THE LIBRARY
OF
THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA
LOS ANGELES
<r
ADVANCE SHEETS
OK
LITERACY AND HISTORICAL ACTIVITIES
NORTH CAROLINA.
Since undertaking this publication it has been decided to enlarge
its scope and change its subject matter to a considerable extent
and therefore it has been thought best to issue what is already
printed in the form of advanced sheets and issue the complete
volume contemplated aJittle later.
gjSfSSSa
f OCT ?'- 1938
X
UB'
MRS. LINDSAY PATTERSON,
Who gives the Patterson Memorial Cup to encourage Literary
and Historical Activity in North Carolina.
HISTORICAL AND LITERACY ACTIVITIES
NORTH CAROLINA,
1900-1905.
PUBLICATIONS OF THE HISTORICAL COMMISSION
Volume I.
W. J. PEELE, Chairman, J. D. HUFFHAM,
R. D. W. CONNOR, Secretary, RICHARD DILLARD,
F. A. SONDLEY.
COMPILED BY
W. J. PEELE arid CLARENCE H. POE.
GOLDSBORO :
NASH BROS., PRINTERS AND BINDERS,
1S04.
f
v: J
INTRODUCTION.
That the literary life of the State is growing if proved
not less by the increasing number of hooks written by authors
\\ln> dwell among OS than by the organized activities of the
clubs and associations which are founded for the study and
preservation of our State history. The possibilities for good
readily suggest themselves to the thoughtful. Suppose only
a do/en students consider any topic together; the aggregate
knowledge of all soon becomes the property of each; and the
errors and misconceptions of each are subjected to the light
which all together can give. The result is that knowledge
of ourselves is at once widened and made more accurate.
These associated efforts have a similar advantage in dissemi-
nation. One of the most hopeful signs of the times is the
interest which our literary men and women are taking in the
common schools, and the interest that the common schools arc
taking in matters that relate to our State history and litera-
ture. The best of the things new and old which are brought
to light are now being utilized for their benefit.
There is a change in the character of the work which is
being done by our authors. Instead of being all too ready to
spread their work over a century or more, they now usually
confine themselves to a topic, a person, or a short period, and,
in this way, instead of rehashing what is already familiar,
they make permanent additions to the common stock. In-
tensive history and literature is as much a desideratum as
intensive farming.
The time is near at hand when a good book written to in-
form us about ourselves will pay a reasonable profit to its
03 author and publisher. A pure, healthy, home literature is
** the nursing mother of civic virtue. As some one has well
r said, God "spake" before he created. The "word," the plan,
' the logic (logos) of His work preceded the work itself. So
we, His creatures, must think, must plan, must brood over
void and formless things and dead facts until they live in
organic unity and beauty.
^ The State of North Carolina, too, is the foster mother of
the best of these enterprises for developing original sources
302509
\A
4 Introduction.
of our history. ' It has provided for the publication of the
Colonial and State Records, and the State Regimental His-
tories ; its last act is to provide for a Historical Commission
to gather up and preserve, in a permanent form, the frag-
ments which are not already published or else not published
in available form. This supplemental work the Commission
is undertaking to do, and it has been thought appropriate
to begin by taking a census of the present literary activities
in North Carolina as a means of encouragement to those who
have produced them, as a standard of comparison for future
progress, and for the utility of the publication itself.
W. J. Peele,
Chairman North Carolina Historical Commission.
PREFACE.
The task of compiling this record of literary and historical
activities in North Carolina was entrusted to Mr. W. .].
Peele and the undersigned. As this is the first attempt of
the kind, and as there was no model to copy, the compilers
are aware that the volume is not without its defects. It is
hoped, however, that these imperfections will be removed
in subsequent editions of this work, nor is it too much to hope
that this first edition will itself quicken interest in historical
effort, develop a more generous rivalry among our historical
organizations, and lead to more orderly and enthusiastic work
for the study and preservation of our State history.
The present volume is the outgrowth of the plan of the
Literary and Historical Association to publish a Yearbook of
its own, and that organization has been given such a large
place in this publication because it is the only society State-
wide in its scope which is devoting itself primarily to his-
torical and literary work.
It should also be said that we found an embarrassment
of riches in dealing with the addresses delivered at the annual
meetings of this society. Some papers of real merit had to be
omitted. It was found necessary therefore to conform to the
purposes of the Historical Commission and select only those
addresses having the greatest value as historical material
the Address of the President in 1903 being the only excep-
tion to this rule.
Some of our historical organizations, it will be observed,
are represented in this volume only by reports too brief and
meagre to be in keeping with the importance of their work.
The compilers feel therefore that they should explain that all
organizations received the same hearty invitation to report
their progress, and it is hoped that the more detailed accounts
will lead these other organizations to report with greater
fullness in succeeding volumes.
On the whole, we regard this as an excellent showing of
historical activities in our State, and the good work already
accomplished should inspire us to make "that which we have
done but earnest of the things we yet shall do."
Clarence H. Poe,
Secretarv State Literarv and Historical Association.
P42023
THE CALL FOR THE ORGANIZATION OF THE
SOCIETY.
At a recent conference of gentlemen and ladies, held in Raleigh, it was
determined to take steps for the organization of a State Literary and Histor-
ical Association. The undersigned were appointed a committee to prepare
an address to the people of the State, setting forth briefly the purposes of
such Association, and extending to all persons and organizations that
may be interested an invitation to meet in the city of Ealeigh on Tuesday
night of Fair week, October 23d, proximo, at 8 o'clock, in the Hall of the
Olivia Raney Library Building.
The chief purposes of the Association will be
First. To promote the reading habit among the people of North
Carolina.
Second. To stimulate the production of literature in our State.
Third. To collect and preserve historical material.
In carrying out these purposes the Association will hope to aid in the
improvement of our public schools, in the establishment of public libra-
ries, in the formation of literary clubs, in the collection and republication
of North Carolina literature worthy to be preserved and now rapidly
passing away, in the publication of an annual record or biography of
North Carolina literary productions, in the collection of historical mate-
rial and the foundation of an historical museum, and in the correction of
slanders, misrepresentations and other injustice done our State.
We are confident that much good can be accomplished by an association
composed of even a few members who shall earnestly endeavor to pro-
mote these purposes. We therefore invite all, both ladies and gentlemen,
who are interested in this movement, to be present at the time and place
above indicated, to take part in the conference that is to be held, and to
enroll themselves as members of the Association.
Walter Clark,
Geo. T. Winston,
W. J. Peele,
Henry Jerome Stockard,
D. H. Hill,
Miss Rebecca Cameron,
Mrs. John Van Landingham.
6
PART I.
THE
State Literary <? Historical
Association.
Officers i904-'05.
President,
First Vice-President,
Second Vice-President,
Third Vice-President,
Secretary-Treasurer,
ROBT. W. WINSTON, Durham, N. C.
A. C. AVERY, Morganton, N. C.
W. R. COX. Penelo, N. C.
Mrs. LINDSAY PATTERSON,
Winston-Salem, N. C.
CLARENCE H. POE, Raleigh, N. C.
Executive Committee
D. H. Hill,
C. Alphonso Smith,
J. Bryan Grimes,
W. J. Peele,
Edwin Mims,
Raleigh, N. C.
Chapel Bill, N. C.
Raleigh. N. C.
Raleigh, N. C.
Durham, N. C.
CONSTITUTION
OF THE
State Literary And Historical Association.
NAME.
This Association shall be called the State Literary and Historical
Association.
purposes.
The purpose of this Association shall be the collection, preservation,
production and dissemination of our State literature and history; the
encouragement of public and school libraries ; the establishment of an
historical museum ; the inculcation of a literary spirit among our people;
the correction of printed misrepresentations concerning North Carolina,
and the engendering of an intelligent, healthy State pride in the rising
generation.
OFFICERS.
The officers of this Association shall be a President and three Vice-
Presidents, a Secretary and Treasurer, and a Corresponding Secretary-
whose terms of office shall be for one year and until their successors are
elected and qualified. They shall be elected by the Association at its
annual meetings, except that vacancies in any office may be filled by the
Executive Committee until the meeting of the Association occurring next
thereafter.
The duties of the President shall be to preside overall the meetings of
the Association, to appoint all members of committees, except where it
is otherwise provided, and to look after the general interest of the Asso-
ciation. In case of the death or resignation of the President, his succes-
sor shall be chosen from among the Vice-Presidents by the Executive
Committee to fill the unexpired term. In the absence of the President,
at any meeting, the Vice-President who may be selected by the Associa-
tion shall preside.
The Secretary and Treasurer shall keep the books and the funds of the
Association, and shall pay out money only upon the order of the Execu-
tive Committee and the warrant of its chairman and the President.
The Corresponding Secretary shall attend to the correspondence of the
Association, and act under the general direction of the P^xecutive Com-
mittee, and, for cause, he may be removed by the Executive Committee
in its discretion.
committees.
The permanent Standing Committees of the Association shall be:
I. An Executive Committee, consisting of five members and the officers
of the Association who shall be ex officio members, except the Corres,
ponding Secretary, any three of whom and an ex officio member shall
constitute a quorum for the transaction of business.
8
Constitution. 9
The duties of this committer shall be to make programs and arrange-
ments for all meetings of the Association, to manage its business matters,
to receive and acknowledge such donations in money, or its equivalent,
as may be offered, and to endeavor specially to create a permanent fund
of endowment by recommendation of its objects to our philanthropic
citizens of menus, to receive all reports of officers made when the Asso-
ciation is not in session, to make a report of its own actions and the affairs
of the Association at the meetings thereof, and to perforin the other
duties herein prescribed for it.
This committee shall have power to determine the compensation of any
paid officer or servant of the Association it may be necessary to employ,
subject to the general supervision of the Association.
II. A committee on Literature and History, consisting of twelve mem-
bers, to be appointed by the President, and such other members of the
Association as they shall associate with themselves.
It shall be their duty to collect valuable material connected with the
history of North Carolina and such of its literature as, in their judgment,
is worthy to be preserved. They shall endeavor to secure the co-opera-
tion of local committees in the cities and towns of the State, and may
appoint sub-committees wherever the same may be necessary for the
prosecution of their work in any locality.
They shall recommend to the Association plans and contests to promote
and encourage the production of literature among our people.
They shall examine and recommend for publication such of the manu-
scripts submitted to them as may be thought worthy, and they may
require as a condition precedent to their taking any manuscript into con-
sideration that its author first secure the endorsement of some local com-
mittee, and they shall have charge of any printing or publication ordered
or authorized by the Association.
Ill A committee on Libraries, consisting of twelve members, to be
appointed by the President.
It shall be their duty to ascertain and report to the Association, as far
as may be practicable, the number and condition of the public and school
libraries in the State, and to devise and suggest plans for their establish-
ment and promotion.
It shall be their special duty to suggest, promote and encourage free
libraries in connection with schools and factories.
This committee shall have power to associate with itself other members
of the Association, and to appoint such sub-committees as it may deem
requisite for its work in any locality.
IV. A committee on Membership and Local Organizations, consisting
of twelve members.
It shall be their duty to find out by correspondence and otherwise per-
sons in all parts of the State who are in sympathy with the objects of
^he Association and to bring the same to their attention as far as may be
practicable. They shall promote and encourage local literary and his-
torical organizations and endeavor to secure their co-operation with this
Association by representation at its meetings and otherwise.
10 Historical and Literary Activities in N. C.
All applications for membership shall be made through this committee,
and no person shall be elected, after the first meeting, except upon their
recommendation.
V. A committee on an Historical Museum, consisting of seven mem-
bers, to be appointed by the President, with power to associate with itself
such other members of the Association as are interested in its special
work.
It shall be the duty of this committee, by correspondence or otherwise,
to collect and accept for the Association, and place in a museum or place
of safe-keeping and exhibition, all valuable historical relics and original
documents which may be donated or collected, and to endeavor to dis-
cover and collect them wherever they may be found: Provided, that the
Historical Department of the State Museum, with the concurrence of its
proper officers, be selected as the permanent place of deposit and safe-
keeping for the Association.
MEMBERSHIP.
Any white resident of the State, or North Carolinian residing out of
the State, who subscribes to the purposes of the Association, is eligible to
membership and may be elected by the Association or by the Executive
Committee when it is not in session, upon the recommendation of the
Committee on Membership.
PEES.
The initiation fee and the annual dues of each member of the Associa-
tion shall be One Dollar, to be paid to the Secretary and Treasurer.
There shall be one regular general meeting in each year, the time and
place thereof to be determined by the Executive Committee.
Program. 11
PROGRAM FIRST ANNUAL MEETING
OF THE
STATE LITERARY and HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION,
Music Hall, Olivia Raney Library,
RALEIGH, OCTOBER 23, 1900.
8:15-8:30 Reading of Plan of Organization by Committee on Constitution.
Song Thou Art Mine All ( Tipton) Miss Minnie Fitch Tucker.
How to Collect and Preserve Material for Local and State Hisjtory
8:45-9:00 Graham Daves, New Bern, N. C.
9:00-9:15- -J. S. Bassett, Durham, N. C.
Violin Solo Miss Mary Johnson.
Practical Plans for Publishing What We Produce
9:30-9:45 E. J. Hale. Fayetteville, N. C.
How We May Stimulate the Production of Literature in North Carolina
9:15-10:00 B. F. Sledd, W a ke Forest, N. C.
Vocal Solo (Angels Serenade) Miss Mamie Cowper.
General Discussion.
The Old North State (Gaston) Miss Mitchell Mrs. Hamilton.
(Chorus accompanied by Choir and Audience).
10:45 Adjournment.
12 Historical and Literary Activities in N. C.
PROGRAM SECOND ANNUAL MEETING
OF THE
STATE LITERARY and HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION,
Music Hall, Olivia Raney Library,
RALEIGH, OCTOBER 22, 1901.
8:00 p. m. Prayer by the Rev. Eugene Daniel, D.D.
Address by the President, Justice Walter Clark.
Violin Solo by Mr. Clarence de Vaux-Royer, Raleigh, N. C.
8:25 p. m. Address: "Status of the Library Movement in North Caro-
lina," by Professor G. A. Grimsley, Greensboro, N. C.
8:45 p. m. Address: "Possibilities of the Library Movement in North
Carolina," by Senator H. S. Ward, Plymouth, N. C.
9:05 p. m. Address: "What Durham County is Doing, and What the
State Ought to be Doing, for Public Schools," by Hon.
Robert W. Winston, Durham, N. C.
9:20 p. m. Reports of Committees.
Vocal Solo, by Miss Mary R. Mackay, Raleigh, N. C.
9:40 p. m. Address: "Proposition to Celebrate on Roanoke Island the
Landing of Raleigh's Colony," by Major Graham Daves,
New Bern, N. C.
Proposition seconded by Governor Charles B. Aycock.
General Discussion.
Piano Solo by Miss Chilian Pixley, Raleigh, N. C.
10:20 p. m. Address: "Ways and Means to Erect a Statue to Sir Walter
Raleigh in Our State Capital," by General Julian 8.
Carr, Durham, N. C.
General Discussion.
Vocal Solo by Miss Alice Huston Hammond, Raleigh, N. C.
10:40 p. m. Poem: "Sir Walter Raleigh" (written for the occasion), by
Henry Jerome Stockard.
10:50 p. m. Election of Officers.
Benediction.
11:00 p. m. Adjournment.
Program. 13
PROGRAM THIRD ANNUAL MEETING
OK THE
STATE LITERARY and HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION,
Music Hall, Olivia Uaney Library,
RALEIGH, JANUARY 23, 1903.
1. Annual Address of the President, by Judge H. G. Connor.
2. Report on Hall of History, by Col. F. A. Olds.
3. Rural Libraries in Our State, by Hon. J. Y. Joyner.
Vocal Solo by Mrs. Charles McKimmon.
4. North Carolina Bibliography for 1902
(a) History By Prof. D. H. Hill.
(b) Poetry By Prof. H. J. Stockard.
Vocal Solo by Mrs. Ashby Lee Baker. I
5. Claims of State Literature and History in Our Schools, by J. W. Bailey.
Violin Solo by Miss Charlotte Kendall Hill.
6. Election of Officers.
14 Historical and Literary Activities in N. C.
PROGRAM FOURTH ANNUAL MEETING
OF THE
STATE LITERARY and HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION,
Pullen Hall, A. and M. College,
RALEIGH, NOVEMBER 12, 1903.
7:30 The Enrichment of Country Life. (President's Address). By
W. L. Poteat.
8:00 North Carolina Bibliography for 1903, by R. P. Beasley.
8:15 Report on Hall of History, by Col. P. A. Olds.
8:30 The Career of Sir Walter Raleigh, by W. J. Peele.
9:00 A Study of North Carolina Poetry, by Hight C. Moore.
9:30 Material for the Study of North Carolina History in Trinity Col-
lege, by H. B. Adams, Jr.
10:15 New Business; Election of Officers.
10:30 Adjournment.
Program. 15
PROGRAM FIFTH ANNUAL MEETING
OK THE
STATE LITERAL Y am, HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION,
Music Hall, Olivia Ranet Library,
RALEIGH, OCTOBER 18, 1904.
8:00 President's Address, "The Average American, " by Dr. C. Al-
phonso Smith, Chapel Hill.
8:30 North Carolina in the Civil War: A Reply to Judge Christian's
Charges, by Judge Walter Clark, Chairman of Committee.
9:00 North Carolina Bibliography for 1904, by Prof. D. H. Hill, West
Raleigh.
9:10 Our State Literature, by Mr. John Charles McNeill, Charlotte.
9:30 The University and Its Relation to Staie History, by President
F. P. Venable, Chapel Hill.
9:40 Business Meeting; Resolutions; Election of Officers.
10:00 Adjournment.
16 Historical and Literary Activities in N. C.
Roll qf Members.
[Those whose names are marked by a star (*)are activemembers of the
Association. The other names included are those of charter members
who have not resigned but have not renewed their membership within
the last twelve months].
*Mrs. A. L. Baker Raleigh, N. C.
*Gov C. B. Aycock Raleigh, N. C.
*T. M. Arrington Raleigh, N. C.
*H. B. Adams. Jr Durham, N. C.
Capt. S. A. Ashe Raleigh, N. C.
8. E. Asbury Raleigh, N. C.
L. F. Alford Raleigh, N. C.
*George Allen Raleigh, N. C.
*S. S. Alsop Enfield, N. C.
*Mrs. A. B. Andrews Raleigh, N. C.
*Frank Armfield Monroe, N. C.
*F. H. Busbee Raleigh, N. C.
W. H. S. Burgwyn Henderson, N. C.
Mrs. Maggie C. D. Burgwyn Henderson, N. C.
N. B. Broughton Raleigh, N. 0.,
*Mrs. J. M. Barbee Raleigh, K C.
*Miss Elizabeth N. Briggs Raleigh, N. C.
*Thomas H. Briggs Raleigh, N. C.
*Mrs. Thomas H. Briggs Raleigh, N C.
*R. H.Battle Raleigh, N. C.
Miss Grace H. Bates Raleigh, N. C.
Miss Bessie St. C. Bates Raleigh, N. C.
*0. W. Blacknall Kittrell, N. C.
J. 8. Bassett Durham, N. C.
*Miss Elizabeth Bellamy Raleigh, N. C. !
B. C. Beckwith Raleigh, N. C.
John J. Blair Wilmington, N. C.
R.T.Bennett . . . Wadesboro, N. C.
*R. F. Beasley Greensboro, N. C.
*John F. Bruton Wilson, N. C.
Thomas W. Blount Roper, N. C.
*E. C.Brooks Raleigh, N. C.
*Judge Walter Clark Raleigh, N. C.
Miss S. H. Clark Raleigh, N. C.
*Jonas M. Costner Raleigh, N. C.
Mrs. Hope S. Chamberlain Raleigh, N. C.
Roll of Members. 17
Mrs. Sallies. Cotton Falkland, N. C.
*Mis8 Rebecca Cameron Hilltboro, X. C.
R. B. Creecy Elizabeth City. N. C.
*Mrs. Irene Johnson Cook Cardenas, N. C.
*Judge H. G. Connor Wilson, N\ 0.
*Prof. P. P. Claxton Knoxville, Tenn.
EL K. Ooker Goldsboro, X. C.
Mrs. A I .. ( 'air Durham, I
Prof. J. B Carlyle Wake Forest, N. C.
John S. Cunningham Cunningham, N. C.
Locke Craige Asheville, N. C.
*J. S. Carr Durham, N C.
Wm. R. Cox Penelo. N. C.
Re*. J. B. Cheshire Raleigh, X. C.
*Prof. R. I). W. Connor Wilmington, X. C.
Judge R. M. Douglas Raleigh, X C.
Mrs. E. G. Davis Henderson, N. C.
T. W. Dobbin Raleigh, N. C.
*Miss S. H. Dinwiddie Raleigh, N. C.
'Josephua Daniels Raleigh. N. C.
Graham Daves New Bern, N. C.
R. D. Douglas Greensboro, X. C.
Dr. W. E. Dodd Ashland, Va.
*Junius Davis Wilmington, N. C.
*Euzelian Literary Society Wake Forest, N. C.
P. C. Enniss Raleigh, X. C.
A. H. Eller Winston, X. C.
G. S. Fraps Raleigh, X. C.
Alex. J. Field Raleigh, N. C.
*Miss Adelaide L. Fries Salem, N. C.
J. I. Foust Goldsboro, N. C.
*J. Bryan Grimes Raleigh, X. C.
*Maj W. A. Graham Machpelah, X. C.
*A. W. Graham Oxford, X. C.
G A. Grimsley Greensboro, N. C.
*B. F. Grady Turkey, N. C.
J. O.Guthrie Raleigh, X. C.
*H. T. Greenleaf, Sr Elizabeth City, N. C.
Maxwell Gorman Raleigh, N. C.
*F.R. Grist Raleigh, N. C.
*R. T. Gray Raleigh, N. C.
G. A. Graham Charlotte, N. C.
Marshall DeL. Haywood Raleigh, N. C.
Mrs. Ashley Home Clayton, N. C.
Miss Mary H. Hinton Raleigh, N. C.
*Mrs. Charles Hancock Stark ville, Miss.
Miss Lillie Strong Hicks Raleigh, N. C.
Miss Mary Seaton Hay Raleigh, N. C.
*Carey J. Hunter Raleigh, N. C.
18 Historical and Literary Activities in N. C.
Mfcfl Fannie E. S. Heck Raleigh, N. C.
*Miss Susie McGee Heck Raleigh, N. C.
*P. E Hines Raleigh, N. C.
Mrs. John W. Hinsdale Raleigh, N. C.
*Maj. E. J. Hale Fayetteville, N. C.
*D. H. Hill Raleigh, N. C.
*Edward J. Harding Biltmore, N. C.
*John S. Henderson Salisbury, N. C.
*Wm. L. Hill Maxton, N. C.
J. B. Hathaway Edenton, N. C.
T. N. Ivey Raleigh, N. C.
*Charles E. Johnson . Raleigh, N. C.
*Mrs. Charles E. Johnson Raleigh, N. C.
*Mrs. Garland Jones Raleigh, N. C.
*Prof . J. Y. Joyner Greensboro, N. C.
Willie S. Jordan Raleigh, N. C.
*John Wilber Jenkins Baltimore, Md.
Miss Sarah Simmons Kirby Raleigh, N. C.
*Thomas S. Kenan Raleigh, N. C.
*Henry T. King Greenville, N. C.
*B. R. Lacy Raleigh, N. C.
B. F. Long Statesville, N. C.
*T. J. Lassiter Smithfield, N. C.
*Wilson G. Lamb Williamston, N. C.
*W. J. Martin Raleigh, N. C.
*Prof. E l\ Moses Raleigh, N. C.
Mrs. John A. Mills Raleigh, N. C.
John A. Mills Raleigh, N. C.
*Mrs. E. E. Moffitt Raleigh, N. C.
Prof. Hugh Morson Raleigh, N. C.
*Charles McNamee Biltmore, N. C.
Miss Mary P. Mills Raleigh, N. C.
Miss Louise Mahler Raleigh, N. C.
*Dr. Charles D. Mclver Greensboro, N. C.
*Mrs. F. L Mahler Raleigh, N. C.
F. L. Mahler Raleigh, N. C.
Iredell Meares Wilmington, N. C.
*Prof . Robert L. Madison Painter, N. C.
J. A. Matheson Durham, N. C.
*Rev H. C. Moore Raleigh, N. C.
*Dr. Edwin Minos Durham, N. C.
J. H. Myrover Fayetteville, N. C.
Miss J. W. Nicholson Raleigh, N. C.
*Frank Nash Hillsboro, N. C.
Fred. A. Olds ' Raleigh, N. C.
Edw. A. Oldham Washington, D. C.
*Prof. W. L. Poteat Wake Forest, N. C.
Mrs. P. C. Patterson Raleigh, N. C.
Roll of Members. 19
Mrs. Lindsay Patterson Winston-Salem, N. C.
*S. L Patterson Raleigh, N. C.
Miss Annie F. Petty Greensboro, N. C.
E. N. Pugh Windsor, N. C.
W. S Primrose Raleigh, N. C.
Miss E. A. Pool Raleigh, N. C.
Clarence H. Poe Raleigh, N. C.
*W. J. Peele Raleigh, N. C.
Philomathesian Literary Society Wake Forest, N. C.
*J. E. Pogue Raleigh, N. C.
*W. D Pruden Edenton. N. C.
*Mr8. Annie Moore Parker Raleigh, N. C.
Dred Peacock Greensboro, N. C.
George S. Powell Asheville, N. C.
T. M. Pittraan Henderson, N. C.
W. S. Pearson Morganton, N. C.
W. S. O'B. Robinson Goldsboro, N. C.
Mrs. W. S.O'B. Robinson Goldsboro, N. C.
Miss Minnie Redford Raleigh, N. C.
Miss Loula Riddle Raleigh, N. C.
John E. Ray Raleigh, N. C.
Mrs. D. L Russell Wilmington, N. C.
Mrs W. I. Royster Raleigh, N, C.
R. B. Raney Raleigh, N. C.
G. Rosenthal Raleigh, N. C.
Wallace C. Riddick Raleigh, N. C.
"Miss Li da Tunstall Rodman Washington, N. C.
J. E. Robinson Goldsboro, N. C.
Prof. Charles Lee Raper Chapel Hill, N. C.
Dr. W. I. Royster Raleigh, N. C.
Miss Edith Royster Raleigh, N. C.
Miss Cornelia Shaw Charlotte, N. C.
Prof. W. E. Stone Raleigh, N. C.
Prof. H. J. Stockard Raleigh, N. C.
Miss Carrie C. Strong Raleigh, N. C.
Mrs. W. O. Shannon Henderson, N. C.
John A. Simpson Raleigh, N. C.
A. M. Scales Greensboro, N. C.
Judge James E. Shepherd Raleigh, N. C.
M. 0. Sherrill Raleigh, N. C.
Mrs. H. E. Stone Raleigh, N. C.
Mrs. William O. Smith Raleigh, N. C.
W. A. Syme Raleigh, N. C.
Mrs Mary Bates Sherwood Raleigh, N. C.
Prof. Benjamin F. Sledd Wake Forest, N. C.
Prof. E. Walter Sikes '. Wake Forest, N. C.
A. B. Stronach Raleigh, N. C.
Walter P. Stradley Oxford, N. C.
J. H. Southgate Durham, N. C.
20 Historical and Literary Activities in N. C.
*James Sprunt Wilmington, N. C.
*Ed. Chambers Smith Raleigh, N. C.
*Wm. H. Streeter Greensboro, N. C.
*Mrs E. E. Swindell Raleigh, N. C.
*Dr. F. L. Stevens West Raleigh, N. C.
*Dr. C. Alphonso Smith Chapel Hill, N. C.
*Mrs. Mary Grimes Smith Raleigh, N. C.
*Dr. Henry Louis Smith Davidson, N. C.
*Mrs. F. L. Townsend Mt. Airy, N. C.
*Mrs. R. S. Tucker Raleigh, N. C.
*J.W. Thackston Raleigh, N. C.
*Dr. Charles E. Taylor . . . . Wake Forest, N. C.
C. F. Tomlinson Winston, N. C.
*Mrs. Frances Tiernan Salisbury, N. C.
Mrs. John Van Landingham Charlotte. N. C.
*T. B. Womack Raleigh, N. C.
Zeb. V. Walser Lexington, N. C.
*Dr. George T. Winston Raleigh, N. C.
*Mrs. H. DeB. Wills Chapel Hill, N. C.
*Miss Ada V. Womble Raleigh, N. C.
*Mrs. Spier Whitaker Raleigh, N. C,
*Rev. James A. Weston Hickory, N. C.
Walter L. Watson Raleigh, N. C.
John Ward Raleigh, N. C.
W. A. Withers Raleigh, N. C.
Alexander Webb Raleigh, N. C.
*Judge F. D. Winston Windsor, N. C.
*Prof. W. T. Whitsett Whitsett, N. C.
*Wm. H. Williamson Raleigh, N. C.
*J. M. Way Ashboro, N. C.
*Robert W. Winston Durham, N. C.
*J. R. Young Raleigh, N. C.
ADDENDUM.
New members added at Fifth Annual Meeting, Raleigh, October 18, 1904.
*Dr. B. F. Arrington Goldsboro,-N. C.
*W. R. Bond Scotland Neck, N. C.
*Joseph G Brown Raleigh, N. C.
*Dr. Kemp P. Battle Chapel Hill, N. C.
*W. M. Cumming , Wilmington, N. C.
*T. W.Davis Raleigh, N. C.
*J. R. Ferrall Raleigh, N. C.
*A. C. Holloway Lillington, N. C.
*John Hinsdale Raleigh, N. 0.
J. K. Howell Rocky Mount, N. C.
*A. W. Haywood Haw River, N. C.
*B. F. Hall Wilmington, N. C.
*Mis8 Lizzie P. Jones Raleigh, N. C.
Roll of Members. 21
Norman H. Johnson Raleigh, N. C.
Henry A. London Pittsboro, N. C
*Rev. A. H. Moment Raleigh, N. C.
*F. O. Moring Raleigh, N. C.
*M. C. S. Noble Chapel Hill, N. C.
*Dr. Joseph H. Pratt Chapel Hill, N. C.
*F. C. Robbins Lexington, N. C
*Dr. F. P. Venable Chapel Hill, N. C.
B. G. Worth Wilmington, N. C.
*M. S. Willard Wilmington, N. C.
22 Historical and Literary Activities in N. C.
Resolutions Adopted.
Resolutions Adopted October 23, 1900.
I.
Resolved, That it is the sense of this Association that one day in each
year should be set apart in the schools of our State for the consideration
of some important fact of State history with appropriate public exercises
to be called the North Carolina Day.
II.
Resolved, That this Association, as soon as the Committee on Literature
and History shall recommend, offer a prize of one hundred dollars for the
best story of the life of Vance for children.
III.
Resolved, That annually, or biennially, as may be determined, the
Association shall, as far as it may be able, cause to be printed in a per-
manent form a year book containing the best things in our history and
literature that have been or shall have been produced.
Resolutions Adopted October 22, 1901.
I.
Resolved, That this Association endorse the efforts of Hon. John H.
Small to secure an appropriation for a monument to Sir Walter Raleigh
on Roanoke Island.
II.
Resolved, That a committee of twenty-five, to be selected by General
Julian S. Carr, be, and the same are hereby appointed, to adopt such
measures as may be requisite to carry into effect his suggestions for col-
lecting a fund to erect a suitable statue to Sir Walter Raleigh in our capital
city, named so fitly in his honor; and that in carrying this resolution into
effect the committee have in mind the educational value of giving the
people an opportunity to raise this fund by penny collections, so that all
may share in the glory of thus honoring the great hero-martyr of Amer-
ican colonization.
Resolutions Adopted January 23, 1903.
I.
[A resolution was adopted at this meeting urging the establishment of
the State Historical Commission. The Secretary unfortunately has been
unable to obtain a copy of the resolution as passed.]
II.
Resolved, That this Association through a special committee to be
appointed by the President, request the General Assembly to provide for
Resolutions Adopted. 23
six rural libraries in each county in addition to the number now pre-
scribed by the Rural Library Act of the last General Assembly.
Resolutions Adopted November 12, 1903.
Resolved, That a committee of seven, as follows: Judge Walter Clark,
Capt. S. A. Ashe, Judge W. A. Montgomery, Capt. W. R. Bond, Major
H. A. London, Judge A. C. Avery, Major E. J. Hale, be appointed to take
under consideration recent allegations in regard to the inaccuracy of
North Carolina's claims of its part in the* history of the Civil War, and
that this committee report to the next meeting of this Association or
sooner through the press, if it is thought advisable.
Resolutions Adopted October 18, 19Q4--
I.
Whereas, the State Literary and Historical Association has noted with
great pleasure the continued growth of the rural school library move-
ment fostered by this Society; and
Whereas, the State appropriation for the support and growth of the
rural libraries is already practically exhausted; and
Whereas, the interest manifested by the rural districts and evidenced
by the fact that there are over 900 rural libraries containing over 75,000
volumes, makes it necessary that this movement should be encouraged;
therefore be it
Resolved, 1. That we earnestly urge the next Legislature to continue
this appropriation for the extension of the rural libraries.
Resolved, 2. That a committee shall be appointed to urge the Legisla-
ture to continue this appropriation.
II.
Whereas, there are in the State Library 36,545 books and many valua-
ble pamphlets and annual files of State newspapers; and
Whereas, many of these books and papers are rare and of so great
value for the preservation of the history of North Carolina that their loss
by fire would be irreparable; and
Whereas, it is desirable to add to this valuable collection of books and
papers from year to year so that students of the history and literature of
our State may find in one place within the State a complete collection of
literary and historical material for their investigation and study; and
Whereas, a large and valuable collection of historical relics of all kinds
has been brought together in the Hall of History, practically without
expense to the State; and
Whereas, these valuable books and papers and these valuable historical
relics are now in constant danger from fire; and
Whereas, many other valuable historical relics might be secured as
loans or gifts if the present owners of them could have assurance of their
safety and preservation ; and
Whereas, many of these relics unless collected soon will be lost forever
to the State; therefore be it
Resolved by the State Literary and Historical Association, 1. That the State
24 Historical and Literary Activities in N. C.
ought to erect a fireproof building as a means of protecting its present
and future valuable collections of the books, papers and historical relics,
and as a means of inducing owners of valuable collections of historical
and literary material to give, lend or sell them to the State.
Resolved, 2. That a committee of three be appointed by this Association
to memorialize the next General Assembly for the erection of such a
building.
III.
Resolved, That a committee of three be appointed to formulate plans to
stimulate the study of local history.
The duties of the committee shall be:
1. To publisljta plan for the organization of clubs in the various coun-
ties of the State for the study of the history of the county in which a
club may be established.
2. To collect, as far as possible, the papers read at the meetings of the
clubs, and annually to submit to this Society and to the newspapers for
publication such of these papers as may seem to be of historic value, after
they have been offered to and published in the local papers.
SIR WALTER RALEIGH.
Poem Read by Prof. Henry Jeromk Btocxasd at Second Annual Meeting
or the State Literary and Historical Association, October 22, 1901.
He is not greatest who with pick and spade
Makes excavations for some eplendid fane;
Nor he who lays with trowel, plumb, and line
Upon the eternal rock its base of stone:
Nor is he greatest who lifts slow its walls,
Flutes its white pillars, runs its architrave
And frieze and cornice, sets its pictured panes,
And points its airy minarets with gold:
Nor he who peoples angle, niche, and aisle
With sculptured angels, and with symbol graves
Column and arch and nave and gallery:
These are but del vers, masons, artisans,
Each working out his part of that vast plan
Projected in the master builder's brain.
And he who wakes the organ's soulful tones.
Faint, far away, like those that haply steal
The first notes of the song of the redeemed
From out the spirit-world to dying ears;
Or rouses it in lamentations wild
Of Calvary, or moves its inmost deeps
With sobs and cryings unassuaged that touch
The heart to tears for unforgiven sin,
He voices but the echo of that hymn
Whose surges shook the great composer's soul.
Bold admirals of the vast high seas of dream,
With neither chart nor azimuth nor star,
That push your prows into the mighty trades
And ocean streams towards continents unknown:
Brave pioneers that slowly blaze your way
And set your cairns for people yet unborn
Upon imagination's dim frontiers,
Ye are the makers, rulers of the world !
And so this splendid land to sunward laid,
With opulent fields and many a winding stream
And virgin wood: with stores of gems and veins
Of richest ore: with mills and thronging marts,
26 Historical and Literary Activities in N. C.
The domain of the freest of the free
'Tis but the substance of his dream, the pure,
The true, the generous knight who marked its bounds
With liberal hand by interfusing seas.
What though no sage may read the riddle dark
Of Croatan, that band diffused through marsh
And solitude? Their valor did not die,
But is incorporate in our civic life.
They were of those that fought at Bannockburn;
Their vital spirits spake at Mecklenburg;
They rose at Alamance, at Bethel led,
And steered at Cardenas straight through blinding shells.
They live to-day and shall forever live,
Lifting mankind toward freedom and toward God.
And he still lives, the courteous and the brave,
Whose life went out in seeming dark defeat.
The Tower held not his princely spirit immured;
But in those narrow dungeon walls he trod
Kingdoms unlimited by earthly zones;
Nor holds the grave his peerless soul in thrall;
It passed those dismal portals unafraid
To an inheritance beyond decay
Stored in the love and gratitude of man.
He lives in this fair city, noble state,
Puissant land in all each hopes to be.
He was the impulse to these later deeds.
He lives in fateful words and splendid dreams,
In strenuous actions and in high careers,
An inspiration unto loftier things.
Upon the scheme of ages, man shall find
Success oft failure, failure oft success
When he shall read the record of the years.
On ROflflOKE ISLAND.
Address of JUDGE WALTER CLARK at Meeting Inaugurated
by the State Literary and Historical Association,
Manteo, N. C, 24, July 1902.
Ladies and Gentlemen: Standing on the Aventine hill,
by the banks of the Tiber, we can still behold the cradle of the
great Roman people, the beginning of that imperial race
which for centuries held in its control the entire civilized
world of their day and whose laws, whose feats of arms, whose
thought, have profoundly impressed all succeeding ages.
HERE BEGAN THE GREATEST MOVEMENT OF THE AGES.
Standing here we see the spot where first began on this
continent the great race which in the New World in three
hundred years has far surpassed in extent of dominion, in
population and power the greatest race known to the Old.
Farther than the imperial eagles ever flew, over more men
than its dominion ever swayed, with wealth which dwarfs its
boasted treasures, and intelligence and capacity unknown to
its rulers, this new race in three centuries has covered a con-
tinent, crossed great rivers, built great cities, tunneled moun-
tains, traversed great plains, scaled mountain ranges and halt-
ing but for a moment on the shores of a vaster ocean, has al-
ready annexed a thousand islands and faces the shores of a
Western continent so distant that we call it the East.
We do well to come here to visit the spot where this great
movement began. It was one of the great epochs of all history.
Here, 36 years before the landing of the Pilgrims at Ply-
mouth Rock, here 23 years before John Smith and James-
town, in the year 1584, the first English keel grated on the
shores of what is now the United States. Here the greatest
movement of the ages began, which has completed the circuit
of the globe. For thousands of years, God in His wisdom,
had hidden this land behind the billows till His appointed
time, and in Europe and Asia millions had fought and perish-
28 Historical and Literary Activities in N. C.
ed for the possession of narrow lands. The human intellect
had been dwarfed with the dimensions of its prison house.
In due season Copernicus gauged the heavens, revealing count-
less worlds beyond our grasp and Columbus almost at the
same time unveiled this tangible world beyond the Atlantic.
Stunned, dazed, the mind of man slowly realized the broad-
ened vision unrolled before it. Since then the energies of
the human intellect have steadily expanded, and thought has
widened with the process of every sun.
Here broke the spray of the first wave of Saxon population
and now westward across the continent to the utmost verge
and beyond it, there rolls a human sea. Three centuries have
done this.
About this very date Amadas and Barlow landed here, for
on July 4, a day doubly memorable on these shores, they de-
scried land and sailing up the coast 120 miles they entered
with their two small vessels through an inlet, probably now
closed. Proceeding further they came abreast of this island,
where they landed and were hospitably received.
what wondrous changes.
Nature remains unaltered. As on that July day, of the
long ago, earth, air and sky and sea remain the same. The
same blue arch bends above us. The same restless ocean rolls.
The same sun shines brightly down. The same balmy breezes
breathe soft and low. The same headlands jut out to meet
the waves. The same bays lie open to shelter the coming ves-
sels. The trees, the foliage, the landmarks, would all be recog-
nized by the sea-worn wanderers of that memorable day.
But as to what is due to man, how altered !
To the westward, where the Indian paddled his light canoe
on great rivers, innumerable vessels, moved by the energies
of steam, plow the waters, freighted with the produce of ev-
ery industry and the produce of every clime. Where the
smoke of the lonely wigwam rose, now the roar of great cities
fills the ear and the blaze of electric lights reddens the sky.
Where then amid vast solitudes the war-whoop resoundedj
boding death and torture, now rise a thousand steeples and
anthems to the Prince of Peace float upon the air. Where
the plumed and painted warrior stealthily trod the narrow
On Roanoke Island. 29
war path, mighty engines rush. Where a few thousand
naked savages miserably starve. 1 and fought and perished,
near one hundred millions of the foremost people of all the
world live and prosper. Three short centuries have seen this
done.
OUR CONTRIBUTION TO EUROPE.
Looking eastward the ocean rolls unchanged, but not as
then to be crossed only after two or three months of voyage.
Already a week suffices for its passage and across its waves
even now messages flash without the medium of wires. Be-
yond its shores is also a new world. When the first expedi-
tion landed here, the Turk was threatening Vienna, and the
Spaniard was asserting his right to burn and pillage in Hol-
land. The fires of the Inquisition burned in Spain and Bel-
gium. France, sunk to a second-class power, grovelled be-
neath the rule of one of the most worthless of its many worth-
ies- kings, the third Henry while England, the England of
Drake and Raleigh, of Shakespeare and Bacon, and of Eliza-
beth, already lay beneath the growing shadow of the xVrmada,
whose success threatened the extinction of English liberty
and of the Protestant religion. Russia was then a small col-
lection of barbarous tribes and Germany and Italy, not yet
nations, were mere geographical expressions. Contrast that
with the Europe of to-day. The change is barely less start-
ling there than on this side of the water.
The change has been greatly the reflex action from this
side. Civilization has been and is on the steady increase in
the betterment of the masses. The leaders of thought, Shake-
speare, Bacon, Michael Angelo, Dante, Petrarch, the painters,
the sculptors, the statesmen, were as great then as since. The
difference is in the masses. Then they were degraded, dis-
regarded, beaten with many stripes, dying like animals after
living like brutes ; to-day they have a voice in every govern-
ment and are beginning more fully to perceive that they have
unlimited power which they can use for their own advance-
ment and the betterment of their material surroundings.
The change started here when a new race began, without
feudal burdens and amid the breadth and freedom of un-
trammeled nature. With new paths to tread, new roads to
30 Historical and Literary Activities in N. C.
make, new rivers to travel, new cities to build, men began to
think new thoughts and to add to the freedom of nature the
liberty of speech and of action.
WHERE THE SHACKLES OF THE AGES WERE BROKEN.
Well do we come here to visit the spot where the shackles
of the ages were broken, precedents forgotten and where man
first began to stand upright in the likeness in which God had
made him.
ISTaught tells more forcibly the depression in which the
minds of the men of that day were held than the fact that the
hardy English mariners, the descendants of the Vikings of
old, delayed nearly a century after Columbus had discovered
the New World before the foot of an Anglo-Saxon had trod
the shores of North America. From the discovery in 1492
to the first landing here in 1584 and the first permanent but
feeble settlement at Jamestown in 1607 was a long time.
Could another new continent such as this be discovered in
3,000 miles of London to-day, not as many hours would elapse
as our ancestors of three centuries ago permitted years to pass,
before the English race would land on its shores. In 1520
Cortez led the Spaniards to the Plateau of Mexico and sub-
verted an empire. Yet 65 years more passed before Amadas
and Barlow led the first English expedition to land on this
continent.
Not only were men's minds enthralled by governments
which existed solely for the benefit of the few, but the condi-
tion of the upper classes was only in degree better than that
of the poorer. Coffee, sugar, tobacco, potatoes and other
articles of common use by the poorest to-day were unknown.
Queen Elizabeth herself lived on beer and beef, and forks
being unknown that haughty lady ate with her fingers, as did
Shakespeare, Raleigh and Bacon. Articles of the commonest
use and necessity in the dwellings of the poorest now, were
then not to be obtained in the palaces of Kings. Carpets
were absent in the proudest palaces and on the fresh strewn
rushes beneath their tables princes and kings threw the bones
and broken meats from their feasts. Religion was to most
a gross superstition, law was a jargon and barbarous, and med-
icine the vilest quackery. Just in proportion as the masses
On Roanokk Island. 31
have been educated, as freedom has been won by them, as
their rights have been considered, the world has advanced
in civilization and in material well being.
Unlike the founding of Rome, where the seat of Empire
abode by its cradle, no great cities arose here at Roanoke Is-
land, at Jamestown nor at Plymouth. The new movement
begun here was not for empire but for the people and it has
advanced and spread in all directions.
THE GREAT DANGER TO-DAY.
In 1820 Daniel Webster delivered a memorable oration at
the anniversary of the landing at Plymouth Rock. In that
speech he prophesied that our free government could stand
only so long as there was a tolerable equality in the division
of property. What would he say could he stand here to-day
and count over the names of those possessed of $20,000,000,
of $50,000,000, of $100,000,000, even of more than $200,-
000,000, and name over the great trusts and corporations who
levy taxes and contributions at their own will, greater than
those exacted for all the purposes of government? He in-
stances that when the great monasteries and other church cor-
porations under the Tudors threatened English prosperity the
eighth Henry confiscated their property (as has been done in
our day by Mexico and other Latin countries) and re-distrib-
uted their accumulations. He might have added that when
the new commercial monopolies under his daughter Elizabeth
bade fair to take the place of the suppressed ecclesiastical
foundations in re-creating inequality, the Commons called
on her to pause and that haughty, unbending sovereign had
the common sense to save her throne by yielding.
Mr. Webster also utilized the occasion to point to the fact
that in France by her exemption of nobles and priests from
taxation, property had gravitated into their hands till the
wild orgy of revolution had re-transferred it to the people
and he prophesied that the new law in that country which
by restricting the right to will property had prevented its
accumulation into a few hands would inevitably destroy the
restored monarchy and rebuild the republic. His prophecy
has come true.
32 Historical and Literary Activities in N. C.
The great expounder of the constitution was right. Power
goes with those who own the property of the country. When
property is widely distributed and a fair share of the com-
forts of life are equally in the reach of all, a country will re-
main a republic. When property, by whatever agency, be-
comes concentrated in a few hands, a change is impending.
Either the few holders will bring in, as he stated, an army
that will change the government to a monarchy, or revolution
will force a redistribution as in England and France. That
has been the lesson of history.
In this day, of wider intelligence and general education,
let us hope and believe that there is a third way, hitherto un-
known in practice, and that by the operation of just and wiser
laws enacted by the sovereignty of the people, a more just and
equal distribution of wealth will follow and the enjoyment of
material well being will be more generally diffused among the
masses. All power is derived from and belongs to the people
and should be used solely for their good. This is the funda-
mental teaching of the institutions which begin their record
from the landing of the Anglo-Saxon race on these shores, a
landing which was first made at this spot.
Had I the ability of Mr. Webster, could I speak with his
authority, I might point out as he did the great danger of the
accumulation of wealth in a few hands, and might foresee and
foretell the remedies which a great, a wise and an all-powerful
people will apply. But I shall not follow in the path which
he has trod, hand passibus equis.
Let us not forget on this occasion that to this island belongs
the distinguished honor of being the birth-place of the first
American girl. It is the Eden from which she sprung. She
had no predecessor and remains without a model and without
a rival. In that first Eden man was the first arrival and the
garden was a failure. Here the girl was the first arrival and
the boys have followed her ever since. Appropriately she
bore the name of Dare, and daring, delightful, her successors
have been ever since. We do well, were we to come here sole-
ly to do honor to the memory of the first American girl, this
finished, superlative product of her sex and of these later
ages.
On Roanoke Island. 33
noeth caeolina's futuee.
When the first expedition landed here there were, it is esti-
mated, in the bounds of the present State of North Carolina,
20,000 Indians, earning a precarious living by fishing and
hunting and spending their miserable lives in slaying and tor-
turing one another. To-day we have near 2,000,000 of the
foremost race of all the world, living in peace and order.
Could I like Mr. Webster, in his Plymouth Rock oration,
prophecy as to the future 100 Jlu$I%ilence I should predict
a still greater change. I .should say that with the same rate
of increase North Carolina will then have 6,000,000 of people
and that cities of 100,000 inhabitants will be numbered by
the score; that every village will be connected with its neigh-
bor by electric roads, for steam will have ceased to be a motive
power; that education will be universal and poverty un-
known ; that every swamp will have been drained to become
the seat of happy homes ; that every river will be deepened
and straightened ; that public works operated for the benefit
of the people and not for the enrichment of a few, will bring
comforts and conveniences, now unknown, to the most distant
fireside; that the hours of labor will be shortened; that the
toil of agriculture will be done by machinery and that irriga-
tion will have banished droughts ; that the advance of medi-
cine, already the most progressive science among us, will have
practically abolished all diseases save that of old age ; that
simpler laws and an elevated and all-powerful public opinion
will have minimized crime and reduced the volume of liti-
gation; that religion less sectarian and disputatious about
'.-reeds and forms will be a practical exemplification of that
love of fellow-man which was typified by its divine founder;
that every toiler with brain or with hand will prosper and that
under juster laws the only inequality in wealth or condition
will be that due to the difference in the energy, efforts and
natural gifts of each possessor.
This is but the first of many successive celebrations of the
landing here and if these feeble, fugitive words shall be pre-
served to that distant day the speaker who shall read them to
a vast audience gathered here will either justify the prophecy
or at least he will say, ''Tn the interest of the happiness of
the human race, they ought to have come true."
3
THE ENRICHMENT OF COUNTRY LIFE.
Address by PRESIDENT W. L. POTEAT at Fourth Annual Meeting
of North Carolina State Literary and Historical
Association. November V2, 1903.
The world is too much with ns; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that ib ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon !
The Sea that bears her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea.
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Ptoteus rising from the sea,
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.
W ORDS WORTH.
Permit me first of all to refer to the genuine pleasure with
which I have regarded my connection with the North Caro-
lina Literary and Historical Association, not only because of
its high aims, but also because of the honorable record which
it has made since its organization a little more than three
years ago. I wish, moreover, to take this first opportunity to
say that I have appreciated the kindness which put me into
this official relation to the Association. The distinction of
your favor has been a happiness to me whenever it rose into
consciousness during the whole year now closing, except
I beg a thousand pardons, but one is under bonds to speak the
truth a happiness, I say, except for the past fortnight,
through which the entailed obligation of this address has
walked like a ghost to disturb my peace. This official tradi-
tion from honored predecessors, they will allow me to say, is
quite a empty inheritance. If along with the necessity of
the presidential address one got also the substance of it, the
task of following them would not be so hard.
Other gentlemen will present to you important and inter-
esting matters about which the Association has been occupied
The Enrichment of Country Life. 35
since its last annual session. From them I detain you this
thirty minutes to speak of
THE ENRICHMENT OF COUNTRY LIFE.
I venture to think that this subject, irrelevant as it may
seem to be at first thought, touches in reality the very
foundations of all we hope for as members of this body
and citizens of this State. Ours is a rural community, and
in spite of the late irruption of steam and its iron wheels, I
tragi it is decreed above that it shall remain a rural commun-
ity. The history which we wish to make and to record, the
literature which we wish to evoke and to scatter ; in short, the
manhood and womanhood which we wish to grow and to
brighten must be in the country and of the country. And
observe, this fact is not a handicap, but a call and a guarantee.
To see-that it is so, let me remind you that mankind in its
long world-history has shown itself to be most responsive to
the moulding action of external natural conditions. The po-
litical history of a country, as Sir Archibald Geikie has dem-
onstrated, is largely predetermined by its geological history.
The sifting out and distribution of the elements of a com-
posite population, the development of the national industries
and commerce, the localization of the vocations of the inhabi-
tants, are directly controlled by its physical features. But
the influence of land contour and water and sky penetrates
beyond these externals of life. It extends into the sphere of
the spirit, and with an intimate and subtle power applied for
generations with a pressure so constant as to be unconscious,
it transforms in the end the very temperament and character
of a people. The Celt of Ireland and the Celt of the Scottish
Highlands, for example, were originally the same type of
man light of heart, witty, and impulsive. This Celtic tem-
perament in the congenial environment of the great grassy
plains of the Emerald Isle has undergone little change; but
in the lonely wind-grieved glens of the Highlands with their
ungenerous soil and cold, wet climate, under the perpetual
f rown of mist-wreathed mountains, this sunny gaiety has been
chilled and sobered into what we now know as the Highland-
er's reserve and melancholy a gloomy stubbornness of nature
like that of his own granite hills.
36 Historical and Literary Activities in N. C.
Not only so. When man and nature have thus given and
taken and come to an understanding with each other ; when
man finds his place in nature and settles into it, he finds him-
self also. He comes to his own in capacity to grow, or to
endure, or to achieve. He is in the condition of stable equilib-
rium, set broad-based like a granite pyramid and ready for
whatever Heaven may send. This alliance with nature is his
strength. And so it has turned out that the man of the field
is the man of the world. The history of civilization can
hardly be said to begin until man roots himself in some loved
spot of ground. Once rooted whether by Nile, or Euphra-
tes, or Indus, or Rhine his plow and axe lay the foundations
of civilized life, or upon demand turn sword and spear to de-
fend it. From the days when the old Saxon, standing
astride his furrows, changed a transient defeat into an endur-
ing victory over Angle and Dane and Norman, down to Con-
cord where
Once the embattled farmers stood
And fired the shot heard round the world,
your Anglo-Saxon farmer has been your prime maker of his-
tory.
Moreover, your farmer, if he is not himself historian or
poet, is the father of the historian and the poet, for country
life is the native soil of literature. The literature of which
T speak here is the "literature of power" as distinguished by
De Quincey from the mere "literature of knowledge". Amid
the bloodless conventions and social vanities of the city, its
tension and artificial modes of life, literature wilts and per-
ishes. It must have solitude and time in which to germinate.
Its life is in its unfettered spontaneity, and the free winds
that blow under the open sky are its sustaining breath. The
country produces the man, the country fills his heart up with
materials, the country bids him write. Whether literature
concern itself with the details or the wider aspects of nature,
with the passions or the occupations of men, its best examples
will be supplied by the incidents and situations of common
life under natural external conditions. More than a hundred
years ago Wordsworth called men's minds anew and for all
time to the literary fruitfulness of the simple life of the coun-
try, and gave the reasons why he rebelled against the literary
The Enrichment of Country Life. 37
canons of his day, and chose to delineate humble and rustic
life. A similar reversion to what is simple and native is
Dante's adoption of his mother-tongue, instead of Latin, for
his immortal song, which violation of tradition he feels call-
ed upon to justify at some length in the Convito. As that
choice created Italian literature, so in more recent yean
the new Provencal poetry dates from the day when Kouma-
nillc resolved to write no more poems in French, which his
mother could not understand, but to write only in the dialect
of his native province. Is it not true that every period of
renewal in the history of literature is a period of a freshened
communication with nature, either in a clear look into the
face of the great world outside us, or in a new discovery of the
elementary and therefore universal simplicities of the great
world within?
But what is to be said of Charles Lamb and the emotion
which the throngs and roar of London stirred in him ? In an
intimate letter he exclaims, "Hills, woods, lakes, and moun-
tains to the eternal devil!" And one recalls a memorable
night when this same London seen from a height to the east,
appeared to the youthful Robert Browning to be more won-
derful and appalling than all the host of stars. A living
American poet declares that he is not dependent upon his life
in the" Berkshire Hills for literary stimulus. He finds
poetic inspiration in the teeming life of Broadway. "You
see," said he, "I have farmed New York. In the work of
tenement reform I moulded the city and worked and reworked
it;" and his fingers moved vigorously as in the act of knead-
ing dough. And one thinks of the stately urban Milton,
of the old-world idyllic poet Theocritus and his enjoyment of
the city life of his native Syracuse, and of other city-bred
find city-loving makers of the highest forms of literature.
Do such cases invalidate what we were just now thinking, that
country life is the proper soil for the germination and growth
of this fine plant? On the contrary, they establish it. Not
as exceptions are said to establish rules, but because they are
really illustrations of our proposition. They all may be fair-
ly set out in two groups. One group, of which Milton is an
example, embraces authors who feed on other authors who,
in their turn, fed on nature. They are like the flesh-eating
animals which only in appearance violate the naturalist's law
302509
38 Historical and Literary Activities in N. C.
that animal life is dependent upon plant life : they get their
plants by way of other animals. The second group embraces
authors like Theocritus who love their Syracuse, but, with the
breath of the rural Pan upon them, love yet more the cliffs
and snow-fed streams of a near-by Etna, the fisher-huts and
fragrant forests of the coast. A New York writer in a
wholly incidental way makes this significant confession: "I
had succeeded in laying up provisions enough to last me while
I wrote another book, and I fled away to put up my tent in
the wilderness." Even while they are in the city and under
its spell, that which so arouses these spirits is not its endless
walls of brick, its miles of stony pavement, its lights and
shows, its pageantries of wealth and power. It is rather that
particular piece of universal nature, humanity, that struggles
blindly on these pavements, or festers in the dens below them
life's tragic significance exhibited where life converges to
a throbbing focus. There has never lived a more fervid lover
of field and wood and sea and sky than Richard Jefferies. He
tells us that in front of the Royal Exchange in London the
wide pavement juts out like a promontory into the whirlpool
of human life which swirls and dashes there day and night.
It was his habit to stand on the apex of this promontory to
ponder, and in that spot he felt the presence of the resistless
forces of the universe as strongly as when he lay in a remote
valley carved out in pre-historic time. That is to say, nature
cannot be wholly cast out even by the artificialities of city
life, and these city-born stirrings of the poetic impulse are
due to the breath of country life which is not yet smothered
beneath unnatural conditions.
i. the wandering.
The blessings of attachment to the soil are, that primary
one of harmony with nature, which draws after it a bright
retinue of dependents; the opportunity of self-realization in
an atmosphere of independence and freedom and repose;
exemption from the pettinesses and moral obliquities which
swarm on the surface of a crowded and conventional life.
But distinct as they are and excellent both for character and
for conduct, they do not seem greatly to impress the average
man. He may go so far as to admit them in theory, but he
The Enrichment of Country Liik. 39
declines to be practically influenced by them. While he is
singing the praises" of rural life, he packs up for the city.
This impulse to wander forth from nature and gather into the
city group is well-nigh as old as mankind itself. It was the
second man, who, as we read in an ancient writing, went out
from his flocks and from the presence of the Lord, and build-
ed a city. Fear lay back of this primitive wandering, fear
of nature's vast solitudes and of the marauding children of
the wilderness. But the modern drift into the city, which
gained in the last century an unprecedented volume and im-
petus, is determined by other causes. Allow me to suggest
some of them:
1. The materialistic habit established in the long struggle
for physical comfort becomes inveterate and demands a wider
field for exploitation with the chance of quicker gains.
2. The substitution of machinery for human labor in so
many agricultural processes.
3. The application of machinery to manufacturing proc-
esses, which localizes manufactures in centers of population.
4. The development of transportation, whereby it becomes
possible and convenient for the rustic family to reach the city,
as well as food supplies for a practically unlimited number*.
You observe that these are mainly economic facts, and in
the light of them the movement to the city, which is a world
phenomenon, is seen to be the result, not so much of a social
or aesthetic preference, as of an economic compulsion. Tt
will continue so long as these conditions obtain, or until equal-
ly powerful conditions arise to oppose it Excepting such as
I shall refer to later, the only check which is as yet above the
horizon is the relation of the external food supply to the grow-
ing mass. Certainly the mere preaching of the charms of the
country-side will limit the rural exodus no more than the old
royal proclamations dammed back the currents which swelled
too fast the population of London.
The results of the drift to the city, from the point of view
of the country, are even more manifest than its causes. The
first result is sparseness of the rural population. I need not
remind von that in this condition the most serious of our
rural problems take their rise. This is what renders provis-
<C. J. Strong, The Twentieth Century City, p. 34 f.
40 Historical and Literary Activities in N. C.
ion for the religious and educational needs of the country
districts so difficult. A second result is perhaps more disas-
trous. Not only are there few left, but the average quality
of these few suffers by the fact that the city appeals with es-
pecial force to the brighter and more enterprising section of
the community. And what would the city do without these
bright barbarians from the woods ? They are its life and
pass into it as so much fresh arterial blood to renew its jaded
physique. But what a disaster to country life. This policy
of giving its choicest product to the city without return is a
violation of one of the primary principles of good farming,
and the fact that country life goes forward at all under this
unbroken and costly drain is the highest possible proof of its
inexhaustible fertility. But this depletion cannot go on in-
definitely at an increasing rate without serious loss to the to-
tality of our civilization, to the country clearly and none the
less to the city, whose very sources of maintenance and re-
newal it inevitably contracts.
It will not be a cheering task, though it may be a whole-
some one, to look more particularly at the general situation
and recognize the several items which make up for us what
we may call
II. the lost estate.
And first we must set down the poverty of country life
itself. "Sure good," says Buskin, "is first in feeding people,
then in dressing people, then in lodging people, and lastly in
rightly pleasing people, with arts, or sciences, or any other
subject of thought." How much of the "sure good" in these
several particulars does the country dweller enjoy, not indeed
at another's hand but at his own ? He feeds the world, and
that is his chief contribution to its welfare. How does he
feed his own family? It -must be owned that the farmer's
family is too often underfed, the food lacks the requisite nu-
tritive value and palatableness ; and this not because of nig-
gardliness, but ignorance of food-stuffs and the modes of pre-
paring them. There results a low chronic dyspepsia which
advertises itself in men who are sallow in spite of their active
life in the open, and in women who look pinched and fade
prematurely into decrepitude. Now, whatever the teachers
of ethics may say, there is surely some connection between
The Enrichment of Country Life. 41
diet and morals, as there is between diet and brains; and at
this moment I am not entirely decided that the country needs
schools of grammar more than it needs schools of cookery.
Dressing is better done than feeding, some would urge because
of the universal qnieknesfl of the feminine eye for the new
fabric and the new garment, and avidity for the omnipresent
Delineator pattern. As for the lodging, the houee is often
mean and uncomfortable enough, not for lack of material,
but solely for the lack of the proper standard of comfort
But these are not the features which mark the deepest poverty
of country life. The farmer touches bottom when In- oomee
to the last item in Ruskin's listing of the "sure good." How
far do "the arts or sciences or any other subject of thought"
minister to his pleasure ? Has the average farmer heard
whether there be arts or sciences ? or having heard, does he
care ? I am afraid that his fair landscape of forest and field
and stream often encompasses a sordid and lonely life, and
what we call his contentment is only a stolid acquiescence in
the hard pressure and the monotony of unbroken toil. The
most pathetic figure in this isolated and narrow life is the
farmer's wife.
The inventory of the lost estate must include also what has
been called the simple life. Of course, the great loser here
is the city ; but so dominant has the city come to be that it is
invading the independence of the country to a degree, and
imposing there its ideals and standards. Indeed, it has long
been doing so. In the closing years of the eighteenth cen-
tury Cowper noted the same thing. He says,
"The town has tinged the country; and the stain
Appears a spot upon a vestal's rohe,
The worse for what it soils."
One would think that nowadays the simple life, if not
wholly lost, must be quite effectively buried in the depths of
the wild wood, at the bottom of remote meadows, or in inacces-
sible coves of the mountains. Indeed, I am told that even in
some of these retreats it is, with a keen eye to business, as-
sumed every season to draw thither metropolitan idlers whose
paths drop fatness, and who, in their desperate struggle to be
amused, sometimes embrace the fad of the antique and culti-
vate it now in china and furniture, now in the costumes and
42 Historical and Literary Activities in N. C.
customs of human beings. This very affectation of the antique
is itself a demonstration of how thoroughly lost the simple
life is to some sections of Western civilization. They collect
its symbols with a curious avidity just as antiquarians collect
old Eoman coins or the clay tablets of Assyria. It would be
amusing, if it were not so pitiful.
Of course, no one could be so simple as to wish for the re-
versal of the progress which modern days have made toward
the elaboration, the refining, and the beautifying of life.
After all subtractions have been made, Charles Lamb in the
midst of his ledgers by the Thames does retain some advan-
tages over the rude Celt who was there some centuries before
him. No ; the simple life does not involve the return to bar-
barism; nor does it require asceticism or poverty. Its prin-
ciples are to-day observed in families of every financial rating
and social rank. Neither is it incompatible with the highest
industrial development. For the simple life does not consist
in circumstances whether of luxury or want, but rather in a
certain relation to circumstances. Simplicity is an inward
attitude, "a state of mind," as Charles Wagner, the apostle of
the new France, has so admirably set forth. "It dwells in
the main intention of our lives. A man is simple when his
chief care is the wish to be what he ought to be, that is, hon-
estly and naturally human."
But as one looks abroad on civilized life in our time one
cannot avoid the impression that we are in peril of making a
capital error ; in fact, the controlling section of our urban life
has already made it the error, I mean, of putting exterior
conditions upon the throne which belongs to life itself. We
are so dazzled by the brilliancy of our civilization that we
forget to inquire after the man at the center of it, who alone
gives it worth. We confuse the incidental and the essential.
Madam has a fine equipage ; therefore Madam is a fine wo-
man. Madam has no equipage ; Madam is no woman at all.
So concerned are Ave about our business, that we have lost our-
selves. The Chinese proverb applies : "Here's my umbrella,
here's my bundle, but where am I ?"
"The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
The Enrichment of Country Life. 43
Wants multiply with astonishing rapidity and grow to be
as imperious as needs, and whip us to our topmost speed.
And yet this haste and bustle does not advance us on our way ;
it is dissipated among manifold appurtenances of life.
Thoreau once said that he looked upon England as an old gen-
tleman travelling with a great deal of baggage which had
accumulated from long housekeeping and which he had not
the courage to burn.
The fatal taint of artificiality is often observable in the
courtesies and refinements of urban social life. Individuality
is suppressed and manners are constrained in the endeavor
to conform to the recognized standard. Frankness and sim-
plicity of speech are the marks of the boor. We are "charm-
ed" with the music which has tortured every nerve. We have
been "longing for weeks" for the visit which we hoped would
never be made. We are "so pleased" to meet the gentleman
from whom we turn in disgust. We are "delighted" to have
been bored at receptions and teas. From our hysterical speech
the old-time positive and comparative degrees in plain home-
spun are rigidly excluded ; only the superlative appears in
good society. No reserve of a moment, no grateful silence,
no calm candor of emotion ; but only raptures and ecstasies.
O the weakness ! O the pity !
One of the sanest of the ancient philosophers compares a
man who has severed himself from union with nature to a
hand or foot cut off and removed from the body ; but, he goes
on to say, though God set man above the necessity of breaking
off from nature, he shows him a special bounty in giving him
the power to rejoin the body and recover the advantage of
being the same member he was at first. I am glad to turn to
the contemplation of such a possibility. Even where the
separation has been most radical there are signs of reaction
and return, and I esteem it a fortunate circumstance that this
reactionary tendency abroad distinctly established itself before
our own loved State was very far wandered into the alien
realm of extravagance and artificiality. Her population is
markedly homogeneous and ninety-two per cent rural, and her
comparative remoteness from the main current of modern
progress, which w r as once her reproach among her sisters, must
be credited with the compensation of having preserved her
from much of the physical and moral deterioration w T hich is
44 Historical and Literary Activities in N. C.
the penalty of acuter phases of social development in other
communities. Allow me to speak of some symptoms of the
reaction referred to and to point out certain facts likely to
quicken it. May we not hope that they prophesy the good day
when prodigal society, too far wandered from the bosom of
nature, will be
III. at home again.
It is related of Von Baer, the founder of the science of
embryology, that, though reared in the country and ardent in
his devotion to external nature, he had long shut himself
closely in the city, so absorbed was he in the cultivation of his
infant science. One day he went outside and discovered that
the wheat had been sown and was ready for reaping, and he
had not so much as laid eyes on the fields. He fell on the
ground in the waving grain and wept at his loss, which in
his scientific absorption came near to being a permanent loss.
He resolved to save himself even at some cost to his science,
and took a government post which brought him again to the
open field and sky. This insatiable earth-hunger is not con-
fined to a few poetic and susceptible souls. It draws out of
the cities annually a great migration of people to the country,
to the seaside, and to the mountains, where once more they
become simple and free. And, as social and industrial com-
plications multiply, the number who seek this annual refresh-
ment increases. Does the human nature, in which the lower
world elements are gathered up into a higher unity, yearn
blindly for its kindred ? does it sigh for the bosom where its
infancy lay ? Whatever explanation, scientific or romantic,
you prefer, there is no denying the strength of this old at-
traction of country life.
But to-day new attractions are re-inforcing the old. Coun-
try life is enriching as never before. I am not now saying
that farmers are growing richer. I hope they are, though
appearances sometimes point the other way. You know,
agriculture has been defined as making money in the city to
spend in the country, and farming as making money in the
country to spend in the city. You observe, neither the agri-
culturist nor the farmer keeps his money. Be that as it may,
we are now concerned with the enrichment of the farmer's
life, not the filling of the farmer's purse.
The Enrichment of Country Life. 45
1. Comfort. It is to be noted, in the first place, that coun-
try life is ;it hist beginning to share in the beneficent revolu-
tion which science has lately wroughl in the means ami modes
of life. The standard of comfortable living is spread into the
country, and, what is important, it is found to be practically
applicable there. We have discovered, for example, that a given
lot of materials for a house can be put together in a comfort-
able and convenient dwelling at no additional cost for the
comfort and convenience. We have a series of practical
books on Home Building and Furnishing, How to Plan Home
Grounds, How to Make a Flower Garden, etc. We are mak-
ing another discovery making it in spots, but the spots will
multiply and meet the discovery, namely, that we are too
poor to endure the expense of ungraded roads with mud bot-
toms, or no bottoms. And for the brightening of country life
the good road will
Lie like a shaft of light across the land.
Through all the circle of the golden year.
And the work of the farm is already greatly lightened by
the introduction of machinery into well-nigh all its depart-
ments, as well as by the control of the fertility of any soil by
scientific treatment. In the past fifty years the number of
farm workers has only doubled, but the value of their work
has been increased twenty-fold. Are we warranted in expect-
ing the time when the experience of Thoreau will be realized
by the average country dweller ? He says, you may recall,
that for more than five years he maintained himself solely
by the labor of his hands, and found that he could meet the
expenses of living by working about six weeks a year, which
left him the whole of his winters and most of his summers
free and clear for study.
2. Variety of interests. The monotony of country life is
relieved now by a greatly increased variety of interests.
Transportation opens markets and makes profitable many
more crops than formerly. Experimentation on the physical
and chemical character of soils, on the plants and animals
upon the farm, offers an unending means of amusement. But
more effective than experiments and varied products for im-
parting interest and zest to country life is the new sympathy
with the manifold phases of nature which is one of the pic-
46 Historical and Literary Activities in N. C.
turesque features of our period. This feeling and attitude
occurs, indeed, in individual cases from early times in liter-
ary history, as in Horace, and Lucretius, and Theocritus, and
in some of the early English poets ; but in our day it is get-
ting to be almost universal, as is shown by the popularity and
volume of outdoor literature with its invitation,
Come forth into the light of things,
Let Nature be your teacher.
This later phase of it may be traced back to the eighteenth
century to such sympathetic observers as Gilbert White and
De Saussure on the scientific side and on the poetic side
to Cowper and Wordsworth. In the latter half of the nine-
teenth century it grew rapidly under the stimulus of the gen-
eral scientific movement and the influence of men like Ernst
Krause in Germany, Jefferies and Ruskin in England, and on
this side "Old Silver-Top" as John Burroughs has been
affectionately called, and his younger followers as Roberts,
Long, and Thompson- Seton. What an endowment of interest
and of beauty have we here for country life.
3. Fellowship. Let me speak lastly of the new fellow-
ships of country life. In the future its isolation will be only
so deep as individual taste may determine. For it has now
opened communication with all other sections of human activ-
ity. The telephone and the rural free delivery supply the
opportunity of personal fellowship well-nigh as close as that
of the city, with the distinct advantage that it may be con-
trolled according to one's preference. By the same means
the edge is taken off the fear of sudden danger in the coun-
try's solitude. Moreover, the rural school is laying the foun-
dations for an intellectual fellowship with all the world and
all the ages. And the free rural library, which this Associa-
tion had the honor to inaugurate in North Carolina, com-
pletes fittingly the apparatus of a simple, free, intelligent,
strong, happy, country life.
But I beg to point out the danger that the rural school, in-
stead of serving to enrich and adorn country life, may be the
most efficient agent in perpetuating its poverty. Under the
operation of the French Education Bill of 1833, revised in
1871, there was a fearful exodus from the farms and villages
to the towns and to Paris. I have little doubt that many of
The Enrichment op Country Lips. 47
you can duplicate the o b s er v a tion of Prof. Bailey in a county
in New York. Be asked the forty-five children of a rural
school how many of them lived on farms. All hands went up
but one. When he asked how many wished to live on the
farm, no hand was raised hut the one which was down before.
Clearly that school had been educating the children away
from the farm, killing with bookish and city methods their
native sympathy with the country and its pursuits. In this
matter indifference or compromise will lead to disaster. We
need to insist that the rural school shall apply the funda-
mental principle of all education, and put the rural child into
direct sympathy with his rural environment and into intelli-
gent relation with the life which he is going to lead. The
text-book made by the city man for the only child he knows,
namely, the city child, will have to be rigidly excluded. The
teacher must be less urban and literary in his ideals and
methods, and more at home amid natural objects.
And now, as I conclude, let me say that the old love of
nature, which will have its way with us at times, and the new
enrichment of country life have already produced a distinct
movement, of which one sees signs in Europe as well as in
America. It means intensely and means good. For one
thing, the city is trying to countrify itself. Witness the in-
troduction and care of trees Paris expends $60,000 a year
on its trees the extension of the park area, the multiplica-
tion of play grounds, the rapid development of the Detroit 'po-
tato patch" experiment in other cities, and the "Garden City
Movement" of England, which proposes that every city which
it will build shall have attached to it in perpetuity and in-
violable an agricultural area of six thousand acres. Tt really
looks as if, in the city of the future, agriculture will join
hands with trade and manufactures to enhance its prosperity
and to preserve its physical and moral health. But this is
not all. The city in a way is moving into the country. Al-
ready men begin to speak of the problem created by the
growth of the system of suburban residence, which depopu-
lates the cities of the better middle class and leaves the tene-
ment districts in undiluted sordidness. The development of
rapid transit makes it possible for traders and factory op-
eratives whose work is in the city to live in the country. And
small-salaried men sometimes club together and maintain a
48 Historical and Literary Activities in N. C.
suburban farm for what their board in the city would cost.
Besides, the young men of good position and opportunities
who heretofore have sought careers in the cities are turning
in increasing numbers to the land.
All this means a return to nature, to a simpler, saner, truer,
life. It means the emergence of agriculture into a new dig-
nity and respectability. It means the renascence of South-
ern influence in national affairs. If I do not err, it means
for us in this agricultural region the recovery of at least some
of the charm of the social life that crowned the prosperity of
other days. It means the birth of a new and richer litera-
ture to record faithfully and in tenderness our past and cele-
brate the larger life of the new day.
THE RALEIGH CALEMDAR.
A Chronological Compendium of thk Principal Events
in thk Life of Sir Walter Raleigh.
Read by W. J. PEELE, op Raleigh, at the Fourth Annual Meeting
of the Literary and Historical Association, November 12, 1903.
1552 Walter Raleigh was born in the county of Devon,
South England, at an old country house or manor,
called "Hayes." lie was the son of Walter Raleigh
of Fardel and Katherine Gilbert, his wife. She was
also, by her first husband the mother of the celebrated
Sir Humphrey Gilbert, with whom Raleigh was asso-
ciated in fitting out his earlier American expeditions.
1566 Entered College at Oxford, England, where he re-
mained for three years, distinguished especially in
oratory and philosophy.
1569 Went to France as a volunteer, fighting six years in
that country for the liberties of the Huguenots under
the famous Admiral Coligny, the first citizen of
France and the first victim of the massacre of St.
Bartholomew's Day.
1575 Returned to England. Studied and practiced naviga-
tion and ship-building for several years, in which arts
he became a master; and in the meantime he made
himself familiar with the West Indies and with the
American coasts and waters.
1578 Accompanied (according to some authorities) his half
brother, Sir Hmnphrey Gilbert, in an expedition to
the St. Lawrence, in North America.
15S0 Was commissioned captain of an hundred foot soldiers
to fight the Irish rebels and their Spanish and Italian
allies. His pay was only eighty cents a day but in
two years he was the most famous soldier in Ireland
and attracted, by his valor and success, the notice of
Queen Elizabeth.
4
50 Historical and Literary Activities in N. C.
1581 Was introduced at the Queen's court where he con-
tinued to grow in favor until he became her most trust-
ed adviser in military and naval affairs and the most
active organizer of her forces against the Spanish.
1583 Fitted out, with the aid of Sir Humphrey Gilbert,
his half brother, an expedition to New Foundland.
The Queen and the public service requiring his pres-
ence in England, Gilbert was placed in command,
and, after remaining on the desolate shores of that
Island for thirty days, the expedition sailed for Eng-
land. Jt lost on its return voyage its brave command-
er in a great storm ; but his last words, uttered from
his sinking ship, are the best seaman's motto that has
come down to us : "Be of good cheer, friends, we are
as near heaven by sea as by land."
1584 March 25. Obtained charter from Queen Elizabeth
under which the several settlements on Roanoke Is-
land were made being the first settlements of the
English race in America, the beginning of the Amer-
ican nation, and the seeds of Jamestown and Ply-
mouth.
The charter was the beginning of English law in
America. Emigrants to the lands that should be dis-
covered and possessed under its authority were, by its
provisions, guaranteed the rights and liberties they
enjoyed in England.
1584 April 27. Dispatched an expedition of two ships un-
der the command of Amidas and Barlowe with au-
thority to explore and take possession of such lands,
(not under the dominion of any Christian Prince) as
they should discover.
1584 July 4.* The expedition arrived off the coast of
what is now known as North Carolina about one hun-
dred and twenty miles south of an inlet not far from
Roanoke Island.
July 7. This inlet was entered and a landing effected
on a part of the "Banks." The English took formal
possession in the name of Elizabeth, the Queen, and
* Dates from July 4, 1584. to December, inclusive, are approximate,
having been obtained by estimation.
The Raleigh Calendar. 51
Sir Walter Raleigh the governor of the newly dis-
covered land ; and the Queen called it "Virginia,"
in honor of herself the virgin queen of England.
The country embraced under this name extended
from the 34th to the 45th degree North latitude
that is from the region of Cape Fear to that where
Maine touches Canada on the Atlantic.
July 10. They were first visited by the Indians who
caught for them fish, which are still abundant in those
waters.
July 11. They made friends with Granganimeo, the
brother of Wingina, the king of that coimtry ; the near-
est mainland of which the Indians called Dassa-
monque-peak.
July 16. They visited Roanoke Island, the cradle of
American civilization, and the birth place of Virginia
Dare the first child of English parents born in Amer-
ica nature's best protected spot on the American
coast in which to have begun the hitherto untried ex-
periment of English colonization ; for the Chesapeake
had been explored and sketched by the Spaniards, but
the Sound section of North Carolina, behind its frown-
ing barriers of sand, was terra incognita.
August They sailed for England taking with them
the two Indians, Manteo, the friend, and Wanchese,
the enemy, of the white race.
September 15. The expedition returned to England.
Barlowe published an account of it which Raleigh
used, with the other accounts brought back, to thrill
the English people with the fever of emigrating to
America a fever which has never fallen from that
day to this.
December. Was knighted "Sir Walter Raleigh" by
Queen Elizabeth in honor of his exploits and discov-
eries.
1585 April 9. Raleigh's second expedition set out from
Plymouth for the shores of "Virginia" (North Caro-
lina) under the command of his cousin, the celebrated
Sir Richard Grenville. It consisted of one hundred
and eight colonists and five little ships, the largest
being of one hundred and forty tons burden, the
52 Historical and Literary Activities in N. C.
smallest, fifty. Among the other famous men in this
expedition was Thomas Cavendish, who afterwards
circumnavigated the globe, Hariot, the mathematician
and historian, and Ralph Lane, the explorer of East-
ern North Carolina, and the first governor of an Eng-
lish Colony in America.
June 20. The vessels came in sight of "Florida," the
name by which some explorers, called so much of the
continent as is now embraced within the limits of the
South Atlantic States, and under which the Span-
ish claimed the land from Key West to Nova Scotia.
June 23. Sailing up the coast to what is now North
Carolina they barely escaped shipwreck on a "breach
called the Cap of Feare." Probably cape Look-out.
June 24. They came to anchor in a harbor where they
"caught in one tide so much fish as would have yield-
ed twenty pounds in London."
June 26. They came to anchor at Wokoken, where one
of the ships was wrecked in the attempt to run
her over the bar of the inlet the first recorded ship-
wreck in the region of Hatteras.
Sept. 3. Was written the first letter by an English-
man in America ; it was from the "New Fort in Vir-
ginia" (Fort Raleigh on Roanoke Island) and writ-
ten by Ralph Lane to Richard Hackluyt, of London.
Lane's colony remained in "Virginia" (North Caro-
lina) one year wanting five days, but lost only four of
its number, and these died from natural causes.
15 85-6 During his occupation Lane explored the Albemarle
and Pamlico Sounds and their principal tributaries.
He ascended the Roanoke River, called by the In-
dians, Monatoc, about as far as Weldon. He explored
the Chowan, called by the Indians Chowanoke, as far
as Wyanoke Ferry, at the junction of the Black Water
and Nottoway Rivers. He went North as far as the
Elizabeth River and reported to Raleigh its commod-
ious harbors and the deep waters of the Chesapeake.
Hariot wrote the best account of these expeditions
and a description of the principal food plants and ani-
mals which were found; and DeBry, in 1588 and in
1590, published a book illustrated with maps, pic-
The Raleigh Calendar. 53
tures and drawings of the sound section of North
Carolina, its inhabitants and its food plants and ani-
mals. The originals of these illustrations were made
by John White, a painter, whom Sir Walter Raleigh,
with the special approval of the Queen, and at his
own cost, sent to our shores for this purpose. The
book is the joint product of White, Hariot and DeBry,
and is the most definite and valuable early English
publication that was ever published of any part of
America. With Barlowe's and Lane's narratives,
it is the main source of the history of the earliest
efforts to colonize America by the English.
1586 June 19. Lane and his colony sailed for England
in the fleet of Sir Francis Drake. They had been
doing well and were reasonably contented, but the
sight of English ships and sailors made them home-
sick and a terrible storm, such as still rage around Hat-
teras, completed their demoralization. They landed
in England, and Raleigh introduced from our shores
the use of tobacco in England and the culture of pota-
toes in Ireland. Shortly after the departure of the
colonists, a ship loaded with provisions for them ar-
rived at Wokoken, but soon sailed away for England.
A fortnight later Sir Richard Grenville arrived and,
finding none of Lane's colony, he left fifteen men on
Roanoke Island to hold possession of the country until
they could be relieved by a stronger force. No white
man ever beheld their faces again. The destruction
of these men first proved to the Indians that the Eng-
lish were not invulnerable and begun the long battle
between the two races.
1587 May 8. Raleigh's Fourth expedition sailed from Ply-
mouth for the shores of North Carolina. It consisted
of three vessels with their crews and one hundred and
fifty colonists, of whom 91 men, 17 women and 9 chil-
dren remained. The emigrants were under the com-
mand of their governor, John White ; they were fated to
become what is known in history as the "Lost Colony."
July 16. They landed on that part of the "Banks" then
known as the Island of Croatan lying to the South
of Cape Hatteras.
54 Historical and Literary Activities in N. C.
July 22. They arrived at Hattorask Inlet and passed
over to Roanoke Island where they learned the fate of
the fifteen men left there by Grenville.
August 13. Manteo was christened "Lord of Roanoke
and Dasamonque-peak" by command of Sir Walter
Raleigh.
August 18. Was born Virginia Dare the first child of
the English speaking race born in America.
August . Was born Harvie, the first American
boy of that race.
August 27. Governor John White sailed for England
leaving his little colony to its unknown fate in the
wilds of America. For three centuries the ingenuity
of poets and historians has been exercised to discover
its history, but the woods have not given up their se-
cret. Perhaps the Red men of Croatan Island mi-
grated inland to what is now Robeson County and
carried the "Lost Colony" with them. There still
resides in that region a tribe of Indians of mixed
blood calling themselves by the mystic name of Croa-
tan and there still exists among them a tradition that
they came from a region called Roanoke.
1588 Early in the year, Raleigh fitted out an expedition to
relieve White's colony and placed it under the com-
mand of Sir Richard Grenville, but, on account of the
war with Spain, it was not permitted to sail.
April 22. Sent a second relief expedition. consisting of
two little ships loaded with provisions, but they were
captured and stripped by pirates.
England being now menaced by the great invasion
from Spain, Raleigh assigned his principal interests
in "Virginia" to Sir Thomas Smith, Richard Hack-
luyt and others, who afterwards became, under his in-
spiration, the chief promoters of the settlement at
Jamestown in what is now the State of Virginia.
Aug. The Spanish Armada was, under Raleigh's advice,
attacked at sea and destroyed before it could effect
the invasion of England. He was the real author of
this victory which was the turning point of England's
greatness and Spain's decline. It was in the destruc-
tion of the Armada that he reached the highest point
The Raleigh Calendar. 55
of his fortune and favor with the Queen. He was as
great and brave as ever in the sea fight in the harbor
of Cadiz, and, in his expedition up the Oronoko River
was as zealous as ever for the extension of the Queen's
empire in America, but he did not have the same in-
fluence in the government nor receive the same recog-
nition for his public services.
1589 Co-labored with his friend the poet Spencer and was
the subject and inspiration of the best English poetry
since Chaucer. He was Spencer's patron, introduced
him to the Queen and procured him the leisure to write
and the means to publish the poems which made their
author famous. It was with Spencer that Raleigh for
the next two years cultivated his natural fondness for
literature which in the after years resulted in his
"History of the World" and other literary works.
1590 March 20. The fifth expedition being the second un-
der John White, sailed from Plymouth for Roanoke
Island.
August 15. The ships came to anchor at "Hattorask
Inlet" which was then reckoned to be 36 degrees and
20 minutes North latitude, and this reckoning locates
this inlet North of Roanoke Island.
August 17. White went with a party of men to Fort
Raleigh, but found it dismantled and deserted. The
colony had vanished ; only the name "Croatoan" carved
on a tree could give a clue to its new abode; and he,
who "joyed" in this "certain token of their being safe"
left the country without making an honest search for
their recovery. He who had before deserted his
colony, could now be satisfied with only a "token" of
their safety.
August 18. (The anniversary of the birth of Virginia
Dare.) The expedition sailed away and the "Lost
Colony" was "lost" in the deep solitudes of North
Carolina's forests affording the first of the many
lost chapters of our history.
1591 November. Raleigh wrote an account of the famous
B6fl fight between his ship the "Revenge" under the
command of his cousin, Sir Richard Grenville, and a
Spanish fleet of fifteen vessels. This is one of his
56 Historical and Literary Activities in N. C.
best pieces of prose literature, and the subject of it,
England's bravest sea-fight the Thermopylae of
naval warfare.
1592 Married Elizabeth Throckmorten the Queen's maid of
honor and forfeited the favor of the Queen who was
herself reputed to be in love with him. He was de-
barred from her Court for five years, but he did not
cease to serve his country.
1592 July 28. Was imprisoned in the Tower of London
on account of the anger or jealousy of Queen Eliza-
beth. During his imprisonment an expedition he had
fitted out captured the Spanish plate-ship the Madre
de Dios with its cargo valued at two and a half mil-
lions.
Sept. 21. Was released from prison as the only man in
England who could save the treasure of the great prize-
ship from the plunder of his own countrymen. The
Queen, as sovereign, took the lion's share of what he
recovered.
1594 Sent a ship to get information concerning Guiana, in
South America, which the Spanish had then lately an-
nexed to their dominions and named the "New El
Dorado."
1595 Feb'y 6. Sailed with an expedition to explore and
take possession of Guiana.
March 22. Anchored off the Island of Trinidad and
shortly took possession of it as a base of operations
from which to explore the Continent. This Island
still belongs to Great Britain.
April. Began his famous voyage up the Oronoko River
which he explored for four hundred miles from its
mouth.
His expedition remained in Guiana, Trinidad, and
the American waters for several months. He was re-
ported sailing along the coast of Cuba in the month of
July, and he landed in England sometime in October.
He told the Spanish Governor of Trinidad that he was
on his way to his settlement in "Virginia" but there
is no record that he touched our coast.
December. Published an account of his explorations
The Raleigh Calendar. 57
which were speedily translated into Latin and German
and circulated over Europe.
1596 Sent another expedition to Guiana which explored
the South American < -ast as far south as the Amazon.
Of this also lie published an account, written, as was
the other, in some of the best prose of the Elizabethan
perioil ; in both he set forth to the English people the
boundless wealth of America and the advantage and
practicability of colonizing it. Of the vast territory
in the region of the Oronoko and the Amazon which
Raleigh urged England to seize, it now holds British
Guiana a country about one and half times the
size of North Carolina.
June 21. Led the English to victory in the great naval
battle of Cadiz. This fight placed him on the pin-
nacle of his fame as commander of warships, re-instat-
ed him in the counsels of his Sovereign, and made
Great Britain, for the first time, Mistress of the Seas.
1597 Sent another expedition to Guiana which obsequiously
confirmed his own previous accounts. It returned
without adding any new information, or materially
advancing the policy of exploration and conquest
which lay next to his heart. It was shrewdly sur-
mised that the Spanish, failing in open warfare, were
beginning to try the effect of gold upon his subordi-
nates as well as his superiors in office.
Sept. Stormed, at the head of a small force, the town of
Fayal in the Azores. It was his last battle and only
added another spark to the envy of him which now in-
creased with his fame.
1602 Nov. 4. Had his last interview with Queen Eliza-
beth.
1603 Despatched two expeditions to America, the last of
five which he sent at his own charge to search for the
"lost colony."
March 30. The Queen died, and with her perished Ra-
leigh's hopes of preferment and even of personal
safety. He had spent his years of freedom in oppos-
ing "the tyrannous ambition of Spain," and now his
well-beloved England was to be governed by a mon-
arch, James I, who had taken into his counsels the
58 Historical and Literary Activities in N. C.
mercenaries of Spain the country with which Ra-
leigh was even then urging war. He also wrote a
letter denouncing Cecil, James' chief officer and ad-
viser and one who was then privily receiving five
thousand crowns a year from the Spanish Government.
July 17. Was arrested on the charge of treasonable
conspiracy with the Spanish Government.
July 18. Was imprisoned in the Tower to await his trial
which could not commence at once on account of the
great plague which was then raging in London.
Nov. 17. He was brought to trial at Winchester on the
charge of high treason and convicted on the same day.
The prosecution was conducted by the famous law
writer, Coke. Raleigh plead his own cause, the laws
of England not allowing him to have counsel for his
defense; nor was he confronted by the witnesses
against him. The jury was packed, the testimony
against him was perjured, the Court was subservient
to the Crown, and at least one member of it, Cecil,
was in the pay of the Spanish Government. Immed-
iately after his conviction he was roundly abused from
the bench by Chief Justice Popham, who presided over
the Court, and then sentenced to death. But he was
not then executed. Popular favor which he had sac-
rificed some years before by acepting from Queen
Elizabeth a monopoly of the tax on wines and liquors,
was in a measure now restored to him on account of
his persecution and misfortunes. England would
not believe, though a court record had spoken the lie,
that the great enemy of Spain who had spoiled her by
land and ruined her prestige on the seas, would betray
into her power his own country.
Dec. 10. His sentence was commuted to imprisonment.
The man of action and exploit was now caged for his
long confinement. He was stripped of his vast pos-
sessions that they might enrich the fawning favorites
of the king.
1604 In prison he took up the study of physical sciences,
especially the properties of medicinal herbs, and his
cell became the resort of learned men. He was visited
by those concerned in his plans for colonizing America,
Thk Raleigh Calendar. 59
among them his friend Hariot who wrote the most
intelligent account of Lane's expedition. Hackluyt,
patriot and historian, also the principal assignee of
his franchises and interests in "Virginia," more than
any other man caught the spirit of his enterprise and
kept popular interest alive, until King James was
forced by public sentiment or tempted by his own lust
for fame and dominion to give his sanction to sending
a colony to America.
1606 The most persistent efforts were made to set Raleigh
at liberty, as his colonizing scheme again grew into
favor. Queen Anne, of England, and the King of
Denmark, and James' oldest son, Henry, used their
utmost efforts in his behalf, but without avail.
1606 Apr. 22. James granted a new charter to the two
companies who now proposed to undertake the coloni-
zation qf "Virginia." Among the four named corpor-
ators of the Company which settled Jamestown stands
the name of Raleigh Gilbert, doubtless a nephew of the
great explorer, after whom he was named. The treas-
urer and general manager of this company was Sir
Thomas Smith who had acted in the same capacity
over the company by which the settlements on Roanoke
Island were effected: Of the nineteen corporators of
the "City of Raleigh" which John White was enjoined
to build in 1587 , ten were among those who subscribed
to the Jamestown expedition. Raleigh in prison, the
men he had inspired were still the chief promoters of
American colonization.
1607 Jan. 1. The expedition under Captain Newport
known as the Jamestown expedition set sail for Roan-
oke Island, but was driven by a storm into the Chesa-
peake Bay, the shores of which, twenty years before,
Raleigh had designated for the settlement of the lost
colony. This Chesapeake country was within the
limits of the territory granted him by Queen Eliza-
beth, and his grant was kept in force in the hands of
his assignees until it was revoked by James to pave the
way for that monarch to possess himself of the fruits
of Raleigh's labors and at the same time belittle so
much of his fame as he could not appropriate.
60 Historical and Literary Activities in N. C.
The people of the nineteen States and five parts of
States embraced in the territory of Raleigh's "Vir-
ginia" on this side of the Mississippi,, owe to him their
first debt of gratitude for the land they occupy. It is
fitting that North Carolina, on whose soil his far-
reaching experiments were made, should have taken
the lead in erecting suitable memorials of his labors;
but the other States, and Virginia especially, should
be proud to follow the State which more than a cen-
tury ago named its capital in his honor.
16-14 Published his "History of the World" a book com-
mended by Cromwell and studied by Milton. Ra-
leigh's royal persecutor objected to its circula-
tion on the ground that its criticism of the an-
cient Assyrian kings and of Henry VIII of England
might be construed into a reflection on James' own
government. The notion that only a king was com-
petent to sit in judgment on the conduct of a king,
with the similar fallacies inherited from him by his
son Charles I, cost the latter first his crown and then
his head.
1616 March 19. Was released from the Tower after an im-
prisonment for more than twelve years, broken in
health and no longer fitted to endure the activities
which had made him famous, but in spirit he was as
undaunted as ever, and immediately began to fit out
an expedition to America.
His enthusiasm seemed to suit the purposes of the
king who was bent on marrying his son Charles into
the royal family of Spain and hoped that the fear of
the great "sea-rover" might succeed where diplomacy
had failed.
1617 June 12. Sailed out of Plymouth harbor on his last
voyage for America. His expedition had been partly
appointed by his enemies and not without design:
One ship deserted him before he was half across the
Atlantic ; another was lost in a storm ; others still were
hulks of disease commanded by disloyal captains and
manned by men whom he called mere "scum." There
is no better picture in English history than that of
this old man, broken in health, racked by fever, long
The Raleigh Calendar. 61
separated from the kindred spirits of his dauntless
manhood, steadily setting his face toward the sunset
to make his last play for a continent which the vanity
and treachery of his king cast away.
Nov. 17. Anchored in the mouth of Cayenne River
in the Island of Trinidad. On the mainland the
I udians still rememhered him though it was more than
twenty years since his first visit, and flocked to the
coast when they heard he had returned.
Himself too feeble to lead, he dispatched his son
and his old friend Captain Keymis, with a party of
men, up the Oronoko to search for a mine the Spanish
and the Indians had told him existed somewhere in
that region.
Dec. 31. The party were attacked by the Spanish near
San Thome and in the fighting which followed the
younger Raleigh was killed at the head of his com-
mand.
1618 The Oronoko expedition returned and brought with it
the certain tidings of its failure and disasters and also
a letter which proved that the king of England had
warned the Spanish Government of Raleigh's ap-
proach. The great navigator saw now that he had
been betrayed into a death trap.
Reproached by him for his ill-success, Keymis com-
mitted suicide. In a counsel of the remaining cap-
tains, Raleigh proposed that they revictual the ships
in Virginia and return to search for the mine, but two
of them deserted, leaving him without sufficient force
to contend with his daily increasing enemies. All
his resources exhausted at last he sailed homeward
by way of New Foundland, but there is no record
that he passed near enough to our shores to behold the
land he had spent more than a million dollars to
colonize as measured in the currency of these times.
June 21. Arrived at Plymouth in his flag-ship the
Destiny and shortly thereafter was arrested. The
king held out his execution as an inducement to the
proposed marriage of his son Charles to the Spanish
Tnfanta. The wily Spaniards were shrewd enough
62 Historical and Literary Activities in N. C.
to have the execution come off first, and the marriage
never come off at all.
Oct. 15. The king of Spain declined James' offer to
turn Raleigh over to him to be executed, but requested
that the business be done by the English King, and
as soon as possible.
Oct. 28. Raleigh was condemned to die on the old
charge of treasonable conspiracy with the govern-
ment whose head was now demanding his death for the
invasion of Spanish territory.
Oct. 29. Was executed in the 67th year of his age,
Sir Walter Raleigh, soldier, navigator, explorer, au-
thor, poet, philosopher and patriot, the statesman who
wrested our continent from Spain, the pioneer who
first planted the seeds of law and liberty and Anglo-
Saxon civilization in America, the hero-martyr of
English colonization on our shores.
His name and fame are indissolubly linked with North
Carolina. He made the first chapter of her history, which
is also the first chapter of Anglo-American history, and one
day the English speaking race on this continent, with the
Carolinians in the lead, will call its brethren across the seas
and go back to the Island where it began its conquering
march to do honor to the man who gave himself and all he
had for its advancement.
NORTH CAROLINA POETS -THEIR WORK
Address by Kkv HIGHT MOORE Before Fourth Annual Meet-
ing of the State Literary and IIihtohk/ai, Association,
12 N.\ KMIJi:!!, 1908.
There is perhaps no section of America that can furnish
;. richer background for exalted poetry than .Yorth Carolina.
The opening leaves of her history tell of the famous Raleigh,
the mysterious "Croatan," little Virginia Dare and Flora
McDonald. The Mecklenburg Declaration was the first fear-
less cry for American liberty, and Alamance was the "first
fought field of freedom." The heroism of Carolinians was
exhibited in the wars with England and Mexico, and when
reluctantly North Carolina espoused the cause of the Confed-
eracy "she furnished more soldiers than she had voters
and lost more men than any other Southern State." There
is also poetic inspiration in the charm of her scenery
" From Mitchell, the pride of the mountains,
To Hatteras, the dread of the sea."
But despite our wealth of poetic theme, we are twitted with
the declaration that our State is a land without a poetry, a
solitude without "a warbler of woodnotes wild." Sift the
jingles by your army of rhymesters, our critics say, and you
will have little genuine poetry left. Even so; let a just
and fair criticism be meted out upon our writers of verse
it is precisely what we have needed for long. But the decap-
itation of all our poets at one blow can be done only by a
critic who is sadly lacking in either insight or information.
He probably is unaware of the existence of more than fifty
volumes to the credit of our poets, at least a dozen of which
embody genuine poetry. He may not know that a few of our
bards have won high praise from the foremost literary critics
in America, or possibly he is unable to appreciate such stir-
ring lines as Holden's "Hatteras," Fuller's "The Last Look,"
Boner's "Poe's Cottage at Fordham," Sledd's "The Chil-
dren," or Stockard's "Homer." But the fact remains, North
Carolina has a poetry of her own ; some of her bards have
64 Historical and Literary Activities in N. C.
sung gracefully and nobly; and she may well be proud of
them.
VERSES UNINSFIRED.
And yet we readily grant that the mass of Carolina verse
is uninspired ; many of our Tar Heel melodies are far from
melodious. And when a Korth State poetaster strikes a dis-
cordant note he makes a noise one is not likely to forget.
More than once the Charlotte Observer has sent a titter across
the State by a review of "original pomes" by native versifiers
from the author of "The Balsam Groves of the Grandfather
Mountain," to the songster who nests in the wire-grass of the
lowlands. Sometime ago Charity and Children of Thomas-
ville was the victim of a letter containing two specimens of
verse one "A Sketch of Drunkness," and the other on "The
Lovely Little Pet Dog" with the following unpunctuated
directions : "Editor please publish these two peases in
poetry give the name of compositioner in your paper let us
have a copy at elams." A correspondent of the Goldsboro
Headlight wrote that paper that he had "decided to launch
out in the literary business" and inquired "if there's a market
for poetical toasts at receptions and social gatherings." He
further wrote: "I don't want anybody to buy a cat in the
bag, so I herewith send samples of my work throwed off on
the spur of the moment." About the best of the samples was
as follows :
" Here's to the health of Silas Jones,
He is a man nobody owns,
Mighty few people can break his bones."
He concluded his letter saying: "If you want any obit-
uaries on people that's dead* and gone, I can fill them too at
moderate rates. All T want out of life is a living." Prob-
ably surpassing either of these lovers of the muse was yet
another whose effusion finally came to the light of print in
the columns of the New Bern Journal under the following
card : "Dear Sir : I sent you a poem last week and asked
you to publish it in your paper. You declined and returned
it to me with the crushing reply that T was no poet, and that
you could turn out better poetry out of a sausage mill. Xow
I won't be crushed and T propose to show up your attempt to
J
North Carolina Poets and Their Work. 65
throttle bubbling genius. Publish this card and the follow-
ing poem in your columns and charge to me at your advertis-
ing rates." Upon such a back-ground as this we could hardly
criticise the sophomore who taking the Latin sentence "Poeta
nascitur non fit" is said to have translated it 'The poet is
nasty and not fitten."
But aside from such froth there is more serious and ambi-
tious work which is lacking in poetic fire. Perhaps as many
as twelve or fifteen volumes of native verse have been the work
of authors and authoresses not out of their teens ; and most of
their pages we read in a vain search for one inspiring thought
or line. A poetess hailing from the vicinity of Wilmington
who is said to have published two volumes of her work at her
own expense was the butt of much merriment two or three
years ago in the New York and Norfolk papers as well as in
our own State press. And there have been men of real abil-
ity in other departments of thought and life who have been
quickest of all to lament their early poetic escapades. The
author of "Francis Herbert and Other Poems," more distin-
guished in law than in poetry, sought to recall his volume
from the hands of every purchaser and to destroy it. Dr.
Thomas Wilson, of New Bern, wrote a volume in early life
but later being more skilled with pills than with poems he
threw a friend's copy of his poems into the fire with words of
deprecation. So great a man as Dr. Deems became was
guilty of writing a small volume of poems before he was
twenty. The magazine in which he expected a most appre-
ciative notice is reported to have contained the brief and
scathing comment: "The young writer is advised to take to
the measles or whooping cough, but do not take to writing
verse."
THE LIONS IN THE WAY.
So in any adequate review of the poetic literature of the
State Ave must reckon with a great deal of matter ordinary
and sub-ordinary. But. the fact is that our poets have had to
encounter many lions in the way. For one thing, they have
had to struggle for a living and have had little time for court-
ing the muse. As a result, the divine afflatus has escaped
through their pores rather than their pens. And as to re-
5
66 Historical and Literary Activities in N. C.
numeration, who ever heard of a publisher buying a manu-
script volume of poems by a North Carolinian ? Probably
not one was ever undertaken independently by a publisher.
It is easy to believe that some of our best authors have pub-
lished their verses at actual financial loss ; others have barely
come out even ; none have made money. While some of our
later bards have been paid handsomely for fugitive pieces,
yet the rule is that in dollars and cents Xorth Carolina poetry
doesn't pay.
Again, it must be confessed that our best singers have been
received with scant popular appreciation; seldom an expres-
sion of encouragement and never an encore. One could
hardly say that even the literary public in the State is in-
clined to native verse and of course the masses are quite un-
aware of its extent and value. The people's judgment and
patronage of home verse has not been such as to stimulate its
production. To only a limited extent has Mrs. Clarke's hope
been realized that the best of native verse will be dear to
North Carolinians "as the note of the mocking bird in our
native woods is sweeter to the ear of patriotism than the songs
of the nightingale in foreign climes."
Moreover, our existent poetic literature has been the victim
^f poor critical judgment. Under proper criticism the true
poet is spurred to higher nights of poesy; he does better work
when he knows that discriminating eyes are following the
movements of his pen. But hitherto the Carolina poetic
barque has encountered danger between the Scylla and Cha-
rvbdis of fulsome praise and indiscriminate censure. On the
one Land he has been flattered by a friend or two less endowed
with poetic insight than personal friendship, and on the other
he has been wounded by the blade of a too-sweeping disap-
proval. True and thorough criticism would greatly help the
oause of native verse.
Not to mention any other,- we may note the lack of artistic
literary training as accounting in part for the rarity of real
literature among us. Our poets have generally exhibited
more heart than mind. Nearly always their feelings have
rung true, but their forms of expression have too often been
tame, insipid, lacking in freshness and in fire. Tt is not due
to paucity of poetic materials nor so much to intellectual
North C'apouna Poets and their Wokk. 67
mediocrity or limited poetic power as to deficiencies in liter-
ary training. The defect may be traced partly to our schools
and colleges. Then has been wanting also the clash of kin-
dred spirits in sympathetic critical association. The individ-
ual discipline of mind and of work which insures that each
piece is brought to the highest possible refinement before it
is rushed into print are also to be taken into account. When
these things are remedied, we shall enter the era of a richer
and more extended literature.
ON THE SLOPES OF PARNASSUS.
And vet in spite of headless rhymesters and heartless critics
and mountainous difficulties a few of our writers have un-
doubtedly ascended the slopes of Parnassus. It was fifty
years ago and before the bulk of our best poetry was written
that Mrs. Clarke in her preface to "Wood- Notes" said :
"Though we may not have produced any great poets still these
(footprints of the muse) will show that we possess some of
'The poets that are sown
By nature; men endowed with highest gifts,
The vision and faculty divine."'
There is a much larger circle of native poets than our
people are aware of, and many of them have sung sweetly,
once in a while sublimely. The note of patriotism sounded
by Judge William Gaston in "The Old North State Forever"
is repeated by our school children from Murphy to Manteo,
and is sung by scattered Carolinians the world over. The
great poem on "Ilatteras" by Joseph W. Holden was pro-
nounced by General Clingman the finest of Southern poems,
by Walter H. Page the best poem in sentiment and tone yet
written in the South, and it was included by Longfellow in his
collection of the best American poems. Mrs. Frances C.
Tiernan "Christian Reid" though author of many popu-
lar novels has also written excellent verse entitling her to a
high place among our poets. Mrs. Elizabeth Oakes Smith,
native of Maine, intimate friend of Longfellow, wife of Seba
Smith (the Major Jack Downing of literature,) and a lit-
erary star of the northern galaxy, spent her last years in this
State and she rests near "The Anchorage," her adopted home
68 Historical and Literary Activities in N. C.
at Hollywood. Nixon P. Clingman wrote numerous poems
of a high order ; in fact, Mr. Joseph E. Robinson's sketch in
"A Poet and his Songs/' which contains fifty of Mr. Cling-
man's poems calls him "the Robert Burns of North Caro-
lina."
Not to swing further around the circle we may stop for
brief biographical and literary mention in alphabetical order
the half dozen poets who have thus far written most and best
within our borders our greater poets upon whom our present
poetic reputation stands.
John Henry Boner was born in Salem Jan. 31, 1845. He
received a good academic education, learned the printer's
trade, and later became editor in his home town and in
Asheville. He was reading clerk of the State Constitutional
Convention in 1868. and chief clerk in the House of Repre-
sentatives the following year. At thirty-five he married Miss
Lottie Smith, of Raleigh. In 1871 he moved to Washington
City where he spent sixteen years in the Government Printing
Office. In 1887 he moved to New York where he did literary
work as a member of the editorial staffs on the Century Dic-
tionary, Appleton's Cyclopedia, Library of American Litera-
ture, and Standard Dictionary; he was also literary editor
of the New York World, and later editor of the Literary Di-
gest. Owing to failing health he abandoned his New York
career, returned for a time to his native State, and again drift-
ed to his former post in the national capital where he died
March 6, 1903. Mr. Boner was a genuine poet and was rec-
ognized as such at home and abroad. His first work, "Whis-
pering Pines," published in 1883, was cordially received by
the critics and the public. "The Song of the Old Mill Wheel,"
"Bells of Christmas," and "We Walked Among the Whisper-
ing Pines," are some of the poems in the volume which one
will cherish many a day after reading them. In 1901 Mr.
Boner published a pamphlet of his verse under the title of
"Some New Poems;" this embodied, I understand, most of
his work in the Century and a few pieces from other maga-
zines. And just before his death he completed a collection
of verse which has since appeared under the title of "Boner's
Lyrics ;" it embodies in the author's view the best of all the
North Carolina Poets and Their Work. 69
work he did and certainly entitles him to an abiding place in
OUT Slate literature.
Mary Bayard Clarke, daughter of Thomas P. Devereux,
was born in Raleigh, May 12, 1829. She took at home ondet
a governess the same course pursued by her brother at Prince-
ton and was therefore highly educated. Tn 1848 she was
married by her uncle Bishop Leonidas Polk at his home near
New Orleans to Capt. William J. Clarke, graduate of our
State University, Confederate officer, later judge and literatus
in North Carolina. She and her husband were close friends
of Gen. and Mrs. Robert E. Lee. Her culture was enriched
by travel, particularly wintering in Cuba and six or seven
years in Texas. Her later life was spent in New Bern
where she died March 31, 1886, just two months after the
death of her husband. At sixteen she wrote her first poem
"Nemo Semper Felix Est" which her son (who left a type-
written sketch of her life) considered rarely equaled by later
and more studied composition. She herself considered "Un-
der the Lava" her best poem ; it is truly a fine piece of work
but certainly "The Triumph of Spring" is its equal, many
would say superior. In 1845 Mrs. Clarke made the first
compilation of State verse "Wood Notes; or Carolina
Carols : A Collection of North Carolina Poetry." It appear-
ed in two volumes and contained one hundred and eighty-two
poems by sixty writers, "Tenella" herself in eight poems
furnishing the best work in the volumes. Her second work
appeared in 1866, contained sixty poems, and was entitled
"Mosses From a Rolling Stone; or Idle Moments of a Busy
Woman." The last of her works was a long poem of sixty-
five pages entitled "Clytie and Zenobia, or, The Lily and the
Palm." It was published in 1871. Though other women
have written, some of them well, yet no other has yet ap-
proached Mrs. Clarke in either quality or volume of work ;
beyond question "Tenella" still remains the queen poetess
among Carolina bards.
Edwin Wiley Fuller was a native of Louisburg where he
was born Nov. 30, 1847. "The Village on the Tar" was his
first published poem and it evinces the talent later shown.
He entered our State University in 1864 and spent two years.
In 1867 he went to the University of Virginia to spend a
70 Historical and Literary Activities in N. C.
year. While there he contributed to the University Maga-
zine "The Angel in the Cloud," then covering only a few
pages. It is said to have won high praise from such men
as Dr. Scheie De Vere, Dr. Gildersleeve, Prof. Holmes and
others. It is interesting, to note that he once contemplated
entering the ministry but his father's failing health bound
him to business and thus he continued merchandising the re-
mainder of his days. In 1871 he revised and published
"Angel in the Cloud," a poetic and philosophic statement and
refutation of heart-questionings. His preface requests a
complete reading if any at all and then "In the bulrush ark
of self-confidence, pitched with faith" he commits his "first
born to the Nile of public opinion; whether to perish by
crocodile critics or bask in the palace of favor the future
alone must determine. May Pharaoh's daughter find it!"
And so it came to pass ; his work is regarded as the most orig-
inal long poem ever produced in the State and he is esteemed
our poet-philosopher. No other work has passed through
foUr editions in ten years as was the case with "Angel in the
Cloud." The third and fourth editions contain a sketch of
the author and additional poems of which "The Last Look"
and "Out in the Rain" are rare gems the crystalized tears
of a deeply bereft parent. With only the plan of a new poem
worked out which gave promise of surpassing that upon which
his fame rests and with a memorial ode upon his lips his
poet's soul passed hence April 22, 1876.
Theophilus Hunter Hill, native of Wake county, was born
Oct. 31, 1836. Though admitted to the bar in 1858 he never
practiced, his mind inclining him more to literary work than
to law. He did some editorial work and was at one time
State Librarian, but his fame was won through his poetical
writings. His first volume, "Hesper and Other Poems" was
published in Raleigh in 1861 under copyright of the Confed-
erate States of America. In 1869 a second volume appeared ;
it was simply entitled "Poems" and was published by Hurd
and Houghton, New York. His third volume "Passion
Flower and Other Poems" and the only one of his works not
out of print, I believe was published in 1883 by P. W.
Wiley, of Raleigh. The closing days of his life were spent,
I have heard, in final revision of such of his poetical writings
North Carolina Poets and their Work. 71
as he esteemed worthy of preservation. It is much to be
regretted that he was unable to complete his work as did his
dear friend Mr. Honor. Perhaps a fitting collection may yet
be made, for generous as has been the reception of his verse
it is entitled to yet wider recognition. It is marked by state-
liness and reverence and every piece is manifestly the product
not only of the poet's soul but of his intellect as well. His
lines on "Sunset" reveal him as a sympathetic observer and
painter of nature. The memorial verses entitled "Willie"
are remarkably sweet and tender. "The Star above the Man-
ger" has become a recitation classic in almost every school
room in the State. His work throughout bears the stamp of
a pious nature. Shortly before his death June 29, 1901, he
wrote his last poem, "At Eventide," the closing stanza of
which fittingly and representatively crowns a worthy poetic
career :
" As of old, ever new the sweet story
Of Christ the Redeemer of men;
When grace is transfigured to glory
May we sing it together again."
Benjamin Sledd, Professor of English in Wake Forest
College, though native of Virginia, has produced his poetry
on North Carolina soil where he married and where the main
part of his professional life has thus far been spent. Two
interesting volumes have lately come from his pen. "From
Cliff and Scaur" appeared in 1897 from the presses of the
Putnam's, New York and London. Reviewing the volume in
the Biblical Recorder Editor J. W. Bailey said: "His lines
are marble like in finish, in refinement, and in purity. Wheth-
er he plays upon some soulful instrument or draws the picture
in the mind's eye or touches the silvery strings of the lyre
of love or sends forth to God a prayer from life's deeps, there
is ever that same genuineness, refinement, delicacy, and sim-
plicity which mark the artist." Mr. Sledd's second volume
was published by the Gorham Press of Boston as number one
of the Arcadian Library. As its title; "Watchers of the
Hearth" indicates, it centers around the fire-side with its
child-treasures, though there is a genuine sympathy with
nature, a few touches of national interest, and poems rem-
iniscent. By competent critics this second volume is regard-
72 Historical and Literary Activities in N. C.
ed as registering a distinct advance upon the first "as regards
both workmanship and outlook upon life." Reviewing it in
the News and Observer Prof. W. L. Poteat says: "In the
dainty volume before us a genuine poet heart finds utterance.
These poems are not echoes, but the unconstrained and free
outpourings of a singularly delicate and tender soul which
sings its own song and not another's, and sings truly because
it has lived deeply." Another reviewer says: "One is invar-
iably impressed with two qualities in Prof. Sledd's poems;
the crystal purity of their form, perfect to the last word and
note ; and the utter genuineness of his sentiments."
Henry Jerome Stockard is a native of Alamance county
and has given his life to the cause of culture. As educator
he has held important positions at Graham, Chapel Hill,
Monroe, Fredericksburg, Va., and now at Raleigh. For
years he has been writing verse for such magazines as the
Century, Cosmopolitan, Belford's, Harper s, Kate Field's
Washington, Ladies' Home Journal, and The Sunday School
Times. He has also been represented in collections of poetry
North and South; "Select Poetry of North Carolina," for
example, having more poems from his pen than from any
other writer. In 1897 his "Fugitive Lines" appeared, the
Putnam's being the publishers. Many are the golden opin-
ions won by his verse. The Washington Post some years
ago said : "North Carolina has a promising poet in Henry
Jerome Stockard. He has written some notable verses."
Edmund Clarence Stedman declares his sonnets "good, in-
tellectual, and with effective diction." The Charlotte Ob-
server considers "he is perhaps the best writer of verse in the
State." Dr. T. B. Kingsbury says of the poems he has read,
"They are replete with tender and moving and exalted
thought, as with melting harmonies." Frank L. Stanton in
Atlanta Constitution mentioning Mr. Stockard's visit to the
Exposition there a few years ago added : "We repeat that
no one to-day is writing better sonnets than those which bear
Mr. Stockard's signature if indeed he is equaled in this,
the most difficult form of verse * * * There are laurels
for this poet of the Old North State ; the bays are blooming
for him from far away."
North Carolina Poets and Their Work. 73
i1ik best is yet to be.
As a final word we are glad to note the present poetic revi-
val in North Carolina. It is safe to say that more chaste and
elegant verse is now appearing than at any period hitherto
in our history. Professors Stockard and Sledd are just in
the prime of their manhood, both located in congenial chairs
of literature, and both widely recognized as poets of real
ability; and from them we may expect even sweeter notes
than those already sung. A constellation of younger poets
has arisen and is already brightening our literary sky. For
example, John Charles McNeill has been lately appearing
in the Century and other prominent periodicals. The pen
of Leonard Charles Van Noppen is also rich with promise.
The same may be said of Miss Sue M. Whitaker whose poem
on "Finis" is sufficient to entitle her to distinction. Misses
Dickson and Armfield have each in dainty volumes given us
the earliest buds of their poetic genius which promise still
richer fragrance in the coming days. Others also are striking
melodies from their lyres; after awhile we may listen for a
chorus of undiscordant song.
The educational revival in the multitude of its blessings
is sure to strengthen and spread the wings of poetic fancy;
our lofty souls will better learn the what and how of the poetic
art. The easier industrial conditions will permit them time
to feel deeply and express nobly. The day of keener criti-
cism and more discriminating appreciation is quite at hand
and with it a stronger stimulus to the production of purer,
sweeter verse. The much-talked-of provincialism which is
credited with wet-blanketing Tar Heel genius, if it ever exist-
ed at all, is becoming a thing of the past. The literary atmos-
phere is more bracing, fuller of intellectual ozone, more invig-
orating than in recent years. What Mr. Hamilton Wright
Mabie says of Southern poetry in general {International
Monthly, Feb. 1902) applies also to the work of North Caro-
lina poets: "There is the charm of the southern tempera-
ment warmth, grace, power of abandon, generosity of spirit ;
qualities which re-enforced by adequate artistic training and
adequate ideas promise rich fruitage in the poetry of the
future."
Then let our verse-writers catch the inspiration of the hour.
74 Historical and Literary Activities in N. C.
Let them pigeon-hole or burn all sickly rhymes and valueless
verse. Let them coin at their mints only the precious metal
of lofty thought and it will become widely current in human
life. Let the bees of Hymettus with busier hum gather gen-
uine honey from the flowers of fancy blooming in our midst.
Then our poets now living as well as bards unborn will verify
our prophecy of Carolina poets that bright as the past has
been the best is yet to be.
NORTH CAROLINA BIBLIOGRAPHY, 1902.
HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL.
Read at the Tiiikd Annual Mektino op the State Literary and
Historical Association, by Prof. D. H. HILL,
January 23, 1903.
Coincident with the great educational revival now blessing
North Carolina, there has come throughout the State a quiet,
apparently self -born, but nevertheless wide-spread re-birth of
literature. An epoch of book making has fairly set in.
Happily, too, these books for the most part are not publica-
tions of poor stuff by hasty compilers endowed only with
Trollopeian beeswax. They are the outcome of scholarly,
well-equipped, conscience-mindful men and women whose
work has grown under their hands because their lives are full
and their brains aglow with vital thought.
It falls to my lot to-night to present so far as I have been
able to collect a brief synopsis of what for the past year these
writers have done in one department, the department of his-
tory and its twin sister, biography. As this is the first an-
ual report made to this society, I shall overstep the- year line
a trifle and include some books that were publishel in 1901.
I shall also include some books that were finished so far as
writing goes in 1902, but that are yet in press or aAvaiting
a publisher. I shall mention first the books, then pamphlets.
Foremost in volume of historical work is the first president
of this Society, Chief Justice Walter Clark, whose industry
has kept pace with his rare attainments. Taking up the
wearisome task of editing and publishing the Colonial
Records as this love labor fell from the dying hands of Col.
Saunders, Judge Clark published last year the tenth volume
of this series this being the twentieth volume of the set.
Two more volumes and an index will complete the set. Tt
is needless to say to this body that these massive books are
invaluable repositories of material for historical students.
Tn addition, Judge Clark, with infinite patience and labor,
completed the editing, revising and publishing of the five
volumes of Confederate Regimental Histories provided for
76 Historical and Literary Activities in N. C.
by State appropriation. These volumes neatly printed by
E. M. Uzzell, of Raleigh, constitute the noblest memorial yet
reared to the endurance and dauntless heroism of the soldiers
of our State.
One of the vice-presidents of this Society, Dr. Spencer
Bassett, of Trinity College, edited a sumptuous edition of the
"Writings of Col. William Byrd, of Virginia, Esq." This
exceedingly handsome volume is from the presses of Double-
day, Page and Company. To scholarly editing Dr. Basset
adds an eighty page biography of Col. Byrd. Dr. Basset
has also contributed several historical articles to the pages of
the South Atlantic Quarterly , an ably managed journal that
he has found time during the past year to establish and man-
age.
President J. H. Clewell, of Salem Female Academy, has
contributed a valuable book, "The History of Wachovia in
North Carolina." This four hundred page illustrated book
is also from the press of Doubleday, Page and Company.
"The volume is based upon researches made in the original
manuscripts of the Salem archives and represents a work of
translation and study covering five or six years. The book
contains the history of this Colony during the French and
Indian wars; the struggle between the Regulators and Gov-
ernor Tryon ; the stirring times of the Revolution, with all of
which Wachovia was associated." . The founding of the town
and the academy is also described.
Joseph Alexander Tillinghast published under the auspices
of the American Economic Association an exhaustive study
of the Negro Race in America. The volume, published by
the Macmillans, contains two hundred and thirty-one pages
and a three-page bibliography: The book which is written
with laborious painstaking, begins with the Negro in Africa,
describes his social and political life there, and then follows
the African to this country and outlines his life here.
Mr. Cicero W. Harris, now living in Washington, D. C,
issued during the past year, through the Lippincotts, the first
volume of his "Sectional Struggle." This is a handsomely
printed book of three hundred and forty-three pages and is
the result of many years of study. After the introductory
chapter the author devotes one hundred and forty-five pages
to tariff issues; eighty three pages to the debates of 1830;
North Carolina Bibliography, 1902. 77
and one hundred and thirty to Nullification and the Compro-
mise of 1833.
Rev. Jno. W. Stagg, D. D., of Charlotte, has just sent out
from the Press of the Presbyterian Publication Committee
a historic and polemic study of the teaching of Calvin, Twisse
and Edwards. This book which is the result of research and
clear thinking, contains one hundred and sixty-three pages.
Dr. R. B. Creecy, of Elizabeth City, sent out for young
folk and for old folk with young hearts, his "Tales of a
Grandfather." These tarheel stories and incidents that are,
I trust safely lodged in the libraries of every member of this
Society, cover three hundred and one small pages and were
published by Edwards & Broughton, of Raleigh, N. C.
Somewhat along the same line, but for younger readers,
comes a little book written by Supt. W. C. Allen of the
Waynesville schools. This is called "North Carolina His-
tory Stories," and contains two hundred pages. Many of our
schools are using this book as a text book, and I trust that it
may be the means of awakening a love of State history in our
children.
Mr. D. A. Tompkins, of Charlotte, has published four or
five valuable technical works in the past two or three years.
Among these is a large volume of four hundred and ninety-
four pages on "Cotton and Cotton Oil." Several chapters
of this book are devoted to historical matter. Chapter second
for example, discusses the introduction of the cotton plant
into America and the influence of the cultivation of the plant
upon slavery; chapter three is devoted to an account of how
cotton was prepared for the market by slave labor; chapter
four contains a vivid picture of the organization and social
and industrial life of the plantation before the Civil War.
Mr. Tompkins is his own publisher.
Mr. James O. Carr, of the Wilmington bar, edited and pub-
lished a little volume of the letters of William Dickson.
These old letters give interesting glimpses of N"orth Carolina
in the early days.
Professor C. L. Raper, of the State University, is the
author of "North Carolina: a Royal Province." This is an
octavo volume of seventy-three pages from the press of the
University. It discusses the government under the Crown,
78 Historical and Literary Activities in N. C.
the Council, the Lower House, the conflict between the execu-
tive and the legislative branches. Professor Raper has also
revised the first edition, of his "Church and Private Schools
of North Carolina."
The rare success of the North Carolina Booklet was one of
the noteworthy features of the year. Its publication was
doubtfully but bravely undertaken by the North Carolina
Society of the Daughters of the Revolution. These ladies
were singularly happy in the selection of their editors.
Mrs. Hubert Haywood and Miss Martha H. Haywood, whose
unflagging energy and business tact ran its monthly edition
up to six hundred copies. This little magazine presented
from May, 1901, to May, 1902, twelve single booklets on
North Carolina history. These books varied in size from
Dr. Creecy's seven page one on "Betsy Dowdy's Ride" to
James Sprunt's vivid one hundred and twelve page booklet
or rather book on "Tales of the Cape Fear Blockade." The
Booklet has started upon its second year and every one hopes
that it may grow in length of days and extent of usefulness.
The James Sprunt monographs of State history under the
supervision of that distinguished veteran in patriotic work.
Dr. Kemp P. Battle, are commendable additions to our his-
torical literature. So far three of these monographs have
been issued.
Mr. Moses N. Amis, of Raleigh, has put much useful infor-
mation in a little book called "Historic Raleigh."
II. BOOKS FINISHED OR ABOUT IN 1902 BUT NOT YET
THROUGH .THE PRESS.
Dr. W. E. Dodd's elaborate Life of Nathaniel Macon will,
I am told, go to press this year. Dr. Dodd has been engaged
upon this work for some years.
Mr. Marshall DeLancey Haywood, Librarian of the Agri-
cultural and Mechanical College, is now reading the proof
of a large book upon Governor William Tryon and his admin-
istration in the Province of North Carolina, (1765-1771).
Dr. Stephen B. Weeks announces as in preparation "The
Life and Times of Willie P. Mangum, Senator of North
Carolina and President of the United States Senate."
Mrs. W. P. McCorkle, of Savannah, Ga., has in press a
North Carolina Bibliography, 1902. 79
neat little volume of North Carolina history Stories for
children.
Major W. A. Graham, of Lincoln county, is about ready
to publish a biography of his stouthearted grandfather, Gen.
Joseph Graham, of Revolutionary activity. This book will
also include a military study of the Campaigns of Western
North Carolina.
Capt. Robert Graham lias in press a history of the Regu-
lator movement and the Mecklenburg Declaration of Inde-
pendence.
1 >r. J. 13. Alexander, of Charlotte, announces that his his-
tory of Mecklenburg County is now about ready for distribu-
tion.
Mr. D. A. Tompkins is also engaged upon a history of
Mecklenburg County.
Capt, S. A. Ashe in collaboration with his sister, has now
ready for publication a school history of North Carolina.
Miss Adelaide L. Fries is engaged upon a history of the
Moravian settlement at Savannah.
Prof. C. L. Raper writes me that he now has ready for
the Macmillan press an octavo volume of 250 pages upon
the subject "North Carolina; a study in English Colonial
Government." 1663-1775.
in. historical pamphlets printed during 1902:
The Guilford Battle Ground Company printed Mr. Thomas
Pittman's address on Nathaniel Macon. This pamphlet con-
tains nineteen pages.
Mr. D. A. Tompkins printed* a fifty-three page pamphlet
on the "Cotton Gin. The history of its Invention." This
contains drawings and specifications of the original gin,
photographs of many old documents connected with the issu-
ing of letters patent and the suits that arose over the patents.
It is an elaborate study of first hand material.
Miss Adelaide L. Fries issued a thirty-three page historical
sketch of Salem Female Academy.
Mr. Marshall- Delancey Haywood contributed an address
on "Col. Edward Buncombe." This was delivered before the
North Carolina Society of the Cincinnati, and was published
bv that bodv.
80 Historical and Literary Activities in N. C.
Under the title of "Old Brunswick Pilgrimages," the
Society of Colonial Dames printed in 1901 a beautiful
pamphlet containing four addresses delivered at the ruins
of St. Phillips's church. These addresses are as follows:
"Early Explorers of the Cape Fear," by Alfred Moore
Waddell; "Old Brunswick," by James Sprunt; "Defense
of Fort Anderson," by E. S. Martin; "Spencer Compton,
Earl of Wilmington," by James Sprunt.
Now in conclusion a practical question : What can we do
to foster this new literature ? I offer these two suggestions :
First, buy and pay cash for each worthy book written by
a North Carolinian.
Second, Read these books and commend them to others.
NORTH CAROLINA VERSE IN 1902.
Am-K'.ss bt Pro*. BBNRT JEROME 8TOCKARD, ubfobi the
THIRD Annual Mkkting of the State Literary ano
Historical Association, January 23, 1903.
If I may be allowed the figure, our lamented Theo. H.
TTill was the first singer to nest in the wilderness. From
the spring time to the winter of his age he cheered and
strengthened us with his minstrelsy. There were notes
sounded before his, but they were those of migratory birds,
[Hissing the night, thrilled by the morning, and away. Then,
later, our beloved lyrist, John Henry Boner, joined him ;
and, for a long time, these two were the only distinct voices
in our State. But now a veritable chorus is about us,- and
the solitudes are vocal with music.
Two volumes of verse during a twelve-month, with num-
erous poems in the State papers and, occasionally, in the
magazines, signify, I hope, a new order of things in Xorth
Carolina, the opening of a new era, the rising to a life
on a level above that of mere materialism. As yet these
are only signs, hints, dim suggestions, but it seems to me they
are unmistakable. To carry on the figure there is
"in dark summer dawns
The earliest pipe of half-awakened birds.''
My time will allow only a word here and there. "The
Watchers of the Hearth," as Mr. Sledd calls his second
volume, is a distinct advance upon his first; an advance in
material and in craft. Mr. Sledd writes well in the sonnet,
and shows a decided liking for that most difficult and most
exquisite measure. "To Sappho" is delivered in vigorous
phrase, and observes well the limitations of the form. "Mj
Silent Guest" is a tender touch, and "Isaac" is true to a
beloved past.
"Songs from the Carolina Hills," by Miss Armfield, is a
first venture, I believe, and is a most creditable beginning.
Her note is instinct with life and promise. "Carpe Diem"
6
82 Historical and Literary Activities in N. C.
lias some singing lines ; "Satyr's All" is a thoughtful sonnet,
"well worked out; "Freedom" is a triumphant note. Did
my time permit, I should have no trouble in quoting some
pleasing stanzas from her book. Both these volumes should
find appreciation in our State. Will not this Association
recommend that they and other meritorious work by North
Carolinians be included among the books purchased for our
rural libraries ? In what better way could be done the
double service of encouraging our authors and of acquainting
our people with their works ? A digression at this point
seems to be warranted.
The ignorance that some of our teachers show about the
meagre literature we have produced is deplorable. A little
while ago a professor in one of our colleges, in a lecture on
North Carolina literature, delivered before the students of
another institution, entirely omitted the names of Hill and
Boner, in the discussion of our poetry, gravely criticising the
work of our less known versifiers. This is Hamlet with
Hamlet left out. I heard another professor in our State
and I use the title each time in its strict sense in making
a translation of a sweet little lyric, labor with ox-like skill
to reconcile its figurative to its literal signification. Is it
to be expected that, as a general thing, the students will sur-
pass their masters ? Let our institutions see to it that only
men are in charge of their literary departments who are
themselves at least capable of appreciating aesthetic things
and of interpreting them to their classes. In this way we
shall train up a literature-loving people, out of whose ranks,
here and there, will inevitably come literary-producing men
and women.
There are certainly three volumes of verse by North Caro-
linians ready for publication: one by Mr. Frank Armfield,
a kinsman of the writer already mentioned ; one by Mr. L.
C. VanNoppen ; the third by Mr. J. H. Boner. It has been
n iv privilege to read these in manuscript, and, I believe, they
will prove a permanent addition to our modicum of poetry.
Mr. Armfield's is now in the hands of the printer and will
soon appear. I do not know what steps, if any, have been
taken toward the publication of Mr. Van Noppen's. Mr.
Boner's containing selections from his first volume, "Whis-
pering Pines," together with his later poems, is prepared in
North Carolina Verse in 1902. 83
every detail for the press. The manuscript includes only
what the poet would have survive. It is the work of a lyrist
of exquisite touch. Mr. Boner is, moreover, a critic and a
scholar. He has held important positions in the literary
world, as a member of the editorial staff of the Century
Dictionary, and of the Standard Dictionary, rising to the
editorial chair of The Literary Digest. He has contributed
to the most notable magazines of the country, and his work
has added grace to their pages. Extreme ill health has cut
off his bright career in journalism. Sick and dispirited, he
is, nevertheless, heroically struggling at his former post in
the Government's service at Washington. Boner's lyrics
would be a volume of which any State might justly feel
proud, and would, therefore, tend strongly to redeem us in
the eyes of our sister States. South Carolina has given us
Hayne and Timrod ; Georgia, Lanier and Stanton ; Ken-
tucky, Father Ryan and Prentice ; Virginia, Poe and Thomp-
son. These are some of our nearest neighbors: what of our
own state ? I believe Boner's volume would be a command-
ing note from North Carolina, and I wish that this body
would devise some means by which it might be published.
I do not know in what shape Mr. Hill left his literary
papers, nor what is the outlook for their preservation. He
told me not long before his death that it was his intention
to arrange his work as he would have it exist. His writings
should, by all means, be collected and put into permanent
form. I must seize this chance to say that it was one of the
rarest privileges of my life to know and commune with his
fine spirit. He lived right here in Raleigh ; come and went
among us in his unobtrusive way; but few of us have ever
risen to the serener atmosphere which he breathed.
A most auspicious indication in this new condition of
affairs is the number and surprising excellence of poems
from unsuspected versifiers. It is true Mr. Boner has his
poems in the Century, but so have Mr. L. C. VanXoppen
and Mr. J. C. McNeill. The State papers have published
others quite as good by Dr. McKelway, Rev. Mr. Cade, Mr.
Gilliam. Miss Dickson, and Mrs. Townsend. There are more
still which escape me and which are equally worthy of men-
tion. Dr. McKelway 's "O Little Child of Bethlehem" is
charged with sincere feeling; Mr. Cade's "Tithonus" reveals
84 Historical and Literary Activities in N. C.
a skill in versification and a purity of diction that augur
well; Mr. Gilliam's "Capitol at Washington" is artistic
handiwork; Miss Dickson writes frequently and always fer-
vently ; and Mrs. Townsend has given us one sonnet vitalized
with true feeling. This list is very incomplete ; had I known
a year ago that this talk would fall to me I could have culled
from our State press a most satisfactory showing.
These same papers that are fostering this talent are work-
ing upon advanced lines. Poetry does not yield dollars and
cents; its dividends are men and women; faith, hope, glad-
ness, purity, consolation, brotherly -love ; a more liberal pa-
triotism and a broader creed ; a larger capacity for living and
a brighter outlook for dying. Poetry is the language of
the imagination, that forerunner of every notable achieve-
ment in human knowledge and human endeavor. Of the
earth, earthy, only a step removed from the slug and the
ox, is the man who will admit that there is nothing in this
world but can be touched or bartered or eaten. The great
so-called captains of industry, whom men too often deify,
are only camp-followers, gathering up the treasures imagi-
nation has lavishly scattered as she goes on to higher enter-
prises. To put it in homely figure, they are fat porkers,
with eyes on the ground, following the corn-laden wagon,
picking up the scattered grains and assimilating them into
lard and bacon. It is infinitely more profitable to write one
helpful line that shall become the heritage of the world than
to amass untold treasures only to be scrambled for and ap-
portioned to a few ungrateful heirs. The one act is a price-
less addition to the wealth of mankind, and increases at a
geometrical ratio for all time ; the other is a gathering to-
gether from the many and a redistributing to the few.
If a people would build for permanence they must build
in song. Creeds, governments, philosophies change only
the songs abide. Why ? Because they are the voice of
Truth and Beauty and these are immortal. The finest sen-
timents and the deepest emotions that stir the soul must find
expression in poetry nothing else is adequate to their utter-
ance. What gave distinction to the Periclean, the Augustan,
and the Elizabethan age ? The poets of their times : the
names of the sovereigns are no more than dates. Sappho
and Pindar are still the inspiration of lyric poetry; Homer
North Carolina Verse in 1902. 85
and Aeschylus of epic and tragic. Shakespeare, Milton,
and Tennyson will remain unchanged while the English gov-
ernment proceeds in its evolution. Sculpture and paint-
ing are subject to the accidents of time; poetry is as inde-
structible as human passion: for as long as the heart shall
be moved by hope and love and suffering it will seek to ex-
press itself in fatally-chosen words, and this is poetry.
Emerson says: "The high poetry which shall thrill and
agitate mankind, restore youth and health, dissipate the
dreams under which men reel and stagger, and bring in the
new thoughts, the sanity and heroic aims of nations, is deep-
er hid and longer postponed that was America or Australia,
or the finding of steam or of the galvanic battery. We must
not conclude against poetry from the defects of the poets.
They are, in our experience, men of every degree of skill,
some of them only once or twice receivers of an inspiration,
and presently falling back on a low life. The drop of ichor
that tingles in their veins has not yet refined their blood
and cannot lift the whole man to the digestion and function
of ichor, that is, to godlike nature. Time will be when
ichor will be their blood, when what are now glimpses and
aspirations will be the routine of the day. Yet even partial
ascents to poetry are forerunners, and announce the dawn.
In the mire of the sensual life, their religion, their poets,
their admiration of heroes and benefactors, even their novel
and newspaper, nay, their superstitions also, are hosts of
ideals, a cordage of ropes that hold them up out of the
slough. Poetry is inestimable as a lonely faith, a lonely
protest in the uproar of atheism."
Then let us listen to song with attentive ear and strive
to catch her far-heard strains that across the obscurity come
to us now and then on the veering winds; and let us follow
her, with the assurance that, if not now and here, sometime,
somewhere, she will lead us out into a place of infinite glad-
ness.
NORTH CAROLINA BIBLIOGRAPHY, 1903.
Address of R. F. BEASLEY, Esq., before the Fourth Annual
Meeting of the State Literary and Historical
Association, January 23, 1903.
No doubt many of the men who are furnishing the country
with reading matter from Boston and New York sought
those places from poor and remote communities, like North
Carolina. The people of such communities haven't yet had
the time to sow the seeds of fancy and gather the harvest of
literature; they haven't gotten far enough away from the
bread and butter problem. Before the war we had an eccles-
iastical and a political literature as a product of the times;
since the war, the great date of recuperation in the South, we
have been bound Ixion-like, to the wheel of toil. We haven't
yet been able to give our children a primary school educa-
tion. The luxuries of life can be thought of only after the
necessities have been attended to. But we are beginning
now to free ourselves from the ligaments that bind us down,
and so we are having more men who write books, not the
best books, to be sure, for could they write them they would
leave us, but the quality must get better as more conducive
conditions exist.
Now, I would not have any of my remarks construed into
any discouragement or want of appreciation of any of those
who are doing all in their power to give North Carolina a
creditable display in the catalogue of books. Every year
shows some really creditable work. The present year is
probably ahead of the last, and counting natives, both resi-
dent and non-resident, 1903 comes up with a good record.
There is the usual presence of the historical much of it
creditable, all of it valuable for future reference, and for
the purpose of teaching the State's history to the present gen-
eration, one of the objects of this society. In the very short
time allotted me I have not been able to make a complete
list of the publications of the year, and can therefore make
mention only of some- of the most conspicuous.
Lawson's book of observations, called the first history of
North Carolina, has been transcribed from the copy in the
North Carolina Bibliography, 1903. 87
State Library by Col. F. A. Olds, of Raleigh, and after being
published serially in the Charlotte Observer, has been issued
in durable and attractive form by that paper and put upon
the market at the price of two dollars.
Major W. A. Graham is publishing an extended biography
of Governor Joseph Graham, and it is sure to be a very val-
uable book.
The same must be said of Mr. Haywood's life and times
of Gov. Tryon, now on the book store shelves. This work is
original and is the result of careful investigation, and in it
the author has left the blazed paths, and ambitiously launch-
ed his craft upon the sea of research.
Prof. W. E. Dodd, a North Carolinian of the faculty of
Randolph-Macon has a life of Nathaniel Macon ready for
the printer.
Mr. D. A. Tompkins, like the farmer in the fable, having
tried in vain to get some one else to write the history of Meck-
lenburg, has done it himself, and we may be sure that it is
well done. It is very encouraging to see a man immersed,
as Mr. Tompkins is, in large and varied business enterprises,
turn aside to write a book, and one of local history at that.
Mr. Frank Nash has issued a well prepared booklet enti-
tled "Historic Hillsboro."
Judge Clark has issued a new volume of the State Records.
Dr. Edwin Mims, of Trinity College, has been engaged
by the well known publishing house of Houghton, Mifflin and
Company to write a biography of Sidney Lanier for the
series of "American Men of Letters."
Mr. Joseph Alexander Tillinghast, a native of North
Carolina, and a graduate of Davidson College, has published
a book of nearly two hundred pages on "The Negro in Africa
and America," which has received very favorable comment
as a serious and thoughtful work.
The Neale Publishing Company of Washington, has lately
issued a volume called "Boner's Lyrics," which contains all
the best work of the gifted North Carolina poet, the late
John Henry Boner, whose death occurred this year.
Other poetical works of the year are : "Memorial Ponns,"
by Mrs. E. M. Anderson. "Poems," by Dr. W. W. Bays.
"Heart Songs," by Lila Ripley.
The same average reader referred to in the opening of this
88 Historical and Literary Activities in N. C.
paper would be astonished at the suggestion that a number of
text books had this year been published by North Carolin-
ians, some of which are likely to pass into wide use. But
such is the case. Dr. C. Alphonso Smith has issued an
excellent English Grammar. A book of great importance.
"Agriculture for Beginners," prepared for the publishing
house of Ginn and Company, by Professors Burkett, Stevens
and Hill, of the State Agricultural and Mechanical College.
This book is designed especially for use in the public schools
and is destined, if honestly taken up and thoroughly taught,
to become a potent factor in revolutionizing the agricultural
methods of the South, particularly North Carolina. It has
already been adopted for the public schools of North Caro-
lina and several other States, and so many as 1,000 copies
have been sent to the Philippines.
Other text books are : "Principles of Dyeing," by Dr. Geo.
S. Fraps.
"Foundation Stones of True Development," by Caroline
W'ashburn Rockwood.
Of course no list of books by North Carolinians would be
complete without mention of "The One Woman," by Tom
Dixon. Dr. Dixon belongs to North Carolina though he sees
fit to dwell apart from us for a time. "The One Woman"
is a literary crudity, but it has power. The Review of Re-
views says that "the story is sensational and melodramic;
every color in it is flamboyant and every sound a scream,
but it is powerful with elemental force." It may be added
also that it sells.
Other books of varying character are "A Traitor, Yet
True," an historical romance, by S. H. Thompson, now in
the printers hand ; "Heaven on Earth," by A. C. Dixon, D.
D. ; "Studies in Christian Doctrine," Wilbur F. Tillett,
D. D. ; "Doctrines and Polity of the M. E. Church," W. F.
Tillett, D. D. ; "Parsifas," by Mary Narcissa McKinnon;
"An Adirondac Romance," and "In Biscayne Bay," Caroline
Washburn Rockwood ; "Historical Sketch of the Shuford
Family," by Rev. John Shuford, and "Social Life in Co-
lonial North Carolina," by C. L. Raper, in press of the Mc-
millans.
NORTH CAROLINA BIBLIOGRAPHY, 1904.
Read before tiik Fifth Annual Meeting of the State Literary
and Historical Association, Kaleigh, October 18, 1904,
by Prof. D. H. HILL, West Raleigh, N C.
"Governor Tryon of North Carolina," by Marshall De-
Lancey Haywood of Raleigh ; E. M. Uzzell, Raleigh, pub-
lishers; pages 225.
This is a handsomely illustrated and handsomely printed
biography of the most conspicuous of the Royal Governors.
The author bases his conclusions largely upon documentary
evidence. In addition to the details of Gov. Tryon's life,
Mr. Haywood includes a careful study of the so-called War
of the Regulators.
"Gen. Joseph Graham and his Revolutionary Papers,"
by Major William A. Graham, of Lincoln county; Edwards
& Broughton, Raleigh, printers; 385 pages.
Part 1 of Major Graham's volumes is devoted to the life of
General Graham and his family. Xew light is thrown upon
Queen's College, the Mecklenburg Declaration and the manu-
facturing of that day by the narrative. Part 2 includes,
among others, papers furnished for Judge Murphey's pro-
jected history of North Carolina. The General's accounts of
the battles at Ramsaur's Mill, at King's Mountain, at Cow-
pens, at Cowan's Ford, at Hart's Mill, Pyle's Massacre, and
Gen. Rutherford's campaign on the Cape Fear furnish much
valuable material for future historians.
"North Carolina, A Study in English Colonial Govern-
ment," by Charles Lee Raper, Acting Professor of Econo-
mics in the University of North Carolina ; The MacMillan
Company, New York, publishers; 268 pages.
Starting with a review of the proprietary Period, Dr.
Raper follows with chapters on the Governor, the Council,
the Legislature under the Crown ; also chapters on the terri-
torial, the judicial, and the fiscal system of the colony; on
the means of defence, the conflict between the Executive and
the Lower House, and closes with the downfall of the Royal
Government.
90 Historical and Literary Activities in N. C.
"Nathaniel Macon," by William E. Dodd, now Professor
of History in Randolph-Macon College, formerly of
Johnston county; Edwards & Broughton, printers; pages
443.
Along with a full account of the illustrious Macon's life,
Dr. Dodd has woven a wealth of historic matter that has
been collected with much care and industry from many wide-
ly scattered sources.
"The Philosophy of Education," by Herman Harrell
Home, formerly of Johnston county, now professor in Dart-
mouth College; The MacMillan Company, New York, pub-
lishers; 295 pages.
In eight chapters Dr. Home discusses first the field of edu-
cation, and then the biological, the physiological, the sociolog-
ical, and the psychological aspects of education.
"A Year in Europe," by Rev. Dr. Walter W. Moore, for-
merly of Charlotte, now President of Union Theological
Seminary, Richmond, Va. ; Presbyterian Committee of Pub-
lication, Richmond; 366 pages.
Dr. Moore has illustrated his volume handsomely with
original photographs. His style is fresh and vital and his
matter is unhackneyed and attention-catching.
"Four Princes," by Rev. James A. Scherer, now living
in Charleston, S. C. This capitally printed volume of 275
pages is from the presses of the Lippincotts, of Philadelphia.
The book is a study of Christianity through four of its repre-
sentative heroes, Paul, Constantine, Bernard and Luther.
"China's Business Methods and Policy," by T. R. Jerni-
gan, formerly of Raleigh, now of Shanghai, China. This
volume is from the Shanghai press of Kelly and Walsh and is
well printed and bound. If we leave out books by mission-
aries, this is perhaps the first North Carolina book ever
printed in China. It is a careful study of Chinese com-
mercial and industrial life.
"History of Mecklenburg County," by D. A. Tompkins,
of Charlotte. The second volume of Mr. Tompkins's elab-
orate history of Mecklenburg is just from the Observer press.
The book is in every way worthy of its subject. If some
patriotic citizen would do for each of our older counties what
North Carolina Bibliography in 1904. 91
Mr. Tompkins has done for his adopted county, our state
would soon be rich in historic material.
"Life of Rev. C. A. Rose," of the Lutheran Church, by
Rev. Dr. L. E. Busby, of Salisbury. This is the biography
of a friend and admirer.
Mr. James W. Albright has published a very complete
hand-book of the city of Greensboro. Amid much local
history, this book contains some material of general interest.
Carlyle's "Essay on Burns" has been edited for the Gate-
way Series of Classics, published by the American Book
Company, of New York, by Prof. Edwin Mims, of Trinity
College, Durham. Dr. Mims has also in press a book of
selections from the writings of Dr. Henry Van Dyke, and has
also nearly ready a Life of Sidney Lanier.
"A Study of Quintus of Smyrna," by George Washington
Paschall, Associate Professor of Latin in Wake Forest Col-
lege. University of Chicago Press. The purpose of this
book, the author states, is to give a comprehensive outline of
the present state of our knowledge of the Posthomerica.
"Carding and Spinning," by George F. Ivey, of Hickory.
This is a text book meant for practical workers in carding
and spinning. Mr. Ivey has previously written a book upon
"Loom-fixing and Weaving."
"A New Definer," by M. C. and J. C. Pinnix, of Oxford.
This is also a text-book.
"The North Carolina Booklet," under the editorship of
Miss Mary Hilliard Hinton and Mrs. E. E. Moffit continued
through the year its valuable contributions to history. This
booklet ought to go to every home in North Carolina.
"The James Sprunt Monographs of History," ably super-
vised by Dr. Kemp P. Battle of the State University, are
first-hand studies of important events in the history of the
state. Number 4 of this series has appeared during the
past year. Dr. Battle has contributed an introduction to this
number on the Early History of the Lower Cape Eear.
Number 5 is now in the hands of the binders.
A number of pamphlets of historic value have appeared
during the year, but these do not come within the province of
this report.
In poetry, the most notable volume of the year is a new
edition of the late John Henry Boner's poems with an intro-
92 Historical and Literary Activities in N. C.
duction by Henry Jerome Stockard. This delightful little
volume contains all of Mr. Boner's later poems as arranged
by himself just before his death.
"The First Shearing" is the title of a volume of poems
written by M. Battenham Lindsay, of Asheville. It is from
the Richmond press of Whittet and Shepperson and contains
399 pages.
"Poems" is the simple title of a dainty little volume of
verses from the pen of Miss E. A. Lehman, of Salem. This
is published by the Grafton Company of New York.
Private Corporations in North Carolina Thos. B. Wo-
mack, Raleigh.
Reprints of North Carolina Supreme Court Reports with
annotations and cases cited; 8 vols. Chief Justice Walter
Clark.
Manual of Odd Fellows by Messrs Chas. M. and Perrin
Busbee.
A Study of the Atom, or the Foundations of Chemistry
President Francis P. Venable.
The colored race is not without representation among the
books of the year. G. Ellis Harris, of Littleton, has written
a "Constitutional Reader" with the object of preparing the
men of his race for suffrage by teaching them the rudiments
of our State Constitution.
MOVEMENTS INAUGURATED
m THE
ASSOCIATION.
THE RURAL SCHOOL LIBRARY
ClROVTH QF THE MOVEMENT.
By Hon. J. Y. JOYXKli. SUPBBUfTEHDEHT op Public Instruction.
The General Assembly of 1901, acting upon the suggestion
of the State Literary and Historical Association heartily en-
dorsed by the State Superintendent of Public Instruction,
passed an act appropriating $5,000.00 for the establishment
of rural libraries. Under the provisions of this Act the
number of libraries was limited to six in any one county, ten
dollars was appropriated out of the State treasury to any dis-
trict upon notification that ten dollars had been raised by
private subscription in the district and ten dollars had been
appropriated by the County Board of Education out of the
school fund apportioned to that district. This first Act pro-
vided for the establishment of five hundred rural libraries
in North Carolina. Every one of these libraries has been
established. The General Assembly of 1903, with practical
unanimity, passed another act appropriating $5,000.00 for
the establishment of five hundred additional libraries and
$2,500.00 for supplementing the libraries established under
the act of 1901. The provisions of this act as to the estab-
lishment of new libraries were practically the same as those
of the act of 1901. For the supplementary libraries five
dollars was appropriated from the State treasury upon noti-
fication that five dollars had been raised by private subscrip-
tion in the district and five dollars had been appropriated by
the County Board of Education out of the school fund
apportioned to that district. Under this new act 280 new
libraries have been established and 59 supplementary libra-
ries. It is more than probable that the remaining 220 new
libraries and 441 supplementary libraries will be establish-
ed before Jan. 1st, 1905. There are now then in North
Carolina 780 rural libraries established under the acts ol
1901 and 1903. In addition to this 61 libraries have been
established by private subscription without aid from the
96 Historical and Literary Activities in N. C.
State. There are rural libraries in all counties of the State
except two, Clay and McDowell. The following counties
have availed themselves of the twelve rural libraries for
which the State appropriation provides: Alamance, Alle-
ghany, Anson, Beaufort, Bertie, Buncombe, Chatham, Cum-
berland, Edgecombe, Forsyth, Iredell, Jackson, Johnston,
Mecklenburg, Northampton, Orange, Pitt, Randolph, Robe-
son, Rockingham, Rowan, Sampson, Union, Vance, Wake,
Wayne, Wilkes, Wilson. In total number of libraries Wayne
leads with 34, Durham stands next with 28, and New Han-
over next to Durham with 26. The total number of volumes
in these rural libraries is estimated at 70,000. The total
value of them is estimated at about $30,000.00. The books
for these libraries must be selected from a list approved by
the State Superintendent. A pamphlet containing a care-
fully prepared classified list of books, the library law, and
the rules and regulations for the management of the libraries
has been issued from the office of the State Superintendent
and will be furnished to any person upon application.
A neat, carefully prepared record book is furnished to
each library and annual reports are required from each.
These reports are encouraging. They show among other
things a steady increase in the use of the books, in the de-
mand for them, and, in many instances, an increase of attend-
ance and an increase of interest in the school through the
use of the library. On account of the interest in the library,
arrangements are made for the use of most of the libraries
during vacation as well as during the session of the schools
so that the books are quietly at work in the community twelve
months in the year. These books have gone into many a
bookless home and brought joy and light and inspiration to
many a parent and elder brother and sister. I can think of
no more effective means of stimulating a taste for good read-
ing among all our people, old and young, than by sending
into their homes through the children, by the blessed instru-
mentality of these rural libraries, these great masterpieces of
the master minds and souls of the world. I believe that the
General Assembly will see the wisdom of continuing a reas-
onable appropriation for the establishment of rural libraries
until every rural school in North Carolina shall enjoy the
The Rural School Library. 97
inestimable benefit of at least a small but well selected col-
lection of good books.
One important aim of all true education is to cultivate
along with the acquisition of knowledge and the love of it
the reading habit and the love of good books. No educa-
tional equipment is complete, therefore, without a library.
A library of well selected books, even though limited in num-
ber, will increase greatly the efficiency of the work of any
school, will be a breath of fresh air, a gleam of glorious light
in any community, will quicken ambitions, arouse aspira-
tions and set in motion forces the power of which no man can
estimate.
THE RURAL SCHOOL LIBRARY
As an Educational Factor.
By CLARENCE H. POE, Kaleigh, N. C.
[Republished from the "American Monthly Review of Reviews" for Septem-
ber, 1904. By permission of Review of Reviews Company.]
Just now, when the princely donations of Mr. Andrew
Carnegie have given a new stimulus to library building in
American cities, it may be well to turn our eyes to the "other
half" the rural half of our population, for although, until
quite recently, no one thought of the public library as a pos-
sible rural institution, it has now made an auspicious entry
into this new field, and is destined to play an important part
among the twentieth century forces rural mail delivery,
good roads, rural telephones, etc. that make for the uplift
of American country life.
The need of the rural library must be apparent to all that
are familiar with country school methods. Reading is the
magic key to all our store-houses of intellectual wealth ; it is
the basis of all education. "The true university of these
days," says Carlyle, "is a collection of books." And it is here,
of all points in its curriculum, that the country school has
failed most grievously: it has not taught the children to
read, to use books. Do not understand me to charge that the
rural school is literally and avowedly disloyal to the first of
the immortal three R's, for it is not. But only in the nar-
rowest sense does it teach reading reading as the mere pro-
nunciation of words and the observance of punctuation
marks; the unlovely, mechanical side of reading. The
brighter side of reading the country pupil does not get ; the
city pupil does. Aided by the prescribed supplemental liter-
ature, and guided by the teacher, the child of the townsman
learns to find joy in reading, learns not only how to read,
but actually learns to read, to use books. If you know the
country school as the writer does, you know the other side
of this picture. You know children who live out a long school
The Library as an Educational Factor. 99
career without learning anything of literature beyond tho
monotonous rehearsal of dry text book matter. Cold, hard
facts about the boundaries of foreign states, the dates of
ancient battles, the rules of the stock exchange, are regarded
as matters of importance, but the teacher does not see that it
is better to foster a love of reading than to teach history or
geography. Or if he sees the duty, and longs to direct the
child to the beauties of literature, he is shackled by the lack
of facilities for such work. Year after year, there is the same
old drill in the same old readers, no classics are studied, and
there is no supplemental reading to give the spice of variety.
It is inevitable that children reared in such schools come to
regard reading not as a luxury but as a drudgery, and grow
up potentially, if not in the strictest sense, illiterate. "I
confess," says Thoreau, somewhere in his "Walden," "that I
do not make any broad distinction between the illiterateness
of my townsman who cannot read at all and the illiterateness
of , him who has learned only to read what is for children and
feeble intellects." How much narrower, then, should be the
distinction between the "illiterateness of him who can uot
read at all" and the illiterateness of him whose training his
been such that he regards reading only as a task to be shun-
ned ! People everywhere are now beginning to see the mis-
take pointed out, ten years ago, by President Eliot in his
essay, "Wherein Popular Education Has Failed." He says:
"We have heretofore put too much confidence in the mere
acquisition of the arts of reading and writing. After these
arts are acquired, there is much to be done to make them
effective for the development of the child's intelligence. If
his reasoning power is to be developed through reading, he
must be guided to the right sort of reading. The school must
teach not only how to read, but what to read, and it must de-
velop a taste for wholesome reading."
It is to remedy just this defect that the rural school library
has been introduced into twenty-nine American States. And
though widely varying plans have been adopted, in no other
State, I dare say, has more rapid progress been made or
greater results accomplished in proportion to capital ex-
pended than in North Carolina. For this reason I may be par-
doned for referring at some length to this North Carolina
plan which seems to be the one best adapted to States having
100 Historical and Literary Activities in N. C.
a large rural population and a small revenue. The law as
passed by the General Assembly of 1901 provides, in sub-
stance
That wherever the friends or patrons of any rural public
school contribute $10 or more for starting a library in connec-
tion with the school, $10 of the district school fund shall also
be set apart for the same purpose, while another $10 will be
given from the State appropriation thus insuring at the out-
set at least $30 for each school library; in many cases, of
course, the patrons contribute more than the minimum sum,
$10, needed to secure the $20 from other sources. The coun-
ty board of education then names some competent person to
manage the prospective library and buy the books for it, these
to be chosen from a remarkably well selected list of standard
works recently prepared by a committee of distinguished
educators. The same committee, by the way, obtained com-
petitive bids from prominent publishing houses, thus forcing
prices to strikingly low figures, even for classics. The small-
est libraries have seventy-five or eighty neat and substan-
tially bound volumes.
By the earnest efforts of the North Carolina Literary and
Historical Association, an appropriation of five thousand
dollars was obtained for the payment of the State's part on
the experimental plan just outlined, and in September, 1901,
the appropriation became available, and the first North Car-
olina rural school library was established. The entire sum
would have been speedily exhausted by the more progressive
section had nT)t the Legislature provided that State aid should
be available for not more than six school districts in any one
of the ninety-seven counties. Within five months, a third of
the counties reached this limit, and applications from other
communities within their borders had to be rejected. Before
the General Assembly of 1903 met, in January, four hun-
dred and thirty-one of a possible five hundred libraries had
been helped. In the face of such success there was nothing
for the legislature to do but make an appropriation of five
thousand dollars more for the ensuing two years, while twen-
ty-five hundred dollars was added to maintain and enlarge
the libraries already established, the same Carnegie-like prin-
ciple of co-operation to be observed : each gift from the State
The Library as an Educational Factor. 101
to be duplicated by an appropriation from the school fund,
and again duplicated by private subscription.
Already many applications for aid from the new appropri-
ation have been received, and Superintendent Joyner con-
fidently predicts that before the next Legislature meets North
Carolina will have one thousand State aided rural school li-
braries. Then there are others, established entirely by pri-
vate gifts. In one county (Durham) adjoining that in
which the writer lives, a wealthy citizen continued the good
work begun by the State. He offered to duplicate amounts
raised after the State aid limit had been reached, and now
every one of the forty white schools in the county has a
library.
One other fact deserves mention. Not only does the rural
school library develop the reading habit, it develops it along
right lines. Since as Emerson says, "the ancestor of every
action is a thought," how important it is that the literature
that is to provoke thought be wholesome and well balanced!
In our city libraries, fiction has much too large a place, many
women and young people read nothing else. But while these
rural libraries contain a few novels the chief effort is to de-
velop a proper appreciation of choice works of science, travel,
nature study, poetry, history, biography and mythology.
Even if the child formed the "reading habit" outside the
school, it would still be worth while for the State to have
these libraries for the sole purpose of turning his new found
love of literature into right channels of truth and beauty.
Nor have the boys and girls been the only beneficiaries of
the -new movement. It has opened up a new world for many
of the parents, and has done incalculable good in continuing
the education of persons too old or too poor to longer attend
school. The superintendent of schools for Durham County
says that the books are used almost as much by the parents as
by the children themselves, and the Pitt County superinten-
dent says that the libraries have caused hitherto indifferent
parents to become deeply interested in reading and in the edu-
cation of their children. "The peculiar value of the school
library," as the New York Evening Post rightly observes,
"lies in the fact that it educates the younger generation as
well as the older."
102 Historical and Literary Activities in N. C.
All in all, the North Carolina plan has proved a strikingly
successful innovation, and we are moved to wonder that our
educational leaders did not long ago perceive the value of
rural library work, or, realizing it, did not think of the ease
with which it may be conducted in connection with the public
school. We are not far from the time when no house where
children meet for study, whether in town or country, will be
regarded as even tolerably equipped without a small collec-
tion of the best books.
NORTH CAROLINA DAY" IM THE
PUBLIC SCHOOLS.
By HON FRANCIS D. WINSTON, Windsor, N. C.,
Author of the Statute.
At the instance of the North Carolina Literary and His-
torical Association, an act of our General Assembly was
passed designating October 12th as North Carolina Day in,
the Public Schools. This law provides "That the 12th day
of October in each and every year, to be called 'North Caro-
lina Day/ may be devoted, by appropriate exercises in the
public schools of the State, to the consideration of some topic
or topics of our State history, to be selected by the State Su-
perintendent of Public Instruction: Provided, that if the
said day shall fall on Saturday or Sunday, then the celebra-
tion shall occur on the Monday next following: Provided,
further, that if the said day shall fall at a time when any
such school may not be in session, the celebration may be
held within one month from the beginning of the term, unless
the. Superintendent of Public Instruction shall designate
some other time."
The consecration of one day in the year to the considera-
tion in the Public Schools of the history of the State is a
beautiful idea. It is the duty of every public school teacher
in North Carolina to obey the letter of this law, and it is grat-
ifying to know that the schools over the State are availing
themselves of this opportunity to fill the children with pride
in their state, to thrill them with enthusiasm for the study
of her history, and to kindle new fires of patriotic love.
As an evidence that North Carolina Day is an important
event in our educational work, 20,000 copies of the program
for last year were distributed and the official reports show
that more than 3,000 schools observed the day with the official
program.
The State Superintendent gives this celebration much
prominence. The material for these celebrations has been
carefully selected ; the programs have been neatly printed in
104 Historical and Literary Activities in N. C.
pamphlets of about fifty pages each. In this work he has
received the efficient assistance of the Daughters of the Revo-
lution, the North Carolina Literary and Historical Associa-
tion and patriotic citizens of the State interested in preserv-
ing her history.
The subject selected in 1901 was "The First Anglo-Saxon
Settlement in America." Following the chronological order
of the State's History, the subject for 1902 was fittingly
"The Albemarle Section" and the subject for 1903 was "The
Lower Cape Fear Section." In succeeding years the history
* of other sections of the State will be studied somewhat in the
order of their settlement and development, until the entire
period of the State's history shall have been covered.
The program for each year that has celebrated North Caro-
lina Day is given below:
PROGRAM FOR 1901 NORTH CAROLINA DAY.
Subject: First Anglo-Saxon Settlement in America.
PROGRAM OF EXERCISES.
1. Song Our Fathers' God, to Thee.
2. Reading Sketch of Sir Walter Raleigh, the Father of Anglo-Saxon
Colonization in America.
3. Declamation Sir Walter Raleigh and Virginia Dare By Jos. W.
Holden. *
4. Reading Sketch of the Landing From Hawks' History.
5. Song "Ho! for Carolina" W. B. Harrell.
6. Sketch of the Settlement of Roanoke Island By Graham Daves.
From N. C Booklet.
7. Recitation or (Reading)
(a) The Mystery of Croatan By Margaret J. Preston.
(b) Roanoke Island By Fred. A. Olds.
8. Address by Local Orator.
9. Recitation Poem, " My Native State" By H. J. Stockard
10. General Discussion Topics:
(a) Are the Croatan Indians the Lost Colony?
{b) Why Did the Attempt to Colonize North Carolina Fail?
11. Song In conclusion ''The Old North State" By Gaston.
Sir Walter Raleigh By Henry Jerome Stockard.
North Carolina Day in the Schools. 105
PROGRAM FOR 1902 NORTH CAROLINA DAY.
Subject: The Albemarle Section.
PROGRAM OF EXERCISES.
1. Song The Old North State William Gaston.
2. Reading The First Governor. William Drummond. Adapted from
Wiley's North Carolina Reader and Weeks' Sketch of Drummond.
3. Questions and Answers for Children By Committee of State Literary
and Historical Association.
4. Reading Roanoke Island of To-Day Charles E. Taylor.
5. Reading Albemarle .Monuments R. B Creecy.
6. Reading Edenton W. E. Stone.
7. Song America.
8. Reading Hertford W. F. McMullan.
9. Reading A Distinguished Citizen of the Albemarle Section. Adapted
from Address by Junius Davis.
10. Declamation Extract from the Memorial to Congress concerning the
Celebration of the Settlement of Sir Walter Raleigh's Colonies on
Roanoke Island George T. Winston, for Committee.
11. Reading Cape Hatteras and the Banks.
12. Hatteras and the Hankers R. B. Creecy.
13. Stories of the Banks Jennie Langston.
14. Declamation Hatteras Joseph W. Holden.
15. Selected Hvmn.
PROGRAM FOR 1903 NORTH CAROLINA DAY.
Subject : The Lower Cape Fear Section.
PROGRAM OF EXERCISES.
Prayer.
1. Song The Old North State William Gaston.
2. Reading The Early Explorers and Settlers of the Cape Fear A. M.
Waddell.
3. Declamation The Pride of the Cape Fear George Davis.
4. Reading Life Among the Early Cape Fear Settlers John Brickell.
5. Recitation The American Eagle Henry Jerome Stockard.
6. ReadingMary Slocum's Hide Adapted from Mrs. Ellet.
7. Recitation Moonlight in the Pines John Henry Boner.
8. Reading Heception of the Stamps on the Cape Fear George Davis.
9. Recitation Light'ood Fire John Henry Boner.
10. Declamation The Men of the Cape Fear George Davis.
106 Historical and Literary Activities in N. C.
11. Eeading Rescue of Madame DeRos.set James Sprunt.
12. Recitation Alamance S. W. Whiting.
13. Reading Blockading off the Cape Fear James Sprunt.
14. Recitation Regret Christian Reid (Mrs. F. C. Tiernan).
15. Resources of the Lower Cape Fear. Adapted from " North Carolina
and Its Resources," published by State Board of Agriculture.
16. Questions and Answers.
17. Song My Country, 'Tis of Thee.
Appendix.
Teachers are urged to make a special effort to secure a
larger attendance of the patrons of the district on these occa-
sions. This should be the educational rallying day. The
women interested in better school houses should be given a
place on the program.
On the 22nd day of August, 1901, the Windsor Ledger in
urging a proper celebration of this day said editorially :
"We refer our public school teachers to Chapter 164, Laws
1901, for the act providing for the celebration of North Caro-
lina day in the public schools. The act was introduced by
the representative from this county. It provides that Octo-
ber 12 of each year be devoted to considering topics of our
State history, to be selected by our State Superintendent. The
date is a memorable one. America was discovered on that
date. It is also ftie day of the founding of the University
the very capstone of our public school system. The day
should be made very interesting in our schools. All of
the patrons of the school should be present. It should be a
pic-nic occasion with public dinner. The children should be
given tasks on Bertie county history. We suggest the follow-
ing arrangement for a day's entertainment and profit:
1. Have two scholars write a short sketch of the county.
2. Have one scholar write a history of the founding of the
public school in that district, giving date, names of all com-
mitteemen, names of all teachers and of those in the vicinity
interested in school work.
3. Have one scholar give the number of miles of public
road in the township in which the school is situated and the
distance and direction of the school from the important places
in the county.
4. Have one scholar give the names of all rivers, creeks,
North Carolina Day in the Schools. 107
swamps, bridges and other natural objects in the township
including places of note, residences and families.
5. Have one scholar give the names and number of
churches, when organized, and the names of pastors, clerks
and officials, past and present.
6. Have one scholar give the names of all Confederate
Veterans in the township, with the Company and Regiment
in which they served and any special acts of daring and
bravery they performed.
7. Have one scholar give any local incidents and tradi-
tions.
These matters occur to us now. Our teachers can easily
enlarge the scope of the work. In ten years with the work
carried out on this plan we will have the best county history
ever written of any locality." Windsor Ledger, Aug. 22,
1901.
I suggest that the future programs be cast on more local
lines. Organization for this work must be had and the unit
of organization should be each district. The County Super-
intendents will be the collectors for each county and a few
years would place much valuable material in their hands for
the future historian. No matter how the day is celebrated
it cannot fail to produce the best historical results.
STATE HISTORICAL COMttlSSION.
By R. D. W. CONNOR, Secretary of the Commission.
The creation by the General Assembly of 1903 of the
North Carolina Historical Commission is by no means the
least important work of the State Literary and Historical As-
sociation. We are realizing more and more every day in
North Carolina that it is dangerous to trust the future in the
hands of a people who are ignorant of their past ; and that no
people who are indifferent to their past need hope to make
their future great. One of the missions of the State Liter-
ary and Historical Asociation is to teach this lesson to the
people of North Carolina. But the lesson when learned will
be valueless unless steps are taken at the same time to pre-
serve the material from which that past is to be made intel-
ligible to the present and to the future. Realizing this, the
Literary and Historical Association, along with all patriotic
citizens of the state, views with deep regret the loss of hun-
dreds of invaluable historical documents and records which
would throw much needed light on our history. Many hun-
dreds of them have been lost or destroyed through the indiff-
erence of the state and the ignorance and carelessness of their
possessors. These are hopelessly gone, but there are still in
existence, stuffed away in dark corners and dusty archives,
many such documents and records that should be brought to
light. To accomplish this important work a committee of
the association appeared before the General Assembly of
1903 and urged the creation of an historical commission.
An act was passed creating a commission of five members, to
be appointed by the governor to collect and publish valuable
documents elucidating the history of the state. The sum of
$500 annually is appropriated to enable the commission to
have the desired documents collected and transcribed, which
are then to be issued by the state printer as public docu-
ments.
The personnel of the commission as appointed by Gov-
The Historical Commission. 109
ernor Aycock is as follows: Mr. \Y. J. Peele, of Raleigh;
Rev. Dr. J. D. Hufham, of Henderson; Dr. Richard Dillard,
of Edenton ; Mr. F. A. Sondley, of Asheville, and Mr. R. D.
\Y. Connor, of Raleigh. Various obstacles prevented the
meeting of the commission until in November of 1903.
On the 20th of November a quorum met at Warsaw, and
organized for work by the election of Mr. Peele as chairman,
and Mr. Connor as secretary.
Such work as the commission is to do will require, of
course, great care and time. As yet, therefore, but little
more than a good beginning has been made. In addition to
the present volume, the commission has had made and placed
in the Hall of History in the State Museum under the direc-
tion of Col. Fred A. Olds, of Raleigh, handsome photographs
of DeBry's rare and valuable engravings illustrative of early
Indian life in North Carolina. These pictures are perhaps
the most nearly perfect illustrations of Indian life before
the white man colonized the continent in existence, and can
be utilized to great advantage by students of our early his-
tory. Arrangements have also been perfected for reprinting
the narratives of Barlowe, Lane and Hariot of the early dis-
coveries and settlements on the North Carolina coast, and
these reprints will be illustrated with the DeBry pictures.
In addition to these there will soon be issued a reprint of the
"Proceeding and Debates of the Constitutional Convention of
1788" together with the "Journals of the Constitutional Con-
vention of 1789." This work has been prepared under the
direction of Prof. E. P. Moses, of Raleigh. Under the
direction of Dr. Richard Dillard, of Edenton, the commis-
sion has had copied and prepared for the printer the early
records of St. Paul's Parish, of Chowan, in which is found
much valuable information of the early history of the Albe-
marle settlement. Finally at the request of the committee of
the State Literary and Historical Association appointed to
reply to the statements of Judge Christian, of Virginia, in
regard to North Carolina's part in the War Between the
States, the commission paid the expenses of two men to visit
the battle-field of Appomattox for the purpose of gathering
information. A copy of the committee's report appears in
this volume.
110 Historical and Literary Activities in N. C.
The importance of such work as the commission is ex-
pected to do is equalled only by the difficulties in the way.
Stowed away in pigeon holes, vaults, desks and boxes, all over
North Carolina are many documents, records, private and
public letters and manuscripts which as matters now stand
are of absolutely no value to their possessors or to the people
of the state ; but if they can be carefully and properly collect-
ed, edited and published, they will be of incalculable value
in throwing light on our history. It is the duty of the His-
torical Commission to do this work. All patriotic citizens
will aid in it. Those who possess such documents, or know
of their whereabouts will render a service to the state by
placing them, or copies of them in the possession of the com-
mission. All originals or copies of valuable documents, church
and court records, manuscripts, letters, maps, portraits, and
old newspapers, or of any other material of historical value,
will be greatly appreciated by the commission and a safe
repository will be provided for their preservation. All such
material as cannot be parted with permanently will be return-
ed after copies have been made ; and provision is made for
copying those which their owners are unwilling to part with
at all. All expenses connected with such work will be met
by the commission. Such material after being carefully
edited will be published and due acknowledgment will be
made to all those who have aided in this patriotic work. Let
not those who have such material stored away hoard it
as the miser does his gold.
The history of our state, as noble and as full of inspiring-
lives as it is, can never be written until this work is done. But
it is a work that cannot be accomplished unless the commission
meets with the earnest support of patriotic citizens who have
the documents, or information of the documents which are
desired. It is a work that cannot be accomplished in a year
nor in two years, but is rather the work of a life time ; and it
is earnestly to be hoped that no cessation will be permitted
until all the work is done and thoroughly done. Need one
urge upon intelligent men and women the necessity for this
work ? We need not be surprised, as long as we neglect these
duties, if the "scorner shall sneer at and the witling de-
fame us."
THE STATE'S HISTORICAL MUSEUM.
I.v F. A. OLDS, Esq., Kalkioh, N. C.,
Chairman of tiik Committee ON Historical IfUBXUM.
It is difficult to give a condensed account of the first year's
work in the collection of objects in the Hall of History in the
State Museum, so numerous and so varied is the collection
and so great the progress made in forming it. The grouping
is as far as possible by periods in the State's history. Begin-
ning with relics of the Indians, the collection follows the var-
ious periods. The people of the state have been liberal in
the way of gifts and loans. Out of the thousands of articles
only a few can be referred to as most notable. Mrs. Mar-
garet DevereiiXj of Raleigh, lends the valuable documents of
Governor Thomas Pollock, including grants by him, Gover-
nors Eden and Everard and others, and the treaty between the
whites and the Tuscarora Indians. In the same section are
ballast from the vessels of Amidas and Barlowe at Roanoke
Island, a will dated 1692, Lawson's History of North Caro-
lina, first edition; lease by the Lords Proprietors of the
North Carolina fisheries to Mr. Burrington, afterwards gov-
ernor. In the Revolutionary section is the protest of the
North Carolina Quakers against bearing arms, the auto-
graphs of signers of the Mecklenburg Declaration, &c. The
Swain collection of autograph letters, owned by the State,
is of extreme value and contains the signatures of most of
the great North Carolinians of Revolutionary times. Bish-
op Joseph Blount Cheshire is a valued contributor, his case
containing the first book about North Carolina and the first
map, printed in 1590 ; the "Yellow Jacket," the first book
printed in North Carolina, New Bern, 1752 ; the only known
copy of the journal of the State Convention at Hillsboro in
1788, which rejected the Federal Constitution, and the jour-
nal of the convention at Fayetteville in 1789 which ratified it,
Mr. Charles E. Johnson, of Raleigh, gives the public an op-
portunity to see a part of his extensive and valuable collec-
tion, and the portraits, mainly etchings, of prominent colon
ial North Carolinians attract much attention. He also ex-
112 Historical and Literary Activities in N. C.
hibits a proclamation of Governor Josiah Martin, which bears
the only known second seal of North Carolina ; a copy of the
South Carolina Gazette of June, 1775, containing the Meck-
lenburg Resolves of May 30th ; a rough draft of the opinion
of Judge Iredell of the United States Supreme Court in the
noted case of Chisholm against Georgia, which resulted in the
eleventh amendment to the constitution of the United States.
By the courtesy of Governor Aycock and Secretary of State
Grimes a collection of autograph letters of the governors is
being made, already containing letters and public documents
bearing the signature of 40 governors. Relics of Nathaniel
Macon, secured from Mrs. J. T. Turnbull and Julian S.
Carr, are objects of much public interest. Judge Robert M.
Douglas lends the original petition of the people of Mas-
sachusetts to congress for the dissolution of the Union on ac-
count of slavery.
What may be termed the Confederate section is very rich
in uniforms, swords and other relics of offic'ers, including
those of Generals Branch, James H. Lane, W. H. C. Whit-
ing, Robert Ransom, Collett Leventhorpe, Matt W. Ransom,
James Johnston Pettigrew, Bryan Grimes, Thomas F. Toon,
as well as Col. William Lamb, the commander of Fort Fish-
er ; Col. Cowand and Col. Henry K. Burgwyn, of the famous
26th regiment. The collection of Confederate flags em-
braces the "Bethel" flag, that of the First North Carolina
volunteers ; that of the 24th volunteers ; the 14th North Caro-
lina troops; the battle flags of the 50th and the 58th regi-
ments, the latter having been in all the great battles in the
southwest, including Chickamauga.
In autographs of the Civil War period the collection is not-
able and there are also orders written on the battlefield to
North Carolina officers by the greatest of the Confederate
generals. A case, mainly contributed by Col. Thomas S.
Kenan, is devoted to souvenirs of prison life. In other cases
the literary and domestic life of the Confederacy is illus-
trated in a very striking way. Mrs. Elias Carr has presented
the only painting in existence of the North Carolina block-
ade-runner, "Advance," while from Governor Aycock has
been secured the silver service which was in the captain's
cabin of that noted vessel. The collection of swords of all
The Historical Museum. 113
periods is a very fine one, some of these being in the cases
devoted entirely bo arms of all kinds, grouped by periods,
while others are shown in connection with uniforms and
other relics.
A photograph of President Jefferson Davis and one of the
last letters he ever wrote are objects of much general interest,
as is also the candlestick which be used while secretary of
war and during the campaign in Mexico, and also in the
Confederacy, and which was in his tent when he was cap-
tured near Washington, Ga.
In the Mexican war period one of the most valued objects
is the sword which was presented to .Major Mmitford J S.
Stokes by the officers and men of the First North Carolina
Regiment, U. S. Volunteers.
The Spanish American War period is well illustrated, a
special case being devoted to uniforms and other relics of
Ensign Worth Bagley, U. S. Navy; and another to relics of
Lieut. William E. Shipp, IT. S. Army, who was killed at the
storming of San Juan Hill, Santiago. The latter case also
contains the first American flags borne through the city of
Havana, these having been carried by the First Regiment,
North Carolina Infantry, North Carolina Volunteers.
There are also all that remains of the noble marble statue
of Washington by Canova, which was partially destroyed by
the burning of the old capitol, and a large engraving showing
the statue as it stood in the rotunda of the old building; a
framed collection of all the state currency issued during the
Civil War and all the currency except four bills issued by
the Confederate States. Cannon captured at Manila and
Santiago illustrate the greatest sea fights of the war with
Spain, while the smoke-stack and armor-plate of the North
Carolina-built ram Albemarle show the remarkable work
of that vessel.
The public interest in the collection is constantly on the
increase and not a day passes without additions. The Agri-
cultural Department enters heartily into the spirit of the
work and Commissioner Patterson gives his most cordial co-
operation.
THE ROANOKE CELEBRATION AND THE
RALEIGH HEttORIAL INSTITUTE.
By W. J. PEELE, Esq., Raleigh, N. C.
The idea of having a celebration on Roanoke Island to
commemorate the historic events associated with Raleigh's
efforts to colonize America, was suggested by Father Creecy
as far back as 1884 the ter-centennial of the landing of the
Amidas and Barlowe expedition; and Senator Vance intro-
duced in Congress a resolution respecting it. At that time
our people knew so little of their own history that the prop-
osition fell still-born.
Before and since the crucifixion it has been easy to under-
rate an apparent failure. The apparent failure at Guilford
Court House paved the way for Yorktown and Peace. Be-
tween 1584 and 1590, while Raleigh was breaking Spain's
sea power, he was winning from her a continent claims to
which he never ceased to assert even in prison. He was more
the immediate inspiration of the Jamestown expedition
than the monarch on the throne, but the continent had been
already won by his bold strokes and held by his repeated
expeditions until the crucial time had passed for its recovery
to Spain. Its effectual colonization (which Raleigh never
ceased to urge, even when fortune failed) had now become
only a question of time. It was now safe for conservative
and cowardly royalty to undertake it and leisurely appro-
priate the fame of its real author. It has been left to North
Carolina to tear away the veil which mean spirits have drawn
around this collossal figure. She began more than a century
ago by naming after him her capital, the beautiful "City of
Oaks." In a few years a noble monument to his memory
will stand in the center of one of her principal squares.
At the great meeting of the State Literary and Historical
Association held in Raleigh Oct. 22, 1901, Maj. Graham
Daves, of New Bern, (now deceased) offered the following
resolution which he supported by an appropriate speech.
Resolved, That a committee be appointed to provide for an
The Roanoke Celebration. 115
appropriate celebration on Roanoke Island of the landing
there in 1584 of the expedition of Amidas and Barlowe of
the settlement in 1585-1587 of the bands of colonists sent
out by Sir Walter Raleigh.
This resolution was seconded by Governor Chas. B. Aycock
in his well known felicitous style and manner, inaugurating
a movement which has been ever since growing in popular
favor in the State and in the country at large.
On the 24th of July, 1902 a large and representative
body of citizens met at Manteo on Roanoke Island, and, as a
preliminary to what will be one day done on a grand scale,
proceeded to celebrate by patriotic speeches and appropriate
songs the historic events which had transpired there on the
island more than three centuries before. Among the great
speeches on that occasion that of Chief Justice Clark is given
in this volume, an inspiration for the many which are to fol-
low.
During the session of the Legislature of 1903 it was pro-
posed to establish on Roanoke Island a memorial institution
in which should be investigated and taught the arts and
sciences which relate to obtaining wealth from the sea such
as ship-building, navigation, meteorology, fish culture, &c.
The bill which embodied these ideas was introduced into the
Legislature by Representative Thos. W. Blount, of Washing-
ton County. It became a law the 9th day of March, 1903,
and is published as chapter 408 Private Laws of that year.
Besides Representative Blount, among those most efficient
in securing its passage should be mentioned Senators Don-
nell Gilliam, of Edgecombe ; Mitchell, of Bertie ; and Joseph
A. Spruill, of Tyrrell ; and Representatives Guion of Craven,
Etheridge of Dare.
The corporators are Thos. W. Blount, R. B. Etheridge,
Theo. S. Meekins, B. G. Crisp, F. P. Gates, A. G. Sample,
R. C. Evans, J. B. Jennett, John W. Evans, W. H. Lucas,
Joseph A. Spruill and C. W. Mitchell. The charter is
unique in the history of charters. It grants powers amply
sufficient for its purposes but provides that they cannot be
exercised until an hundred subscribers to be selected by the
corporators named shall subscribe a sum not less than ten
thousand dollars to the capital stock of the Company; "it
116 Historical and Literary Activities in N. C.
shall then be the duty of the Secretary of State to issue a
charter artistically designed and ornamented."
This preliminary fund, the amount of which is variously
estimated at from ten to fifty thousand dollars, is to be sub-
scribed first by representative North Carolinians, preferably
one from each county or Senatorial District, and then by
representative citizens of the United States and from other
countries. Those who subscribe to this fund will have their
names and autographs enrolled in the charter to be issued
by the Governor and Secretary of State under the Great Seal.
At the proper time a suitable reward will doubtless be offered
for the best design for this instrument.
Some wealthy gentlemen from the North have already in-
dicated their purpose to subscribe as soon as the corporation
is organized and ready to take subscriptions.
The Jamestown Exposition a little more than one hun-
dred miles North of Roanoke Island is attracting the atten-
tion of the world to the shores and waters of Virginia and
North Carolina. Whether those in charge of that exposition
will it or not, Sir Walter Raleigh is the central figure in the
English colonization of America, and North Carolina should
join Virginia in her efforts to make the Jamestown Celebra-
tion worthy of the man and of the events he inspired.
The success of that enterprise rightly taken advantage of
by North Carolina would mean almost as much for one State
as for the other.
The following are some of the principal sections of the
act of incorporation:
Sec. II. That the sum of fifty thousand dollars be and the
same is hereby appropriated for the establishment and equip-
ment of the said institution ; and the State Treasurer is here-
by authorized and directed to pay this sum out of any fund
in the treasury not otherwise appropriated upon the warrant
of the board of directors of said company : Provided, That it
shall first be made to appear to his satisfaction that the sum
of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars has been realized
from other sources, at least one hundred and fifty thousand
dollars of which shall have been appropriated to or made
available for the buildings, equipment and endowment of the
said institution of scientific investigation and instruction:
The Roanoke Celebration. 117
Provided further, That no part of the appropriation herein
provided for shall be paid before the first day of January,
1907: Provided further, That it shall be unlawful for the
board of directors of said company or the trustees of the said
institution, or any of the authorities of either, to pledge the
faith or credit of the said company or institution or to un-
dertake to pledge the faith or credit of the State for any sum
of money or other thing of value for the purposes of this act,
or any purpose whatsoever; and that any director or trustee
or other officer of the institution who shall violate this pro-
vision shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, and the State hereby
notifies all persons that it will in no wise recognize the valid-
ity of any pledge, contract or obligation so made.
Sec. IV. That the principal office of said coroporation shall
be at Washington, N". C, or Manteo, N. C, but the board
of directors may change the principal office to some other
place and may open branch offices at any place desired.
Sec. V. That the said corporation shall have full power
and authority to promote, organize and conduct on Roanoke
Island and on such other adjacent places as the stock holders
may select a celebration of the landing and settlement of Sir
Walter Raleigh's colonies on Roanoke Island, the birth place
of Virginia Dare, the first Anglo-American and the cradle
of American civilization ; and to hold as a part of such cele-
bration an exposition of Indian and colonial relics, imple-
ments, weapons, utensils, curios, documents, maps, surveys
and books illustrative of that period and such other objects
of historical and educational value as will show the progress
of our race on this continent and that the said corporation
shall have full power and authority to do and perform all
such acts and things not unlawful under the laws of this State
as may be deemed necessary or proper for the successful pros-
ecution of the above mentioned objects.
Sec. VI. That the capital stock of said corporation shall
be tAvo hundred and fifty thousand dollars divided into fifty
thousand shares of the par value of five dollars each, but the
said corporation may begin business when ten thousand dol-
lars shall have been subscribed to the capital stock and the
charter shall have been issued by the Secretary of State as
hereinafter provided.
118 Historical and Literary Activities in N. C.
Sec. IX. That the company is authorized and empowered
to establish on Roanoke Island, on lands which may be do-
nated or purchased for the purpose, in commemoration of Sir
Walter Raleigh and his efforts to colonize America, an insti-
tution for investigating and teaching useful arts and sciences,
and especially those relating to ship building and navigation,
meteorology, and to the culture and propogation of fish and
oysters, and the protection and preservation of aquatic birds
and animals. The instruction in shipbuilding and naviga-
tion, and so far as may be, in the other special subjects above
named, shall be industrial, and practically illustrated by
examples and work personally conducted by the students in
such a way that they shall learn to apply the principles and
theories in which they are instructed and be made familiar
with the manipulation necessary to that end. The other in-
struction in the institution shall be as may be prescribed by
the trustees hereinafter provided for.
Sec. XII. That as soon as one hundred subscribers to be
selected by the corporators named in section 2 of this act
shall have subscribed a sum not less than Ten Thousand Dol-
lars to the capital stock of the company it shall be the duty
of the Secretary of State to issue to the company a charter
artistically designed and ornamented.
Sec. XV. That if the work is not begun on the business of
said corporation within five years from the ratification of this
act, then this charter shall become void and of no effect;
otherwise so, it shall remain in full force and effect for the
period of thirty years from the date of its ratification.
The Island itself the fulcrum by which Raleigh raised
a continent into English possession is interesting without
its history and associations. Thirteen miles long a mile
for each of the colonies of Raleigh's "Virginia" and three
in breadth, this cradle of the Anglo-American race, like the
ark in the bulrushes, lies embowered in evergreens amid the
gently heaving waters of four Sounds Albemarle, Pamlico,
Roanoke and Croatan. A little to the East of it, and be-
tween it and the stormy Atlantic, is ridged the great barrier
of sand, all knotted like a huge serpent, and stretching itself
in the sheen of its yellow beauty for two hundred miles be-
tween the ocean and the Sounds.
In the little land-locked sea, the best protected waters on
The Roanoke Celebration. 119
the American coast, in the safety and the privacy of great
dame Nature was prepared the birth place of the nation,
which has become the greatest of her children. After more
than three centuries a feeling akin to home-sickness stirs
the breasts of Americans and they are turning their longing
eyes toward the place of the nation's nativity.
About the year 1835 the romantic historian Jo. Seawell
Jones visited the Tsland while it was yet covered with the
primeval forests and vine, much as it was in July, 1584,
when the sight of it first gladdened the hearts of Amidas and
Barlowe. Jones says: "If it should ever be the lot of the
reader to stroll under the vintage shades of Roanoke made
impervious to the rays of the sun by the rich foliage and the
clustering grapes above him he will not venture to discredit
the highly wrought sketches of Hariot nor mock the humble
enthusiasm of the volume now before him."
"Nature seems to have exerted herself to adorn it as the
Eden of the New World. The richest garniture of flowers,
and the sweetest minstrelsy of birds, are there. In travers-
ing the northern section of the island, in the spring time of
the year, flowers and sweet scented herbs, in the wildest
luxuriance, are strewn along your winding way, welcoming
you with their fragrance to their cherished isle. The wild
rose bush, which at times springs up into nurseries of one
hundred yards in extent, "blooms blushing" to the song of the
thousand birds that are basking in her bowers."
Sometimes the great Lover and Author of colors paints a
sunset of green and gold on Sound and ocean. Jones seems
to have witnessed one of these sunsets from the brow of a
sandhill during his visit, and thus describes it:
"To the westward of the Island, the waters of the Albe-
marle crept sluggishly along; and in the winding current of
the Swash several vessels stood, with outspread but motionless
wings. Away down to the south, the Pamlico soread itself
out, like an ocean of molten gold, gloaming along the banks
of Chickamacomico and Hatteras; and, contrasted with
this, were the dark waters which separate Roanoke from the
sea-beach, and which were now shaded from the tints of the
sunset by the whole extent of the island."
"A sea of glory streamed along the narrow ridge dividing
120 Historical and Literary Activities in N. C.
the inland waters from the ocean ; and beyond this the bound-
less Atlantic heaved her chafed bosom of sapphire and gold
against the base of yon stormy cape. I enjoyed and lived in
that sunset twilight hour. I thought of the glorious destiny
of the land on which I trod as glorious as the waters and the
earth then around me. I thought of the genius and the death
of Raleigh of the heroic devotedness of Grenville of the
gallantry of Cavendish and Drake of the learning of Hariot
of the nobleness of Manteo, the Lord of Roanoke of the
adventurous expedition of Sir Ralph Lane up the river Mora-
tock of the savage array of the bloodthirsty Wingina of
the melancholy fate of the last of the Raleigh colonies of
Virginia Dare the first Anglo-American of the agony of
her mother and then T thought of those exquisite lines of
Byron,
"Shrine of the mighty, can it be
That this is all remains of thee?"
In 1901 Col. F. A. Olds visited the Island and told a part
of what he saw as follows:
"The centre of attraction is Fort Raleigh. Along roads
of white sand, beneath pines with which the bright green of
the holly is mingled, the way lies to the fort. To the right,
after going a little distance, rise in long lines the sand dunes,
vast mounds, the creation and sport of the winds. Looking
from the top of these, one sees to the eastward the sea, green
and heaving, and the curl of its breakers, and borne by the
soft wind comes the thunder of the surf, almost like an echo.
At ones feet lies the Sound, yellow as gold, three miles in
width, and so shallow that nearly the entire distance can be
waded. Looking westward the island seems at one's feet."
"Descending from the height, the ride is resumed. Past
houses, some modern, others gray with age, the road winds.
Presently there appears a guiding hand, bearing the words
"Fort Raleigh." It points eastward, and there, 100 yards
away is the fort."
"Surrounded by a fence of pine rails, with a rustic gate-
way of little upright poles, is the ruin. In its center stands
a severely simple marble monument, and low posts of granite,
a foot high, mark the venerable earthwork. The outlines are
perfectly plain. The greatest height of the parapet above
The Roanoke Celebration. 121
the ditch is some two feet. Almost an acre is enclosed by
the fence, and the fort covers little more than a fourth of this
area. The colonist's log huts surrounded the fort, which was
their refuge. Within the limits of the enclosure are live-oak,
pine, holly, dogwood, sassafras, water-oak and cherry trees.
Up one live-oak clambers a grape vine and at its foot is an
English ivy. The monument, or memorial stone faces west-
ward and bears this inscription:
"On this site in July- August, 1585, colonists sent out by
Sir Walter Raleigh built a fort called by them 'The new
fort in Virginia.' These colonists were the first settlers of
the English race in America. They returned to England in
July 1586 with Sir Francis Drake.
"Near this place was born, on the 18th day of August,
1587, Virginia, the first child of English parents born in
America, Daughter of Ananias Dare and Eleanor White,
his wife, members of another band of colonists sent out by
Sir Walter Raleigh in 1587. On Sunday August 20, 1587,
Virginia Dare was baptized. Manteo, the friendly chief of
the Hatteras Indians had been baptized on the Sunday pre-
vious. These baptisms were the first known celebrations of
the sacrament in the territories of the thirteen original
States."
"The land has never been in cultivation, and to this fact is
due the marvellous preservation of the ancient earthwork.
In America 316 years seem a very great lapse of time, yet so
old is this little earthwork, which, thanks to the care of the
"Roanoke Colony Memorial Association," is at last marked.
It is evident that the fort was made of two rows of upright
palisades, or logs, between which was earth. The palisades
soon decayed, but the earth retains its outline perfectly."
Prof. Chas. R. Taylor, a resident of the Island and prin-
cipal of the High School at Wanchese, writes in 1902 :
"Much of the beautiful scenery of that age has passed
away. To the east lies a long and well-nigh barren strip of
sand that marks the bounds of the ocean. Along the coast
at nearly regular intervals, are the life-saving stations, with
bere and there a village inhabited by oystermen and fisher-
men, and where many life-savers have their homes. All
these banks, within the memory of their old men, were cov-
ered, with scarcely a break, with a dense forest. These have
122 Historical and Literary Activities in N. C.
all been swallowed up by small mountains of moving sand.
Roanoke Island was heavily timbered."
Another change that has taken place within the memory of
the fathers of this generation is that the island is further
from the mainland. The marsh from Croatan and that from
the south end of Roanoke Island nearly met, only a narrow
creek separating them. This was when the waters of the
Albemarle sought the ocean by Nag's Head Inlet. A storm
closed this. These waters then sought to pass by way of an
inlet south of Roanoke Island. Their force removed the
peaty marsh and opened the wide waterway as it now is.
For more than two centuries this section was sparsely set-
tled. Only twenty-five years ago there were no more than
five or six hundred inhabitants on this island. Their only
connection with the outside world was by sailing vessels.
They were difficult of access, and made little improve-
ment. *****
"Dare County was formed after our Civil War, out of
parts of Hyde, Tyrrell and Currituck Counties. This may
be deemed the first marked step of advancement. Its com-
munities, separated by water, and hitherto attending different
Courts, and having different political associations, were now
brought together to build up their own section."
"The people are now united as a county, with their court-
house finely located, and accessible from every quarter. The
wealth of fish and fowl, which the Heavenly Father has
placed in their waters, is now fully appreciated, and is simply
enormous. They now have excellent steamboat communi-
cation with the outside world. The people have built them-
selves homes that would be creditable to any rural section of
the State. Besides the schools in the various parts of the
county, they have built two commodious academies on Roan-
oke Island one at Manteo and the other at Wanchese. These
are conducted by graduates of leading colleges in Virginia
and North Carolina. There are, moreover, as many young
men and women attending schools of high grade from this
island as from any place of the same area in the State, cities
excepted. Nor is this all. Their churches are nowhere sur-
passed in any country place known to the writer. These
people fear God and honor Him."
The Roanoke Celebration. 123
The island contains a population of about eighteen hun-
dred people engaged for the most part in fishing and agricul-
ture. This number is considerably swelled by visitors at cer-
tain seasons.
From the light house on Bodie's Island, a few miles to the
south of Roanoke, is spread out one of the most interesting
panoramas on the American coast. The historic Island, the
Banks, where the first landing was made, the Sounds with
their deep shaded shores, and the limitless expanse of the
ocean conspire together to make a picture that shall not be
soon forgot.
"Carolina! Carolina! Heaven's blessings attend her;
While we live we will cherish, protect and defend her."
MONUMENT TO SIR WALTER RALEIQH.
Br Gen. J. 8. CARR, Durham, N. C.
At the great meeting of the State Literary and Historical
Association held in our State Capitol during the Fair (Oct.),
190^, I had the honor to propose the erection of a statue to
Sir Walter Raleigh.
The Association, the audience, and apparently also the
people at large, responded enthusiastically to the proposition.
The requisite funds would have been raised in a short while
if a canvass had been then made; but, as it was rightly con-
sidered, the monument was the least part of the project.
The educational value of raising a fund to erect it as far as
may be practicable by penny collections from the school chil-
dren, is not easy to overestimate.
But there is something better even than education in his-
tory it is the growing fellowship of North Carolinians
wherever they are found and where indeed are they not
found. They are forming clubs and associations not only
throughout this State but in every State in which they reside.
They are all united by the ties of filial affection which bind
them to their mother and they will readily respond to any call
by which she may seek to bring her children together.
Our sister State, Virginia, has undertaken that vast enter-
prise, The Jamestown Celebration, which is drawing all
Virginians together from every land and clime. Many tens
of thousands of our own people from the other States into
which they have gone, returning from the Jamestown celebra-
tion, will be only too glad to join us in doing honor to the man
whose untiring efforts to colonize America on the shores of
North Carolina made successful colonization possible.
It is the purpose of those who have the erection of this
monument at heart to bring it to pass during the Virginia
Exposition so that the real colonizer of America may not be
forgotten amid the multitude of lesser lights.
' It is not expected that the fund requisite for so great an
undertaking will be raised by penny collections from the
Monument to Sir Walter Raleigh. 125
school children, but the effect wherever these collections have
been taken up has been to create a healthful interest in the
source of our history among those who are hastening to take
our places. If some well-disposed citizen in each county
where the educational authorities fail, will see to it that each
child in his county has an opportunity to give his penny, or
in default of this will see that enough pennies are given to
represent each child of school-age, it will make the erection
of the monument far easier and will immeasurably increase
the interest in the movement.
THE PATTERSON MEMORIAL CUP.
The most notable recent gift for the encouragement of
literary ami historical activities in North ( arolina is the
loving cup donated to the State Literary and Historical AflBO
ciatiox) ly Mrs. J. Lindsay Patterson, of Winston-Salem. In
recognition of this patriotic action the compilers have thought
it fitting that Mrs. Patterson's portrait should be used as the
frontispiece of this volume. The following editorial from
the Charlotte Observer of January 9th sets forth very com-
pletely the terms and conditions of her splendid gift and the
motives which inspired it.
Certainly no happier idea could have been conceived by
Mrs. J. Lindsay Patterson, of Winston-Salem, for honoring
the memory of her father, and at the same time fostering and
stimulating the literary spirit of our people, than that out-
lined in the Observer a few days ago and elaborated in an
interview in the Raleigh Post with Mr. Clarence H. Poe,
secretary and treasurer of the Xorth Carolina Literary am!
Historical Association. Mrs. Patterson proposes to present
to the society, for competition, a gold loving cup, set with
selections from all the precious stones that are found in Xorth
Carolina, to be awarded each year to the North Carolinian
doing the best literary work in either prose or poetry. We
quote from the Post :
"This splendid gift," said Mr. Poe, in speaking of the mat-
ter yesterday, "is given by Mrs. Patterson as a memorial of
her father, Colonel W. H. Patterson, of Philadelphia, who
died last September, and will be known as the 'William
Houston Patterson Memorial Cup.' Col. Patterson was him-
self a writer and a scholar of unusual ability, and was in-
tensely interested in Xorth Carolina history and Southern
literature generally. And the memorial which Mrs. Patter-
son has decided upon is not a barren and lifeless one, but
one which will be fruitful of great good to the State in
just the way her father would have liked most. The terms
under which the cup is given are these:
"At each meeting of the State Literary and Historical
127
128 The Patterson Memorial Cup.
Association it is to be awarded to that resident of North Caro-
lina who during the preceding twelve months has published
the best work, either in prose or verse history, essay, fic-
tion or poetry ; in books, pamphlets or periodicals. At the end
of ten years the cup is to become the permanent possession of
the writer winning it the greatest number of times, though if
no one person win it three times, or if there be a tie, the time
will be extended. No one is formally to enter the contest, and
the judges from their knowledge of our State literature are
simply to decide which North Carolina writer publishes the
worthiest work between the annual meetings of the associa-
tion. The cup is now being made in Philadelphia, and the
first award will be made at our annual meeting in October,
all the work of the preceding twelve months being considered
by the judges. Each winner is to have his name engraved
on the prize, and to retain possession of it for one year.*
"The judges as finally decided upon by Mrs. Patterson
consist of the president of the Literary and Historical Asso-
ciation, chairman, and the occupants of the chairs of history
in the University of North Carolina and Trinity College, and
the chairs of literature in the University, Davidson and Wake
Forest.
"All in all," said Mr. Poe, "the plan is regarded by our
committee as thoroughly happy, praiseworthy and practical,
and we feel that the whole State will honor Mrs. Patterson
for her patriotic action. The award of the cup will certainly
be one of the most interesting features of our next annual
meeting."
Mrs. Patterson's thought is a beautiful one, and carries
with it not only the evidence of tenderness for the memory
of her father but a desire on her part to do something for
North Carolina in the direction he would have most pre-
ferred. Colonel Patterson was a gentleman of rare scholar-
ship. He took peculiar interest in North Carolina, the
home of his accomplished daughter, and it is fitting that a
memorial to him should carry with it a purpose to advance
the intellectual life of the State. He died at his summer
home in the mountains of Tennessee.
* Since the above was printed the cup has been completed and will be
presented to the first winner during the coming State Fair.
This book is DUE on the last
date stamped below
NOV 2 6 195$
5m-6,'41(3644)
UJUVERSITY OJ QRMA
AT
LOS ANGELES
LIBRARY
F255
Molina.
State d cpt. of-
7 1 )S and
his tor
nrrinN .i LIBRARY FACILITY
Historical and literary
activities in IJorth
Carolina.
nov2 m
F255
N81h
1904a
T.l