USA > North Carolina > History of North Carolina: North Carolina biography, Volume VI > Part 92
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Mr. Wilson has been twice married. November 13, 1883, he married Miss Brittania R. Saunders, of Plymouth, North Carolina. To that union were born six sons, all of whom have attained manhood, the oldest being Walter Brown Wilson, Jr.
Walter Brown Wilson, Jr., was born October 15,
.
1884, and received his early education at the Green- ville Male Academy under the late Prof. W. H. Ragsdale. After finishing there he attended Hor- . ner's Military School at Oxford, North Carolina. Later he received an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, but due to trouble with his eyes at this time he had to give up the appointment. He later at- tended Eastman Business College at Poughkeepsie, New York, and after graduating from there he entered the brokerage business with his father. Just recently he has given up his business to enter an officers' training camp to become an officer in Uncle Sam's army with his five soldier brothers.
Mr. Wilson's second wife was Miss Lizzie Blow, of Greenville, North Carolina, and they are the parents of two young sons, not yet of military age, Francis Quentin, born January 5, 1908, and James Blow, born June 24, 19.12.
Mr. Wilson's five soldier sons, about whom so many articles have appeared in all the leading papers of both the North and the South, are: Lieut. Col. Durward Saunders, Maj. Frank Wiley, Maj. Bascom Lee, Maj. William Rosser, and First Lieut. Carlisle Britannia.
Durward Saunders Wilson was born July 2, 1886, and received his early education at the Greenville Male Academy under the late Prof. W. H. Rags- dale. He later attended Horner's Military School, and after graduating from there received an ap- pointment to West Point, New York. He grad- uated from the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, with the class of 1910 on June 12, 1910, and was commissioned a second lieutenant of infantry and assigned to the Seven- teenth Infantry Regiment, stationed at Fort Mc- Pherson, Atlanta, Georgia, but was soon transferred to the Mexican border service at Eagle Pass, Texas. In December, 1910, he was married to Miss Olive Morrill, of Snow Hill, North Carolina. They are the parents of a little daughter, Olive Morrill Wil- son, born on March 21, 1913. In September, 1914, Lieutenant Wilson was sent to the Philippine Islands and joined the Thirteenth Infantry, with which regiment he served in the islands for three years, after which time he was transferred to the United States to the Fifty-Third Regiment of In- fantry at Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia. Just recently he has been assigned to Camp Lee, Petersburg, Vir- ginia, where he is serving at present. He has re- ceived a number of promotions since he has been in the service and at present is a lieutenant-col- onel in the Regular Army.
Frank Wiley Wilson was born April 29, 1888, and was also a student at the Greenville Male Academy under the late Prof. W. H. Ragsdale and later attended the Baltimore City College at Balti- more, Maryland. He spent one year at the Agri- cultural and Mechanical College at Raleigh, North Carolina, and then entered the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, North Carolina, in the class of 1909, and was there for three years. He belonged to the Sigma Nu fraternity. Later he studied medicine at the University of Maryland at Baltimore, Maryland, and graduated from there in the class of 1914. While there he joined the Nu Sigma Nu medical fraternity. Then he be- came an interne in the hospital of the United States Soldiers' Home at Washington, District of Columbia, and in a year's time passed the cxam- ination for a commission and was commissioned a first lieutenant in the Medical Reserved Corps of the Army. He entered the Army Medical School and after graduating from there was commissioned
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a first lieutenant in the Regular Medical Corps of the army and was assigned to the Twenty- Eighth Infantry Regiment and stationed at Fort Ringgold, Rio Grande City, Texas, and was on the Mexican border until war with Germany was de- clared and his regiment was ordered to France for overseas service. He has received two pro- motions since being in the service and at present is a major in the Regular United States Medical Corps and is doing duty in France with the Fifth United States Field Artillery.
Bascom Lee Wilson was born December 3, 1889, and received his early education at the Greenville Male Academy under the late Prof. W. H. Rags- dale and at the Greenville graded school. He later attended the Baltimore City College at Balti- more, Maryland, for one year, and then entered the University of North Carolina in the class of 1910, and while there joined the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity. After spending two years at college he accepted a position with the Bank of Greenville. Later he studied medicine at the Uni- versity of Maryland, Baltimore, Maryland, and was graduated from there with the class of 1915. While there he joined the Nu Sigma Nu medical fra- ternity. He then became an interne at the hospital of the United States Soldiers' Home at Washing- ton, District of Columbia. During his four years at the medical college he took the examination of the State Board of Medicine of Maryland and passed first on the first two years' work and passed second on the next two years. After one year at the Soldiers' Home he passed the required exam- ination and was commissioned a first lieutenant in the Reserve Corps of the Regular Medical Corps. He entered the Army Medical School and after graduating from there was commissioned a first lieutenant in the Regular United States Medical Corps and was assigned to the Twenty-Third United States Infantry and stationed at El Paso, Texas, an the Mexican border, but was soon transferred to Syracuse, New York. He married Miss Marion Dilworth, of Baltimore, Maryland, on January 15, 1917, and they are the parents of a baby daughter, Marion Dilworth Wilson, born February 13, 1918. Since being in the army service Bascom Wilson has been promoted twice and at present is a major in the United States Medical Corps and is doing duty in France.
William Rosser Wilson was born February 28, 1891, and received his early education at the Greenville Male Academy under the late Professor Ragsdale and at the Greenville graded school. He received his early military training at Bingham's Military School at Asheville, North Carolina. Later he entered the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, North Carolina, with the class of 1911 and was in college for two years. While there he joined the Sigma Nu fraternity. He left college to prepare himself for West Point, New York. He passed the examination and entered the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, on June 14, 1911, and graduated from there with the class of 1916 on June 14, 1916, after having lost one year in the academy on ac- count of pneumonia. He was commissioned a sec- ond lieutenant of infantry and assigned to the Sixteenth United States Infantry and saw his first service with the American Expeditionary Forces in Mexico with General Pershing. Later he was stationed on the Mexican border at El Paso, Texas, with the Thirty-fourth United States Infantry, at which place he was married on May 31, 1917, to Miss Elizabeth (Dolly) Evans, of El Paso,
Texas, and they are now the parents of a baby daughter, Elizabeth (Dolly) Evans Wilson, born at El Paso, Texas, March 10, 1918. Lieutenant Wilson has been promoted since being in the service and at present is a major of infantry and is stationed at Waco, Texas, with the Thirty- fourth Infantry.
Carlisle Brittania Wilson was born October 11, 1892, and received his early education at the Greenville Male Academy under the late Prof. W. H. Ragsdale and at the Greenville graded school. He entered the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, North Carolina, in the class of 1913 and was in college for two years. While there he joined the Sigma Nu fraternity. He left col- lege to accept a position with the Bank of Green- ville. Later he gave up his banking career to ac- cept an appointment to West Point, New York. He passed the examination and entered the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, on June 15, 1914, with the class of 1918. On account of the outbreak of the war with Ger- many each of the classes at the academy was graduated early and the class of 1918 was gradu- ated on August 30, 1917. He was commissioned a second lieutenant of infantry and assigned to the Twenty-first Infantry, United States Army, and stationed at San Diego, California. He has been promoted once since graduation and at pres- ent is a first lieutenant of infantry.
The Wilson family bears the distinction of being the only family on the records of the War De- partment which has five sons commissioned officers in the Regular Army of the United States of America.
BLANFORD B. DOUGHERTY. The men who succeed in any enterprise in life, the generals who win their spurs on the field of battle, the financiers who amass wealth, are men who have confidence in themselves and the courage of their convictions. There is a time in every man's life when he reaches the conclusion that envy is ignorance, that imitation is suicide and that though the world is full of good, no good thing comes to him with- out self-reliance and the power to gain results. The man who trusts himself and who plans well his part on the stage of life is a success. A strong and sterling character is like an acrostic- read it forward or backward or across, it spells the same thing. Professor Blanford B. Dough- erty, superintendent of the Appalachian Training School at Boone in Watauga County, has gained much distinction as an educator in this section of the state, and during his long connection with the above institution has succeeded in greatly raising the intellectual standard and promoting the effi- ciency of the teachers and consequently of the school system of the mountain district. It has been Professor Dougherty's life ambition to wipe out ignorance and prejudice in North Carolina through the establishment of good schools, and his first great work in this connection has been to educate and equip teachers capable of carry- ing out his ideas. The history of the Appalachian Training School is the history of the accomplish- ments of Professor Dougherty. This school is the realization of an ideal conceived by him in his early manhood and tenaciously pursued by him for his whole life, unswerved by any difficulty or circumstance.
He grew up in the very dawn of our present educational system and is distinctly one of the pioneers of our educational progress. When he
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came up through the grammar schools, high schools, as such, did not exist and the old academy was just beginning to fill up the gap which was al- most a chasm between the grammar school and the college.
In 1907, when the educational impetus, begun under Aycock, was beginning to bear fruit un- der the progressive leadership of our educators, our high schools in their present form were started by legislative enactment. But in 1903, four years previous, Professor Dougherty was so enthusiastic in establishing high schools and train- ing schools and had made such success with the Watauga Academy that he secured an appropri- ation from the Legislature for $1,500 for a building and $2,000 for yearly maintenance. His inspiration and vision must have been powerful to secure such an appropriation at that time for that purpose.
This was only a beginning. Since that time he has devoted every energy and thought to the establishing of a training school where boys and girls may be fitted to teach and to live a fuller life of usefulness, inspired with the proper mo- tives and ideals. At chapel on Tuesday, Novem- ber 13, 1917, Professor Dougherty. said :
"For our school I have an ideal: It is an in- stitution where friction is reduced to a minimum, and co-operation and congeniality are planted and successfully cultivated; an institution where all kinds of sham and neglect of duty receive no sup- port, but where students and teachers alike re- joice in the amount and in the excellency of their work; an institution where caste is not known, but where each one, if he does his work well and protects his reputation as he should-not taking advantage even with opportunity-may realize that he is the equal, not the superior, of his fel- lows; an institution where health is preserved, econ- omy taught, honor developed, and morality and re- ligion encouraged; an institution dedicated to mountain homes, to the rebuilding of mountain schools-to every interest of our mountain people; an institution that the mountaineers gladly sup- port in every way with unstinted measure, and to which they delight to make frequent visits; an institution that the mountain people rejoice to recognize as their VERY OWN.
In 1870, at Jefferson in Ashe County, North Carolina, occurred the birth of Professor Blanford B. Dougherty, a son of Daniel Boone and Ellen (Bartlett) Dougherty, both of whom are deceased. The father was born in Johnson County, Ten- nessee, the son of Elijah Dougherty. The family is of Irish origin and comes of that strong, self- reliant race of Highlanders who pioneered and settled the southern ranges of the Appalachian mountains in Western North Carolina and East- ern Tennessee. Johnson County, Tennessce, where the Dougherty family lived, was almost wholly Union in sentiment. At the beginning of the war between the states Daniel Boone Dougherty espoused the cause of the Confederacy and came into North Carolina, joined the Confederate army and served throughout the entire period of the war, at the close of which, being penniless, lie walked across the state and into the mountains of the extreme western part of North Carolina. As he journeyed he ehanced to stop at Jefferson, Ashe County, to attend special services held by the presiding elder. Sheriff Edwin C. Bartlett was an ardent Methodist and on observing the young man's interest in the services invited him
to spend as much time as he wished at his home. Such an invitation to a bountiful home was in itself a sufficient interest to a returned Confeder- ate soldier. But when Mr. Dougherty met the sheriff's daughter, Ellen, his interest became ab- sorbing. Though he was of a religious turn of mind, the meeting was no longer a thing of first importance. After his marriage he lived at Jef- ferson, until 1871, moving in that year to the vi- cinity of Boone, in the adjoining County of Wa- tauga, where he bought a large tract of land embracing a large part of the present Town of Boone. He sold off several small tracts of land and a large number of town lots in order to en- courage the building of the town. He retained 150 acres of beautiful bottom, meadow and moun- tain land which was subsequently divided among his three children, D. D. and B. B. Dougherty and Mrs. R. M. Green. He operated a mill, edited the county paper, was justice of the peace, was postmaster for the town, and was general referee of disputes and disagreements for the surround- ing country. Professor Dougherty's maternal grandfather, Edwin C. Bartlett, of Jefferson, was a prominent man in his day, serving as sheriff of Ashe County for a number of years and as a member of the Legislature. He was recognized as one of the leaders in his section of the state.
Professor Dougherty's boyhood home at Boone, where he was reared, is part of the present site of the famous Appalachian Training School, of which he and his brother were the founders. This tract of land is of great historic interest as it is the site of Daniel Boone's cabin home, a monu- ment marking the exact location of which was erected here in 1913 by Col. W. L. Bryan. This is the place from which the great explorer with his companions started on their western expe- dition, blazing their way through mountains and forests into Tennessee and Kentucky. On Octo- ber 14, 1914, the Daughters of the American Revolution had stone monuments erected marking the old Daniel Boone trail from the northwest- ern part of North Carolina across the country into Kentucky.
Professor Dougherty grew up amid the stern and repelling surroundings of the mountain coun- try, the conquering of which has ever proved a great developer of character. The family, though poor, was highly respectable, honest and very conscientious. As a young boy he helped to clear the land at Boone, even the very site on which is now located the Appalachian Training School. He grubbed trees and sometimes with five oxen hitched to a wagon hauled wood into town to sell, He was an unexcelled teamster. He was very ambitious for an education and his studies at college extended over a period of several years, as he was forced to alternate teaching and study- ing in order to finance himself. He completed his freshman year at Wake Forest College and then attended Holly Springs College, Tennessee, for one year. Following this he was principal of Globe Academy, in Caldwell County, from 1893 to 1895. He then entered the senior class at Car- son-Newman College in Tennessee, and was grad- uated in that institution, with the degree of Bachelor of Science, in the class of 1896. He then returned as principal of Globe Academy for another year and in 1897 he became teacher of Latin in Holly Springs College, where he remained for another year. In the fall of 1898 he was matriculated as a student in the senior class of
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the University of North Carolina, in which he was graduated as a Bachelor of Philosophy in the class of 1899.
In 1899 Protessor Dougherty and his brother, Professor Dauphin D. Dougherty, established Wa- tauga Academy at their home Town of Boone. This was the predecessor of the present Appala- chian Training School. Professor Dauphin D. Dougherty is a Bachelor of Arts of the class of 1892, Wake Forest College, and he was profes- sor of mathematics in Holly Springs College from 1892 until 1899. By his straightforward and di- rect manner of life, by his tireless work in every capacity, by his thoughtfulness and carefulness in every detail of school work, by his loyalty and devotion to every interest of the school, as well as everyone with whom he comes in contact, he is generally thought of as the main spring if not the right arm of the Appalachian Training School.
The Watauga Academy was begun on a very modest scale, with an appropriation of only $25 per month from the county. It had for some time been the ambition of these two brothers to establish a normal school-a thorough training school for teachers-for the especial benefit of the mountain region of North Carolina, a section which has ever seemed woefully lacking in edu- cational facilities. They realized that the first necessity for improvement was good teachers, for even with money to establish free schools little could be accomplished without trained and edu- cated teachers. Accordingly they set about to get a training school established here by the state, to form a part of the state's normal school system. To this line of the work Professor Dougherty, of this sketch, devoted his special at- tention. This work carried him through three or four years of patient labor, that required heroic effort on his part among the legislators at Ra- leigh, long drawn-out sessions with the com- mittee on education getting the leaders in state affairs lined up for his cause. It should be stated at this point that Professor Dougherty on ac- count of his thorough honesty and unselfishness, his unblemished character, his plainness of speech and manner, albeit with much tact and ready di- plomacy, won his way to a commanding position with politicians of all degrees, as well as with business men of wealth and people of large af- fairs. In the latter connection the truth is dem- onstrated by the fact that he personally called upon and became acquainted with some of the wealthiest citizens not only of North Carolina, but of eastern financial cities as well, such as New York and Philadelphia, and was given con- tributions by them for the fund to start the school.
From a circular of information issued De- cember 20, 1904, the following facts concerning the establishment of the school are gleaned. The North Carolina Legislature of 1903 established for the public school teachers of Western North Carolina the Appalachian Training School, which was subsequently located, by the chartered trus- tees, in the Town of Boone. The law creating the school provided that when the citizens do- nated $1,500 for a building the state would give the same amount and also an annual appropria- tion of $2,000 for the maintenance of the school. During the first year's work the financial agent, Professor Dougherty, of this sketch, easily secured the required amount in Watauga County, the Town of Boone giving $1,000, which secured the
school. In all he secured $10,000 in subscriptions -a handsome sum in that day, which came from almost every state east of the Mississippi. The trustees of Watauga Academy tendered the use of their commodious building, free of charge. The school year was divided into three terms: A fall term, a spring term and a summer term, and six teachers, representing .. the best North Carolina colleges, were engaged during the year.
Professor Dougherty is superintendent of this school, which is the successor to his own school, the Watauga Academy, and his brother, Professor Dauphin D. Dougherty, is head of the science de- partment and has supervisory management of most of the details of the school. In addition there is a complete faculty of seventeen of the very best talent, most of whom have college de- grees. It is most gratifying to note that the school has won its way to a place of command- ing importance. It has done and is continuing to do great things for the education and bet- termeut of the entire mountain section, and inas- much as its establishment was largely the work of Professor Dougherty and his brother, they de- serve special thanks for its success. One of the features accomplished is introducing the eastern to the western section of the state. This was a work greatly needed in North Carolina and has been brought about mainly by the graduates of the school going into other sections of the state to teach, while the teachers of those sections come up into the mountains for their summer work.
The school not only is devoted to education, but in addition aims to be of benefit generally to the mountain region. Professor Dougherty advocates all kinds of public development, the building of railroads, of good roads, the establishment of lo- cal industries that are suitable for the section and the improvement of the local farms. He has personally taken an active and leading part in the organization and promotion of railroad build- ing-efforts which are now bearing fruit, for the railroad now extends from Johnson City, Ten- nessee, to Boone. He is an educator whose ideas and activities are not confined to the school room, and as a business man his services are often sought in the organization of industries, financial institutions and public enterprises generally. He organized and the school is the owner of the New River Light & Power Company, which furnishes electric light to the school, the Town of Boone and to farmers throughout this region. The prop- erty of the school is worth about $200,000 and is constantly increasing in value. In addition to the buildings there are two big farms, compris- ing altogether 450 acres of fine land.
With all of his many duties, Professor Dough- erty was for sixteen years (1899-1915) county su- perintendent of schools of Watauga County. The . development of the schools of his county was not among the least of his accomplishments. The' value of the school property in the county in- creased from $5,000 to $30,000. He built forty- four schoolhouses, and established a loan fund of $11,000 for building schoolhouses. At one time the attendance was the best of any county in the' state. He often appeared before the legislative assemblies and urged longer terms and better sal- aries for the teachers in the public schools of the entire state. In 1916 he served on the North Carolina Text Book Commission and took an ac- tive part in securing from the publishers of text
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books contracts favorable to the children. Dur- ing the great world war he was county food ad- ministrator and chairman of the war savings stamp committee, both he and his brother sub- scribing to the limit as well as enlisting a large number of others to do the same.
Professor Dougherty is a loyal member of the Baptist Church and known for his benovelence to all good causes. Besides other aid he and his brother, D. D., gave the land for the Baptist parsonage and the valuable corner lot for the new and commodious Baptist Church.
Professor Dougherty is uniformly known as an able and highly competent man, just the one for this work. He has been commended for his ac- complishment by numerous writers in newspapers and magazines, who have investigated the work of the school; but probably the highest compli- ment of all was paid him by the North Carolina Legislature, as per the following letter, dated March 12, 1915, at Raleigh :
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