U.L. Spence of Carthage, in the address of welcome extended the lawyers at their meeting in Pinehurst last week, said: “Pinehurst has awaited your reluctant feet these few years; discouraged, but always confident and hopeful, we knew you would sometime come, for all the other conventions have been here, not once but twice and more. Your distinguished committee repeatedly coyed with us in but faint encouragement, but we were yet constant as an ardent lover with our invitations and now, full of joy of seeing you here, we bid you beseeching welcome of all things to a meeting we trust will be alike delightful to every one of you.
Judging from observation, as well as a cursory investigation, the chief function of a speaker in my role tonight is, after extending a welcome to the meeting body, to boast of the wonderful advantages and fame of the place that happens to be honored with the assemblage. By this rule, it would be an easy task to a more gifted speaker, even without imagination, to enchant you with a plain statement of facts about Pinehurst and Moore county.
A careful investigation of history convinces me that the spot we now occupy existed as a place long before Columbus discovered America.
Nestled among the beautiful hills and in plain view of the magnificent hotel in which we are assembled is the ancient city, famous to history and art, now the capitol of Moore county, of Carthage; less than an hour’s ride to the West we find the city of Troy, known to the world before Columbus was born, by Homer’s song. An even shorter journey into the neighboring county of Montgomery brings us to the heathen city of Pekin, and eight miles beyond Mount Gilead gets into the historic landscape. And hard by lies Aberdeen, of dear old doughty Scotland; and among the hills of a deep clear watered stream, along a wooded way as fascinating as the ‘road to Mandalay’, Samarcand asserts itself as once the oldest town in Asia.
But whether or not this is an accurate statement of local history, it is a fact that all these places, for the most part, take origin during the early beginning of American history and these names to a significant degree indicate the ambitions and intelligent character of the early settlers here.
Until a short time ago, as we reckon time, this particular sandhill section of the state was regarded as one of the least attractive in North Carolina, and it has frequently been referred to as poor and barren. This section seems to have been so regarded notoriously as early as the Revolutionary period. Irving in his history of George Washington records the fact that when Baron DeKalb had been sent from the North to join General Caswell at Camden to assist in repelling the invasions of Lord Cornwallis from Charleston, his troops halted at Buffalo ford on Deep River, now in Moore county, for the reason, as described by the historian, that ‘a wide and sterile region lay between him and them, difficult to be traversed, unless magazines were established in advance, or he were supplied with provision to take wit him. Thus circumstanced, he wrote to Congress and the State Legislature, representing his situation and entreating relief.’ He contemplated deviating his course to the right, seeking what was described as the ‘fertile counties of Mecklenburg and Rowan’ when General Gates arrived and to the ‘great astonishment of the baron’ directed the army to move at once along the direct road to Camden. The writer records that ‘the route proved all that had been represented. It led through a region of pine barrens, sandhills, and swamps, with few human habitations and those mostly deserted. His army had to subsist itself on lean cattle, roaming about wild in the woods; and to supply the want of bread with green Indian corn, unripe apples and peaches.’
We are tonight in the center of this barren country described by the historian. It was the forest primeval and the ‘hearts of its denizens leaped like the roe to the huntsman’s call.’ Protected itself from enemies by the nature of its creation, it had for its boundaries such significant natural barricades as Deep River, Gut Creek and Drowning Creek. For years it stood practically untouched by the tools of man. Then came the axe and converted the towering pines into whited monuments of rosin, and then the lumberman with is ruinous desecration. Forest fires destroyed the vegetation and blackened the broken spars of the forest and left it truly a wasted, wounded land.
We marvel that in the very beginning of our Colonial history and throughout these many years of apparent travail which this section underwent and in spite of its reputed barren soil, men and women of the best and sturdiest type of settlers turned aside from the many fertile plains of America and selected this section as a home, particularly a great number of Scotchmen after the battle of Culloden, and among them the famous Flora McDonald, whose home was but a short distance from Pinehurst.
In the light of its recent history the breezes which blow over this sandhill section seem laden with enchantment as well as lift and health and new found vigor. When the country looked most godforsaken, New England found it and rested for a time and could not turn away. The North, the middle West, far away Canada and Sunny California heard of us, came and saw and jeered the while, but stayed and are here now, happily for them and us.
James W. Tufts, the elder, came and ‘built a tabernacle here,’ and his son Leonard Tufts has added the Aladdin palaces you see. Not only that, he built a farm and keeps it as such; his cow barn houses the finest cows in America; his hogs take the blue ribbons at all the fairs; he has bult the finest playground in the world and it is yours to see. Not only that, he built the first sand clay roads in North Carolina almost wholly from his own purse and more than any other one man furnished the initial influence and impetus to the good road results in North Carolina.
Lift up your eyes to the fields and you will find miles and miles of orchards that grow the most luscious peaches in the world.
A truly changed and enchanted country you now see about you. Even the old natural barriers of this sandhill country have yielded to the change and it is now Aberdeen creek that purls its waters to the sea; Drowning Creek gives way to Lumbee River, filled with the elusive trout that seek shelter from the tourist sportsman’s boat; and the hum of spindles daily sing the Indian name ‘Sapporah’ for the Deep River of yesterday.
A sturdy rural population with all the charm of country life and the comforts of urban living; public schools adequately equipped and efficiently taught; an intelligent and more than ordinarily educated people who realize annual profits from the labor and investments—I introduce to you in truth perhaps the most progressive and promising section of North Carolina.
“Representing the bar of Moore County, the management of Pinehurst, all the people of every interest, I esteem it a privilege to extend to this body the cordial welcome that wells from every heart and so justly due to the patriotic leaders of thought and good government in the state since its foundation.”
From the front page of the Pilot, Vass, N.C., May 9, 1924 -=- E.L. McNeill Farm on James Creek Sold Edwin McKeithen of Aberdeen has sold the E.L. McNeill farm on James creek and the river, some four miles below Vass, to W.C. McNeill, formerly of Connecticut, who has been about Southern Pines and Aberdeen considerably during the last three or four winters. Mr. McNeill will rebuilt the house, or supplant it with another, and will improve the farm and make of it not only a good farm in the future as it has been in the past, but will also make of it one of the attractive homes of the future as it has been one of the historic places of the days gone by. The purchase consists of 431 acres. Its location is of unusual excellence, the two streams giving it a fine setting, while the big trees are out of the ordinary in the surrounding foliage. The new owner will be a highly desirable addition to the population of the Vass community. From page 7 of the Pilot, Vass, N.C., May 9, 1924
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