USA > North Carolina > History of North Carolina: North Carolina biography, Volume VI > Part 19
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he turned his energies to larger and more im- portant interests.
Mr. Stewart was born in Craven County, North Carolina, March 25, 1853, and is a son of James and Jane Eleanor (Loftin) Stewart. His father was a substantial farmer in Craven County. On that farn John W. Stewart grew up, and while he attended the local schools his education has come chiefly from his individual initiative and effort. Reading and observation have supplied much that was never included in his school cur- riculum, and his experience has been improved by extensive business dealings. He came to know the value of a dollar in early life. His activities were practically bounded by a farm until he was thirty years of age.
From farming he became a stock buyer, and in - a short time was operating on an extensive scale in the buying and selling of horses and mules. That business he continued for eighteen years. In the meantime he had invested and had become a stockholder in a number of companies. Mr. Stewart still retains some affection for country life, and is owner of large tracts of timber and farm lands in Craven, Jones, Carteret, Pamlico, Beaufort and Pitt counties. He also has about 2,500 acres of farm land under his direct man- agement and owns the Pecan Plantation and has done much to develop that magnificent estate. He is a fourth owner in the Ravenswood Planta- tion, comprising 18,500 acres. Mr. Stewart was a charter member and director of the Farmers & Merchants Bank before it failed through the cashier's defalcation.
At the present time he is a director in the Newbern Banking and Trust Company, the Citi- zens Savings Bank & Trust Company, the Peoples Bank, and is a stockholder in the Bank of Dover and the Bank of Vanceboro. He is treasurer of the Sampson Grove Company at Boardman, Flor- ida; is secretary and treasurer of the Enterprise Brick and Tile Company of Newbern; is presi- dent of the Swift Creek Supply Company at Vanceboro; is president of the Vanceboro Real Estate and Development Company; president of the Dover Lumber Company; and was one of the original stockholders and a director of the Dixie Fire Insurance Company of Greensboro, North Carolina. For the good of the community Mr. Stewart built and organized the Stewart Sani- tarium at Newbern. These connections speak for themselves as to Mr. Stewart's broad and masterly identification with the larger commercial life of his section of the state.
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He is also one of the capable members of the Newbern Chamber of Commerce. Fraternally he is a thirty-second degree Scottish Rite Mason, a Shriner, a member of the Odd Fellows, the Royal Arcanum, the Woodmen of the World and the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks. In church affairs he has always been a loyal and supporting member of the Methodist Episcopal Church and was on the building committee of the new edifice at Newbern.
On April 8, 1880, he married Miss Sarah Cath- erine Wetherington, of Craven County, North Carolina. They are the parents of six children: Jane P., Sara Louise, Maude, Kathrine Wash- ington, Eleanor Grace and James Lee.
FRANK KORNEGAY BORDEN. The permanent benefits that may be conferred on a community through the knowledge, enterprise and public spirit of one man finds no better illustration than has been afforded by one of Goldboro's best known and honored citizens, Frank K. Borden, scientist, manufacturer, banker and solid citizen.
Frank K. Borden was born at Goldsboro, North Carolina, July 12, 1857. His parents were Ed- win Browning and Georgia C. (Whitfield) Bor- den, members of prominent old families of this state. Edwin B. Borden for many years was a banker in this city and made liberal provision for his son's education. The latter attended pri- vate schools in boyhood and then became a student in Horner's and Graves' Military Institute and completed his education in the University of North Carolina, from which he was graduated in 1878.
One of the most familiar sights of Mr. Bor- den's boyhood, perhaps, was a cotton plantation, for cotton in Eastern North Carolina, as in other southern states, had long been a staple, and wher- ever land was under any cultivation to any ex- tent there would surely be found a "patch o' cotton."' With a well trained mind and a natural scientific leaning, Mr. Borden at the beginning of his business career was led to study improved methods of cotton manufacturing and thus came to consider the economic side of the business in a new way. At that time, after the cotton was ginned in North Carolina, there remained the seeds, these, in ratio of weight being 21% or three to one of fiber. That Egypt and India had util- ized these seeds his reading had told him; but no effort had yet been made in Eastern North Carolina to convert cotton seed into oil, feed or other by-products. Mr. Borden could not foresee that he would live to see the day when the oil of the cotton seed should be one of the accepted food products, not as an adulterant but as a re- fined and purified, healthful nutrient.
Having determined to be a pioneer in the de- veloping business at Goldsboro, Mr. Borden fully informed himself through travel and investigation in Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Georgia and other cotton producing sections, and on his return to Goldsboro he secured an expert to construct him a mill wherein the oil could be expressed from the seed and the hulls and meal so prepared that no more fattening food could be provided for cattle, the further refuse being made into fertilizer. Like almost every other new venture, Mr. Borden found little recognition of success just at first, in fact, in order to give the farmers of Wayne County and adjacent sections an object lesson for their own benefit, he invested in cattle and fattened
them on the new food. Long since cattle raisers all over have recognized the value of cotton seed meal but perhaps not all of them give due credit to Frank K. Borden for his enterprise, or re- member that he built the first mill of this kind in the eastern part of the state together with a fertilizer plant for use of cotton seed meal as an ammoniate.
For twenty-one years Mr. Borden continued to operate this mill and then sold out to a cor- poration and for six years longer was manager for the new company. He did not retire then from the cotton business, however, but organized the Borden Manufacturing Company, of which he is president, which operates two cotton mills with 18,500 spindles, an important industrial en- terprise at Goldsboro. He is president of the Wayne National Bank and a director of the At- lantic Coast Line Railroad. He is on the board of directors of the Whitesville Lumber Company, and is a stockholder in all the manufacturing plants at Goldsboro. In financial circles his reputation is sound as vice president and a director of the Taisnot Banking Company. He organized the Bor- den Brick and Tile Company and built the plant along modern lines. In partnership with his brothers, John L. and E. B. Borden, Jr., he owns the handsome six-story brick Borden Building. He has managed all his business undertakings with good judgment and recognized business abil- ity, giving employment to large bodies of work- ers and thereby adding to the prosperity of Golds- boro, and at the same time he has maintaiend dis- cipline with such firm kindness and even justice that his people recognize in him a friend as well as employer.
Mr. Borden was married December 21, 1887, to Miss Sadie Jones, a native of Chatham, North Carolina, and the following children have been born to them: Frank Kennon, who was connected with the Borden Brick and Tile Company, but is now in the aviation service of the National army; Arnold, who died in infancy; Mildred; Julia; Edwin B., who is serving in the Navy; and Sarah.
In civie government Mr. Borden's interest and business talent have long been conspicuous. For a number of years he served the city as alderman and in the city council was chairman of the finance committee for a protracted period. He is one of the active members of the Algonquin Club.
WILLIAM WHITE GRIFFIN, after leaving high school, tested out his ambition and his capabili- ties by performing the duties of a messenger for the First National Bank of Elizabeth City, North Carolina. By steady persistence and a show of responsibility in every task he rose to assistant cashier, and in May, 1909, when a young man with considerable banking experi- ence to his credit, he removed to Newbern and was given the post of assistant cashier with the National Bank of Newbern. Since January, 1915, Mr. Griffin has been cashier of this institution.
He was born in Elizabeth City, North Caro- lina, October 1, 1883, a son of William Joseph and Camilla Cook (Vaughan) Griffin. His father was a respected and successful attorney at Eliza- beth City for many years and is now deceased. William W. Griffin had his education in the public schools of Elizabeth City, where he com- pleted the high school course. He is a thirty- second degree Scottish Rite Mason and Shriner,
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and is also affiliated with the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks and the Improved Order of Red Men. He is treasurer of Christ Episcopal Church at Newbern.
ROBERT W. PALMER, M. D. Since graduating in medicine over a quarter of a century ago, Doctor Palmer has been giving his services to a large community in and around Gulf in Chatham County, where he was born and reared and where the Palmer family has been prominent for nearly two centuries. Doctor Palmer is in addition to being a skilled physiciau and surgeon a merchant and planter and one of the chief men of affairs in that locality.
Many historic names are found in the Palmer family and their counections. The great-great- grandfather of Doctor Palmer was Col. Robert Palmer. He was an officer in the English army, having been granted extensive tracts of land by the Crown. He came to North Carolina at the head of a colony of English people and settled at the old Town of Bath on the eastern shore. There he erected the Episcopal Church, which is still standing and in the vault in the old church his wife, Margaret, is buried. He had returned to England and died in the mother country. He enjoyed unusual privileges from the English Crown and at his death left great estates.
His son, Robert Palmer, great-grandfather of Doctor Palmer, was sent to England to be edu- cated in Oxford University. After reaching man- hood he moved westward and took up large tracts of land in what is now the extreme lower por- tion of Chatham County and some of the land in what is now Lee County. Much of that land is in the vicinity of the present Town of Gulf, where the Palmer family have lived since long before the Revolution.
The grandfather of Doctor Palmer was Joseph Palmer. He married a Miss McQueen. Her brother, Hon, Hugh McQueen, of Chatham County, was one of the big men of the state in his day, a leading lawyer and influential in politics and public affairs. He was a native of Chatham County, son of a Scotchman, represented his coun- ty in both branches of the General Assembly for several terms, was member of the convention of 1835, and was attorney-general of North Caro- lina in 1840. He resigned that high office in 1842 to go to Texas, where he took a part in the struggles of the young republic, and after the admission of Texas to the Union in 1846 was in the war against Mexico. Texas honored him as one of its dominant early figures of the Bar. He died in that state.
Another family' connection that should be noted was the wife of Robert Palmer, second. She was a member of the Alston family, famous both in England and the colonies. The Alstons on com- ing to America settled upon an extensive tract of land at the "Horseshoe"' on Deep River in the northeast part of Moore County, not far from the Town of Gulf. They made settlement there he- fore the Revolution. The wife of Robert Palmer, second, was also related to Col. Philip Alston, a patriotic American, who was attacked and fought a battle with David Fanning, a tory leader, at the Alston home on Deep River. That home is still standing and in a good state of preserva- tion, though its timbers show numerous bullet holes.
Dr. Robert W. Palmer was born near Gulf, Chatham County, in 1863, and is of English de-
scent through both his father and mother. His parents were Dr. Archibald W. and Ellen (Cham- bers) Palmer. His father, who died in 1892, was graduated from the Jefferson Medical College with the class of 1853. He took high honors in scholarship and all his life enjoyed the highest esteem and friendship of members of his class and faculty, some of whom were among the great- est medical authorities of their day. For up- wards of forty years he carried on a large country practice. He did the heavy work of the profes- sion in the days of travel by horseback with medi- cines and surgical instruments carried in saddle bags. The calls for his skill came from widely scattered neighborhoods, and he almost wore him- self out in the profession.
The home at which Dr. Robert Palmer was born . was two miles from the Town of Gulf on the north side of Deep River. He spent his boy- hood days there and attended school under Pro- fessor Kelly of the old Union Home School in Moore County. He studied medicine in Baltimore College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1887 and 1888, and later in Louisville Medical College and was graduated with the class of 1890. Since then he has taken a number of post-graduate courses in New York and other medical centers. He is a successful physician and surgeon of gen- eral practice and has had his home at Gulf for a quarter of a century.
Doctor Palmer was one of the founders of the Central Carolina Hospital at Sanford. He is local surgeon for the Norfolk & Southern Rail- road, and is a member of the Chatham County and State Medical societies and the Tri-State Medical Association. For several years he has been en- gaged in the drug business at Gulf, and is ac- tively identified with farming and other local enterprises. Doctor Palmer is a member of the Presbyterian Church.
He married Miss Edna Russell, a daughter of W. T. Russell, a veteran of the Civil war. She was reared in the same vicinity as her husband. They have six children: Mary Lacy, Archibald, Herbert, Catherine, Robert and Margaret.
HON. NEIL ANGUS SINCLAIR. As a lawyer Mr. Sinclair has practiced at Fayetteville for more than a quarter of a century and has earned a justly high place in the profession. He was a school master before he entered the legal profes- siou, and his interest in educational affairs has been a continuing one. This interest has become productive of great good and substantial benefits to the school system of his community and to that of the state at large. Many people have come to look upon this Fayetteville lawyer as the most distinguished democrat in North Carolina. His political leadership has been more than a nominal and honorary one. He has given careful thought and study to the broader problems and questions affecting the state's welfare, and in some lines, notably in prison reform and education, has done much to replace old and antiquated ideas and sys- tems with the methods approved by the humane thought of the present century.
Mr. Sinclair is descended from some of those splendid Scotch families that from colonial times have dominated the region of the Cape Fear River. He was born near Fayetteville .in Cumberland County in 1863, a son of Doctor Duncan and Effie (McEachern) Sinclair. His grandfather and great-grandfather were respectively Neil Sinclair and Duncan Sinclair, both natives of Scotland,
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who came to Robeson County, North Carolina, about 1800. Neil Sinclair was a child at the time.
The late Dr. Duncan Sinclair, who died at his home in Roberson County in 1907, was born at the old Sinclair homestead near St. Paul in that county. He possessed quick intelligence, loyalty to conscience, and the sturdy character of the old Scotch gentleman. His life was notable for its splendid service as a physician and he was the kindly sympathetic and capable old time country doctor. He was a graduate of the medical school of the University of Maryland, gave all his best years to practice, and his work was largely done in the country districts. Shortly before the war he removed to the vicinity of Fayetteville in Cuni- berland County, and during the war had his headquarters at Fayetteville. While not an enlisted man in the Confederate government, he served the cause in the noble and humane duty of taking care of and administering to the ills of. the wounded and sick soldiers. He made numerous journeys to Richmond and to the front and brought back wounded soldiers to Fayetteville, tak- ing care of them on the train and after their arrival in Fayetteville. Some time after the war he returned to his old home in Robeson County and- continued his practice there until his life came to its peaceful close. His busy professional career did not allow him much time for public service, but in 1875 he was a member of the con- stitutional convention.
Neil Angus Sinclair was reared in Robeson County, attended local schools and a private school at Laurinburg, under the direction of the noted Professor Quackenbush, one of the most talented teachers of his time. For three years he was a student in the University of North Carolina at Chappel Hill. After his University career Mr. Sin- clair became a teacher in the graded schools at Fayetteville, and the second year he was made superintendent of the school system, succeeding Prof. A. Graham, who went from Fayetteville to take charge of the Charlotte schools. While teach- ing Mr. Sinclair studied law privately, and in 1890 passed the examination and was admitted to the bar at Fayetteville. Beginning his professional career with thorough equipment, he has steadily gained in power and resourcefulness and for a number of years has ranked among the foremost at the bar of North Carolina.
Mr. Sinclair served one or two terms as county superintendent of schools and then became chair- man of the county board of education. In the lat- ter capacity he was made a member of the board of trustees of the graded school system in Favette- ville. and is still filling that position. He is one of the men whose time and study have largely . brought about the development and upbuilding of Fayetteville's school system and the construction of adequate buildings and the installation of mod- ern equipment and facilities. For a time he was a member of the board of trustees of the University of North Carolina.
Hundreds of people who know him not as a lawyer nor as a local citizen have a pleasing ac- quaintance with Mr. Sinclair's standing and force- ful power as an orator. He is without doubt one of the most capable speakers in the public forum of the state today. For some twelve or fifteen years he has taken a prominent part in every state political campaign. His usefulness perhaps reached its climax during the state and national campaign of 1916. He was almost constantly en- gaged in making speeches throughout the state,
and he rendered such effective aid in rolling up a handsome majority for the national ticket in North Carolina that President Wilson wrote him a per- sonal letter expressing his cordial appreciation of his services. During that campaign Mr. Sinclair was presidential elector at large for North Caro- lina, and thus had the pleasure of exercising the formal choice of Woodrow Wilson for a second term in the White House. Mr. Sinclair has served as a member of the State Democratic Executive Committee and the State Democratic Advisory Committee.
Mr. Sinclair is an ex-state senator. He rep- resented Cumberland County in the State Senate in the session of 1905. During that session he was chairman of the committee which handled the perplexing problem involved in the disposition of the North Carolina bonds issued under the Con- federacy and at that time held by the State of South Dakota. As is well known, all the Confed- erate state bonds after the close of the war were automatically repudiated, and the private holders of such securities endeavored from time to time to realize something from them. However, the con- stitutional prohibition preventing a private citizen from suing a state shut off all recourse until the ingenious device was adopted of transferring certain of these securities issued originally by North Carolina to the State of South Dakota, which of course could bring suit against another state.
However, the service of his senatorial career' of greatest benefit to North Carolina from the hu- manitarian point of view and affording him most satisfaction was in connection with the matter of establishing a parole system for penitentiary prisoners. He drew up and was instrumental in having enacted in the law the bill providing the legal machinery, by which the governor may grant a conditional pardon to prisoners, this pardon to be made permanent conditioned upon the paroled displaying good behavior and good intentions, or to be revoked at the discretion of the proper state officials. Under the old system a comparatively innocent youth or young man might be sentenced to a long term in the pentitentiary or on the chain gang, and the experience was practically certain to wreck his life, since no matter what his efforts toward reformation were there was no provision for his conditional pardon. Mr. Sinclair was in- strumental in bringing the State of North Carolina into line with those commonwealths which have been foremost in advocating prison reform and more humanitarian methods of dealing with con- victs. Mr. Sinclair has made a close study of penal institutions, and wherever possible has sought to abolish the medieval methods of punishment and cruelty. Beginning in 1907, he served eight years as solicitor of the Superior Court of his district, and while in that position he took it upon himself to warn superintendents of chain gangs against excessive cruelty, and wherever such cases of cruelty were flagrant he exercised all his influence to secure the removal of such officials.
While his activities and interests are so closely identified with the public and the state, Mr. Sin- clair is devoted to the delights of home and family. His home is on Havmount. just within the western limits of Fayetteville. Here he has a place of three acres, sufficiently large to enable him to indulge his fondness for country life. He has fruit trees, pecan trees, and has garden and poul- try. He thoroughly enjoys the privacy and com- fort afforded by this home, and however strenuous
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his life may be on the outside he finds complete relaxation and rest when within his private precinets.
Mrs. Sinclair was formerly Miss Augusta Worth. Her father, the late J. A. Worth, of Fayetteville, was a member of one of the most distinguished families of North Carolina. He was the youngest brother of Governor Jonathan Worth, and another brother, Dr. J. M. Worth, was at one time state treasurer of North Carolina. Mrs. Sinclair through her mother is connected with the Walker family, which has had a large and historic part in the state. Mr. and Mrs. Sinclair have three children : Kate Worth, wife of James E. Williamson; Effie, wife of Frederick F. Travis; and Miss Eunice Sinclair.
DAN HUGH MCLEAN. The Scotch are natural lovers of stirring times; they are born fighters, both for their rights and the liberties of other people, and if they cannot be in the fray on the physical field of battle they are quite apt to seek the arena of politics and public con- flicts. These remarks hold especially good as ap- plied to the careers of the MeLeans of Harnett County, North Carolina-Col. Dan H. and his father, Gen. A. D. McLean.
Before the Civil war General McLean was a noted educator, as well as a brigadier general of state militia. He was born near Lillington, Harnett County, and for years conducted a prepa- ratory school for boys at Summerville, his home being about 21% miles west of that village. He prepared boys for college, and at his institution many young men who afterward became promi- nent citizens received their schooling. During the war he held various civil offices under the Con- federacy, and was a member of the Legislature while Vance was governor. In 1880 he was a member of the State Senate, and died in 1882, at the age of seventy-five. Of pure Scotch an- cestry, he is said to have been descended from ancestors who came to North Carolina after the battle of Culloden, in 1746, by which the Scotch Jacobites, or supporters of the Stuarts, met a crushing defeat. Many of them immigrated to the American colonies at that time.
Dan Hugh McLean was born at Summerville, near Lillington, in 1847, and attended his father's noted school. He was only fourteen at the out- break of the war between the states, and en- listed in the first company that went out from Harnett County, being attached to the Fifth North Carolina Volunteer Infantry, commanded by Colonel MeKenney. So far as the records show, he was the youngest soldier to be actively engaged in the Confederate service. His first battle was at Yorktown, under General Magruder and Bell, and not long afterward he was assigned to a bat- tery of artillery in Virginia under Colonel Poe. The youth served throughout the war in the army of Northern Virginia, and was in the battles of Chancellorsville, the Wilderness, Spottsylvania and Petersburg Crater and the final surrender of Appomattox. He acquitted himself with valor and with so much judgment that he became adju- tant of his company. As a tribute to these qual- ities in one so young he has always been called colonel.
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