Ms. Rachel Hiatt, staff member at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints’ Family History Center, will present a program on using the improved Family Search Website.

Please join them  on Tuesday, June 5^th at 6:30 PM for refreshments.  The program starts at 7:00 PM.  The meeting is free and open to the public.

FORSYTH COUNTY GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY

For more information about the Society, please see our website at www.forsythgen.org. – Facebook too!

Direct Inquiries to FCGS-Editor@triad.rr.com.

The Society’s regular monthly meeting

 will be held on Tuesday, May 1st, 2012 at 7:00 PM

in the Auditorium of the Main Public Library,

660 W. 5^th St., in Winston-Salem, NC

Please join us on Tuesday, May 1st at 6:30 PM for refreshments.  The program starts at 7:00 PM.  The meeting is free and open to the public.

Our program will be presented by Molly Grogan Rawls, local author, historian and, since 1990, photo archivist for the Forsyth County Public Library, Winston-Salem, NC.  Her topic “Preserving Family Photographs” will include tips on proper handling of photographic prints, slides, and negatives, identification of older types of photographs, and how to secure our photos against deterioration and damage; there will be handouts.

As genealogists, photos are our most cherished links to the past – come learn how to preserve them.

Each day, some new delight emerged from the darkness. A baseball autographed by people that none of us had ever heard of, and a baseball bat to go with it, inexplicably sawed off to billy club length. Copies of pamphlets whose titles did not appear anywhere on WorldCat. A plank with a brass label stating that it was a part of the original deck of the battleship USS North Carolina.

Then one day, our newest colleague, Audra Eagle, said “Come look at this. What do you think it is?”

A good-sized parcel, swathed in brown wrapping paper, lay astride a couple of cardboard boxes. We carefully peeled back the paper to reveal a large brown ledger book.

“What is it?” was the immediate question. Only one way to find out. We opened the book.

Streaming across the top of the double page spread was the legend:

TAX LIST in_____Township, _____ County, for the YEAR 1890.

As you can see, the blanks were not filled in. But a quick scan of the alphabetically listed names in the leftmost column was all that was needed. We were looking at the 1890 Forsyth County, NC tax book.

I checked a few more pages, just to make sure. All of the key names were there: Alspaugh, Atkins, Bahnson, Bitting, Blair, Blum, Brown, Buxton, Carter, Clement, Conrad, Davis, Fogle, Fries, Glenn, Gorrell, Goslen, Gray, Hairston, Hanes, Hege, Hill, Hinshaw, Leinbach, Lemly, Liipfert, Manly, Miller, Montague, Morgan, Nissen, Norfleet, Ogburn, Patterson, Pitts, Reynolds, Shaffner, Spach, Starbuck, Vogler, Watson, Williamson, Wilson.

Each listing showed the address and value of real property; a categorized listing of personal property, including buildings, furniture, clothing, cows, horses, mules, hogs, right down to the last billy goat gruff. For those engaged in agriculture, business or industry, the values were given for the tools of the trade and any inventory on hand. Other special township taxes – school, road, railroad were added. And the poll tax, $2 per person. And a final accounting. The largest tax payer was not Reynolds, Gray or Hanes, as you might expect – it was F&H Fries of Salem.

But the pages were old and fragile. You could see that if you touched them in the wrong place, an invaluable piece of information could crumble forever. So we reluctantly closed the book, rewrapped it and gingerly transported it to a shelf in our newly built locked cage.

For those not actively involved in genealogy and local history, the import of this discovery might be a bit fuzzy. One of the most important historical resources in the United States is the decennial US census, beginning in 1790 and continuing every ten years thereafter. Through some unbelievably careless mistake, the 1890 US census records were consumed by fire, leaving us with an unbearable 20 year gap in the record.

Many communities across the nation have used a variety of local records, including tax books, to partially reconstruct that lost census. Tax books are not a perfect solution, because they do not include the names of children or spouses. In fact, our tax book contains very few listings of women at all. But they are better than nothing. By adding other records such as estates and wills and obituaries we can at least partially make up for the missing census.

We knew the potential of this old tax book, but we also knew that we could not allow anyone, even ourselves, to turn those pages for fear of the damage that would inevitably occur. We also knew what the solution was…digitization. But we had neither the equipment nor the money to make that happen. So the 1890 tax book slumbered peacefully in its new home in the locked cage for a few more months. But it was not forgotten. We talked about it regularly, floating ideas on how we might accomplish its digitization.

A couple of weeks ago, our fearless leader, Billy King, and our newly minted archivist, Melodie Farnham, transported the 1890 tax book to the Wilson Library in Chapel Hill, where Nicholas Graham and his fabulous staff at the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center took over.

On Tuesday, April 3, Nicholas sent us a link to a sample page of the newly digitized tax book. It was, simply, perfect, and we let him know. Two days later, April 5, Nicholas sent us the link to the entire book at its new permanent home on digitalnc.org

So now you can go to the 1890 Forsyth County Tax Book and find out how much F&H Fries paid in taxes that year. And you can check out 46 year old Harvey Alexander, a landowner in Happy Hill, the county’s oldest black neighborhood, and see how many cows and horses and hogs that he owned (no billy goats, gruff or otherwise) and what they were worth tax wise.

For this and much more, give thanks to Jerry Carroll, Audra Eagle Yun, Melodie Farnham, Billy King, Nicholas Graham and his outstanding crew, the unknown donor of the tax book and the taxpayers, then and now, of Forsyth County and the state of North Carolina. Our heritage is alive and well.

Check it out here:

1890 Forsyth County, NC Tax Book

Filed under: Events, Genealogy, Government Information, Great Links & Resources, Local History, New Acquisitions, Our Treasures ]]> http://northcarolinaroom.wordpress.com/2012/04/08/bigger-than-the-1940-census/feed/ 1 Fam 1890TaxBook001.jpg 1890TaxBook002.jpg HarveyEntry001.jpg http://northcarolinaroom.wordpress.com/2012/04/07/bahnson-is-more-than-just-a-house/ http://northcarolinaroom.wordpress.com/2012/04/07/bahnson-is-more-than-just-a-house/#comments Sat, 07 Apr 2012 06:09:53 +0000 Fam http://northcarolinaroom.wordpress.com/?p=1647 ]]>

Since our new neighbor, The Spring House Restaurant, Kitchen & Bar in the beautifully renovated historic Bahnson House at 450 North Spring Street will be opening to the public for the first time this coming Thursday, I thought it would be a good time to look at how the building came to be in the first place. It’s history goes far deeper than its 1920 origin.

George Frederic Bahnson (1805-1869) was born in the Moravian congregation town of Christiansfeld, Denmark, and educated at Herrnhut, Germany. He came to Nazareth, PA as a teacher in 1828. In 1834 he was ordained a deacon and moved to Bethania to take the position of pastor there. He married Amelia Hortensia Frueauf in the same year, but she died of consumption only three years later, on her 23rd birthday. His second wife, Anna Gertrude Paulina Conrad had eleven children before dying in childbirth in 1858. Bahnson’s third wife was Louisa Amelia Belo. He eventually became a bishop in the Moravian church.

George and Paulina’s son Henry Theodore Bahnson, born in 1845, began attending the Moravian Seminary in Bethlehem, PA as a teenager. In 1862 he returned to NC and joined the 2nd NC Infantry. He was captured at Gettysburg and thrown into solitary confinement in the Baltimore City Jail, but was soon removed to another Federal prison because his cell was needed for the infamous Confederate spy Belle Boyd.

When he was exchanged, Bahnson joined the 1st NC Battalion Sharpshooters, who had originally been created as the bodyguard unit for Stonewall Jackson. After being paroled at Appomattox, he walked home, subsisting on roots and berries. Upon arrival in Salem, he was so emaciated that his mother did not recognize him. This led to a lifelong obsession with never leaving a scrap of food uneaten on his plate.

Once recovered, he earned a medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania, where he formed a lifelong friendship with the renowned scholar Dr. D. Hayes Agnew. Remember that name. He then went to Europe, where he continued his study of medicine at universities in Berlin, Prague and Utrecht.

Upon returning to Salem, he began his medical practice, in which he would become nationally known as a diagnostician with an extraordinary bedside manner. He married Adelaide Hedwig de Schweinitz, a descendant of one of America’s earliest botanists. She died only a few months later. Bahnson then married Emma Christina Fries, the daughter of Francis Levin Fries, the founder of one of the first textile mills in the Piedmont region.

Left to right: Mary, Caroline & Emma Fries, ca 1860

Dr. Bahnson’s interests extended far beyond his profession. He was deeply involved in his community, his church and a wide variety of other matters. He bought one of the oldest houses in Salem and he and Emma developed the extensive back yard into a botanical wonderland where they cultivated many exotic plants. One of those was the Victoria Regia water lily, a native of Brazil, which they managed to grow for the first time in the US outside a greenhouse.

Dr. Bahnson, right, with his Victoria Regia lilies, ca 1890. His wife, Emma, is in the immediate background at left.

Dr. Bahnson was also a dairyman. His farm, just across the Yadkin River past Tanglewood on US 158 West, was the incubator of Guernsey cattle in the US. There, on May 6, 1884, was born the first calf registered by the American Guernsey Cattle Club. One of his bulls, “Squire of Salem 1451″, became the sire of most of the Guernsey cattle born in the southeastern US.

With all that, perhaps the most important contribution made by Dr. Bahnson was the family that he surrounded himself with.

Fries family, 1889: Front row: Henry Fries, Lisetta Maria Vogler Fries, and Carrie Fries Shaffner. Second row: John William Fries, Lula Fries Moore, Mary Patterson, Emma Fries Bahnson, Dr. Henry Bahnson, and Rufus Patterson. Third row: Agnes de Schweinitz Fries, Walter Moore, Anna de Schweinitz Fries, Francis Fries, Rosa Fries, and Henry Fries.

Henry Fries, in the front row, was the brother of Francis Levin Fries. He and his brother founded the first serious textile mill in this part of the state. And after the Civil War, he and Edward Belo and a few others built a railroad line from Greensboro to Winston and Salem, the single most important local event of the 19th century.

His nephew John William Fries, left on the second row, would join his brothers Francis, middle of the third row, and Henry, right on the third row, to develop gas and electric power, more railroads, the electric streetcar system and modern banking and trust businesses in the community.

Rufus Patterson, right on the second row, played an important role in the development of the local textile industry and also represented the community in the state legislature. His wife, Mary, third from the left on the second row, would join forces with Kate Bitting Reynolds, wife of William Neal Reynolds, and Katharine Smith Reynolds, wife of R.J. Reynolds, to promote important social issues…healthy eating, day care, hospitals…which were make or break matters for the working class.

The Fries name has mostly been lost to our local history because the three Fries brothers had nothing but daughters. But even so, John Willam Fries left us a powerful legacy. His daughter Adelaide became a local history prodigy when she published, in 1898, as a 20 year old Salem College student, the first academic history of Forsyth County. The NC Room has copies.

And John William’s daughter Margaret married William Blair, the superintendent of the local schools. They had a son, John Fries Blair, a graduate of Haverford College and a lawyer who went on to found John Fries Blair Publishers, still an important force in Winston-Salem.

Dr. Henry, who his friends called “Hank”, became a sort of symbol of local hospitality as well. In 1914, Salem College conferred an honorary degree upon one of its alums, Mary Anna Morrison. It seems that after leaving Salem, she married some guy named Thomas Jackson, who later acquired the nickname “Stonewall”.

Mary Anna Morrison Jackson receives an honorary degree from Salem College, 1914. Her arm is linked with that of Dr. Henry T. Bahnson. At the left is Dr. Howard Rondthaler, president of Salem College.

Meanwhile, Henry and Emma Bahnson were busy having children. In 1886, Frederick Fries Bahnson was born. Ten years later, Agnew Hunter Bahnson was born. Remember that I told you to keep the Agnew name in mind.

By 1910 or so, Pleasant Henderson Hanes, a formerly successful tobacco manufacturer, was well embarked on his second career as textile magnate. But there were serious problems afoot in all cotton mills. The mills produced an enormous amount of cotton dust, which, being constantly breathed by the workers, contributed to all manner of health issues. Textile workers got sick from the dust and thus were less efficient at work and also had a very high degree of absenteeism.

So Pleas, looking around for a solution and realizing that it would only be solved by technology, found the Bahnson brothers. In 1915, Fred and Agnew Bahnson and James A. Gray formed a new company, Normalair, which was meant to produce humidifying machines that would reduce the cotton dust in textile factories. It was an immediate success. By 1918 it had become the Bahnson Humidifier Company. The rest, as they say, is history.

It turns out that Agnew Bahnson had a knack for figuring out humidity, and eventually, temperature. By the time he died in 1966, he owned dozens, if not hundreds, of patents in the field of humidity and air conditioning.

In 1965, the Bahnson Company built a new facility in Winston-Salem. It was named for Agnew Bahnson, Jr., who had died in a plane crash the year before. Here we see, at right, Agnew, Sr. and his wife, Elizabeth Moir Hill Bahnson and some of their grandchildren.

After more than half a century of being sold and sold again to a variety of entities, many of which were European, the Bahnson Company still has its international headquarters in Winston-Salem, at 3901-3909 Westpoint Boulevard near Clemmons. Other offices are located in McCleansville, Charlotte and Raleigh, NC, and in Georgia, South Carolina, Idaho and Washington state.

When you partake of your first meal at Spring House, you need not take any notice of any of this. But do keep one thing in mind…Dr. Henry Bahnson’s obsession with cleaning your plate. Let no bite go left behind.

————————————————-

The Agnew Bahnson House at 450 North Spring Street was built in 1920. It was designed by the architectural firm of Northup & O’Brien, the dominant architectural firm in this area for over half a century. The stylized “S” on the north chimney is a chimney brace, common for the era, so has no symbolic meaning.

The North Carolina Room of the Forsyh County Public Library has digitized blueprints of the building.

The original library site across the street was designed by Luther Lashmit as a partner in Northup & O’Brien and completed in 1953. Later that year, Lashmit made a presentation at the annual meeting of the American Library Association in Chicago on his ground breaking design.

The “big box” 1979 addition to the library was designed by one of Lashmit’s proteges, J. Aubrey Kirby.

—————————————-

Sources:

Faye Moran’s incredible website, which contains genealogies for over 300 local families

Southern Collection, Wilson Library, UNC Chapel Hill

NC Room Collection, Forsyth County Public Library

Photos:

The initial photograph showing the new signage at Spring Garden Restaurant was taken by Fam Brownlee last Thursday afternoon just after the sign makers finished their work.

All other photos are taken from digitalforsyth.org, so belong to either the Forsyth County Public Library Photo Collection or Old Salem Museums and Gardens.

For more information about the Society, please see our website at www.forsythgen.org. – Facebook too!

Direct Inquiries to FCGS-Editor@triad.rr.com.

The Society’s regular monthly meeting

 will be held on Tuesday, April 3rd, 2012 at 7:00 PM

in the Auditorium of the Main Public Library,

660 W. 5^th St., in Winston-Salem, NC

Please join us on Tuesday, April 3^rd at 6:30 PM for refreshments.  The program starts at 7:00 PM.  The meeting is free and open to the public.

Our program will be: “Finding Friends in the Carolinas: Tips and Tricks for Tracing Quaker Ancestors”

Gwen Gosney Erickson, Friends Historical Collection Librarian and Archivist at Guilford College, will provide an overview of Quaker membership and migration patterns in pre-1850 North and South Carolina and explain ways to use Quaker records in family history research. 

Photo by Vintage BMW magazine

259 years ago a dozen German men emerged from the forest along Mill Creek and began building what would become the splendid city of Winston-Salem. 170 years later, some other men in the forests of Bavaria began building the first of a splendid series of motorcycles and cars that would become known far and wide as bimmers and beemers.

Fittingly, on Saturday, April 26, those two worlds will merge in Old Salem to produce the largest show of BMW vehicles in North America.

I cannot guarantee that the car above will be there…in fact, I can pretty much guarantee that it won’t, because it is a unique creation, a 1937 BMW 328 Millle Miglia Buegfalte, designed to run in the 24 Hours of Le Mans race that year. It also ran in the 1938 Mille Miglia, the 1,500 kilometer race on public roads around Italy. Later, during the rise of the Third Reich, it was owned by a NAZI minister. After WW II it was seized by the Soviet Union, and later sold to Artiom Ivanovich Mikoyan, the creator of the famous Soviet MiG fighter jets. It recently was sold at auction to an unidentified buyer for $5.6 million.

But there will be hundreds of other cool BMWs on view. And it’s all free. Well, the Spaten and the food won’t be free, but the looking at cars will be. According to those in the know, the best viewing is between noon and four PM on Saturday.

* A beemer (or beamer) is a BMW motorcycle, the first product of the Bavarian Motor Works. A bimmer is a BMW automobile. The two terms are not interchangeable.

Bob Carroll at his 101st birthday party

Legendary Stokes County historian Bob Carroll died Tuesday at the age of 104. He got his longevity from his mother, who, along with two of her sisters, all lived past 100. Bob loved learning so much that he spent 4 years in the 7th grade, which was the highest grade until the local system added a high school. He began a lifelong love of journalism working on the staff of the Guilfordian at Guilford College. He wrote a popular column in the Danbury Reporter for 27 years.

Bob published four books:

The History of Mount Olive Baptist Church, 1851-1976

One Hundred Years of King History

Stokes County, N.C. : A History

Stokes County’s Old, Odd and Other Stuff

The North Carolina Room has copies of all four. Central has two circulating copies of Stokes County’s Old, Odd and Other Stuff on the shelf and the Rural Hall branch has one which is currently checked out.

Read more about Bob’s life at the Stokes News website:

Bob Carroll Dead at 104

The Society’s regular monthly meeting

 will be held on Tuesday, March 6th, 2012 at 6:30 PM

in the Auditorium of the Main Public Library,

660 W. 5^th St., in Winston-Salem, NC

Please join us on Tuesday, March 6th at 6:30 PM for refreshments.  The program starts at 7:00 PM.  The meeting is free and open to the public.

The program topic will be “How to Document “Skeletons” In Your Family Tree.”  

  Phyllis Roberson Hoots, a very experienced genealogical researcher, educator, historian, charter member and current President of Forsyth County Historical Association, and a member of our Society, will present a genealogical case study and discuss her research and documentation process.

For more information about the Society, please see our website at www.forsythgen.org. – Facebook too!

Direct Inquiries to FCGS-Editor@triad.rr.com

Don’t miss this learning opportunity!

Safe Bus #315 picks up a passenger bound for Happy Hill Gardens in 1965. The bus stop was on Fourth Street just east of the Reynolds building. Note the 1964 All American City shield on the front of the bus.

In the North Carolina room we learn something new every day, often from our patrons. This morning, a patron came in looking for an article that appeared in Ebony Magazine in December of 1965. Melodie found it online in the vast wonderland that is NCLive.

So, as our last gasp of Black History Month, take a time trip back almost half a century and see what Safe Bus was up to as it neared its 40th anniversary. To view the whole story, go to Forsyth.cc/library, click on Online Resources, click on NCLive and type “safe bus” into the search box. The first item that comes up will be the one you are looking for. Once you have supplied your library card number, you will be taken to a PDF of the entire Ebony article.

Herewith, a few of the many pics from that article:

Mary Miller Burns, daughter of a Safe Bus founder, and Hampton D. Haith, for whom the current transportation center is named, were main cogs of the Safe Bus operation in 1965.

Clark S. Brown, owner of a funeral home of the same name, was one of several unpaid officers of the Safe Bus Company. They worked for the good of the community.

Old and new blend in this pic taken at the same bus stop on East Fourth, with the still under construction Wachovia Building (Now the Winston Tower) looming in the background. At the left is the St. Atwine Club Cafe. The building next to it, formerly occupied by the King Cole Grill, was vacant in 1965. Next comes Howard’s Men’s Shop, then the popular Rex Billiards, the legendary Sanitary Barber Shop, the Little Rex Cafe, Longfoster’s Credit Clothing and Jewelry and, at the corner of Fourth & Church, the Red Camel Billiards, named for one of the four cigarette brands test marketed in 1912-13 in the runup to the introduction of Camel cigarettes.

This block, once an integral part of the vibrant black business district east of Church Street, was later demolished to make way for the Phillips Building, soon to be the new home of the Forsyth County Sheriff’s Department.

Valuable to both local and genealogy researchers, city directories list names, addresses, spouses, races and occupations. Not only can they be searched by name but they can be searched by address as well and are commonly used by those who are researching histories of houses or addresses. Often researchers will look at the business directories within city directories from several years to gauge the length of time a business was in operation.

Take a look at the city directories and other digital collections such as North Carolina newspapers and North Carolina College and University yearbooks at http://digitalnc.org/collections.

First, I stumbled upon the picture below on Digital Forsyth. The caption says ‘This photograph is inscribed, “Parade of Colored soldiers World War co Liberty & 7th St.” ‘Going by the terrain, that looks about right to me. But I have learned the hard way that inscriptions on photographs are often wrong. We’ll have a perfect example of that, involving soldiers of the same war, soon. The background of this photo is faded out, but if we put it in PhotoShop and darken it a bit, we can see a building in the background.The green arrow points to the unmistakable bell tower of Centenary Methodist Episcopal Church, at the corner of Sixth and Liberty. The house in the foreground was at the northeast corner of Liberty and Seventh, the only one on the short, angled block. It belonged to the late Mathias Masten, a well known engraver who free lanced for several jewelry companies in the area. The children on the deck above the porch are probably his grandchildren.

I wanted to know more about this picture, but quickly discovered that no one has published any research about black troops from Winston-Salem in World War I. Not a single word. So I resorted to Google to see if anything came up there. It didn’t. But Henry Johnson did.

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Who is this man and why is he smiling? Could it be that big old cross with the gold palm hanging on his chest?

Henry Johnson was born in May, 1892, the son of Isaac and Maggie Johnson, a day laborer and a housemaid, and grew up on Sycamore Street in the town of Winston, NC in the late 19th and early 20th century. When he was in his teens, his father found a steady job and moved the family to Albany, the capitol of New York.

There, while working as a chauffeur, laborer and railway porter, Henry married and had three children. He was only 5 feet 4 inches tall and weighed about 130 pounds, but, as we shall see, he was about as big a man as anyone can be.

On 6 April 1917 the US declared war on Germany. Two months later, Henry Johnson enlisted in the US Army. He was assigned to the brand new segregated 369th Infantry Regiment. The officers were white, the troops were black.

The 369th received its basic infantry training in Spartanburg, SC. While there, they came very close to getting into their own war with a white Alabama regiment, whose members resented the fact that a bunch of young black guys were wearing US Army uniforms. The Alabama regiment never saw a moment of combat. The 369th certainly did.

On 15 May 1918, Henry Johnson and seventeen-year-old Needham Roberts of Trenton, New Jersey, were on sentry duty well in advance of the American lines. At around 1 a.m. a German sniper opened up from a bush fifty yards away. Johnson anticipated more trouble, so opened a box of thirty hand grenades and placed them in a row nearby. About 2 a.m. he heard the Germans cutting the wire that protected his post, so he sent Roberts, in an adjoining sentry post, to alert their troops. Johnson lobbed a grenade and the “surprised Dutchmen” began firing, so he recalled Roberts. Roberts was soon incapacitated by a German grenade. Two Germans tried to take Roberts prisoner but Johnson beat them off. Roberts could not stand but he sat upright and passed grenades to Johnson.

With grenades exhausted Johnson grabbed his rifle. He inserted an American clip in his French rifle but it jammed. At that point, a German platoon rushed him and the fighting became hand-to-hand. He then “banged them on the dome and the side and everywhere I could land until the butt of my rifle busted.” Next he resorted to his bolo knife. “[I] slashed in a million directions,” he said. “Each slash meant something, believe me.” He admitted that the Germans “knocked me around considerable and whanged me on the head, but I always managed to get back on my feet.” One German was “bothering” him more than the others, so he eventually threw him over his head and stabbed him in his ribs. “I stuck one guy in the stomach,” Johnson continued, “and he yelled in good New York talk: ‘That black —— got me.’” Johnson was still “banging them” when his friends arrived and repulsed the Germans. Johnson then fainted. The fight had lasted about an hour.

Johnson and Roberts were taken to a French hospital. Johnson had a total of 21 wounds to his left arm, back, feet, and face, most of them from knives and bayonets.

With daylight the Americans found four dead Germans on the battlefield and evidence of perhaps as many as thirty-two more killed and wounded who had been dragged away by the Germans as they retreated. The event almost immediately became known as the “Battle of Henry Johnson”.

A few weeks later, the French awarded both Henry Johnson and Needham Roberts their highest medal for bravery, the Croix de Guerre. They were the first US troops in WWI to receive the award. Henry’s had a gold palm attached, the highest possible award.

So you know what happened next. It’s Medal of Honor time from the US side. Not really. Henry and Needham got nothing at all. Not even a Purple Heart between them.

While they were recovering from their wounds, their unit, the 369th Infantry regiment, was undergoing 191 consecutive days of enemy fire, the most of any US unit in WWI. The French gave the entire unit a Croix de Guerre. From that time forth the 369th was known as the “Harlem Hellfighters”. But the US military ignored them.

When WWI ended, there was a huge ticker tape parade down Broadway for the returning troops. The 369th was not invited. But the citizens of New York gave them their own parade, which started in Manhattan and ended in Harlem. Most of the regiment marched. Henry Johnson rode in a car as the star of the show. In Harlem the paper shower turned to flowers.

But after mustering out, black troops didn’t even get disability benefits. Because he couldn’t work on a regular basis due to his wounds, Henry Johnson became dispirited, began drinking, separated from his family and died, destitute and drunk, in 1929 at the age of 37. He was, strangely enough, buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

Until recent years, his children did not know that. In 1996, upon executive order of President Clinton, Henry Johnson finally was awarded a Purple Heart. At that point one of his sons, Herman, himself a Tuskeegee Airman during World War II and later a member of the Missouri legislature, began a campaign to get him a well deserved Medal of Honor. That campaign ended in failure in 2003, during the Bush administration, with the award of a Distinguished Service Cross, the second highest honor. That medal was awarded graveside at Arlington. But that fight is not over. Last year Senator Chuck Schumer of New York joined the effort to get Henry Johnson a Medal of Honor.

Until now, no one in Winston-Salem has had any memory of Henry Johnson. But, at least, the citizens of Albany, NY, his second home, finally came to give him his due. On Veteran’s Day, 1996, they erected a monument, with a bust of Henry Johnson, in historic Washington Park in that city.

Thank you for your service, Henry Johnson, one of our own.

The community that came to be known as Happy Hill may have been the first black neighborhood in North Carolina. Certainly, it was the first in Forsyth County.

The area just across Salem Creek southeast of Old Salem was originally set aside as a plantation for raising food for the Salem Community. In the early 19th century, the residents of Salem decided that slaves could no longer live in the town, so moved them to Happy Hill. About the same time, Dr. Frederick Schuman moved from the country northwest of Salem and settled on Happy Hill with his own slaves.

In 1836, Schuman decided to move to Salem proper, so freed his 17 slaves. Working through the American Colonization Society, he paid their passage to Liberia and gave them enough money to sustain them for six months.

Salem slaves continued to live on the hill and were eventually joined by a few free blacks. Just two years after emancipation in 1865, they built a schoolhouse and announced that any black child in Forsyth County who could get there could attend free. Five years later, the Moravians were persuaded to sell some of the land to the residents.

Happy Hill school, 1867

From the early to mid 20th century, Happy Hill was what several residents described as a “sweet” community. During that period it had its own school, theater, dance hall and a number of neighborhood businesses. But urban renewal eventually ravaged the neighborhood, leaving little of its former character behind.

In recent years, a handful of local citizens have been working to preserve what is left of Happy Hill’s heritage. Last year, the Diggs Gallery mounted a terrific exhibit paying tribute to Happy Hill’s past. And an ongoing project is attacking the undergrowth that had buried the old cemetery.

The next work session at the cemetery is this coming Saturday, February 18th, from 9-11 AM. Please come help. Old clothes and work gloves are de rigueur.

You are guaranteed to meet some interesting people and leave with a feeling of accomplishment. Here’s how to get there:

NCPedia Adds “Dictionary of N.C. Biography,” “Encyclopedia of N.C.”

RALEIGH, N.C. — North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources Secretary Linda A. Carlisle today unveiled a partnership between the State Library of North Carolina and UNC Press to make the six volumes of the “Dictionary of North Carolina Biography” and the “Encyclopedia of North Carolina” available as part of the Web site NCPedia.org. The free online encyclopedia features articles and resources about North Carolina culture and history.

Joining Carlisle for the announcement were new State Librarian Caroline (Cal) Shepard, UNC Press Editorial Director Mark Simpson-Vos, and “Encyclopedia of North Carolina” Associate Editor and UNC Press staff member Jay Mazzocchi.

“The goal of NCPedia has always been to make cultural information available for a wide range of users – teachers, students, business and civic organizations, cultural groups, and decision makers,” said Carlisle. “The Department of Cultural Resources is committed to digitization, and this exciting partnership with UNC Press is a great leap forward as we continue to record and interpret North Carolina’s rich history and culture.”

“The Encyclopedia of North Carolina” and the multi-volume “Dictionary of North Carolina Biography,” were edited by William S. Powell, professor emeritus of history at UNC-Chapel Hill, and published by UNC Press. Founded in 1922, UNC Press is the oldest university press in the South and one of the oldest in the United States.

“This is a moment William Powell, all of us at UNC Press, and our many friends around the state have dreamed about for years,” said Simpson-Vos. “The Encyclopedia of North Carolina” and the “Dictionary of North Carolina Biography” are veritable treasure troves of information about our state, and UNC Press is delighted to be partnering with the State Library of North Carolina to bring these articles to the public as part of NCPedia.”

The State Library has already received the files digitally, and has begun the process of integrating content and making it available online. The project is expected to take three years. The NCpedia Expansion to include content from the Encyclopedia of North Carolina and Dictionary of North Carolina Biography is funded through a Library Services and Technology Act grant through the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

Many of the pictures are unidentified in any way. And others come in almost weekly…most from folks who say “I found this in my great aunt’s attic…I have no idea who or what it is.” But our intrepid photo librarian, Molly Rawls, is always at work trying to identify the people, places or things portrayed in these photos.

This week, an old friend of mine brought in a couple of historic photographs. One was typical of the sort of thing that we receive…a family dressed in their Sunday best seated proudly in their brand new 1910 Ford Model T in front of their house. No other information available as to who, what, where, when or why, the five basic questions of journalists and historians.

A quick scan of the photo reveals that is was taken somewhere on Fourth Street. The terrain limits it to West Fourth, somewhere between Poplar and Broad Streets. The fact that the house is only one story, in a time when almost all houses in the area were two story, gives us an advantage. But it will still take time to narrow it down to its place.

The second picture shows a man and woman posing in a photographer’s studio. it has been damaged, but the important details are visible.

And we were delighted to note that someone had written at the bottom the names of the subjects…Nora and George Winkler. Their attire suggested a recent post-Civil War timing. And even better, it is an “original”, so we have the back as well.

Henry A. Lineback was an early local photographer, dating from around the Civil War era. His original studio was on Main Street, near Bank Street, in Salem. He later moved north to the town of Winston, locating his studio at 103 1/2 West Fourth Street, on the north side of the courthouse square.

Note that the names of the subjects are repeated on the back of the photo, along with the inscription “Born July 30th, 1848″. The usual reaction would be that such a photo is of a married couple, so why the single birth date? Is this a reflection of the typical 19th century American male-centric attitude? And if they are a married couple, why are they standing on opposite sides of a rail fence?  Or is there something else operating here?

Even so, we follow the usual path, looking for a marriage record for George or Nora Winkler. There is none. So we move to Ancestry’s vast website and try the 1860 census. And up pops a Salem listing for Amelia Winkler, a widow, whose household includes Mary Winkler (age 13), Henry Winkler (age 8) and Leonora and George Winkler (age 12).

My, my. Leonora (Nora) and George. Twins.

But in the conventional record, that is the end. Will the long running series of the records of the Moravians provide us any more information? As it happens, it will.

Here’s what happened. George Winkler grew up in Salem, attended the Salem Boy’s School and was apprenticed to the Blums, who operated a printing business and published one of the area’s most important weekly newspapers, the “People’s Press”. So he became a printer.

But at some point, he decided that he wanted to be a Moravian minister. Around 1868-69, he applied to and was accepted at the Moravian College in Bethlehem, PA, joining several other local boys, including Samuel Hagen, William H. Vogler and George F. Bahnson.

In those days, college ran pretty much year round. But there was a short break in August. In August, 1870, George Winkler and his friend William Vogler came home for a brief visit with their families.

Since students at the Moravian College had a special status, William Vogler was enticed to give a “chalk talk” to the Salem Sunday school students. And George Winkler actually preached at a service at Home Moravian Church.

And while he was home, he did one other thing. He went to Henry Lineback’s photo studio and posed for a picture with his twin sister, Nora. Then he and Vogler returned to Bethlehem.

A few weeks later, on September 15, 1870, a telegram was received at the offices of the Salem “People’s Press”, Winkler’s former employers. George Winkler had died suddenly of unknown cause at age 22.

His body was returned to Salem and interred in the Salem God’s acre. On October 5, during the Wednesday prayer meeting at Home Moravian, E.A. Vogler, the father of Willaim Vogler, read extracts from George Winklers diary to the congregation.

What newspapers were published in or near Brevard, North Carolina, in 1910? That’s a big question and if you’ve ever had to try to answer it, you know that you are in for a little research. Well, the Government & Heritage Library at the State Library of North Carolina just made that question, and others like it, easier to answer.

The North Carolina Newspaper Locator database, reflecting the microfilm holdings of the Government & Heritage Library, contains listings for nearly 2,000 unique newspaper titles dating from 1751 to today.  Free to all and of particular interest to North Carolina genealogists and historians, this database locates newspapers in time and geographic space. Users can search for titles by specific counties or those surrounding them, city, date or date range, or by a newspaper title itself.  Once a newspaper has been located, users may request the microfilm reels through their local library’s interlibrary loan service. We lend newspaper microfilm to libraries throughout the continental United States.

The power in the database lies in the ability to expand a county search to neighboring counties. For example, genealogists looking for marriage and death newspaper announcements may know where an ancestor lived, but that doesn’t mean finding the announcements is straightforward. The NC Newspaper Locator searches not only by city, but also automatically by county. And, it gives users the option to expand their search to all surrounding counties. This gives a researcher more time to spend perusing appropriate newspapers for family information.

So what about 1910 Brevard, North Carolina, newspapers? A quick search of the NC Newspaper Locator finds that the Sylvan Valley News was published in Brevard, in Transylvania county, from 1900 to 1916. Even better, at least five other newspapers were published in the North Carolina counties surrounding Transylvania in that same year (Asheville Gazette-News, French Broad Hustler, Waynesville Courier, Western Carolina Enterprise, and Western North Carolina Times).

 LINK: http://cinch.nclive.org/newspaper/

For more information about the Society, please see our website at www.forsythgen.org. – Facebook too!

Direct Inquiries to FCGS-Editor@triad.rr.com.

The Society’s regular monthly meeting

 will be held on Tuesday, February 7th, 2012 at 7:00 PM

in the Auditorium of the Main Public Library,

660 W. 5^th St., in Winston-Salem, NC

Please join us on Tuesday, February 7th at 6:30 PM for refreshments.  The program starts at 7:00 PM.  The meeting is free and open to the public.

Attn: FCGS Members

Our February 7, 2012 program will be presentations of North Carolina Civil War letters, diaries and memorabilia provided by YOU.  No matter where you live, this is a project that all members can participate in.

So ~ 

Please dig deeply into your family treasures and research files and notify either John Reynolds at FCGS-Editor@triad.rr.com or Jerry Loafman, President, at jloafman1@triad.rr.com of what you have to offer.  In addition to using the material at the February program we would also like to print some of the documents in our FCGS Journal.  It would be grand if someone discovers they have a photograph made during the Civil War.

Thank you for helping to make this one of our most interesting projects.  Not only will our ancestors, and the war, become more real for us as we read correspondence between family members, but we can analyze the language used, the style of the envelopes, the stamps, foods mentioned and much more.

A very interesting website:

CCWP, The Center for Civil War Photography http://www.civilwarphotography.org/index.php/exhibits/online-exhibits

This website has Online Exhibits and explains the types of photography that existed during this period.

This year’s theme for Black History Month is African American Women in History and Culture. Forsyth County Public Library has got some great programs lined up.

 Preserving Photographs and Documents, January 28^th, 2pm: The celebration kicks off in late January with our very own photograph librarian, Molly Rawls, who will talk about the organization, storage and conservation of photographs and documents. Molly will provide a historical overview of the types of photographs you may have in your collection. She will discuss best practices in archival housing and environment such as acid free boxes, folders, and photo albums, what is available and how to choose among the options, and the importance of climate control. She will also demonstrate how to deal with simple preservation issues and when to consult a conservation professional. So bring your questions and meet Molly in the Central Library auditorium at 2pm.

Septima Clark: Citizenship Education, February 2^nd, 3:30 pm: Civil rights activist Septima Poinsette Clark (1898-1987) is best known for her role in developing the Citizenship Schools. During the 1950s and 1960s thousands of disenfranchised African Americans passed through Citizenship School classes in which they learned to read and write in order to pass the literacy tests required by southern states to register to vote. Septima Clark brought four decades of practical experience as a public school teacher and civic activist to bear as she designed the Citizenship Schools.  Join Katherine Mellen Charron, Ph.D. at the Southside Branch library as she talks on three moments in Clark’s life to show that the roots of the program lay in organizing tradition forged by black women educators in the segregated South. 

This program is sponsored by the North Carolina Humanities Roads Scholars program of the North Carolina Humanities Council. 

Elaine Riddick, February 3^rd, 12pm: Elaine Riddick is an African American woman who, as a 14-year-old girl in 1968, was forcibly sterilized by the Eugenics Board of North Carolina which argued that she was “feebleminded” and “promiscuous.”  In March 2003 Ms. Riddick and       another victim of the Eugenics Project spoke out against the atrocities committed to them to the Eugenics Study Committee. As she said “When you’re a little girl, what do you want? You want to be a mommy. To find out that’s been taken away from you is devastating.” Ms. Riddick has worked tirelessly in bringing awareness to this project since 1970 and continues to do so through speaking engagements and television appearances. She will be at the Central Library auditorium to talk about her experiences as a survivor of the sterilization project.    

 First in Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Panel Discussion, February 24^th, 10am: Join three African American women that have been celebrated as being the firsts in their fields. They are educators, entrepreneurs, civic leaders and more.  They are “First” in Winston-Salem and Forsyth County. Join us in the Central Library auditorium!

Ms. Mutter Evans (Business woman, entrepreneur and first African American woman to own and operate a radio station in the United States)

Mrs. Sylvia Sprinkle-Hamlin (First African American and woman to serve as Library Director of the Forsyth County Public Library System)

Mrs. Denise Franklin (General Manager of WFDD, and first African American woman to anchor at WXII News)

Storyline Bus: ECHO’s Storyline bus will be visiting some of our library locations to collect personal stories during the months of February and March. To read about Storyline and for more information about their visits see my blog post from January 12, 2012.

But we also remind them to ask family members about pictures. Our own Forsyth County Public Library picture collection is enormous, yet is unlikely to have any pictures relating to a particular family. We warn them that the answer will often be that there are no pictures.

But almost every family has pictures somewhere, often forgotten. So we urge them not to give up, to ask about long neglected boxes in attics and basements. More often than not, eventually, some pictures show up.

But that is just the beginning, because once pictures are found, other questions crop up. Who is this? When and where was this picture taken? By whom? What is that in the background? And on and on. Sometimes there are answers. And sometimes there are not. Deciphering pictures takes a bit of imagination and creative thinking. Reading a picture properly can tell a story. Here is an example.

I am working on a future blog post about the second most important event, after the arrival of the Moravians in Wachovia in 1753, in our fair city’s history…the building of the railroad spur from Greensboro to the towns of Winston and Salem in the early 1870s. I will explain in that post why that event was so important.

We know who was involved in that project. I wanted pictures of those men for the blog post, and found most of them right away. But a couple of the most important players, including the president of the corporation that built the railroad, were missing.

So the president, Edward Belo, became the object of my search. He was one of the most successful and powerful men in Salem, yet none of the usual sources would yield a portrait of him. Then I remembered two pictures, obviously taken on the same day, sometime just before or during the American Civil War. These pictures are well known in the local history community. But as far as I know, no one has ever asked who the people in the pictures are.

This is the Belo House in Salem, built over a period of about thirty years in the early to mid-19th century. But for the moment we’re not really interested in the building itself.

Since one of the pictures is labeled “war time”, we can figure that both were taken just before or during the Civil War. But when? At first glance, the only time clue is the trees. They are pretty bare, but seem to be budding, especially the ones at the left along Main Street. So let’s say early spring. But what year? Probably not 1861, because North Carolina did not secede from the Union until late May, by which time the trees would no longer be budding. So that would not qualify as “war time”, would it?

Of course, it is possible that Edward Belo, being a smart man, realized earlier than most, that there was going to be a war, and decided that he wanted to record his family before it started. But somehow that doesn’t ring true to me…yet.

For other reasons, which I will explain later, I will eliminate 1864 and 1865 as well. So, for the moment, let’s say 1862 or 1863.

What else do we see in the picture? There is a covered wagon at the extreme left, facing north on Main Street. Near the center is another wagon parked at the curb. Unfortunately, the horse moved its head too fast for the film speed, so we cannot see its pretty face.

At the right are some interesting items. Near the stairs is a brick and lathe structure, which is one of the cisterns that make up the Salem water system. The tower housed a pumping mechanism which had a spout at the bottom where the water came out.

Beyond that, next to the stairs, are some cast iron animals, a lion and two dogs, and beyond them an intricate wrought iron fence. You could buy such items in the mid-19th century, but we happen to know that Edward Belo owned a foundry located less than a mile and a half north of here where all of these items were almost certainly made. We may even know the name of the man who made them. But again, that can wait for another time. Remember, we are looking for a picture of Edward Belo himself. So our real interest must be focused on the people in the picture.

At the left, arrayed along the sidewalk, we find seven men. Who are they? We know that the center section of the Belo House contained the main source of Belo’s wealth, “E. Belo’s Leviathan”, the largest general merchandise store in Forsyth County at that time. So it is reasonable to guess that the seven men are the clerks who worked in the Leviathan.

We know that most of the clerks lived on the top floor of the building. And the 1860 US Census lists six of them. So we know their names, but may never be able to match names to faces. The census lists the clerks as John L. Belo, 38 (not one of Edward’s sons); Frank C. Hauser, 24; Thomas Hunter, 23; James Kern, 21; John Reid, 18; and John W. Bitting, 17.

Their number alone is yet another reason why I disregard 1864-65, because by then, most of the Leviathan employees had gone off to war and the business was operating with a skeleton crew.

To the right, we have three groups of people. First let’s look at the women on the top balcony. This is the same level on which the clerks lived. Are the women wives of the clerks? Or are they servants? The 1860 census is no help here, because no women other than Belo women are listed. A mystery for another time.

On the main level, behind the wrought iron fence, we find two more women. Almost certainly, these are Belo women. Those included Caroline Amanda Fries Belo (Edward Belo’s wife, the daughter of Francis Levin Fries, b. 1817), Ellen Elizabeth Belo (b. 1841), Bertha Catherine Belo (b. 1850) and Agnes Cornelia Belo (b. 1852).

So it would make sense to say that the older woman at the right is Edward Belo’s wife, Caroline Amanda Fries Belo, age about 43 or so. And that the younger woman at the left is their daughter Ellen Elizabeth Belo, age about 19 or so. Where are the younger girls? We shall see in part 2.

Then, standing on the stairs in front of the fence, we find three men. There is a strong temptation to say right off the bat that the man in the top hat is Edward Belo. As obvious as that is, that would raise a howl in the halls of professional history, so I won’t go there…yet.

For the moment, there is a more interesting question. Who are the other two men? Edward and Amanda Belo had four sons: Alfred Horatio (b. 1841), Robert W, (b. 1843), Henry Augustus (b. 1845) and Arthur F. (b. 1848).

But if this is the Belo family, only two of the Belo sons are shown. If the picture was taken in1861-63, Henry would have been 16-18 and Arthur would have been 13-15.

Both of these men look older than that, so I am inclined to guess that they are the two older sons, Alfred Horatio and Robert W. Since we know that Alfred Horatio had a full beard, I’m even going to say that he is the one in the center of the picture. But I could be wrong. Find out in part 2 of this post.

As the Kingston Trio used to sing:

“I think we better call this the end of this song ’cause it’s a-getting’ too d..n long. Honey, let me be your salty dog.”

It’s not the end yet. But take a break before viewing part 2 of this long, long post.

Filed under: Genealogy, Local History ]]> http://northcarolinaroom.wordpress.com/2012/01/18/is-that-edward-belo-part-1/feed/ 0 Fam BeloHouse001.jpg Cistern001.jpg Clerks001.jpg Ladies3rdFloor001.jpg LadiesMainFloor001.jpg BeloMen001.jpg http://northcarolinaroom.wordpress.com/2012/01/12/storyline-archive/ http://northcarolinaroom.wordpress.com/2012/01/12/storyline-archive/#comments Thu, 12 Jan 2012 19:30:52 +0000 Melodie http://northcarolinaroom.wordpress.com/?p=1512 ]]> One of my very favorite things in the world is to listen to the stories that people tell. I consider myself luckier than most because I share an office with a storyteller (that’s Fam, our local historian, for those of you that know him). When I’m hankering for a story and Fam isn’t available I head for the Storyline archive that sits near the entrance to our archival storage area known as the “cage.”

ECHO’s Storyline bus travels the greater Winston-Salem area collecting snippets of life stories from the people who live here. Naturally the subjects of the stories vary greatly. From childhoods in The Great Depression to broken hearts to emigrating to the U.S. their archive has a story for everyone. If you are interested in listening to one of the Storyline CDs just come to the NC Room desk on the ground floor of the Central Library and ask to see the production log. This will provide you with a synopsis of all of the stories in the archive. CDs cannot be checked out but you are welcome to use our computers to listen to them.

If you want to share your own story the Storyline bus will be coming to the Central Library and some of the FCPL branches during February and March. The schedule is listed below.

Carver: Thursday, February 2, 11AM – 3PM

Central: Wednesday, February 8, 11AM – 3PM

Walkertown: Friday, February 17, 11AM – 3PM

Kernersville: Thursday, March 1, 12 – 5PM

Malloy Jordan East Winston: Thursday, March 8, 12 – 5PM

If you have any questions please email Melodie Farnham at farnhamj@forsyth.cc or call 336-703-3073.

We had little to go on and the usual sources were unhelpful. But then I realized that she might be talking about an orphanage of some sort and remembered that census takers in those times often listed residents of such institutions as “inmates”.

So I went to Ancestry Library Edition, selected the 1900 US Census, designated Forsyth County, NC and searched for the keyword “inmate”. The result was, shall we say, more than expected.

Up came several pages of people’s names in various areas of the county…Winston Ward 1, Salem, Old Town and Middle Fork townships.

The Salem entry revealed a sort of group home, at 823-29 South Main Street. The city directory listed it as the Salem Old Women’s Home*, but it turns out that it was more than that, because the residents were not all old at all.

According to the census listing, the head of household, or matron, was one Charity Hicks, age 40. There was also a cook, listed as Malissa Kominger, age 22 . A look at the actual census sheet tells us that that should be Malissa, or Melissa, Rominger. And there were a number of others listed, ranging in age from 30 to 91, almost certainly widows, with, perhaps, one struggling couple.

But the interesting part is the children: Minnie May & Thomas Maston (ages 9 & 5), Flora & Beatrice Longworth (ages 9 & 8), Lessa Doland & Bessie Oland Shaver (ages 9 & 7), Margaret Keeton (age 3) and Beatrice E. Wheeler (age 9). Were these all orphans? Possibly.

In light of our patron’s inquiry, there was a “candy factory” just a couple of blocks away. T.B. Douthit had for years maintained a grocery at 528 South Main Street. But if you look at his ads in the Salem “People’s Press” and elsewhere, it is clear that he manufactured a variety of candy products and, indeed, considered his business more of a “confectionary” than a simple grocery store.

All of this information has been forwarded to our patron. It remains to be seen if any of it will be helpful to her.

Other links from the Ancestry search led us to some interesting institutions such as the County Home and the County Farm, providing us with listings of the current inhabitants of those places.

And the one in Winston Ward 1, turned out to be the Twin City Hospital, the second hospital in our community, on Brookstown Avenue between Broad Street and Burke Street. More on that in a later post.

But the one that interested me the most was identified as the “convict camp” in Middle Fork township.

Forsyth County convict camp, early 20th century

We already knew a little about this institution through an interview with a man who, as a boy, lived across the road from the camp and delivered the Twin City Sentinel every afternoon to the guards and some of the inmates, and from a unique document held in our archives recording the memories of a woman who lived next door to the camp.

We knew where it was…on the hillside behind the soccer fields at Calvary Baptist Church on Country Club Road. But now we know who, in 1900, ran the camp and who was incarcerated there.

One Aquilla Bishop was the man in charge. James P. Fulton was the foreman, Joseph A. Sapp was the overseer and John N. Hedgecock was the driver. Rufus Roberson and James A. Caroll were the guards and Rufus Pegram was the cook.

The census lists the inmates as well, two white and 21 black prisoners ranging in age from 17 to 47. If you need their names, you can find them by using the same search method that I employed.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries North Carolina law allowed counties to use convict labor to build roads, railroads and schools. In some cases inmates were also rented out to private individuals. By the late 1920s, studies had shown that such procedures were inefficient and they were discontinued in North Carolina, but many of us can remember seeing chain gangs working on the roads in South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi as late as the 1950s.

In 1916, as she neared completion of her country estate, Reynolda, Katharine Smith Reynolds wanted the road from downtown Winston-Salem to her estate paved. The state did not have the funds to do so, so she donated around $10,000 in materials and the state provided convict labor to do the paving from Summit Street along Reynolda Road to what is now Silas Creek Parkway.

Convicts paving Reynolda Road, c. 1916. In the full-sized version of this picture, it is easy to see that the man standing at the left in the hat and vest is holding a shotgun or sawed-off rifle.

In the early 1930s the state absorbed all county convict camps into the state prison system. Today, all of the former Forsyth County convict camps have been incorporated into the Forsyth Correctional Center on North Cherry Street. The FCF is designated as a transitional facility for prisoners about to return to civilian life, which means that most are involved in work release or study release programs.

I guess the point of all this is that is you have terminally undetectable ancestors, you might want to try the “inmate” search, which could well find missing widows, orphans and, yes, real inmates. You might think that you do not want to know about the last, but I have found that some of my most interesting ancestors were bad guys and gals.

* The Salem Old Women’s Home should not be confused with the Widow’s Home, which was maintained by the Salem Moravian Congregation, exclusively for members of that congregation. In 1900, that facility occupied what we now know as the Single Brothers House.

Intermediate Genealogy Class (non-computer based): February 22nd from 1-3 at the Malloy Jordan East Winston Heritage Center taught by Reba Jones. No registration is necessary.

Introduction to Online Genealogy (basic computer and internet skills necessary): February 15th from 5:30-7pm in the Central Library Computer Learning Center taught by Melodie Farnham. Please register at the Computer Training Bridge site.

Questions? Please contact Melodie Farnham at 336-703-3073.

Wanda Gantt, State genealogist for DAR, will conduct this workshop. She will discuss the DAR application process and answer questions in

Room 120 of the Central Library at 10:00 AM

To be followed by a visit to the North Carolina Room at the library to do  research.

For more information about the Society, please see our website at www.forsythgen.org. – Facebook too!

Direct Inquiries to FCGS-Editor@triad.rr.com.

The Society’s regular monthly meeting

 will be held on Tuesday, January 3^rd, 2012 at 7:00 PM

in the Auditorium of the Main Public Library,

660 W. 5^th St., in Winston-Salem, NC

Please join us on Tuesday, January 3rd at 6:30 PM for refreshments.  The program starts at 7:00 PM.  The meeting is free and open to the public.

To begin the New Year of 2012, the North Carolina Room staff of the Forsyth County Public Library will give us an in-depth tour of the Forsyth County Public Library’s North Carolina Room.  First we will gather as usual in the Auditorium of the library, and after a very brief business meeting we will walk to the NC Room as a group.

We will learn or be refreshed in memory about the many genealogical resources and tools that are available in the NC Room, where to find them, and how to use the equipment to best advantage.  Did you know that there is A QUICK GUIDE TO CALL NUMBERS IN THE NC ROOM, related to Genealogy, available at the desk? The list gives the call numbers for states, counties, individual surnames, multiple surnames, and a separate page of call numbers for general North Carolina history materials. 

To prepare for this tour you are encouraged to go online to  http://northcarolinaroom.wordpress.com/the-collection/genealogy/  and read the overview of the Genealogy Collection in the NC Room.  Don’t forget that the NC Room also has a Digitization Center for VHS, audio cassettes, slides, photographs, documents.

As we have done in the past, our FCGSociety furnishes volunteers in the NC Room on the 1^st and 3^rd Thursdays of each month from 10-1 pm to assist genealogical researchers in their quests; consider joining the team. 

Many, many thanks to the NC Room staff for providing us such an exciting and helpful program to begin 2012!

The University Library at UNC-Chapel Hill has digitally published a premium catalog of offerings from RJR to its customers from that time. All you had to do was fill out a form and submit it, along with the appropriate number of tags to receive any item of your choice, ranging from household goods to clothing to sports equipment to kitchenware to fine furniture to just about anything that your heart could desire.

Take a look at the cover of the catalog:

And on the back cover was a then-and-now rendering of RJR history:

Of course, to accumulate 3,125 tags, a man (or woman…there were plenty of women who chewed) would have to chew a full plug of “Reynolds’ Sun Cured” daily for about 8 1/2 years. But for the slackers, there were lesser premiums. The cheapest that we could find in the catalog were a tobacco pouch for 30 tags and a child’s cutlery set, a collar button, match box and a pair of scissors for 40 tags.

As always when anything of value is offered, there were problems with counterfeiters. But RJR had anticipated that. Beware the notice in the catalog:

EVERY PACKAGE RECEIVED BY US WILL BE CAREFULLY INSPECTED, AND ANY AND ALL TAGS FOUND THEREIN THAT ARE NOT REDEEMABLE UNDER OUR OFFER, WILL BE REJECTED, AND THE SENDER REQUIRED TO FURNISH US, INSTEAD, TWO TAGS THAT WE DO AGREE TO REDEEM, FOR EVERY ONE TAG SO REJECTED.

For the serious chewer, there were much higher challenges. Fine furniture went for 5,000 to 15.000 tags. And for the overachievers, there was this, the priciest item in the book:

That would keep a jaw working for 78 years. Ya’ll chew now.

Documenting the American South (DocSouth), a digital publishing initiative sponsored by the University Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, provides access to digitized primary materials that offer Southern perspectives on American history and culture. It supplies teachers, students, and researchers at every educational level with a wide array of titles they can use for reference, studying, teaching, and research.

See the complete 80 page RJR premium catalog and many other fascinating documents at the University Library website.

No doubt, many have seen the new WSTA big red Wells Fargo bus around town. That signals the end of the 132 year era of Wachovia Bank. So let’s have a look at the history of banking in Winston-Salem.

Some historians say that in the early days of America a settlement needed three things to become a real town: a blacksmith, a church and a bank. Winston-Salem had the blacksmith and the church right from the start in the 1750s. But as with most settlements, the bank would have to wait.

For well over a half a century, financial transactions, especially lending, were a private matter between individuals. The result can be seen in the court records which are peppered with lawsuits over who owes whom.

It wasn’t until December, 1804, 23 years after the end of the American Revolution, that banks were chartered in North Carolina. The first was the Bank of Cape Fear, chartered in Wilmington on December 17, 1804, followed quickly by the Bank of New Bern.

It would be eleven more years until banking came to the backwoods, when three individuals were appointed as agents of the Bank of Cape Fear in Salem. In July of 1815, Charles F. Bagge became the cashier, and Emanuel Schober and John Christian Blum were named as agents.

This 1866 view of Main Street in Salem shows the Salem Hotel at left, and next to it, the Blum house, which was the home of the Salem branch of the Cape Fear Bank.

After an incident in 1828 in which some money was burned up, Dr. Friedrich Heinrich Schumann became the local cashier, serving through 1847. That year he was succeeded by Israel George Lash, who served until 1866, when the Cape Fear Bank, like almost all southern banks encumbered by leftover Confederate currency, collapsed.

But Lash was a resilient man. That same year he established the First National Bank of Salem. It would serve as the only local bank until just a few years before his death in 1879, when his nephew, William A. Lemly, would move the bank to Winston and change its name to Wachovia National Bank.

William A. Lemly, at left, and Wachovia National Bank, ca 1895, at the corner of Third and Main Streets in Winston, now the site of the old Wachovia Bank & Trust Building.

But by then, Winston had its own financial institution, the First National Bank of Winston. That bank had been founded in 1876 by Wyatt Bowman, James A. Gray, Edward Belo and others, with an initial capitalization of $100,000. It would remain the premier local bank for many years, erecting in 1895 the largest commercial building in the city. It would soon merge with Lemly’s Wachovia Bank.

The 1st National Bank Building (1895) at left, on Liberty Street at Third. Demolished in the 1980s and since then the site of one of our ugliest downtown parking lots. At right is the Phoenix Hotel and in right foreground, the original courthouse square. On the second floor of the 1st National Bank building were the law offices of Buxton & Watson. Cyrus Watson was the first Winston resident to run for governor. The Twin City Club was located in the right side of the third floor. Next to it were apartments, one of which was occupied by R.J. Reynolds just before he moved to his grand house on West Fifth Street, now the site of the Central Library.

But in the meantime, another bank had opened in Winston in1893. Founded by the Fries brothers of Salem, the Wachovia Loan & Trust company would almost overnight become the largest bank in the community. The two Wachovias would compete fiercely over the next fifteen years, but by 1909, the Wachovia Loan & Trust held deposits of nearly $4.9 million, while Wachovia National Bank was lagging well behind with deposits of only $863,000.

The 1895 photo at left shows the Wachovia Loan & Trust Company on Main Street near Third. In the background is the Gray Block, which housed the Wachovia National Bank, facing on the courthouse square. Left to right are brothers Francis H. Fries, Henry E. Fries and John William Fries.

That year, the two agreed to merge, to become the Wachovia Bank & Trust Company. They erected Winston’s first “skyscraper”, a seven story building, on the site of the original Wachovia National Bank at Main and Third Streets.

The Wachovia Bank & Trust building at Main and Third Streets was originally seven stories, designed by one of the South’s most famous architects, Franklin Pierce Milburn. In 1914, pharmacist Edward O’Hanlon built a slightly taller building at the corner of Fourth and Liberty Streets. That may have irritated the Wachovians, because they then added an eighth story to their building to reclaim the bragging rights to having the tallest building in what had, by then, become the city of Winston-Salem. This illustration is an architect’s drawing of the expanded bank building. Both the O’Hanlon and Wachovia buildings are still standing. At one point, Winston-Salem had eight buildings designed by Milburn. The old bank building and the Brickenstein house on the Old Salem bypass are the only ones left.

By 1918, the Wachovia Bank & Trust Company had become one of the South’s premier banks, boasting assets of $18 million, plus another $7.5 million managed by their trust department. The board of directors included a who’s who of local citizens: the Fries brothers, W.T. Brown, H.G. Chatham, L.H. Clement, E.L. Gaither, A.H. Galloway, Jno. L. Gilmer, Eugene E. Gray, James A. Gray, P. Huber Hanes, A.J. Hemphill, T.S. Morrison, William N. Nissen, J.K. Norfleet, C.D. Ogburn, E.W. Ohanlon, H.A. Pfohl, R.J. Reynolds, William Neal Reynolds, Wescott Roberson, W.C. Ruffin, H.F. Shaffner and W.T. Vogler.

Sources:

Weekly newspapers: The People’s Press (Salem), The Western Sentinel and the Union Republican (Winston)

Daily newspapers: The Winston-Salem Journal and the Twin City Sentinel

Booklets: Published by the local Chamber of Commerce, 1888 and 1918, and by the Norfolk & Western Railroad, 1899.

Website: North Carolina Business History     A work in progress loaded with information about a wide variety of businesses in the Tar Heel State.

Images: from Digitalforsyth.org and others scanned from North Carolina Biographical History, a series of books published beginning in 1905 and other publications housed in the North Carolina Room at the Central Branch of the Forsyth County Public Library.

Filed under: Local History ]]> http://northcarolinaroom.wordpress.com/2011/11/30/big-red-bus-end-of-an-era/feed/ 2 Fam BigRedBus.jpg BlumHouseSalemHotel1866.jpg WmALemly1846-1928.jpg WachoviaNationalBank.jpg 1stNationalBank002.jpg WachoviaLoan&Trust1895-1.jpg FrancisHenryFries001.jpg HenryEliasFries001.jpg JohnWatsonFries001.jpg WachoviaBank&Trust.jpg http://northcarolinaroom.wordpress.com/2011/11/22/national-register-of-historic-places-in-nc/ http://northcarolinaroom.wordpress.com/2011/11/22/national-register-of-historic-places-in-nc/#comments Tue, 22 Nov 2011 21:29:22 +0000 Billy http://northcarolinaroom.wordpress.com/?p=1448 ]]> Our colleague Fam has discovered a very valuable link from the North Carolina State Historic Preservation Office, a listing of documents related to National Historic Places in North Carolina. Scroll down to Forsyth County, or whatever county you want, and see the wealth of information that is available.

 http://www.hpo.ncdcr.gov/NR-PDFs.pdf

Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art
750 Marguerite Drive, Winston-Salem, NC 27106
5:00 p.m. Galleries open to the public; free of charge
6:00 p.m. Presentation and video
7:00 p.m. Networking and galleries open until 8 p.m.
Free and Open to the Public

For more information about the Society, please see our website at www.forsythgen.org. – Facebook too!

Direct Inquiries to FCGS-Editor@triad.rr.com.

The Society’s regular monthly meeting

 will be held on Wednesday, November 9th 2011 at 7:00 PM

in the Auditorium of the Main Public Library,

660 W. 5^th St., in Winston-Salem, NC

Please join us on November 9^th at 6:30 PM for refreshments.  The program starts at 7:00 PM.  The meeting is free and open to the public.

Our program, “Introduction to British Isles Genealogy Research,” will be presented by MS. CINDY GREEN.  Ms. Green is a staff member at the Family History Center of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.  The Family History Center is located at 4870 Westchester Rd. in Winston-Salem.  Her program will include: Connecting Across the Pond (Emigration and Immigration), The Three Cs: Census, Civil Registration and Church Records, and Online Resources and Research Helps.

Members: Remember that beginning with our Tuesday, December 6th 2011 Christmas Party, our FCGS meetings will be held monthly on the 1^st Tuesday of each month!  Details for the Christmas Party will be sent out later, but mark the date on your calendar now.

29 October 2011 Raleigh, NC at the North Carolina Museum of History, 5 East Edenton Street, Raleigh, NC 27601: Researching Your Ancestors in Colonial Times will be presented by the North Carolina Genealogical Society in conjunction with the NCGS Annual Meeting.  The Speaker will be Barbara Vines Little, CG^SM, whose talks will provide the information that can move your research to the next level.

Working With Colonial Records – A look at how to effectively deal with the vagarities of colonial government and the lack of records.

Land and Inheritance – Understanding the law in regard to inheritance, especially of land, is an important tool in interpreting records. Without a thorough understanding of how real and personal property was inherited especially in an intestate estate or under the rules of primo-geniture and entail, it is impossible for the researcher to make accurate assumptions of relationships based upon the inheritance of land.

Backtracking Your Migrating Ancestor: A Methodology That Works – When an ancestor suddenly appears in an area with no obvious clue to his origin, many researchers are lost. Yet carefully combing for clues in the area in which he is found will often provide the answer. This lecture provides a framework for researchers to follow in their search for their ancestor’s origin.

Taxes: Milk Them for All They’re Worth! – Most often used as substitute census, tax lists, when interpreted properly, can provide a wealth of information on individuals, their occupations, families, lifestyles, and antecedents.

Registration and additional information available at: http://www.ncgenealogy.org

New at this Fall Swap Meeting
Society member Jane Wade will have a
Workshop on
Do You Have a Revolutionary Ancestor?
She will have a talk at 11:00am

She also will have some materials to search on hand, lists of sources,
hints and guidelines, and information about using what you learn about
your ancestor to join the DAR.  
Jane will be on hand the whole day to answer questions.

For more information go to  http://gsrsnc.com/GENEALOGICALSOCIETY.html

The beginner genealogy class is suitable for people who are in the earliest stages of their family history research. Reba will focus primarily on vital (birth, marriage and death records) and census records.

The intermediate genealogy class will cover tax lists, bastardy bonds, wills & deeds, and military records. Reba will also answer questions that participants have about the research they have done and help them to break through any brick walls that they might have encountered.

The schedule for Reba’s classes is as follows:

Beginner classes

November 16, 2011 from 1-3 pm at Kernersville branch

January 18, 2012 from 1-3 pm at Malloy Jordan East Winston Heritage Center

Intermediate classes

October 4, 2011 from 1-3 pm at Rural Hall branch

February 22, 2012 from 1-3 at Malloy Jordan East Winston Heritage Center

For those who are interested in learning to use electronic genealogy databases such as Ancestry Library Edition and Heritage Quest, I teach classes in the computer lab at Central Library every other month. Please note that my focus is primarily on electronic resources and less on process, though I do give a brief overview of how to start your family history research. For more information and to register please go to the Computer Training Bridge web page. Participants should have a working knowledge of computers and the internet to register for this class. The next class is scheduled for October.

Please direct questions to:

Melodie Farnham

336-703-3073

farnhamj@forsyth.cc

The Program includes:

• “A Virtual Tour of the North Carolina State Archives” by Debbi Blake
• “Tar Heels in the Family Tree? A Genealogical Introduction to North Carolina Records” by Helen F. M. Leary, CG (Emeritus), FASG, FNGS
• “Get Excited about Your Pre-1870 N.C. African American Research: the N.C. Archives Can Put Great Resources at your Fingertips!” by Diane Richard
• “Finding Your North Carolina Revolutionary War Soldier or Patriot” by Kenny Simpson

Visit the following link for registration information:

http://archives.ncdcr.gov/news/Friends_of_Archives_Registration_form2011.pdf

Civil War Online Resources Take Center Stage at Free Aug. 8 Talk

RALEIGH — “The baby toddles about all day only takes two little naps I made her a pair of shoes and she can walk first rate in them she is just gone to sleep…”  A wife delivers news of their family to her soldier husband in October 1864, in a letter held in the Civil War materials at the North Carolina State Archives.  

How can you find such a letter? 

Join archivist Ashley Yandle at 10:30-11:30 a.m. on Monday, Aug. 8, as she demonstrates Web sites, online catalogs and blogs focusing on the Civil War that are available through the State Archives’ Web site at www.archives.ncdcr.gov. “An Introduction to Online Civil War Resources” will be held in Room 208 of the State Archives building, 109 E. Jones St., Raleigh, N.C. 27601.

In observance of the American Civil War sesquicentennial (www.nccivilwar150.com) the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources (www.ncculture.com) has planned more than 250 events – talks, re-enactments, exhibits – statewide. The Civil War wrought great hardship upon the state and nation. North Carolina suffered at least 35,000 deaths and felt more than its share of pain. The nation and state survived the war years, 1861-1865, but at great price.  

The talk will touch briefly on tools helpful to genealogists whose search for family history take them through this time period, and will also include information about family letters, governors’ correspondence and other Civil War materials in the Archives’ collection. These online tools can help both novice and advanced researchers to identify and explore the lives of ordinary North Carolinians, as well learn more about actions taken by government officials during this tumultuous time.

Many of North Carolina’s military records, like those of other southern states, were taken during the war and are now maintained by the National Archives in Washington, D.C. However, several types of records including some state agency, court and pension records can be found at the State Archives, and many of them have been scanned and digitized for easy access.

Call (919) 807-7385 for additional information.

The N.C. Department of Cultural Resources is the state agency with the mission to enrich lives and communities, and the vision to harness the state’s cultural resources to build North Carolina’s social, cultural and economic future. Information on Cultural Resources is available 24/7 at www.ncculture.com.

The Civil War was the first war widely covered with photography. The Freedom, Sacrifice, Memory exhibit provides images of historic figures, artifacts, and documents that brought the reality of the war from the battlefront to the home front, then and now,” explains Deputy Secretary Dr. Jeffrey Crow of the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources.

The exhibit will commemorate the bravery and resiliency of North Carolinians throughout the Civil War with stimulating images gathered from the State Archives, the N.C. Museum of History and State Historic Sites. A total of 24 images will be displayed by the N.C. Department of Culture Resources in 50 libraries throughout the state from April 2011 through May 2013. A notebook will accompany the exhibit with further information and also seeking viewer comments.

The collection depicts African Americans, women and militiamen, including images of artifacts and official documents. More than 5,000 North Carolina blacks are documented as having served in the U.S.C.T. for the Union Army and Navy. Despite resentment from Confederates, African Americans dutifully served, paving their way to freedom.

Find out more about North Carolina’s commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the War at the North Carolina Civi War Sesquicentennial website.

In 1861, the citizens of Forsyth County had limited sources for news. There was no e-mail, no Facebook, no Twitter, no TV, no radio, no telephone. They had five basic ways of getting information: Word of mouth, mail, flyers, public meetings and newspapers. Since the newspapers were connected to the telegraph system, they usually had the latest information first.

Most newspapers of the times were political weeklies. Most of the time their chief interests were promoting their political party of choice and providing entertainment in the form of poetry, essays, short fiction, occasional novel serializations and “travel” pieces. If you knew your literature and your politics, you could figure out a newspaper’s political orientation from reading the entertainment selections. For all, news not connected to politics took a definite back seat.

In 1861, Forsyth County had two political weeklies. The older of the two, the People’s Press, based in Salem, was identified with the Whig Party. The Whig Party formed around 1830 in opposition to Andrew Jackson’s new Democratic Party. They favored a stronger Congress and a weaker President and strong tariffs on international trade. Whig leaders included Daniel Webster, Henry Clay and, in Illinois, a young Abraham Lincoln. Between 1841 and 1853, four Whigs held the presidency: William Henry Harrison, John Tyler, Zachary Taylor and Millard Fillmore. But by 1850, the party was falling apart over the issue of slavery. Fillmore was expelled from the party and by 1856 the party essentially did not exist. But newspapers like the People’s Press continued to espouse Whiggish ideas for some time to come.

The Western Sentinel, based in Winston, was a wholehearted Jacksonian Democratic organ, which made them a natural enemy of the People’s Press. The party was an evolution of the Democratic-Republican Party founded by Jefferson, Madison and Monroe. Its founding fathers were Jackson and Martin Van Buren, favoring a strong President and a weak Congress, unrestricted foreign trade, and, for a time, slavery. But in the 1850s, the issue of slavery fractured the Democrats just as it had the Whigs. In the run-up to the 1860 election, the party split into three parts: the Northern Democratic Party, the Southern Democratic Party and the Constitutional Union Party, a southernish/borderish compromise between the other two.

In the 1860 election, the three parts of the former Democratic Party won about 60% of the popular vote. But Abraham Lincoln’s new Republican Party, which got almost none of the popular vote in the slave states, won the most populous states and 180 electoral votes, almost 60% of the total. The old, “original” Democratic Party got just 12, dead last. Needless to say, the Western Sentinel went with the Southern Democrats.

Since almost all of the local information in this series is derived from these two publications, a closer, more personal look at the people behind them is in order.

The People’s Press, Salem, NC  1851-1892

Johann Christian Blum, a Salem Moravian, was an entrepreneur. In the 1820s, he arranged to establish a branch of one of North Carolina’s preeminent banks, the bank of Cape Fear, in Salem. There were problems which led to his being forced out, but the branch continued into the middle of the 19th century under other management until, like most southern banks, it folded near the end of the Civil War.

About the time that his association with the bank was ending, he decided to go into the printing business. In 1827 he  bought a 17 year old second hand Ramage printing press in Philadelphia and announced that he would begin publishing a newspaper to be known as the Weekly Gleaner. In those days, the Moravian Church was still the governing body in Salem. They were not comfortable with a newspaper published outside their control. Blum promised not to publish anything critical of the local government, but his newspaper lasted barely a year.

By then he had already begun publishing Blum’s Farmers and Planters Almanac. Since it did not contain any controversial material, it became an immediate success. It is still published today in Winston-Salem by the Goslen family.

Blum purchased the local paper mill and made his own ink. The almanac and a vigorous job printing business assured success. By the time of Blum’s death in 1854, his sons, Levi and Edward had taken over the business. In 1851, they founded the Salem People’s Press.

The Western Sentinel, Winston, NC   1856-1912?

John Wesley Alspaugh was born on July 22, 1831 to John and Elizabeth Lashmit Alspaugh. His father was the minister for nearly 56 years of the Methodist Episcopal Church, since merged with Centenary Methodist Church, which was located at the corner of Liberty and Seventh Streets in the town of Winston.

Alspaugh graduated from the Union Institute (later Trinity College, now Duke University) in Trinity, NC in 1855 and studied law in Greensboro under the noted judge Robert Dick.  He then opened a law office in Winston. To supplement his income, he took a part time job with the weekly Western Sentinel. Within a year, he was co-editor of the paper, and in 1859 became the editor and proprietor. An avid southern patriot, he steered his newspaper into the mainstream of the secessionist movement.

Brown’s School was founded in Trinity, NC in the 1830s as a Methodist institution. It was renamed in 1839 as the Union Institute after local Quakers helped save it from bankruptcy. In 1859 it was again renamed as Trinity College. In 1890 the Duke family agreed to invest heavily in the school, which moved to Durham, NC in 1892 and became Duke University.

He was already involved in politics, serving from 1858 through the end of the Civil War as chief clerk of the North Carolina Senate. After his retirement as editor and publisher of the Western Sentinel in 1872, he continued to practice law and also became a founder, in 1876, of the First National Bank of Winston, serving as cashier until 1892, when he became president.

He was also deeply involved in the affairs of Trinity College, serving as a trustee from 1869 until his death and helping to rescue the chronically bankrupt school long before the Duke family got involved. He helped to finance many local Methodist churches, and is buried in the Mt. Tabor Methodist Church cemetery.

But irony is one of the chief features of human existence. And irony was certainly no stranger in John Alspaugh’s life, because the 1860 census tells us that he was living in what is now the Washington Park neighborhood. Other members of his household were listed as George W. Sites, his 27 year old copy editor, and Bedford Copeland, his 18 year old printer.

The irony arrives as a neighbor. Alspaugh’s residence is listed as census number 1440. The next residence is 1441. That would be the home of one Constantine Banner. You may recall that earlier we published a speech, delivered by Mr. Banner at the mass meeting on December 29, 1860, in which he bitingly questions the sanity of South Carolina’s decision to secede from the union.

Just imagine the chat between those neighbors over the next few months.

FORSYTH COUNTY GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY

For more information about the Society, please see our website at www.forsythgen.org.

Direct Inquiries to FCGS-Editor@triad.rr.com.

The Society’s regular monthly meeting

 will be held on June 8^th, 2011 at 7:00 PM

in the Auditorium of the Main Public Library,

660 W. 5^th St., in Winston-Salem, NC.

Cindy Green and Rachel Hiatt will present a program on Finding Family History at the Family History Center. They will discuss the resources available at the LDS Family History Center and on Family Search.

Please join us at 6:30 PM for refreshments.  The program starts at 7:00 PM – business meeting to follow.  The meeting is free and open to the public.

Attachment: Minutes of FCGS 13 April 2011 and 11 May 2011 meetings.

A first-time event you may be interested in:

The Genealogy Jamboree at Cumberland Gap, TN, will be June 9th – 12^th, 2011.  Check out their website for all the exciting details:

 www.wil-syl.com/jamboree3/

The Committee to Restore Old Salem presents their report to Mayor Marshall Kurfees in 1950. L-R: C.T. Leinbach; R. Arthur Spaugh, Sr.; Mayor Kurfees; Charles Siewers; James A. Gray, Jr.; Agnew Bahnson, Jr.; Frank Willingham; Fred Bahson, Jr.; Charles Babcock. The NC Room has books published by Siewers and Agnew Bahnson, the latter signed by him to his good friend, Charles Babcock.

In 1928, Marshall Kurfees had just gotten into the dry cleaning business when his landlord, William Neal Reynolds, the president of the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, suggested that he might have a future in politics. He ended up heading the local campaign of Al Smith for president of the United States. His side lost, but he began a love affair with politics that would last the rest of his life.

Between 1928 and 1948, Kurfees ran eight times for various local offices and lost every time. Then, in 1949, he ran for mayor of Winston-Salem against popular incumbent George Lentz. He didn’t have a chance of winning, because people liked Lentz and the established powers, especially the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, did not like Kurfees.

He made two campaign promises: he would get the city a winning baseball team and a new hospital. He also suggested that he would work for a new library, a coliseum, a needed fire station and liquor stores.

On election day, before the polls closed, he received a phone call from James A. Gray, Sr., the chief financial officer at R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, congratulating him on his victory. The baseball team won the Carolina league pennant the next year and the hospital (Forsyth Memorial) came later.

The library, coliseum and fire station got built, and the liquor stores, immediately nicknamed “Kurfees drugstores”, were not far behind. Kurfees pushed for new roads, which included Peters Creek Parkway, Silas Creek Parkway, US 52 and Interstate 40. Of course, I-40 had this notorious curve over Hawthorne Road, which naturally became known as the “Kurfees curve”.

Kurfees also played a major role in the passage of the “Powell Bill” in the state legislature, which gave cities a cut of the state road-use tax money. Defying the racism of the times, he hired black firefighters and policemen and appointed black citizens to local boards and committees.

Kurfees won six consecutive two year terms as mayor, making him the longest serving in that job ever. And when he stepped down in 1961, he left Winston-Salem a much better city than it had been in 1949.

Kurfees probably knew more people than anyone else in town. He certainly knew me, because he lived on Fenimore Street right behind my usual Safety Patrol station at Ardmore School. I was a New York Yankees fan and he was a Brooklyn Dodgers fan, so each morning as he left for City Hall, we would exchange barbs about the fortunes of our respective teams. As a precocious sixth grader, I would sometimes offer him advice on city affairs as well. He always said “I’ll look into that.” That always made me feel good, until one day when I realized that he probably said that several hundred times a day.

There are a million Marshall Kurfees stories. My favorite takes us back to his political beginnings in 1928. The US was almost a decade into the great prohibition experiment, and talk of ending that experiment had already begun. Kurfees was an enthusiatic “wet”. Santford Martin, the editor of the Winston-Salem Journal, was an adamant “dry”.

Once, while they were arguing, Kurfees said “I could stand in your office and throw rocks on three different places I could buy whiskey.” Moments later, Kurfees found himself in a courtroom under orders to name the places.

He did: the Robert E. Lee and Carolina Hotels and the bus station, all well within rock throwing distance of Martin’s office. Then the judge ordered Kurfees to name the people who had been present when illegal liquor was being sold. He named the biggest druggist in town, the city’s top stock broker and the secretary of the Chamber of Commerce. The reigning mayor, who happened to be in the courtroom, started sweating bullets.

“He’d been up there to the hotel with me,” Kurfees later told a reporter. “I didn’t name him.” The Journal ran a story about the incident the next morning, but it did not name names.

 Thank you, Mr. Mayor!

A series of technical problems have caused a long delay in this series. For that, I apologize. To get caught up, we will be going pretty fast in the next couple of updates. This one will cover from mid-January to the first week of March, 1861. The next one, sometime next week, will bring us up to the beginning of May, 1861. To read the series in order, go back to the first entry, dated  January 13, 2011.

Following the secession of South Carolina on December 20, 1860 there was a lot of talk, but little action, over the next three weeks. The unanimous Union vote at the Forsyth County courthouse on December 29, 1860, and many others across the state and in other southern states made it seem as if matters might be settled amicably after all. The Palmetto State stood alone.

But those who were determined to leave the Union were hard at work throughout the South, arguing, pleading, planting rumors, making promises. On January 9, the telegraph lines across the nation sprang to frantic life. Mississippi had seceded. The next day, Florida went out. And the next day, the 11th, Alabama.

The disunionists ratcheted up their pressure. On January 19, Georgia seceded. A week later, Louisiana followed suit. And on February 1, Texas, which had been a part of the United States of America for barely 15 years, voted to leave.

So seven were out. Those who had been planning and promoting secession for years had made certain calculations. They needed the seven already out and and a few more, specifically North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri and Arkansas.

That was based on simple demographics, combined with current military theory. If the disunionists could get what they sought, the Union would have about a 2 ½ or 3 to one advantage populationwise. If war was on the horizon, the secessionists had no intention of doing anything other than defending. And current military thinking required a better than 3-1 advantage for the attacking side. So if all the “projected” states joined the disunionist cause, the unionists would have to think twice or more before attacking.

Following the huge meeting at the courthouse in December, with its unanimous unionist vote, the Winston based Western Sentinel, supporter of the local and national Democratic Party, had muted its disunion leanings. But this surge in secessionist momentum encouraged the Sentinel to speak out more strongly. Unfortunately, the Sentinels for this period are missing, but we know pretty much what they were writing, at least in tone, based on the response from the Whig oriented Salem People’s Press.

The two newspapers descended to petty sniping. The Sentinel published its first openly secessionist article, then crowed that the People’s Press had not even responded. The Press replied that the “gentleman’s exchange” had broken down and that they had had to make considerable effort just to get a copy of the Sentinel. The Sentinel said that they had delivered a copy to the Press. The Press said that they had not. Did! Did not! Did! Did not! Now boys, stop that!

But the focus of real attention was on the Peace Congress in Washington, which was struggling desperately to find a last minute compromise, and the state conventions, a prerequisite for secession. There was little hope that the Peace Congress would succeed, so the strategy of the Unionists was to forestall, or at least, delay, a statewide convention on secession.

Note that the Peace Congress was doomed from the start, because the seven states that had already seceded were not present. The best that the Peace Congress could come up with was to draw an east-west line at 36 degrees, 30 minutes north latitude that would preserve the current laws on each side of the line regarding slavery from coast to coast in perpetuity. So the focus on preventing a state convention was the only reasonable alternative.

For a moment, the Unionists thought that they had won, but that turned out not to be the case, because rumors and threats set in motion by the disunionists were beginning to have an effect.

In reality, the legislature had voted to hold a statewide referendum on whether or not to hold a convention to consider secession. And just in case the referendum called for a convention, the legislature had instructed each county to designate two representatives to such a convention by January 28, 1861.

At this point, local relationships began to become a bit strained. The local Unionists suspected that the disunionists…the “courthouse crowd”…were up to some hijinks.

The courthouse was, of course, in Winston, home of the secessionist Western Sentinel. And even though the Winston courthouse and the square in Salem were less than a mile apart, information did not flow as freely between those two points as one might imagine. Was someone in Winston giving out false information about the date of the meetings in hopes that the Unionists who read the People’s Press might not show up for the crucial meeting that would select Forsyth County’s delegates to a possible secession convention?

They need not have worried. At the second countywide mass meeting, two men were selected by an overwhelming majority to represent Forsyth County at any such convention that might occur. One was Rufus Patterson, who had so ably chaired the original mass meeting. The other was Thomas J. Wilson, the first non-Moravian to be allowed to live on Salem property. Both were strong Unionists.

In the end, all the angst was for nothing. Because on February 28 North Carolina held a referendum on whether or not to call a convention to consider secession. But the vote was not really about a convention. Everyone understood that approval of a convention would have been an automatic vote for secession. The result was a margin of 651 out of 96,000 cast against the convention. In New Hanover county, the vote was 4-1 in favor of a convention. In some other eastern counties , the margin was as high as eight to one. But moving west from Raleigh, the vote shifted to no convention. And the farther west you went, the stronger the no convention vote became. The Salem People’s Press jubilantly published the results, beginning with Forsyth County:

Even more important was the election of representatives who would have attended a convention had such an event been approved. There, the vote statewide showed 74 Unionist delegates and only 46 for disunion.

In his monumental TV series, Ken Burns used the song “The Battlecry of Freedom” throughout. That song was not written until 1862, but if it had been around in 1861, the anti-secessionists in North Carolina would have been singing its best line “The Union forever, hoorah boys, hoorah.”

 If They Could See Us Now: The Story of Charlotte’s 38th Evacuation Hospital and How I Survived World War II are by award winning and Emmy nominated filmmaker Chris Hudson.

Combat didn’t belong to just soldiers and officers during World War II. Many WWII veterans never picked up a rifle, flew a B-17 Bomber, captured a Nazi or Japanese soldier or killed another human being. Many worked behind the scenes saving lives instead of taking them.

If they Could See Us Now is a documentary about Charlotte’s 38th Evacuation Hospital during World War II. This film tells the amazing story of doctors and nurses from Charlotte, NC joining the war effort and going overseas to help support troops battling the Axis powers.

From storming the beaches in North Africa during Operation Torch, to setting up camp and taking care of countless casualties at Anzio, the 38th Evacuation Hospital started from a simple idea at a lawn party in Charlotte to becoming internationally known in magazines such as Time and Life.

Shot in High Definition, this documentary contains interviews of 38th doctors and nurses, and photos and film footage of the unit in action. In addition, the film contains a special foreword by legendary documentary filmmaker Ken Burns.

The Emmy Nominated and Silver Telly Award Winning How I Survived World War II is a documentary film  based on over 120 oral histories collected by WTVI and the Charlotte Rotary Club. Narrated by Dan Morrill of the University of North Carolina Charlotte, this epic tells the personal stories of American and German soldiers and civilians, and takes you around the world, from Charlotte, NC to Europe, Burma, and the Pacific Theatre.

For more information call 336 703-3019

 Students of Wake Forest University’s Public History course cordially invite you to attend:

Winston-Salem Histories:  

Explorations in Memory, Place, and Community

April 30^th at Krankies Coffee -  211 East 3^rd Street

Presentations and screenings commence at 8 PM

       Photographs courtesy of Digital Forsyth

 This presentation of students’ exhibits and documentary films features local voices, memories, and new research on Winston-Salem history.  Whether a long-time resident or new arrival, come learn some of the stories about Winston-Salem’s past that shaped the city and matter for the future.

Exhibits

The Legacy of Union Station: Past, Present, and Future

The Unfinished Process of Desegregation in Winston-Salem, 1957-present

Community Gardening, Past and Present

Documentary Films

Popping Bubbles: Bridging Communities Through Art

Cigarettes and Soap Operas: The Forgotten History of Winston-Salem Tobacco

Practical, Functional, or Beautiful?  Preserving Memory Through Means of Adaptive Reuse

Free and open to the public. Enjoy hors d’oeuvres and desserts from local businesses

Sponsored by the WFU Department of History and the Institute for Public Engagement

The Beginning

Our series has been delayed by a number of technical and other problems. It will resume in a few days.

FORSYTH COUNTY GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY

REGULAR MONTHLY MEETING

APRIL 13, 2011 

The Forsyth County, NC Genealogical Society will hold its regular meeting on Wednesday, April 13, 2011 at 6:30 PM in the Main Library Auditorium at 660 West 5th Street in Winston-Salem.

Mr. Tom Perry will speak on “Civil War Genealogy”

Historian Thomas D. “Tom” Perry was born in Mount Airy, NC, grew up in Ararat, VA, just up the road from where Civil War General J. E. B. Stuart lived.  Perry writes on Patrick, Henry and Surry Counties in VA and NC. He is the author of a dozen books on Patrick, Henry Counties in Virginia and on Mount Airy, North Carolina, along with several about the J. E. B. Stuart and the Civil War in his native Patrick County. His website is www.freestateofpatrick.com

Perry’s publications include (among others):  God’s Will Be Done: The Christian Life of J. E. B. Stuart, J. E. B. Stuart’s Birthplace: The History of the Laurel Hill Farm, Ascent to Glory: The Genealogy of J. E. B. Stuart and The Free State of Patrick: Patrick County Virginia in the Civil War.

Join us at 6:30 PM for refreshments.  The program starts at 7:00 PM – business meeting to follow.  The meeting is free and open to the public.

For an explanation of this series, please see the first installment, posted January 13, 2011.

In the weeks following the secession of South Carolina, chaos reigned throughout the nation. Rumors ran rampant. At the People’s Press, the Blums did, as always,  what they could to check the accuracy of their reporting.

One early rumor had it that President Lincoln had dispatched federal troops to put down the rebellion in South Carolina, and that they would be occupying Fort Fisher in North Carolina.

But with only the busy telegraph lines linking them to the outside world, the Blums must have felt overwhelmed. So they resorted to grouping some of the most alarming rumors together in a column titled “Important, If True”.

The first of these was partly true, partly false. The Star of the West had indeed been dispatched to deliver supplies to the besieged federal troops at Fort Sumter. Not having had time to form an actual army, the citizens of Charleston summoned cadets from the Citadel. Apparently they had been well drilled in artillery practice, because they scored at least three hits on the Star of the West. But the ship was not sinking. It had, in fact turned back and was headed out to sea with minimal damage. Today, in each graduating class at the Citadel, the “best drilled” cadet receives the Star of the West award.

The Florida story was a bit premature. The others were a mishmash. The New York story was silly. The story from the Raleigh newspaper was simply bizarre. The Pennsylvania petition was mostly true, a move on the part of the citizens of Philadelphia to offer conciliation on one of the most burning issues of the day.

About two thirds of the “secession” stories reported locally mentioned the Fugitive Slave Acts, federal laws requiring non-slave states to cooperate with slave states in the recovery of runaway slaves. Abolitionists in the north had pushed through state laws guaranteeing the freedom of all residents of their states in an attempt to “nullify” the federal laws. These nullification attempts were a primary cause of the secession movement. Despite later attempts to cast secession as a states rights issue, the southern states actually opposed states rights in regard to the Fugitive Slave Acts. The Pennsylvanians were simply doing their part to try to fend off secession by urging repeal of their own nullification laws.

Ironically, the most important real story, that Mississippi had just become the second state to secede, did not appear anywhere in the People’s Press. Perhaps the Mississippians had been a bit slow in getting their message out.

In anticipation of South Carolina’s action, the local courts had already tightened restrictions on the movements of local slaves.

But most were hoping that the problems would simply go away, and that life could continue as usual. Long term ads for local businesses continued to run in the People’s Press.

The “32-tf” annotation at the end of Brother Hall’s ad was a code used by the Blums to help them keep track of the duration and terms of their advertisers.

The results of the Salem town elections were duly reported.

And the annual town treasurer’s report was published.

Cultural events went on as scheduled.

But the Blums wanted their readers to understand that the current events were of crucial importance, so they published in full a speech given in late December at the mass meeting at the Forsyth County Courthouse by Constantine Banner.

Banner was a prominent member of the Salem Moravian congregation, a wealthy farmer who lived with his wife and three of his adult children in what is now the Washington Park area. His circa 1855 house, although much modified in the 1920s, is still standing there.

According to the 1860 US Census, Banner owned over 900 acres of land, 260 acres of which were under cultivation, valued at $15,000 ($547,00 in current value). His net worth was $20,000 ($730,00 in current value).

He owned 3 horses, 2 mules, 12 cows, and 40 pigs, valued at $800. The previous year, he had produced 325 bushels of wheat, 800 of corn, 100 of oats, 75 of potatoes, 75 of sweet potatoes, 100 pounds of butter, 1,500 pounds of tobacco and a goodly amount of hay and orchard products.

But perhaps most importantly, he was a major slave owner, at least by local standards. He owned 25 slaves, ranging in age from 1 to 70 years old, and three slave houses. So one might think that he would be in favor of secession. Read this excerpt from his speech and see what you think.

One man’s opinion. But on the same page of the People’s Press, we have this story from New York.

Constantine Banner clearly believed that the citizens of South Carolina had made a big mistake. The above article might just confirm his opinion. Did the South Carolinians really believe that they could get a loan from a New York bank to finance an army that would oppose the interests of the Union, of which New York was very much a part?

Next: The plot thickens. Mississippi, Florida and others secede, leaving the citizens of Forsyth County in a state of disarray.

Constantine Banner’s house, built around 1855, as seen in an 1890s photograph.

This class will be held on February 23, 2011 from 5:30-7:30 pm in the computer lab at the Central Library. Email me questions at farnhamj@forsyth.cc

I hope to see you there!

Since 2011 is the sesquicentennial of the Civil War, we thought it might be interesting to take yet another look at those events. But instead of rehashing what has already been rehashed over and over, we thought that we might take a slightly different perspective and look at what was going on on the home front.

In 1861, there were two weekly publications in the towns of Winston and Salem. The Peoples Press, founded by the sons of  Christian Blum in 1851, represented the Whig viewpoint dating back to the founding of the nation. The Western Sentinel represented the somewhat newer views of the Democratic party, established by Andrew Jackson in the 1820s.

We have microfilm of both newspapers. Unfortunately, the run of the Western Sentinel is badly broken. The run of the Peoples Press is much more complete. So this series will mostly reflect the views of the Peoples Press, which is not so bad, because the Whig view was the more moderate view. There would not be a local newspaper representing the more radical Republican view until after the war. When the Western Sentinel is available, we will include relevant items from that paper. What we hope to achieve is a feel for what it was like living in the two towns during America’s most dramatic and pivotal years.

As the momentous year of 1860 advanced toward the November election, the 1000 or so citizens of the towns of Winston and Salem and their few thousand rural neighbors watched uneasily.

They had their own local problems. The North Carolina Railroad had been essentially completed. It ran westward from Wilmington to Fayetteville, Raleigh and Greensboro, then turned southwestward to Lexington, Salisbury and Charlotte. Without a rail link, they would remain the backwoods community that they already were.

And now there was talk of secession from the Union. That could bring about the kind of economic disaster that could ultimately obliterate the two small towns. The principal issue was slavery, which was not much of an issue locally.

The population of the South as a whole was about ⅓ slaves. But that ratio was much heavier in the deep South, especially in neighboring South Carolina, where slaves outnumbered free men. North Carolina and Virginia conformed to the regional average. But in Forsyth County, and most of the Piedmont, the ratio was much lower.

On November 6, Abraham Lincoln, the candidate of the new Republican Party, was elected President of the United States. The campaign had made it clear that a Republican victory would weaken the influence of the slave states.

So talk of secession increased, while Congress sought desperately to find a compromise that would cool such talk. There was little if any success.

On December 20, South Carolina officially seceded from the Union. They immediately demanded surrender of all Federal property in the state. Having anticipated this development, and the fact that communications with the Charleston harbor fort complex might be broken, the US Army had replaced the commander of the forts in the Charleston area with Major Robert Anderson, a man known for his wisdom and discretion, who might have to make decisions on his own.

He wasted no time. On the day after Christmas, under cover of darkness, he abandoned the indefensible forts in the area and moved all of his troops into Fort Sumter, on an island unapproachable by land.

That sent the South Carolinians into a fury, because they realized that Major Anderson intended to defend the fort. And it may have finally awakened the residents of Forsyth County to action, because 3 days later, on December 29, they called for a public meeting at the courthouse to discuss the problem.

Of course, there had been much discourse already amongst the locals. Some were avid secessionists. Some were not. Most were middle grounders. There had been bitter debates, even some name calling. The People’s Press had cautioned citizens more than once to “watch their tongues”, that the name calling and divisiveness could have very negative consequences for the community. Now, perhaps, it would all be settled.

On the 29th, everybody who was anybody in Forsyth County showed up for the meeting. An estimated 800 people jammed themselves into the tiny county courthouse. Rufus Lenoir Patterson, a Salem resident and textile manufacturer and merchant who was married to Marie Louise Morehead, daughter of former Governor John Motley Morehead, was chosen to chair the meeting. He explained that the purpose of the meeting was to “counsel together…and to see if there was not some common ground on which all (local) parties could unite in the present crisis.”

On motion of Darius H. Starbuck, a Winston resident and the U.S. Attorney for North Carolina, a committee of fifteen was appointed by the chair to draft resolutions for the action of the meeting. The committee consisted of Thomas J. Wilson, Joseph Masten, D.H. Starbuck, John A. Styers, R.W. Wharton, John Boyer, John Blackburn, John Alspaugh, Dr. T.F. Keehln, John Watson, Dr. Beverly Jones, John M. Stafford, George V. Fulp, John G. Hill and Sandy Flynt.

Two hours later the committee returned with eleven resolutions. Most merely rehashed the national concerns regarding fugitive slaves and local militias, with one suggesting that high tariffs be levied against certain other states which were uncooperative on the matter of returning fugitive slaves. But it was resolution #4 that cut to the heart of the matter.

“Resolved, That waiving the Constitutional question of the power of a State to secede from the Union,such act of secession, if effected peaceably, is not an appropriate and adequate remedy for the injuries under which the Southern States are now laboring. To depart from the Union, leaving behind in the hands of her supposed enemies, all her accumulations of eighty years, in which she had proportional rights, would be a sacrifice on the part of a State, execpt under pressure of overruling necessity, as incompatible with her dignity as her interests.”

The final resolution provided for publication of the resolutions in the local newspapers and their transmission to the state legislature and the national congress.

The People’s Press went on to conclude “The foregoing resolutions having been read in the meeting and the views of gentlemen submitted thereon, the chair submitted the resolutions to a vote of the meeting and they were unanimously adopted.”

The document was signed by Patterson and the two secretaries of the meeting, A.J. Stafford and C.L. Banner.

So South Carolina had already seceded. Mississippi might soon. And others might follow. But not North Carolina…not if the citizens of Salem and Winston and the rest of Forsyth County could help it.

The democratic Western Sentinel asserted that the resolutions were in line with their thinking as well, but added a prescient epilogue “Union if we can, otherwise its alternative.”

MONTHLY MEETING

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 12^th, 2011

The Forsyth County Genealogical Society’s regular monthly meeting will be held on Wednesday, January 12^th, 2011 at 6:30 p.m. in the auditorium of the Main Forsyth County Library at 660 W. 5th Street in Winston-Salem, NC.

We are pleased to have Randell Jones, a Winston-Salem author and storyteller, as our guest speaker.  He will present the program

“The Overmountain Men of 1780”

And will share stories from America’s fight for independence.

Please refer to the attached flyer for more program detail.

Copies of his newest book, Before They Were Heroes at King’s Mountain, will be available for autographing.

Don’t miss this special evening!

Refreshments at 6:30.  Program begins at 7:00.

The meeting is free and open to the public.

For more information about the Society, please see our website at www.forsythgen.org.

As December 25 approached last week, we began to hear rumors of snow. You could almost hear Bing Crosby, or Sinatra or Elvis dreaming of a white Christmas “just like the ones I used to know”.

At first it was maybe, then yes, then no, then back to maybe, but probably not much. And the local media gave us a confusing array of dates as to when the last white Christmas had been, first 1947, then 1969, then, no, 1961, even 1981, which, it turns out, after a snow shower around dawn, was cold rainy day in Winston-Salem.

On Christmas Day, when it finally became obvious that we were actually going to get a significant accumulation, a couple of my friends suggested that I look into the history and come up with THE answer.

Easy, I thought. The Weather Underground website lets you search for the weather at most locations in the US on any day going back to the 1940s. But I quickly encountered problems. The website said that Winston-Salem had snow on such and such a day, but when I went to the local newspaper microfilm, there was no snow.

Then I got lucky. I remembered that when I was a kid it snowed several Wednesdays in March and that we were out of school for almost a month. I thought I would use that to compare the Weather Underground info with what really happened so that I would know what to look for on the website.

When I pulled up the microfilm for Thursday, March 3, 1960 the headline said “Heavy Snowstorm Paralyzes Northwest North Carolina”. Ah, this is more like it. Then I noticed a little article near the center of the front page. It mentioned that exactly 33 years before, on March 2, 1927, there had been what was thought to be the largest single day accumulation of snow in local history. I thought it said that Winston-Salem had gotten 18 inches, but the microfilm is a little blurry and I thought that that sounded like way too much. At any rate, I lost interest in the Christmas Day business and went looking for the all-time single day record.

So I went to the Journal microfilm for March 2, 1927. Remember that the newspaper is actually written and edited the night before, so most of the information was already produced before midnight on the 1st. The weather box at the top of the page said that the 2nd would be chilly, with a chance of rain or maybe even snow. There was even a paragraph, somewhere inside, that said that snow flurries had begun before midnight. Obviously nothing to worry about.

Cut to the headlines for March 3. “Deepest Snow in Years”…”Wilson Reports 30-40 Inches”…”Overloaded Roofs Collapse”… Well, this was a surprise, wasn’t it? Probably because the snow reversed its usual pattern and came down heaviest from east to west. Asheville only got 7 inches. Fayetteville had over 2 feet. Greensboro had 20 inches, and, yes, Winston-Salem came in at 18 inches.

Was that the biggest snow ever here? It certainly sounds like a contender. But there are other possibilities. The 1927 articles mention the “Great Blizzard of 1899″. Unfortunately, when the Journal microfilm was done, 1899 was missing. The locally published weekly “The Union Republican” was more interested in politics than in local events. They do mention the blizzard, which affected the entire eastern half of the US. They do not mention local snow accumulation, which was apparently no more than 7 or 8 inches (see picture). They do note that temperatures were well below zero and that the streetcars were unable to run from Sunday until around noon on Tuesday and that there was a widespread shortage of fuel.

Almost certainly there is more information buried (beneath snow?) somewhere in the Moravian records. I am hoping that there is someone out there who likes to focus on weather extremes. If your research has been in that area, please let us know.

The F.J. Liipfert house at 512 West Fifth Street. This picture was taken on January 10, 1927. On that day, the Twin City got 7 inches of snow. Just a few weeks later, on March 2, 18 inches, probably the local record, fell in a single day. Of course, 1927 was a momentous year in other ways as well, because Lucky Lindy flew the Atlantic and Babe Ruth set a major league baseball record with 60 home runs.

THE CONSTITUTION FOR THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: crafted by a small group of wise patriots who had to overcome fierce opposition, ratified by the early colonists and adopted as the ‘Law of the Land’, the Constitution established the future of the United States of America and solidified its place as the premier nation on earth.

Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay: three men heavily involved in the drafting of the Constitution and deeply committed to its ratification published “The Federalist”, a series of newspaper articles known today as “The Federalist Papers.” The articles clearly delineate the necessity for a rule of law for the new nation. Their explanations and their reasoning are as sound today as they were two and a quarter centuries ago. Learn once again the foundation for the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution.

Join us for lively and informative discussion of the events, debates and thinking that went into the formation of one of the most enduring and inspiring documents ever crafted over the course of history: the Constitution of the United States of America.

Central Library
Sunday, December 5th at 2:00 pm

Elizabeth Thalhimer Smartt is a fifth generation member of the family that operated the legendary Thalhimers Department stores.

She will be at the Central Library on Sunday, November 14 at 2:00 PM.

Join us in the auditorium to hear about her new book, Finding Thalhimers and get your copy of her book autographed. Refreshments will be served. Free.

Read more here: http://www.forsyth.cc/library/?StoryID=16557

While looking for something else, I came across the above picture on Digital Forsyth. The caption, obviously citing an inscription on the picture, said that it was the funeral of J.C. Bixton at 1st Presbyterian Church and that nothing else was known about Mr. Bixton.

I immediately knew why nothing was known about Mr. Bixton, because his name was John Cameron Buxton. But there was still a problem, because I also knew that Mr. Buxton was a founding member of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, yet the church in the picture is indeed 1st Presby. It is quite a story.

John Cameron Buxton was admitted to the NC Bar in 1875 in Asheville. He practiced law in the town of Winston for the next 35 years, sometimes solo and sometimes in partnership with John W. Alspaugh or Cyrus B. Watson.

He was very active in local affairs, especially politics, serving a term as mayor of Winston, and a term in the state legislature. But his most important role was as the godfather of culture.

The state legislature had passed a law giving municipalities the right to establish a tax to fund a local school district, but no one jumped on the bandwagon right away. By the early 1880s, however, the leaders in Winston were ready to move. Buxton volunteered to head up the project. The Winston Graded School opened in 1884. Its first principal, hand picked by Buxton, was Charles Duncan McIver, who would later found the State Normal and Industrial School for Women, now UNC-G. The Depot Street Colored School opened in 1887.  Both the white and colored achools were considered to be the best of their kind in the South.

Twenty years later, when the community went in search of a Carnegie grant to build a public library, Buxton again stepped up and got the job done. A new city high school for white children followed in 1908. That school can be seen in the background of the above picture. The Carnegie Library was across the street to the right.

When Buxton died on April 25, 1917, two simple services were planned, one in his home and a second at St.Paul’s. But it quickly became apparent that the two venues could never accomodate the number of people who wanted to say a final good-bye to the city’s king of culture.

The funeral began on Sunday at Buxton’s home on Summit Street, now the home of St. Paul’s Episcopal. More than a hundred people jammed the house for the service conducted by the Reverend W.A. Cheatham, rector of St. Paul’s, and the Reverend J. Kenneth Pfohl of Home Moravian. In the yard were gathered, in a body, the members of Buxton’s fraternal organizations, the Odd Fellows, the Knights of Pythias, the Elks and the Eagles. Also in the yard were 200 or more children from the white schools, all holding flowers.

When the coffin was moved the four blocks to St. Paul’s, which then stood at the northwest corner of Fourth and Cherry Streets, the sidewalks were filled by citizens of the black community, including dozens of school children holding flowers.

While the service was held at St. Paul’s, conducted by Cheatham, Bishop Cheshire of Raleigh and Bishop Edward Rondthaler of the Moravian Church, Southern Province, an overflow service was held barely a block away at 1st Presbyterian. Dr. D. Clay Lilly, pastor of 1st Presbyterian, began the service. The Reverend Howard E. Rondthaler, president of Salem Academy and College, read the scripture lesson and led the group in prayer.

Then Mayor Oscar B. Eaton delivered an eulogy, followed by Eugene E. Gray, speaking on behalf of the legal fraternity. The assembled then sang “Nearer My God To Thee” whereupon a huge throng accompanied the casket the eight blocks to Salem Cemetery, where they were greeted by the Home Moravian Church band under the direction of Bernard J. Pfohl.

The Winston-Salem Journal estimated the crowd at 6,000. It is the biggest sendoff we know of in the city’s history.

The  State of North Carolina is redesigning its main website (www.nc.gov) and is seeking public input.   We want to hear from a wide range of people about what they want and need from the new site.  The goal is to build a site that makes it easier for everyone to obtain information about and perform transactions with NC state government.

Please consider taking a few minutes to answer a 9-question survey.  Feel free to share this survey through your social networks.

The survey closes at 5pm on Friday, November 5. 

If there is a way to send it to other staff at your libraries and to your patrons, that would be greatly appreciated.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/ncgovwebdesign

Thank you for your time.

This years On the Same Page community read features Dashiell Hammet’s The Maltese Falcon. Since it is set in the 1920s, we thought it would be interesting to take a look at what was happening in Winston-Salem during that period.

So we made a video that begins with the boys coming home from WW I to a booming economy that soon made Winston-Salem the state’s most populous city. Building exploded, outward and upward, and the party was on.

Ironically, as the boom continued, the dynamic leaders who had made the boom possible were dying off one by one. And then came Black Monday and the party ended.

It is all right here: Winston-Salem in the Jazz Age

Thursday, September 23 at 5 p.m.

Book Launch

Old Salem

Lecture from 5:15 to 5:45 p.m. in the Single Brothers Workshop

10 Academy Street

Winston-Salem, NC 27101

Reception following at T. Bagge Shop’s Garden Courtyard

626 South Main Street

Winston-Salem, NC

And here’s a blurb about this historic account:

In the spring of 1865, Federal major general George Stoneman launched a cavalry raid deep into the heart of the Confederacy. Over the next two months, Stoneman’s cavalry rode across six Southern states, fighting fierce skirmishes and destroying supplies and facilities. When the raid finally ended, Stoneman’s troopers had brought the Civil War home to dozens of communities that had not seen it up close before. In the process, the cavalrymen pulled off one of the longest cavalry raids in U.S. military history.

Based on exhaustive research in 34 repositories in 12 states and from more than 200 books and newspapers, Hartley’s book tells the complete story of Stoneman’s 1865 raid for the first time.

Happy Searching!

Garriss. Hackney. Idol. Jackson. Kearns. Lacks. Bible histories for these and nearly 320 other families – with names mainly beginning with the letters G, H, I, J, K, and L — are now searchable as part of the freely available North Carolina Family Records Online project. These new records join around 700 others already online, as well as death notices from Fayetteville newspapers (1859-1869), and marriage and death notices from the Raleigh Register and the North Carolina State Gazette (1799-1893).

 The project began in 2008 when the State Library of North Carolina and North Carolina State Archives paired up to digitize a small, representative sample of the 2,000+ family Bible records in the Archives’ collection. Because of the huge public response — 325,000 pages viewed in 24 months — the partnership continues. Our hope is to eventually digitize, transcribe, and provide online access to the remaining 1,000 Bible records and to add more genealogy-related materials to the collection.

 As of August 2010, letters A through L are nearly complete, and samples from M through Z are publicly available to search, read, and download. So, keep stopping by or get automatic updates through your RSS feed as we add new records to the collection. And, be sure to tell your friends — especially if their names are Holaday, Livengood, or Kinnamon — that their long search for family ancestors may be over.

http://statelibrary.ncdcr.gov/dimp/digital/ncfamilyrecords/index.html

African American Genealogy Resources

Print

NC929.1 B993 African American Genealogical Sourcebook edited by Paula K. Byers

NC929.1 R796 Black Genesis: a Resource Book for African-American Genealogy by James M. Rose (2^nd floor copies available for checkout)

NC929.1 B Family Pride: The Complete Guide to Tracing African-American Genealogy  by Donna Beasley (2^nd floor copies available for checkout)

NC929.1 Finding a Place Called Home: a Guide to African-American Genealogy and Historical Identity by Dee Woodtor

NC929.1 C The Genealogist’s Companion and Sourcebook by Emily Anne Croom

NC929.1 J66 A Student’s Guide to African American Genealogy by Anne E. Johnson (Children’s Room copies available for checkout)

Electronic

African American Cemeteries Online http://africanamericancemeteries.com/

AfriGeneas http://www.afrigeneas.com/

Digital Library on American Slavery http://library.uncg.edu/slavery/about.aspx

The Freedmen’s Bureau Online http://www.freedmensbureau.com/

Slave Archival Collection http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~ilissdsa/text_files/database_intro2.htm

The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database http://www.slavevoyages.org/tast/index.faces

The USF Africana Heritage Project http://www.africanaheritage.com/

Oral History Resources

Print

NC907.2 A425 From Memory to History: Using Oral Sources in Local Historical Research by Barbara Allen

LC 39.2: V 64/3 The Library of Congress Veterans History Project Field Kit: Conducting and Preserving Interviews by The Veterans History Project (U.S. Government Document)

Y 3.H 74:8 H 62 Oral History Interview Guidelines, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 1998 (U.S. Government Document)

929.1 F Recording your Family History : A Guide to Preserving Oral History with Videotape, Audiotape, Suggested Topics, Questions and Interview Techniques by William Fletcher (located on the 2^nd floor)

 NC907.2 N632 Saving Family Memories: A Step-by-Step Guide to Interviewing Relatives by Janice Nickerson

NC907.2 A Your Life and Times: How to put a Life Story on Tape – An Oral History Handbook by Stephen Arthur

Electronic

Baylor University – Institute for Oral History http://www.baylor.edu/oral_history/index.php?id=23560

DoHistory – Step-By-Step Guide to Oral History by Judith Moyer http://dohistory.org/on_your_own/toolkit/oralHistory.html

International Oral History Association – Oral History Methodology by Dr. Sean Field http://www.iohanet.org/resources/advice.html

The Library of Congress – The American Folklife Center – Oral History Interviews http://www.loc.gov/folklife/familyfolklife/oralhistory.html#tips

 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill – The Writing Center – Oral History http://www.unc.edu/depts/wcweb/handouts/oral_history.html

Historic Maps of N.C. Now Available Online

More than 3,200 historic maps of North Carolina are now available online as part of the digital North Carolina Maps project.

Visitors to the site can see the results of a three-year collaborative project to identify and scan nearly every original map of the state published from 1584 to 1923. The collection also contains maps of every N.C. county and maps published by the state through the year 2000.

The North Carolina Collection of UNC Libraries collaborated to produce the new site with the N.C. State Archives and the Outer Banks History Center in Manteo. UNC Libraries and the state archives scanned the maps, and the library hosts and administers the site.

“We’ve heard from K-12 teachers, students, university faculty and genealogists, all of whom are big fans of the project,” said Nick Graham, project manager and coordinator of the N.C. Digital Heritage Center, based at UNC Libraries. “It’s clear this is reaching a wide audience.”

Highlights of the new site include:

• a 1584 map of the Southeast from the Outer Banks History Center – the oldest map in the online collection;
• color maps documenting 116 towns in 67 counties show streets and even individual buildings, permitting a detailed look at local history and development over time; and
• Coast and Geodetic Survey maps from the 19th and 20th centuries, showing detailed surveys of the state’s ever-changing coastline.

North Carolina Maps also contains an interactive option allowing users to lay selected historic maps over current street maps and satellite images. Another feature combines historic maps from the project with a Google Earth 3-D tour.

North Carolina Maps was underwritten by a grant from the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services, given under provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act and distributed through the State Library of North Carolina.