Lightning Destroys Bed Without Harming Thomas Maness and His Baby Lying On It, 1916

The Monroe Journal, “The Union County Newspaper—Everybody Reads It!” Published Tuesdays and Fridays—One Dollar a Year. Friday, August 4, 1916

A heavy storm visited Albemarle yesterday and did considerable damage. The creek which runs through the town was four feet higher than it had ever been known. At Baden lightning struck the house of Mr. Thomas Maness and tore to splinters the bed on which he and his baby were lying without hurting them in the least.

Watson Brown Photo of Pitt County Tobacco Field and Old Farmhouse

http://www.flickriver.com/photos/edgecombeplanter/tags/painting/ photo by Watson Brown of Tarboro, N.C. You can also find his photos from https://www.flickr.com/photos/edgecombeplanter/. If your family is from Eastern North Carolina, his images will give you a feel for the area and you might even find a picture of your old family homestead or cemetery.

Fires in Pitt County Tobacco 'Barns Are Smouldering as Families Toil All Day Tying Leaves for Curing, 1945

By F.H. Jeter, Extension Editor, N.C. State College, Raleigh, as published in the Wilmington Star Aug. 1, 1945, and the Charlotte Observer on Aug. 7, 1945

Smouldering fires are flickering in the bricked up-furnaces of eastern Carolina’s tobacco curing barns these August nights. There is the pungent odor of the burning wood mingled with the perfume of the tortured tobacco leaves as they are changed by heat from the brownish green of the ripening plant to the deep yellow of the cured leaf.

Shadowy figures tend the fires by the light of conveniently hung lanterns as night falls after busy days in the fields. Under the leafy bowers erected at the curing barns, eastern Carolina growers and their families toil all day to tie the leaves in preparation for other curing.

It’s a picturesque job, although a hard one and the “tar” of the freshly primed leaves clings with intense persistence to the hands and clothes of those who work the tobacco. The growers believe, however, that the labor will have its reward for not only does the entire family co-operate, night and day, but extra labor is being hired where possible at exorbitant rates to “barn” the tobacco.

There is an excellent crop in Pitt County this season. The rains of early June came just in time to save it and later showers throughout the month assured that the growth would be continued until a fine quality of leaf had been produced. Pitt’s tobacco is of especial importance right now because the whole county has become something of an agricultural laboratory in which tests and demonstrations are being conducted with almost all kinds of improvements in growing and handling the tobacco. Floyd Hendrix, the enterprising county agent, says that, while the old wood burning furnaces may be somewhat picturesque, many growers are turning to oil burners for the reason that wood is becoming harder to get as the farm forests shrink from constant cutting. There are not over 1,500 oil burners in the county and the number is increasing as this new type heater can be secured.

But the Pitt tobacco grower has his problems, as do farmers everywhere. The dreaded Granville Wilt has invaded that county, along with black shank, root rot, and root knot. Scientists of the North Carolina Experiment Station working at the Oxford Tobacco Station have been fighting these troubles and have developed strains of new tobacco which apparently will be resistant to them. Of course, resistance to the diseases is not the sole answer as the crop must be rotated and otherwise handled and managed for best results.

But T.E. Smith says that the Oxford Station has in sight now a strain of tobacco that should be ready for distribution in a limited way by 1945. This strain is resistant to Granville Wilt, and, at the same time, will produce a quality comparable with other established varieties. A few field tests are not being conducted in Pitt County and elsewhere over the flue-cured area with some of these resistant strains. There are about 12 of them at present but two are said to be exceptionally good. I saw some of these strains standing up almost 100 per cent in a wilt-infected field while the named variety being grown alongside, as a check, showed at least 75 per cent damage.

I also saw some of Eugene Moss’ famed 400 strains that seem to be of extra fine quality. The new 402 strain, as I saw it grown on the seed farm of Brantley Speight near Winterville, was as fine a tobacco as I have ever seen in North Carolina. It also has certain resistant qualities, I believe, to the root rot disease. Then there are the Blackshank-resistant strains which are being field tested and are proving to be suited for growth where this trouble is present. For the time being, these Blackshank-resistant strains are being used almost altogether in the piedmont but with some further perfecting will be adapted to the coastal plains.

Great pressure is being exerted on some of the county agents to permit co-operating farmers to save seeds from the resistant tobaccos now under test. However, it will not be known until October 15 whether or not these new strains meet all the storage, manufacturing, and chemical requirements for a good quality of flue-cured smoking tobacco. Mr. Moss is working in co-operation with the tobacco companies to run manufacturing and storage tests, and if his new resistant strains produce tobacco on wilt-infested land, and, at the same time, will provide a quality of leaf that is usable for cigarette manufacture, then a great victory will have been won over this Granville Wilt.

But Pitt farmers are winning other victories over the pests and production troubles which have beset them. They used Dinitro dust this spring to save the early corn crop from the nymphs of the chinch bug which crawled from the ripening small grain onto the immature green corn and threatened, for a time, to destroy it.

Progress also is being recorded in the production of a high-yielding hybrid corn. Out in a Pitt County field the other day, I saw a strong man trying to pull up a stalk of hybrid corn and unable to do so until he had twisted it sidewise and had otherwise worked with the stalk until the great bunch of fibrous roots had been torn loose from the sandy soil. Hybrid corn is drought resistant, an important factor in North Carolina at this time.

Bradley Speight is doing an excellent job in developing certified seed of some of the better hybrids bred by the North Carolina Experiment Station. County Agent Hendrix makes the point, however, that not all hybrids are suited to Pitt County or to any other county. This work is still in its infancy but it shows that science is helping the North Carolina farmer to march towards a better day.
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If you're interested in the tobacco barns themselves, Susan Stafford Kelly wrote an interesting article on them in 2013 for Our State magazine. You can read it online at https://www.ourstate.com/tobacco-barns-in-north-carolina/.

Mooresville's Annual Picnic Raises $800 for Barium Springs Orphanage, 1914

“Barium Springs Orphanage Received $800 From Annual Mooresville Picnic” from the Aug. 6, 1914, issue of the High Point Review. Barium Springs Home For Children, formerly the Presbyterian Orphans' Home, opened in 1891. Here's an old post card showing the orphanage when it was the Presbyterian home. For current information on the home, see this article from the Mooresville Tribune: http://www.mooresvilletribune.com/news/barium-springs-home-announces-merger/article_5f52d50e-a4a4-11e3-984a-0017a43b2370.html

Mooresville—The town with the close of the eventful program adds another to its goodly list of entertainments in the interest of the Barium Springs Orphanage. Long since the annual picnic became a fixed and established order for the July calendar and the occasion is one that the average man, woman and child in this immediate section and the wide outlying circles of territory counts as his or her own enjoyment, and they would as little think of foregoing the pleasure of being present to see, to hear, to renew friendships, to swap jokes, to hand on gossip and pass the compliments of the season as they would of not sitting down to dinner after a morning of toil and labor in the store, in the field or in the mill. It is a great day, one of large import and worth t the people as such and one in which the number assembled is about equal to the capacity of the grove and the grounds open for their reception.

This day was ideal. The recent rain had put a “quietus” on the dust, but cooled the air and filled with hope and enthusiasm the great crowd of farmers who were beginning to feel that nothing but disaster was before them in the presence of drought-stricken crops. The features of the day were in the main  those not unfamiliar to any who attend such gatherings. The crowd was large and well worth survey.

The children from the home about 50 in number, with their teachers and chaperones all under the leadership of Rev. W.T. Walker, superintendent, came in for a full share of observation and as the guests of the town and the picnic they had no occasion to complain that anything was left undone for their entertainment and comfort. The concert by the chorus of singers was an event of commanding interest. It was in two divisions, the first installment being by the little girls, all inmates of the Annie Louise Cottage, the second by the larger girls.

Congressman Doughton, Whose Own Farm Was Flooded, Asks Congress for Federal Aid for Western N.C. Counties, 1916

“Congressman Doughton Asks for Federal Aid,” from the Statesville Landmark and reprinted on the front page of the Watauga Democrat, Boone, N.C., August 10, 1916

Congressman Doughton, who returned to Washington last week, after a few days at his home, introduced a resolution appropriating $300,000 for the flood sufferers in western North Carolina, the money to be expended under the direction of the Secretary of War. The Washington correspondent of the Greensboro News says:

Mr. Doughton decided to introduce the resolution after a conference between himself and Representatives Page and Webb. All three are of the opinion that something must be done to aid the people of the western part of the State and decided they would have the resolution introduced and use their influence to have it passed. They realize, however, that it is going to be a hard job to get such a measure through Congress, as Minority Leader Mann of Illinois is almost sure to make an objection, which would result in its defeat.

Mr. Doughton says it is impossible for anyone to estimate the damage done by the floods in his section of the State. He said it was so great and so far beyond the human imagination that the people have not yet been able to realize just what has happened. “I am not a drinking man” said Mr. Doughton, “and therefore do not know how a man feels when afflicted with delirium tremens, but what I saw in North Carolina is so appalling that I can easily believe that a man afflicted with this form of alcoholism might imagine anything. Whole farms have been wiped off the map with a single landslide. Hundreds of men who have been prosperous and happy citizens are now roaming about the country with no place to go and many of them declare they will not again return to their former homes. Hundreds and hundreds of acres of fertile land along the railroad that usually produced the finest crops in the land are today nothing more than worthless sand heaps. A few acres must be used for cultivation but the larger part of the lowlands will not be worth cultivating for many years if ever.”

Mr. Doughton himself lost heavily but he is a well-to-do man as values go in that section of the country. He is chiefly concerned for the poor fellows—those who rent land—who have nothing to do nor a place to lay their heads. Much of the rich lowlands of Mr. Doughton’s farm at Laurel Springs is totally ruined. Barns and outbuildings have been swept away, roads completely destroyed; not a bridge in the county and his 300-acre timothy hay crop covered in sand from three to four feet in depth.

His handsome home, located at the foot of the mountain and within a hundred yards of the stream which flows through his farm, was flooded with water and much of the furniture completely ruined.

Rains Have Damaged N.C. Cotton Crop, 1916

“Cotton Not Behaving,” from the Pageland Journal and reprinted on the front page of the Monroe Journal on Aug. 4, 1916

The damage to cotton by the continued rains seems to be much greater in the sand than in the clay. Cotton is usually about matured in the sandy section by this time of the year, while August is the big month for cotton in the clay sections. It is not possible at this time to say what per cent of a crop will be made. Cotton has not behaved at all satisfactorily during the past few days.

Flooded 'Watauga Will Be Cared For' Promises Newspaper Editor, 1916

“Watauga Will be Cared for,” from the editorial page of the Watauga Democrat, Boone, N.C., August 3, 1916, R.C. Rivers, proprietor

The good Old North State is acting nobly in her efforts to provide for the destitute in the flood-swept sections within our borders, tens of thousands of dollars already having been raised by Greensboro, Charlotte, Winston-Salem and other cities and towns in the State. 

Our sister county of Caldwell, who has suffered so fearfully from the effects of the flood, has taken the situation in hand, and will care for her own people, courteously refusing any outside help, for the present, at least. In the Mortimer and Edgemont sections of the county, there are 19 families, representing 110 people, who are, temporarily, on the charities of the people. The people of Buncombe county are also taking care of their unfortunate sufferers. 

The stricken people of Wilkes were the first to receive outside aid, and probably needed it the worst. But, what we started out to say, is, that when the first news of the terrible destruction wrought in the western part of the State, and an appeal for national aid was made, Watauga was in the list of destitute counties for which an appeal was made. Watauga, to be sure, has received the hardest blow ever, but conditions are not so bad, by a great deal, as they were first considered. ‘Tis true the loss in crops, etc., has been considerable, but fortunately no homes were wrecked, and all still have a good fighting chance for a living, as the demand for labor just now is great, and if, perchance a little help is needed, the generous hearted people of this God-favored county will come to their rescue, which they are eminently able to do. 

To be remembered by friends in the outside world, when we are considered in want, is indeed gratifying, and how it is appreciated can never be expressed, but at this juncture we are pleased to announce to the big-hearted philanthropists who were endeavoring to contribute to our needs, that it is not needed; in fact, we believe that it is the duty of Watauga, when we consider how doubly blessed we have been through the fearful ordeal, to contribute to the relief of the stricken in other counties, where homes, crops and lands were carried away by the rushing waters. Watauga is all right yet, but for the majority, the next year will doubtless be hard enough to demand the most rigid economy we have ever known.