Susan's Blogue

Something Might Come Along

by Susan Taylor Block

Four years ago, when my brother and I spent three poignant months cleaning out our parents’ house, I discovered a fragile slip of paper that amazed me. It is a receipt issued by the Gregory Institute of Wilmington, in 1892. The student’s name is noted as Prince Smith.

Hill-Taylor Collection

Gregory Institute operated as a school for blacks from 1868 until 1921. The American Missionary Association, in close alignment with several Congregational Church communities, founded the school, along with others in North Carolina, in an effort to correct the longtime lack of quality education for minorities. The Association named it in honor of James J. H. Gregory, of Marblehead, Massachusetts, who underwrote building costs for not only the school, but also a teachers’ residence, and Gregory Congregational Church.

James J. H. Gregory.

Gregory was a seedsman who also contributed to library programs and projects that would not only encourage reading, but teach it to African Americans. The Wilmington Gregory campus was located on the 600 block Nun Street.  The church still stands, complete with the bell Mr. Gregory had had inscribed with the words, “The North to the South, in Sympathy and Love.”

Gregory Institute was located at 613 Nun Street. (Reprinted from Cape Fear Lost; photo courtesy of Cape Fear Museum)

I didn’t know of any connection between my family and Gregory Institute, and I was not familiar with the name, Prince Smith – but I liked it, and the bonding of the names. Prince, as a first name, is quite rare – and Smith, as a surname, soaks up much more than its share of phonebook printing ink. I wondered if the young man had been named Prince at birth, either through his parents’ ambition, or from having an ancestor who was a real African prince. Was it a nickname he acquired because of his carriage, general demeanor, or his accomplishments?

At my parents’ house, the receipt had been filed with images and papers having to do with the Hills, my maternal grandfather’s family. The Hills were hard working folks of modest means who lived in Dry Pond, so I could not figure the connection. A dollar was a lot of money in those days, and my great-grandfather, Owen Hill, had lots of dependents at the time.  Did he give a whole dollar just to educate someone else’s child? I hoped so. http://susantaylorblock.com/2012/12/08/the-hills-of-queen-street/

So many questions, with no one left to give a quick answer. My beloved Grandmother Hill, who saved everything of note, had been dead for 25 years, and my mother had not shared our interest in family history – and history in general.

What to do? What to do? I decided to simply file it away as “Prince Smith.” Something might come along one day that would shed some light. Well, yesterday, a penlight of illumination arrived in the form of “Back Then,” a column compiled and notated by Star News writer, Scott Nunn, of Wilmington. He pulled this quote from a hundred-year old newspaper: “Sheriff S. P. Cowan went to Castle Hanes (Haynes) to get Prince Smith, who stabbed Dave Smith Saturday night a week ago but learned that his man was hiding in the fastnesses of Pender County.”

“How could you, Prince?” I thought, with a bit of the anger and disappointment a doting aunt might feel. Especially after the experience of being a student at the Gregory Institute, where discipline was strict and punishment was severe. Yet, on average, only one pupil per year was sentenced to expulsion.

(…to be continued)

SOURCES:

Annual Report of the American Missionary Association, 1896. (This report indicates that Mr. Woodard was still principal. Teachers included: Julia Condict, Adrian, Michigan; Susan Marsh, Massachusetts; Lucy Fairbanks, Woodstock, Vermont; Ella Smith Ably, Michigan; Alma Crane, Schenectady, New York; Minnis Strout, Salem, Massachusetts; Ellen Hanson, Oberlin; Susan Breck, Lawrence, Kansas; Florence Gough, Grand Rapids; Mary Bennett, North Rochester.)

The Negro Church: Report of a Social Study made under the Direction of Atlanta University; together with the Proceedings of the Eighth Conference for the Study of the Negro Problems, held at Atlanta University, May 26, 1903. Edited by W. E. Burghardt Du Bois

I Wrote This Poem Myself

by Susan Taylor Block

It seems that some people

Who’d  never say, “ain’t,”

Are serving up grammar

That makes teachers faint.

“Myself” is the word that is

Scattered about,

As if just to say it

Gives substance and clout.

I and me used to be

Perfectly fine,

But now myself’s jumped to

The top of the line.

“Sean and myself

Are going to Venice.”

“Jane and myself

Are playing some tennis.”

“Send email to myself.

I’ll answer it quickly.”

“Serve myself some liver,

And I’ll feel very sickly.”

If you send myself an email

It sounds a lot to me,

Like I must then go send it

To I and me and we.

“Myself” is not a problem

When the me does speak of I:

“I bought myself a pig today

And now we need a sty.”

That a nation’s tweaked its grammar

‘Til it’s actually incorrect,

Is just a bit amusing

To myself, as I reflect.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Azalea Belles, 2013

Photos and text by Susan Taylor Block

The North Carolina Azalea Festival was launched on April 9, 1948, when ABC Radio broadcaster Ted Malone described the festival’s flower show to an estimated ten million listeners. The flower show was sponsored by Cape Fear Garden Club, and the North Carolina Sorosis and Crepe Myrtle garden clubs. The Azalea Festival and Cape Fear Garden Club have been closely linked ever since. In fact, the garden club lead scattered tours prior the 1948, and several of its members helped organize and define the festival.

In addition to its famous Azalea Garden Tour, Cape Fear Garden Club sponsors the Azalea Belle program. Historian and author Leora “Billy” McEachern laid the groundwork when she recruited a few teenage girls to dress up in Colonial attire for Pilgrimage Tours, that predated the festival. From 1948, the practice continued in sporatic form, until Mrs. McEachern, Mrs. Harley Vance, and Mrs. W. A. Fonvielle presented the first annual slate of Azalea Belles in 1969. The charter belles were Wanda Johnson, Jean Burdette, Kathie White, Beth Chadwick, Ginger King, Pamela Wood, and Marsha Blake. Most of the hoops worn that year were left over from the Cape Fear Confederate Ball held at Cape Fear Country Club on April 15, 1962.

The Azalea Belle program continues to thrive. To learn more, and to purchase copies of Belles and Blooms: Cape Fear Garden Club and the North Carolina Azalea Festival, check out the Cape Fear Garden Club site: capefeargardenclub.org

Here’s a sampling of what my Cape Fear Garden Club sisters and I witnessed during the Mary Lou McEachern Mother-Daughter Azalea Belle Tea, on April 7, 2013.

Interior Decorating, c. 1910

Susan Taylor Block

(Photograph courtesy of Catherine Marie Gerdes, John Rehder’s great-great niece.)

Safe and convenient flash photography was still a dream when this “indoors” photograph of John and Elise Bissinger Rehder’s house was taken, about 1910. This first floor sitting room served as a breakfast nook and a study. For more information on the John Rehder House, see:

 http://susantaylorblock.com/2011/07/19/cape-fear-lost-the-john-rehder-house/

“…seven hundred cannons ready to fire….” Civil War Letter 3

Susan Taylor Block

(What follows is the gently edited text of a Civil War letter written by Andrew Jackson Stone, my great-great grandfather.)

“House of Boyds, South Carolina

March 20, 1863

Dear Wife,

I take my pen in hand to drop you a few lines to inform you that I am well at present. Hoping those fine few lines may find you the same. I have been looking for a letter from you for several days. I have written once to you since I recieved a letter from you. I have nothing of interest to write to you at present. Everything is quiet on the coast today.

I have been correctly informed of your Father’s departure and was shocked with sorrow to hear of his death. I hope you not take to heart no more of the trials of this world than you can avoid. I want you to write whether your Brother will have to go to the service or not and if he goes, I would like for him to come to our Company and if we stay here I don’t think that we will get in to a fight soon for we are so well fortified here that the Yankees will never make any attack at this place. We have seven hundred cannons ready to fire all at the same time if needful. I heard last Saturday about your Father being dead and I have been looking for a letter from you and since I want to know when you heard from Henry Oldham and your Brother, Orran. Give my respects to all inquiring friends. So I must close by saying write soon. Direct your letter Col. D 67th Regt. NCT.

Yours truly,

A. J. Stone”

(Use of any part of this letter should be acknowledged as susantaylorblock.com  )

See:   http://susantaylorblock.com/2013/02/18/8457/

http://susantaylorblock.com/2013/03/04/civil-war-letter-2/

“Without being Wounded or Killed” – Civil War Letter 2

Susan Taylor Block

What follows is a letter from my great-great grandmother, Emily, to her husband, Andrew Jackson Stone. She writes from Chatham County, NC.

“Peddlars Hill, Sept. 5

Dear Husband,

Yours of the 28th came to hand last mail informing me that you had been in a fight, lost a great many of your com. Many killed, wounded, and taken prisoner. I cannot tell you how thankful I am that you escaped unhurt. I heard of it before I got your letter and was very uneasy that you might be amongst the prisoners. I don’t know how in the world you got out without being wounded or killed. This leaves all well but myself. I have been almost crazy with toothache today but it feels easy now. There is no news worth writing. Henrietta’s baby has been very sick this week. Something like cold, but is better now. I wrote to you last week and sent you 5.00 dollars. I hope you will get it. Mr. Dowdy and Henrietta expect to move soon as he is not able to go back in the Army any more. The 45 men will be examined at Pittsboro nest week so they will be called off soon.

We have not commenced making molasses yet. Farmers are getting busy getting fodder. Corn crops are tolerably good. My potatoes are right good. I have tried them a time or two. We got a letter from Fran last week. He is well. Patsy and family are well. Mother’s family are well and doing well. Mrs. Fields got a letter from Noah last week. He says he is doing very well, expects to get home in a week or two. Edgar and Joel {Andrew and Emily’s young sons} send a heap of howdy to Pa. Mother and family join me in a heap of love to you. The Rives family send their respects to you. Write soon.

I remain your affectionate wife,

E. H. Stone”                                 http://susantaylorblock.com/2013/02/18/8457/

 http://susantaylorblock.com/2013/03/05/seven-hundred-cannons-ready-to-fire-civil-war-letter-3/

Joel Stone, son of Andrew and Emily, poses with granddaughters Margie Stone (Elliott) and my mother, Betty Hill (Taylor), about 1932. (Hill-Taylor Collection)

“Camp of Destruction” – Civil War Letter 1

“…I am sorry for every man who has to leave his home and family to go to the tented field to a camp of destruction….” – Andrew Jackson Stone.

Susan Taylor Block

What follows is the gently edited text of a Civil War letter written by Andrew Jackson Stone, my great-great grandfather.

“Sept. the 25, 1862

(In care of) Phoebe S. Elmore

A. J. Stone, Manchester, Cumberland County

My Dear Brother,

I embrace the opportunity of writing you an answer to your kind letter that we received some two weeks ago. Have been waiting for Jesse to have it right for you, sent it to him, but he keeps putting it off till I have got tired of waiting and I am going to write it myself as there is no one present. We are all well at this time and hope when this comes to hand it may find you enjoying the best of health. I heard the yellow fever was ragin in Wilmington and am very uneasy about you for fear it will get in your camp. I was very glad to hear that you were better satisfied than you thought you would, but I am sorry for every man who has to leave his home and family to go to the tented field to a camp of destruction, I call it.

You wanted me to write where William Elmore is. I received a letter from him last evening. He is at Raleigh, Camp Mangum. He came home when the prisoners were exchanged and formed in the old company and went to Camp Mangum and is there yet and I don’t know when they will leave there or where they will go. He was well when he wrote his letter.

I want you to write, as soon as this comes to hand, how you are and if you have heard any more from Henry Oldham and if you hear anything from goshw (Joshua?) Stone for we can’t hear a word from him. Jesse doesn’t hope to leave….it all the factory will bear him from … and Sally says she is not a going to get married till all the soldiers get home for she is a going to have a soldier or none and she has not gotten a letter from the one that you speak of in two months or more and she can’t hear anything from him….”

(Cover addressed to Mrs. Emily H. Stone, Peddlars Hill P.O., Chatham County, N. Carolina. Legible part of postmark reads, “WIL.”)

Assorted notes:

-Andrew wrote this letter from Manchester, in Cumberland County. Company E of the 8th North Carolina was originally raised as the “Manchester Guardians” in Northern Cumberland County. Captain James M. Williams commanded this company. Additionally, the Carolina Boys of Cumberland County were Company K of the 38th North Carolina Regiment headed by Captain Murdoch McLaughlin McRae age 20. This unit boasted the highest percentage of men with Highland Scot names in the Confederacy. Captains Peter Mallet, O.H. Blocker, Francis N. Roberts and Peter Sinclair commanded troops in this regiment.

-Andrew wrote to his twin brother, William Stone. Their parents were Elijah and Phoebe Willitt Stone, who moved to North Carolina from Virginia, about 1820. Andrew and William were members of Company G. William was killed in the Peachtree Creek Battle in Atlanta, in 1864.

-Andrew lost his life to friendly fire when a Confederate soldier, who spotted him with a Union powder horn, mistook him for the enemy. Having lost his own powder horn during battle, Andrew had taken the horn off the body of a dead Yankee.

The fateful powder horn.

-At least 650 Wilmington residents were victims of the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1862.

-William Elmore was married to Andrew’s sister, Phoebe Stone Elmore.

-Camp Mangum was located where the NC State Fairgrounds are today.

-William Oldham, killed in 1863, was married to Andrew’s sister, Martha “Patsy” Stone Oldham Dowdy. “Aunt Patsy Dowdy,” as my grandmother always called her, made a beautiful coverlet that has survived. When I asked Nana what the story was, she answered, “The coverlet is about the only thing the Yankees didn’t take from her house.”

http://susantaylorblock.com/2013/03/04/civil-war-letter-2/

http://susantaylorblock.com/2013/03/05/seven-hundred-cannons-ready-to-fire-civil-war-letter-3/

The coverlet, 148 years after its close call.

(Information republished from this blog should be acknowledged as susantaylorblock.com)

The Lions of Landfall

by Susan Taylor Block

Lions graced the Bungalow at Pembroke Park. The girls are unidentified. (Photo courtesy of Cape Fear Museum)

It’s no wonder “lions” once lounged at Landfall, an expansive community near Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina. Owner Pembroke Jones’s voice was described as a roar when riding in his carriage down Jones Road, after the grand parties.For most of its 20th-century life, Landfall was known as Pembroke Park, a 2,000-acre hunting preserve that was owned by Pembroke Jones. Henry Walters was Jones’s best friend and he took artistic charge of Pembroke Park before Jones could do so much as order up the kit house he threatened to build there as his lodge.

Lions represent royalty and have been depicted in almost every facet of art. Henry Walters acquired many distinctive “lions” while amassing his enormous, diverse personal collection that he bequeathed to the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore. William Walters, Henry’s father, acquired a lion statue by French sculptor Antoine-Louis Barye, and placed it near the Walters’ Mount Vernon Avenue estate in Baltimore.

“Fuchi with Crouching Lions,” one of many such treasures acquired by Henry Walters. (Artist: Hagiya Katsuhira. Walters Art Gallery)

Walters hired John Stewart Barney to design an exquisite Italianate villa on the property that bordered Wrightsville Sound. Barney was a New York architect, novelist, and author who kept company with Mr. and Mrs. Jones, and Walters in New York City and Newport. Versatile and studious, his design portfolio ranged from big city churches and libraries, to the development plan for the restoration of Williamsburg.

The Joneses called their 39-room home at Airlie Gardens, near Pembroke Park, “the Shack”; their mansion in Newport, “the Cottage”; and the new hunting lodge, “the Bungalow.” When the Bungalow was complete, about 1905, Walters filled it with furnishings from Palazzo Accoramboni, a palace in Rome, and invited many of his friends from Europe to visit the new spread. Lions were incorporated into Bungalow’s original design.

One of two Landfall lions that much caught attention when they graced the steps of City Hall. (Photo courtesy of Cape Fear Museum)

Former Mayor J. E. L. Wade and unidentified lion admirers at City Hall, about 1962. (Photo courtesy of Cape Fear Museum)

In 1912, Pembroke and Sarah Jones’s daughter, Sadie, born in an upstairs room at Wilmington’s Governor Dudley Mansion, married architect John Russell Pope at Mount Lebanon Chapel, in Airlie. Pope, who designed the Temple of Love at Pembroke Park, also designed the classical Lion’s Gate that divided the two Jones properties, Airlie and Pembroke Park, on the southern and northern ends of Jones Road. Most of the Lion’s Gate structure still exists, and it sits at the rear of the Lion’s Gate condominium community, off Eastwood Road.

Sadly, two large elegant marble lions that once stood at the gate were destroyed. The lions were imported from Italy and each weighed two tons. The lions crouched atop the gates, with their claws on a large serpent. Sometime after 1940, thieves misjudged the weight of the animals and the lions slipped while being hoisted. They fell onto the road and shattered into many pieces.

(See        http://susantaylorblock.com/2010/04/01/airlie-gardens-the-annex-landfall/     )

A portion of the Lion’s Gate, designed by John Russell Pope, architect of the Jefferson Memorial. (Photo by Susan Block)

Two mere 400-pound freestanding lions from the Bungalow disappeared from the lodge, sometime in the 1940s. School students placed them on the lawn of a Board of Education employee as a Halloween trick. Later, they were moved to City Hall, where they sat until someone complained they were not of proportionate height for the building. Their next home was the Kiddie Zoo, across South Third Street from the Greenfield Lake overflow. Eventually, vandals hit again, pulverizing one of the concrete animals. It is not known what happened to the other.

Long Beach resident Mary Ann Bolduc and a Landfall lion, at the Kiddie Zoo, September 1966. (Star News photo. Ruffin Collection, Historical Society of the Lower Cape Fear)

   ******************************************************************************************************************************************* “The outside of the building (Bungalow) is what fascinated me – the lions and the gold fish that were big as flounders.” – Longtime Wrightsville     Sound resident Lossie Gardell, in an interview conducted in 2000. 

A portion of the Bungalow. (Photo by Hugh Morton)

READING LIST:

William and Henry Walters, The Reticent Collectors, by William R. Johnston.

Land of the Golden River: Old Times on the Seacoast, by Lewis Philip Hall.

Airlie: The Garden of Wilmington, available at the Airlie Gift Shop.  (All proceeds go the Airlie Foundation)

Camellia and Rosemary

Photo by Susan Taylor Block.

Shot without a flash – only the light of sunset shafting through a darkish hall. (Click to magnify.)

Along the Cape Fear: A New Identification

by Susan Taylor Block

Cover image is housed at Cape Fear Museum.

The process of identifying old photographs is an ongoing and exciting activity. It’s gratifying to pair names and faces in pictures that lack labels, and more so when the images are quite old. The cover photo of Along the Cape Fear has fascinated me since the book was published in 1998. It was taken at Lilliput Plantation, in Winnabow, NC, and was donated to Cape Fear Museum with only one identification, Eric Norden.

Photographer Eric Norden took this photograph of the rice fields at Orton Plantation. (Cape Fear Museum)

Norden is the man on the right. He was a surveyor who drew plats of many properties in town and along the river, as well as Hugh MacRae’s colonization projects. He amassed one of North Carolina’s finest collections of rare books that included 16th century titles, most of which were lost in a 1939 house fire. In 1902, about the time the cover photo was taken, he presided over the Wilmington Camera Club, All three men have a seriousness about them that made me continue to wonder who the two on the left were. I happened upon the identity of the middle man in 1999, when I saw him on the cover of another book: The Jiangyin Mission Station, by Lawrence Kessler. He is Dr. George Worth, a Wilmington native who spent most of his life as a Presbyterian medical missionary in China. Dr. Worth was on furlough in 1902, when he served as vice-president of  the Wilmington Camera Club.

The Jiangyin Mission Station cover features images of Dr. George Worth, wife Emma Chadbourn Worth, and son William, about 1896.

Like the others, the man on the left is playing for no audience, and seems too well-dressed to be standing in the midst of an overgrown plantation. Blood courses through his hand as he stares, almost glares, into the lens. His face stayed with me. One day I thought I finally had found a youthful match for him in a collection of McKoy family photos, but I could not be 100% sure.

William Berry McKoy, at age 16. (Historical Society of the Lower Cape Fear)

Yesterday, while viewing photos posted by the Historical Society of the Lower Cape Fear, I saw another McKoy photo that made me entirely sure the man on the left is William Berry McKoy (1852-1928). He was a Princeton graduate  and a title attorney, who collaborated with surveyor Norden. McKoy was prominent in local democratic politics and freemasonry. In 1886, he married Katherine Bacon McKoy, who was the daughter of Henry Bacon, U.S. Engineer for the damming projects at the mouth of the Cape Fear River. Her brothers were Lincoln Memorial architect Henry Bacon; and archaeologist and furniture designer Francis Bacon.

William Berry McKoy, (on left) about 1924. (Historical Society of the Lower Cape Fear)

McKoy gathered information on Cape Fear River properties as early as 1881, when he delivered a lecture entitled, “Early Settlements on the Cape Fear, and the History of Old Brunswick,” to the Wilmington Historical and Scientific Society – an organization he founded. McKoy compiled history about many other local sites as well, and some of his work is included in Chronicles of the Cape Fear River, by James Sprunt – owner of Lilliput and adjoining plantations, Kendal and Orton.

In 1887, William Berry McKoy built the McKoy House at 402 South Third Street. James F. Post served as architect, and Alfred Howe was the builder. Architectural historian Tony Wrenn called the house, “Wilmington’s best representative of the Stick style and a first-rate example for any area.” Ironically, William’s brother-in-law, Henry Bacon (1866-1924), merely 21 in 1887, would design another house on the same street, but for an unrelated family – the MacRaes. The Donald MacRae House at 25 South Third Street, known today as the Ann Moore Bacon Church House, was built in 1901.

The William Berry McKoy House at 402 South Third Street.

As late as 1917, fifteen years after the Along the Cape Fear cover photo was taken, William McKoy was still interested in the picturesque, history laden area of Winnabow. He requested James Sprunt allow him, accompanied again by Eric Norden, to visit Orton Plantation and St. Phillip’s Church.

St. Philip's Church, Brunswick Town. (Historical Society of the Lower Cape Fear)

“We have just moved up to town for the season,” replied Sprunt. “I think I could arrange to go down with you, however, or certainly to send you from Orton in a conveyance to the Old Church. … I may be able to go down in my own boat and bring you back in good time in the afternoon.”

With all the identifications in place, the photograph takes on a strong Presbyterian slant, and the connections become clearer. William McKoy and Eric Norden were members of First Presbyterian Church, as was James Sprunt, who was known locally, even internationally, for his generosity to Presbyterian causes. Dr. Worth was a member of First Presbyterian before moving to China. Almost wholly, Sprunt and First Presbyterian Church supported Dr. Worth and his family in their missionary work. Princeton, founded by Presbyterians, played into the picture, too, with James Sprunt’s son, Laurence, following McKoy there, two decades later. James Sprunt was close to First Presbyterian Church minister Dr. Joseph Wilson, whose own son, Woodrow Wilson, taught at Princeton. Sprunt gave substantial financial support to the school.

First Presbyterian Church, dedicated in 1861, burned New Year's Eve, 1925. Designed by Samuel Sloan, who also served as architect of the N.C. Governor's Mansion. (Cape Fear Museum)

The Knox tie did truly bind during James Sprunt’s lifetime. His guest lists were heavy with other Presbyterians of Scottish descent. Like most of their church peers, the three Presbyterian cover-men were serious minded, modest people who would have been uncomfortable in any sort of spotlight, no matter how dim. They were the sort of people who would have taken the lowliest seat at the table. It is interesting that images of William McKoy and Eric Norden landed on the cover of one book, and Dr. Worth is featured on two.

Sources:  Bill Reaves Collection, New Hanover County Public Library; Historical Society of the Lower Cape Fear; Cape Fear Museum Library; Perkins Library, Duke University; James Sprunt, Chronicles of the Cape Fear River. Tony Wrenn, Wilmington, North Carolina: An Architectural and Historical Portrait. Susan Taylor Block: Along the Cape Fear. Author’s nterview, December 30, 2012, with Elisita McKoy McCauley.