USA > North Carolina > History of North Carolina: North Carolina biography, Volume VI > Part 2
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His early environment and advantages were in- fluenced and interfered with by the troubled con- ditions incident to the Civil war period. In the meantime he had attended private schools and after the war began the study of law under Chief Justice Richmond M. Pearson at Richmond Hill, North Carolina. Admitted to the bar in 1872, he was in practice at Shelby and Lincolnton until 1891. Though he represented his home district in the Legislature in 1889, he has devoted himself more to his profession than to politics. As a law- yer he has gained reputation as an able counselor, and upright citizen, and has exemplified that char- acter which begets general confidence. With these qualifications he began his career on the bench as a judge of the Superior Court in 1891. With the ripe and mature experience of thirteen years on the Superior beuch he was elected an associate justice of the Supreme Court in 1904, and was re- elected in 1912, his time expiring in 1920.
In the opinions he has written and the decisions he has influenced the bench and bar of North Carolina will have a record for all time. It is permitted here to quote the words of a member of the bar who has long been familiar with Judge Hoke's activities and influence: "It may be questioned whether the Supreme Court Bench was ever occupied by a closer student than Judge Hoke. United with the varied phases of the written law which he has so well mastered is a strong store of common sense which manifests itself in his judicial opinions as well as in his daily walk of life. These qualifications, united with a cordiality
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of manner which bespeaks a friendship for man- kind, and with a character above reproach, have gained for him as many friends as there are good men in North Carolina."'
Judge Hoke is a member of the Society of the Cincinnati and is a communicant of the Episcopal Church. He married at Lincolnton December 16, 1897, Miss Mary McBee. To this union has been born one daughter.
JULIAN SHAKESPEARE CARR. In the varied re- lationship of an honored soldier of the Confed- eracy, as a highly successful manufacturer and banker, a philanthropist and a leader in public life, it is indeed conspicuous praise when it was asserted of Gen. Julian S. Carr that he was one of the best beloved men in North Carolina, and that. positiou in the affection of his home state is undiminished at the present writing.
General Carr was born October 12, 1845, at Chapel Hill, North Carolina, a son of John Wesley and Elizabeth Pannill (Bullock) Carr. What his people lacked in wealth they made up iu quali- ties of solid character and good social position, so that while General Carr had to begin his inde- pendent career when North Carolina and all the South was suffering extreme poverty of resources as a result of the war, he was well fitted by personal character and by inheritauce to gain an honorable position in affairs. His earliest Ameri- can ancestor was John Carr, who was born in County Down, Ireland, in 1728, and settled in Virginia in Colonial times. During the war of the Revolution he served as an ensign in the First Virginia Regiment. A still earlier genera- tion of the family contained Robert Carr, Earl of Somerset, and that distinguished member of the family accounts for the name of General Carr's handsome residence at Durham, Somerset Villa. John Wesley Carr, his father, was a mer- chant of Chapel Hill, a good business man, and in the early days was one of the three justices who composed the Court of Quarter Sessions for Orange County. That was a position of honor, to which only as a rule learned and able men were called. He was an active Methodist, and bore a high character for the unpretentious simplicity of his life and his open handed hospitality. His wife, Elizabeth Pannill Bullock, was of the promi- nent family of that name in Granville County.
General Carr was educated in village schools at Chapel Hill and at the age of sixteen entered the University of North Carolina. He never fin- ished his course there, since the war had broken out before he enrolled as a student and in a year or so his own services were needed. He was a private in Company K of the Third North Caro- lina Cavalry, in Barringer's Brigade, Hamp- ton's Corps, Army of Northern Virginia. He made a creditable record as a soldier and when the war was over he returned to Chapel Hill and for a time was associated in business with his father. He then spent a year in Arkansas, but in 1870 returned to North Carolina.
For many years General Carr's distinctive posi- tion in North Carolina and the nation's industrial affairs has been as president of the Bull Durham Tobacco Company. How he became interested in the tobacco industry and his part in developing what is perhaps the most famous tobacco manu- facturing and distributing organization in the world has been adequately told by Mr. S. A. Ashe in the Biographical History of North Carolina. That portion of the story is repeated here:
"Soon after his return he was able to make the purchase, for $4,000, of a third interest in a tobacco partnership which W. T. Blackwell and J. R. Day were conducting at Durham. It was a small but prosperous business, with hardly any capital and no particular prospect of improve- ment. That was a day of small things in the industrial life of North Carolina. Durham itself consisted of only about a dozen houses, aud excepting a few cotton factories that had sur- vived the war and a few small tobacco factories there were no industrial enterprises in the state. Manufacturing was a new business. Our people had not been trained to it, and those who had capital feared to embark in an untried field, espe- cially as money brought an interest of eighteen and twenty-four per cent. However, hopeful ot the future, the firm of W. T. Blackwell & Com- pany, now reinforced by the quick apprehension of its junior member, pressed on their work. The financial management fell to the care of Mr. Carr, and so skillful was he that although he was often embarrassed because of insufficient capital, the business continued to expand, and after some years of hard struggle and persistent labor it be- came very profitable. And eventually, under the sagacious direction of its managers it grew to mammoth proportions, its unparalleled success be- ing both gratifying and astonishing to the people of the state. Mr. Carr desiring to still further expand, Mr. Blackwell sold his interest to him, as Mr. Day had done earlier, and the business was continued on still larger lines than ever before. The creation and successful management of such a vast business, no less than the income it gave, brought Mr. Carr a great reputation. He was by long odds the greatest business mau who had up to that time ever been in the state, while his disposition to make donations to worthy objects and his frank, pleasant manners endeared him to the public. However, Mr. Carr found it to his interest to dispose of his factory, receiving for it a large fortune, and since then he has devoted his talents to other enterprises."
One of the largest banks of North Carolina is the First National Bank of Durham, which has had a prosperous existence of nearly thirty years. General Carr has given much of his time for years as president of this institutiou. He has also served as president of the Ormond Mining Com- pany and the Durham & Charlotte Railway, and as a director of the State University Railway. He has originated and had a helpful part in a large number of the enterprises which are at the foundation of the business prosperity of Durham.
The means and time of his later years have been liberally bestowed upon various causes and institutions, both educational aud philanthropic. He has long served as a member of the Board of Trustees of the University of North Carolina, and has also been a member of the Durham Board of Education and president of the North Carolina Children 's Home Society. A prominent layman of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, he was a delegate to the Ecumenical Methodist Confer- ence at London, and has also given liberally to other churches and church causes. To General Carr more than to any other individual belongs the credit for that saving assistance which tided Trinity College over its era of adversity and enabled it to grow great and strong as one of the finest educational institutions of the South. He and two other Methodist laymen agreed to condnet the college three years at a time when
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the Methodist Conference felt compelled to aban- don the school, which was then located in Ran- dolph County. At the end of the three years the burden of management still devolved upon the three self-constituted trustees, and when the other two withdrew General Carr assumed the entire burden. Later when the college was moved to Durham, he contributed $20,000 to pay for the fine grounds upon which the institution stands today. In a similar manner he headed a syndi- cate which restored and revived the fine Wom- an's School, Greensboro Female College, when that institution too was under the stress of hard financial circumstances. Both of these schools were institutions of Methodism, but General Carr's beneficence has been impartially bestowed, and other institutions that acknowledge his gen- erosity are Wake Forest College, Davidson Col- lege, Elon College, St. Mary's College, the Bap- tist University for Women, while on the campus of the University of North Carolina, his alma mater, stands "Carr Building" in honor of its donor.
At the outbreak of the Spanish-American war Durham furnished two companies, one white and the other colored. As there was some delay in the assignment of the colored company to its proper regiment, General Carr provided for their subsistence. To the regiment containing Dur- ham's white company he gave continually of his constant care and his liberal means so that the army boys should never want for any comforts consistent with the army regulations and should suffer nothing from the neglect and lack of sys- tem which were in such flagrant evidence during that war period. While his care and money did so much to lighten the situation for the men actually at the front, it is said General Carr fur- ther sought every case of need in his home town and at his own expense defrayed bills of house rent, doctor's care and grocery expenses for both white and colored soldiers who needed such as- sistance.
General Carr has been one of the most esteemed veterans of the war between the states, served many years as president of the Confederate Vet- eran Association of North Carolina, and one of the institutions that has most regularly received his donations has been the Soldiers' Home. On the organization of the United Veteran Association of the Confederate States he was elected major general for the North Carolina Division, and has filled that office every recurring year.
A large part of these achievements and services might properly be described as his participation in public life. But something should also be said under the head of his political career. He has long been prominent in the party councils of the democratic party, and considering his high position and his merit it seems strange that the party has never been able to combine the time and place in honoring him as he has deserved. At times his own private business kept him from the responsibilities and cares of public office, and at other times General Carr gracefully yielded to party convenience and allowed the honors of can- didacy to go to others. He declined the nomina- tion of his party for governor in 1896. In 1900, in the National Convention at Kansas City, Gen- eral Carr received fourteen votes for the vice- presidency, his own state and the state of Idaho furnishing that graceful compliment. in the same year he was a candidate in his party for the office of United States senator, but retired
from the race in order that the honor might be given to Hon. F. M. Simmons. General Carr has been a delegate at large to democratic national conventions fourteen times and has propably exerted as much influence in shaping the fortunes of the party within his home state as any other individual. General Carr is widely known through his public addresses and is a man of splendid literary tastes and the wide cultivation of the best in literature and art.
One of the finest auguries of the wholesome- ness and soundness of American life has been the hearty co-operation of men of great business ability and experience with the war administra- tion and activities of the Government. Since America entered the war with Germany General Carr has in many ways rendered important serv- ices, and has practically abandoned his private interests and business affairs for this purpose. For some months he was in active co-operation with Mr. Hoover working out the general plans for food regulation and conservation. More re- cently his services were directed to the benefit of the ship building board. General Carr is now absent most of the time from North Carolina and is one of the men of wealth and business and so- cial prestige who are giving all they have to the Government at this time of need.
February 19, 1873, General Carr married Miss Nannie Graham Parrish. Her father, Col. D. C. Parrish, owned a beautiful country seat in the northern part of what was then Orange, now Dur- ham, County. General and Mrs. Carr became the parents of six children: Eliza Morehead, who became the wife of Henry Corwin Flower of Kansas City, Missouri; Lallah Rooke, wife of Wil- liam F. Patton of Pennsylvania; Julian S., Jr., who married Margaret Cannon, of Concord, North Carolina; Albert Marvin; Claiborne McDowell; and Austin Heaton.
WILLIAM HOLT WILLIAMSON. In the historic Holt homestead "Locust Grove, " Alamance County, North Carolina, the home of his maternal ancestors for several generations, William Holt Williamson of Raleigh, North Carolina, was born, February 4, 1867.
Michael Holt (who died about 1785), of the first generation of the family in North Carolina (and Mr. Williamson's great-great-great-grand- father) had made settlement here at an early date, and many of his descendants, including the subject of this sketch, first saw the light of day from beneath this honored roof-tree; many of them in after years attaining distinction through nobility of character, unrivalled success in business and in the councils of the state and nation.
Edwin Michael Holt (1807-1884) a great-grand- son of the first Michael Holt (and Mr. Williamson's grandfather) established the first cotton mills south of the Potomac River for the manufacture of colored cotton goods, becoming, virtually the founder of the colored cotton goods industry in the South.
The war between the states was responsible for the scattering of many southern families and for the destruction of their records. To this calamity the Williamson family was not an excep- tion, though patient research has developed some interesting facts relative to several generations of the name and relative to the ancestry of the families into which the earlier Williamsons married.
The first of the name to whom this branch
L
Come Williamson
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HISTORY OF NORTH CAROLINA
of the Williamson family has been positively traced was Nathan Williamson (sometimes called Nathaniel) who was born (tradition says in Vir- ginia) probably about the year 1750 and who died in Caswell County, North Carolina, in the year 1839.
The earliest recorded mention of Nathan Wil- liamson (thus far discovered) is on February 9, 1780, on which date. Henry Hays, of Guilford County, conveyed to the said Nathan William- son (who is described as "of Caswell County''), 237 acres in Caswell County on both sides of County Line Creek. The price paid for the land was 125 "specie of Virginia." (Caswell County Records, Deed Book "A," p. 563.) In October, 1782, Nathan Williamson obtained by grant, from Alexander Martin, Governor of North Carolina, 200 acres in Caswell County, on the waters of County Line Creek, and adjoining John Windsor, Jeremiah Williamson, and the said Nathan Wil- liamson (Ibid, Deed Book "B," p. 140). From all appearances, one is justified in the conclusion that Nathan Williamson followed the quiet life of a farmer, while from his will and the inven- tory of his estate one learns that he was quite a successful man for his time, judging from the real and personal estate of which he was pos- sessed; among the latter a number of slaves.
Nathan Wililamson married . Sarah Swift. Mrs. Williamson was the daughter of William Swift, of Caswell County, a successful farmer and sheriff of the county in 1792 and 1793, and who had gone to Caswell County from Goochland County, Virginia. William Swift (who died in 1808) was the son of the Rev. William Swift, a minister of the Church of England, who resided in Hanover County, Virginia, where he died in 1734.
Nathan and Sarah (Swift) Williamson had issue: George Williamson; Martha Williamson, who married in 1819, Caswell Tait; Elizabetlı Williamson, who married in 1812, Samuel Smith; Frances Williamson, who married in 1799, Leon- ard Prather; Margaret Williamson. who married in 1808, Roger Simpson; John Williamson; Swift Williamson, who married in 1819, Mary Lea; Mary P. Williamson, who married in 1818, Robert S. Harris; Anthony Williamson, who married, in 1818, Eliza K. Lea; Thomas Williamson, who married Frances Pannill Banks Farish; Nathan Williamson, who died unmarried; Sarah C. Wil- liamson, who married Mr. Moss.
Thomas Williamson (son of Nathan and Sarah (Swift) Williamson) was born about the year 1782 and died in 1848. He was an extensive planter and a large merchant. Mr. Williamson though frequently urged to enter political life, declined to do so, owing to a lofty ambition to excel in his business undertakings and feeling that success could not be obtained by any divi- sion of interests. He achieved marked success in the business world, amassing a comfortable fortune for the times in which he lived; further- more, winning and holding the respect and friend- ship of all with whom he came in contact.
Thomas Williamson (1782-1848) married
Frances Pannill Banks Farish, of Chatham County, North Carolina, daughter of Thomas and Fannie (Banks) Farish, both of whom were na- tives of Virginia and whose ancestors for genera- tions had been prominent in the life of that colony. Mrs. Williamson was descended from Adam Banks, who appears as a purchaser of land in Stafford County, in 1674; Thomas Pannill of
old Rappahannock County, who died in 1677; Samuel Bayly, who resided at an early day in old Rappahannock County, dying in 1710, in Richmond County; and, from the Farishes, who settled at an early day in the Rappahannock Valley. Repre- sentatives. of all these families moved from Tide- water to the Piedmont section of Virginia; the counties of Orange, Culpepper and Madison be- coming their homes; and from which, later, their descendants removed to Southern Virginia and to North Carolina.
Thomas and Frances Pannill Banks (Farish) Williamson had issue : Anthony Swift William- son; Emily A. Williamson; Mary Elizabeth Wil- liamson; Thomas Farish Williamson; Lynn Banks Williamson; Virginia Frances Williamson; and James Nathaniel Williamson.
James Nathaniel Williamson (the last above mentioned child) was born March 6, 1842, and was therefore but six years of age at the time of his father's death. His mother, Mrs. Frances Pannill Banks (Farish) Williamson, was a woman of markedly strong characteristics, and it was with great earnestness and enthusiasm that she turned, at the death of her husband, to the careful train- ing of her young family. Thomas Williamson had desired that his son, James Nathaniel Wil- liamson, should be educated along the most lib- eral lines, and to the execution of this plan Mrs. Williamson devoted great energy.
James Nathaniel Williamson pursued his early studies in the well known preparatory school of Dr. Alexander Wilson, at Melville, Alamance County, who said of young Williamson that he was one of the "best in his classes." In 1860 Mr. Williamson entered Davidson College, and at the age of nineteen years he responded to his native state's call to her sons to arms in the war between the states. He enlisted as member of the First Company raised in Caswell County-Com- pany "A," Thirteenth North Carolina Regiment. Following the fortunes of the Confederacy to the bitter end, he served in many of the greatest battles of the war and was twice wounded, re- ceiving his parol at Appomattox as captain of Company "F," Thirty-eighth North Carolina Regiment. Returning at the close of the war to his home farm Caswell County, and amidst the chaos that then reigned, Captain Williamson, with grim determination, undertook the reconstruction of a shattered fortune. With a few faithful negroes, who were formerly numbered among his negro property, he went to work, and it was not long before order began to emerge from chaos.
Shortly after his return from the war, Cap- tain Williamson married, on September 5, 1865, Mary Elizabeth Holt. daughter of Edwin Michael Holt, of Alamance County. The branch of the Holt family of North Carolina, which resides in Alamance County, is descended from Michael Holt, who came into the colony at an early day (supposedly from Virginia) and settled in what was afterwards Orange County, now Alamance. Michael Holt secured a large grant of land from the Earl of Granville. This land, to which many additions have been made, from time to time, is now covered by the towns of Graham and Bur- lington.
Michael Holt died about 1785. His son, the second Michael Holt, had been one of the leaders for law and order, opposing the violent outrages of the Regulars prior to the Revolution, and he suffered much in consequence. He was slow in siding against the King, and, in the early days
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HISTORY OF NORTH CAROLINA
of the war period, was arrested and carried to Philadelphia, but was released upon the presenta- tion of the facts in the case. Though he did not enter the war, he did a noble part by the Army in providing for its sustenance. He was the father of five sons and five daughters. A son, Joseph, by his first wife, Margaret O'Neill, moved to Kentucky. By his second wife, Jean Lockart, he had four sons and three daughters. Michael, the sixth of these seven children, was the father of Edwin Michael Holt. To the genius, industry and indomitable perseverance of this latter is due the founding of the Holt cotton mill business in North Carolina.
Edwin M. Holt married Emily Farish and was the father of ten children, among them Mary Elizabeth Holt, who married James Nathaniel Williamson.
Mr. Holt's idea (which he shared with preced- ing generations) was that families whose inter- ests were in common, should remain together, and thus the husbands of his daughters became iden- tified with the Holt family in its large manufac- turing interests. In this spirit, Mr. Holt invited Captain Williamson to unite with him and his four sons in the manufacture of cotton goods, and Captain Williamson accepted the invitation.
For several years after his marriage Captain Williamson made his home at Locust Grove in Alamance, but after the erection, near Graham, in the same county, of the Carolina Mills, in which he was a partner, he moved to that place, where he still resides.
William Holt Williamson, of this sketch, is the son of James Nathaniel and Mary , Elizabeth (Holt) Williamson, and was born at Locust Grove, Alamance County, North Carolina, Feb- ruary 4, 1867. He was enrolled, in his seventh year, as a pupil in the school of the Rev. Archibald Currie, a school in which many prominent North Carolinians received their early education. After- wards, he attended Lynch's Preparatory School, at High Point, and in 1882, entered Davidson Col- lege. He remained in college two years after finishing the sophomore course. Though quite young to leave college, the inclination to be at work, and filial affection, developed into an irre- sistible desire to be with, and a help to, his father, in the cotton mills. After the great suc- cess of the Carolina Cotton Mills, on Haw River, Captain Williamson had built the Ossipee Cotton Mills in Alamance County, operating the latter in his own name.
In June, 1884, in the Ossipee establishment, William Holt Williamson first began work on the very "lowest rung of the ladder." For some- time he worked for but a nominal salary, which was gradually increased as his work became more effective and his ability was proved. On January 1, 1888, he was admitted to partnership in the business with a one-seventh interest. Mr. Wil- liamson was then of age, and the firm name was changed to "J. N. Williamson and Son." In 1891, James N. Williamson, Junior (a brother of William Holt Williamson) was admitted to mem- bership in the firm, and the former designation of "Son" became "Sons." Between 1888 and 1892, the firm's business was highly successful; the colored cotton cloths becoming known through- out the United States by a constantly increasing trade.
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