USA > North Carolina > History of North Carolina: North Carolina biography, Volume VI > Part 8
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ALFRED JULIUS KLUTZ. Greensboro has been the scene of Mr. Klutz's active independent career, and while he began life as a clerk and with only his individual resources to command, he has pros- pered and is an active official in two of the lead- ing drug houses of the city.
Mr. Klutz was born on a farm in Providence Township of Rowan County, North Carolina. His grandfather, William B. Klutz, was owner and op- erator of a plantation in Cabarrus County, aud probably spent all his life there. William B. Klutz., Jr., who was born in that section of North Carolina, grew up in rural surroundings and was busily engaged in farming and planting when the war between the states broke out. He served as a Confederate soldier, and after the war re- moved to Rowan County, buying a plantation in Providence Township. That was the scene of his labors and activities the rest of his life. He died in 1881. He married Julia A. Ludwig, who was born in Cabarrus County, daughter of J. A. Lud- wig. There were four children in the family: George A., who died at the age of forty-two years; Jennic, who died aged thirty-nine, wife of John R. Crawford; Minnie B., who married Jacob Sowers; and Albert Julius.
Mr. Klutz during his boyhood attended district school and had his higher advantages in the North Carolina College at Mount Pleasant. At the age of eighteen, having chosen a business career, he went to work as clerk in a drug store at Salis- bury, and three years later removed to Winston- Salem, where he continued clerking for about five years.
He came to Greensboro to engage in business for himself and has kept his affairs progressing until he is now secretary and treasurer of the Greens- boro Drug Company and of the Farris Klutz Drug Company. The latter company owns and operates the Greensboro Drug Store that is peculiarly a literary landmark. It was the store in which Sid- ney Porter clerked as a young man before he had earned place among the literary celebrities of the world under the name O. Henry.
Mr. Klutz is an active member of the Merchants and Manufacturers Club and the Chamber of Com- merce. belongs to the Greensboro County Club and the Rotary Club, and is affiliated with Greens- boro Lodge No. 602 of the Benevolent and Pro- tective Order of Elks. He and his wife are active in the First Lutheran Church, and he has been a deacon in that church since it was organized. In 1912 he married Miss Bessie Rankin. Mrs. Klutz was born in Guilford County, daughter of William
C. and Julia A. Rankin. The three children of Mr. and Mrs. Klutz are named Dorothy, Julia Ann and Albert Julius, Jr.
DAVID LIVINGSTONE WARD, of Newbern, has given all his best years, his best talents, and his inter- est to the law, and largely due to this concentra- tion of purpose has gained a success that ranks him among the ablest members of the North Car- olina bar.
Mr. Ward was boru in Greene County, North Carolina, October 24, 1860, and represents a prom- inent old family of North Carolina-one that was settled here iu colonial days. His grandfather, Josiah Ward, acquired an immense tract of land fronting on the Atlantic Ocean and extensively farmed it and was a man of power and influence in the locality Mr. Ward is a sou of Dr. David George Washington and Adelaide (Moye) Ward. His father was not only a physician with a large practice but owned a plantation, and before the war operated with slave labor.
David L. Ward had a liberal educatiou, despite the fact that his early childhood was spent in the period of devastation during and following the war. He attended Stantonsburg Academy in Wil- son County, under Dr. Joseph Foy, aud from there entered Wake Forest College, where he was grad- uated A. B. in 1881. He pursued the study of law with Dick & Dillard, noted lawyers and law teachers at Greensboro, and was liceused to prac- tice in February, 1883, by Justices W. H. Smith, Thomas S. Ashe and Thomas Ruffin, of the Supreme Court.
Mr. Ward began practice at Marshall in West- ern North Carolina, had his law office at Wilson one year, was associated for a time with Colonel Thomas S. Kenan, and then went west to San Francisco, California, where he was enjoying a large and lucrative law practice for eight years. At the death of his parents he returned to North Carolina, and on March 1, 1894, located at New- bern, where he has practiced steadily for the past twenty-three years. Mr. Ward's ability and tal- ents are especially well displayed in the handling of civil cases, and a practice of great variety and importance in this branch has been given him.
He served six years as county attorney of Craven County, resigning from the office in 1905 to enter the State Senate, to which he was elected in 1904. By appointment he served with the rank of colonel on the personal staff of Governor Glenn and also on the staff of Governor Kitchin. Governor Kitchin appointed him judge of the Superior Court of the third district, and while by nature and ex- perience well fitted for judicial duties he soon resigned his post in order to take up what is to him more congenial work, his private practice.
Mr. Ward is a member and chairman of the executive board of the North Carolina Bar Asso- ciation, is former chairman of the judiciary com- mittee of the association, and belongs to the American Bar Association. He is affiliated with the Kappa Alpha college fraternity, is a Knight Templar Mason and a member of Sudan Temple of the Mystic Shrine. He also belongs to the Benevo- lent and Protective Order of Elks. Mr. Ward was married February 7, 1900, to Miss Carrie Louise Schollenberg, of Philadelphia. Pennsylvania. They have three children: Emily Curran, David Living- stone and Carrie Louise.
CHARLES P. PARKER. It is a highly grateful task to be able to record and estimate as fully
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HISTORY OF NORTH CAROLINA
as possible such splendid services as have been rendered to Bladen County by two members of the Parker family, father and son, the late William J. Parker and Charles P. Parker. It was in every sense fitting that a thriving and flourishing town just across the line from Bladen County in Samp- son County should be named Parkersburg to com- memorate not only the business energy but also the civic prominence of the late William J. Parker.
William J. Parker was born in Sampson County in 1824. His father, Joel Parker, was a native of Virginia, while the grandfather was born in England. Several generations of the Parkers have lived in Sampson County. When twenty years old in 1844, William J. Parker left the old home iu Sampson County and moved into Bladen County. He acquired just one acre of land at what later became known as Cypress Creek, four miles west of the present Town of Parkersburg. He was at that time absolutely without financial resources, not even a dollar. It would be an in- teresting story to tell in detail how he went to work to make a home and place for himself in the world and how one by one those things he most desired came to him and how he earned the substantial gratitude of his fellow citizens and made a memory that will not soon perish.
At his first location he spent all the rest of his days. His energy enabled him to acquire large and valuable tracts of land surrounding him, and he developed a plantation and prior to the war was a slave owner. During the war he had charge of the Confederate Home Guards in his vicinity and was postmaster of Cypress Creek and per- formed various other useful duties for the Con- federacy. In 1846 he engaged in the mercantile business, opening a stock of goods in a store near his residence in Cypress Creek. This business was burned out in 1858 and caused the loss of nearly all his accumulations. He refused to allow the misfortune to daunt him for a single moment. He went to work, regained all he had lost, and much more besides. In the era when the turpen- tine business was the great industry of North Car- olina he became one of the most extensive turpen- tine operators and was a manufacturer on a large scale of naval stores. His mercantile interests rapidly expanded, and in 1892, when the Cape Fear and Yadkin Valley Railway was completed through this region, he established a store on the line four miles east of his old home in Samp- son County and thus inaugurated a village com- munity which was named in his honor Parkers- burg.
For all that he accomplished in a business way his memory is most secure because of the inval- uable services he rendered the county as county commissioner for sixteen years following 1876. It was not characteristic of him to render official duty in a prefunctory manner and it was the ex- traordinary energy and financial acumen he brought to bear in redeeming Bladen County from hopeless bankruptcy that makes his official term so memorable. It will be recalled that North Carolina was redeemed from the carpet-bag regime by the election of 1876, when Vance was defeated as governor. At the same election William J. Parker was elected county commissioner of Bla- den County. He and his five colleagues after brief investigation discovered that the county's fiscal affairs were in an almost hopeless condition on account of several years of corruption and mis- rule following the war. They were confronted
with a truly herculean task. William J. Parker put his whole heart in the work, and applied to it all the ability and good judgment that had made him a successful man in his own affairs. The county debt was over $40,000. The county 's scrip was not worth the paper it was printed on. In 1878 he was made chairman of the board, and throughout his term of sixteen years was inde- fatigable in effort and resource to serve the county. The result, briefly stated, is that when he left office the county was out of debt, its credit was first class, and everybody then and since has said that William J. Parker deserves a monument for what he did for the county.
The death of this splendid citizen occurred in 1896. He had lived a life of intense usefulness and high purpose for fully half a century. Prior to the war he was a whig in politics. After that struggle he was a stanch and loyal democrat. He was very religious, a generous supporter of the church and its activities, and for a long period of years served as steward of the Methodist Episcopal pal Church, South. For a number of years be was chairman of the Joint Board of Finance of the North Carolina Conference, a position of responsi- bility that has never been filled by any other lay- man in this conference. Another church service school superintendent. In character he was
which he performed many years was as Sunday stanch and true, possessed the courage of convic- tions, never compromised his principles for any consideration whatever, and proof of his stead- fastness is found in the fact that while he was county commissioner he did not allow personal friendships or neighborly relations to interfere with the exact performance of his duty. He was always willing to sacrifice temporary good will in order to insure the true welfare of the greatest number. All who knew him testified to his pro- gressiveness and enterprise and he is remembered as an advocate of good roads long before that movement was thoroughly inaugurated in the state.
William J. Parker married Amanda J. Cron.artie. She was the daughter of Patrick Cromartie, grand- daughter of John Cromartie, and great-grand- daughter of William Cromartie, who founded the Cromartie family of Bladen County in 1765 and whose descendants have continued to live on the Cromartie land there to this day. The distin- guished position of this family in North Carolina history is described elsewhere in this publication.
Whatever his other individual interests and activities have been, Charles P. Parker has always felt that life demanded of him more than anything else that he be true to the ideals and example of his honored father. The good people of Bladen County have many reasons to testify how worthily he has lived up to this ideal. He was his father's successor as a member of the Board of County Commissioners, beginning in 1891, and served the same length of time his father did, a period of sixteen years, ending in 1907. During fifteen years of this time he was chairman of the board. It was his constant aim to continue the good work of judicious administration of county affairs, and every new responsibility and emergency he tested by the wise precedence set by his father. It was during this administration that the new court house and jail were built at Elizabethtown, and much other permanent public works consum- mated and transacted. It is said that Mr. Parker made an ideal presiding officer for the board, dis- charging his duties with dignity and with as
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HISTORY OF NORTH CAROLINA
much dispatch as were justified by the importance of the matter in hand. In fact he seems to have had an especial talent for handling the responsi- bilities of county chairman. It was a work furthermore which appealed to his taste and drew out of him his best business ability. The records set by him and his father, covering a period of thirty-two years, is undoubtedly one of the long- est as well as one of the most nearly ideal that can be found in any county of the state.
Charles P. Parker was born in 1848, on the place where he has spent his entire life, the home which his father acquired in 1844. Charles P. Parker has the honor of being one of the youngest surviving veterans of the great war between the states. He served through the last three months of the war in 1865, as a private in Company I of the Second South Carolina Cavalry, being only seventeen years old at the time.
Soon after the war he entered merchandizing under his father and continued this for nearly half a century. Under the old firm name of W. J. Parker & Son the business was continued at Cypress Creek and at Parkersburg until 1914, when Mr. Parker retired. For nearly half a century the firm supplied much of the general merchandise required and consumed over the large and prosperous agricultural section surrounding the stores. Since 1914 Mr. Parker has devoted his attention to his extensive farming interests, including the management of the eleven hundred acres of land at his home place, and is also post- master of Parkersburg.
Mr. Parker married Miss Elizabeth Oneal Richardson Smith. Mrs. Parker is a member of a very interesting and historic North Carolina family. Her parents were Rev. Alexander B. and Mary A. (Richardson) Smith of Anson County. Her father was a Methodist minister, prominent for many years in the North Carolina Conference and was the first president of old Carolina College, a denominational school at An- sonville. Mrs. Parker was born in Anson County, but was reared in Bladen County at the home of her uncle, Dr. John S. Richardson.
Her Richardson ancestry goes back to the noted Colonel James Richardson, who was born at Ston- ington, Connecticut, and was a member of a fam- ily of wealthy merchants and ship owners. While traveling on one of his trading ships engaged in the English-West Indian trade he was wrecked off Cape Hatteras in 1776, and making his way to Newbern, North Carolina, determined to be- come a permanent citizen of the state. He soon afterwards settled in Bladen County on the Cape Fear River five miles below Elizabethtown. Colonel Richardson was a man of military record. He served with the British army in colonial times and commanded a regiment under Wolfe at the Battle of Quebec in the French and Indian war. Notwithstanding his former services to the Crown he was a loyal American patriot and during the Revolution was with the armies under General Greene in the South Carolina and North Car- olina campaigns. One of his cousins, Nathaniel Robinson, a member of the Provincial Congress from North Carolina, was shot by the tories. Col. James Richardson married Mrs. Elizabeth Oneal Purdie, widow of Hugh Purdie of Bladen County. Colonel Richardson developed and built one of the famous landmarks of Eastern North Carolina, known as "Harmony Hall." This is situated on the Cape Fear River twelve miles above Elizabethtown, and in ante-bellum days was
one of the famous plantations, conspicuous for its beauty of situation and surroundings. In the course of generations its owner became Rev. Samuel Neal Richardson, maternal grandfather of Mrs. Parker. This grandfather was a dis- tinguished figure in the ministry of the Method- ist Episcopal Church, South, in North Carolina.
PATRICK SIDNEY CROMARTIE is a prominent planter of Bladen County in the same district where the Cromarties as a family have lived for more than a century and a half. He is a great- grandson of the original founder of the family in America, William Cromartie, whose interesting and romantic career is briefly sketched on other pages of this work.
One of William Cromartie's sons was Alexander Cromartie, whose share of the family estate was the plantation now occupied by his grandson Patrick Sidney, a son of Patrick L. Cromartie.
Patrick L. Cromartie was born on that farm April 10, 1825, spent his life as a planter and died there September 7, 1897. He was in the Con- federate army during the war between the states. The grandfather, Alexander Cromartie, was born August 12, 1772, and his wife, Elizabeth Carr, was born in 1782.
Partiek L. Cromartie married Eleanor Faison, who died February 6, 1918. She was a member of that prominent Faison family of Sampson and Duplin counties, frequent references to which among the historic personages of eastern North Carolina are made throughout this publication.
Patrick Sidney Cromartie was born in 1869. He grew up here and his life has been lived creditably in accordance with the ideals of his ancestors. His plantation comprises between 400 and 450 acres of fine land that characterizes this section of North Carolina, situated along the South River. The plantation adjoins that of Dr. R. S. Cro- martie, elsewhere mentioned in this publication, and is about 312 miles west of the Town of Gar- land in Sampson County. The Cromartie planta- tion, however, lives in Cypress Creek Township of Bladen County, along the banks of the South River. Mr. Cromartie has developed his land as a general farming proposition, and has a handsome as well as a valuable estate. Like all his ancestors before him, he is a member of the old South River Presbyterian Church.
Mr. Cromartie married Miss Rossie Page. She was born at Harrell's Store in Sampson County, daughter of Evan and Marie Page. They have one daughter, Mary Elizabeth Cromartie.
WILLIAM G. DAVIS. The Dixie Fire Insurance Company of Greensboro is an institution with such resources and high standing among the insurance companies of the South that any official connec- tion therewith is in itself a badge of honor and an evidence of great business capacity and integ- rity. William G. Davis has been identified with the company for the past ten years, and is its treasurer, and as such is one of the well known insurance men of the state.
Mr. Davis was born on a farm belonging to his maternal grandfather located near Trinity in Randolph County, North Carolina. His great- grandfather once owned and onerated a farm in Lenoir County. His grandfather, Mandell Davis. was born in Lenoir County and owned and occupied a plantation there. His death at the age of sixty-four was the result of an accident. He married Elizabeth Rouse, who prob-
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HISTORY OF NORTH CAROLINA
ably spent all her life in Lenoir County, and lived to the advanced age of eighty-four. Of their eight sons, seven served as Confederate soldiers. Their names were Samuel, James, Robert, William, Alonzo, John and Aleck. Of these Samuel and Aleck survive, while four of the brothers died in the service and one shortly after his return home.
Aleck Davis, father of William G. was born in Lenoir County, grew up on a farm, and after his marriage began agricultural work in the upper edge of Duplin County. He enlisted from that locality and after the close of the war resumed his business connections as a merchant at Mount Olive. He spent his last years in that town. Aleck Davis married Carrie Kornegay, who was born in Lenoir County near the Wayne County line, daughter of William and Elizabeth (Wade) Konre- gay. William Kornegay was a prominent business man and planter and for many years engaged in merchandising at White Hall in Lenoir County. He owned and operated several large plantations in different counties and also coal lands at San- ford. His residence throughout his life was in Lenoir County. He and his wife had four sons and one daughter, the sons being James, William, Robert and Albert. Mrs. Carrie Davis died at the age of thirty-four years. Aleck Davis married for his second wife Bettie Barrett. Of the first marriage there were four children, Jefferson, Eva, William G. and Lola. The father by his second wife had one daughter, Mayme.
William G. Davis attended rural schools and graduated from the Laurinsburg High School. After two years of clerking in a mercantile house at Mount Olive he formed a partnership with his uncle, Robert Kornegay, and they were extensive and well known general merchants at Mount Olive for a period of sixteen years. Having sold out his interests there, Mr. Davis in 1908 came to Greens- boro to take up the work of reserved clerk with the Dixie Fire Insurance Company. He rapidly ac- quired and assimilated knowledge of the insurance business and was advanced until in 1914 he was elected treasurer of the company.
In 1892 he married Miss Maria F. Marable, who was born in Sampson County, daughter of Rev. B. F. and Octavia (Faison) Marable. Mr. and Mrs. Davis have one daughter, Virginia, now a student in the State Normal and Industrial Col- lege. Mr. and Mrs. Davis are members of the Presbyterian Church. He served as elder and deacon in the church at Mount Olive and at Greens- boro is a member of the First Presbyterian Church.
HON. ROBERT B. REDWINE. One of the most forceful and energetic citizens of Union County, Hon. Robert B. Redwine has steadfastly used his sterling legal talents in the furtherance of those movements which he has considered to be for the welfare of his community, incorporating the two characters of lawyer and citizen into a worthy and helpful personal combination which has been gen- erally accounted an example well worthy of emu- lation. Since 1891 he has been engaged in the practice of his profession at Monroe and has steadily risen to a commanding position among the legists of the county seat, where he is at present a member of the law firm of Redwine & Sikes. Both as a legislator and a private citizen he has been unsparing in contributing of his abili- ties in securing better legislation, and as a finan- cier his personal integrity has lent strength to local banking conditions.
Robert R. Redwine was born in 1860, in Union
County, North Carolina, and is a son of the late Dr. T. W. and Mary A. (Clark) Redwine. The Redwine family is of German origin, the founders of the name in this country first settling in Penn- sylvania, while the branch to which Senator Red- wine belongs located in North Carolina a few years prior to the Revolutionary war. Dr. T. W. Red- wine was born in Davidson County, North Caro- lina, April 18, 1827, and was given good educa- tional advantages, attending the best schools af- forded by that county. He read medicine at Mount Pleasant under Doctors Smith and Sted- man, and located at Samuel Howie's, in the wes- tern part of Union County, where in September, 1846, he engaged upon a career in medicine that extended over a period of fifty-three years. When the Civil war broke out Doctor Redwine enlisted and went to the front as a Confederate soldier, and in September, 1861, was elected captain of Company F, Thirty-fifth Regiment, North Caro- lina Infantry. After a brave and meritorious service he returned to his practice at the close of the war, and in 1880 was honored by his fellow- practitioners by election to the presidency of the Union County Medical Society, an honor which evidences the high quality of his ability and his standing in medical circles. In 1875 he was a member of the Constitutional Convention, repre- senting Union County with great credit to himself and his constituents. He continued in active prac- tice until 1899, in which year he retired, and lived quietly at his home until his death in January, 1911. While he was one of the leading citizens and physicians of his day and community in Union County, he was quiet and unassuming, not given to show, nor cherishing any ambitions for exalted public position, merely a skilled, learned and kindly physician, a sympathetic friend and a thor- ough gentleman of the old school. He married Miss Mary A. Clark, whose death occurred in 1889, and they became the parents of several children.
Robert B. Redwine was reared on the farm of his father in Union County and attended the famous Bingham School of North Carolina, after leaving which he began the study of law under the preceptorship of the late Dr. John Manning and Judge Shepherd, obtaining his license to prac- tice in 1889. The two legal teachers referred to were members of the faculty of the University of North Carolina, and after being admitted to the bar Mr. Redwine returned to the university for an optional literary and law course, which he pur- sued for about one year, receiving the degree of Bachelor of Laws from that institution. In 1891 he began the practice of his profession at Monroe, the county seat of his native county, a practice he has pursued with eminent success ever since, and has won abundant prosperity in life, being one of the citizens of the county who are of large ma- terial resources. In 1895 he formed a law part- nership with the late Maj. David A. Covington, an association which continued until the latter's death, and at present he is senior partner of the law. firm of Redwine & Sikes. He has always enjoyed a large law practice, both civil and criminal, and has the absolute confidence of clients, whose in- terests he makes his own. Both in and out of the courthouse he is the personification of honor and integrity, standing unflinchingly by principle and truth as he sees them.
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