USA > North Carolina > History of North Carolina: North Carolina biography, Volume V > Part 95
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Although some thirty-seven years have passed I still have a very distinct recollection of how I felt when I first put on my new clothes for the journey, and with what pride my mother viewed the workmanship of her hands, and how she em- praced again and again her darling boy. But the
day in time came around when, as it turned out, I was to bid a final farewell to my home.
The scene can be better imagined than de- scribed. My father, who did not like to show his weakness to the family, embraced me tenderly and bade me good by early in the morning, and went his way into the fields to conceal his emotion, mother was ever present with me, holding me in her arms until the last moment, giving me kind words of advice and counsel when her sobs would permit, until at last we were ready, and I being lifted up behind brother Robert, we turned our faces reluctantly from our home of happy mem- ories and took the road to Charlotte, which was to be our future home.
Such is a hasty history of myself for the first eight years of my life; and my departure from my parents' roof on that bright October morning may be considered my starting point in life, and my début into the busy world.
The journey for one of my years was a trying one, and not soon to be forgotten. I was mounted behind brother Robert on a saddle blanket, with himself, saddle and saddle bags (which contained all my worldly possessions, except what I had on), in front. Our first stop was at Mr. Bryan's; the
Having given a hasty sketch of my family, I - journey was over the mountains, and about twenty- will now turn more particularly to giving some account of myself.
five miles from our home. Mr. Bryan lived on the beautiful Yadkin, about two miles from Jones- ville. I remember how helpless I was when I was lifted from my perch to the ground, and had to be led into the house, as I could not walk for sometime after being lifted from the horse. But a night's rest (and it was a sound one) refreshed me wonderfully, and save a soreness about my lower limbs, I was all right. The next day, how- ever, was one of the trying days of my life. We made a distance of forty miles to Statesville on that day. Is it not a wonder that I stood such a trip, traveling as we were? When I was taken off the horse I could not stand, but fell flat on the ground in front of Harbin's Hotel, where we put up.
I was so sore and exhausted that I could not rest, and though I slept, it was not refreshing, and the next morning I felt very much like rebelling and refusing to go any further, and wished, oh how ardently, that I had taken my mother's ad- vice and stayed at home. But I was again put upon my perch for the third day's journey, and we traveled about thirty-five miles and put up at Dr. Alexander's, about nine miles from Char- lotte. My experience on this day was much like the previous one-my sufferings being great, but somewhat relieved by the reflection that I was nearing my destination, and that the next day would see the end of this long-to-be-remembered journey.
I shall surely never forget it! In looking back, it seems but a short time, so indelibly is it stamped upon my memory.
On the next day-October 15, 1838, we arrived in Charlotte and took dinner (I think) at Amzi McGinn's, who was clerking for uncle William, and that afternoon we went out to the plantation of my uncle, which was seven miles from Char- lotte, in the Steel Creek neighborhood.
Thus ended one of the most remarkable jour- neys of my life, and to this day the best remem- bered. I must have been tough to have stood it, but after some painful suffering of perhaps a fortnight's duration, I was all right bodily. The change of scene and place was very striking and novel to me. My uncle, it may be proper to men- tion here, was a bachelor; and although he re-
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ceived me kindly, I cannot say that I was very favorably impressed with his reception, as it was in striking contrast to the separation of a few days before; and I had for sometime one of the biggest spells of the blues, I think, that ever fell to the lot of a boy to experience. The presence of a considerable number of negro children, with bare legs and long shirts-evidently as much sur- prised by my appearance as I was astonished and bewildered by their capers, was not calculated to dissipate, but rather to intensify them, and it really seemed for weeks that the malady was be- coming chronic.
It may be mentioned here that my father had no negroes until after my uncle William's death, when he purchased a woman and three children at his sale. Until that time my mother and sisters did all the house work, and seemed to do it well.
On my uncle's plantation everything was done by negroes, and it was sometime before I could reconcile myself to eating the food the black hands of the black cook prepared. At that time my uncle owned about fifty negroes, big and little, and it was many a day before I made the ac- quaintance of all, or could tell them apart. Among the number of little imps that so annoyed me at first I may mention Allen, whom all of you know very well, and who has proved to be a good friend to me and my family. At that time he was some four or five years old, with a very long head, very black, as he is still, but always in a good humor. My uncle had a nice farm and made good crops of cotton and corn, which were the leading pro- ductions then, as they continue to be in this part of the country. The cotton field was a novelty, as cotton was not cultivated in the mountains, and at that time there was very little cotton grown north of Mecklenburg County, North Caro- lina. The first time I saw my uncle's working force altogether was in a cotton field, and if he had not been with me, I think I should have been very much alarmed, but as they did not molest me, I soon gained courage and lost my fear, and, by degrees, as we become accustomed to things we see every day, so I got accustomed to the new order of things around me. It was not long be- fore I learned their names, and by degrees my fears and my blues, too, wore off, and I began to feel myself at home.
I had not been with Uncle long until he started me to school in the neighborhood. The teacher, Alexander Johnston, a little, squatty Scotchman, still lives, or did a few months ago. He was little, it was true, but I had very exalted notions of his. ability-in fact I thought that he knew it all, and what he did not know was not worth a cent. Con- trary to the custom now, he made all hands "sing out" at the peril of being switched across the knees or back, and the more fuss that was made in "singing out" the happier he became. He joined the school in all their plays, and I thought then that, taking him for all in all, I should never see his like again. He would go home with the scholars in rotation, but I soon noticed that he always came home with me when Uncle was in town; and I remember well the tussles that he and brother Robert would have. They would pull off their coats and set to, as regularly as they would meet, and the falls they would sometimes get was enough, I thought, to break every bone in their bodies, but the contests always seemed to be drawn battles, as neither would admit that the other was the better man. How long I went to this school I have now forgotten, but I do not think it could have exceeded six months. After
leaving this school my recollection is that I re- mained on the farm for some months until an- other school master was found for me. My next teacher was a man who is still living, by the name of George Washington McDonald. He taught in one of the little cabins at the "Arbor," or Harbor as it was called, which was then a great and noted place for Methodist "Camp Meetings," which are still, kept up, I believe, by that denomination. This was some two to two and a half miles from home, which was a long distance for a nine year old boy to go alone through the woods, but I made the trip successfully, and always on time. Mr. McDonald was a small man with a feminine voice, and a small head, but I thought that if there could, by any possibility, be anything that Alex- ander Johnston did not know, George Washington McDonald did. How pleasant (and fortunate, too) it is to have such confidence in those to whom we look for advice and instruction! If I could only have seen those men as I see and know them now, I doubt if ever I should have gotten out of the spelling book, but my confidence was never shaken until many years had passed away. How men, and everything, in fact, grow small as we grow older, and objects upon which we were wont to gaze with wonder and delight become in after years insignificant! I can well remember that the first time I saw the brick building on the Spring's Corner, and the old jail, I thought they were perfection itself in size, style, height, depth, thickness. In fact I had no idea that there was anything that could surpass them on the habitable globe. And the Mint! And more especially the eagle over the front entrance! It was my firm be- lief then that nothing could surpass it. Mr. Mc- Donald, like Mr. Johnston, made his scholars "sing out," and it was done in fine style. At a distance of two or three hundred yards from the schoolhouse the sound was very much like the seven years locusts in an oak grove. Mrs. Mary Wriston was one of the scholars at this school.
If I remember correctly, I went about six months to Mr. McDonald, and not long after, sometime in the year 1840, my uncle brought me to Charlotte. This was another great change, and one that brought back the blues almost as much as when I landed at the plantation, a little more than a year ago.
My uncle then lived, when in town, on the lot where the Bank of Mecklenburg building and the two buildings immediately above it now stand. His dwelling set back about fifty feet from the street, was a one-story frame building with three rooms, and is now somewhere in town and belongs, I think, to H. G. Springs, who bought the house when it. had to be removed to give place to the bank building, which was erected in 1858 or 59, for the branch of the Bank of North Carolina. The store house of my uncle occupied the space now occupied by the two stores above the present bank building. (It may be necessary to mention here that my uncle was a merchant as well as farmer, and spent half of his time in town.)
The store room was a two-story frame building to which was attached two sheds, one on the end and the other in the rear, with a fireplace and a small room cut off one end for the clerks to sleep in. The adjoining lot above had a store room on the street-a one-story frame building-and a dwelling house set back some twenty-five or thirty feet from the street. This is the property on which the First National Bank Building and the store room below it now stand. It was owned and operated by James H. Orr, a worthy and an
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upright man, a good neighbor and a Presbyterian elder. He has but one living child, James H. Orr, Jr. It was with his family that my uncle put me to board, and soon after I started to school to a man by the name of R. G. Allison, who had the reputation of being a good teacher, as well as that of being a finished scholar. The school house was a one-story brick building on College Street, and was located on the lot where the residence of W. J. Black now stands. (John B. Ross' home.) I think I shall remember that school long after many subsequent events are forgotten. was here that I first came into contact with "town boys" -- a stranger to them all, and the butt of ridicule to many. It must not be forgotten that my parents were Irish, and not having much inter- course with the outside world in that sparsely settled mountain country, their children had the Irish brogue pretty strongly developed. The pe- culiar idiosyncrasy still stuck to me and, though no doubt it afforded much amusement to my tor- mentors, it caused me many hours of misery. My nicknames were numerous, and many were the jokes that were perpetrated at my expense, and I felt that every boy in the school was my enemy. This, perhaps, was in the end, fortunate for me, as it soon iustilled a spirit of self reliance which in after years I have found to be of great service.
My tormentors gave me but little rest for a long time after I entered the school, but as every- thing earthly has an end, so, by degrees, they be- came less annoying, uot, however, until some of them found out that it was not altogether safe to carry their jokes too far.
After I had had a good many fights, in which I generally came off with flying colors, the tide in my favor began to set in. Be it understood that I disclaim any merit for courage when, under similar circumstances, the veriest coward would have fought and sometimes shown himself a hero; and I believe I can say with truth that I never provoked a fight, but when I had been forced into it I generally fought out of it in such style as proved satisfactory to the aggressor. When it was discovered in school that the little "freckle- faced Irishman" would fight it was really sur- prising how soon I began to have friends. When my reputatiou for defending myself became fully established my tormentors soon vanished, and I had as many friends as I wanted; and, as it was not in my Irish nature to bear malice, I readily accepted their friendship; but the lesson there learned has never been entirely forgotten, and my sympathies have always leaned towards those who have but few friends and who are unjustly snubbed on account of their poverty, or because they do not happen to have rich relations and friends to give them a lift.
After my status became fully established in the school I found it very pleasant, and be- came well pleased with my surroundings. The school was quite large, numbering about sixty scholars-some of them grown young men. Of all that number I can name but two besides my- self who now live in Charlotte-M. L. Wriston and John L. Brown. There are others scattered here and there, but the great majority, together with their teacher, have passed over the river; some of them the best friends I ever had-peace to their dust!
How soon a generation disappears and is for- gotten. This was the first school I had attended where the sexes were not mixed, and of a grade high enough to prepare for college. I do not know how long I went to Mr. Allison, but it must
have been a year or longer. When I left the school I was again takeu to the plantation and put in a school that was taught by a Mr. Cheek in a small log house not far from big Steel Creek Church. This was, I think, in the year 1842. I had another long walk to and from the school house, but this time its length was materially shortened by having a very pleasant companiou part of the way. Her name was Minerva and her father's house stood on my way to school, and we generally went together and were very good friends. Her father did not have a very good character in the neighborhood, as he had a still-house, and it was thought he traded his whiskey to the negroes for stolen cotton and other things. I know my uncle thought he was a bad man.
I well remember a very ingenious theft that was committed on the plantation about this time. Uncle built what he called a wheat house, for storing his wheat. It was a strong log house, with the floor some two feet from the ground, to admit of free circulation of air underneath. He theu put his wheat in hogsheads and covered it with a sprinkling of lime to keep off the weevil and fly. After he had stored his crop away securely, as he thought, he soon found an unusual shrinkage in some of the hogsheads, but could detect no evidence of its having been molested-the lime was spread over the tops of the vessels just as he had left it-the lock had not been tampered with, and there was no scattered grain on the floor; but the wheat continued to get lower, and still lower in the hogsheads. This was a mystery a first class detective would have found hard to solve, and it worried Uncle no little. Finally, however, in examining around the granary, he found the clew to the mystery. The thief had crawled under the floor, and with auger had bored hole's through the floor and the bottoms of the hogsheads, and plugged up the holes. By pulling out the plugs he could fill his bag when the opportunity presented itself. Uncle thought that this wheat, together with many other things, found its way to neighbor distillery. Nevertheless, I rather liked his daughter, and I thought she was as pretty as anyone I had ever seen. So we continued good friends and com- panions as long as I went to that school. As I was only about twelve years of age, my love did not last very long.
At this time there was an encampment of Catawba Indians on the road to the school, and from what tales I had heard of them from the negroes I did not like to pass near their quarters, but finding that I was not molested, or even noticed, I soon picked up courage, and would frequently stop on my way to see them make crocks, bowls, etc., out of the common clay. I have seen them kill squirrels out of the tops of tall trees with their bows and arrows, and hit a dime in a forked stick twenty-five yards or farther. I thought this marvelous, and, boy-like, I had the bow and arrow fever for some time, but as I found out that I could not learn the art I gave up my bow and arrows.
I was about a year at Mr. Cheek's school and had by this time acquired a tolerably fair knowl- edge of the branches of reading, writing and arithmetic. I remember that I had accomplished the feat of doing every sum in Pike's Arithmetic at this school, and I was considered quite pro- ficient iu that line-so much so indeed that I was called upon frequently by the scholars to un- ravel the hidden mysteries of that art, and might
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have been, very justly, considered an assistant to the teacher.
Brother Robert and I were permitted to make visits to our mountain home once in two years- going generally about the first of August and returning the first of October. These visits were pleasant to look forward to, and but for the pain of again having to part-especially from mother-they would have been enjoyed far more. Nevertheless they always proved a delightful recreation.
I was now soon to bid adieu to plantation life and take up my permanent quarters in Charlotte. Some time in the year 1843, I think it was, I was again sent to school, at the same place, to a Mr. Pomeroy, who had recently come out from the North. I felt quite at home now, having known quite a number of the boys, who were my playfel- lows of a year or two before at Mr. Allison's school. I was, too, classed among the big boys, and was not annoyed by jokes at my Irish brogue, as I had been the year before. I presume a good deal of it had worn off by this time.
Mr. Pomeroy was a thorough Yankee, and be- came very unpopular in Charlotte, so much so that it was not safe for him to be out on the streets at night alone. I do not think anyone would have done him any bodily harm, but the boys soon dis- covered that he was cowardly, and would, in order to have a little fun, chase him occasionally through the streets, but I never knew of his having been hurt. Let me say that he was never molested by me, nor did I approve of it in others.
Mr. Pomeroy taught the boys to sing, a part of the curriculum, and every evening he would exer- cise us in singing for an hour. This part of his training was greatly enjoyed by all, and all his efforts to maintain order were altogether unsuc- cessful. He persevered, however, and in time had a passable choir. His stay in Charlotte did not last over one year, at the end of which time he returned to Yankee land, and I never heard of him afterwards.
At the close of this school I was put in the store to learn the art of merchandising; for be it known that the country was "cursed" at that early day, as it is now, with "middlemen, " but not blessed, as now, with the antidote-the "Grange."' What a paradise the country will be when middlemen (all except Grange officers) will have been con- signed to the tomb of the Capulets! Nobody, I fancy, will be cursed with poverty or poor kin then! But this is a digression. At this time Uncle had an associate in business with him, one William Henderson, who was to boss the business and I was to be clerk (1844). As the trade of Charlotte at that time was not large, we two man- aged to do the business of the concern. I may remark that the associate was not calculated to build up a very large business-in fact he was sat- isfied to do very little. Our sales did not exceed one thousand dollars per month-in fact, that was considered a fair business then.
At that day there were, all told, some nine or ten stores in the place. Every store kept a general assortment of dry goods, hardware, groceries, hats, shoes, etc., and there was no great rush to do 'busi- ness, and we had no merchants that wanted to do it all, but each one had his regular customers; and the present system of "drumming" was virtually unknown. Although the business was small, yet, they managed generally to make "both ends meet,'' and lap a little, as the expenses of living here at that time were small in comparison with the present day.
As I was saying, the associate was not a man to push business. If the trade was lively, he was satisfied; if dull, he seemed content. I think I may safely make the assertion that he never had the blues because of dull times. He was fond of music and tobacco, and when he got down his singing book (Southern Harmony), after the busi- ness of the day was over, you might safely infer that he was going "through it"' before retiring.
My uncle, who was a keen observer and a good judge of men, was not very long in finding out that the man was a fraud, and the concern was dissolved in about a year. I have now forgotten what disposition was made of the stock of goods, but I think they fell back on Uncle's hands, and he shortly sold them to some merchants. This was in 1845, and was the close of Uncle's mercantile career. A short history of him here will not be out of place. He was an Irishman and landed in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1801, and very soon thereafter established himself in Charlotte. He was a hatter by trade, and carried on a successful business for a number of years. After he had, by great economy, made enough to buy property and put up a storehouse he abandoned the hat busi- ness and turned his attention to general merchan- dising. This he followed until the year 1845, as above stated. He had also accumulated a large amount of land in different parts of the county -- the plantation upon which he lived a portion of his time being the largest and most valuable. He had also by this time become possessed of about fifty slaves, some of whom he had bought, but most of them he had raised. As I was quite young he never told me about his early history. I have heard from others that he courted a woman soon after coming here, but his suit proving unsucces- ful, he never tried his hand again. Although austere in his manner seemingly, he was fond of company and relished a joke with his friends. He read a great deal, and few men of his day were better informed on general topics than he. It was a short time before he abandoned merchandising (I think in 1845) that he and brother Robert had some misunderstanding at the plantation, which resulted in brother leaving him. This required more of his time at the farm until he employed another man as his overseer. His health was giv- ing away at this time, and he could not take that interest in business or give it that personal super- vision which was his wont when in health. After disposing of his goods his next thought was to know what to do with me; and he gave me my choice, either to go to school and prepare myself for college, or to get a situation as clerk in some store. I preferred the store. I had two offers, one by R. C. Carson and the other by H. B. Williams. I chose the latter for reasons known only to myself. I was now a lad of fifteen years of age, a pretty fair penman and accountant, and not a bad clerk for one of my years. I received a sal- ary of seventy-five dollars and board, per annum. This would be considered small now, but at that time it was considered quite liberal, and I managed to live upon it, but boys then did not wear, as now, ten dollar boots and fifty dollar suits. I had not been with Mr. Williams long before I had most of the bookkeeping to do, being considered correct in figures and writing a very fair hand.
Mr. Williams' store was on the corner now oc- cupied by the Central Hotel. It was a two-story frame building which fronted on Tryon street and to which was attached a back room, one story, on Trade street. His dwelling was on the lot where Dr. Miller now lives, on Tryon street, corner of
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