantation on the Scuppernong River, to 15,000 acres of turpentine land on the Cape Fear River, to the High Shoals mining and manufacturing operation in Lincoln and Gaston counties. Late in 1865 the agency listed for sale a total of 132 separate offerings, including 146,700 acres of agricultural land plus manufacturing, commercial, and residential property. The consistent theme of the publication was the need "under the recent change in the system of labor," to begin anew in "starting North Carolina in a career of prosperity heretofore unknown." The effort met with favorable response from Governor W. W. Holden and from newspapers in North Carolina and beyond, including the New York Times. Heck and Battle made a long promotional journey to northern cities and established an office on Broadway in New York, where inquiries were numerous. Yet the project failed by the end of 1865. Recalled Battle later, "Seldom did an enterprise have greater prospects of success, seldom did an enterprise so suddenly and completely collapse." The Advertiser, and in later years Kemp Battle, cited the threat of confiscation of southern lands during Reconstruction as the chief reason for the hesitancy of investors and hence the failure of the company.

The partners emerged from the venture still ready for new projects; Battle recalled that, despite the loss of money, they had "had for months . . . active, interesting work in exchange for gloom and despondency and . . . made connections." Two of Heck's next enterprises involved innovative development ideas concerning resources he had become acquainted with during the war years—the Deep River industrial development and the Ridgeway Company.

Geological reports before the war indicated that the coal and iron deposits along the Deep River were among the best in the nation, with potential for a "national foundry." During the war, these resources were vital to the Confederate effort, and Heck had investments in the area. Soon after the war, George Lobdell of the Lobdell Car Wheel Company of Wilmington, Del., sought to use the iron there—reportedly after being impressed with the quality of Confederate steel used in train wheels, which had been made from Deep River ore. He joined Heck in an ambitious development plan for the region, including navigational improvements to allow access to the port at Wilmington, development of the existing furnace at Endor, construction of a big furnace and a dam at Buckhorn, expansion of mining at nearby Egypt and elsewhere, and development of the towns of Lockville and Haywood. Some of these tasks were accomplished, and the firm estimated that a half-million dollars was sunk into the project. Under a series of names—such as the Deep River Manufacturing Company, Cape Fear Iron and Steel Company, and American Iron and Steel Company—Lobdell, Heck, and others created one of the most extensive industrial development enterprises in the state in the early 1870s. Again, however, grand ambitions were thwarted, this time by the discovery that the mineral deposits were smaller than anticipated and the fact that the navigation system on the Deep and Cape Fear rivers was never completed satisfactorily. The operation soon declined.

During the decade after the war, Heck was also involved in an immigration and development plan for Ridgeway, a community on the railroad in Warren County, and home of William J. Hawkins, an associate of Heck, Battle, and Company. The Ridgeway Company was chartered on 22 Aug. 1868, with Heck, Hawkins, Peter R. Davis, and A. F. Johnson as incorporators. Extensive advertising was done in the North and abroad, in hope of creating a bustling city amid the sad fields of Warren County. Orchards were planted, streets laid out, some construction done, and a stone placed to mark the center of the metropolis. Immigrants did come—Germans, Englishmen, and others; in fact, a community of German farmers established there maintains its cultural identity to the present. But Ridgeway never became the thriving city its developers envisioned.

Despite the failure of these schemes, Heck's vision, energy, and willingness to take risks contributed to the renewal of business and industry in the state. Far from being a dreamy idealist, he was an astute and adventurous investor, a successful businessman whose fortunes grew rapidly. Other enterprises, less colorful perhaps, did succeed, making him a wealthy and respected business leader. Among these were several iron or coal operations, including the Moratock Mining and Manufacturing Company near Danbury, the Coal Creek mining operation in Tennessee, and copper enterprises in Virginia. In addition, Heck was a major developer, along with R. S. Pullen, of the new residential section of Raleigh, called Oakwood, which grew as the town recovered from Reconstruction.

Heck's confidence in the new day was expressed in the house he built on North Blount Street, soon to be Raleigh's fashionable avenue. Actually Mrs. Heck's house, the impressive three-story frame dwelling in the modishly ornate Second Empire style, was the first major home to go up in Raleigh after the war; it was built in 1869–70 by contractors Wilson and Waddell, and designed by architect G. S. H. Appleget. The contract for the house survives, along with an almost identical contract for a house for Heck in Ridgeway, but no information has been found to suggest the latter was built; certainly no similar house now stands in Ridgeway.

As his fortunes rose, Heck became a "liberal contributor to many causes for his town and state," with particular interest in Baptist affairs. A member of the First Baptist Church in Raleigh, he had been elected a trustee of Wake Forest College in November 1865, and along with John G. Williams he funded the school's first postwar building—the Heck-Williams Building, constructed in 1878. For some years Heck was president of the board of trustees. He contributed substantially to the Baptist Female College in Raleigh and was a Baptist lay leader, serving as president of the Baptist State Convention. Other civic activity included participation in the reorganization of the state agricultural society, providing "a handsome house and property for a North Carolina Confederate soldiers home," and in 1892 service as chief marshal for Raleigh's centennial celebration.

Colonel and Mrs. Heck had thirteen children, of whom adult sons were George C., John M., and Charles M., and daughters were Mary Lou (Mrs. W. H. Pace), Fannie E. S., Minnie C. (Mrs. B. G. Cowper), Mattie A. (Mrs. J. D. Boushall), Susie, and Pearl. Of interest in North Carolina are Charles, for over thirty years head of the physics department at North Carolina State College, and Fannie, an influential leader in the Woman's Missionary Union of the Southern Baptist Convention. Heck died in Philadelphia, where he had gone for treatment of cancer. He was buried in Oakwood Cemetery, Raleigh.

Duke, William, Jr.

ca. 1720–before 26 Oct. 1793

William Duke, Jr., planter and public official, was born in Southside, Va., where his father, William Duke, was a prominent planter. Recent research and records now available support the contention by the Duke family of Warren County, N.C., that they were descendants of the first Colonel William Byrd of Westover through his youngest daughter, Mary. The twentieth-century publication of the second William Byrd's Secret Diary makes clear that she was the wife of James Duke of James City County and later of Charles City County, Va. James Duke was himself a son of Colonel Henry Duke of James City County, a member of the council, and a close friend and political associate to both colonels Byrd of Westover. James Duke and his wife Mary (who later married Richard Corbett) had a number of children, among them Anne, who married Joab Mountcastle; Henry, who married Elizabeth (probably a Marston); John; Edmund, who married Jane Gresham and whose children resettled in Granville County, N.C., after 1787; Sarah, who married Charles Christian; and William, the father of the subject of this sketch.

William Duke, Sr., was the eldest son of James and Mary Byrd Duke. An early nineteenth century genealogy of the Duke family states that he was educated at Westover by his uncle, Colonel William Byrd II. It is likely that the son of James Duke referred to in Colonel Byrd's Secret Diary on 3 Aug. 1709, was this William. Like several other of his siblings, William Duke, Sr., moved away from his home in the James River region and settled on Rocky Creek in Brunswick County, Va. In 1742 he deeded to his son, William Duke, Jr., 317 acres of Brunswick County land that had been granted to the senior Duke on 28 Sept. 1728. By this time William Duke, Sr., was remarried to a widow, Elizabeth Bartholomew; his first wife, Thamar Taylor, had died. His known children were by his first marriage: Samuel, the first of the family to remove to North Carolina; John, who married Mary Myrick; Thamar, who married Peter Green; Joseph, who married Mary Eppes and whose descendants became prominent settlers of Georgia and Tennessee; and William, Jr. On 11 May 1744 William Duke, Sr., and his wife Elizabeth, and William Duke, Jr., and his wife Mary, sold their lands in Brunswick County and removed to North Carolina where they settled on Possum Quarter Creek in what was then Edgecombe County—it shortly became Granville County, even later Bute County, and finally Warren County in 1779. The elder Duke acquired an estate of over six hundred acres before 1746 but soon afterward gave much of it to his children or sold part of it, retaining only about fifty acres for his own use for the remainder of his life.

William Duke, Jr., began to amass a large fortune in land and slaves. Purchase Patent plantation, as he named it, was the seat of his operations and amounted to several thousand acres. An inventory of his holdings in 1794 shows that he owned fifty-three slaves. A number of other Dukes in Warren County also had large estates.

One of the most interesting aspects of William Duke's residence in Warren County was the house he, or his father, built. Said to date from about 1750, it clearly demonstrates a high standard in domestic Georgian architecture in that section of North Carolina. According to strong, sustained, local tradition, the Duke house was similar to that of Colonel William Byrd II at Westover. On the surface, this assertion seems clearly erroneous. When the facts are more closely examined, however, there appears to be evidence to support the claim. The original house at Westover, which Colonel Byrd built in the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century, is thought to have been a story and a half in configuration. The main block of the present mansion was raised by Colonel William Byrd I after 1730. Architectural historians now believe that the large chimneys at the ends of the west dependency of the present mansion were built much earlier than the 1730 buildings, and that a story-and-a-half wooden structure stood there. An 1866 photograph of Purchase Patent clearly shows large chimneys, similar in construction to those at Westover, and a house that demonstrates a high degree of sophistication for Georgian style houses in the Carolina Piedmont at mid-century. If one adds to this the close ties of kinship between the Byrds and the Dukes, and the statements in the Secret Diary, which only came to light in this century, the evidence seems to point with some reliability to the design origins of the Duke house. Purchase Patent was clearly one of the most handsome houses in the region for this period.

William Duke, Jr., Samuel Duke, John Duke, and Joseph Duke—all sons of William Duke, Sr.—were listed with their father on the muster roll of Granville County in 1754. On Friday, 23 June 1775, William Duke was listed as a member of the Committee of Safety. The minutes of the committee show that William and other Dukes were active members. On 8 July 1775 William Duke, along with such notable figures as Jethro Sumner, Philemon Hawkins, Jr., James Ransom, William Alston, Green Hill, Thomas Eaton, and sundry others, designed a document that virtually endorsed the actions of the Continental Congress then sitting in Philadelphia. This was clearly treasonable to the British authorities, and places all these men in the vanguard of revolutionary activities.

William Duke, Jr., was one of the men in 1779 commissioned to measure the Bute County boundary and to divide the county in two new units to be named Franklin and Warren counties. Though he did not serve in the armed forces during the Revolution, the military pay vouchers for the Halifax District indicate that in 1781 the revolutionary government owed him £6,000, probably for supplies furnished the military. In 1779 he was appointed one of six commissioners to lay out the county seat town of Warrenton on the one hundred acres that had been purchased for the purpose. He was clearly interested in the new town and county and its educational facilities, for in 1787 he was appointed a trustee for the Warrenton Academy when it was founded. Duke was later styled "William Duke, Sr.," as his father had died in 1775 and the younger William Duke later had a grandson named William.

Duke's wife, Mary, was a daughter of Edward Green of Brunswick County, Va., who later settled in Granville County, N.C. She is thought to have been a widow when Duke married her and the mother of one daughter, Winnifred. Mary was not married before 17 June 1740 when she witnessed a deed in Brunswick County as "Mary Green." By May 1744 she was the wife of William Duke, Jr., when they, with his parents, William and Elizabeth Duke, sold their land in Brunswick County and moved to North Carolina. William and Mary Duke had five children: Green (m. Mary Parham); Thamar (m. Edward Jones); Sarah (m. Captain Thomas Christmas); Ann, called Nancy (m. Robert Jones); and Mary (m. Isaac Howze). The Green Duke plantation is the site for the Soul City project in Warren County; its handsome mansion house is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Mary Green Duke survived her husband. They are said to be buried on his Purchase Patent plantation, near the town of Warrenton.

Bute County

by Michael Hill
Research Branch, NC Office of Archives and History, 2008.
http://www.ncmarkers.com

Bute County was a Piedmont North Carolina county between 1764 and 1779. It was named for the Earl of Bute, the prime minister of Great Britain during the reign of King George III. In 1779 Bute County was divided into Franklin and Warren counties. The Bute County courthouse was located in present-day Warren County, about eight miles southwest of Warrenton.

On June 10, 1764, the North Carolina General Assembly formed Bute County from part of Granville County. The new county was incorporated to provide the residents in the eastern parts of Granville County, specifically St. John’s Parish, better access to county government. Bute County was expanded in 1766, when part of northwestern Northampton County was annexed.

The popularity of the Crown in Bute County had declined significantly by the late 1760s. The Earl of Bute was blamed personally by many North Carolinians for institution of the Stamp Act in 1765, and was hung in effigy. Royal Governor William Tryon’s call for troops to fight the Regulator Movement in 1768 was ignored by the Bute County militia. In the early 1770s, it was commonly claimed that, “There are no Tories in Bute,” and there is little evidence to dispute the statement.

With the declining popularity of the Crown and of the Earl, as well as the increasing county population, support grew for the division, and renaming, of Bute County in the mid-1770s. Following the Provincial Congresses of 1775 and 1776, Bute County representatives proposed an act to divide their county. After two years of discussion, it was divided, generally along the Shocco Creek, into two parts: the northern county of Warren and the southern county of Franklin. With the incorporation of Warren and Franklin counties on January 20, 1779, Bute County ceased to exist.

The Bute County courthouse stood to the southwest of Warrenton, built on land donated by Jethro Sumner, a brigadier general in the Revolutionary War. It was located on a tract of land called “Buffalo Race-Path.” The courthouse no longer stands.

Hall, John

31 May 1767–29 Jan. 1833

John Hall, justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court at the time of its organization in 1818, was born in Augusta County, Va. His father, Edward Hall, a native of Ireland, settled in Pennsylvania about 1736 but later made his home in Virginia. In the spring of 1744 Edward married Eleanor Stuart, a daughter of Archibald Stuart, Sr., of the noted family that produced Judge Archibald Stuart, Jr., the Honorable A. H. H. Stuart of President Fillmore's cabinet, and General J. E. B. Stuart of the Confederate Army.

After due preparation John Hall entered William and Mary College. He then studied law at Staunton, Va., under his kinsman, Judge Archibald Stuart, for whom he cherished an ardent gratitude and later named a son. At about age twenty-five Hall, having completed his legal studies, located at Warrenton, N.C., where he remained throughout his life. He was not a talented orator, but his splendid intellect and rich store of legal knowledge soon drew a profitable clientele.

In 1800, Hall took his seat on the Superior Court bench, a position he held until 1818, when he became one of the justices of the newly established North Carolina Supreme Court. Upon the organization of this court on 1 Jan. 1818, John Louis Taylor was appointed chief justice with Leonard Henderson and John Hall as associate justices. The court first sat for the dispatch of business on 1 Jan. 1819. Hall remained on the bench until December 1832, when he resigned because of ill health. In 1829, he was chosen one of the presidential electors from North Carolina. Although his position on the court prevented his active participation in the political campaigns of the day, he was a pronounced Democrat of the Jeffersonian school. He was also a Mason and Senior Grand Warden from 1802 to 1805.

Hall initially was a Presbyterian, but he eventually joined the Episcopal church and received its sacraments upon his death from cancer of the throat. On 31 January, when news of the death of Judge Hall reached Raleigh, a joint meeting of the bench and bar was held in honor of his memory. At this meeting Chief Justice Leonard Henderson presided, and William H. Haywood, Jr., afterwards a U.S. senator, acted as secretary. Among other resolutions it was resolved that, "in testimony of this respect and affection, we will wear the usual badge of mourning for thirty days."

Hall married Mary Weldon, the daughter of William Weldon and granddaughter of Lieutenant Colonel Samuel Weldon, an officer of North Carolina militia during the American Revolution. By her he left a large number of children, including Dr. Issac Hall, a physician in Warrenton and later of Pittsboro, who married Eliza, the daughter of Peter Evans, and Judge Edward Hall, who occupied a seat on the Superior Court bench in 1840–41. An oil portrait of John Hall hangs in the Supreme Court, Raleigh, and another is owned by the Masonic Grand Lodge of North Carolina.