State News. . . A Digest of Things Worth Knowing About Old North State Folks and Things
--Suffering from poison which she swallowed, Miss Nell Holcomb, 22, is in serious condition at a Winston-Salem hospital. In the personal effects of Miss Holcomb were papers which indicated difficulties had arisen in a love affair and it is believed these were responsible for her act.
--Teachers of the Northwestern District of the North Carolina Educational Association ended their annual meeting at Greensboro with a resolution calling upon the Legislature to submit the question of an eight-months minimum school term to the people in the form of a constitutional amendment.
--Gertrude Neal, 5-year-old daughter of H. A. Neal, was almost instantly killed at Durham when she was struck down by an automobile in front of her home. No action has been taken against the driver of the car, the unhappy affair being termed by the sheriff as an unavoidable accident.
--It was a case of “Beauty in Distress” with the Greensboro College Glee Club beauties for a few minutes at Albemarle just as their big bus rolled in. As the bus was climbing the long grade up East Main Street the engine commenced to backfire and then the machine burst into flames.
--Samuel Owen, about 60 years of age, was in a Brevard hospital and police were seeking Sylvanus McCall of Gloucester township, as a result of a shooting said to have climaxed an election argument. Mr. Owen, prominent Republican, is the father of the register of deeds in Transylvania county.
--A suit for $50,000 damages was commenced in Richmond County by B. V. Downer against W. S. Love for alleged alienation of the affections of Downer’s wife. Attachment proceedings were at the same time instituted against Love’s property, inasmuch as Love is not in the county. Allt he parties concerned live in Hamlet.
--Two men who came to Kinston from far distance points recently to see each other for the first time in 40 years were members of a family broken up by a cruel tragedy in reconstruction days. One traveled 3,000 miles to clasp the hand of his brother, who came more than 1,000 miles.
--As a prelude to the formal opening of the 101st annual session of the North Carolina Methodist Protestant Conference at Grace Church in Greensboro, the annual meeting of the conference faculty was held Tuesday. The conference opened Wednesday morning at 9:30 o’clock and will be in session for five days, ending next Monday at noon.
--Conducting two raids in Wilson County Tusday night, deputy sheriffs captured one distiller, two plants and a small quantity of brandy, wine and beer. Rev. J. Hoover Lamm, Holiness preacher, is alleged to have been operating the distillery. Rev. Lamm was bound over at a preliminary hearing held Wednesday.
--B. T. Cowan, foreman of the county convict road gang, was killed almost instantly at Durham when the truck on which he was riding with 23 convicts collided with a street car on Holloway street. Mr. Cowan, riding on the running board, was crushed between the truck and the car. His body was badly mangled and both legs were broken.
--Arrangements are being made to hold in Warsaw one, if not quite the biggest Armistice Day celebrations in the State. Tentative plans to this effect have been formulated by Commander John M. Pierce, Adjutant M. H. Thomas and their corps of assistants. Fort Bragg will again furnish a band, football players, and numbers of officers and soldiers.
--Following his investigation yesterday morning into the death of the week-old child of Hurley Edwards, the 19-year-old daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Lonnie Edwards, who lives two miles from Raleigh on the Fayetteville road. Coroner-Magistrate Waring issued a warrant for the arrest of Lonnie Edwards, charging him with incest. He is alleged to be the father of the dead child.
--An 8-month school term for every child is the next logical step in North Carolina educational progress which has been made under the leadership of the Democratic party, declared Josephus Daniels in a campaign speech in Lincolnton. He also advocated adoption of the Australian ballot as the local result of the success that has been achieved in Buncombe and a score of other counties in the State.
--Suit against the City of Rocky Mount for $75,000 as an aftermath of the drowning of Bernard P. Vaden, October 1, 1924, when the automobile he was driving ran into a swollen creek on Wilson road, at the outskirts of the city, where the bridge had been washed away by the flood waters which prevailed at the time, has been docketed for the November term of Edgecombe County Superior Court.
--Damage suit for $30,000, filed by Gilbert W. Hoskins, a minor, against the Rev. Thomas Carrick, a retired Baptist minister of High Point, will be aired out in tis term of Guilford County Superior Court. The case is an outgrowth of an attack with a shotgun by the aged minister upon several small boys, whom he charged with stealing turnips from his garden and in other ways damaging is property.
--Sales on the Wilson tobacco market passed the 36 million pound mark with an average price of approximately $27 per hundred-weight still prevailing. Official sales figures announced today by Bennett Hooks, supervisor fo sales, showed that for the almost 5 million pounds sold this week $1.5 million had been paid, an average of $30.09 per hundred-weight.
--About two miles from Jonesboro is a well only 15 feet deep that was dug 40 years ago and during the long period of time has never gone dry, while other wells and springs in the community went practically dry. S. B. Worthy, who had the well dug for the benefit of the passing public, is now erecting a cover over it as a protection from the sun’s rays and to make the surroundings more pleasant.
--Asking $100,000 for the death of his two daughters, Laura M. and Bertha A. Wright, who died of injuries received when an automobile in which they were riding was ruck by a railroad passenger train last August, W. T. Wright of Bessemer City filed suit against the Southern Railway Company. Six young girls died in the accident which occurred on highway No. 2 at a grade crossing two miles west of Gastonia.
--There lives today in the city of Jackson, Mich., a lady now 91 years old, who in 1854 taught in the schools of Henderson, then hardly more than a flag stop on the railroad. That lady is Mrs. Martha Crandell Reid. The fact that she still lives after these 72 years came to light in a letter received by Prof. J. T. Alderman, for nearly a quarter of a century superintendent of the Henderson public schools, now retired.
--In spite of Winston-Salem’s well-known priority as the federal tax-paying town of North Carolina, more people filed income tax returns in four other North Carolina cities, according to statistics published by the bureau of Internal Revenue. Charlotte led with 6,655 returns; Asheville second with 4,15; Raleigh third with 3,400; and Greensboro fourth with 3,865. Winston-Salem was fifth with 3,700 returns.
--Sales on the Rocky Mount tobacco market during the past week totaled 1,490,416 pounds. The average price was $2 per hundred, more than last week’s average. This week’s figure brought the total sales for the season up to $14,883,660 pounds with the general price average standing at $25.26 per hundred pounds. This total is in contrast to 14,388,392 pounds sold up to the same date last season, when the average price was $24.20 per hundred pounds.
--Chief of Police A. D. Gardner of Fountain, Pitt County, barely escaped being blown to atoms by a stick of dynamite placed by a would-be assassin. Mr. Gardner came to Greenville on business, a distance of about 18 miles, and upon starting he discovered that his six-cylinder car was hitting only on five but continued his journey home and immediately drove to a garage to have a mechanic to investigate the trouble. When the hood was raised there was discovered three sticks of dynamite.
--One hundred girls students of the LaGrange high school observed “Cotton Day,” and discarded silk hose for the day. A recent census showed that 19 out of 20 wore silk stockings regularly. The observance marked the beginning of a movement. The LaGrange misses resolved that they will “insofar as is practicable, substitute cotton fabrics in all wearing apparel,” and hurled a challenge to school girls and young women throughout North Carolina to match their sacrifice.
--The endowment campaign for Atlantic Christian College at Wilson will be ushered in with a general fellowship meeting of the brotherhood of the Disciples in the Carolinas to be held in Greenville on January 14 next. The campaign will be for $300,000 adidtional endowment and $10,000 annual maintenance income from churches and individuals over and above the income from the endowment. Wilson has subscribed $100,000 for additional buildings.
--With expenditures for roads totalling $32,588,514 in 1925, North Carolina ranked fifth among the States for the Union in the amount expended for highways during the year, according to reports compiled by the U.S. Bureau of Public Roads. The total expenditure by the State Highway Department of the country in 1925 for road and bridge construction on the several State highway systems amounted to $640,125,101, according to the compilation. Thus North Carolina spent a little over 5 per cent of the national total.
--Five champions of Volstead prohibition, including ex-Governor Pat M. Neff of Texas, appeared at Charlotte Sunday in 15 addresses delivered before church congregations and mass meetings, in an intensive one-day campaign launched against liquor traffic on behalf of the Anti-Saloon League of North Carolina. Ex-Governor Neff, distinguished attorney of Texas featured the onslaught with three addresses in which he scathingly denounced not only the prohibition law violators, but the laxness of officials and individuals in not making greater effort at enforcement of the law.
--Claiming damages of $25,000 for seduction, Effie Whitley, 19-year-old Wake County woman, started suit against James A. Phillips, Wake Count farmer. It is set forth that three years ago the plaintiff was a young and immature woman without knowledge of the ways of the world while the defendant was a man past middle age, well acquainted with the world. It is set forth that the defendant gained the confidence of the father of the girl and that about one year ago, after he had by superior will brought her under his subjugation, he gave her some candy, which it is said seemed to have some peculiar effect on her, and that the following day he took her out in the woods and wronged her. As a result, she became a mother and her health has been impaired and her reputation ruined.
From page 2 of The Independent, Elizabeth City, N.C., Nov. 5, 1926
newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn83025812/1926-11-05/ed-1/seq-2/
