USA > North Carolina > History of North Carolina: North Carolina biography, Volume V > Part 53
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71 | Part 72 | Part 73 | Part 74 | Part 75 | Part 76 | Part 77 | Part 78 | Part 79 | Part 80 | Part 81 | Part 82 | Part 83 | Part 84 | Part 85 | Part 86 | Part 87 | Part 88 | Part 89 | Part 90 | Part 91 | Part 92 | Part 93 | Part 94 | Part 95 | Part 96 | Part 97 | Part 98 | Part 99 | Part 100 | Part 101 | Part 102 | Part 103 | Part 104 | Part 105 | Part 106 | Part 107
His father, born April 16, 1826, and died March 22, 1903, was for many years one of the leading citizens of Wilson County. Warren Woodard, as was also his wife, was one of the large landowners of Wilson County. Both the Woodard family and the Farmer family are descended from a long
and useful line of these names. Both families were primarily engaged in agriculture, and both families have always been identified with education in their communities. Both the Woodards and the Farmers have been staunch members of the Primi- tive Baptist Church for generations. Mr. Wood- ard, on both his paternal and maternal side, traces his ancestry back through the Revolutionary period.
Mr. Woodard attended the Wilson Collegiate Institute, one of the leading educational institu- tions of the state at the time, and at whose head was Professor Sylvester Hassell, a distinguished educator of North Carolina, and afterward went to Randolph-Macon College, and attended the University of Virginia in 1885. From inheritance and training Mr. Woodard is a reading man, being interested in history, specially in regard to local matters, genealogy and the literature of agriculture.
After returning from the University of Virginia he evinced a lively interest in farming, and at all times since, although engaged in business enterprises, agriculture has been his real object in life.
In 1890 the cultivation of tobacco began in Wilson County and other parts of Eastern North Carolina, and Mr. Woodard became not only in- terested in the cultivation of the plant, but in the sale of it, and established and built the first ware- house for the sale of leaf tobacco in the Town of Wilson, known for many years as the Woodard Warehouse, and was actively engaged in this business until 1908. Today the Town of Wilson is one of the leading loose leaf tobacco markets of the World, the sales aggregating from 30,000,000 to 35,000,000 pounds per anmm.
Mr. Woodard was the first president of the Farmers' Alliance of Wilson County, having been elected such as a young man in 1887. He has served as alderman of the town and in 1915 was elected a member of the Board of County Com- missioners and became chairman of the board, and was reelected in 1917.
Mr. Woodard is closely identified with the banking interests of his community and with the social life in it, taking a lively interest in all matters tending to the up-building of it.
As chairman of the Board of County Commis- sioners he has devoted considerable study to the question of road building and general county finances, taxation and county matters in general. As a land owner he has a keen appreciation of the importance of rural transportation and of good roads in relation to the material, social and educational life of the rural districts.
Since the outbreak of the great war, as chairman of the County Council of National Defense and as food administration of the county, he has shown a lively interest in the promotion of the interests for which these organizations stand, and has done no little to aronse the patriotism and enthusiasm of his countrymen.
On June 10, 1897, Mr. Woodard was married to Miss Mattie Hadley, daughter of Thomas J. and Sarah Saunders Hadley, of Wilson. Mr. and Mrs. Woodard have three children, Mattie Hadley Woodard, Thomas Hadley and Louise.
Mrs. Woodard, like Mr. Woodard, is descended from straight American stoek. Her father, Thomas J. Hadley, was born in that part of Wil- son County, which was then Wayne County, on July 9, 1838. He was educated at the University of North Carolina, and immediately after his
198
HISTORY OF NORTH CAROLINA
.
graduation, enlisted in the Confederate Army. He was first lieutenant; was wounded twice, once at Falling Water and the other in the Battle of the Wilderness. Upon recovering from his last wound, he was promoted for bravery and ability to a captaincy, which office he held until the close of war. He was present at many of the celebrated battles of the Civil war, among which is Gettys- burg. His grandfather, Thomas Hadley, repre- sented his home town of Campbelltown, now Fayetteville, in the Provincial Congress, which met in Halifax November 12, 1776. After serv- ing his term in the Provincial Congress, he entered the Provincial Army and attained the rank of captain, and was killed by a band of tories, while home on a leave of absence.
Mrs. Woodard is a member of the State Board of Charities and Public Welfare; the Womans' Club of Wilson, and is president of the John W. Dunham Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy.
FRANCIS MARION HARPER. For nearly thirty years one of the active and able educators of North Carolina, Francis Marion Harper is now superin- tendent of the City and Raleigh Township public school system. His is one of the best known names in the state among school workers. He is a man of thorough scholarship, a great executive, and in all the various positions he has held has worked faithfully to lay a broad and solid foundation to the state school system.
Professor Harper started out with the intention of becoming a business man. It was his associa- tions while a student at the University of North Carolina that turned him into educational fields. He has always felt grateful to the influence that emanated from that institution and from his teachers there, and the deep impression created by the high standards of the university gave a permanent trend to his useful and productive career.
A native of North Carolina, born at Newbern in Craven County, November 27, 1865, he is a son of Francis and Mary Elizabeth (Croom) Harper. His father was a planter at Newbern, also a native of North Carolina, and shortly after the close of the Civil war was sheriff of Craven County for one term during Governor Worth 's administration.
Reared in Lenoir County, Francis M. Harper attended the LeGrange Academy, the first graded school established at Newbern, and from 1884 to 1888 was a student in the University of North Carolina, where he graduated in the latter year with the degree Ph. B. As an educator he did his first work at Raleigh, where he spent a year in the Murphy School, and in the third year be- came principal of the Centennial School, a post he held two years. After that for two years he was assistant superintendent of the schools at Dawson, Georgia, and from 1893 to 1907 was assistant superintendent of the public schools of Athens, Georgia. While in Georgia he had charge for two years of the organization of the University of Georgia Summer School.
Since 1907 Professor Harper has been superin- tendent of the city and township schools at Raleigh. Here he has done his greatest service, and the city school system today reflects his progressive ability and his wise administration.
In 1896 Mr. Harper received the Master of Arts degree from the University of Georgia, and has also taken post-graduate work in the University of Chicago. As a member of the National Educational
Association he lias attended all its annual meet- ings since he began teaching, and in that time has made four trips to the coast. He is also prominent in the North Carolina State Teachers' Association and was appointed by this association as delegate to represent North Carolina in the National Edu- cational Association, and has served as director of the latter body. He is a member of the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity, the Knights of Pythias, the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks and the Junior Order of United American Mechanics. He has written and edited a large number of articles that have appeared in educational journals and also in the current press. Mr. Harper is a democrat, and is a deacon of the First Presbyterian Church at Raleigh.
On August 1, 1896, he married Clara Hodges, of Linden, North Carolina. Mrs. Harper is a daughter of John Murchison and Sallie (McNeill) Hodges. Her father was a planter. They are the parents of two children: Francis Marion, Jr., a student in the Raleigh High School; and Sara Croom, who is also a high school student.
DAVID FRANKLIN WILLIAMS. Energetic and en- terprising, and liberally endowed with business ability and tact, David F. Williams, of Linwood, North Carolina, has been variously employed, at the present time, in 1917, being actively identified with the lumber interests of this part of David- son County, as a dealer in lumber having built up a satisfactory trade. A son of James Mon- roe Williams, he was born, November 5, 1889, on a farm in Davie County, near Fork Church. He is descended from an early pioneer of David- son County, his great-great-grandfather, John A. Williams, a cannoneer in the Revolutionary war, having settled in this section of the state, on the Yadkin River, just five miles below the his- torie cut and cave of the pioneer Boone, on con- ing to North Carolina from Maryland in 1803.
William Williams, Mr. Williams' great-grand- father, located on a farm in Tyro Township, where he spent his life as a tiller of the soil.
Madison A. Williams, Mr. Williams' grandfa- ther, was reared to agricultural pursuits, and as a young man located on a farm in Tyro Town- ship, where he lived for a number of seasons, and then being seized with the wanderlust he with three of his brothers, Anderson, Stokes and Wil- liam, migrated to Missouri, making the removal with teams and taking with him his household goods and driving his stock. Not content to set- tle in Missouri, he secured an Indian scout as a guide, and with teams continued his journey to Texas, prospecting as he went. That part of the country not appealing to him, he returned to Missouri, where he had left his brothers and family, and for seven years lived in the vicinity of Sedalia. Later, leaving his brothers, he came back to his old home in Tyro Townshin. where his wife, whose maiden name was Polly Williams, died. He is still living.
Succeeding to the free and independent occu- pation of his forefathers, James Monroe Williams began farming on his own account in Davie County, North Carolina, where he remained sev- eral years. Removing to Rowan County, he bought land near Salisbury and began its improvement. Selling that a few years later he came to David- son County and located in Cotton Grove Town- ship, where he has since been actively and suc- cessfully employed in agricultural pursuits. He has made wise investments, now owning in ad-
.
199
HISTORY OF NORTH CAROLINA
dition to his home farm two other farming es- tates, which he operates with tenants. He mar- ried Minnie Belle Owen, a daughter of Billy and Mary (Snider) Owen, her father having been an expert inechanie and engineer. Eleven children were born of their marriage, as follows: David Franklin, Henry Carl, Beulah Belle, William Lundy, Charlie Sylvester, Mary Jane, James Monroe, Jr., Luther Madison, Fred Marvin, Edna Verna and Jessie Lee.
After his graduation from the Churchland High School David F. Williams took a commercial course at Wood's College in Washington, District of Co- lumbia. He subsequently taught school three years, and then accepted an appointment as clerk in the Department of Commerce and Labor in Washington, District of Columbia, and while thus employed was manager of the Arizona Hotel. Two years later, on account of ill health, Mr. Wil- liams resigned his clerkship and returned to Cot- ton Grove Township, Davidson County, and hav- ing purchased a good farm was actively and profitably engaged in tilling the soil until 1914, when he was appointed postmaster at Linwood. Mr. Williams removed to Linwood, and during the same year embarked in the lumber business, which he has since carried. on with satisfactory re- sults.
Mr. Williams married, in 1911, Miss Lula E. Strange, of Salisbury, North Carolina, a daugh- ter of Robert F. and Ida Adella ( Byerly ) Strange. Two children have blessed the union of Mr. and Mrs. Williams, Ruth LaVern and William Elsey. Religiously Mr. and Mrs. Williams are attendants of the Old School Baptist Church.
WILLIAM REDIN KIRK, M. D. A recognized au- thority and specialist in diseases of the lungs and throat, Doctor Kirk has enjoyed a high place of prominence in the profession in both the states of Kentucky and North Carolina, and has been a resident of Hendersonville since 1901.
He was born at Owensboro, Kentucky, Angust 25, 1870, son of James William Redin and Mary (Watkins) Kirk. His father gave most of his life to farming but for some years was in the bond brokerage business. Doctor Kirk had a high school education and his first ambition was to be- come a pharmacist. To that end he studied and received a diploma in 1889 from the Louisville College of Pharmacy. He was at that time only nineteen years old and in the meantime his am- bitious scope had broadened to include the pro- fession of medicine. He took his medical courses in the Medical Department of the Central Univer- sity of Louisville, where he was graduated in 1891, at the age of twenty-one. He forthwith engaged in a general practice at Louisville, and had some valuable preliminary experience as visit- ing surgeon of the Louisville City Hospital. He also was prominent in the establishment of the Jimmy Cassaday Infirmary for Women of Louis- ville, which he served as assistant gynecologist. At the outbreak of the Spanish-American war Doctor Kirk enlisted and as a surgeon was assigned some very responsible and important duties with the army of occupation on the Island of Porto Rico. He was given charge of the vaccine farm, had active supervision of the manufacture of vaccine, and was also one of the army officials entrusted with carrying out what probably stands today as the largest order of the kind ever issued, for the vaccination of 1,030,000 persons on the
island. He also had service in the Philippines as surgeon with the regular army.
Before his army service Doctor Kirk served as adjunct professor of gynecology and abdominal surgery with the Hospital College of Medicine and later was professor of Physiological Physics in the Kentucky School of Medicine. While in the army his rank was Acting Assistant Surgeon.
It was a breakdown of health that brought Doc- tor Kirk to Hendersonville, North Carolina, and for several years while recuperating he did little practice. His experience has led him more and more to specialize in disease of the chest and lungs and some years ago he established at Hender- sonville the first sanitarium for the treatment of tubercular troubles in that county or in South- western North Carolina. He is also one of the founders and is a trustee of the Patton Memorial Hospital at Hendersonville.
Doctor Kirk has been very active in medical organizations, particularly the Tenth District Med- ical Society, of which he has twice been president. He was elected president for a second time in 1918. He is also a member of the North Carolina State Medical Society, the Tri-State Medical Society, and the American Medical Association, and is a member of the National Association for the Study and Prevention of Tuberculosis and the North Carolina Association for the Prevention of Tuber- culosis. April 19, 1916, he was elected a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has contributed many reports and formal articles to medical journals on tubercular subjects, one of which was an address read before the Tenth District Medical Society on the title: "Humane Management of the Tuberculous." In November, 1917, Doctor Kirk was chosen chair- man of the Southern Tuberculosis Association, a society comprising all the southern states. Litera- ture has always been an important diversion with Doctor Kirk, and among other writings he has indulged occasionally in poetry, which has found much favor. Some of his verse have been widely printed and circulated, especially the lines en- titled "Cross of Red on a Field of White."
Doctor Kirk' is a thirty-second degree Scottish Rite Mason and Shriner, and is a former vestry - man of St. James Episcopal Church. He served as treasurer of the church for several years. In May, 1904, he married Miss Josephine Egerton, oť Hendersonville.
J. SCROOP STYLES, a well known Asheville law- yer, gained extended reputation and prominence in his profession through his several years of active service as a special attorney for the Department of Justice. The duties of this position called him to all parts of the United States, and he was con- nected with the investigation and general handling of a number of federal cases that have attracted attention in recent years.
The record of Mr. Styles is one of stimulating experience and achievement. He was born in Jackson County, North Carolina, February 19, 1882, a son of John Wesley and Nancy (Sellers) Styles. He spent his early boyhood on his father's farm, attended the district schools to the age of thirteen, and from that time forward shifted for himself, working as a farm hand and in other lines of employment to make a living, studying at night, and in the course of time had qualified for the position of a country school teacher. Hle followed that occupation for seven years during
200
HISTORY OF NORTH CAROLINA
winter time and during the summer seasons at- tended school to complete his own education. In 1901 he graduated from Rutherford College and in 1903 from Weaverville College. In 1903 Mr. Styles was elected president of Boon's Creek College, the oldest academic and collegiate institu- tion in the State of Teunessee. He was head of the school for one year and in 1904-05 was princi- pal of the high school at Democrat in Buncombe County, North Carolina. While teaching in Tennessee Mr. Styles was admitted to the Tennessee bar and in February, 1905, was admitted to practice in North Carolina. He is now member of the bars of North Carolina, Tennessee, Wash- ington, Idaho, California and Montana.
After qualifying as a lawyer Mr. Styles prac- ticed at Asheville from 1905 to 1908, following which he spent one year at Seattle, Washington. He had a promising law business in the Northwest, but on account of his wife's health abandoned it and returned to North Carolina. He resumed a general practice at Asheville in 1910 and carried it forward until 1913, when he was appointed special attorney for the Department of Justice. He was especially employed in the investigation and prosecution of cases involving infringment of the Sherman Anti-Trust Law. He had charge of the investigation of the cotton seed oil in- dustries, of the American Tobacco Company, of the Armour Rate case and others. It was an interesting service, but one which involved con- tinued absence from his home state, to the neglect of his private law practice, and in 1916 he resigned and again reentered private practice at Asheville.
Mr. Styles has been quite prominent in demo- cratic politics in the state, in 1912-14 was chair- man of the Executive Committee of the Tenth Congressional District, and for a time was secre- tary to the committee ou postoffice appropriations at Washington. He is a member of the North Carolina and American Bar associations and is affiliated with the Masonic Order, is a past noble grand of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, and a member of the Modern Woodmen of Amer- ica. He teaches the Woman's Bible Class in the Sunday School of the Methodist Episcopal Church at Asheville.
Mr. Styles has an interesting family connec- tion, Abraham Lincoln having been his great -. uncle on the maternal side. Mr. Styles married in Buncombe County, December 23, 1903, Miss Eloiso Frisbee. They have four children: James S., Jr., Ralph Emerson, Martha Virginia and William Marion. Besides his law business Mr. Styles is a farmer and extensive land owner. His principal farm comprises 236 acres iu Bun- combe County, and he gives much personal at- tention to its management and raises a number of blooded cattle. He also has a half interest in a large ranch of 1,631 acres in Cascade County, Montana. This is a wheat and cattle proposition, and in 1918 600 acres were planted to wheat. He also owns 100 acres in Laurel County, Ken- tucky, this being a hay farm.
PAUL OTTO SCHALLERT, M. D. An accomplished physician of Winston-Salem and in the enjoyment of a large and steadily increasing practice, Doctor Schallert is a gentleman of thorough culture, and besides his attainments in his profession has varied interests that make him estcemed and valued by his large circle of friends.
Doctor Schallert is a northern man by birth and training, and his early years of practice were in
his native state of Wisconsin. He was born near Watertown in Jefferson County, Wisconsin, on March 5, 1879. All his ancestors were of German birth. His grandfather, Michael Schallert, was boru at Lehman's Hoefel, in the Province of Bran- denburg. Prussia, September 29, 1811, and was of Polish ancestry. His great-grandfather, Martin Schallert, father of Michael Schallert, having fought for Polish freedom against Russia, was com- pelled to flee from Poland with four other brothers on account of the failure of the war to establish a free Poland. All the brothers wandered into Ger- many, where many of their descendants are still living. Michael Schallert served an apprentice- ship at the cabinet maker's trade and followed that occupation for a few years, afterward be- coming a dealer in poultry and live stock. In 1856 he brought his family to America. He was accompanied by his wife and five children. The voyage was made in a sailing vessel, and it required eight weeks and four days between ports. At that time many thousands of German people had found their way to the new State of Wisconsin, and Michael Schallert established his home in one of the favorite sections of the German population in Southern Wisconsin, in Jefferson County. Locat- ing at Watertown, he followed his trade in that community the rest of his life. He died at the * advanced age of ninety-one. His wife, whose maiden name was Dorathea Wurl, was a native of Brandenburg, and she died at the age of eighty- nine, after they had enjoyed married companionship for fifty-nine years. She reared five children: William F., Charles, Mrs. Sophia Boetcher, Mrs. Amelia Hasse and Mrs. Maria Lehmann.
William F. Schallert, father of Doctor Schallert, was born at Lehmau's Hocfel in the Province of Brandenburg, May 22, 1836. His education was acquired in the local schools of his native country, and he was twenty when he came with his father's family to the United States. In Wisconsin he learned the cabinet maker's trade and followed it along with farming until the Civil war. During the war he served in the Seventeenth Wisconsin Infantry, and lived up to the reputation of the Schallert German-American citizenship for loyalty to their adopted country in that critical struggle. He was a participant in many battles, and was with Sherman's army on its march through Georgia to the sea and thence up through the Carolinas and Virginia to Washington. He marched in the Grand Review at Washington after the close of hostilities. On securing his honorable discharge he returned to Watertown and for a time followed his trade, but then invested in a farm five miles south from Watertown and made farming his chief vocation. He died January 17, 1918, in his eighty-second year, after a brief illness. He was buried at Johnson Creek, Jefferson County, Wis- consin.
William F. Schallert married Frederika Floren- tina Volkman. She was born November 5, 1841, at Reetz in the Province of Pomerania in East Prussia. Her father, whose ancestry originated near Memel at the Russian boundary, was a mem- ber of the Black Hussars in the German army, and his death resulted from injuries received in the service. He left a widow, whose maiden name was Blazins and whose father, Daniel Frederick, was born in Bohemia. He also left six children, and the widowed mother came with them to Amer- ica, arriving June 8, 1855, after an ocean trip on an old sail boat lasting six weeks and two days. Her sons were named Charles, August and Henry.
.
٠٠
9.7. Williams MQ
201
IIISTORY OF NORTH CAROLINA
Her three daughters were Albertina Schwanke, Wilhelmina Homan and Frederika Florentina. The mother of Doctor Schallert died at the age of sixty- four, having reared six children: Herman, Emma, who married Otto Marens, of Chicago, Illinois; Martha, who married Aloys Beischel, of Greensboro, North Carolina; William, Jr .; Paul Otto and Frank Richard.
In a district of Wisconsin noted for its dairy farms and varied agricultural industry Doctor Schallert spent his early youth. He attended the rural schools, and having determined to secure a liberal education he subsequently attended the Northern Illinois Normal School at Dixon, from which he graduated in 1897, and was also graduated from the Indiana Normal School at Marion in 1899, with the B. S. and M. A. degrees. He then entered the University of Illinois, where he completed the literary course in 1900, and continued in the medi- cal department of that university at Chicago, where he secured his M. D. degree in 1904. Doctor Schal- lert began practice at Wrightstown, Wisconsin, where he remained five years, and for another year was located at Johnson Creek in his native county, where he also owued a drug store. Doctor Schallert came to Winston-Salem in 1910, and almost from the start has had a profitable practice and his business is now about all that he can attend to.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.