Asheville, June 9—Western North Carolina tonight is in mourning for its departed leader, Locke Craig, former Governor of the state, whose death occurred at his home on the Swannanoa River this afternoon at 2:38 o’clock following an illness of over four years.
Only a few minutes before his death, the former governor smilingly looked upon those about him and indicted that he knew the end was near. His life faded away as softly as the mists wreathed above the rushing river. And a little later over the hills came faintly the cadenced strokes of the fire bell tolling its mournful message that the loved son of the mountains would see them no more.
Tonight all over the city and this section of the state, there is sorrow throughout western North Carolina even as he was in his own home city and county. From ever section of the state tonight also came messages from loving friends expressing to the bereaved family their sorrow over the death of “the little giant of the mountains.”
Though his body is dead, Locke Craig yet liveth in the hearts of his people. He was governor of North Carolina 1913-17. Born in North Carolina, he was North Carolina in every fibre of his being, from the sentinel lines of Hatteras shoals to the summits of the Tennessee line. Gone in the harvest time of the state’s material and social well being, he is remembered as the chief of those who planted the seed and diligently labored in the field of high endeavor, and so he goes with prayers and with tears and many-voiced benediction into the realms of light.
North Carolina was born and bred into Governor Craig from an ancestry well antedating the revolutionary war. William Craig came from Scotland to America in 1749, and settled in Orange county, where three sons were born to him, John Oavid and James, soldiers in the continental army. The grandson of John Craig was Andrew Murdock Craig, who, though of a Presbyterian family, became a Baptist minister and one of great influence, power and eloquence beyond the bounds of Bertie county, where he lived. He was a scholar of fine tastes and worthy attainments, an honor graduate of the state university.
Rev. Dr. Craig married Clarissa Rebecca Gillam, and their son, who was born on the farmstead in Bertie county August 16, 1860, was named Locke because of his father’s admiration for John Locke, the philosopher. Brief was the boy’s knowledge of his father, for the latter passed away soon after the close of the war between the states, leaving his widow and two sons with only a small estate to support them in the tumultuous days of reconstruction. The mother rose to the occasion.
Governor Craig’s life is yet to be appraised for his is yet a figure too near to be rightly judged in all his public service. But it seems clear that among those who have moved North Carolina by the spoken word, he must be ranked with the chiefs of the leaders. Pleasing in person and voice, an intellectual type in physical form, he was magnetic and with this went a dramatic eloquence, a fervor deeply moving, an intangible something which stirred men’s hearts as few have stirred them.
the home life of Governor Craig has been one of singular beauty. Married Nov. 18, 1891, to Miss Annie Burgin, the fair daughter of the late Captain Joseph B. Burgin of McDowell county, Governor Craig had a worthy life companion and four sons have come to grace the household, Lieutenant Carlyle Craig, U.S.N.; George W. Craig, attorney of Asheville; Lieutenant Arthur Craig, U.S.N.; and Locke Craig Jr., born in the governor’s mansion in 1914.
From the front page of the Watauga Democrat, Boone, N.C., Thursday, June 12, 1924
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