THE LIBRARY OF THE

UNIVERSITY OF

NORTH CAROLINA

FROM THE LIBRARY OF

ALEXANDER B. ANDREWS

Class of 1893

TRUSTEE OF THE UNIVERSITY

FRIEND OF THE LIBRARY

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00032761556

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HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

HISTORY

OF

WAKE COUNTY

NORTH CAROLINA

WITH SKETCHES OF THOSE WHO HAVE MOST INFLUENCED ITS DEVELOPMENT

BY

HOPE SUMMERELL CHAMBERLAIN

Pen and Ink Illustrations

BY THE Author

Edwards & Broughton Printing Company

Raleigh, N. C.

1922

Copyright, 1922

BY

Mrs. William Johnston Andrews

Mrs. Alexander Boyd Andrews

■

IS DEDK	THE MEV
OUR L-A	VED CH
Mrs. Ale	Boyd
(JULJ	A JOHKS
The Wake	CoMMlTi-^.
North i	iaSociet
CCON
UNL	. .. ............
I	TEN AND

)!'

Alexander Boyd Andrews

This Book is dedicated to the memory of our late beloved chairman

Mrs. Alexander Boyd Andrews (Julia Martha Johnston)

BY

The Wake County Committee of the

North Carolina Society of

Colonial Dames of America

under whose auspices

IT is written and

PRINTED

Author's Dedication

O her just pride in her own colo- nial ancestry, Mrs. Alexander Boyd Andrews (Julia Martha Johnston) added a strong inter- est in the early history of her State. From the tradition of Mecklenburg where she was born, she came to be intensely interested in the annals of Wake, her adoptive County, and in the development of Raleigh, where she lived to be a blessing to all who knew her.

She was a patriot, as well as a Christian wife and mother; she loved the inspiration of old days, as well as the new friends she found everywhere. She was honored by being chosen as Vice-Regent from North Carolina of Mount Vernon Ladies Association. Often during her lifetime she recommended to the writer of this book the writing of a history of Wake County as a worthy work for this Committee of the North Carolina Society of Colonial Dames in America.

Thus this book becomes a memorial to her friendship and to her ideals, a sincere labor

[9]

CO

10 AUTHOR S DEDICATION

of love undertaken at her often expressed de- sire. It pictures the community she loved. It embodies the interests of that Committee which came into activity under her leadership. It is the fittest monument to her worth and dignity that we can raise. May she know that we remember and feel that we still love her, and approve of our dedication to her of the book she inspired.

^^

Contents

CHAPTER I Introductory

Introductory Paragraph — Lawson, Explorer, 1700 — Journey through the Carolinas — Visit to Falls of "News Creek" — Possibly traversed what is now Wake County — Granville Tobacco Path — Beginnings in North Carolina — Causes of great love of Liberty — Poor Government of Lords Proprietors — Locke's Fundamental Constitutions — Geographical and Topographical Conditions — Inde- pendence of Settlers — Col. Byrd's libel of Settlers — Good character of same — Growth of Settlements in North Carolina — Wake existed as parts of Johnston and Orange Counties in 1765 — Tryon's Admin- istration as Governor — Contrast between East and West of Colony — Tryon's Palace at New Berne — Grievances of Different Sections — The Regulators War — Tryon's Expedition against Regulators — Setting off of four New Counties in 1771, of which the Fourth was Wake — Tryon's Camp at Hunter's Lodge in Wake County, spring of 1771 — Laying off of Rhamkatt Road — Naming of Wake County — Esther Wake, Margaret Wake, Lady Tryon — Derivation of Terri- tory of Wake — Position in State — Soil — Products — Elevation — Climate — Streams — Raleigh Capital City and County Seat.

CHAPTER H The First Twenty-Five Years

Tryon's March from Wake to Alamance — The Quelling of the Regulators — Rapid Growth of Revolutionary sentiment — Thomas Jefferson's Tribute — 1772, First Court held in Wake — Wake Cross Roads — Bloomsbury — Source of Name — Joel Lane's Tavern — "First Capitol" — Inscription on Tablet — Supplies furnished by Joel Lane — Inauguration of Gov, Thomas Burke — His Inaugural Ad- dress— Sketch of Burke's Life — Burke Square — Interval between Yorktown and 1789 — Location of New Capital — Discussed in In-

12 CONTENTS

tervals of Debates about the Ratification of the Federal Constitu- tion— Account of Debate on Location of Capital — Wake County- Site voted Aug, 2, 1788 — Pros and Cons — Constitution Ratified 1789 — Wake County Site Confirmed 1791 — Willie Jones and Com- missioners— Joel Lane's Tract — Laying Off of Streets — Price of Tract, etc. — Description of City Plan — Names of Streets — Park System — First Sale of City Lots — Building of State House.

CHAPTER III Early Worthies

Number of Inhabitants of Wake County in 1800 — Character of Settlers — General Mode of Life in 1800 — Cotton — Transportation — Tobacco — Corn — Wheat — Live Stock — Homes — Vehicles — Horseback Riding — Amusements — Look of Country — Mode of Liv- ing of Settlers — Easy Success — Slavery — Schools — Stores and Tav- erns— Court Week — Religious Services — Discontent with Primitive Conditions — Prominent Citizens of Wake — John Hinton and De- scendants— Theophilus Hunter and Descendants — Joel Lane and Brothers — Story of Lane's Scheming — ^Two Jones Families of Wake — Kinship with Allen and Willie Jones — Mingling of Blood of First Families of Wake — Fanning Jones the Tory — Dr. Calvin Jones of Wake Forest — Names of Taxpayers of Wake, i8cxD — Same Names to-day.

CHAPTER IV Raleigh The Capital Village

Colonel Creecy's Description of Raleigh in 1800 — Old Sassafras Tree — Governor Ashe, 1795, — FirstGovernor Residing in Raleigh — First Governor's Mansion — Joel Lane House — Andrew Johnson House — Academy — (Old Lovejoy's) Begun 1802 — Female Depart- ment 1807 — Additions — Curriculum — Dr.McPheeters — Other Early Schools of Wake — John Chavis — Presentation of Globes to Univer- sity of North Carolina by Matrons of Raleigh — The old "Palace" or Governor's Mansion at Foot of Fayetteville Street — Community Life of Old Raleigh — Plays — Processions — Speakings — Banquets —

CONTENTS 13

Census of Raleigh in March, 1807 — City Government — City Watch, 181 1 — Art Treasure of Old State House — Story of Canova's Statue of Washington — Fourth of July Celebration, 1809 — Subsequent Celebrations — First Church Edifices — List of Subjects for Further Interest in Raleigh History.

CHAPTER V Early Life and Thought

Forgetting the New Necessary to Understanding of Old — Politics — Economics — Definition of Democracy — Federalists — Jeffersonians — Warring Ideals, French and English — Andrew Jackson — Political Change in North Carolina — State Banks — "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too" — Henry Clay — Old Whigs — Backwardness ofjEducation — The Western Fever — Discussions of Slavery — New England's Didacti- cism— Internal Improvements — Canals — High Cost of Living, 1 82 1 — Stage Coach Travel — Newspapers — The Gales — Raleigh "Register" — "The Standard" — Scarcity of Books — Food in Raleigh — Furniture — Fashions — Table Ware — Housewives, Duties — The Unmanage- able Young Folks of the Twenties and Thirties.

CHAPTER VI Giants of Those Days

Col. William Polk— The Old State Bank— Colonel Polk on Duel- ing (Alfred Jones Duel) — Colonel Polk Beats an Old Neighbor — His Dancing — His Son Leonidas — His Friend and his Cousin and his Bank Janitor — Sketch of William Boylan — Invention of Cotton Gin — Mr. Boylan's Kind Heart — His Home, Wakefield — Peter Brown — Practising Lawyer — His Return to Raleigh — ^Judge Seawell — Moses Mordecai — William Peck — Anecdote of State Bank Days — Young R. S. Tucker — Dr. William McPheeters — Disciplinarian — Peace Brothers — Joseph Gales and Mrs. Winifred Gales his Wife — DavidL. Swain — HisLife — HisHistoricalWork — Mentionof Familiar Characters in the Raleigh of His Time.

14 CONTENTS

CHAPTER VII More Biographies

Noticeof John Marshall — Anecdote of his Stay in Raleigh — Refer- ence to Him from Governor Swain — Quotation by Judge Badger — Judge Gaston — Influence on Constitutional Con ventionof 1 83 ^ — Last Religious Disability Removed by Influence of William Johnston — Gaston's Eloquence — His Piety — John Haywood, State Treasurer — Other Members of the Haywood Family — ^John Haywood's Friendly Ways — Popularity — Devotion to University of North Carolina — Funeral Eulogy — Judge Badger — Youthful Ability — Many Honors — Battle Family — Duncan Cameron — His Buildings — Leonidas K. Polk (Fighting Bishop) — Brigadier-General in Confederate Army — His Life, Services as Bishop and as Soldier — Brave Death.

CHAPTER VIII Improvements and Progress

Stimulus of Loss — Burning of the Old State House — Destruction of Statue of Washington — Other Alarms of Fire — Miss Betsy Geddy — Controversy over New Capitol — Judge Gaston's Influence — Ap- propriation for New Capitol — Building Committees — Corner Stone, July 4, 1833 — Same Day, Railroad Plan — Final Cost of Capitol — Its Material — Its Designers and Builders — Method of Moving Stone for Capitol — Mrs. Sarah Hawkins Polk and Her Street Cars — Spirit- ed Raleigh Women — Poor Fire Protection — Hunter's Pond — Descrip- tion from Petersburg Paper — Eagerness for Railroad in North Caro- lina— Capitol Finished — Railroad Comes In — Great Double Cele- bration— Described by Witness — Early Engines, Tracks and Cars — Time Table — Breath of Progress.

CHAPTER IX The Middle Years

Rapid Progress — Establishment of Capital as Center, Political and Social — General Prosperity — Plantation Homes — Mexican War —

CONTENTS 15

Discovery of Gold in California — Effect on Men's Minds— Cheerful Temper — Great Political Campaign Waged in Wake — Educational Interest— Saint Mary's School— Wake Forest College — Free School — Growth of Population — Increase of Luxury — Of Fashion — Dress and Food — Advantage of Railroads though Despatched Without Telegraphs — Interest in Farming Methods — Culture — Reading — Discord over Slavery — Rift Growing Wider — Differing Opinions in Raleigh — Old Heads — Hot Young Hearts — The Actual Secession — After — The Surrender of the Capital as Narrated by Governor Swain — The "End of an Era."

CHAPTER X Our Benefactors

Five Citizens — One Stranger— A Woman — John Rex the Tanner and his Bequest for a Hospital — Intention not Fully Realized and why — William Peace and Peace Institute — Dorothea Dix — Sketch of Life — Story of Founding of State Hospital for Insane — Stanhope Pullen — His Peculiarities — His Business Success — His Gifts: to City, to State, to State College for Women — John Pullen: Charitable, Consecrated — His Example — His Remarkable Funeral — R. B. Rainey— His Gift of Library to City — His Modesty— The Real Meaning of his Gift.

CHAPTER XI Distinguished Visitors

General Lafayette — Henry Clay — President James K. Polk — President Buchanan — General Joseph Lane — Stephen A. Douglas — Mrs. Jefferson Davis — President Andrew Johnson — President Theo- dore Roosevelt — Woodrow Wilson, Just Before Becoming Candidate for the Presidency — Vice-President Sherman — Vice-President Mar- shall— State Literary and Historical Speakers — Edwin Markham — James Bryce — Henry Cabot Lodge — ^Jules Jusserand — Ex-President Taft — Frenchmen of the High Commission during World War — General Tyson — Dorothea Dix Several Times — Dr. Anna Howard Shaw — ^Miss Rankin the First Congresswoman.

16 CONTENTS

CHAPTER XII These Later Days

Life Story of a Nation — ^Wm. L. Saunders and Colonial Records — Self-Consciousness in History Comes Later — Early Manufactur- ing— Hand-loom Products — Home Dyes — Women's Handicrafts — Early Before-the-war Cotton Factories — None in Wake — Cotton Gins in Wake — Cotton-seed Oil made in Wake Before the War — Pianos made in Raleigh — Paper Mills in Wake: Joseph Gales' and Royster's — Disposal of Latter Mill — Agricultural Methods — ^War- time Impetus to Manufacturing — Home Work Given Out to Country Women — Sewing — Knitting — Manufactures in Raleigh for Confederacy — Powder — Guncaps — Cartridges — Matches — Curry-combs — Metal Findings — John Brown Pikes — Wooden Shoes — Cotton Cloth Found in Devereux Mansion — Cotton Cultiva- tion— Reconstruction Period — Priestley Mangum and Man gum Terrace — Developed More Perfectly — Walter Page — State Chroni- cle— ^Watauga Club — Agricultural and Mechanical College — Growth of Manufactures in Raleigh — Rural Free Delivery — Progress all over Wake County.

H

CHAPTER I

Introductory

T is difficult to realize beginnings. Let us turn back the stream of time, let us look at our old famil- iar places in the light of former days. No one has stepped twice in the same river, and its onward flow changes all shores.

Who has not said to himself, as he passed along famihar streets and considered familiar

landmarks, — .77,7

"I wish Id seen

The many towns this town has been.''

So it is with this country we live in and pos- sess. When we go abroad upon the hilly roads of this pleasant inland County of Wake, when we note the outlines of its ridges agamst the sky, and see field and forest and farm, and scenes of man's long residence, we often wish to think backward and perceive clearly these old well-known scenes with the eyes of the first European explorers as they threaded

[17]

18 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

their way through forest glades, peopled at that time only by the red men.

The first historian of North Carolina, the explorer Lawson, although known to have passed through the central part of this State, cannot actually be proved to have trod the soil of Wake County. One authority on our local history thinks that he did, and indeed it seems more than possible.

Lawson made a journey through western and middle Carolina in the year seventeen hundred or thereabout. His course was a long loop coming out of South Carolina and cross- ing the Catawba and the ''Realkin" (or Yad- kin) and other streams, continuing in a north- easterly direction and then due east, until he finally reached the settlements of the North Carolina seaboard. His descriptive travel- ler's journal reads as fresh and as crisply In- teresting as if penned last year, and we get the impression of a writer alert in every sense and perception. He was a fine optimistic fellow, and though he was hired no doubt to praise the new colony, and so draw In settlers from among the readers of his account, yet no one can close his book without the feeling that he

INTRODUCTORY 19

too, like many another coming to North Car- olina to live, soon fell in love with the climate, and delighted to bask under the sunny sky.

Hear his account of leaving ''Acconeechy Town" (which must have been near Hills- borough), and marching twenty miles east- ward over "stony rough ways" till he reached "a mighty river." '^This river is as large as the Realkin, the south bank having tracts of good land, the banks high, and stone quarries. We got then to the north shore, which is poor white sandy soil with scrubby oaks. We went ten miles or so, and sat down at the falls of a large creek where lay mighty rocks, the water making a strange noise as of a great many water wheels at once. This I take to be the falls of News Creek, called by the Indians We-Quo-Whom."

For a first trip through an unknown wilder- ness, guided only by a compass, this suggests the neighborhood, and describes the granite ridges that traverse Wake County, and pro- duce the Falls of Neuse, where the river flows across one of these barriers.

During the next days' travel he comments on the land ''abating of its height" and ''mixed

20 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

with pines and poor soil." This, too, makes it sound as if he perceived the swift transition which may be seen in the eastern part of Wake County from one zone to the next, from the hard-wood growth to the pine timber, and from a clay to a sandy soil.

Lawson highly praised the midland of North Carolina, between the sandy land and the mountains, and it is pleasant to read his en- thusiastic account of this home of ours, and learn the impression it made on a good observ- er in its pristine state, and before the white man's foot had become familiar with the long trading path, which must have crossed west, near this section, but not certainly in the exact longitude of Wake County.

This trail is known to have passed Hills- borough, and to have crossed Haw River at the Haw Fields. It may well have followed the same course, as later did the Granville Tobacco Path, which certainly traversed Wake County near Raleigh.

Wake County was one of the latest of the pre-Revolutionary counties to be set off from the rest, and its boundaries were not in any sense natural boundaries, dependent upon

INTRODUCTORY

21

natural barriers or the course of streams, but were run and divided for purely political reasons.

The story of the making and naming of Wake County is an interesting one, and prop- erly to tell it requires some general account of the Colony of North Carolina and its begin- nings.

The first settlement of the Carolinas was begun under the charter of a company of English noblemen, the Lords Proprietors. If these owners received their quit-rents as speci- fied, they did not take much further interest in their plantations, nor molest the settlers; hence, the northern colony, being so neglected and more isolated, was ever the freest of all the Old Thirteen; one might even say the freest and easiest of them. Having no good harbor, and hidden behind the sand-bars from the storms of Hatteras, it enjoyed its immun- ity. Not being easily reached from outside, it did as its people chose with governors and edicts, dodged its taxes, harbored fugitives, and governed its own affairs quite comfort- ably.

22 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

The Lords Proprietors employed John Locke, the great English philosopher, to draw up a form of government for their two infant colonies, and when he did so a more unsuitable set of constitutional provisions for a thinly settled state would be hard to find.

This '^Fundamental Constitution" was a confused and complicated plan full of strange titles and orders of nobility, with Its ''Land- graves" and Its "Caciques," a plan which It would have been hard enough to follow In a populous society, with no will of Its own; and which it was quite Impossible to carry out in a sparsely peopled edge of the wilderness' where the principal aim in life of the inhabit- ants was to escape all outside coercion, and to delight In space and liberty.

The confusion brought about by this fam- ous Locke Constitution was also a cause of this glorious opportunity, eagerly grasped by the colonists, to avoid outside Interference, as well as dispense with all the Inconveniences of home rule and superfluous government.

Still another cause of freedom was the rapid succession of governors sent by the Lords Proprietors, some grossly incompetent, some

INTRODUCTORY 23

most tyrannical, and all objectionable to the temper of the colony even when of average diligence, or because of that diligence.

The later Royal governors were on the whole better men, but the custom had gone on too long for them to subdue those who had defied so long and so successfully any other government save their own.

Again, the liberty of North Carolina was favored simply by the shape of the coast as mentioned above, indented as it is by sounds and wide tide-water rivers, intersected by great swamps, and the whole shut in from the highway of nations by shallows and sand-bars. Even neighborhoods were secluded from each other by sounds and estuaries, while the whole was protected from outside interference. The individual planter scarcely saw a dozen folk outside of his own family in a year.

This freedom of the free in North Carolina was well known, and many came to her bor- ders to enjoy it.

The adventurous, then as now, longed for a wilderness in which to wander; the hunter wanted game, and found abundance there.

24 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

Religious sects, persecuted elsewhere, were unmolested in North Carolina; dissenters and Quakers could settle in peace. Indeed the colonists, like Sir John Falstaff, had almost forgotten what ''the inside of a church was like." Those also who wanted to rub out their reckoning and begin life over again, could do so unquestioned, and those who simply wanted to make a living, could make it al- most too easily for their own welfare, by half cultivating the rich bottom-lands.

At no time were there any more really crim- inal persons in North Carolina, in proportion to the population than there were in Virginia, al- though there may well have been more fugi- tives from the law in the strip of no-man's- land that intervened between North Carolina and Virginia before the dividing line was run and agreed upon.

One may read and smile at the witty libel of Colonel William Byrd of Westover, and note how this colony and its liberty roused the ire of the aristocratic Virginian.

He regards it as a big brother does a very impertinent smaller one who has run away and is making faces from over the fence. His

INTRODUCTORY 25

chuckles are a bit spiteful as he describes the inferiority, compared with Virginia, of the ^^Rogues Harbor," this ^'Redemptioners Ref- uge." He waxes sarcastic over their over- primitive homes, and habits of living, choosing extreme examples; he refers to their lack of piety and churches, adverts to their love of liquor and laziness, their lack of baptism for their children and of the sanction of church ceremony for the union of the parents, and then, having had his merciless fling at them, he unwillingly acknowledges that the dividing line will have to be run fifteen miles or so north of the line that Virginia has always been claim- ing.

He is also forced to record that all the set- tlers on this strip of territory were glad to hear that they had been set ofl^ into North Carolina forever, but seems also to regret that by this means these undesirables and border ruffians were deprived of chance for future amend- ment.

Colonel Byrd coveted the pleasure of seeing them put to rights, although the including of them in Virginia would have seemed to spoil the high moral average of that colony accord- ing to his telling.

26 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

The fundamental nature of our population was sound and wholesome, incentive to crime was lacking; there was plenty of a rude sort, no crowding for any, and the excess of liberty was better endured there than in the west of of the eighteen-fifties, where there was gold, and the lust of it, to excite men's ambition.

Colonists were coming in great numbers by the middle of the eighteenth century. Great Indian wars were fought to a conclusion, and the west was opened up more and more, as people pushed up the great rivers. By 1765, Mecklenburg and Rowan had filled up, faster perhaps than the intervening lands. The soil grew more fertile farther west. Scotch-Irish, Moravian and Pennsylvania "Dutch", second generation pioneers, came down the Piedmont and settled the pleasant valleys.

A few years later, Salisbury and Charlotte were thriving little frontier towns and Hills- borough was almost as large as it is today.

For many years after Col. William Byrd and Edward Mosely had surveyed the dividing line, Wake County was but an undistinguished part of the middle western woods, with here and there a settler; but by 1765 it had become ad-

INTRODUCTORY 27

joining parts of the counties of Johnston and Orange.

It was in this same year that William Tryon came to be the new Royal Governor of North Carolina, and the colony became daily more prosperous, the west having filled up as stated, while the eastern precincts grew rich and be- came refined in their ideas of comfort and even luxury. Those eastern folk enjoyed agricul- tural abundance from the fertile soil, they plied a coastwise trade, and owned large ships trading to Bermuda and even to English sea- ports. Their sons were sent to be educated in England or in the northern colleges, and the leading men showed "a prevalence of excel- lent education" although there were no col- leges and few schools worth the name in all Carolina.

The different levels of rank were as well marked in the east as in Virginia at that time, but in the west, in Carolina, as in western Virginia, the settlers were mostly Presbyter- ians and other dissenters, were small farmers, and did not own slaves, which were always the rule for working the broad plantations in the tide-water country.

28 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

These western folk were often pious, but If by chance some one was careless in religion he was all the more eager for liberty. Pio- neers, and the sons of pioneers, some settled and some pressed on, piercing the wooded passes of the mountains and faring over into Kentucky and Tennessee. They were the second generation in the colony, Americans born, who cared nothing for the King and the ''Old Home," but rejoiced to find the whole boundless continent before them. Woods- men and explorers these, like Daniel Boone, who once settled for a little time in western North Carolina, but felt himself crowded when he could see smoke from a neighbor's fire closer than twelve miles of wilderness away.

This was the Old North State when Tryon came from England to his difficult task, that of bending the pride of the east, and subdu- ing the independence of the west, and thus governing the heterogeneous mixture.

Tryon had many good qualifications. It is certain by evidence that he must have been a fine figure of a man; he had been a soldier; his ability was far above average; he was the

INTRODUCTORY 29

possessor of fine tact, reinforced by an Iron will, and a determination to govern at all costs. His first problem was the trouble about the stamp tax and he handled the news of its repeal In a masterly manner, gaining from it the full advantage in behalf of the Royal Government. Also he cunningly util- ized the joy and good humor over this repeal as an opportunity for asking money to build a governor's mansion In New Berne, then the seat of government.

When we think of the dislike of all America for the word "taxes" at that date, and when we remember how unwilling our fathers then were, and their descendants still are, to spend money for governmental show and glory, Tryon is in this matter shown to be a com- manding and astute manager of men. His ascendancy over the lower house of deputies, and his gaining so much of his desires from them seem little short of marvelous.

He received fifteen thousand pounds in all for building his ''palace" as it began to be call- ed, and when this was finished it was the finest building of the kind in all America. Tryon reconstructed there, as best he could, the

30 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

English ideal of polite society, and held social festivities with all dignity and due decorum; but the accomplishment of his heart's desire brought him a thriving crop of jealous com- ment from the wealthy planters who did not relish his sitting to receive them in his *'elbow chair," nor his haughty airs in his fine house.

As to the western farmers in their log-cabins^ although they were a thousand times better off than their brethren of the English country- side, and though they did not call themselves either poor or miserable, they lived hardily and had little respect for luxury, and no pa- tience at all with what seemed to them sinful extravagance. Moreover they had a set of excellent grievances. They justly complained of the large fees for the grants and deeds to their land, extorted by the sheriffs and county clerks. The amounts of these fees are not set down as so enormous, but the King's officers were constantly accused of over-charging, and of charging twice and pocketing the difference. Also these dues must be paid in real money, of which there was very little in circulation in the Colony and which then had a much greater purchasing power than now.

INTRODUCTORY 31

Thus the men of the back country were fer- menting with a spirit of obstinate opposition to constituted authority, while taxes were some years in arrears. That there was op- pression and abuse seems quite certain, and also that this oppression was caused by the arbitrary and offensive behavior of the men in charge of the tax collecting.

Mingled with the ever-growing dislike of their tyranny was indignation over the ex- pense of building that great fine palace, and added to that, an ill-defined irritation against what we might call pernicious high-brow-ism in some of the more prominent officials, es- pecially Edmund Fanning and John Frohock.

Fanning was called Tryon's son-in-law, but authority for that is wanting. He was a graduate of Harvard College and a man tact- less and arrogant, who felt and showed con- tempt for these frontier folk. The hatred that centered upon him cannot be accounted for in any other way. Not one voice has been raised in vindication of his doings until more than a hundred years had passed since he left North Carolina. The sting of disdain out- lasts blows and injuries In the memory, and

32 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

Fanning and Frohock were so hated that they became the subjects of the first popular bal- lads native to North Carolina, mere prose not expressing the strong feelings of the people against them, and an ante-Revolutionary "Hymn of Hate" being necessary.

The Governor went to the western part of the State In 1770 to compose the trouble that was brewing there, which was the beginning of what Is called the Regulators War, but he does not seem to have gone to the root of the matter. He simply told the people to be good, and while he had Fanning tried, allowed him to be white-washed and fined only a penny for each of the extortions as proven. Tryon could not read the signs of the times and left discontent behind him.

The Regulators were full of bitterness. It was a feeling rather than a reasoned opinion. The War of the Regulation, as It seems to our partial Information, was the rising of a ground- swell of Democracy.

It bore some analogy to the spirit of oppo- sition which has sometimes possessed the mountain folk of our own and adjoining states when they thought of revenue collectors and United States revenue officers.

INTRODUCTORY 33

Mr. Frank Nash has called this ''political near-sightedness" In one of his historical papers, and that expresses the condition better than any other phrase.

The backwoodsman who had traveled far and subdued a bit of the wilderness for his own, wished to be let alone in possession of what he had so hardly won. He had fought and fended for himself against crude nature and savage foes, had made his clearing and built his cabin with unaided arm. He could scarce- ly acknowledge the right of any one to dictate to him. Like the Irishman who said he owed nothing to posterity by reason that posterity had never been of any benefit to him, the frontiersman considered talk of this govern- ment, and of taxes owing to it, quite imperti- nent, while the British throne and the king over the water had no sentimental appeal to him.

His case was parallel to that of the moun- taineer who finds a far-away government lay- ing hands upon his home-made whiskey. He has made it out of his own corn, which he has often cultivated by hand on a hillside too steep to plough, and he knows that this indul-

The old sassafras tree ox the Capitol Square still

ALIVE IN 1922. From this famous "deer stand" forty

head of deer were shot by one hunter, within the

memory of those alive in 1800.

INTRODUCTORY 35

gence Is denied him by an outside Influence and not of his own consent.

No brief Is held for the moonshiner, but who can not understand the point of view of the Ignorant mountaineer? Our frontiersman reasoned much In the same way, and his fees and taxes seemed enormous to him, and In- deed were so, measured by his ability to pay in real money.

It was In 1771 when Tryon returned west with the eastern militia to quell this distur- bance In Orange and Rowan, which grew daily more severe, and it was in that very year that Wake County came Into existence. The Regulators were most active in Orange and Rowan, and the best opportunity for getting together and talking politics was then even more than It Is now, court week, for that was the only time when the whole settle- ment turned out in a general manner.

Tryon thought It would be a good thing to divide the counties, and, so doing, divide the courts and prevent so general a free discus- sion. He therefore influenced his council to set off four new counties, Guilford, Chatham, Surry, and Wake, as a measure for dividing

36 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

Up the Regulators and silencing their general discussions. The reason given in the enact- ment, however, is one of distance and greater convenience in attending court. This meas- ure was signed by Tryon in the spring of 1771.

In the record of the expedition of that same spring against the Regulators, we find Tryon camped at Hunter's Lodge, the home of Theophllus Hunter in Wake County, and said to have been about four miles from the present southern boundary of the City of Raleigh.

It is also of record that the (Ramsgate) Rhamkatt Road was laid off through the woods towards Hillsborough so as to avoid the rough hills of the Granville Tobacco Path, in hastening Tryon's military wagons.

We also note that the sign and countersign of one of those days of delay in camp at Hunt- er's Lodge, as they waited for recruits, were the words "Wake" and ^'Margaret," which suggests strongly the origin of the name of the new county. The maiden name of the Gov- ernor's lady was Margaret Wake, and the new county might well have been named for her, especially as the parish was named St. Margaret's, after her baptismal name. Es-

INTRODUCTORY 37

ther Wake, that lovely vision whose tradition Is so persistent, cannot be absolutely proved to be more than an Imagination of the gallant Shocco Jones. She probably existed, but we cannot be certain of It now, and the name Wake Is easily accounted for without her aid. It has very recently been noted that in January, 1771, "the Honorable Miss Wake" gave two pounds sterling for the founding of a minister and teacher for the German settle- ment. This shows Esther a very kindly, lovely girl.

Wake County was carved out of Orange for the most part, and included also a bit of John- ston and a little of Cumberland. In making of new counties around It later, it lost part of its first extent; but it was then, as now, the midmost county between the low country and the mountains, and Is approximately central between the Virginia line and the boundary of South Carolina. It is the level where the long-leaved pines of the lower lands yield to forests of hardwood trees, and the sandy soils pass definitely Into red clay. Its wonderful diversity of products is directly re- ferable to this variety of soil, and the two

INTRODUCTORY 39

edges of the county, eastern and western, are as distinct as though a hundred miles separat- ed their boundaries.

The first ridges of any regularity of extent which cross the State from north to south, the first ripples of those folds which rise into the great Blue Ridge, cross Wake County. Al- most all varieties of soil not strictly alluvial are found in some part or another of Wake, and indeed there is often the greatest differ- ence in the constitution of the soil of different sides of the same field. The climate also is about the medium between the damp of the east and the keen light air of the mountain section. Neuse River and Its tributary creeks drain and water it well. Raleigh, the Capital of the State for more than a hundred years, occupies almost a central point In the County, and has been until now the only large town of the County.

CHAPTER II The First Twenty-five Years

ROM Theophilus Hunter's in Wake County, Tryon marched direct to the Battle of Alamance, where the Regulators were beat- en, their army dispersed, and six of their ringleaders quickly hung for treason. So thorough were his methods that all ac- tive hostility was then over. But although their armed resistance was quelled, the ''em- battled farmers" of North Carolina went to their homes with that bewildered feeling of frustration and utter disaster that left them neither self-confidence for future attempt, nor expectation of any redress for their crying grievances. The public debt which Tryon incurred in this expedition, added to the ar- rears bequeathed to him by his predecessors, was never paid; nor would it have been easy to collect from a people more and more indig- nant, more and more weaned from its alleg- iance to Great Britain.

The New England Colonies treading the self-same path, sent emissaries to North Car-

[40]

THE FIRST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS 41

ollna to test the temper of Its people, and never did sentiments of liberty meet greater sympathy, or aspirations for Independent ex- istence more favor. The people of North Carolina were ripe for revolution. Wrote Thomas JeflFerson at this time, "There Is no doubtfulness In North Carolina, no state Is more fixed or forward."

In this year of transition and bitter brood- ing was held the first court In the new County of Wake, and w^e know who located the coun- ty seat at Wake Cross Roads, and named It Bloomsbury, which name had never appeared before in this place. This was also done by the Tryons, and the name of Bloomsbury must be referred to them, as being the name of a new suburb of London, just then being "developed" as we say of real estate ventures.

Russell, Earl of Bedford, was building this part of London on a portion of his ancestral acres, and he Is said also to have been re- sponsible In some way for Tryon's appoint- ment as Colonial Governor. Russell Square, which Is so often mentioned In Thackeray's novel. Vanity Fair, as the home of the heroine, was In Bloomsbury, and Is the actual name of

42 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

a street there. This name must have meant something of home and London to the Try- ons, as is shown by their giving it to this cor- ner of the wilderness. Here is a likely con- nection.

On the contrary, we cannot see any reason why Joel Lane, born on this side of the ocean, and busy, enterprising wild-westerner as one might call him, should fancy and insist upon the name of Bloomsbury more than any other English name. He probably was glad to adopt a name which the Governor suggested for his tavern. This western Bloomsbury was a mere stopping place beside the Hillsborough Road, and the first court was held in the resi- dence or tavern of this Joel Lane, already one of Wake County's most prominent citizens. There was a jail of logs, and our first sherifi" was named Michael Rogers. Theophilus Hunter was a justice, and so were Joel Lane and several other of the men whose names occur first on the records. The old court corres- ponded to the English Quarter Sessions and has been long superseded by the later con- stitutional arrangements of North Carolina.

There still stands, in the western part of Raleigh, a rather small house with a very

THE FIRST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS 43

Steep gambrel roof, In the style of architec- ture common at the beginning of the nine- teenth century and before, called the Dutch Colonial. This house used to face Boylan Avenue, standing a little back from the street, but was moved a few years ago, and now faces the south side of Hargett Street near the State Prison.

The exact year of its erection is not known, but its architecture is of the same order as that of the house at Yorktown, Virginia, where Cornwallis surrendered to General Washington.

It also resembles in angle of roof the little "Andrew Johnson Birthplace" which stands restored in Pullen Park, and another historic house at Edenton, where was held the Eden- ton Tea Party. The peculiar, quite steep slant of the roof over the second story has been disused in more modern houses, and serves as a means of dating the erection.

This house on Hargett Street was once known as the "First Capitol," and was built by and belonged to Joel Lane. It may well have been new at the time we are describing It was considered a very fine house in its day, and is called the "best house within a hundred miles."

44 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

Probably those same old walls that we all have seen were those that sheltered the first county court, and there Tryon certainly stopped on his return from the military ex- pedition against the Regulators. It could scarcely have been built during the troubled times of the Revolution, and could well have been in existence in the year 1772, as it is of record that it was in 1781.

On the street corner near to its first situa- tion a boulder has been placed, and a bronze tablet let into its side bears the following in- scription, placed there by the Daughters of the Revolution, Bloomsbury Chapter, in the year 1911.

ON AND AROUND THIS SPOT STOOD THE OLD TOWN OF BLOOMSBURY OR WAKE COUNTY COURT HOUSE

Which was erected and made the County Seat WHEN Wake County was established IN 1771. This place was the ren- dezvous OF A PART OF TyROn's

Army when he marched against the Regu- lators in I 77 I

Here met the Revolutionary Assembly in 1781,

AND to this vicinity WAS REMOVED THE

State seat of Government WHEN the Capital City OF Raleigh was incorporated in 1782.

THE FIRST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS 45

Tryon and his lady left North Carolina in 1771 for New York State, he to become Gov- ernor there, and North Carolina never saw- either of them again. It Is said that they were glad to go In spite of having to leave the fine house they had built In New Berne, be- cause the climate had not suited their health nor the spirit of the colony their minds. When the Revolution came on, Tryon County in the west was promptly divided Into Lin- coln and Rutherford and the Governor's name thus expunged from our County roll; but the name of Wake spoke neither of de- feat nor oppression.

Gallant North Carolina would not flout the Governor's lady, and Wake remained the name of a county, and shall ever remain so called, whether named originally for that lovely shadow, Esther Wake, or for her fair sister, Lady Tryon.

The Revolution called on every man to rally to his colors. Tories were plentiful and active in North Carolina. The former Regulators strangely did not come to the help of the Con- gress very freely, but seem to have been cowed or disgusted with fighting, and stood aloof,

46 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

not enlisting on either side. The Wake County mihtia volunteered, and from the sparse population many men went to war. We will not follow these, but, remaining at home, will mention a few points of distinctly Wake County history.

We have already described Joel Lane's home, called the 'Tirst Capitol," and it was there that the General Assembly of North Carolina met in the month of June, 1781. The Capital of the State had been a movable institution for some time previous, being ap- pointed to meet at first one town and then another, according to the necessities of a country at war. Records were thus many a time lost, and it is wonderful that we possess intact as many as we do, considering the dif- ficulty of keeping up with such a shifting capital. As a measure of safety perhaps, Wake County was made the choice of this troubled year, almost the lowest ebb of the American cause. At this meeting Joel Lane was voted the sum of fifteen thousand pounds for the lodging and food of the General As- sembly and the pasturage for their horses. His guests must have been as addicted to

THE FIRST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS 47

fried chicken as the preachers are accused of being, for the next item of allowance is one to Vincent Vass, *'for candles and fowls" eigh- teen hundred pounds.

These are not such great sums as they sound, for the colonial currency of paper money became extremely depreciated as the Revolution went on, just as the Confederate paper money did years afterward in the war between the States; and by this time it was worth no more of its face value than is in- dicated in the saying, "not worth a Continen- tal."

A good horse would bring twelve hundred pounds in the money of that year, and we may estimate by this that the members of Assem- bly probably had no more chicken than they needed.

Another event of this Wake County session of the Assembly, much more noteworthy, was the inauguration of a Governor of North Caro- lina, which was, prophetically, held for the first time in Wake County inside the area of the future capital of the State, while as yet it was not. The war-time Governor was Thomas Burke of Orange County, and the announce-

48 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

ment of his election to the Governor's office was formally conveyed to him at the tavern at Wake Court House, at the beginning of this first Assembly there convened.

His speech of acceptance, his inaugural, on that occasion, refers to the difficulty of his task, and especially mentions the activities of the Tories, the condition of the colony al- most verging on civil war, and the lack of proper support from the people to the State Government.

Burke was a well educated man, and had assisted in drafting the State Constitution adopted for North Carolina at the time of the Declaration of Independence at Philadel- phia. He was an Irishman from Galway and a Catholic, but although he lived in a far more intolerant age than ours, the fact of his relig- ious belief was never mentioned against him. According to English law, which was the foundation of the law of the colonies, none but Protestants could hold office, and of Pro- testants only Church of England men. In the colonies, however, this rule had already been ignored before the Revolution, and dissenters had become governors of North Carolina

THE FIRST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS 49

under the old government. No one now asked anything of Governor Burke save as to his patriotism.

Burke lived near Hillsborough, and was further distinguished as being the very first of the poets In this State, except only those nameless ballad-makers among the Regulators. His further adventures are of Interest.

In September of that same year, 1781, the Tories under David Fanning (a name of bad odor, but no relation that we know to that Edmund first mentioned) came up In force from the southern counties, with the publicly avowed aim of capturing the Governor of North Carolina.

They raided Hillsborough, then called the capital. David Fanning was a native of Wake County, and a Tory bushwhacker; he knew the lay of the land. His band surprised the defenceless village of Hillsborough one night, and while Burke and his friends seem to have been expecting them, and to have resisted with spirit, the Tories were too many for them, and Burke was captured and carried to Wilming- ton, then in British possession. Thence he was taken to Sullivans, and later to James

50 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

Island off the coast of South Carolina. Being held imprisoned by the expanse of ocean about this island, he was set free on parole there. He felt most unsafe, his life being threatened by a lawless band of Tories living on the is- land, and was forced to hide from place to place.

Being, as he said, in such danger of his life, he broke his parole and escaped, returning to North Carolina. Arrived there he immedi- ately resumed his office as Governor. The leaders of the army and of civil affairs do not seem to have known quite what to do about his actions. A man at liberty on parole, even though supposedly confined by the limits of an island and who had broken that parole to escape, appeared to them not quite an hon- orable man, much less a hero, and as such, unworthy to hold the office highest in the state. Burke, however, felt himself justified, and showed no scruples on the subject.

On April the twenty-second, 1782, Burke having at last found that the sentiment of the people and the Assembly was against him, asked of his own accord to resign, and the Assembly consented with great alacrity.

THE FIRST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS 51

The name of Alexander Martin was pro- posed to supersede Burke, while a vote of thanks and recognition of his service was pass- ed to permit his retiring with full dignity.

Burke died during the next year at Hillsborough, his home. Burke County, North Carolina, was named for him, not for the other greater Irishman, Edmund Burke, who gave expression in England to the creed of American freedom. Burke Square, where our Gover- nor's mansion stands today, was also named for him and no other, and had he not fallen upon such trying times and puzzling cir- cumstances, his name might shine undimmed by even a bit of poor judgment.

It has always appeared to the careless reader of history that the interval between the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown and the association of this state with the rest of the Union was an eneventful and negligible time, because it was not signalized by drama- tic events, as was the period of Revolutionary struggle just past.

We are required to count those seven or eight years long years, and to conceive the various perplexities they brought, in order to

52 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

see what a risk and what an experiment this government of ours was considered at first, and how many new questions pressed for so- lution upon the leaders everywhere, especially upon the members of the Constitutional Con- vention of Philadelphia.

It was clear enough that the Articles of Confederation which had been strong enough to unite the colonies against a common foe during the Revolution, could not sufficiently hold together the differing interests of the different states, during their period of recov- ery from the damage of the war. It was to meet those new internal dangers that the Con- stitution of the United States was framed.

Our fathers builded better than they knew. When drawn up, the Constitution was sub- mitted to each of the states for its approval by vote of its representatives. Nine states, by approving the articles, would make the Constitution valid for all. North Carolina summoned her Constitutional Convention to consider the new Constitution and recommend any amendments considered necessary to its adoption by herself.

This was done, and those amendments which were recommended stand mostly em-

THE FIRST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS 53

bodied in the United States Constitution today, all four being concerned with personal and states rights, which were not considered sufficiently guarded in the first draft, to satisfy our individualistic ideas in old North Carolina.

At the second Constitutional Convention in Fayetteville, amendments had been adopted by the Philadelphia convention, many states had already ratified, and North Carolina was content to fall into the procession. This assembly voted to ratify the Constitution at once, this being in November, 1789, and North Carolina being next to the last state to enter the Union. This is all general history, but what makes it necessary to review it here is the fact that the location of the City of Raleigh, and its choice as our permanent capi- tal, was mixed and sandwiched in with the grave and searching consideration of the Articles of Constitution. This was because the task was set for this first convention, not only of criticising and later ratifying the Con- stitution of the United States, but also of choosing a proper seat of government or state capital for North Carolina.

*'The first Constitutional Convention of North Carolina was held at Hillsborough on

54 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

the twenty-fifth of July, in the year of our Lord 1788, in the thirteenth year of the in- dependence of the United Colonies of America, in pursuance of the resolution of the last General Assembly, for the purposes of deliber- ating and determining on a proper form of Federal Government; and for fixing the unal- terable seat of government for this State."

Thus runs the opening phrase of the report of this convention. A full delegation was present, five from each county represented the best minds and most patriotic hearts of the land. The delegation from Wake con- sisted of Joel Lane, Thomas Hines, Brittain Saunders, James Hinton and Nathaniel Jones. Governor Samuel Johnson presided as Gov- ernor of the Colony. The debate of the de- legates shows a good deal of opposition to ratification on the part of the extreme Jef- fersonians, led by Willie Jones of Halifax. The second part of their task, that of fixing an "unalterable seat of government" was at- tended with many jealousies and bickerings. This is a matter of tradition as well as of re- cord, and even mixed into the conventional phrases we may today trace bitter rivalry be-

THE FIRST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS 55

tween the west and the east, between one town and the other. Tradition has it that Wilhe Jones was a master at log-rolling and took a hand for his friends in this free-for-all contest. The first motion making this business the order of the day was made by Mr. Rutherford of Rowan, seconded by Mr. Steele, his col- league, also of Rowan. "Resolved, that this Convention tomorrow at four o'clock in the afternoon fix on a proper place for the seat of government."

This resolution was passed but protested against by Mr. Blount of Beaufort County. Next day, accordingly, a committee was se- lected to choose places for the Convention to vote upon in turn "Exact spot not to be fixed, but that it be left to the discretion of the Assembly to ascertain the exact spot; provided it be within ten miles of the point or place de- termined by this Convention."

This defined indefiniteness is accounted for by considering that the provision was made in order to prevent the speculation in land that could suddenly be brought to pass if the spot should be more definitely located. Besides, we may consider that conditions as to water

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THE FIRST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS 57

and water courses, and levels and slopes were not entirely known, and room for ad- justment would be afforded in a twenty-mile diameter.

The following places were voted on by the Convention. Smithfield, Tarborough, Fay- etteville. The Fork of Haw and Deep Rivers, Mr. Isaac Hunter's Plantation in Wake County (placed in nomination by Air. Ire- dell of Chowan), New Berne, Hillsborough.

On ballot Mr. Isaac Hunter's plantation in Wake County was fixed on for the future location of the Capital in its immediate neighborhood. This vote was taken on Au- gust second, 1788.

Willie Jones of Halifax (being, as a living man an astute politician, and none the less still to be reverenced as one of our constructive statesmen so long after his death), seems to have moved on the stormy waters at this junc- ture, and to have shaped things to his mind.

Just why he wished to locate the Capital in Wake, and why he moved in such myster- ious ways to that end, the terse record does not show; but tradition insists that he did a good deal of the dealing, and as we are too far

./

58 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

down the river of time to review his conclus- ions, we will just be satisfied with the result, and be glad he made so good a selection, using his so great Influence to bring it about. From out the past comes a whisper about the recipe which he used for apple toddy, and about supper at Joel Lane's tavern. Surely they slander the city's founders who repeat this old story! Scarcely was the vote counted when Mr. Barry Grove of Fayetteville entered a protest on the following grounds : "First, because the situation chosen Is unconnected with commerce and can never rise above the degree of a village. The same mistake has been made in the selection of Wllllamsburgh and of Annapolis, and the result is seen there. Secondly, because Fayetteville would have a great effect upon commerce, being a thriving town at the head of navigation."

This protest was signed with one hundred nineteen names, and would indicate that the opposing factions, though strong, did not get together quite early enough to thwart Mr. Jones or accomplish their own wish.

The west wanted Fayetteville or Hills- borough; the eastern section was divided, each

THE FIRST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS 59

delegate wanting the chief town of most con- venient location in his own immediate neigh- borhood ; and rather than vote for a rival town would vote for a western place, by this means restraining the rival from profiting.

Thus the vote being so close and so doubt- ful, a committee was appointed to report later upon this matter, when the constitutional convention should meet at Fayetteville the next year.

Accordingly, in the autumn of 1789, the Convention ratified the United States Con- stitution with far less wordy war than they had expended upon the question of a site for the capital the year before. The com- mittee which was to report upon the matter of the seat of government was not ready at that time and made its recommendations two years later, by which time all the tumult and shouting had finally died, and the matter was settled once for all in favor of the Wake County site.

Fayetteville still felt aggrieved and said so, and her indignation was reasonable enough, but such compromises are very often made.

Perhaps we should be justified in raising a statue to the memory of that great Jefi^er-

|»^Ci^fe.

THE FIRST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS 61

sonian, Willie Jones, as the real founder of Raleigh, for to his interest the actual parcel- ing out seems due. Nine commissioners were given the task of laying off ground for the new city, and selecting for that purpose among the various tracts offered.

The names of the commissioners were James Martin, Hargett, Dawson, McDowell, Blount, Harrington, Bloodworth, Person, and Willie Jones, and while all did not actually ride over the various lands, all have their names perpetuated in the names of streets of Raleigh.

Joel Lane's tract was chosen, and a thous- and acres of land bought from him. Part of this land was originally Mr. Lane's, but part belonged to Theophilus Hunter of Hunter's Lodge, was sold by him to Mr. Lane a short time before, and was bargained for by the commissioners as part of the Lane tract. The original Lane land ended at Morgan Street and all south of that line was Mr. Hunter's. This purchase is the greater part of the land where the city of Raleigh now stands. At that time it was covered with primeval forest, and some old oaks are still standing which

62 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

must have shaded the surveyors who run off the streets and carved our city squares out of the virgin wilderness.

On Friday March thirtieth, 1792, the final decision was made, and boundaries locat- ed. The price paid to Lane for the whole tract of land was two thousand seven hundred fifty dollars, which does not sound like a fancy price for a selected square mile of land.

William Christmas was the surveyor, and was paid one hundred ten dollars for his work after he had finished laying out substantially the same streets and squares that we tread in our daily walk at this date.

The Capitol Square is the largest, in the center of the city. Four other squares were left open to form parks, and named Caswell, Nash, Burke, after the three Governors of those names, while the fourth was called Moore, after the first Attorney General, who afterwards became Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. Streets were named after Stephen Cabarrus, William Le- noir, William R. Davie, and Joel Lane, be- sides the commissioners as named above. The streets which ended at Capitol Square,

THE FIRST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS 63

and those bounding It were named after the leading towns of the state at that time— Hillsborough, Fayettevllle, Halifax, New Berne, Salisbury, Edenton, Wilmington, ex- cept Morgan, which is named for what was then a judicial district.

One wonders why there was not a Charlotte Street, according to the plan. Fayettevllle Street was at one time afterwards known as LaFayette Street, but the change has not per- sisted.

Raleigh was born a city. No wandering pre-hlstoric cows laid out her streets and marked her thoroughfares, as was the case with older settlements. Her name was ready for her two hundred years before, and was be- stowed at the suggestion of Governor Alex- ander xMartin, and her charter had been grant- ed in 1587 when Sir Walter Raleigh attempted a permanent settlement on Roanoke Island. This historic name was inevitably hers. It was the only name that could have been given with propriety to a capital of North Carolina. The Infant city stood clothed in forest, with streets blazed among the trees. The four avenues which ended at the Capitol Square,

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then named Union Square, were much broader than the rest, and the only criticism we can offer to the worthy committee who laid out our town is that they might have made all the streets as wide, seeing that land was cheap and paving unknown. It is not wonder- ful that no vision of automobile traffic and street railway system visited their minds, but they did show a great foresight in giving us a park system, foresight which their descend- ants have done their best to nullify, for in our great economy we have built up two of these four squares which were left open for us and for our children, and we shall always have to keep repenting our short-sightedness.

After the City of Raleigh was thus laid out and named, lots were sold to pay for the building of a State House. The commission who attended to this were R. Bennehan, John Macon (brother of Nathaniel Macon), Robert Goodloe, Nathaniel Bryan, and Theo- philus of Hunter's Lodge.

The architect of the first Capitol was Rhody Atkins, whose name was not again mentioned. The floor plan was quite similar in form to the present building, but much smaller, plainer,

66 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

and built of rough brick. The brick was burned for the building on lots 138 and 154 of the original survey.

The old Capitol turned its back on Hills- borough street. It faced the east according to the custom of many another public building erected at that epoch. It cost the State of North Carolina twenty thousand dollars when complete, and was enough enclosed in 1794 so that the Legislature met that year for the first time in the "New State House" in the City of Raleigh.

The members of assembly boarded in the

neighboring farm houses and at Joel Lane's

tavern, and rode in to their work each day on

horse-back. Scarcely anyone lived as yet

in the limit of the city proper. The State

House stood in solitude, surrounded by its

mighty oaks for the most part of the first de-

I cade. Raleigh was like any other town

I created by legislative act, crude and strug-

[gling at first.

Washington was the same kind of capital on a far larger scale; but both have long out- grown their awkward age.

CHAPTER III Early ff^orthies

IFE just after the Revolution was a much simpler manner of exist- ence than it is now, especially as regards worldly possessions. In 1800, there were but ten thous- and people in all Wake County, and many of these were negro slaves, although not so many servants were thought necessary in proportion to the white folk as it was customary to hold in the eastern counties where the lowland climate made agricultural labor difficult for Caucasians.

The names of the most prominent citizens of Wake County in the last days of the eigh- teenth century and the beginning of the nine- teenth were the same surnames which usually occur in the meager records of assemblies and conventions of the early pre-revolutionary time. These fathers as members and as del- egates showed much practical sense and won- derful comprehension of public questions; they were also possessors of many a fertile acre of uncleared forest; their spirit was that of the

68 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

eager pioneer whose prospects were fair before him, but whose present possessions did not hamper him enough to become a daily care.

The Importance of the cotton crop was not yet apparent. Whitney's cotton gin was not yet Invented, and the four or five pounds of cotton which one person could laboriously seed In a day, would not afford so much lint as was needed for home consumption. Those were the days of the small cotton patch planted to supply the spinning wheel and loom, and each child and every servant of the home must seed his shoe full of cotton, each winter even- ing before going to bed, as his regular task.

Tobacco was the crop which brought In money or exchange. It exhausted the new land very quickly, and was hard to transport over the rough roads of the settlements, but it was nevertheless an all-Important means of paying for any Imported goods, and a regular medium of exchange In North Carolina as for- merly also in Virginia. Much of what we read in that time before railroads, about the prime Importance of locating the towns upon rivers, was considered true, because it was an easy means of readily transporting tobacco to a good market.

EARLY WORTHIES 69

Wheat was raised in sufficiency and corn in great abundance. The response of the virgin soil was wonderful and the climate was as fine then as now. The farmer whose family- did not live in plenty was a man who would not take the trouble to raise the food he could easily cultivate. Great herds of pigs roamed the woods and lived on acorns and nuts, half wild, only coming at intervals to be fed a little corn when they heard the shrill halloo of the slave whose duty it was to look after them. Cattle, too, roamed the woods and were only a little more tame, coming up to be milked as they chose.

All the house work halted when the bell- cow's jangling bell was heard in the clearing, and the women quickly went to milk the herd, whatever the hour of day.

Houses were small and simple, log-cabins well or ill-built, single or double, and all chairs and small furnishings were home-made. Only now and then was there some prized chest or high-boy which had been brought from the last station of the pioneer family, or even from old England direct.

Vehicles were confined to wagons and gigs, and a family carriage was as much of a rarity

70 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

in the early years of the nineteenth century as an automobile was in the latest ones. Ladies rode pillion, behind their men or their servants, or singly if attended. Everyone expected to ride horseback as well for a long journey as for a short one.

Hunting and fishing were the chief sports, but racing was universal in a country so de- pendent as this upon good and spirited horses; but there seems to have been no regular race- track in Wake County at this early date. Shooting matches for beef were held and con- ducted much like the famous match described in "Georgia Scenes." Cock-fighting was a common sport, the taste for which came from England with the Colonists. Wherever a few people could gather from the thinly settled neighborhoods, they enjoyed dancing and fiddling, and such amusements were partici- pated in by young and old alike.

As to the look of the country, we know that the forest and the old field bore such a great proportion to the cultivated cleared land that farms were far apart. Only here and there did a home stand out against a wooded slope, here and there a slim spiral of smoke betray a

EARLY WORTHIES 71

human habitation behind the trees, or a clear- ed field show the work of the settler. Roads wound for miles through unbroken woodland, and the cultivated fields seemed but patches. This life was not a poor one, although it was extremely simple. It was independent, it was self-respecting. It was full of rude plenty and wholesome work, of hope and expectation. A poor man could make a start and be sure of getting a living while paying for his land. He would raise a little stock and a pair of colts. His log-cabin cost him little beside the time he took to build it, and he need never go without his simple food and clothing and his necessities provided that he was a good shot, and that he and his wife were industrious. Slavery light- ened the tasks of those who could get far enough ahead of the world to afi^ord the pur- chase of a servant or two. With all its faults it was a life which had an upward slope to it, and a hopefulness for the future which kept it stimulating.

There were practically no schools in Wake County for the first years of its existence, and after the Capitol stood lonely on its hill in the midst of the new City of Raleigh. At various

72 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

cross-roads were taverns where men met. Court week called them to Raleigh sometimes, and occasionally a preacher passed through and services were held; but the children were mostly left to home instruction and to the educating influence of practical experience and the many absorbing interests of their back- woods homes and their free life in the open.

The leading spirits were not satisfied with this state of things, however. There were a few men of education and refinement in Wake County from the first, and all these were prom- inent in the State history and politics of their day.

The first name that appears in the Colonial Records showing active service and prominence in the new county of Wake was John Hinton, who lived on Neuse River near Milburnie. He owned enormous tracts of land along the Neuse under grant from Lord Carteret, and when in course of time Wake County was divided from Johnston County, his residence fell within its boundaries. His residence was called Clay-Hill-on-the-Neuse.

He had moved from Chowan (the part now Gates County), about the middle of the eigh-

EARLY WORTHIES IZ

teenth century, and his father's name before him was John Hinton. He married Grizelle Kimbrough, and had eight or nine children who reached maturity. John Hinton was Major in the provincial troops of Johnston County, and was thus called to aid Governor Tryon in the expedition against the Regula- tors. He was made Colonel of the Wake County troops in 1771, and was In command of his men at the Battle of Alamance. Gov- ernor Caswell mentions that he was an eye- witness of Colonel Hinton's gallant behavior on this occasion.

Colonel Hinton lived near the home where his descendants still live. He was a promi- nent man in the Revolutionary struggle, of- fering himself at once to the American cause. He served in the first Provincial Congress at New Berne, was appointed Colonel of North Carolina troops, was present at the Battle of Moore's Creek Bridge, was a member of the Council of Safety for Wake County, and acted always the part of the brave patriotic gentle- man he was.

He died in 1784, leaving several minor children, and besides his own personal service

74 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

two of his sons were in the Revolutionary Army. John Hinton the third, his eldest, was commissioned as Major, and James Hin- ton was Colonel of a troop of horse.

James Hinton above, married Delilah Hunt- er, daughter of Theophilus Hunter of Hunter's Lodge. Two of the daughters of Colonel Hinton successively became wives of Joel Lane, one dying quite young. Thus the Hinton family was connected with those few other families which seem to have shared with them the first possession of the broad acres of pristine Wake County wilderness, and the moulding of the little community by their service and examples.

The descendants of these people are here with us today, and their blood runs in the veins of many who never have traced out their pedigree sufficiently to be proud as they justly may be of their fine old Revolutionary ancestry.

Hinton James, the first student that regis- tered at the newly opened University of North Carolina, and another Hinton who graduated with him in the first class, were both grand- sons of Colonel John Hinton of Wake. Judge

EARLY WORTHIES 75

Henry Seawell married a daughter of John Hinton, son of Colonel John HInton, Second, the first of the name to settle In Wake.

Theophllus Hunter of Hunter's Lodge ap- pears first as the host of Governor Tryon, and his plantation was the headquarters of the expedition of 1771 during Its halt of several days In Wake County. It was at his planta- tion that the recruiting was done for Tyron's Army, which Is recorded as having been so slow and so unsatisfactory, the smaller farmers holding sympathy with the Regulators.

Theophllus Hunter the elder was the pre- siding justice of the first county court ever held In Wake County, and when the first court house was moved from Joel Lane's tavern, Wake Cross Roads, or Bloomsbury, by which- ever name one chooses to call the place, to Its present site on Fayettevllle street, Theophllus Hunter and James Bloodworth each conveyed half an acre adjoining to the then justices of Wake County and their successors In office forever, for the nominal sum of five shillings; and upon this piece of ground the new court house was then built, and successive buildings have occupied the same lot.

l(y HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

This property has become so extremely val- uable, that some time since there was an Idea of Its being sold, and some land purchased which might not be quite so valuable, although quite as convenient for the purpose. Upon looking into the old deeds it was found that to use this ground for any other purpose be- side the designated one of locating a court house upon it, would forfeit it to the heirs of the givers.

Besides giving a lot for the court house, Theophilus Hunter also gave a lot for a masonic lodge. This lies on Morgan and Dawson streets, Raleigh.

Theophilus Hunter, besides being a justice and a Mason, was a Major in Colonel John Hin- ton's Wake County Regiment during the Rev- olution, afterwards Lieutenant Colonel, Coun- ty Surveyor, and a member of Assembly sev- eral times. He left a family of sons and daughters who married Into the Hinton and the Lane families and thus drew closer the family kinship and solidarity of the first fami- lies of Wake County. He lived at Spring Hill, south-west of where the State Hospital for the insane now is. The old mansion still

i

EARLY WORTHIES 11

remains on the eminence near this old site, re- built into part of the State Hospital, the out- door colonies for epileptics being located near the spot. His son, Theophilus, Jr., inherited Spring Hill and rebuilt it. The landed possessions of these men were extensive, their land reaching almost to Cary in a south- westerly direction. Isaac Hunter, brother of Theophilus, Sr., owned that plantation within ten miles of which Raleigh should be located, and his place was to the north of the city. Descendants of both these men are among our citizens today, notably the brother last men- tioned has many although none of his own name, the inheritance of blood having gone through the female lines.

Theophilus Hunter Hill, a poet, and one of our few singers, was a grandson of the Hunt- ers of Spring Hill. At the very beginning of the war of 1861, he published a slender volume of lyrics and sonnets, and after the war another volume.

He had genuine feeling and power of ex- pressing it, and several sonnets of his are ex- quisite, but for the most part his poetry seems an echo of what had pleased him in his

78 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

wide reading of other men's writings. It is not racy of the soil, and his Images are acade- mic, but he shows nevertheless a vein of real poetic Inspiration which time and the times did not develop In the least, the stress and strain of the war extinguishing poetic fancy, and leisure and stimulation both being lack- ing to the perfecting of his gift.

Joel Lane with his two brothers, Joseph and Jesse, who were not so well known as himself, also had a great deal to do with the early shaping of Wake County.

O. W. Holmes, in a humorous poem, de- scribing the portrait of his great-grandmother when a young girl, plays with the idea of what might have been the result if that dainty maiden had chosen a different suitor, when she answered 'Yes' to her life-mate, and thus had thrown the stream of inheritance into a different channel. He quaintly asks,

^'Should I be /, or would it he One tenth another and nine tenths me?^^

In similar fashion we may well wonder what would have been the differing traits In the like- ness of the good people of Wake County If

EARLY WORTHIES 79

busy Joel Lane and his brothers had chosen another path through the wilderness, and those dozen others whose blood lives today in many a citizen, "solid and stirring in flesh and bone," had settled beside some other river.

Joel Lane, who helped lay out the boun- daries of Wake and the streets of our city, land-owner, mine host of Bloomsbury Tav- ern, Colonel in his father-in-law's Wake County regiment, purveyor of supplies for the Revolutionary Army, Associate Justice at Wake County Court in 1771 and for many years thereafter, delegate to the Provincial Congress at New Berne, member of the Coun- cil of Safety for this district. State Senator for Wake for thirteen sessions of the Assembly,. planter, speculator in real estate, did not let all these activities exhaust his abundant ener- gy. It v/ould not take many citizens such as he to make a town progressive and lively even in these strenuous days.

He seems vividly alive to the mind as he is exhumed from old records dusty with the passing of a century. His nature must have been kindly, and his disposition sunny, to

EARLY WORTHIES 81

have made him so universally liked. His house we have all seen, and it looks small and plain enough to us; but it represented to the people of that time what Governor Swain calls ''a rare specimen of architectural elegance." Joel lived in this well-known house of his in the sense of the often quoted words, "by the side of the road, to be a friend to man;" and in turning the pages of the records, those dry bones of history, we may note and admire the human attraction of the way people grav- itated to his tavern for their various meetings. It must have been pleasant staying there, which speaks well for the character of mine host, although we must wonder where in the world he took care of so many legislators. Probably, after the good old custom, log-cabin "offices" or bachelor quarters flanked the central dwelling, and in these he put his gentlemen guests. Very few ladies went traveling in those days.

Joel Lane's two wives were both daughters of Colonel John Hinton, who lived near Neuse River, and they brought him a fine colonial family of six sons and six daughters. Joel always adhered to the Church of England.

82 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

The Lanes are descended from the Ralph Lane who first came to North CaroHna with the unlucky colony in 1S8S, and then sailed back to England in 1586, being succeeded as Governor by John White who left a handful of lonely white settlers to lose themselves in the western wilds, and become one of the mysteries of fate to this day. The spirit of the old seafaring Lanes still drove him "West- ward Ho" and Ralph returned after a time. Joel and his brothers were already the third generation of Lanes born in the American Colonies. Their descendants have half pop- ulated Wake County, and have sent good citizens to Alabama, to Tennessee, to Mis- souri, and to far away Oregon. Among them are numbered governors, judges, a general and a vice-presidential candidate, a cabinet officer, too, — all men in the public eye, while they have also furnished scores more of excel- lent folk of the race who, while not so con- spicuous, have built up their own communities more quietly for generations.

Joel Lane has been criticised because his sale of land for the location of Raleigh seemed a bit of sharp practice at the expense of his

EARLY WORTHIES 83

father-in-law, Colonel John Hinton, who also had a square mile of land for sale; it is even hinted that people generally resented this and that it cost him his seat in the Assembly for the next term thereafter. These hundred- year-old rumors are hard to verify. Let us use our imagination in all charity, and think that he knew what a very pleasant home for the State's central government would result from his success.

He offered a square mile of land near Cary as a free gift, should it be decided to place the University of North Carolina there, and one wonders why this offer was not accepted. He was one of the first Board of Trustees of the new institution, and had two grandsons in the first graduating class. His friendliness brought him friends and his friends showed him favor, which was surely his desert. He died in 1795, and his grave was plowed over and obliterated by Mr. Peter Brown, a Scotch- man and a lawyer, who acquired his home by purchase, a few years after Joel Lane was dead and gone. Mr Brown in his turn sold the place to the first Mr. William Boylan, early in the last century.

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EARLY WORTHIES 85

A tablet to the memory of Joel Lane was recently placed In the Municipal Building of Raleigh by the Daughters of the Revolution. One of Joel Lane's brothers was the progeni- tor of the Lanes of Alabama and the other was the ancestor of those who sought the far west and became prominent there. Carolina Lane, his sister, was mother of David L. Swain, and lived her whole life in Buncombe County near Asheville.

Another pre-revolutionary family connec- tion was that of the Jones' of Wake County. There seem to have been two distinct families at first, no known kin, and living in different parts of the county, both well known for in- telligence and property acquired. Besides this fact, two men, one from each family, bore the unusual name of Nathaniel, and of these, one named his eldest son after himself; hence it requires more than an ordinary genealogist to reconstruct their respective family trees, and this all the more because they complicated and confounded things still worse by inter- marrying once or twice a few years later, after the second generation had grown up.

The first Jones to reach Wake County was Francis or Frank Jones, who settled on Crab-

86 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

tree Creek near Morrisvllle. His deed from Lord Carteret bears the date 1749. He bought more land adjoining in 1761. His two sons, NathanielFirstofCrabtree, and Tig- nail, or Tingall, were often mentioned in County and State records. This Frank is said to have been a brother of the father of Willie Jones and General Allen Jones of Hali- fax. If this is so then these two distinguished men were own cousins to the Jones family of Crabtree. This was the General Allen Jones who gave his name to a penniless adventurer, John Paul, whom he had befriended, and who asked at parting, if the Jones surname might be added to his own, promising that if permit- ted so to add it he would also add fame to it some day. This he did most wonderfully, as all those who have thrilled at the story of John Paul Jones and the Bon Homme Richard can testify.

Perhaps this cousinship gives one of the reasons for the residence in Raleigh of Willie Jones, during the last years of his life. This great Jeff ersonian bought the plantation where Saint Augustine's School for the colored race now stands, and in the spot where the garden

EARLY WORTHIES 87

of the school now Is, he Hes buried In an un- marked grave. Though an agnostic, WiUie Jones also gave the land for a Methodist Church, where Edenton Street now stands, according to several authorities. He died about the first of the new century.

To return to the Jones family of Crabtree. Nathaniel the second of Crabtree, married a daughter of John KImbrough. His name appears as member of Assembly from Wake In both House and Senate before 1801. His son, KImbrough Jones, was a member of the Constitutional Assembly of 1835, and he has many descendants. John KImbrough, the father-in-law, does not come so often into the records, being perhaps a man busy with his plantation alone, but he owned more slaves In 1800 than anyone else, except James HInton and TIgnall Jones.

To continue the Wake County Joneses : Na- thaniel Jones of White Plains near Cary, came also from Eastern North Carolina. His an- cestors are buried In old Bath Church, and he came to what Is now Wake County in 1750. Nathaniel of White Plains was, as I have said, supposed to be no known kin to Nathaniel of

EARLY WORTHIES 89

Crabtree. His father was of Welsh blood, and bore the Welsh-given name of Evan. Nathaniel of White Plains married into the Lane family, and his daughter Sarah married her cousin, John Lane, son of Joel. They went west, and their son, born in Tennessee was named Joel Hinton Lane. Of course there were many others of this family, but I give this instance to show the strong mixture of pioneering blood which must have been the very elixir of life in that "Winning of the West" which became the task of their genera- tion.

Finding the records of all these intermar- riages of the Jones families, and adding to them the more recent connections of these with the Cadwallader Joneses of Hillsborough and noting the constant recurrence of familiar Wake County surnames and Welsh patronym- ics among the lists of children, one realizes how hopeless and how useless it is to try and untangle the skein of these families.

There stands, however, a desolate house with vacant windows and grinning rafters, a high four-square old house, dating from the Revolutionary time, but which has been de-

90 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

serted many years. It stands near the town of Cary to the west, and Its story was told to me by an old lady who remembers traditions, and who was somewhat kin to the former owner. Fanning Jones, but who was not proud of the relationship.

Whether his name means a relationship of connection with the notorious Tory leader who stole the Governor, or whether It is merely a coincidence, no one can now declare, but he is said for some vague reason to have forfeited the regard of his patriotic relatives, and to have been driven from the neighborhood for that reason. The Old Tory, they called him.

Doctor Calvin Jones on whose plantation Wake Forest College was located was a later comer into the county from the North. He sold his place to the Trustees of the Baptist School for two thousand dollars, which was considered cheap even in those days, for six hundred acres, equipped with buildings. Doctor Jones sold this at sacrifice In order to move to Tennessee, and mentioning him here, too early as to time, but In order to distinguish him, we will add that ht was a distinguished physician and that he had a fine war record

EARLY WORTHIES 91

for the war of 1812, having raised a Wake County troop of horse for the army.

Besides these people whom I have called out of the past, and not speaking of others perhaps as prominent and as useful, we must recall the forbears of many of our citizens of today, living in simple homes, leaving no re- cord of wealth, save the ownership of the acres which they had won from the wilderness and tilled for themselves with their own hands. A random reading over of the tax payers whose names were enrolled in Wake County in the year 1800, such a list as appears in the State records, yields many of the most re- spected and honored names of today — many names seen on church rolls, painted on sign- boards, and on office windows, names which have been marked by flags on Memorial days in the cemetery and which only yesterday have been engrossed and hung in the vesti- bules of churches, names marked on service flags with blue stars, and some after awhile with golden ones.

The father and son, and the mother and daughter also, these are those who have re- deemed the wilderness, peopled the solitude,

92 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

fought in Revolutionary ranks in blue and buff, and many years later have worn Confed- erate grey. They have done the hardest work of the new land, and the harder of the land grown populous, they whose descendants have fought and fallen on the fields of France so lately, these plain people of whom the world is made, and for whom it was made, and who shall carry the work on by their descendants into many a tomorrow.

CHAPTER IV

Raleigh the Capital Village

OLONEL CREECY In his "Grand- fathers Tales'' describes the look of the City of Raleigh in the year 1800 and for some years thereafter. He says, "It was a town of magnificent distances, of unsightly bramble bush, and briers, of hills and morass- es, of grand old oaks and few Inhabitants, and an onwelcome look to newcomers."

At that time the first State House stood solitary on the Capitol Square and near It was the famous sassafras tree, which had long marked a wonderful deer stand whence forty deer had been shot by one hunter's rifle, within the memory of those then alive.

Governor Ashe was the first governor to make Raleigh his permanent residence, and he came to town In 1795, while the other State officers also found It necessary to "go out there in the woods to live, and help with the govern- ment." The first Governor's mansion was a plain frame building on Fayettevllle Street about where the Raleigh Banking and Trust

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94 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

Company's building now stands. By 1800 there were two hotels. The first one, Casso's, still stands on the corner of Morgan and Fayetteville Streets opposite the State Lib- rary Building, is especially in excellent repair, and were the fire escapes and such modern ad- ditions taken away, would remain much as it used to be when the stages rolled to the door. The second was called the Eagle, which was demolished in April 1922, to erect a new State Department Building

One handsome residence had been built in Raleigh which is standing today, and has been kept in repair, remarkable beside for the fact that it is still inhabited by the re- presentatives of the family that built it. There is no other residence so old in town or county today, beside ''the old Burke Hay- wood Mansion" on New Berne Avenue, built in the year 1794, of which we may confidently say, as it is today so it was almost identi- cally, more than a hundred years ago.

There were homes and stores along Fayette- ville Street — small frame buildings long since burned or demolished; the Joel Lane house stood near where it now stands, but facing

RALEIGH THE CAPITAL VILLAGE 95

South Boylan Avenue; the Mordecai place was partly built; the old Andrew Johnson birthplace, judging by the style of architecture was then In existence, but tradition says that It stood near the plot where Tucker's Store was built Immediately after the war of '61. From thence It was moved at that time to Cabarrus Street, where It remained until 1900, when the local Committee of the Colonial Dames of America had it taken down board by board, and reconstructed, exactly, in Pul- len Park, where it is now preserved as a relic. There was no church edifice in Raleigh in 1800, although services were frequently held by the several denominations in the State House.

There were no common schools in all North Carolina, and but few pay schools. In the year 1801, Raleigh asks for state aid in estab- lishing an academy, and also petitions for the use of Burke Square (where the Governor's mansion now stands) for Its site.

In 1802 the plans for the building were made, fifty feet long and twenty-four feet wide, with fireplaces at each end both above and below stairs. My authority says brick, but

96 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

the expression is so vague, perhaps it merely means that the great chimneys were brick, and not the whole building. In 1807 a build- ing for a "Female Department" was added. This was one-story and smaller. The school was supported partly by tuition fees and part- ly by private subscriptions to bonds or shares. All the State officers' names of that day and those of nearly all the townsfolk besides were to be found on its lists.

In 1813 another building was built, the two larger buildings were insured for two thousand dollars each, while the Female Department carried two hundred and fifty dollars. Tui- tion was nine dollars a year and the rolls of honor and other school notices published in the newspapers of the time show that many of the pupils were from other places and boarded in town. By the year 1817 one hundred eighty pupils were in attendance. The first teacher engaged was named German Guthrie, the second Maurin Delaigny, a French refugee, a Huguenot minister, who afterwards went to Charleston and became pastor of the old Huguenot Church there.

In 1810 came Doctor William Mc.Pheeters who was principal of the Academy for many

RALEIGH THE CAPITAL VILLAGE 97

years, and also ''Town Pastor," preaching on Sundays in the State House and holding Sun- day School there. His salary was eight hun- dred dollars a year. His school throve, and soon he required assistants In his work. The course included Latin, Greek, Mathematics, English, Geography, and Bible, and his scholars ranged from beginners In reading to those who would go next year to the Univer- sity. No Latin or Greek was taught to the girls, but a course In ^'alphabetical samplers" and wool work took the place of the classics for them.

There were other schools In the county, and some were very efficient, especially the one at Wake Forest which afterwards was enlarged into Wake Forest College. Besides this one the schools were more or less Intermittent, be- ing private enterprises.

One of the Raleigh schools deserves mention for the oddity of Its human Interest.

John Chavis was a negro slave, who was sent by his master to Princeton College, and educated as a Presbyterian minister. This was done as an experiment on the part of his owner, to see what could be done with a

98 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

negro's mind, as I have been told by the older people. John had a good understand- ing and a docile disposition. When, after his years of training, he was returned home an educated man of some refinement, it became a problem to know what should be done with him. He was an ordained Presbyterian min- ister; he could not be sent back to the negro quarters; nor could he be recognized as a social equal. He was set free, and he was per- mitted to use his learning in instruction of youth. He taught in Raleigh in 1808, in- structing poor white children in the day, and colored youth at night. He afterwards kept school in other parts of the State, and prepared many prominent young men for college with great success. I have heard stories told of how on occasion, he might be at some white planter's house at meal time, and how the plantation darkies would come to peer into the windows of the dining room at the Great House, to see "dat nigger John Chavis" sit- ting over at his side table by himself, but nevertheless, actually eating his dinner in the same room with Old Massa and Old Miss. That was the way the problem was finally

RALEIGH THE CAPITAL VILLAGE 99

solved as to the exact social position of John Chavis.

Before leaving the subject of educational uplift in Raleigh, let me chronicle the doings of the leading matrons of the town in the year 1802. They then presented a pair of globes to the scientific equipment of the Infant University at Chapel Hill. The names of of the donors were as follows: S. W. Potter, Eliza Haywood, Sarah Polk, Anna White, Martha McKethan, Margaret Casso, Eliza Williams, Nancy Bond, Hannah Paddison, Susannah Parish, Ann O'Brien, E. H. P. Smith, Nancy Haywood, Priscilla Shaw, Rebecca Williams, Winifred Mears. This is probably a list of all the ladies who made up Raleigh society at that date, and shows these good women ready and efficient in helping worthy causes as their descendants and suc- cessors have ever since striven to do.

A brick mansion was built about 1813, just opposite the foot of Fayetteville Street, and outside the then city limits. It stood where the Centennial School stands now. It was a large simple building, with no architectural pretensions, and was paid for out of the pro- ceeds of lots In the City of Raleigh sold for the

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RALEIGH THE CAPITAL VILLAGE 101

purpose, being those which remained in the possession of the State up to that time. These lots did not bring as great a sum as was hoped, by reason of the hard times prevaihng after the War of 1812. This mansion, al- ways known as the Governor's Palace, is the one occupied by all Governors in succession from 1813 up to the War of '61, and Gover- nor Swain adds in dignified phrase, ''The Executive office was then, as now, contiguous to the Palatial Residence."

The little town of those early days was in feeling and deportment always the capital. We read of plays staged, of processions and festivities, of speakings patriotic, and speak- ings commemorative, and of regular religious services all held in the State House, which was then even more than since, the center, and one might say, almost the circumference as well of all Raleigh's social life.

Banquets in celebration of the national an- niversaries, not on a strictly temperance plan, were held at the hotels and occasionally out of doors at the mineral spring near the Palace. These inns were good ones, because of the many gentlemen who had to be entertained

102 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

at certain seasons of the year, whose number would have strained the small private accom- modations of the place.

On great occasions tables were even set in the rotunda of the State House and toasts were drunk on patriotic excuse to ''every State in the Union," and the fact that there were not nearly so many states then as there are now is the reason the devoted banqueters lived through the test.

The census of Raleigh on March 23, 1807, as published in the Raleigh Minerva, gives white males 255, white females 178, freedmen 33, slaves 270, total 786, families 85. Governor Swain also gives these figures. The apparent overplus of bachelors in Raleigh at that time is noticeable, there being seventy-five or more unattached men. This must mean that the State officials were written down as residents whether they had brought their families to live in the town or not.

Raleigh had a commission form of govern- ment in those early days, similiar to that of the City of Washington now, being governed by the direct authority of the Assembly. It also had a town watch which patroled the un-

RALEIGH THE CAPITAL VILLAGE 103

lighted Streets at night, and kept the slaves from wandering abroad. There were twenty- classes who took turns. This same plan was universally followed In the larger towns throughout the South.

The names of the Captains of the Watch for the year 1811 were Henry Potter, Isaac Lane, William Scott, William Boylan, Joseph Gales, Thomas Emond, Southey Bond, John Wyatt, Joseph Peace, Samuel Goodwin, Bev- erly Daniel, William Peck, Willis Rogers, Sherwood Haywood, William Jones, John Raboteau, James Coman, Benjamin King, Robert Cannon, and Jacob Johnson. This last name was that of the father of the Presi- dent Andrew Johnson.

We may gather a good many good home- sounding names from this collection, although they made their rounds more than a century ago, and all sleep dreamless sleep tonight while others are watching.

The war of 1812 having been fought to a glorious finish, and the Algerian pirates having been smoked out by Admiral Decatur, the America name became more respected and the flag more distinguished abroad, while

104 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

England was no longer a present fear to our nation as it had been since the Revolution. Our nation began to feel its full destiny as favored of heaven. We might say of ourselves in our growing vigor and importance as a nation,

^'No-pent up Utica contracts our pozvers.^^

This happy time when there was little politi- cal or sectional bitterness or other jealousy was called the ''era of good feeling." The. Revolution was receding into the historic past, and its heroes loomed grander, and less dis- tinct, as their doings passed out of ordinary day-light into the shadowed aisles of history. The great consequences of these deeds were more and more realized, as time unfolded its changes.

There was in this village capital of North Carolina ninety years ago one treasure which we would give a great deal to possess, and to be able to point to, in our Capitol of today. I refer to the famous statue of General George Washington, first President of the United States, which was made by Canova.

In November, 1815, the Assembly of North Carolina passed a bill authorizing the purchase

RALEIGH THE CAPITAL VILLAGE 105

of a Statue of the great and good George Washington, to be placed in the State House, and setting no limit to the cost of such a work of art.

The people of North Carolina had a right to be proud of their appreciative admiration for Washington, and the delight they took to honor his memory honored themselves also.

It was a charming bit of extravagance, and not like the strange freaks of spending that attack stingy folk once in a lifetime, but the result of pure idealism, — the fact of a heroic figure impressing the imagination of a whole people, so that they were intent upon pouring out the precious ointment of their hearts to his memory.

The motion for obtaining this statue was first made in the House by Thomas Spencer of Hyde County. His descendants, if there are any, should be proud of their ancestor for this deed.

Governor Miller, the then executive, con- sulted Senator Turner and Senator Macon in Washington, and they in turn consulted Thomas Jefferson in his retirement at Monti- cello. It was decided that only the best was

106 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

worthy of the greatest American and of the State of North CaroHna, and so the Ambassa- dor to Italy from the Federal Government was commissioned to bespeak a portrait statue of Washington from Canova. Canova was the greatest sculptor then alive, unless Thorvald- sen of Sweden be named as his equal.

When asked to undertake the commission from the State of North Carolina, he put aside many orders to accept it, on account, he said, of his extreme admiration for the genius of the great Washington, and for his noble deeds. The statue was executed in Carrara marble, white as snow. The figure was larger than life. When finished, it was brought to Boston on a United States war vessel com- manded by Captain Bainbridge, a hero of the Pirates' War. From Boston it was trans- shipped to Wilmington on a coastwise vessel, and it arrived there in 1821. From Wilming- ton to Fayetteville, it was floated up the Cape Fear River.

William Nichols, father of Captain John Nichols, who lived at that time in Raleigh and was in charge of the improvement of the Capi- tol and of other building for the State at the

RALEIGH THE CAPITAL VILLAGE 107

University, was put in charge also of this task. It was for him to contrive means of transporting those heavy marbles over the long rough miles between Fayetteville and Raleigh. That he did so successfully is an- other tribute to his practical ability. On the ninth of November, 1821, word came that the wagons bearing the precious blocks of marble were near, the entire population of Raleigh, Governor, State officials, and many citizens of other parts of the State as well, went out in procession along the Fayetteville road to meet the train of wagons, and bring them into the city with a band and speeches and rejoicings.

Colonel William Polk pronounced the ora- tion. He was living in Raleigh as president of the First State Bank. He was a Revolu- tionary veteran, and had been a friend of Washington, and personally associated with Lafayette. He was father of Leonidas K. Polk, afterwards the '^fighting bishop," and was cousin to President Polk.

His speech on this occasion was solemn and stately, and he rhetorically declared that it was but meet and fitting that the degenerate

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Italian nation should add the refinement of art to the rough but vigorous patriotism of the American Republic, now far more than Italy the Inheritor of the spirit of ancient Rome. This is but the impression of a long past perusal and not a direct quotation.

The statue, when unpacked and set in posi- tion In the rotunda of the old State House by Mr. Nichols seemed, to the critical eyes of many who had seen Washington In the flesh, a good likeness as regarded the countenance. Our good people, not aware of artistic license, were, however, quite struck dumb by the fact that the Father of His Country was dressed in a Roman Consul's costume, with toga, bare legs, and sandaled feet. This made them wonder and stare.

Washington was represented seated, with a tablet on one knee, on which he was writing his farewell address with a stylus. The atti- tude was balanced and graceful, the face calm and grave. The figure sat upon a Roman curule chair, and this rested upon a pedestal, which was sculptured on all four sides with bas-reliefs, showing notable scenes In the public service of Washington.

110 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

The sculpture exhibited Canova at his best, in which the stone was made to take a finish that seemed almost as smooth to the touch as it appeared soft to the eye, so perfect was the working, so delicate the surface. The great Lafayette, when he came to Raleigh in 1825, vouched for the correctness of the like- ness as he surveyed it. The statue was the pride of the people of North Carolina. Judge Gaston said of them, "Limited in their means, plain in their habits, economical in their ex- penditures, on this subject they indulged in generous munificence." It was suggested by some practical soul, that a statue so valuable being now placed in a building not fireproof, should be mounted on low wheels to permit of its being moved in case of fire, but this sugges- tion was laughed to scorn. It is hard to guess now, in this age of wheels, why it was thought to be so undignified, so very funny to mount the statue in this way, for the sake of its safety. Had this been done, we might well possess it today, for it might have been easily saved from destruction.

Only for about ten years did the State own this art treasure, for all of that period easily

RALEIGH THE CAPITAL VILLAGE 111

the finest example of high art In all America. The mother of the writer saw this statue in in 1830, and though but a child at the time, she ever remembered it with a vivid impression and has described it minutely to her children. Mrs. A. B. Andrews had a most exact picture of it, from an Italian source, entirely authentic. Also there is an engraving with Lafayette and Miss Haywood standing looking at it. In the year 1910 owing to the indefatigable effort of the Hall of History, a cast had been made from the model, and sent as a gift from the King of Italy. The lost treasure in its beauty is a vivid personal regret. The poor muti- lated fragments of the trunk and pedestal which occupy one corner of the Hall of History speak eloquently of its fate but tell little of its glory.

Canova the great Italian sculptor, was at the height of his fame and reputation when he made the statue. He was called the true in- heritor of the classical tradition. He always used the mannerisms of the antique statues he studied, as well as followed the real beauty of their conception. He is now somewhat superseded in artistic esteem being consid-

112 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

ered too artificial, too smooth, although many lovely works of his are still cherished.

The old Raleigh Community revelled in processions as well as banquets. Fourth of July was always a fair chance to enjoy a parade. Hear the account of a celebration of the ever-glorious Fourth which took place in the year 1809. ''At twelve o'clock, a pro- cession of citizens and strangers, with Captain Calvin Jones' troop of cavalry, formed at the State House during the ringing of the State House, Court House, and Town bells, and the firing of the cannon. Being seated in the Commons Chamber, an ode in honor of this day, composed for the occasion, was sung by a choir of seventy voices. Reverend Mr. Turner (the principal of the Academy) de- livered an oration. At three o'clock the com- pany sat down to an excellent dinner prepared by Mr. Casso (keeper of the Hotel), which was served in the State House. Colonel Polk and Mr. Potter presided and toasts were drunk to the Governor, Mr. Nash, to the Su- preme Court of North Carolina, to Literature, Science and Art, to the University of North North Carolina, to the Constitution of North Carolina, and to 'The social circles of life.' "

RALEIGH THE CAPITAL VILLAGE 113

It was the custom of Doctor William Mc- Pheeters a few years later to hold a sunrise service on the Fourth of July, and to preach a patriotic sermon, which was always well attend- ed, and very impressive. Reverend Drury Lacy kept up this custom of the town after- ward. Following this came an oration by some good speaker, the reading of the Dec- laration of Independence, a procession of all the Sunday School children down Fayette- ville Street to the 'Talatial Residence" and then half way back again to the sound of the bells of the town. Dispersing there, everybody attended a picnic and barbecue in Parrish's Grove, at the corner of Davie and Blount Streets, and opportunity was given for all the courting and matchmaking that the daylight would hold. At nightfall, the streets being unlighted, and the ways long, the population called it a day and went home.

In calling up pictures of the town that then was, I have failed to mention the beginnings of the various religious denominations, al- though by the time the State House was burned there were three churches in Raleigh. The Presbyterians had a congregation organ-

114 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

ized in 1806, but as Dr. McPheeters was the only regular pastor in town for a long time, services were held in the State House, and they did not build until 1817. The early Method- ists led the way, and built a little church where Edenton Street Church now stands, and by the next year the Baptists also had a small church building finished.

In 1820 the Episcopal Church was organ- ised, and by 1826 they had begun a church on the present site of Christ Church. Later we find Duncan Cameron chairman of the build- ing committee which made Christ Church of today, one of our really lovely buildings.

There had also been in Raleigh for some time a sort of crazy parson, a Mr. Clenden- ning, who had a pet heresy and preached it on Sundays. On weekdays he sold goods over his counter, and had plenty of ability and com- mon sense to make money in his mercantile business. He seems to have been a sort of town joke.

Having tried in the foregoing chapters to bring back the idea of the old times as they really were, we must next try to recall some of the great men, and draw their characters, some of those who moved about the streets

RALEIGH THE CAPITAL VILLAGE 115

of our old capital, and made Impression on our Institutions. Many were not natives of Raleigh, and yet were nevertheless a part of Its life, and a boast, to be pointed out to strangers sojourning In our gates as they mov- ed on our common ways. We must revive the shock of the burning of the State House. We must learn something of the struggle and final successful anchoring of the State capital here In Raleigh, for when the State House was burned, of course the other claimants revived their claims.

Beside this we must bring out those old tales which make former days alive, and re- store to us the atmosphere so long dispersed, together with the likeness of those who were a part of the passing panorama.

We must go down the roaring forties, and make ourselves by all means catch the feel- ing that pervaded the world before the War of '61, and thereby moulded history; not for- getting that very often feeling Is far stronger than policy.

The history of a people Is the history of the the minds in It, as worked upon by the soul- currents of the age, which pass no one knows how, like the wind that bloweth where It llsteth.

CHAPTER V

Early Life and Thought

E must now forget the path we have traveled to our present day- conception of things, throw away- all those beliefs and ideas which have crystallized in our lifetimes, and think away modern conveniences and conditions and a collection of uncertain- ties and questions that exist no more. If there is "no new thing under the sun," yet old ideas are seen in very novel combinations as time goes on.

Look at the politics of those elder folk, and by politics I mean the prevailing conceptions of right and expediency in governmental poli- cies, rather than party or partizanship; what real correspondences do they show to the political questions of today .^^

Look at their economics. With the whole continent beyond him to choose a residence from, what need was there for the old North Carolina farmer to intensify, to economize, or to farm constructively.^

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He need not suffer In an environment that did not suit him, he could go west, he could take up new land to replace the fields he had cleared and exhausted. Nothing hindered the restlessness of the frontiersman.

Fiscal and money problems were not well understood even in Europe of this time. The question of the best way to guard the money capital needed for all this expansion, had been settled neither in theory nor experience by any financier. While the time of the formation of the constitutions of the United States and of the several States had revealed a farsighted statesmanship which it would he hard to match today, yet all was a great experiment. No one knew how well it was going to work, and only time could reveal its flaws. We dis- agree honestly today on many matters, but we have settled most of the questions which exercised our grandfathers.

A caustic wit has called Democracy ''the rule of the planless man," but it was not plans which were lacking in that seething time when remnants of old English monarchical conser- vatism and the newest and wildest of French Revolutionary theories were striving to com- bine into something different from either.

118 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

"The broadening of human thought Is ever a slow and a complex process." Our old time Federalist did not correspond to any of the political partizanshlps of today and his party passed away with the echoes of the War of 1812. In his time he represented the conser- vative element, but no special privilege save that of education, and the able leadership It gave.

The leaders of the Jeifersonian popular party distrusted the educated few, because as they said, they were '*too far from the people to understand their ways." The old Feder- alists had for their successors the Whigs, while the JefFersonlan, afterwards called the Re- publican, and lastly the Democratic party, represented the ideals of liberty as advocated in the French Revolution.

England of just after the Revolution was a very conservative, hard England, but In America no such degeneration of the demo- cratic gospel took place; the rise of the plain people, the opportunity of the common man to become uncommon, was the opportunity of all in America.

Andrew Jackson, "Old Hickory" as he was called, born In North Carolina, called to office

EARLY LIFE AND THOUGHT 119

from Tennessee, well expressed his party as President and as popular hero.

In politics North Carolina was naturally democratic, but the majority of her leading intellects happened to be Whigs, and many of her best prophets were without honor in their own country.

The money organization of the United States was the field of many experiments. Jackson was of the opinion that money matters were best left to each sovereign state, and so he aboHshed the Bank of the United States, distributing its surplus pro rata among the states. This institution was doubtless a very imperfect one, but had afforded a central stable valuation of credit. Now there were as many values and measures as there were states, all the way from the "wild cat" banks of the west, to the conservative institutions of New England. Following the changeless law of finance, all the better money was hoard- ed and the worse put in circulation. Each state had a State Bank which bore the same relation to its finances as did the United States bank to the United States funds, and there came to be a strange mixture of money.

120 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

with SO many banks issuing notes which were more or less good at a shorter or longer distance from the banks of their origin.

The habit of mind about money is a great part of the mental furniture of a man, because it disposes him to honest dealing and honest success, or disposes him to the taking of too heavy risks.

The early years of the nineteenth century were far too much given to the sporting con- ception of things, and loose ideas about money have given more trouble to our people than has any fallacy which has survived Into the present.

When, after the unlucky Democratic admin- istration of Van Buren, the scale tipped to- ward the Whigs, every one but the inside bosses thought of Henry Clay as the Whig choice for President.

It Is not clear just how his nomination was defeated, but defeated It was, and Harrison won It, Tyler, who succeeded him, being Vice- President, after Harrison had only been a few weeks in office, and had died. Tyler proved not to be a Whig at all, but merely an admirer of the man Clay.

EARLY LIFE AND THOUGHT 121

So far as we can see, he was nominated Vice- President because of his gift of ready tears over the defeat of his friend. Next term, 1844, Clay lost the election to the Democratic candidate, this time by his "Raleigh Letter." This historic letter was sent to a friend of Clay's in Alabama, and published by him, and tradition says it was penned under a great white oak in what was lately the yard of Col- onel A. B. Andrews on Blount Street. In this letter he advocated the admission of Texas to the Union in due time, and thus set all Aboli- tion New England against his candidacy. He opposed admitting it at once, and thus set his Southern friends against him.

Tradition says that he showed this letter to Judge Badger before he sent it, and that Bad- ger said, ''That letter will lose you your can- didacy," to which he replied in the often quoted words, ''I would rather be right than be president."

In ideals Clay was broadly national, and he was noted as a compromiser, and a soother of men's passions. Personally he was the very ideal man in the imagination of the spirit- ed youth of his day, ideal in faults as well as in virtues.

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EARLY LIFE AND THOUGHT 123

Old men have told me that since the War they had felt homeless as regarded political affiliation, that they were and had always been ''Henry Clay Whigs" and nothing else. Of his great body of adherents it might be said, "His name was all the politics they knew."

Education in the South in those days as ob- tained by the richer classes was thorough, but there were no standardized secondary schools and scarcely any conception of what they might mean.

The average country citizen of those days was likely to hold the view of Huckleberry Finn's father: "Your father and your mother couldn't read nor write, and you think you are better than your father because you can. I'll take it out of you!" Planters might employ governesses and tutors, and send their children to pay schools, but common people living in rural isolation had no advantages at all in schooling.

Bartlett Yancey is authority for the state- ment that in Caswell County in 1800 one half the adult white population could not read and write, and that this great proportion grew greater rather than less. In Wake County

124 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

things must have been better, but how much better we do not know how to discover.

Judge Gaston, In a Fourth of July toast In 1826, speaks of North CaroHna as sadly prone in matters educational "to stumble and floun- der on at a lazy and lagging pace," and again in 1827, the ''Legislature habitually looked with indifference upon education."

A belief among the leaders that this was poor policy was growing each year, and many tentative debates discussing possibilities of es- tablishing common schools were beginning to be held; small appropriations were being laid aside to accumulate looking toward the es- tablishing of an adequate fund for future use; but the fact remained that there was little or no general demand for any sort of free school education up to the year 1840 or '41.

The population of Wake County outside of the city of Raleigh gradually lessened, and be- came more scattered than formerly through the rural districts. The filling up of the west, which had begun with the century and shortly before, drew thousands of North Carolina people over the turnpikes to Alabama and Tennessee and far away to Alissouri and the

EARLY LIFE AND THOUGHT 125

"New Purchase" as it was called. At the close of the Revolution the population of North Carolina approximated the same num- ber as did that of New York State, but from the war of 1812 until well Into the forties, the population of North Carolina was at a com- parative standstill.

This emigration, the following of families after their pathfinders, the talk of the golden west and all that, made a great appeal to the imagination of those who stayed behind.

Another great subject for discussion which grew more and more heated was the question of slavery, and attack and defence of this "Institution" was mooted from one end of the United States to the other.

If the cotton gin had lain in the womb of time for another fifty years, slavery in the South might have well become what the doctors call a self-limiting disease and might have followed the course of gradual extinction it had begun In the northern States.

Because of the obvious path of profit, slavery grew from more to more, especially as the south-west was opened up.

126 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

New England, always didactic, began to al- lude first with too much truth to Southern illiteracy, then as time went on to express her conscientious scruples as to the sufferance of slavery in any part of the Union.

Nothing in the general life and thought of the New England states had impressed the South with admiration, the two conceptions of life being at variance. Nothing made our people imagine that moral excellence was greater there than here, and these reproaches were felt undeserved and fell upon ears irritat- ►ed with constant clash of warring sentiments and opinions. It was as though the sister who lived at home and needed only walk paved streets, should count for a sin the drag- gled skirts of her whose way had lain through briars and muddy ways.

That New England was the nearest right if not most righteous, was never acknowledged at the South, and in New England the fact of conditions and not deliberate choice was carefully ignored.

Much ink was spilt, and hard sayings on each side grew harder, and anger bred pre- judice, and aspersions against slavery made

EARLY LIFE AND THOUGHT 127

New England's educational example odious. Justice in this world can never be perfect, but perfect justice is somehow what every man claims for his own. Raleigh, the center of North Carolina's political life, heard many a speech about this bitter controversy, many an echo of the ever growing dispute.

Another subject of prime interest then, as now, was the building of roads, and added to that the projecting of canals. It scarcely seems possible, but the idea was at one time entertained that the City of Raleigh must be connected with the sea by means of the small creeks that run to Neuse River and a system of canals and locks, in connection with that, stream, in order to have a commercial outlet.

The State of New York had recently com- pleted the Erie Canal, and the fashion thus, set was admired, — this before the days of railroads.

A Scotch engineer engaged for the State by Mr. Peter Brown made calculations on this sort of a plan, on a salary of several times the pay of the Governor. In the early twenties one trip is said to have been made to New Berne and back, with many difficulties. Boat, a scow; captain, James Murray.

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It was calculated that a canal was practical from Hunter's Mill on Walnut Creek, the pre- cise spot of the Waterworks pumping station down to Neuse River, the fall being sufficient, but that a better port would be at the spot near Bloomsbury Park where Lassiter's Mill stands now, and a better canal down Crabtree Creek to the river, though it might have to be longer.

These wild schemes had to be discussed be- cause prices, owing to wagon transportation, were enormous. The salary mark was far, far lower than it is today, and yet calico brought one dollar per yard, broadcloth was worth from seven to ten dollars, and sugar was at the figure of forty-five cents a pound. Nails came by the dozen. Truly it was not the choice of frugality for its elevating charm which influenced our ancestors toward plain living, but necessity, and that of the sternest.

No wonder they listened to fairy tales about easy transportation down Neuse River, where, as today, at some seasons, a terrapin could carry flour on his back all the way from Raleigh to New Berne without wetting his load.

One romantic thing, as we call it now, was part of daily lives then, and we should be glad

130 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

to experience the thrill ourselves. The stage from the North came In over the Loulsburg Road, and went southward to Fayetteville, stopping at Casso's tavern on Fayetteville Street. Three times a week at first it came, then daily. The sweet, flourishing notes of the coach horns could be heard as the lumber- ing vehicle came into town, and rolled up near the Capitol. This was the link with the world outside. The mail came In, the north- ern papers with their European news, slowly brought to them In ships, and already more than a month old; letters at fifty and twenty- five cents apiece, according to distance and weight. Strangers would dismount for a moment to stretch their cramped legs a bit, while the fresh horses were put to; or would dismount and spend the night at the tavern.

It was a day's trip from Warrenton to Raleigh, a days' trip from Fayetteville to Raleigh. The passing of the stages was the event of the day, and reminds us of the ac- count In one of Mark Twain's Inimitable books of the passing of the New Orleans packet up the river In his youth. If any one had wished to know the census of the able-bodied popu-

EARLY LIFE AND THOUGHT 131

latlon of Raleigh, he could doubtless have stepped down from the stage and counted them. Not one would wish to be absent when the stage rolled in.

Of course people read newspapers in those days, and there were good ones, although the sheets were small, and had no sporting page, and no Sunday edition. The editorials were dignified and well written, and compare with- out disparagement with what we get today, and these weeklies were well read inside and out, as newspapers are not any longer read today, since the armistice.

The Whig paper of the earHest time was called the Raleigh Minerva, and was publish- ed by William Boylan, the first of the name to come to Raleigh. About six months earlier a paper of rival politics, a Democratic or Jeffer- sonian organ, was begun by Joseph Gales, an Englishman. He had been driven away from his printing office in Shefiield, England, be- cause of his sympathy with the French Revo- lution and its very radical developments, such ideas being hateful even to the very mobs, because of the excesses of the Terrorists. He was in some way connected with Doctor

132 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

Priestley, who was driven away from Birming- ham by mob persecution, a man a hundred years ahead of his time, who also was forced to spend the last of his days in America.

Joseph Gales came to America with Doctor Priestley and was for a time in Philadelphia. Then he came to Raleigh early in the nine- teenth century, and the paper he edited here bore the same name as his former journal in Sheffield, ''The Register.'" For many years Joseph Gales was state printer. Besides these two, there was a third sheet, The Star which often changed hands, although it was pub- lished for years.

As to books, the City of Raleigh in early days was poorly off. Of course some owned a few books, which were read and re-read, and learned almost by heart, to good purpose, and letters and papers of the time show that liter- ary style was far from bad. No books were printed in the state until years later, save a few law books. The list given in Doctor Battle's History of the University of North Caroli^ia, of the College library of the first of the century past, will give some idea of the scarcity of all that we should call readable.

EARLY LIFE AND THOUGHT 133

Most of the works were heavy and solid enough to kill the largest rat when made into a dead-fall and allowed to drop upon him. Doctor Battle states that this was the use made of Saint Augustine's works in folio and other substantial volumes which were borrow- ed from the University library for this express purpose. However that may be, there was little to read in Raleigh then but law, classics and theology, with a very few novels which were heavy to hold if not to read. I have before me a copy of ''Sir Charles Grandison,^^ owned in Raleigh in 1813 or '14, which is as large as a family Bible, has two columns of rather small print, and seven hundred pages. This light work was a reprint from the seven volumes originally issued, and is dated 1810, printed in London.

The eating and drinking which built up life from its physical side was much like the food of today, and yet unlike in many ways.

Chicago beef was not to be had, nor was there an abattoir, nor an ice plant. Local sup- plies were all that obtained, and much more pork and bacon was used by all classes. Vegetables were raised the same as now, but

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the COW pea was considered food for beasts alone, and the useful tomato was unknown. Canning was a thing unpracticed, although dried fruit was plentifully used. A little "pound for pound" preserves for state oc- casions was kept on hand from year to year. Sugar was scarce and molasses of the home- grown sort took the place of it. The import- ed molasses was most delicious, being far better than it has been since, and was the ac- cepted sweetening for many foods. Hospitali- ty laid stress on one sort of refreshment that is but a sad memory to the thirsty. Imported and domestic wines and liquors were used in great variety, and every gentleman considered it his duty to have such things on hand for the chance guest, however he might prefer to abstain himself. Hence the mahogany cel- larets which still grace many old fashioned dining rooms, and the portly glass decanters which are now set back on the china-closet shelves, but used to stand out within reach. As regards the furniture that we are still carefully collecting, are we not sure that the things then bought and admired are still the most beautiful that are obtainable.^ Do we

136 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

not regard thus all old sofas and desks and secretaires and what not?

Has there ever been more satisfactory silver- ware than the gracefully shaped spoons and pierced fruit baskets that we treasure with pride and buy now and then for great prices?

Household work was far greater then than it is now, and the notable housewife must be like Solomon's virtuous woman in her cease- less activities. Providing work and super- vision for the many and lazy servants made her rise early and be ceaselessly busy. Even Colonel Byrd, though not enthusiastic about the men, acknowledges that the women of early North Carolina were a thrifty race, and we may be sure that they knew how to sew and knit and dye and weave and embroider and care for meats and supervise all the varied domestic arts.

It is interesting to note that in the twenties and the thirties young folk were considered very mannerless and unmanageable.

The spinning of "street yarn" was much dep- recated, the extreme idleness of young men was cerlsured in private letters and in the newspapers, and older folk were caused much

EARLY LIFE AND THOUGHT 137

anxiety by the strange tendency of the young girls to dress up and go out gadding when there was work for them to do at home! All these many things, great and small, go to make up the tenor of the lives of our fore- runners. Sometimes the small are more impor- tant than the great in filling up the many de- tails which add most to the picture, and it is a picture that I am trying, awkwardly perhaps, but anxiously, to place before your eyes.

CHAPTER VI. GianH of Those Days

OLONEL WILLIAM POLK,

coming fromMecklenburgCounty to Raleigh very early in its history, was a figure of great prominence here, and would still have been were his adoptive city a far larger place. He came of that well known Polk family which lived in Mecklenburg before the Revolution, and was cousin to President Polk. In his youth he was an eye-witness to the signing of the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independ- ence, and it is so stated in the Life of Leonidas K. Polk. He enlisted in the Continental Army when a mere boy and was In active ser- vice all through the Revolutionary War. He was twice wounded, very severely at the battle of Germantown. He suffered that sad winter at Valley Forge with Washington, and he was also present with him at Yorktown.

He was twice married, his first wife dying before he came to Raleigh. His second wife was a i^Jiss Hawkins of Warrenton, In Warren

GIANTS OF THOSE DAYS 139

County. She bore him nine children of whom the second was Leonidas K. Polk.

Colonel Polk came to Raleigh in the year 1799 to become the first president of the State Bank, serving without compensation. His home was a large house which used to close the end of Blount Street just as the Centennial School now closes Fayetteville Street. It was standing ten years ago, and was used for a while after the war for a girls' school.

The old State Bank where Colonel Polk presided is now used for the Rectory of Christ Church and is the third brick building which was erected in Raleigh, the first one be- ing the old State House, the second Casso's Hotel, now used for stores and some of the State offices, at the corner of Morgan and Fay- etteville, still sturdy and substantial. The State Bank building was much laughed at, in the early day, because it was considered queer architecture. One can still trace the newer bricks where the old Bank door was built up on the New Berne Avenue side. "Two porches, and a house between, like the ham sandwich."

140 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

Colonel Polk of those days was a tall stately imposing figure, of old-fashioned formal man- ner, and ceremonious dignity, but capable of unbending genially on occasion. He was a citizen for everyone to be proud of, the man whom his neighbors honored and called upon to welcome distinguished guests and be the presiding genius of public meetings and toast- master at banquets on state occasions. In politics he was an old time Federalist, but in his youth he had a boy friend, a neighbor in Mecklenburg County whose name was An- drew Jackson.

The halo which surrounded this venerable Revolutionary figure grew brighter as time went on and thinned the ranks of his fellow soldiers and the story of their deeds became a sort of legend. At his death he was probably the last survivor of the Revolutionary officers in all North Carolina.

Colonel Polk, like other gentlemen of his time, was a convivial soul, as no one thought harm of being; but he was no vulgar roysterer and he took a firm stand against duelling, then an accepted way of protecting ''honor" and settling controversies. On one occasion

GIANTS OF THOSE DAYS 141

he wrote for publication a strong letter con- demning the practice, and this had great weight because it was from a man so well known to be of distinguished courage. This declaration was needed, as at least one duel had been fought about that time by a Wake County man.

Alfred Jones of White Plains was a party in a duel about 1820, and was badly wounded. He always declared that though he nearly died of his wound, he considered the mental anguish he suffered for a few seconds while looking down his opponent's murderous pistol- barrel was more grim and unforgetable than the physical pain of the wound. He felt his honor entirely less satisfied.

To return to Colonel Polk. He was one of those who owned great tracts of land in Ten- nessee, and was once making a trip into that state on business connected with his property, when he saw, leaning over a fence beside his road, a man whom he at once recognized, and whom he knew only too well. It was a Tory, who had formerly lived neighbor to his father in Mecklenburg, and who had taken an oppor- tunity while the men of the family were away

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in the army to wreck and plunder his father's plantation. The Colonel, knowing him for this deed and knowing that he had got off scot free, handed his horse's rein to his com- panion, and withoutone word, dismounted and fell like an avalanche upon the astonished man, giving him a horsewhipping that was en- tirely consoling to the giver, as well as fully satisfying to the recipient. State Treasurer Haywood was the authority for this anecdote.

Another story tells of his showing the young folk how to dance a minuet in the stately fashion of the eighteenth century, Miss Betsy Geddy of the statue-saving fame being his vis-a-vis and dancing partner.

When his son Leonidas, just graduated from West Point, insisted upon resigning from the army to study for the Episcopal ministry, Colonel Polk could neither understand nor be- come resigned to it. It is said that he spoke of it for some time with an oath whenever he mentioned it.

Cousin to one President of the United States, friend of another. Colonel Polk was the man who chanced to put a bit of bread into the mouth of a third. Jacob Johnson,

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father of Andrew Johnson, Lincoln's successor in the Presidency, was for many years porter and factotum at the State Bank, under Col- onel Polk, and afterward.

This man Johnson was absolutely unedu- cated, but Governor Swain describes his quick heroism in saving Mr. T. Henderson from drowning in Hunter's pond, according to ac- count by William Peace. It was at a picnic, and the canoe overset and Henderson was un- able to swim. Johnson lived in a small house near Casso's Hotel. Miss Margaret Casso nam- ed the future President Andrew Jackson, al- though he afterward dropped the middle name. A newspaper advertisement is still in existence offering a reward for the return of this Raleigh boy to his legal guardians, when he ran away from his apprenticeship at about twelve years of age.

Successor to Colonel Polk at the State Bank was William Boylan, the first of the name. He was editor of the Raleigh Minerva^ some- time state printer, and he was also a rich planter, dying worth a million dollars at the time when millionaires were most unusual and money was far more valuable. Mr Boy-

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Ian came originally from New Jersey, but had kin In North Carolina. His portrait shows a face of a very different character from the others of that gallery. He looks, among those great lawyers, like a sedate business man and his qualities of mind were the prophecy of coming times. Mr. Boylan was public-spirit- ed and progressive. He first saw the possi- bilities, and set the example of raising great quantities of cotton on the uplands of Wake. Whitney's cotton gin had made the growing of cotton profitable because the gin could re- move the seed from a thousand pounds of cotton in a day, which labor previously had to be done slowly and tediously by hand. Also the invention of the power-driven loom and spinning machinery made more cotton necessary to keep the looms of the world at work, and the development of the necessary inventions had built up a mighty industry. Mr. Boylan planted acres of cotton where square rods had been the custom before. He also became interested In transportation, and a heavy investor in our first railroads. He was at one time president of the Raleigh and Gaston Railroad. Governor Swain says of him that he was dignified and grave, and it

GIANTS OF THOSE DAYS 145

also is sure that he must have been charitable, for he is responsible for the building of the first county poor-house in Wake. Before that the County poor were boarded out with the lowest bidder at county expense; a hard arrangement.

Doctor Kemp Battle, from whose centen- nial address many details of this old time may be gathered, tells a story of how Mr. Boylan sent loads of wood around to the poor, caught as they were without fuel in the time of the wonderful "big snow of '57." He states that one ''son of rest" keeping warm abed that cold- est morning, humped up in his mound of bed- ding to inquire whether Mr. Boylan "had had that wood cut up to fit his fireplace before it was loaded on the wagon .^"

Mr. Boylan lived in the Joel Lane house which he had bought from Peter Brown. But one undignified thing is told of him — that is his part in the fight which he and Joseph Gales, rival editors, fought about some politi- cal question. In this Mr. Gales was worsted, and brought suit for damages, which were awarded to the sum of two hundred dollars, which amount he donated to the Academy.

»l

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The two worthy combatants were after- ward reconciled and shook hands in token of amity. Mr. Boylan died in 1859, his Hfe thus spanning the whole time of industrial and material growth before the war.

Peter Brown, Esquire, was a lawyer and a bachelor. He came to Raleigh in the first years of its existence, but in his old age he wished to return to Scotland, or thought he did; so he sold his property, including the historic Joel Lane house as above, and went back across the water. He had contracted the Raleigh habit however, and matter of fact as he appeared, he let sentiment take him back to Scotland, and then bring him back again to North Carolina, where he died after all.

Peter Brown also took a turn at being presi- dent of the State Bank. He knew something of the Scotch ideas of banking, said to be the best at that time. He was a lawyer of ability as well as a financier, and was for some time the only practicing attorney in Raleigh. His oddity was great as his ability. Once he found occasion to move his law office, and when ready for business in the new quarters,

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he hung out the following notice: ''Peter Brown, Attorney at Law, has moved from where he was, to where he now is; where he may henceforth at all times be found." No ambiguity in that!

Judge Seawell, nephew of Nathaniel Macon, was one of the legal lights of the time. He married a daughter of James Hinton, son of Colonel John the first, and his descendants live here still. He was a well-known lawyer and citizen representing this county in the Assembly several terms.

Moses Mordecai, the first of the family of legal and other prominence, came to Raleigh in time to buy a lot at the second city sale. Only recently has the great square, with the old mansion built far back upon it, been finally divided into smaller lots. Mr. Mordecai's first and second wives were sisters, Margaret and Annie Lane, daughters of Joel Lane. Many of their descendants are among us now.

One of the old time merchants was William Peck, who did a banking and mercantile busi- ness at the south-east corner of the Capitol facing Wilmington Street. He was a hatter by trade, a safe man and a good citizen. He

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admired the new Capitol as It gradually rose from foundation to dome and watched Its progress day by day from his shop door, com- plaining mightily when the grading up of the square began, and because of the bank of earth in front of him he could no longer see the whole building In Its entirety. Like Judge Cloud of State-wide fame, he disliked whist- ling as a means of self-expression, and of course all the small boys of Raleigh took care to make a long, shrill, ear-piercing effort, just as they rounded his corner on a dead run. A story Is told of him, a legend which Is a sort of classical myth of the days of private banks of issue, and which Is printed in that old book, ''Flush Times in Alabama and Mississippi,'^ a story which may be true, but Is at any rate a good parable, and runs this way:

A Mississippi horse-trader wanted to buy exchange on North Carolina, and bargained for a draft on Mr. Peck's banking Institution. His exchange cost him ten dollars a thousand. Then the banker In Mississippi asked if his customer would do him the favor of carrying a small package with him to North Carolina to be delivered to his ^'old friend. Peck."

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The trader easily consented to do this. On arrival in Raleigh he presented his draft, and Mr. Peck was most positive that he owed the bank in Mississippi nothing, but would like to look over his books and make sure. As he turned to go, the trader handed the package to Mr. Peck, with the message, and when unsealed, it contained the North Caro- lina bills necessary to offset the draft. The trader had paid ten dollars a thousand for his exchange, and then had taken the risk of bringing his own money that long, dangerous way besides. This is a good story to illustrate the working of the banking methods in vogue before railroads and national banks were in existence.

Jokes are the most difficult things to trans- plant out of the time that gives them being, but there is an old joke which might be told here, connected with Mr. Peck. It is a true tale, well avouched this time. One night the great beaver, twice natural size, which swung over the door of his shop and was his sign, disappeared unaccountably. Next morning a student at the University appeared in chapel with this hat balanced on his head and further

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disguised with huge goggles and a long coat, with a cane in hand. This brought down the house and broke up prayers for that morning, as it might well have done with several hun- dred young scapegraces fairly pining for an ex- cuse for a demonstration. The naughty boy who stole the hatter's sign was named R. S. Tucker, and, in partnership with his brother, became a considerable merchant himself in after days. The father, Ruffin Tucker, had settled in Raleigh some years before this and was by trade a printer. Descendants of this man are among those successful in busi- ness of the city.

Dr. McPheeters, who has already been men- tioned as head of the Academy and as ''Town Pastor," was a very interesting figure of old Raleigh. He took his calling in dead earnest, and ruled on week days and on Sundays con- tinuously, so that the boy who played hooky and went fishing on Sunday instead of to church and Sunday School, was made to regret his mistake when he reached day-school Monday morning.

Once Dr. McPheeters was about to visit the sins of his youth in this way upon the future Bishop of Louisiana, and Lonnie Polk

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broke away and ran for It. He was Instantly- pursued, caught, and birched by the Doctor who on that occasion laid down the law In an axiom which is old but by no means obsolete. *'No boy," said Dr. McPheeters, ''who Is not old enough to behave properly when he knows he has been fairly warned, is too old to be whipped for misbehavior."

The Peace brothers were men of diligence and probity, successful merchants. William left a sum for the building of Peace Institute. They were both bachelors, and their name suited their character. One of the city streets Is named after them.

Ihave mentioned Joseph Gales and his estab- lishing the first newspaper, also his connection by birth and association with the ferment of new thought in the manufacturing districts of middle England. After his printing office was wrecked and he was driven to emigrate, he came from Philadelphia to Raleigh. He was a man of resources, bringing some capital with him, and having the knowledge needful to start a paper mill to supply his press.

His wife, Mrs Winifred Gales, was highly educated and had ability. She wrote the

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first novel that was ever written and printed in North Carohna, although not many have been produced since. We have never caught the writer's itch; however, it may some day come to us. She is "the first that ever burst" into the '^silent sea" of North Carolina author- ship. She died in 1839, her husband two years later. They lie buried in the old City Cemetery. Beside their graves are those of two grown daughters lost a few years earlier, victims to one of those recurring epidemics of malaria that took toll of so many who did not know that m.osquitoes and a prevailing souther- ly wind over Hunter's pond on Walnut Creek were the combined cause of so much chills and fever in the town of Raleigh. The Gales have still descendants living in Raleigh and claim- ing the city as home.

David L. Swain lies buried in Oakwood Cemetery, and he lived his formative years here, although he was chiefly known by his later work as President of the University of North Carolina. As a young man he came to Raleigh, and studied law with Chief Justice Taylor, who married the only sister of Judge Gaston.

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Although born in Buncombe County, and coming to Wake after he was a man grown, Swain was near akin to the Lanes and other famiHes connected with them; his mother be- ing Caroline, sister of Joel Lane, and he being the son by her second husband, named as they say after the first, David Lowrie.

Not many educational advantages came to this lad in the western wilds, and young Swain had scanty schooling, and but four months of university instruction, before he went to Raleigh to study law. Every crumb of learn- ing that came his way he seized and assimilated, and every book which he laid his hands upon he read, especially absorbing all obtainable history. Though his early life was not so sordid and pinched as that of Abraham Lin- coln, yet his education and development bear some likeness to that of Lincoln, because he was like him, a rough diamond, and took polish from all the friction of later life; and be- cause his education was in progress all during that later life.

When he had won his law license he return- ed to Buncombe, and was immediately sent to represent that county in the next Assembly.

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Here he attended to the important bill in- troduced by him, for building the French Broad Turnpike, leading west into Tennessee. In 1829, he received an odd compliment, be- ing elected Solicitor for the Edenton District because factional fighting had become des- perately bitter, and only a man from out- side the district could be tolerated. Next he was appointed Judge of the Superior Court, and was chosen over Henry Seawell, of Ral- eigh, a man of greater known distinction and a most excellent lawyer. His judgeship was but another step upward.

He was elected Governor of North Carolina by the Legislature, as was the constitutional provision at that time, and was re-elected for two succeeding years. During his term as Governor he represented Buncombe County in the Constitutional Convention of 1836. This Convention was to change the Con- stitution of North Carolina in many details, and among other matters to amend the laws governing the representation of the different sections of the State in the Assembly. Gover- nor Swain was full of detailed information re- garding the State's history and statistics, from the earliest Colonial times, and he led the re-

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form party which equalized differences between the east and the west — matters which had never been adjusted, and which had stirred up strife between the sections ever since the Revolution.

In this same year, Doctor Joseph Caldwell, President of the University, died, and Gover- nor Swain asked his friend Judge Nash whether he could recommend him for appoint- ment to the vacancy. Judge Nash thought, naturally enough, of formal academic educa- tion, and of the lack of such preparation which Governor Swain's exclusively political life must present. All that he would promise was to consult Judge Cameron about the requests The latter held a diiferent opinion. He de- clared that Governor Swain had all nec- essary requisites for the position except formal scholarship; that he had always been able to manage men, and should know well how to manage boys, and that his education, while not conventional, was far broader than might be supposed.

At the next meeting of the Board of Trus- tees Swain was elected President of the Uni- versity and went to Chapel Hill to take up his

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real crowning life-work. Hence some humorist has said that the State of North Carolina had given him every office in her power, and had at last sent him to college to get an edu- cation. This was an unjust taunt to a man so well self-taught, and whose cultivation was a progressive process lasting all his life. He himself was the Historical Society, and his collections of documents were very complete for that early time. The historian Bancroft used his collections and consulted his knowl- edge for the chapters in his History of the United States which concern North Carolina. Governor Swain's political strength had been aided greatly by his unerring memory for kinship, names and dates, and this gift also helped him in his knowledge and management of his boys. His legal power was founded on his grasp of detail, and by this also he was fitted to record the history of the State he loved.

Papers in the University Magazine, by his hand, and a few occasional addresses full of dry humor, are all that he left as formal writings of a historical nature, and these are all too few; but they give a presentment of

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the life that then was, on the far side of that bloody chasm which was to divide all our his- tory in twain.

Like Judge Gaston, Governor Swain was a Federalist in poHtics, and became later a Whig. He married Eleanor White of Raleigh, the daughter of William White, Secretary of State, and a grand-daughter of Governor Caswell. He died in 1868, some say of grief over the wreck of his beloved University, accomplished in the disheartening Recon- struction days. In person he was a tall, awkward man, one of those whose appearance lends point to some humorous nick-name. His students called Governor Swain ''Old Bunk," referring to his native county.

It is only in Governor Swain's reminiscences of Raleigh that we gather the traits of the lesser folk, lesser only in not being conspicu- ous as State officials. He mentions and char- acterizes many, of whom v/e may mention Mr. Casso, the Italian tavern keeper whose descendants are many, Dugald McKeithan who married a Lane, the cousin of the Gover- nor, John Meares, James McKee, Benjamin King, Captain, afterwards Sheriff Wyatt, the

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first member of the Briggs family, the original David Royster, cabinet-maker (this last was in Raleigh by 1801), John Stewart who mar- ried Miss Margaret Casso and is the ancestor of the Binghams of Mebane, James Coman, a Frenchman, the Smiths, substantial mer- chants, whose heir. Miss Mary Smith, after- wards Mrs. Morehead, left her money to the University, Ruffin Tucker who has been men- tioned, who worked for twenty-five dollars a year and board during his first year in Raleigh.

John Rex, the tanner, will be mentioned more fully later. One John S. Raboteau, a French Huguenot, a saddler by trade, should be named here, for his grand-daughter married A. F. Page, and through her he is ancestor of the great Ambassador to England, and his brothers, builders of North Carolina. Sheriff Page, recently dead, was of kin to these.

Also there was a Captain Wiatt who built the houseon Hillsborough road where the High- way Commission's great shops stand today, and who was the Marshall of the Supreme Court for many years. He came from Vir- ginia, was a veteran of 1812, and built a country home almost like the one of about the

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same epoch belonging to General Calvin Jones, his comrade in arms. Captain Wiatt had a wayside well which was used by all the passers- by. He was also celebrated for the kindness of his heart and the great freedom of his com- mand of bad language. He was one of those who swore terribly, although this is all that was ever said in his dispraise. His home has been very long a landmark of the county.

CHAPTER VII More Biographies

N a previous chapter we sketched Colonel William Polk, the Rev- olutionary hero who was so much the leading citizen of Raleigh for so many years, and for the completion of the story of our best example of character transmitted from father to son and built up in the Raleigh of old time, we shall add a life of his son, Leonidas, who be- came the celebrated Bishop-Brigadier of the Confederate Army.

We are not able to claim possession of that great ''Revolutionary Titan," as Gov- ernor Swain calls John Marshall, who rode his circuit as United States Justice, and was thus a regular visitor to Raleigh, riding alone from Richmond all those dreary miles in his gig. The trip took him a week. We may re- tell, however, the stories still remembered of him, of his simplicity, his kindly good nature, of how he loved to pitch horseshoes with the townsfolk, of afternoons when court had ad-

[163]

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journed; of how once he could get no tailor to make him a pair of new breeches, for love nor money, because he would not ask him to take away the turn already promised to a custo- mer to serve himself. As Justice Marshall would not insist upon any special consideration he had at that time to hold court in ragged breeches, which made no more difference than he thought it did, namely, no difference at all.

Swain says, "I shall never see nor hear his like again," and Judge Badger tells of Marshall's saying in his hearing, ''The Constitution of the United States is to be con- strued not loosely, not strictly, but honestly." Here you see Judge Badger learning those lessons of moderation and of justice which he put to good use for himself in his later life.

State Treasurers are usually retained for many successive years; Secretaries of State for long terms, also being re-elected and passing their lives with us and becoming permanent residents. The Judges of the Supreme Court of North Carolina did not do this so invariably, while Governors, having short terms of office, were more often but transient sojourners. Men

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from other states often came to us. The mention of such solid and worthy qualities as those of Duncan Cameron and Kenneth Ray- ner, might be made as examples of the great gain which often came to this city and state when such men chose to cast in their lot among us.

It is said that you must have been a part of the city of Charleston for three generations before you can claim to belong to the place. Raleigh has been more hospitable from the first, and has added to herself many a good and worthy man by this virtue.

Certainly Judge Gaston should be charac- terized in any story of Wake County. His memory deserves honor among us for what he was enabled to accomplish for Raleigh as well as for his great service to the State.

He was born in New Berne, and when living in Raleigh inhabited a little office building in the yard of that house which stood, until a few years ago, at the south-west corner of Salisbury and West Hargett Streets. This was originally the home of Chief Justice Tay- lor, who married Judge Gaston's sister. The little office in question was on the very corner,

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and stood in an old fashioned garden, under a huge ginkgo tree, and with vines and flowers about its rear. Business houses have en- croached on this old residence, and brick and mortar entirely cover its site today.

Judge Gaston has no living relatives in the State. His portraits, both painted and chisel- ed in marble, are to be seen in the State Library building. That he was a very great lawyer those who know affirm enthusiastic- ally; that he was a greater man, a white-souled Galahad of his day, his contemporaries agree in testifying, while his letters bear it out. "His Sanctity" as one reverent admirer calls him. Judge Gaston's pictured face is intel- lectual, calm, regular in feature, but shows a sad expression of the mouth, a somewhat pathetic air. Gaston is said to have been a bit too fine-grained for the rough game of politics. He could not hate any one with his whole heart for a moment, not even one of another party! His high standards and per- sonal ideals joined with his judicial temper- ament, made some things unbearable to him which would scarce have provoked a shrug from a less sensitive man. When the Feder- alist Party went to pieces he felt a little home-

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less politically, and registers his disappoint- ment in his advice to Governor Swain never to be persuaded to re-enter public life after he had found useful retirement away from it.

Judge Gaston was first a Congressman, re- tiring to practice law but going to the State Senate from time to time. In 1833 he was appointed to the Supreme Court after the death of Judge Leonard Henderson.

In religion he was a Catholic, and used his influence in the Constitutional Convention of 1835 to do away with the restraints on re- ligious liberty and amend the Constitution to read "Christian," instead of 'Trotestant," when enumerating the qualifications for public oflice. His speeches on that theme are said to have carried his hearers deep into the realm of abstract justice, leaving mere expediency far behind.

In this connection let it be stated that in the Constitutional Convention of 1861 the last religious limitation was removed, when dis- abilities were removed from the Jews, by ordinance introduced by William Johnston of Mecklenburg, father to Mrs. A. B. Andrews, whose memorial volume this is intended to become.

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Judge Gaston's celebrated eloquence, like that of many another dead orator, is hard to estimate at this time. His speeches are dignified, sensible, patterned with metaphors like the figures on an old-fashioned brocade, and like it a bit stiff. Voice and intonation are gone. Great oratory is a fading flower. Gaston's signal service to us and to Raleigh was his determining influence in persuading the Legislature to retain the Capital of the State on the old site. In doing this he kept our heritage for us which might have been lost but for him. He was the author of the words of our State song, ''Carolina, Carolina, Heaven's blessings attend her!" He was also permitted in that heated time to speak many wise words about slavery, to prophesy its downfall, and all this without offense, such was the universal respect for his purity and sincerity. His taking off was very sudden. His last words were a confession of faith in God and Christianity.

We have mentioned the name of John Hay- wood, State Treasurer for forty years, builder of the venerable mansion which stands un- changed on New Berne Avenue and shelters his descendants. He came to Raleigh in the

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year 1787, and about that same time three brothers of his also settled here: Henry, father of Senator William H. Haywood, Sherwood Haywood, and Stephen Haywood. By prom- inence of position and by services the Treas- urer was the best known of the four. His portrait shows a handsome, well marked face with dark eyes and a smiling expression, crowned with a mass of prematurely grey hair. He was an able man, but his greatest talent was the art of doing kind things kindly. He was a veritable genius at friendship.

Besides the duties of his ofBce, he interested himself in the infant University, and he is said to have missed not more than two trustees' meetings in his whole career, a signal devotion when we consider the long muddy miles that had to be wallowed through on horseback for nearly a whole day, both going and coming, to the winter meetings. It is a persistent tradi- tion that he was the designer of the seal and motto of the University. This has not been established, but it is given for its intrinsic like- lihood.

He was responsible for calling to Raleigh that good and useful man Dr. William McPheeters who was a native of Virginia, and

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who became both schoolmaster and town pastor and was long a kind of Presbyterian Pope of Raleigh.

Each session of the Legislature, Mr. Hay- wood invited each member to eat at least one meal with him, and he knew more men well and pleasantly than did any other man in the State unless it may have been Gov- ernor Swain.

His funeral was a state affair, with full mili- tary honors, and though Mr. Haywood was an Episcopalian in denomination, his old friend Dr. McPheeters pronounced the funeral discourse, closing with these words: "Integrity and innocence were his guardian angels, and out of the furnace of suspicion he came unhurt." Haywood County, where Waynesville is situated, was named for our longest incumbent in the Treasurer's office.

Judge Badger was one of the ablest men ever produced in North Carolina. He was born in the eastern part of the State, and was a precocious genius, graduating from Yale University very young. By the time he was thirty years old, he had been a lawyer, a con- gressman, and a judge, and had left the bench to practice law in Raleigh.

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William Peace, the merchant, told of having sold him a suit of black broadcloth on credit, when he was just twenty years old and had, at that early age, obtained his law license. It was against his custom, he said, but he was so taken with the gallant youth, that he risked the money upon him without security, and was entirely justified in doing so.

Judge Badger had still a long and a brilliant career before him after he settled in Raleigh. When the Whig party rose out of the ruins of the Federalist, after the disputes with Jackson, Badger was appointed Secretary of the Navy under Harrison. When Tyler, after succeed- ing to the presidential chair on Harrison's death, split the party. Badger resigned his portfolio along with the rest of the cabinet. Soon after this he succeeded William H. Hay- wood as Senator, serving until 1855. Always a man of great brilliancy of mind he took hold of nothing by the rough handle. It was a criticism of him that he was too jocular, that he could make a joke of anything and laugh it out of court. He held well-defined opinions, however, and was a moderate man, a concilia- tor. In his opinions about slavery he follow- ed the ideas and the hopes of Henry Clay.

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In denomination he was Episcopalian, and was an active opponent of Bishop Ives, who was touched with a wave of that same belief which was troubling the Church of England at that time, and which carried Newman over into the Catholic Church. That was also the final development with Bishop Ives, and Badger early recognized whither this Roman- izing tendency was drifting, and opposed and exposed the change in the conventions of the Episcopal Church.

A staunch Union man, a moderate and a conservative. Judge Badger was nevertheless forced by the cruel turn of affairs in '61 to move the secession ordinance, as representing Wake County, in May of that year. He died in '66. His second wife was a sister of Leoni- das Polk, and his third wife was a Haywood.

Like the Polks and like the Haywoods, the Battles have given good men and faithful ones to Raleigh. Judge Battle, father of Doctor Kemp Battle, so long President of the Univer- sity and historian of it, father also of our late useful townsman Richard Battle, Esquire, lived for most of his active years in Raleigh. Dun- can Cameron moved here in 1829 and was

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chairman of the committee which had charge of the building of the second Capitol; he also had charge of the building of Christ Church, thus leaving his mark on Raleigh in these lovely buildings. He was also president of the the State Bank until succeeded later by his son-in-law, George Mordecai.

Leonidas Polk, the second son of Colonel William Polk, was born in Raleigh. In a former chapter he has been characterized as a live boy, a student at the old Academy un- der Dr. McPheeters. His distinctive ac- complishment as a youth was his gift of song. He could sing more old songs better than any- one else in town.

When prepared he went early to Chapel Hill, remaining two years. A part of that time Governor Swain was his room-mate. In 1822 he received his appointment to West Point.

Up to this time in his life he was a high- spirited and care-free but ambitious lad, hav- ing perhaps a keener pair of eyes in his head than most, and indeed he was scarcely more than twenty when he entered the Military Academy.

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There he encountered an atmosphere as de- void of any religious warmth as an institution could manifest without being absolutely atheistic or openly vicious in its influence. It is not known to the average person what a tendency to irreligion was shown in our country during the early part of the last cen- tury, before the great revivals began to sweep their converts into the churches, and before a true missionary spirit became active. The older folk of that time were of the generation of the French Revolution, and the most educated minds, like Jefferson's for example, were full of the ideas of Voltaire or of Tom Paine, and were often agnostic in refusing to fix any religious belief.

At West Point at that time it was consider- ed soft and silly to notice the subject of religion in any way. Not a single officer there was a professor of any religious faith at that time, although they had a chaplain for form's sake. About that time a new chaplain was appoint- ed and came to serve them. He records how chilling he found the apathy and the veiled scorn he met, but he was the kind of man whose conviction led him to strive to accom- plish something under any conditions. He

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was able to influence Leonidas Polk, and made in him his first convert. The young man was deeply and genuinely touched and changed. Alter graduating at West Point, he told his father of his new outlook and of his recently taken decision to leave the army and study for the Church. While Colonel Polk's plans for his boy were cruelly frustrated, still there was no open breach between them, and the father became more reconciled as time passed. After studying at the seminary in Alexander, Virginia, Leonidas was ordained deacon in 1831.

Before that time he had married Miss Devereux, daughter of John Devereux of Raleigh, and when a few years later he was consecrated Missionary Bishop of the South- west, he moved to Tennessee to the generous tract his father allotted him of a thousand acres of good blue grass.

The diocese of the new bishop was enormous consisting of Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Indian Territory of Oklahoma, and the great state of Texas. The whole of this wide extent of country was still sparsely set- tled, and its isolated inhabitants had very little religious instruction and did not wish

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for any. In emigrating, they had escaped re- straint, and unlike the more northern emi- grants they were mostly country people and did not come from communities well organized religiously. Their old homes had often been as isolated to all intents and purposes as the new ones so far on the frontier.

This made the problem of the missionary, and on one of his long journeys a Texan told Bishop Polk that he was wasting his time. ''Go home; go home, young man," said this man earnestly, "we are not worth saving!"

An anecdote told of one of these border ruffians of this decade will illustrate the lawless undisciplined spirit of the South-west with which Bishop Polk had to deal in the begin- ning of his ministry. It was a man who had been jailed for manslaughter and was most indignant, considering it an outrage, and say- ing, "Now-a-days you can't put an inch or so of knife into a fellow, or lam him over the head with a stick of wood, but every little lackey must poke his nose in, and law, law, law is the word. Then after the witnesses swear to their pack o'lies, and the lawyers get their jaw in, that old cuss that sets up there

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high and grinds out the law to 'em, he must have his how-de-do! I tell you T won't stay in no such a country. I mean to go to Texas, where a man can have some peace and not be interfered with in his private concerns!"

This was the spirit that Bishop Polk met over and over again in his long journeys all over this great district. His life was threat- ened with violence in more than one frontier place, but he was a man who could not be daunted; and beside this he well understood the tempers and manners of his southern fel- low-countrymen. He did the work of an evangelist with much success. Later he help- ed to initiate and organize the University of the South at Sewanee, Tennessee.

The war came on in '61, and Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederacy, being in need of all the trained soldiers possible to lead and train his armies, asked his advisers if they supposed Bishop Polk would allow himself to be appointed Major-General. This appointment was offered to him, without his having any surmise of it beforehand. After some consideration. Bishop Polk accepted the commission, and served his country and chos- en cause as Major, afterwards Brigadier-Gen-

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eral all through the war. Quite late In the struggle he was killed during the fighting round Atlanta. He was burled in Augusta, Georgia.

His men called him Bishop more often than they called him General, and he was much loved. He kept his sacred calling well to the fore, while doing the difficult duty of a soldier and officer in command.

Such a sincere picturesque figure as he makes is a worthy subject for study and inter- est. We cannot claim many such distin- guished and unusual persons.

Many soldiers went out from Raleigh and of these many distinguished themselves. Their histories are part of that great book of golden deeds which should be read as long as books are made. But it would be too long to try to tell of them all; to tell of those who came home alive to work out a restoration of the piteous destruction of war, and of those who were mercifully spared the further sacrifice except the one of their lives given in a moment of time, rather than spent painfully day by day. These things will be better told by others. There is not room here for that long roll of heroic names.

CHAPTER VIII Improvements and Progress

OMETIMES improvement Is de- finitely started by the stimula- tion of a great loss. The Raleigh that we know today only began to come into existence after the

old town had been destroyed by a series of

fires.

Of these the most serious and the most spectacular was the burning of the old State House in 1831. From Governor Swain's ac- count, given as an eye-witness, we can recall the despair and dismay of this loss.

The fire occurred in broad daylight, the middle of a summer day, June 21st, 1831, and caught from a solder pot which a careless workman took into the loft where he was re- pairing something about the roof, and there left it, while he went to dinner. During his absence the fire caught and spread unnoticed.

Once before, in 1799, there had been an alarm about fire, a warning given by Andrew Jackson, conveyed to his old friend and for-

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182 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

mer neighbor Colonel Polk, to the effect that it was conspired to destroy the State House in that way. It seems that the Secretary of State, Glasgow, holding his office as a respect- ed leader and a Revolutionary officer of re- pute, had somehow fallen into bad ways, and was issuing fraudulent land warrants. The deception being found out, he was prosecuted, and to prevent conviction he had designed to burn the State House, and with it all evidences of his crime. This plot Jackson discovered, and the State House and its records were saved, while Glasgow fled from justice.

This time, however, the fire was well under way before anyone knew about it, and when the flames appeared they were at the top of the building, and there was not even a ladder at hand long enough to reach the trouble. And so that bright June day, the State House burned leisurely, the black smoke rolled up into the blue sky while the owls and bats and flying squirrels scurried out of the burning dome in panic, and the terrified people of Raleigh ran helplessly to and fro across the Capitol Square. Mr Hill, Secretary of State, had ample time to save the State papers. A

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few that were lost at that time were after- wards restored by bequest of Waightstlll Avery, from his private collections.

Miss Betsy Geddy, that spirited and gritty maiden lady, rallied all comers to try and move the Canova statue of Washington from beneath the burning roof. The citizens took hold, under her leadership and encour- agement, and tried hard, but the marble was very heavy, and there were not hands enough to lift or to move it. There remained noth- ing to do but to watch it burn. By and by the fire had surrounded it, and it could be seen heated red-hot, glowing like a figure in a fiery furnace. So it shone for a time with unearthly beauty, and suddenly the roof fell in upon it and it broke and crumbled in utter and final ruin. A silence fell on the watching throng, and some little child's voice was heard speaking the sorrow of all: 'Toor State House, poor statue, Fm so sorry!"

After the smoking ruins in the Capitol Square had been quenched in a few summer rains, the question was asked and the dis- cussion began whether the edifice should or should not be rebuilt in the same spot or an- other Capital city selected.

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At the next General Assembly the contro- versy became hot. Fayetteville, always sore because she had been passed by that first time, when the new Capital was located in a wilderness, came to the front again to put forth an earnest efforttohave her way this time. She felt that the breeze that fanned the flame had been blowing good to her door.

A proposed town site of Haywood to be built at the junction of the Cape Fear and the Deep Rivers was spoken of also; and much was said in its favor because the idea was that water was needed for transportation, and such a site would be favorable for a Capital city on that account. This last is a persistent tradition, and not a matter of written record.

Haywood in the House, Judge Henry Sea- well in the Senate, made the motion to rebuild the Capitol on the former site in the City of Raleigh, and the great influence and eloquence of Judge Gaston were needed at this moment- ous session of the Assembly so to sway the wavering minds of the Legislators that they might vote for the retention of the seat of government in Wake County. The bill to rebuild the Capitol at Raleigh and on its old

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site was finally passed by a safe majority, and carried the appropriation of fifty thousand dollars. The Representatives, thinking of the twenty thousand which sufficed to build the first State House, considered this a gener- ous allowance. They ordered the new build- ing to be as nearly fire-proof as possible, to be built of granite and to have stone floors as well as walls.

The committee to have charge of the build- ing were William Boylan, Duncan Cameron, William S. M'Hoon (State Treasurer), Henry Seawell, and Romulus M. Saunders. This first committee soon resigned and was suc- ceeded by a second entire body composed of S. F. Patterson, Beverly Daniel, Charles Man- ly, Alfred Jones of White Plains, and Charles L. Hinton. Mr. Nichols was State architect and had had some experience with the stone which could be quarried here at home. A builder from the North was associated with him for a little time, but was later dismissed.

The committee were men of boldness, for they calmly used the whole of the first appro- ation to build the foundation for the new Capitol and then asked for more. Of course

Canova's conception of George Washington as pictured

IN A RARE SKETCH AFTER THE FAMOUS STATUE. (fROM MRS. JULIA JOHNSTON ANDREWs' SKETCH)

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this was exactly what they should have done, but when we reflect how unpopular this action would appear to the habitual parsimony of that day's public opinion, and how well the Legislature understood that unavoidable tax- ation was all that would be tolerated, we may understand that in doing this they were tempt- ing criticism and doing it consciously.

On July 4th, 1833, the corner stone of the Capitol was laid with Masonic rites, and an account of the procession and of the articles placed in the corner stone may be read in the papers of that date.

Governor Swain was in office at that time, a;id on that same day was held in the brick hotel, formerly the State Museum, a meeting of representative citizens of North Carolina to debate on ways and means for building a railroad; or two lines, one east and west and one north and south, connecting with the Portsmouth Railroad, and extending to some convenient point on the South Caro- lina line. Governor Swain presided over the meeting, the first of its kind ever held in North Carolina, and their decision was to petition the Legislature to assist the enter- prise by pledging the faith of the State. A

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subsequent, more widely representative con- vention suggested the proportion of three- fifths subscribed by stockholders, and two- fifths loaned or invested by the State.

To return to the new Capitol, begun as above, in 1833, and built for the sum as cal- culated after its completion, of 2530,684, re- quiring seven years to finish. It is, and has been, as fine a building of its kind as is to be found in the United States, and it it has been a lovely and satisfying sight to several generations of North Carolina folk. The stone was all taken from that same quarry at the eastern side of town which had been opened for the foundation of the first State House.

It is a granite, rather brittle, and veined with lines of brown which make its coloring warm instead of too grey. It is somewhat translucent, having the quality, more than any other stone in the State, of reflecting a differ- ent color under every changing sky which looks down upon it. When snow is on the ground, in the glow of a winter sunset, it has a lovely bluish cast. In spring, when the baby leaves on the trees around it show pale green, it looks pinkish and pale grey, and

IMPROVEMENTS AND PROGRESS 189

ethereal like a fairy palace. This wonderful stone gave trouble to the builders, however, and sometimes cracked unexpectedly. One of the great pillars of the western facade, has a broken corner in its pedestal, where a piece of the slab faulted when the weight grew heavy upon it, and which was never corrected be- cause of the great expense involved of renew- ing the whole pillar.

Directing the building was William Nichols. The architect, Ithiel Towneof New York City, came to see the foundation laid out and begun. He left as an architect and draughtsman to to represent him, David Paton, a Scotchman, who did not remain long in North Carolina after he had completed his work. During his stay, however, he married a North Carolina lady, and his wife died and left him with one baby girl. This child was returned to the care of her Southern grandmother, and mar- ried here. Through her Mr. Paton has descen- dants in this State.

Thomas Bragg, father of Governor Bragg, was also In charge of part of the work. It was necessary also to Import skilled stone- cutters from England and Scotland, for there

190 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

were none In North Carolina, and accordingly the ancestor of the Stronach family was one of these skilled craftsmen, William Murdoch of Salisbury was another, also aMr. Puttick, and others who cast in their lot here afterward and became permanent citizens.

On first coming to this climate these foreign folk found the heat and humidity hard to bear and several died of the fevers which were con- sidered quite Inevitable in those days. They lie buried in the old City Cemetery. The most of the Scotch masons adapted themselves as that sturdy race does in every part of the world, and worked busily at the rising wall of the Capitol until it stood complete.

There is no use giving dimensions and telling of the source of the architectural details of this building, speculating as to the Greek or Roman temple suggested by this cornice, or the classical building imitated in that fa- cade, for we may see the lovely pile of stone any day, those of us who live in this city and country. It has become for us like the sunshine and the blue sky, too much a part of our daily vision for us to realize the great Intrin- sic beauty it represents.

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It took several sets of commissioners to finally complete the building of the Capitol, and they frequently resigned, and were often replaced during the interval; for it is hinted that the great amount of money which had to be expended more than the first appropriation caused a good deal of criticism. Also not being skilled architects they must stand by what was told them by their contractors; and many difiiculties quite unexpected had to be met one by one in the progress of the edifice. Besides this, every one who passed by felt privileged to criticise and spend an opinion, until those in charge could scarcely maintain their calmness. This sort of free advice is one of the rights of a democracy. Kings' houses are not so pitilessly criticised.

The last committee, those who persisted, were but three— William McPheeters, John Beckwith, and Weston Gales, and it is these whose final accounting to the General Assem- bly is published in the newspapers of the time.

The stone to build the Capitol was hauled to the spot by means of a little street rail- road or tramway, called the ''Experimental Railroad." This was constructed across from

192 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

the quarry to the eastern end of New Berne Avenue, and west along that street to the Capitol Square, and the small cars drawn by mules easily handled the blocks of stone. This plan, which seems quite simple and ob- vious, was considered a wonder and a great innovation at that time. The railroad Idea was quite new and as thrilling to the popular imagination as the airplane Is now In 1922. The idea of building and operating this little railroad was due to Mrs. Sarah Hawkins Polk, wife of Colonel William Polk, and she put her savings into It, realizing three hundred per cent.

Among the letters of her son, Leonidas, then a cadet at West Point, to his parents, was one which contributed the Idea. He went to Boston on a summer leave of absence, and saw there In operation that sort of a tramway bringing in the stone being then used to build Bunker Hill Monument. He took the trouble to write his parents the whole plan in detail, making a careful little sketch to show the proper flange the car wheels should have In order to run safely on the wooden rails. This experimental railroad was such a sue-

IMPROVEMENTS AND PROGRESS 193

cess that a passenger car was put on, drawn by a safe horse, and people came from far and near to enjoy a new sensation, so that at times the hauling of stone was somewhat Impeded. Street cars were thus a very early develop- ment In Raleigh, due to the seizing of a new Idea by a woman.

Indeed, the good ladles of Raleigh seem to have been more ''experimental" than their lords on several occasions, although we are of- ten told that women are the conservative sex. We have told of Miss Betsy Geddy's spirited effort to save the finest thing In the State, the Canova statue of George Washington, at the time the old State House burned. This story is like that of the alabaster box of precious ointment, always to be told In her praise. One of the daughters of Mr. Casso, the inn- keeper or hotel man, had married the mer- chant, John Stewart. She was one of those strong-willed and practical sisters who make the finest ancestors In the world, because they have the common sense and decision to meet a crisis.

She saved her home, although it was given up to be destroyed in the path of that great

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fire that swept off the whole east side of Fayetteville Street. This happened shortly after the State House was burned and shows how nearly Raleigh was totally annihilated by recurring conflagrations. They brought gunpowder, and told Mrs. Stewart that her house must be blown up to arrest the fire, which was come almost to that place. She mounted her roof and defied them to blow her up with the doomed house, and when she had thus gained her point she proceeded to save her house, and keep a roof over her head, by hard work and wet bed-quilts. Another time she saved somebody's store from being a total loss by quenching the burning roof with twelve barrels of vinegar, after the wells were all drawn dry. At the festival in honor of the coming of the railroad into Raleigh, she served the banquet to seven hundred people who sat down simultaneously.

Good fire protection was scarcely to be ex- pected in Raleigh, and the business block was crowded together more than was prudent when the town was so small. A tiny fire engine was bought as early as 1802, and another in 1810, although they seem not to have done much good.

196 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

Also there were at one time primitive water- works, water being pumped up from Walnut Creek to a tank and allowed to run down Fayetteville Street by gravity. The wooden pipes soon filled up with sediment, for the water was uniiltered and full of the red mud which is seldom absent from running streams in this section. Drought then reigned as be- fore, except as slaked by well-water.

Hunter's Pond was the cause of much of the fever and chills that made the city sickly, and only after the fever epidemics of the thirties was this pond bought by the city and drained.

Raleigh by this time was becoming aware of her backwardness. Railroading was the topic and the sensation. Internal improvement was in the air. After so long without taking serious interest in the subject, people had sud- denly become impatient of the endless miles which separated them from their next town neighbors. Every newspaper told of the rise of real estate values, the increase in the promptness of the mails, and the other joys of those sections where railroads had already be- gun to be built and operated. ''Let us cease to doubt, to hesitate and slumber, let us tear away the poppy from our brows, let us no

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longer be the Rip Van Winkle among com- monwealths," thus runs the editorial comment upon the following bit of news item, dated February Sth, 1833, Petersburg, Virginia.

"It is impossible to convey to those who have not witnessed a similar scene, an ade- quate conception of the pride and pleasure that beamed from every countenance when the Engine was first seen descending the plain, wending her way with sylph-like beauty into the bosom of the town, and, like a conqueror of old, bearing upon her bosom the evidence of the victory of art over the obstructions of nature."

Conventions were held, stock books were opened and the successive Legislatures mem- orialized, while, after a year or two of such excitement many railroads had been laid out on paper and nowhere else, and the newspapers thought things were wofully slow moving. Yet when we think of the novelty of the un- dertaking, we cannot say that there was much delay.

The beginning of railroad agitation and the laying of the corner stone of the new Capitol were accomplished the same day, and the rail-

198 HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY

road, the Raleigh and Gaston, was near enough to completion to be celebrated at the same time as the finishing of the Capitol building.

The same year 1840, which saw the new Capitol complete from foundation to dome, also saw the first train roll into Raleigh from Gaston, near Weldon, and the feelings so well expressed in Petersburg, of victory over space and time, enlivened the hearts of this city, rejuvenated as it was by these two great tasks accomplished.

The Three Days of Raleigh were June tenth, eleventh, and twelfth, 1840, and the town gave itself up to jollification, speechification, il- lumination and barbecue. Guests from Rich- mond and from Petersburg, from Wilmington and from other North Carolina towns, were present. Wilmington had also seen her first train pull into the station that same spring, but the western towns were still served by stage-coaches.

The banquet was served in the new freight depot, empty and spacious, and capable of holding the seven hundred guests. A first shipment of cotton for export had been brought into it just the April previous.

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There were five tables ninety feet long, and the banqueters toasted in real, sure-enough liquor, The Railroad, The Capitol, Judge Gas- ton, "The Ladies" several times, and Mrs. Sarah Polk especially, and separately, al- though they called her a "Distinguished Fe- male." To read of the doings, one would fear that the banqueters might need help when time came to go home after all was over.

That night and the following there were strings of colored lanterns from tree to tree in the Capitol Square, and transparencies, one showing the new Capitol, one the new engine, "The Tornado," and the third, a "lovely scene of nature" entitled "Our Country." There were two balls on successive nights in the Senate Chamber, whose great chandelier held a hundred wax candles; and concerts in the Commons Hall for those who did not dance.

During the day there were trips a few miles out on the railroad, and return, although the rails, or iron strips on which the wheels should run were not yet nailed to the wooden string- ers. ''The Tornado," as the first engine was nam.ed,hadbut a single driving wheel on each

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side, and no cab. It was made In Richmond and was similar in pattern to a good many engines turned out about that time. The cars on these first roads were Hke a string of stages at first, but in South Carolina they had evolved a box-like