Tuesday, March 31, 2015

The South Could Solve 'The Negro Problem' If North Would Quit Interfering, 1903

"The Negro Problem," from the Watauga Democrat, March 12, 1903

The 17th annual dinner of the New York Southern Society was given on Saturday night last in the banquet hall of the Waldorf-Astoria. Members of the society and their guests, including their wives and daughters, were present. It was a brilliant assemblage, numbering nearly 700 people and was presided over by A.J. VanWyck, president of the society. President VanWyck, after reviewing the South's resources and development, touched upon the race question in these terms.

"What the South needs and must have is peace at home, and jointly with the rest of the nation, international peace. There is but one unsettled problem peculiar to that section commonly called the negro question. The South understands it and if left alone will settle it rightly and justly in a Christian spirit. The natural friendship between whites and blacks of long standing, with no idea of social equality, is well known to those at all familiar with the subject. The best friend of the black race is the white race of the South. The future welfare and development of the former rests upon the absence of conflict between the two. Let no American citizen who loves his country be a party to stimulate a war of races."

This is brief but straight to the point, and we trust it will come under the eye of each and every fanatic, and theorist at the North who through willful ignorance or sectional hatred, is constantly adding fuel to the flame of race prejudice in the South and make the solution of the problem all the more difficult. If these people will profit by the utterances of Mr. Van Wyck and other intelligent and conservative men of this section, it will do the negro and the South much good.

The final settlement of the negro question is desired but we can not boast that we are well on the way toward a solution of the problem until the voice of the Northern intermeddler has been stifled.

Gastonia Man Gets 60 Days for Chaining His Wife in Their Trailer Home, 1951

"Gastonia Man Gets 60 Days for Chaining Wife," from the Statesville Landmark, March 1, 1951.

Gastonia, Feb. 27A mill worker was convicted on chaining his wife to a bed in their trailer home. He was sentenced to 60 days on the road. The defendantOliver D. Moorehas appealed this sentence.


The 32-year-old wife testified that her husband shackled her twice because she had been away from him parts of three nights. The woman testified also that Moore had chained their 12-year-old son, Jackie, several times to keep him at home.

Moore did not testify.

Dr. McIntosh Explains Quarantine Rules for Richmond County, 1922

"Quarantine Regulations" by Dr. W.R. McIntosh, from the March 2, 1922 issue of the Rockingham Post-Dispatch

In order that every person in the county may have a better understanding in regard to their duty in reporting contagious diseases to the quarantine office, I request that this article be published.


Sections 7 and 11, chapter 263 public laws of 1917, require the following named diseases to be reported to the county quarantine officer by a physician, parent or house holder, or a school teacher, within 24 hours after obtaining reasonable evidence that a person is afflicted with one of the diseases.

Whooping cough, measles, diphtheria, scarlet fever, smallpox, infantile paralysis, typhoid fever, typhus, Asiatic cholera, bubonic plague, yellow fever, cerebro-spinal meningitis, ophthalmia neonatorum, German measles, septic sore throat, and chickenpox.

When a physician is consulted professionally concerning a case it becomes his duty to report. When no physician is consulted, it is the duty of the parent or house holder to report. When a teacher has reason to suspect that a person residing in his or her school district has either of the diseases, or when any child is absent from school because of what may be one of the diseases, it is the duty of he or she to report it.

When a case of any of the mentioned diseases occur and is not promptly reported, some one has failed to comply with the requirements of the law, and if a case is reported to me and I fail to comply with the requirements of the law I lay myself liable for not having performed my duty.

So let us keep up the fight against disease, and let’s each and every one enter whole heartedly in the effort to save our people so far as possible from sickness and death.

Every reasonable and right thinking person in Richmond county will be glad to comply with the requirements of the law, in regard to this matter, and those who are not willing to do so will be forced to do so by the authorities.

       --Respectfully yours, Dr. W.R. McIntosh, Quarantine Officer for Richmond County

Monday, March 30, 2015

Mr. and Mrs. Allen Mills Own Beautiful Home on Wheels, 1951

"Mr. and Mrs. Mills Have Beautiful Home On Wheels," from the Statesville Landmark, March 1, 1951. This trailer did have the modern conveniences for that time. The apartment where I lived in 1951 didn’t have running hot water, or a refrigerator with a freezer compartment, or a television.

"Well, did you ever" is hardly the name for a home but that is just about the first thing most people say when they get their first glimpse of Mr. and Mrs. Allen Mills new ‘home on wheels.’

The home, which arrived in Statesville this week, is a super deluxe trailer. It looks, first seen with the lights all on, not unlike a section of a streamlined train. Inside it is equipped to the very last gadget of modern convenience and attractiveness. It has two bedrooms with more closet space than is found in lots of homes, there is a complete bath, shower attached and room for towels. There is a refrigerator with a deep freeze combination, a heating unit, hot water unit, a perfect stove and kitchen cabinets with even a spray for washing dishes. And the lighting is just granda book or paper can be read comfortably at any spot in the home without, as the master of the place puts it, dodging shades and leaning in toward tables. The living room has comfortable big chairs, a desk, book space and radio-television room, and at the end of the next the kitchenette there is a table that can be extended to seat six.

The trailer home is placed on a grass plot on Paola Mills grounds but removed entirely from the mill. Mr. and Mrs. Mills moved into it today from their former home in Oakland Heights. Mr. Mills says that he feels quite at home there alreadyand is definitely pleased to be a resident of the Paola neighborhood as more than half his life has been spent with the mill and some of the best contacts of his years have been with the people who live in the immediate neighborhood.

What Home Demonstration Members Are Learning, March 1938

"The Woman’s Touch or What Club Work Means to N.C. Farm Women" by Jane S. McKimmon, State Home Demonstration Agent and Assistant Director of Extension, N.C. State College, in the March, 1938, issue of Carolina Co-operator

Household Accounting Simplified
A simple system of recording the income and the outgo might solve the problem of household accounting for many farm families.


Mrs. Russell Tesh of Tabernacle Club, Guilford County, has kept family accounts ever since she became a home demonstration club member in 1934 and she keeps them in a simple manner.

One sheet of letter paper used on both sides is sufficient for a month’s account and at the end it is filed in a loose-leaf note book. Three columns are ruled off on the monthly sheet, headed: Sold, Spent, and Benevolences. The sheet is kept in the kitchen cabinet where it is handy for frequent entries.

Just after washing the dinner dishes is the most convenient time for jotting down items for the past 24 hours and the time spent at this task averages about two hours per month.

In the three years Mrs. Tesh has been keeping accounts for a family of three she has discovered and practically eliminated several leaks. Her son’s candy bill had diminished appreciably. Recreation dollars are spent in a wiser way, and she has found that it doesn’t look so well if one person’s name appears much oftener than the others in the "spent" column.

"The thing I like best about keeping accounts," says Mrs. Tesh, "is that it settles so many arguments and answers so many questions. We can look over the records of what we sold and what we bought and know pretty well what came in and what went out and the record of any undertaking will show whether it was paid or not, and we can generally discover why."


Marketing the Surplus
A rather surprising result of producing the family’s food supply is the cash income accruing from the surpluses of vegetables, poultry, butter, and other foods.

Many North Carolina farm women have seized the opportunity of adding to their cash income by marketing the food surpluses on the weekly home demonstration markets or in other ways, and last year they reported total gross sales of more than $600,000.

In the past four months Mrs. Dan Green, who is the wife of a tenant farmer, has sold $196.55 worth of vegetables and other things on the Farm Woman’s Curb Market in Rockingham.

Records are being kept on production of her poultry flock by Mrs. D.J. Dobson of Marion, Route 4, McDowell County, and she will endeavor to increase production this year. Mrs. Dobson made a net profit of $265.87 from a flock of 169 hens last year.


Benefit From Goat’s Milk
Two years ago Mrs. Nora Hopkins of Martin County tried goat’s milk to help her bad stomach trouble. She had found it impossible to keep a cow and goats have solved her problem.

She got in touch with a goat breeder and secured a mother Togenburg goat ad its kid for only $4. Togenburgs are good milkers and as the years went on Mrs. Hopkins found she had not only enough milk for her own needs but she could plan to supplement her income with the milk the growing number of goats were producing. Some of the kids have been slaughtered for meat, and on the whole Mrs. Hopkins feels she has done well to secure a valuable source of food supply which costs her little money and effort to care for.

Her desire now is for enough customers to make her supply of surplus milk bring her in an income.


Slip Covers
According to Mrs. Joseph Page of Robeson County, it doesn’t pay to buy cheap, sleazy material for slip covers. She first measured her chairs and sofa and determined how much material it would take. She found that 35 yards of material were required.

She shopped around and found a piece of cotton crash* of an odd, splashy design for 19 cents per yard which had been more expensive and which suited her needs admirably.

The total cost of her slip covers was $8.90, including tape binding, and she was the possessor of beautiful furnishings which would have cost many times that amount had they been purchased form a house-furnishing establishment.


*Cotton crash is a plain-weave fabric of rough, irregular yarns

Elopers Brave Howling Gale in an Open Auto and Defy Blizzard to Defeat Irate Parent, 1914

From the Friday, March 6, 1914, issue of the Washington Herald (Washington, D.C.)


First Story of Battle Against Wind and Snow by Miss Myrtle Wilson and Roger E. Craley and the Final Wedding.

Braving a 60-mile gale in an open auto, Miss Myrtle Wilson, pretty 20-year-old daughter of Harry G. Wilson, contractor, eloped to Baltimore through the storm of Sunday last, was wedded to Roger E. Craley, chief clerk of the Potomac and Chesapeake Steamboat Company, and was snowbound for seven hours shortly after she started on her honeymoon, according to the story of the romance that was told last night.


Miss Wilson left her home at 4004 Georgia Avenue Northwest for Rock Creek Episcopal Church, but instead of going to church she walked to the corner and jumped into an auto which held Roger Craley. The auto also held a suit case, which Miss Wilson had packed and spirited from her home Saturday night. The elopers were off in a jiffy, paying little heed to the high wind, and with no fear of bad roads.

They drove to Craley’s home at 49 W Street Northwest, where they were joined by Craley’s father, Raymond Crayley, a brother, Samuel, and the mother of the bridegroom-to-be. John P. Phillips, an official of the steamboat company, also joined the wedding party. The auto passed out of Washington shortly before noon and at 2 o’clock Miss Wilson and Roger Craley were pronounced man and wife in Baltimore.

At 4 o’clock the bride sent the following telegram to her father:

"Daddy Dear: We are married and happy. Please forgive me."

At 4 o’clock the couple boarded the train for New York, but were snowbound between Philadelphia and New York for seven hours. They left New York yesterday for Jacksonville, Fla., on a Clyde steamer, and after a brief stay in the South will return to Washington. They will be at home at 48 W Street Northwest.

The telegram sent by the former Miss Wilson did not reach her father until Monday, and when he was told Sunday night by a reporter for the Washington Herald that the girl had eloped he said, "Why, that can’t be true. Craley has been in our home but once." The telegram convinced him that the wedding was true, and he then refused to talk to newspaper men.

Is This Justice Asks The Concord Times, 1903

"Is This Justice" in the Watauga Democrat, March 12, 1903

There was more than one exclamation of surprise when it was noted abroad that Arthur L. Bishop had been sentenced to five years in the State prison for the murder of Thomas J. Wilson. Five years is a small price to pay for taking the life of a fellow man, and especially when the circumstances were as aggravated as they were in the case under discussion.

There were few extenuating circumstances in the Bishop case. Mr. Wilson acted probably as any other citizen would have acted under similar circumstances, while Bishop was in fault from the start. He sinned when he, a man of family, paid improper attention to women; he sinned when he offered intoxicating drink to those young women; if he did not have designs against them, then the circumstances and the evidence in the case count for nothing.

Again, when he entered the Wilson home at a late hour of the night carrying liquor, he placed himself in a position not only to be ordered out, but to be thrown out summarily, if the owner of the house and the father of that young woman had seen fit to do so.

It was a horrible affair, contemplated form every view point, a mortal sent to face his Maker, a daughter left fatherless and a woman a widow.

Five years, we repeat, is a small punishment for a man who, after committing two grievous sins, adds to them the crime of shooting down, in his own home, a reputable citizen who attempted to preserve the sanctity of that home, and protect the virtue of his daughter.

Jim Wilcox, against whom there was not one scintilla of direct evidence, was twice found guilty of murder. Bishop, who shot down his victim in his own home and did not deny it, was found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to only five years in the penitentiary. Haywood, who killed the man he had wronged on the streets in broad day-light, will plead self defense, and will go free, no doubt. Tillman, who murdered an unsuspecting man without a word or sign of warning, will go scot free, it seems to be generally conceded. In the face of such facts as these where in the name of heaven has justice flown?

--The Concord Times

Gov. Bickett Addressing Negroes, 1919

From The Independent, March 14, 1919

Gov. Bickett Coming
Governor T.W. Bickett will address the Negroes of Elizabeth City and vicinity on April 7, 1919, the occasion being the 300 anniversary of the transplanting of the Negro race from Africa to America. This event will be celebrated on an elaborate scale by the colored people of northeastern North Carolina.