USA > North Carolina > History of North Carolina: North Carolina biography, Volume V > Part 90
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For many years Mr. Cox has been an interested and a popular member of the North Carolina State Bankers Association as well as of the American Bankers Association. For six years he has been a member of the executive council of the latter body and in 1917 was made president of the Na- tional Bank section of the American Bankers Asso- ciation ..
For nineteen years Mr. Cox was chairman of the City School Board of High Point and also chairman of the board of trustees of Guilford College. He is a republican and one of the prom- inent laymen of the Friends Church.
The New Garden Boarding School, now Guil- ford College, has been more than a source of edu- cation to the Cox family. Both Mr. Cox and his father attended school there and, as already noted, his father met his wife as a fellow student. It was at New Garden Boarding School that J. El- wood Cox also found his life companion. She was
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Miss Bertha Snow, a native of Lowell, Massa- chusetts, and a daughter of Captain William H. and Lydia J. (Cramer) Snow. Reference to her father will be found on other pages. She finished her education in New Garden Boarding School and on October 23, 1878, she and Mr. Cox were united in marriage. They have one daughter, Clara I. Mr. Cox has a beautiful winter home at St. Petersburg, Florida, where his wife and daugh- ter spend the winter months and he goes there for as long a time and as frequently as his many business interests will permit.
CAPT. MARION C. TOMS. There was every rea- son why Capt. Marion C. Toms should be called one of the most widely known men of western North Carolina. He lived to be beyond three score and ten and from a boy fighter with the Confederate army he enjoyed nearly every success and appreciation which a wholesome ambition could crave.
He was born at Fairview in Buncombe County, North Carolina, in 1843, son of James Toms, a pioneer farmer of this section of North Carolina. Captain Toms had reached the age of eighteen when the war broke out and joining the Buncombe Rifles as a private he was later in service with the Sixtieth North Carolina Regiment and for distinguished gallantry at the battle of Murfrees- boro was commissioned to a higher rank and sub- sequently became captain of Company A of the Sixtieth North Carolina Troops, his commission reading "for skill as an officer and for valor in battle."' Following the war Captain Toms re- entered school at Asheville, and then took up his residence at Hendersonville, which was his home during all his active career.
There in the years following the Civil war, Captain Toms was junior partner in the firm of Ripley & Toms, who conducted one of the largest mercantile establishments in the western part of North Carolina. Later Captain Toms entered the mercantile business for himself, and about 1890 took up banking as cashier of the State Bank of Commerce at Hendersonville. From about 1894 until his death Captain Toms had been engaged in farming, fruit growing and other similar pur- suits. His apple orchards in Henderson County were among the largest in the state.
He was also extensively engaged in mining in Henderson County and elsewhere. His principal mines were the Zircon mines of Green River, out of which for a long while was obtained almost the entire supply of zircon used in the world. Cap- tain Toms was everywhere regarded as a success- ful man of affairs, and his holdings of property both in Henderson and Buncombe were extensive and represented no small share of wealth. In Henderson County he was an especially familiar figure, and it is said that he was known by practically every man and woman in that vicinity.
Captain Toms was appointed by the state as one of the three commissioners to ascertain the furthest point reached by the North Carolina troops at the battle of Chickamauga and mark that point by the erection of a suitable monument. Captain Toms was a member of the State Senate of 1899, and rendered most creditable service in that office. He was a member of the Masonic Order.
Captain Toms died at his home in Henderson- ville October 12, 1917, and was buried at Asheville in his native county. His first wife was Miss Josephine French, daughter of the late George R. French of Wilmington. She died in 1889 and
was the mother of Captain Toms' only son, Charles French Toms, a resident of Asheville. Captain Toms married for his second wife Miss Katie Johnson, who survives him. Her father, Rev. Harvey Johnson, was president of Whitworth College at Brookhaven, Mississippi.
CHARLES FRENCH TOMS, whose home and whose business interests are chiefly centered at Ashe- ville, belongs essentially to Henderson County, North Carolina, where he practiced his profession as a lawyer with eminent success for many years, and where he gained his chief distinctions pro- fessionally and in politics.
Mr. Toms was born in Henderson County Sep- tember 5, 1872, son of the late Capt. M. C. Toms, of whom a personal record appears on other pages. He was educated in the University of North Caro- lina, where he was a student of both the literary department and of law. After his admission to the bar he practiced more than twenty years at Hendersonville. During that time he was ap- pointed and elected twice as solicitor and made a splendid record as prosecutor for the state. He was a member of the State Senate of 1905, and filled various other political offices. He has been a delegate to national conventions of the party, has been a member of notification committees, was a trustee of the University of North Carolina and in many other similar ways has been made to sense the regard and esteem of his fellow citi- zens.
Mr. Toms until recently practiced law at Ashe- ville, and as a lawyer had a very large and exten- sive clientele. He is extensively engaged in fruit growing. His orchards are among the largest and finest in the state. For years he has been interested in banking and mining. In the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis he was awarded a medal and diploma as leader in the production of zircon, a mineral of little known popularity but of great usefulness in commercial and industrial lines.
Mr. Toms is a member of the Sigma Chi fraternity, belongs to the various bodies and rites of Masonry, including the Mystic Shrine, is active in the Baptist church and is one of the vice presi- dents of the American Sunday School Union of Philadelphia.
On March 7, 1894, he married Miss Ethel Pank- nin, daughter of Dr. Charles F. Panknin of Charles- ton, South Carolina. They are the parents of five children, Hortense, Charles F., Jr., Frederick, Maurice and Margaret Toms.
GEORGE READE FRENCH, SR., was a prominent old time merchant and business man of North Caro- lina, and exemplified that high quality of honesty and enterprise which makes his name today, thirty years after his death, associated with commercial success and a symbol of the highest commercial integrity. -
Though his life from the early '20s was identi- fied with the City of Wilmington, he was of New England ancestry and birth, and was born at Taunton, Massachusetts, January 24, 1802, son of Enoch French. He began his business career in his eighteenth year, as manager of a shoe and leather manufacturing company at Oneysville, Rhode Island, now a part of the City of Provi- dence. He soon gave up that responsibility and came south, locating at Darien, Georgia, where he was in business with Perry Davis of "pain killer " fame.
In the autumn of 1822 Mr. French established
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H. M. Wilder
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the present boot and shoe business of George R. French & Sons at Wilmington, North Carolina, a firm that has been continuously in existence ever since and has always been one of the largest and most. reputable in this state.
George R. French was a resident of Wilming- ton over sixty-five years. He died in that city March 15, 1889, and was laid to rest in the community where he had always enjoyed the highest degree of success and esteem. He was at one time president and a director of the Bank of Wilmington, and a director of three other banks. He was widely known in Baptist circles as "Deacon French,"' having constructed largely through his efforts the present magnifieent church edifice of the First Baptist Church of Wilming- ton. He was also president of the Oak Dale Cemetery Association and of the Seaman's Friend Society, and was one of the vice presidents of the American Sunday School Union of Philadelphia. Mr. French married April 5, 1827, Sarah Caroline Weeks.
REV. G. S. JONES, a resident of Hendersonville, North Carolina, deserves the memory of the people of North Carolina for the splendid work he did as a Baptist minister and as an effective promoter of home missions.
For forty years he was a missionary of the Ameriean Sunday School Union of Philadelphia. During that long period he established Sunday schools in North Carolina from the mountains to the sea, and when death eame to him in advanced age he had long enjoyed the enviable distinction of having personally established more Sunday schools than any one man who ever lived.
Rev. G. S. Jones was born in Pasquotank County, North Carolina, in 1837, and died at Henderson- ville in 1910, aged seventy-three. His father, Malachi Jones, was a physician of Pasquotank County. Rev. Mr. Jones was educated in local sehools, and later at Wake Forest College, where he ranked as one of the highest men in his class. After the Civil war he removed to Henderson- ville, and married Margaret French, daughter of the late George R. French, Sr., of Wilmington.
Rev. Mr. Jones was a man of fine qualities, genial and lovable in disposition, and was beloved by everyone who knew him throughout the state.
ERNEST BROWNRIGG DEWEY is one of the most widely experienced and oldest in point of con- tinuous service insurance men in North Car- olina. His home and business headquarters are at Goldsboro, where he has spent practically all his life.
Mr. Dewey was born at Goldsboro January 10, 1861, a son of Dr. Charles F. and Harriette (Bor- den) Dewey. He received a publie sehool educa- tion, and as a young man began business life for himself. He had experience as a bookkeeper and clerk and subsequently became one of the or- ganizers of Dewey Brothers and later of George W. Dewey & Brother, an old and prominent in- suranee firm. Besides his connection as a gen- eral insurance man Mr. Dewey is special agent for the Queen Fire Insurance Company of America in the states of Virginia, West Virginia and North Carolina. He is now the sole owner of the George W. Dewey Insurance Agency. He is also a director of the North Carolina Home Insurance Company of Raleigh, and the commissioner of the Electric Light Fond of the City of Golds- boro.
Mr. Dewey is affiliated with the Independent Vol. V-22
Order of Odd Fellows, the Royal Arcanum and the Benevolent & Protective Order of Elks, and is a member of the Algonquin Club at Goldsboro. On June 10, 1884, he married Sallie Arrington, daughter of Dr. B. F. Arrington of Goldsboro.
HILLARY M. WILDER, M. D. For over forty years Doctor Wilder has practiced medicine and surgery at Charlotte. In the judgment of his as- sociates and contemporaries he nas long ranked as one of the leading members of the profession in North Carolina. His work has been especially notable in the field of surgery. Doetor Wilder is also prominent socially and in civic affairs. Men look upon his friendship as a rare privilege. He is a member of one of North Carolina's oldest and most distinguished families, and his own ca- reer has added luster to the family record.
From the mass of interesting data concerning the Wilder family a few points should be noted in introduction to the personal life of Doctor Wilder. His paternal ancestors were remotely of German origin. They first appear in the rec- ord as having gone out of Germany to England to assist the Duke of Richmond in his wars against the Duke of Gloucester. This German soldier of fortune for his services was knighted in Eugland and was given The Sultam House, which was the home of the family for several generations. The Wilders of England were patrons of Eton College.
The first of the name to come to America was Roger Wilder. His mother, Martha Wilder, fol- lowed him abont a year later, landing at Plymouth Rock. Roger Wilder is honored by having his name on the Plymouth Roek Monument. Martha Wilder had two other sons who came with her and from one of them Doctor Wilder is descended. For many years the Wilders lived at Hingham, Massa- chusetts.
Samuel Wilder eame from Hingham, Massa- chusetts, and located on a plantation on the James River near Petersburg, Virginia. It was his am- bition to become a planter and own negroes which caused him to remove from New England to the old South. Deseendants from this Virginia planter subsequently removed to Johnston County, North Carolina, and thus originated the North Carolina family of the name.
Hon. Hillary Madison Wilder, grandfather of Doctor Wilder, was born in Johnston County, North Carolina. He became a prominent and in- fluential figure in his generation. Johnston County sent him as a representative to the Gen- eral Assembly in the years 1821, 1825, 1826, 1827 and 1829, and he served as state senator in 1830, 1833 and 1834. In 1835 he sat as an influential member of the Constitutional Convention. While he was so much occupied with publie matters, his private business was as a planter and slave owner. About 1840 he removed to Wake County, estab- lishing his home five miles east of Raleigh, the state capital, on the old Tarboro Road. In the first half of the nineteenth century he was the friend and associate of practically all the leading North Carolinians.
Gaston H. Wilder, father of Doctor Wilder, was perhaps even more prominent in North Carolina 's business and public life. He had business ability amounting almost to genius, and his experience as a man of affairs brought him in contact with all the great men of his day. He graduated from the University of North Carolina with the class of 1838. That class contained a number of young men who afterwards made names and impressed their achievements upon the history of North
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Carolina. Gaston H. Wilder served as a represen- tative in the General Assembly from Wake County in 1842, 1844 and 1846 and again in 1852. In the meantime he had served through the Mexi- can war, being paymaster in the regular United States Army. In 1854 and again in 1856 he was state senator from Wake County. He had been educated as a lawyer and was a very able advo- cate and attorney, but in time he retired from private practice in order to accept the post of president of the Raleigh & Gaston Railroad. This railroad, extending from Raleigh to Weldon, and in later years a part of the Seaboard System, was up to the time of the Civil war one of the chief traffic lines of the state. Gaston H. Wilder served as its president until about the opening of the war. The duties of the position were very oner- ous and responsible, and at the time the war came on his name was readily recognized as distin- guished by achievements of a large and practical nature. During the war the Confederate Gov- ernment entrusted him with many important busi- ness duties. He was put in charge of all the property interests owned by northern parties in North Carolina. In 1856 he was president elector on the Buchanan ticket, and was a member of the entertainment committee when Mr. Buchanan visited Raleigh and Chapel Hill about 1859.
Gaston H. Wilder married Sarah Hinton. That introduces the name of another prominent North Carolina family into this lineage. Sarah Hin- ton was the daughter of Isaac Hinton of Wake County, and a descendant of one of the three Hin- tons who originally settled on the Neuse River in North Carolina. The Hintons owned vast tracts of land, developed large plantations and had a great many slaves. Mrs. Sarah Wilder and her husband, Gaston H. Wilder, together owned and operated two large plantations, one in Wake County and another in Alabama, and at one time they had 250 negroes.
On the old Wilder estate five miles east of Raleigh in Wake County Dr. Hillary M. Wilder was born in 1851. He was ten years old when the issues which had so long been debated between the North and the South broke into Civil war. The events of that long and horrible struggle made their impressions on his youthful mind and char- acter in its formative state. Despite the gen- eral overturning of private and public interests during that period Doctor Wilder was accorded a liberal education. He attended Davidson College of North Carolina during the presidency of Doc- tor McPhail. He pursued the study of medicine in the University of the City of New York, now the medical department of Cornell University. He graduated there in 1872, and subsequently pur- sued post-graduate clinics in the famous Guy's Hospital in London. Doctor Wilder came to Char- lotte, Mecklenburg County, in 1876, and has stead- ily been a resident of this old and noted city of North Carolina and almost from the first has been a leader in his profession. Soon after he came to Charlotte Doctor Wilder was elected county physican, a position he held for twenty years, longer than any other incumbent of the office. . Of late years his practice has been con- fined largely to office and consultation work in surgery.
His friends and associates esteem him not only for his professional accomplishments but for the rare resources of his mind and social nature. Doctor Wilder knows men, knows life from contact with the world at many points, and has a wonder-
ful fund of historic reminiscence concerning pub- lic affairs and notable characters in his home state and city.
When the Spanish-American war broke out in 1898 Doctor Wilder was appointed surgeon with the rank of major in the First Regiment of North Carolina Volunteers under Col. J. F. Armfield. With the regiment he went into active service in Cuba, and the members of this regiment were among the first troops who entered the City of Havana. They remained there during the occu- pancy of the city and helped in cleaning it up under Gen. Leonard Wood. Prior to the war Doctor Wilder had been surgeon of the Fourth North Carolina Infantry, serving for ten years as Maj .- Surgeon with the Fourth Regiment, North Carolina National Guard.
Doctor Wilder's home is on South Tryon Street in Charlotte. He has lived there since 1891. It is one of the historic places of Charlotte, and at one time was one of the finest mansions in the city. It is the old Tiddy home, and during the war and for a few subsequent years was occupied by Mr. Heilburn, a prominent Charlotte merchant. It was in this home that Judah P. Benjamin, member of President Davis' cabinet, was taken care of while he was ill and toward the close of the war. At the time Mr. Davis and members of his cabinet were in Charlotte. A well authenticated fact is that Mr. Davis, upon hearing of President Lin- coln's death, which occurred while the party were in Charlotte, hastened to visit Mr. Benjamin at the Heilburn home and consulted on official busi- ness. This constituted perhaps the last meeting, or at least a portion of the last meeting of the Confederate cabinet.
In January, 1876, Doctor Wilder married Miss Sarah Demares Worsham, of Mecklenburg County. They are the parents of two children: Gaston Wilder; and Celeste Eloise, wife of Mr. K. M. Blake. their home being at 250 Riverside Drive, New York City. Celeste Eloise Wilder Blake was educated at the Mary Baldwin Seminary at Staun- ton, West Virginia, and was sent abroad to study music and voice culture in London and Paris for several years and reflects in voice her many advan- tages of study and tutelage.
DAVID JEPTHA ROSE. Of the contracting build- ers who have contributed much to the past of Rocky Mount, and who because of their superior equipment and progressive ideas may be counted on to share in the development of the future of the city, mention is due David Jeptha Rose, who has been a resident of Rocky Mount for more than a quarter of a century. During this time he has grown with the community, where evidences abound on every hand of his skill and ability as well as the superior workmanship which he puts into every contract accepted by him. Like many other successful men of this locality Mr. Rose is a product of the farm, having been born in Johnson County, North Carolina, November 27, 1861, a son of George Pinkney and Nancy B. (Ingram) Rose. His father was a farmer and millwright who removed with his family to Wayne County in 1868, and in that community the parents of Mr. Rose rounded out industrious and honorable lives.
David J. Rose was seven years of age when taken by his parents to Wayne County, and there received a public school and academic education. His career was commenced as an agriculturist, but the duties of the farm held out no attractions
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for him, and when he was twenty-four years of age he began to learn the trade of carpenter. He was about twenty-eight years old when he made his first venture into the difficult field of contract- ing, but his success encouraged him to further efforts, and by the time he came to Rocky Mount, in 1892, he felt himself capable of competition with men who had established reputations as con- tractors. A contemporary biographer remarks: "It is well known by those familiar with the subject that the business of successful contracting and building is one that requires a high order of business ability and a sound, level judgment to avoid the pitfalls that encompass it. It is no small tribute to Mr. Rose's capacity that he has not only conducted his business always with con- sistent good faith toward all concerned, but that he has been largely successful financially and is now one of the strong men of the city, speaking in a financial sense. He has been equal to every emergency that has arisen in his widespread field of large and responsible work, and the impression one gains of him at first, as being a man of force and of calm and sane judgment, is one that is amply corroborated by his record. * * In * all the states bordering on the South Atlantic Coast in which he operates, it would be impossible to find a contractor with a better or safer reputation for dependability, thorough efficiency and fidelity than he. This reputation is well earned, too, and has been built up by years of thorough application, hard and conscientious work, and the utmost care of the interests of those who have employed him. The work Mr. Rose has done has been on a large scale, many contracts running into the hundreds of thousands of dollars before completion. It is true, also, that Mr. Rose has done a multitude of the less costly but hardly less important work, such as the building of churches and residences, many of the handsomest in the Southeastern states having been built under his direction." One of these residences, erected for a railroad offi- cial, cost approximately $25,000. At Rocky Mount among his contracts are to be found, among others: the Hotel Ricks, the Shore Building, the Masonic Temple, the Bank of Rocky Mount, the Five Points Drug Store, the store of W. D. & C. A. Cochran, the new Methodist and Presbyterian churches, parts of the Rocky Mount Mills, ' the Planters Cotton Seed Oil Company's factory, the Railroad Young Men's Christian Association building, Rocky Mount's new passenger station, and numerous others. The most of Mr. Rose's work, however, has been done on the larger con- structing plane. For a number of years he was employed on a large number of important con- tracts for the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad Com- pany and other mammoth industrial concerns in the South and elsewhere. The railroad shops at South Rocky Mount were all constructed by Mr. Rose with the exception of two of the first build- ings. Among some of his largest contracts may be mentioned the Morris Fertilizer Factory, which cost approximately $200,000 which Mr. Rose built at Atlanta for the Morris Packing Company of Chicago; all the buildings in connection with the mines of the Florida Phosphate Mining Company at Bartow, Florida, which cost upwards of $150,000; the big factory of the Dutton Phosphate Company at Jacksonville, Florida; factories for the great Southern Fertilizer Company, the F. S. Royster Guano Company, of Norfolk, which fac- tories cost something like, including equipment
$750,000, and which Mr. Rose built for this great concern at Portsmouth, Virginia, Tarboro, North Carolina, Spartanburg, South Carolina, Colum- bus, Georgia, Macon, Georgia, Montgomery, Ala- bama, and Baltimore, Maryland, the last named factory being the largest in the South and alone cost, complete, about $400,000, and scores of others of equal magnitude all over the Southern states, including F. S. Roysbi's large fertilizer works at Toledo, Ohio. He also erected the National Bank building of Rocky Mount, North Carolina at a cost of $150,000. To again quote: "Mr. Rose is widely known as not only a man who completes his contracts, large or small, to the very letter, but a big, broad man who is not satisfied until his patrons have received absolute satisfaction to the last detail. The regard in which he is held by a number of the largest cor- porations in the South, and indeed all over the country, who award him contracts year after year is ample proof that he not only knows his busi- ness and has the necessary financial and industrial generalship to carry out satisfactorily the largest contracts, but is the sort of man who carries his conscience into his business, and who makes every yard of his work good for not only the present but for the future. It has become so that the only bond required of Mr. Rose is the reputation he has won by his years of hard work and uniform honesty and honorable business methods."
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