USA > North Carolina > History of North Carolina: North Carolina biography, Volume V > Part 77
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In general politics he has long been known as one of the most influential democrats in his part of North Carolina. He is a democrat of the old school. While his party has given him 'many honors, all of them have been merited by the splendid service he has given both his party and the state. He served several times as chairman of the County Democratic Executive Committee and as a member of the State Democratic Execu- tive Committee. For a number of years he has been a campaign orator whose services were con- sidered invaluable to his party. He has twice heen a presidential elector. He was president of the North Carolina Electoral College in 1908, when Bryan ran the last time, and as such cast the vote for the state. During the session of 1893 he was a member of the Lower House of the Legislature from Cumberland County.
Mr. Cook has been very active in war work since the United States entered into it. He was chair- man of the Third and Fourth Liberty Loan Com- mittees for Cumberland County in 1918 and suc- ceeded in selling over $907,000 in bonds for the government.
The position of Mr. Cook and family at Fayette- ville has been one of unequivocal social esteem. He married Miss Minnie Watson, who was born and reared at Fayetteville. Their six children are named Walter W., John H., Henry L .. Jr., Mary Starr, Alexander E. and Edward S. Walter and John have already gained admission to the bar and their first honors in practice, and became associated with their father at Fayetteville. The son Alexander was recently appointed to a cadet- ship in the United States Naval Academy at An- napolis, entering that institution in 1916. Walter and Henry L. Cook, Jr., are in the service of the United States, the former now with the army in France, and the latter in the Medical Officers' Reserve Corps, and is in Philadelphia, where he graduated in June, 1918, at Jefferson Medical College, waiting to go into active service, and both volunteered. Walter served with his company on the Mexican border in 1916 and 1917.
SUMTER COE BRAWLEY has been a practicing lawyer at Durham for the past twelve years, and is widely known as a leader in the democratic party in his section of the state, and represented
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his home county in the State Legislature in 1913.
Mr. Brawley was born at Mooresville, North Carolina, in April, 1878, a son of Hiram A. and Susan A. (Mayhew) Brawley. As a boy he at- tended the Mooresville High School, in 1900 was a student in the Business College at Charlotte, and subsequently studied law at the University of North Carolina, where he completed his work in 1905. Since then he has been in active practice and has acquired a good business and high reputa- tion as one of the members of the Durham County bar.
His interests led him into politics at an early age, and he was chairman of the Durham County Executive Committee, 1908-10, and was elected and has been a member of the State Democratic Execu- tive Committee since 1912.
Fraternally he is affiliated with the Knights of Pythias, the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks and has held high and important offices in the former order. He is a member of the Presby- terian Church. In October, 1907, Mr. Brawley married Miss Margaret Burkett. They have three young sons.
J. WHITE WARE. A resident of many years of Gastonia, J. White Ware has had :n intimate relation with business affairs there, and has been a factor in and a witness of the remarkable growth of that city from a small and unimportant town until it is now the most extensive center of the cotton industry in the South.
Mr. Ware was born near the historic King's Mountain in Cleveland County, North Carolina, and is a son of James A. and Martha (Tor- rence) Ware. His father is now deceased. His mother, who now lives at King's Mountain, was of the Torrences of Gaston County, a family prom- inent in that section since prior to the Revolu- tionary war. James A. Ware was a native of Cleveland County, where he spent his active life as a farmer. Though sixteen years of age he volunteered his services in the war between the states and served creditably and gallantly in the ranks of the Forty-ninth North Carolina Infantry, commanded by the famous Colonel McAfee.
It was on his father's farm in Cleveland Coun- ty that J. White Ware grew to manhood. Ac- quiring a good education he also learned teleg- raphy and was employed as a railway teleg- rapher for the Southern Railway at Gastonia, King's Mountain and finally was promoted to a position in the office of the train dispatcher, and as such located at Atlanta, Georgia.
In 1893 Mr. Ware returned to Gastonia, and that has been his family home for nearly a quarter of a century. On leaving the railroad service he entered the cotton mill business as a bookkeeper and accountant. His first employment was with the Avon Mill, later with the Gastonia Mill. the Spencer Mountain Mill and finally . the Loray Mill. He left the Loray Mill to establish himself in an independent business as a general insurance and real estate man at Gastonia. His work in this line has prospered and he has gained an authoritative position as the best informed fire insurance man in North Carolina.
Everthing that concerns the growth and de- velopment of Gastonia is of vital concern to Mr. Ware. He is public spirited and progressive and has always been quick to appreciate the business and civic needs of his community. Early in 1917, although there were three other banks in Gas- tonia, he realized the opportunity for additional banking facilities in the rapidly growing city,
with its extensive industrial interests. He be- came associated as an organizer and director with M. A. Turner, of Grover, North Carolina, and established a new bank. This is organized under a state charter and is known as the Bank of Gastonia, with a capital stock of $50,000. The bank opened for business July 1, 1917. Mr. Ware is also a member of the Gastonia Chamber of Commerce and belongs to various social organ- izations.
He married Miss Carrie Belle Wilson, daughter of William Wilson a well known citizen of Gas- ton County. They have a daughter, Miss Mar- garet Ware.
JOHN BUSHROD LEIGH. No body of professional men in Pasquotank County stands higher as to ability and honesty than the bar of Elizabeth City made up, as it mainly is, of men of sturdy old state ancestry, of high connections, and of collegiate advantages. One of the old county names herein worthily represented is borne by John Bushrod Leigh, who is one of the able law- yers of this city and a man prominent in its po- litical life.
John Bushrod Leigh was born in Tyrrell County, North Carolina, December 19, 1862, and is a son of Ephraim and Ann Elizabeth (Midgett) Leigh. The father followed farming and also engaged in merchandising and was an honorable, upright man and good citizen all his life.
Educated in private schools usually taught by men of high scholarship, and Randolph Macon Col- lege, John Bushrod Leigh pursued his studies at Columbia, and later prepared for college under a local instructor and then entered the law de- partment of the University of North Carolina, where he completed the course and in February, 1889, was admitted to the bar. He located at Newbern, North Carolina, where he practiced for two years. In 1897 he came to Elizabeth City and has built up a fine general practice here and is rated among the most able lawyers in this part of the state.
Not only has Mr. Leigh been active and success- ful in his profession, but he has achieved con- siderable distinction in the field of politics. In 1899 he was elected a member of the State Legis- lature and was the first democrat in the county to win at that election. He served as mayor of Elizabeth City in 1901 and then followed two years as justice of the police court.
Mr. Leigh was married on February 14, 1894, to Miss Maude Harris, of Brunswick County, Virginia, and they have one daughter, Maude Bushrod Leigh. Mr. Leigh and family are mem- bers of the Methodist Episcopal Church and he is chairman of its board of stewards. Other honors have been conferred on him and he is a very use- ful member of the city school board, and has been a trustee of the Eastern North Carolina Training School since its organization.
REV. DR. CHARLES WESLEY BYRD, for thirty-five years an honored and distinguished member of the North Carolina Conference of the Methodist Epis- copal Church, died suddenly at Asheville, where he was pastor of the Central Methodist Church, on January 3, 1918.
He came of a prominent old family of Harnett County and was born in 1860 and reared at the old Byrd homestead near Buie's Creek. He was a son of A. J. and Caroline (Shaw) Byrd. He was survived by four brothers, J. L. Byrd, of Georgia, W. P. Byrd, elsewhere mentioned in this
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publication, Frank and Urquhart Byrd, of Har- nett County, and Mrs. Florence Shaw.
The late Doctor Byrd was prepared for col- lege at Lillington by Rev. William Brunt, an ed- ucated Baptist minister and teacher. Later he was a student under Rev. J. D. Arnold, a Metho- dist minister and teacher at Jonesboro. For two years he was assistant teacher in Mr. Arnold's school. From there he entered Vanderbilt Uni- versity at Nashville, Tennessee, where he put in a
full year at hard work as a student. On return- ing to North Carolina he taught school at Tarboro. There among other pupils he had the now famous Claude Kitchin, the democratic leader in Congress and in many ways next to President Wilson, the most powerful man in the United States. Doctor Byrd entered the active ministry of the gospel in 1882 as a member of the North Carolina Con- ference, and enjoyed every honor his denomina- tion could give him excepting that of bishop. He held pastorates in the largest and most influ- ential churches in the four states of North Caro- lina, Tennessee, Kentucky and Georgia, was pas- tor at Greensboro and Asheville two different times, Owensboro, Kentucky; Atlanta, Georgia; Augusta, Georgia; and Nashville, Tennessee. He was presiding elder of the Asheville and Shelby districts. A short time before his death he was elected a delegate to the General Conference. He was a member of the board of trustees of Vander- bilt University.
Doctor Byrd for all his services, which made him so widely known and honored, is recalled by many of his intimates for his striking attain- ments as a scholar. He was a man of the broad- est culture and intellectual attainments. There is seldom met outside the profession of teaching so thorough and perfect a classical scholar as was Doctor Byrd. He was deeply grounded in Latin and Greek, was also well versed in French lan- guage and literature, and it is said that he could talk and make extemporaneous addresses in either of the ancient classical tongues.
Doctor Byrd married Miss Hattie Bobbitt. Her father, Dr. W. H. Bobbitt, was a prominent Methodist clergyman and at one time presiding elder of the North Carolina Conference. Mrs. Byrd survives her honored husband. They had one son, W. B. Byrd, who was well educated and was making a name for himself as an attorney at Greensboro until he volunteered his services in the Aviation Corps of the National Army.
The many friends of Doctor Byrd will appreci- ate some of the things said of him in the editorial in the Greensboro News, one of the largest and must influential papers of North Carolina. This editorial is given herewith entire.
"Many things might be said with entire truth of the high character, exemplary citizenship and zealous spirit of nearly every man in the clergy of the Methodist Church. A smaller number of those in the Western North Carolina Conference, but not an inconsiderable group, might each day be further described in much broader and more specific terms with reference to their eloquence, scholarship, deep thought and leadership. And in respect of many delightful qualities and cer- tain fine talents Rev. Dr. Charles W. Byrd stood out conspicuously among these. Now that he has gone from us, men and women will but repeat the things they were accustomed to say of him while yet he lived.
"Doctor Byrd possessed a surpassing native elo- quence. He was a scholar of high attainments and constant industry. Mental activity was that Vol. V-19
form of activity in which he delighted. His men- tality was overbalancing. Here was a rare com- bination of ordered, scholarly thought with the ability to express it with both exactness and force. But his was no mere coldly brilliant in- tellectuality. He was a man, a priest of both spiritual conviction and spiritual habit. Had he been a physician or a lawyer, business man, an actor or a scamp, any sort of villian, he would still have been popular, for he was endowed with the gift of magnetic personality and with the gift of humor, and was a delightful story teller.
"He was a man of compassionate heart, but sentimentality was not allowed to overbalance sense. His benefactions were constant, and doubt- less often to unworthy objects, but they were systematic and sensible. He was deeply and most intelligently interested in citizenship, in man as a political as well as a religous being; his admira- tion for justice and his resentment of brutality and wrong amounted to a passion; he esteemed wholly that which was constructive, positive, vig- orous, direct, frank, in public and private busi- ness. ''
WALTER PIERCE BYRD has been a citizen of Harnett County since his birth, June 26, 1867, and there are numerous services by which his name has come to be esteemed and respected in that community. He has been a teacher, farmer, surveyor, well qualified lawyer and now clerk of the Superior Court, with home at Lillington.
The Byrds are old timers of North Carolina. They are of English ancestry, first settled in Vir- ginia and from there moved to Wake County, North Carolina. The grandfather of Walter P. Byrd was Jesse Byrd. The father, the late A. J. Byrd, who died in 1901, was born near Green Level in Wake County, North Carolina, April 1, 1815. In 1853 he moved his family to Harnett County, having bought land at Buie's Creek. While there he cleared a farm out of the wilder- ness which then covered this section of the state. He was thus identified with the pioneer things of Harnett County, then a part of Cumberland County, and was a man of highly respected char- acter and activities throughout his long life. He married Caroline Shaw, who died in 1910. She was a sister of the late Maj. B. F. Shaw, one of the old and prominent families of Harnett County. Further particular's regarding this branch of the Shaw family, which is of Scotch ancestry, will be found under the name Allen M. Shaw elsewhere in this publication. The Shaws were some of the original Scotch settlers in the Cape Fear District.
Walter Pierce Byrd was born at Buie's Creek in Harnett County, North Carolina. Altogether his early environment was best fitted to bring out and develop his latest talents and possibilities. He grew up neither in wealth nor extreme pov- erty and his parents were good and substantial people who believed and practiced the gospel of honest industry and instilled sound habits in their children. In the intervals of work with his hands Walter Pierce Byrd attended the old district school, but received his most important education in the Buie's Creek Academy under Prof. J. A. Campbell, its founder. He was a member of the first class of this now famous institution. He also spent a few months in the Davis Military Academy. Be- fore taking up the law Mr. Byrd was a farmer, school teacher and surveyor and altogether devoted about ten years to work in the public and other schools of Harnett and adjoining counties.
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In 1907 he resigned in Buie's Creek Academy to begin the study of law at the State University at Chapel Hill, where he finished the course and was licensed to practice in February, 1909. He at once opened his office at Lillington, the county seat, and enjoyed a good and growing business as a lawyer until in 1914 he was elected to his pres- ent office as clerk of the Superior Court for Harnett County. Since then he has retired from practice and gives all his attention to this office, which he holds for a term of four years. He built and he and his family occupy one of the beautiful homes of the county seat.
Mr. Byrd has for some years been a man of growing prominence and influence in the repub- lican party of this section of North Carolina. For six years he was county chairman of the Republican Executive Committee of Harnett Coun- ty. He did much to revitalize the organization during that time in the county. For some years a republican candidacy for office was a forlorn hope. However, Mr. Byrd accepted some nomina- tions as a sacrifice due the cause. In 1910 he was candidate for state senator from the Fifteenth District, being defeated by seventy-three votes and in 1912 was candidate for the Legislature and again reduced the democratic majority to a narrow margin. In 1914 he was elected clerk of the Superior Court by 278 votes.
When the Spanish-American war broke out in 1898 Mr. Bryd went to Fayetteville and enlisted in the Fayetteville Independent Light infantry, which became Company A of the Second North Carolina Regiment of Volunteers. He is an active member and has served as an officer of the Meth- odist Episcopal Church.
In November, 1909, Mr. Byrd married Miss Zula Tomlinson, whose people were one of the prominent and substantial old families of Clay- ton, Johnston County. Mr. and Mrs. Byrd have had four children: Annie Ruth, Evelyn, Lois and Emma Poteet. The first named died at the age of nine months, while the last named died in No- vember, 1917, at the age of seventeen months.
JOSEPH EZEKIEL POGUE. North Carolina re- ceived a very valuable accession to its citizenship when Joseph Ezekiel Pogue came across the moun- tains from his native section of Jefferson County in Eastern Tennessee and began clerking in a gen- eral store at Hillsboro. Mr. Pogue brought with him at that time all the virile qualities of the peo- ple of the hill district in Eastern Tennessee, though he had no money and only a common school train- ing as a preparation for the serious business of life. His parents were Rev. John and Priscilla (Carter) Pogue.
After his early experience as a clerk in a store he went on the road as a traveling tobacco salesman. After four years in that he began the manufacture of tobacco at Henderson, North Caro- lina, in 1875, and nine years later moved his plant and factory to Raleigh in 1884. He continued the business actively until he sold out about 1904. The service by which Mr. Pogue has chiefly endeared himself to the people of North Carolina is his long continued work as secretary of the North Carolina State Fair. Association. He has been continuously in that office since 1899, and if any one man de- serves credit for making the association a great success it is Mr. Pogue. The annual state fair is now an institution that attracts thousands and thousands of visitors and stimulates state pride, the development of the state's industries and re- sources, and is one of the most complete educa-
tional agencies in the state. Since Mr. Pogue became secretary he has brought about the im- provement of the association property by the in- vestment of $40,000 in new buildings, has increased the attendance and has also given the fair a pre- mium list sufficient to attract a wide and char- acteristic list of exhibits.
This has been by no means his only public serv- ice. Mr. Pogue is chairman of the board of directors for the State School for the Blind, in- cluding both white and colored. He has held this office since the organization, having been its only incumbent. For two years he served as city alder- man of Raleigh, and declined re-election. Much of his civic work in Raleigh has been done through the medium of the Chamber of Commerce and he was three times elected its president. He was chairman of the committee of that body which framed the commission form of government, and was also chairman of the Chamber of Commerce Committee which established the White Way in Raleigh. He was chairman of the committee which introduced and put into effect the Australian bal- lot system in Raleigh, and was also commissioner general from North Carolina in installing the state exhibit in the Jamestown Exposition of 1907. Mr. Pogue is a member of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, the Improved Order of Red Men and the Junior Order of United American Mechanics, and belongs to the Country, the Capital and Rotary clubs.
In February, 1884, he married Henrietta Kramer of Raleigh. Her father, Nathan Kramer, was a native of Germany. The attainments of their only son, Joseph E. Pogue, Jr., are a matter of special pride to Mr. and Mrs. Pogue. This son was grad- uated from the University of North Carolina in 1906, took his Doctor of Philosophy degree in Yale University, and held a chair in the faculty of Northwestern University of Evanston, Illinois, for a term of three years. Besides his scholarship opportunities in this country he spent one year in the University of Berlin, Germany. He is at this time engaged in special work for the United States.
FRANK NICHOLS EGERTON, for a period of forty years has been merchant, banker and school and church official at Louisburg. Through the re- lationships described by these words he has gained a high degree of success for himself and rendered an invaluable service to this community.
His mature years and the working out of his larger plans have occurred in the same region where he was born and where he spent his youth. Mr. Egerton was born at Louisburg April 11, 1853, son of Charles J. and Mary T. (Pitchford) Egerton. His father was a plain and substantial farmer of Franklin County. Leaving the private school where his education had been supervised until the age of sixteen, Frank N. Egerton went to work as clerk in a general store and in 1877 established a general merchandise and general cot- ton business of his own at Louisburg. He devel- oped it to large and successful proportions and finally sold out in 1910. He was one of the or- ganizers, for many years a director and since 1911 has been president of the Farmers and Mer- chants Bank of Louisburg. He owns a large amount of real estate in and around the town.
For a number of years Mr. Egerton served as chairman of the Board of Education of the graded schools and is also a former town commissioner. He is a trustee of the Methodist Episcopal Church and for fifteen years was steward and superin-
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tendent of its Sunday school. Fraternally he is . Produce Exchange, president of the Seamen's affiliated with the Masonic Order.
November 21, 1877, he married Pattie B. Davis, of Warren County, North Carolina. Ten children were born to their marriage, and they lost two of them, one in infancy and the other as Mrs. B. G. Hicks. The eight living children are Charles Edward; Frank Nichols, Jr., assistant professor in Rutledge College; Florence May, who is Mrs. Wingate Underhill; Blanche, who is Mrs. G. Spencer Baker, of Louisburg; Weldon Davis, in the real estate and insurance business; Elliott Leslie, a resident of Louisburg; Graham B., a soldier in the United States Army; and Kathleen, at home. At the present time Elliott, Frank Jr., Weldon Davis and Graham are all in the United States service.
JAMES SPRUNT, of Alex Sprunt & Son, one of North Carolina's greatest cotton export houses, and a most valuable citizen of Wilmington and the state, and especially in his later years of semi-retirement from business, has done much to enrich the historical literature of his home state. While his material achievements would go far to give him a most creditable position among the masterful men of affairs, it is no doubt true that his books will be read and valued when no trace of business action remains.
Born in Glasgow, Scotland, James Sprunt has been a loyal adopted son of North Carolina since he was five years old. He was educated partly in Scotland and partly in North Carolina-in the Grove Academy in Kenansville, in Mr. Jewett's school and under Rev. Mr. Mengert. His father, who was educated in Edinburg, was unable to send him to the University of North Carolina, for which he was prepared, but he was a student by nature and from youth has carefully developed his faculty for consecutive thinking, which with the information obtained from broad and often specialized reading has given him that power for business and literary execution which only few men of university training ever acquire.
He was in business at the age of fourteen, in 1861, and when the war broke out, he sought an appointment where he could utilize the knowledge he had acquired of navigation. Later he was purser on the "North Heath." Following that came a period of illness, and after recovery he was again purser of the "Lilian" under Capt. John N. Maffitt, C. S. N., for four successful voyages. In August, 1864, this runner was sur- rounded by four Federal cruisers and wholly disabled by bombshells, the crew becoming prisoners of war. Eight months of detention at Fort Macon and Fortress Monroe and elsewhere followed, and Mr. Sprunt did his concluding work for the Confederacy as purser of the blockade- runner "Susan Beirne. "
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