USA > North Carolina > Wake County > History of Wake County, North Carolina, with sketches of those who have most influenced its development > Part 12
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THE OLD PAGE MIL.L "DOWN ON CRABTREE," BUILT AND OPERATED BY THE CDANNFATHER OF WAITER HINES PAGE
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In a hilly country it had long been the cus- tom to run the furrows horizontally around the hill-sides, but a field cultivated after Mr. Mangum's plan had attained the same object more perfectly by its regular terraces made by throwing up a very high ridge beside a deep furrow and then smoothing it into shape with a sort of wooden scraper after the soil was thus heaped up. It was a simple expedient never thought of before.
The first Professor of Agriculture at the "State College," seeing the condition and the necessity, showed how the labor of throwing up these terraces could be lessened by turning several furrows together to form the neces- sary ridge by means of the plow. So when- ever the terraces curl around the hillsides, and the crops grow greener upon the ridges where the soil is stirred deeper and is better drained, we see a real contribution made to economics by a plain man who used his wits to meet his daily problems. This simple plan has been of untold benefit, not only in Wake County where it originated, but also has meant millions to the whole red-clay country of the Piedmont South.
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HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY
After the first spurt toward improvement, there supervened a long period of depression. Cotton went down in price year by year. The remaining lumber was cut down to the bare soil as never before. Wake County had not made any good beginning at restoration for many years after the War.
In Raleigh there was a certain sum of money which must be regularly spent there because it was the Capital; but as Wake County was neither rich nor level, and as its varieties in soil made it hard to manage, because what succeeded on one farm might not suit on an- other, a good farmer could just make a living, and a poor one went ever deeper in the mire.
Another time of emigration began, not so much from the elder folk, or from the farms, but from the ranks of bright young men, who could go anywhere where larger rewards were to be found for their labor.
It was during these pinching times that there grew up at Cary, nine miles from Raleigh, one of our most distinguished North Carolinians, one who has not yet fully come into his deserved fame. This was Walter Page, born of a Wake County family, which
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had been here since early years, one of a num- ber of brothers, all men more than ordinary in ability, and recognized by them as being the ablest of them all.
They agreed to give him the college educa- tion which they did not all feel free to take in this struggling time with fortunes to make.
This Walter Page found his mind busy with the problems of the country he loved, where his fathers had lived for generations.
He wondered why it was that men of good minds and good characters, living under a de- lightful climate, and with no worse soil than was cultivated to advantage in many other places, could exist with so little of hope and en- couragement that life was but a servitude to the average farmer. He could see the great need of some change. His first business ven- ture, in the eighties, was the publication of a weekly newspaper in Raleigh. Although this did not turn out a financial success, yet it sowed much seed which has since come to fruition. A circle of young men in Raleigh, himself among them, talked over at length this feeling of futility, this lack of real progress in Wake County and outside. They found a
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HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY
lack of specific information as to real condi- tions and actual needs of the Southern country, an uncertainty as to the economic questions of southern life, to be one of the great defects of the era. The old formulas did not fit the new times. This coterie, this debating society of young men, not only discussed problems, but decided upon the remedy to suggest.
It is declared by those who watched the signs of the times in these early eighties, that never, until the Watauga Club and the State . Chronicle put it there, was the phrase "indus- trial education" ever set up in type in North Carolina.
This Watauga Club, of which Walter Page was one of the leading spirits, decided that there should be an industrial school where boys could receive a thorough vocational training, fitting them for the task of subduing material, whether it be wood, or metal or re- fractory soil, and making it serve man's needs. They talked the matter over thoroughly, and decided to memorialize the Legislature in be- half of such an institution.
The farmers of the State were prompt to recognize that here was an opportunity.
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Under the leadership of Elias Carr, of Edge- combe, afterwards Governor, and of L. L. Polk, the editor of the Progressive Farmer, they favored the idea but wished to have it carried further.
They wanted the Land Scrip funds, which came from the Federal Government and which were used in an irrelevant manner by the Uni- versity, to be added to the endowment al- ready provided by the fertilizer tax.
Private subscription, a State contribution of part of the Camp Mangum tract to the west of town, and the generous donation of sixty acres adjoining to Pullen Park, given by Mr. Stanhope Pullen for a site, were assembled as the assets of the new institution, after its in- corporation was enacted. To this the Land Scrip was a substantial addition.
It is an interesting item in connection with the expanded idea of the Watauga Club, that both Wake Forest and Davidson Colleges were first started as industrial schools and as soon were augmented into real colleges.
The first building erected at the Agricultural and Mechanical College, as its official title was first bestowed, was finished by Peniten-
THE BIRTHPLACE OF WALTER H. PAGE, AT CARY, WAKE COUNTY, AMBASSADOR AT THE COURT OF ST. JAMES UNDER PRESIDENT WOODROW WILSON
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tiary labor, and the institution was opened in 1890. It was first of all a place where our boys could be taught to win a good livelihood by some creative work.
In the same year was first felt the stirring of the impulse toward a beginning of manu- factures, and money was subscribed to build cotton mills, and after that a fertilizer factory. It seems a long time that affairs had been stag- nant before the changes began to come, but when once initiated, development has been steady and much has been accomplished. There is as yet no stoppage of this steady de- velopment, and it has brought about a wonder- ful alteration in the look of things. Here and there is a farm run so efficiently as to be really making the best of all conditions, while the whole general practice of farming has im- proved wonderfully.
The coming of Rural Free Delivery has been a great aid to the farmer who was suffi- ciently educated to use the help lavished up- on him so freely by the Federal and State Departments of Agriculture.
Formerly a farmer had to go to Raleigh once a week, seldom oftener, and would get his
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mail. It was the exception if he took a paper. Now and then a letter or a patent medicine circular was about all he ever expected. He might hear the news of the day as he stood about the streets, and might return with a feeling of the existence of a world outside, but his wife and children got none of this. Life was stagnant of interest for them. There was now a wholesome change.
Newspapers and magazines became more plentiful, and farmers could read something that was of special interest to their rural life. Now and then a boy would insist on going to the Agricultural College, and contrary to the predictions of the older folk, book farming was found not so unsuccessful after all.
Factories were built in the good old North Carolina fashion of placing them in country surroundings, with rows of comfortable houses, very much more livable, one would think, than the loneliness of the one-horse farms whence their workers were recruited. These factory suburbs, with pleasant gardens to each little home, are seen on several sides of Raleigh.
The spread of the plant of the State College over the hills to the west goes on; a new build-
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ing or so breaks into the skyline every year as the boys keep coming; while the well culti- vated acres of the College Farm extend fur- ther, and the big cattle barns are almost at Method. Here we see another outpost of Raleigh.
In the town proper, inside the city limits, the two older schools for girls, Saint Mary's and Peace, with the newer Meredith College (Baptist), bigger and more advanced in stand- ard than either, make the school population of Raleigh amount to thousands of young folk each winter.
The State offices are growing greater each year as the social service side of the govern- ment reaches out more and more in influence for good each year. We have had the State Hospital for the Insane, and the institutions for the blind, and for the colored deaf, dumb and blind, for many years. There are two colored schools for higher education, sup- ported by Northern capital, and there is at Method a village of negroes and also an indus- trial school for the colored race, both founded by the generosity of one of their own people, a man of means.
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This city of Raleigh while it is not yet an overgrown, swollen metropolis, is as pretty and as pleasant looking, as busy and hopeful a place today as any city of its size in the United States.
Its people are the same that they ever have been. Newcomers are made welcome to follow our own ways. The homogeneity of society in this city makes for the kindliest feeling between all classes, and it is a town of homes, of moderate fortunes, and of many children.
As you ride out on any of these thirteen great highways that extend in every direction like the spokes of a wheel, you find yourself in a smiling country. One can ride for hundreds of miles over the good roads of Wake County without repeating a single mile.
Of the smaller towns which girdle the Coun- ty round, there is Cary, birthplace of the Pages, a small town before the War; Apex seven miles further, which was also a small village until the railroads made it a good sized country town; Garner grown up on the South- ern Railroad, as Apex on the Seaboard; Zebulon and Wendell, sister towns with their great rural High School buildings standing
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half way between them, and their streets of pleasant homes, none over twenty years old.
Wake Forest has been a town since 1833, when Wake Forest College began its benefi- cent career, and now it has beside the college, its own cotton factory, in its own country suburb.
Other places have their factories and schools also. Rolesville has not had a railroad to build her up, and while perhaps the oldest community outside Raleigh, has not increased since the War. Fuquay Springs, where mineral water attracted people for health, has become a good tobacco market, and has grown rapidly since the railroad came, while the water re- mains as good as ever. They, too, have their school building, as has Holly Springs. In Cary the Rural Life High School dominates the town as is fitting in Walter Page's old home.
With churches and schools and farms and factories, and descendants of those good old families who came here to build our first civili- zation, and with those like-minded who have come in to help them and continue it, this County of Wake is a most pleasant, whole- some place in which to live.
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As one young person who was forced to move away from the old town of Raleigh quite unwillingly was heard to say, "Don't you know that the finest people in the whole world live right here in Raleigh?" And this world is made up of folks far more than it is made up of acres, or of climate or of resources or of dollars.
Given the right folks, a place can be as worth-while as one pleases.
North Carolina Society of the Colonial Dames of America
WAKE COUNTY COMMITTEE
Chairmen
MRS. SPIER WHITAKER
MRS. ELVIRA WORTH MOFFITT
MRS. ALEXANDER BOYD ANDREWS
MRS. FRANKLIN MCNEILL
MRS. WILLIAM JOHNSTON ANDREWS
Secretaries MRS. HARRY LOEB MRS. JAMES J. THOMAS MRS. JOSEPH REDINGTON CHAMBERLAIN
Assistant Secretary MISS MARTHA HAWKINS BAILEY
Treasurers MRS. HARRY LOEB MRS. J. J. THOMAS MRS. S. W. BREWER
Custodian of House in which President Andrew Johnson was Born MRS. S. W. BREWER [297]
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WAKE COUNTY COMMITTEE
MRS. JOHN ANDERSON (Lucy Worth London) *MRS. ALEXANDER BOYD ANDREWS (Julia Martha Johnston)
*MRS. ALEXANDER BOYD ANDREWS, JR. (Helen May Sharples)
MRS. WILLIAM JOHNSTON ANDREWS (Augusta Webb Ford)
§ MRS. WILLIAM H. BAGLEY (Adelaide Ann Worth)
MISS MARTHA HAWKINS BAILEY
MRS. THOMAS WALTER BICKETT (Fannie Yarborough)
MRS. SAMUEL WAITE BREWER (Bessie Sarissa Felt)
MRS. RICHARD S. BUSBEE (Margaret Simons Clarkson)
*MRS. BALDY A. CAPEHART (Lucy Catherine Moore)
MRS. JOSEPH REDINGTON CHAMBERLAIN (Hope Summerell)
*MRS. WALTER CLARK (Susan Washington Graham)
MRS. W. A. GRAHAM CLARK (Pearl Chadwick Heck)
MRS. COLLIER COBB (Mary Knox Gatlin)
*Deceased § Transferred to other Committees
-
WAKE COUNTY COMMITTEE 299
MRS. J. S. COBB (Jane Williams) MRS. JAMES H. GORDON (Betsey Louise London)
MRS. JOSEPHUS DANIELS (Addie Worth Bagley)
MISS SALLIE DORTCH
MRS. GEORGE DIX (Janet Dortch)
MRS. DAVID I. FORT (Elizabeth Robinson)
§MRS. LEO FOSTER (Mary Marshall Martin) MISS CAROLINE BREVARD GRAHAM
MRS. B. H. GRIFFIN (Margaret Smith)
MRS. HUBERT HAYWOOD (Emily Ryan Benbury)
MRS. J. M. HECK (Mattie A. Callendine)
MRS. JOHN W. HINSDALE (Ellen Devereux)
MISS MARY HILLIARD HINTON
*MRS. ALEXANDER Q. HOLLADAY (Virginia Randolph Bolling)
MRS. ERWIN ALLAN HOLT (Mary Warren Davis)
*Deceased
§ Transferred to other Committees
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WAKE COUNTY COMMITTEE
MRS. ARMISTEAD JONES (Nannie Branch) *MRS. GARLAND JONES (Florence Monterey Hill)
§MISS MARY FRANCES JONES *MRS. PAUL HINTON LEE (Ellen S. Tyson)
MISS MARGARET TYSON LEE
*MRS. AUGUSTUS M. LEWIS (Sara Matilda Gorham)
MRS. HARRY LOEB (Bessie Armistead Batchellor)
MRS. HENRY ARMAND LONDON (Bettie Louise Jackson)
MRS. HENRY M. LONDON (Mamie Elliot)
MRS. ISAAC MANNING (Mary Best Jones)
SMRS WILLIAM M. MARKS (Jane Hawkins Andrews)
§MRS. WILLIAM J. MARTIN (Lizzie MacMillan)
§MRS. ELVIRA WORTH MOFFITT (Elvira E. Worth)
MRS. BEN W. MOORE (Katherine Badger)
*Deceased
§Transferred to other Committees
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WAKE COUNTY COMMITTEE
*MRS. MONTFORD McGEHEE (Sarah Polk Badger) MRS. JOHN ALLAN MACLEAN (Eugenia Graham Clark) MRS. FRANKLIN MCNEILL (Jennie Elliot)
MRS. JAMES KEMP PLUMMER (Lucy Williams Haywood)
MRS. EDWARD W. POU (Carrie Haughton Ihrie)
MRS. IVAN PROCTOR (Lucy Briggs Marriott)
MRS. WILLIAM E. SHIPP (Margaret Busbee)
MRS. WALTER M. STEARNS (Mary Haywood Fowle)
§MRS. FRANK LINCOLN STEVENS (Adeline Chapman)
MRS. FRANK MORTON STRONACH (Isabel Cameron Hay)
MRS. GEORGE SYME (Harriet Haywood)
MRS. JAMES J. THOMAS (Lula Olive Felt)
MRS. ROBERT L. THOMPSON (Annie Busbee)
*Deceased § Transferred to other Committees
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WAKE COUNTY COMMITTEE
*MRS. PLATT D. WALKER (Nettie Reid Covington)
MRS. WILLIAM L. WALL (Annie Cameron Collins) MRS. THURMAN CARY WESCOTT (Daisy Holt Haywood)
*MRS. SPIER WHITAKER (Fannie de Berniere Hooper)
§*MRS. GEORGE TAYLOR WINSTON (Caroline Sophia Taylor)
*MRS. WILLIAM ALPHONSO WITHERS (Elizabeth Witherspoon Daniel)
MRS. CARL A. WOODRUFF (Effie Hicks Haywood)
MRS. EDWIN S. YARBOROUGH (Nellie Elliot)
*Deceased §Transferred to other Committees
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