USA > North Carolina > History of North Carolina: North Carolina biography, Volume VI > Part 24
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Since that time he has not been a candidate for any public office but has devoted his time en- tirely to the active duties of a large general prac- tice. He is division counsel for the Atlantic Coast Line Railway, and was general counsel of the old Cape Fear and Yadkin Valley Railway prior to its incorporation into the Atlantic Coast Line Sys- tem.
Mr. Rose married Augusta Jane Steel, and has the following children: Dr. A. S. Rose; Charles G. Rose, who is a graduate of the University of North Carolina and law partner with his father, and served in the Legislature in 1911; Jennie, wife of Mr. B. A. Morgan, an attorney and banker of Greenville, South Carolina; John M. and George M., cotton merchants at Charlotte; Thomas D. Rose, electrical engineer connected with the Consolidated Gas and Electric Company of Balti- more; and Miss Lucy Rose, who resides with her parents.
Dr. A. S. Rose, oldest son of Mr. and Mrs. George M. Rose, was a highly accomplished and successful physician at Fayetteville and died Feb- ruary 15, 1918. He was born and reared in Fayetteville and was forty-five years old at the time of his death. His life and services were such as to deserve the following words that appeared in a Fayetteville paper at the time of his death: "From childhood he had shown those qualities which go to make a fine strong character-a high sense of honor, faithfulness to duty, kindness of heart, industry and energy, and a laudable ambi- tion. After graduation in the high schools, Doctor Rose entered the drug establishment in Fayette- ville of Mr. H. R. Horne, where he became a thor-
oughly equipped pharmacist. Later he entered the University College of Medicine in Richmond, Vir- ginia, and graduated and began practice at Fay- etteville in February, 1901. He built up an ex- tensive practice in the city and the surrounding country, and his large circle of patients trusted, esteemed and loved him, 'Doctor Rose' being a household name dear in many families. In his young manhood he was made a deacon in the First Presbyterian Church, was church treasurer and later chosen a ruling elder, which high church office he was holding at the time of his death. He was a member of the North Carolina State Medical Society, the American Medical Society, and the Cumberland Medical Society, being at one time president of the latter."
Dr. A. S. Rose married Miss Jean Evans, of Cumberland County. She and three children sur- vive, Susan, Augustus S., Jr., and Jean.
CALLAGHAN JOSEPH MCCARTHY. The role of a dignified and public-spirited citizen has hardly been taken to better advantage by anyone at Newbern than by C. J. McCarthy, who has never been content merely to give a passive approval to public progress, but has been in the fore- front and in the thickest of every moment and enterprise that would secure a better and greater city.
Mr. McCarthy is a native of Newbern, where he was born June 17, 1875, and is a son of Thomas Frances and Elizabeth (Colligan) McCarthy. His father has for many years been prominently identified with merchandising in Newbern, and has also been active in public af- fairs. For twenty years he represented the fourth ward in the City Council and for six years was city treasurer.
C. J. McCarthy finished his education in the Newbern Academy, and has since been asso- ciated with his father in the grocery and supply business. Besides that connection, he is secre- tary, treasurer and general manager of the New- bern-Ghent Street Railway Company and of the Ghent Land Company, and is president of the Mathers Coal Company.
The public work most closely associated with Mr. McCarthy's name, and for which he is given such high credit, was in behalf of street im- provement, and no one has done more to stimu- late that class of municipal advancement than he. He took his father's place in the City Coun- cil as alderman from the fourth ward, and for six years was chairman of the street im- provement committee. As a result of the task he initiated in improving the streets, twenty-five miles of sidewalks have been built and eight miles of high-class street pavement. That would be a creditable achievement from any standpoint, but is all the more so because it was constructed without any extra tax to the citizens. For two years Mr. McCarthy acted as mayor pro tem and for four years held the office of mayor. While he was mayor he took the leading part in the celebration of Newbern's Bi-Centennial. In recognition of his earnest and effective work for the city the municipality had placed in his honor a fountain. Mr. MeCarthy is affiliated with the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, the Woodmen of the World and the Im- proved Order of Red Men.
JULIUS TRANSON, a retired and respected citizen of Winston-Salem, represents one of the oldest
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families who settled in this section of western North Carolina.
Mr. Transon was born in Vienna Township of Forsyth County, January 1, 1832. His great- grandfather, Phillip Transon, was a native of France. He was a French Hugenot, and to escape the intolerable conditions existing in his native land he emigrated to Germany. He was married in Germany, but after a few years immigrated to America and settled in Pennsylvania. From there he came into North Carolina about 1760, locating at Bethania, where he followed his trade as a wagon maker until his death.
The grandfather of Julius Transon was Abra- ham Transon, a native of Pennsylvania, though most of his life was spent in North Carolina. He likewise learned the trade of wagon maker and fol- lowed it at Bethania all his active years. He married a Miss Pfaff, who was a member of the family which founded the place called Pfafftown in Forsyth County. Phillip Transon, father of Julius, was born at Bethania, also learned the trade of wagon maker and followed it at Pfaff, town, where he lived until his death at the age of seventy-nine. He married Mary Stoltz, who was born near Bethania, daughter of Jacob and Eva (Shultz) Stoltz. She died at the age of seventy- four. They reared eight children: Jonathan, Lydia, Ephraim, Alexander, Augustine, Jacob, Evan and Julius.
Mr. Julius Transon spent his boyhood at a time when practically no free schools existed. His book instruction was acquired in a log building with the simplest of furniture and also with a very crude curriculum. He learned the trade which had been in the family for so long, became a wagon maker, and was working in that capacity when the war broke out. In 1862 he enlisted as a musician in the Salem Band and went to the front with the Twenty-sixth Regiment. Though he was with the army until the close of hostilities, it chanced that he was home on a sick furlough when the war actu- ally closed.
After the war Mr. Transon taught music and tuned pianos for upwards of thirty years, but finally resumed work in a wagon factory, and that was his occupation until he retired in 1914. On June 10, 1855, Mr. Transon married Julia Conrad. She was born in Lewisville Township of Forsyth County, daughter of Leonard and Rebecca (Lasth) Conrad. Mr. and Mrs. Transon reared six children, Stephen, Isabella, Mary, Caroline, Minnie and Fannie.
YANCEY THOMAS ORMOND, a prominent North Carolina lawyer, now located at Kinston, has had an active career of nearly forty years and has employed it for usefulness in the field of educa- tion, agriculture, the law, politics and the promo- tion of civic welfare.
He was born in Green County, North Caro- lina, April 12, 1858, son of Thomas C. and Mar- garet A. (Edwards) Ormond. His people were substantial farmers in Green County. Mr. Or- mond was educated in the Carolina Male and Fe- male Academy in Green County, and in 1878 grad- uated from Trinity College at Old Trinity, Alamance County. After leaving college he taught school for a time but in the main was engaged in farming until 1892. For several years he was associated with his brother, Wilbur E. Ormond, as a teacher and as manager of the Burlington Acad- emy. While connected with that institution he
read law under W. H. Carroll and in 1897 was admitted to the bar.
Mr. Ormond has been in active practice at Kins- ton since 1897, and his clients and the general public have in many ways shown their apprecia- tion of his dignity and ability as a professional man.
While living in Green County Mr. Ormond was chairman of the county board of education, and became active in politics, serving as chairman of the Second Congressional District Committee. He was elected and served in the State Senate of North Carolina from 1907 to 1909, and during his term he did much to influence wise measures. He personally introduced a bill known as "For Youth- ful Delinquents, " and it was enacted into law. He also introduced a constitutional amendment regulating local legislation, and the provisions of his measure have since become law.
Mr. Ormond is a member of the North Caro- lina Bar Association, and is affiliated with the Masons, the Knights of Pythias and the Knights of Harmony. He is one of the most prominent laymen in the Methodist Church, South, in North Carolina. He is chairman of the board of stew- ards of the Queen Street Church, is a former su- perintendent of the Sunday school and is still a teacher. He is district lay leader of the New- bern District, and also conference lay leader of the North Carolina Conference and is active in the lay leaders' movement for the missionary cause.
He was married in February, 1886, at the Dis- trict Parsonage at Goldsboro, North Carolina, to Eugenie Mann, daughter of Rev. J. M. Mann, of the North Carolina Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. Mr. and Mrs. Ormond have one living daughter, Pattie Eleanor, called Bonnie, who is now Mrs. Leroy Turnage. Two of their children died in infancy, while Edward L. died at the age of nineteen, while attending Trinity College.
ASHLEY HORNE. A busy, eventful and useful career was that of the late Ashley Horne, of Clay- ton, North Carolina. Through all the vicissi- tudes that marked the course of the Southern people during the last century he pursued unde- viatingly a career which brought him place among the foremost capitalists and directors of large business interests in the state, and placed him in the ranks of the men who built up and de- veloped North Carolina in the half century after the war.
He was born on a farm March 27, 1841, a son of Benajah and Elizabeth (Tarboro) Horne. His father was a thrifty Scotch planter. As a boy Ashley began buying cattle on his father's credit. He would drive these cattle to Raleigh, sell them there, and after paying all his bills usually came out with a margin of profit for himself. Thus even as a boy he showed a great deal of enter- prise and business judgment. He had only a fair schooling, such as most boys who grew up in the period before the war could obtain.
With the outbreak of hostilities he enlisted in the Confederate army in 1861. At first he was assigned to duty in Company C of the Fifteenth North Carolina Regiment at Camp Holme. His older brother, Samuel, was a lieutenant in the Fifty-Third Regiment, and he was subsequently assigned to that, being a part of Grimes Brigade, Rhodes Division. With a brief exception his serv- ice was with Lee in Northern Virginia. He fought
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in many battles of the war, and was with Lee's shattered armies which withdrew from Richmond and finally surrendered at Appomattox.
When he returned home he found that a por- tion of Sherman's army had occupied his father's plantation in the spring of 1865, and those troops had not left a single hoof of livestock nor so much as a rail on the entire plantation. He wasted no time in idle regrets, faced the difficult circum- stances as they were, and having accumulated a small capital of $300 he began buying tobacco in Virginia and selling it in Florida. That was his real start in life, and from it he made a· name as one of the wealthiest farmers, merchants and manufacturers in North Carolina.
The interests which engaged him in his later years are to be noted briefly as follows: Presi- dent of the Clayton Banking Company; president of the Clayton Cotton Mills from 1900 until his death; president of the North Carolina Agricul- tural Society from 1903; president of the Capu- dine Chemical Company from February, 1904; vice president of the Caraleigh Phosphate and Fertilizer Works from 1890; director of the Raleigh Standard Oil Company from 1885; director of the Raleigh Commercial and Farmers Bank; director of the Caraleigh Cotton Mills; director of the Wilson Farmers Oil Company; director of the Seven Springs Security Company; director of the Eastern Life Insurance Company, and in many other important corporations.
The death of this distinguished North Carolinan occurred in October, 1913. In the way of public service he served as a member of the State Senate in 1884-85. He was on the financial committee which established the Agricultural and Mechanical College near Raleigh. He served from 1901 until his death as commander of the Colonel Walter Moore Camp of the United Confederate Veterans, and was formerly major on General Carr's Staff of State Associations of Confederate Veterans.
Mr. Horne married Cornelia Francis Lee, who became the mother of three children. He married for his second wife Rena Hasseltine Beckwith, by whom he had one daughter. Mrs. Ashley Horne now occupies the fine old homestead at Clayton.
RICHARD BERRY LANE is one of the best-known men in public life in Craven County, which he is now serving for his third term as sheriff. He is as efficient as he is popular, and his work, whether in public office or in business affairs, has always been characterized by an earnest- ness and fidelity that has justified every promo- tion and honor he has received.
Mr. Lane was born at Newbern, North Caro- lina, September 9, 1879, a son of William Bryan and Laura (Bryan) Lane. His father, who was a farmer, was also, well known in public affairs, serving at one time as sheriff of Craven County and for six years sitting in the capital at Raleigh as representative from the county.
Richard B. Lane completed his education with a high school course. After that he worked as clerk in the offices of the Atlantic and North Carolina Railway Company for five years. He was soon in politics and since manhood has been active in democratic party affairs. From 1906 to 1908 he served as register of deeds of Craven County. Following his official term in that of- fice he went back to the farm and cultivated his lands steadily for four years. In 1912 he was brought back to public office by election
as sheriff, and he was recently returned for a third consecutive term.
Mr. Lane is affiliated with the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, the Improved Order of Red Men, the Woodmen of the World and is active in the Presbyterian Church. On September 23, 1903, he married Miss Hallie Connelly, of Ches- tertown, Maryland.
ELI WALTER HILL before responding to the call for duty in the army was a well established lawyer at Goldsboro. Mr. Hill had extensive experience in the newspaper field, in politics, and while study- ing law was connected with the Goldsboro post- office.
He was born at Newport, North Carolina, April 14, 1875, a son of Michael A. and Henrietta (San- ders) Hill. His father was a farmer and at one time held the office of sheriff of Cataret County.
While his people were possessed of some means and he was reared in a good home, Mr. Hill found it wise to exert his efforts in his own behalf at an early age and has in every important sense been the architect of his own destiny. As a boy he attended the public schools, and from 1894 to 1897 was a student in Trinity College. After leaving that institution he spent two years with the News and Dispatch as a practical newspaper man, and then came to Goldsboro and from 1901 to 1908 served as money order clerk in the Goldsboro post- office. In the meantime he took up and studied so far as his opportunities permitted the law with W. C. Monroe. In 1907 he was admitted to the bar and after resigning his place in the postoffice he applied himself actively to the task of building up a practice, and succeeded beyond his fondest hopes.
In 1908 Mr. Hill made a creditable campaign for election to Congress, but was on the republican ticket and went down to defeat before the normal majority. He is an active member of the Wayne County Bar Association. He and his family are members of St. Paul's Methodist Episcopal church. On January 24, 1900, he married Miss Mamie Lindsay, of Beaufort, North Carolina, daughter of Thomas W. Lindsay.
During the summer of 1917 Mr. Hill attended both training camps for officers at Fort Ogle- thorpe, and at the elose of the second period of instruction in November was commissioned a sec- ond lieutenant. He was soon assigned to duty with the Seventeenth Machine Gun Battalion, and was stationed at Chickamauga Park, Georgia, prior to sailing for France, where at the time of publica- tion he is now on duty with his company in the American Expeditionary Forces.
ELIJAH THOMAS ATKINSON. One of the lead- ing educators of Southeastern North Carolina for many years has been Elijah Thomas Atkinson, for the past twenty-five years county superin- tendent of publie instruction for Wayne County. This is his native county and he was born on his father's farm November 2, 1861. His parents were William Franeis and Charity E. (Cox) At- kinson.
Instructed by private tutors until old enough to leave home, he had laid a sound foundation when he became a student in the King's Mountain School, where he had military as well as mental training. Later he entered Wake Forest College and in early manhood made plans for a medical
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career, subsequently spending two years of study In the medical department of Vanderbilt Uni- versity at Nashville, Tenuessee. He then turned his attention to the educational field, aud, finding it unexpectedly congenial, continued to teach school and later became connected as an instructor with Bethel Academy, a well known educational institution in Duplin County, where he remained for eight years.
In May, 1893, Mr. Atkinson was elected county superintendent of public instruction of Wayne County and assumed the duties of this positiou on June 5th following. He brought to this office a ripened mind and years of teaching experience, together with the deep iuterest which, in all sub- sequent affairs of his life, he has kept first and foremost. His devotion has been so marked and his efficiency so unmistakable that year after year he has been re-elected and probably is the oldest superintendent in point of years of service in the Southeastern. North Carolina District Association of Superintendents of Public Instruction, of which he is a valued member. He belongs also to the North Carolina County Superintendents' Asso- ciation, and to the Wayne County Teachers' Asso- ciation. He is one of the earnest men of his profession which, with changing conditions and population, finds itself face to face with educa- tional problems that their books alone cannot help them solve. Old educational methods that for- merly sufficed, such progressive and wide-awake men as Superintendent Atkinson, with ear attuned to the demands of the future, recognize must be changed to fit the times. Wayne County feels confident that in no way will the high standard set up by their superintendent ever be lowered but that on the other hand still more thorough and practical will the advantages be in the curriculum of the public schools in the future.
In political affiliation Professor Atkinson has always been a democrat but has never been par- ticularly active, although willing at all times to acknowledge his convictions and give reason for upholding them. He is serving as secretary of the county board of health. Aside from his profes- sional memberships he belongs to no organization except the Junior Order of United American Me- chanics. He was reared in the Methodist Episco- pal Church and belongs to St. Paul's at Golds- boro.
HENRY CARL BUCHAN. Some of the important problems connected with agricultural development in North Carolina have been and are being worked out on the extensive plantation near Aberdeen in Hoke County owned by the Jonathan Buchan estate. Henry Carl Buchan is a young planter of liberal education and highly specialized train- ing and is largely carrying out the thoughtful ideals and plans of his late father concerning the development of the present plantation.
His father, Jonathan Buchan, who died in 1914, was born near Manly in Moore County in 1846, a son of Archibald Buchan, a native of Scotland. Archibald on coming to America in the '30s located three miles from the present Village of Manly in Moore County. Jonathan Buchan aside from the service he rendered as a boy in the Confederate army with a Moore County regiment gave all his active years to farming and planting. He was one of the prominent men in his part of the state. His county sent him once or twice as Representa- tive to the Lower House of the State Legislature, and he was extremely interested in public affairs
of all kinds. One of the dominating ideals of his life was his strenuous, determined and implacable hostility to the liquor business. He became an advocate of prohibition in North Carolina long before the movement took on a popular character, and as such he bore the brunt of leadership for a number of years. He kept up the fight uncom- promisingly and aggressively until state wide prohibition was affected in 1907. He has been well characterized as a man without guile, with- out the slightest greed for money, enjoying always the good things and the wholesome pleasures of life, the companionship of his friends and was extremely devoted to his family and was beloved by all who knew him. He was of that fine type of character which seems to have almost passed away in this highly commercialized age.
Twenty years before his death Jonathan Buchan acquired a large body of timbered land in the ex-, treme southern end of Hoke County. While he always kept his home at Manly he grew up and cherished many ambitious plans and projects for the development of this property, hoping to make it a modern farm enterprise. He died before his ideas could be put into execution, but his son, Henry Carl Buchan, from close association with his father and natural sympathy with his plans, was inspired to carry them out and has worked faithfully and intelligently to this end.
Henry Carl Buchan was born at his father's home at Manly in Moore County in 1888, son of Jonathan E. and Belle (Robertson) Buchan. He was for three years a student in the Agricultural and Mechanical College of North Carolina, and completed his technical education and received his degree in 1911 from the Alabama Polytechnic Institute. In the fall of the same year he lo- cated on the property which had been acquired by his father and has devoted the past seven years to its development.
This plantation comprises 2,400 acres located on Drowuing Creek in the extreme southern end of Hoke County, at a point where the four counties of Moore, Richmond, Scotland and Hoke converge. This is in the edge of the famous Sand Hills sec- tion of North Carolina, where so many remarkable results have been obtained in agricultural develop- ment within recent years. Mr. Buchan has car- ried out a systematic and well calculated scheme of development. Cotton, of course, is the staple money crop, and his plantation is one of the largest individual producers of that staple among several counties. The crop in 1917 was more than 200 bales, the value of which represented a small fortune in itself. Mr. Buchan permits no hap- hazard cultivation in the handling of crops on his place. He is constantly studying to improve his methods and tactics. In 1917 on one piece of ground of eighteen acres, which was handled with special care, and on which 500 pounds of fertilizer was applied to the acre, the production of cotton reached twenty-five bales. Mr. Buchan has his plantation divided into farm units, so lo- cated as to be the most conveniently cultivated and superintended. Among other features of his culti- vation are some very fine patches of alfalfa, and he is one of the few successful growers of this legume in this part of the state. Mr. Buchan also has a very promising peach orchard of forty acres, containing over 5,000 trees. Most of the uncleared portion of the plantation contains valuable timber, which in itself is an asset. Mr. Buchan employs a large number of negro workers, and is a very effi- cient superintendent of labor, and while everyone
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is busy throughout the year, his workmen and ten- ants are a very contented and harmonious group. For all the success he has gained Mr. Buchan still remains a very young man, only thirty years old, and is therefore still at the beginning of his career. All observers predict a wonderful future for the Buchan plantation. Mr. Buchan married Miss Mary Godfrey, of Jonesboro, North Carolina, and they have one son, H. Carl, Jr.
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