Category: Local History

Newspaper Columnists Day – and My Experiences

When I say it was a great privilege for me to get to write 175 local history articles for a free local weekly newspaper in Harrisburg, North Carolina for almost seven years, it is an understatement.

I was paid $25 per article, which in no way compensated me for my time and any skill I had to write the pieces. My true payment came in the form of new friendships I formed, old friendships that were renewed, the incredible amount of history I learned, and the confidence the experience gave me to think that perhaps I did have some potential as a writer.

Harrisburg Horizons (NC) newspaper banner

As a white woman in my 50s, I did not fully understand that it was partly my white privilege that opened many doors for me – and had opened door for me my entire life. I was genuinely curious about the lives of the elderly black people who had lived their entire lives in the township in which I lived, but I will never be able to fully grasp what I was doing when I asked several of them individually to allow me into their homes to ask them some personal questions.

They had been born into a segregated society in the early years of the 20th century. I had been born into a segregated society in the early 1950s, but I was white. I could not identify with the challenges they had faced all their lives.

They opened up to me and told me things they maybe had never even told their children. I heard stories of discrimination that were mandated by law. What I did not hear from a single one of them was bitterness. That was the most impressive lesson I learned from my experience as a low-level newspaper columnist.

Getting to sit for hours with a veteran of World War II who was eager to share his memories was another experience I was honored to have while writing for Harrisburg Horizons newspaper. I got to hear first-hand the vivid memories he had while training for the D-Day invasion of France. It was from him I heard about the sights, sounds, and smells of D-Day. I heard about the relentless trudging along through non-stop war through the bloody beaches, the towns, the villages, the forests, and the farmlands of Europe.

Photo from National D-Day Memorial in Bedford, Virginia. Photograph from Library of Congress website

A stark contrast between that war and the wars in the late 20th century and early 21st century is that the World War II soldiers were there for the duration of the war. There was no deployment with a pre-announced ending date. The only way they could communicate with their loved ones was through slow-moving letters.

I approached another local World War II veteran who was on the USS Missouri and witnessed Japan’s surrender to General MacArthur, but he was disinclined to speak of the war. I respected his wishes and never spoke to him about it again. Many combat veterans do not want to talk about their experiences and we should always respect their wishes.

Many of the men and women I interviewed were parents of schoolmates of mine. I had known them to various degrees. I’d never met the mother of one of my black classmates until I went to interview her. She shared memories of attending a Rosenwald School.

Classroom in restored Siloam Rosenwald School in Charlotte, NC, 2024

The veteran of D-Day was my family’s mail carrier for decades, so I also got to interview him about his days as the only mail carrier for decades in the wider community. I only knew him as my mailman and Gail’s dad, so it was a revelation to learn that he had participated in the D-Day invasion, the Battle of the Bulge, Bastogne, the Huertgen Forest, … seeing General Dwight D. Eisenhower in person, etc.

After I wrote about a fighter pilot from Harrisburg being killed when his plane was shot down over Buigny, France during World War II, I heard from a resident of Buigny. He sent me photographs of the village and the field where Carl Higgins’ plane crashed on March 5, 1944. The D-Day veteran I interviewed said, “Carl is my hero.”

The B-26 Marauder flown by Carl Higgins, Jr. of Harrisburg, NC.

Later in his business life, the father of another of my classmates met Madame Chiang Kai-shek, wife of the Chairman of the National Government of the Republic of China. When he identified himself as being from Harrisburg, North Carolina, Madame Chiang immediately lit up and told that she remembered stopping at the depot in Harrisburg when she rode the train from Boston to Macon, Georgia to visit her sister!

First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt with Madame Chiang Kai-shek. Photo from Library of Congress website.

The father of another classmate regaled me with his memories of growing up very poor, his family moving from one farm to another as sharecroppers, his marriage to his childhood sweetheart in 1936, purchasing his first car – and being berated about that purchase by the farmer he was a sharecropper for, how he had to quit school when his older brother literally jumped a train in Harrisburg during the Great Depression and made his way to Washington, DC… and much more.

In addition to interviewing individuals, I spent hours at the public library reading old newspapers and some hand-written records on microfilm. Oh, the headaches and eye strain!

One of the unexpected gifts of writing the local history column was the vast amount of history – local and national – that I learned. I had proposed to the editor of the new (week old!) newspaper that I had an idea for a column: local history. I did so because I knew a lot of local history and I enjoyed writing.

I quickly learned that there was a massive amount of local history that I did not know. While pouring over microfilmed newspapers from the 1800s and early 1900s, I often happened upon a tidbit about an event, an organization, a government policy, a person about which I was unaware.

Examples of the things I learned by chance from those old newspapers and other resources are the meteorite that fell here in 1849, a man whose occupation in the 1880 U.S. census of Cabarrus County was listed as “witch doctor,” the evolution of information gathered over the years via the U.S. Census, a head-on collision of two trains in Harrisburg in 1897, the oldest woman in North Carolina died here in 1930 at the age of 112, and the Sauline Players whose performances I enjoyed in elementary school was a theatre troupe based here in North Carolina.

I got to correspond with a Hollywood actress, Joan McCrea, whose career started with the Sauline Players. After contacting her former agent, who contacted her current agent, Ms. McCrea called me! She gave me invaluable background and behind-the-scenes details about the Sauline Players. The two newspaper articles I wrote about the Sauline Players have garnered more response from readers here and online than any of the other columns I wrote.

Actress Joan McCrea, who got her start with the Sauline Players in North Carolina

I have just scratched the surface of my 175 newspaper articles in today’s post. When I say, “All history is local, but no history is just local,” I base that on my experience as a newspaper columnist. It was an almost seven-year writing gig that opened my eyes to delve deeper into the things I knew and to explore the new things I learned.

I count my stint as a small-time, small-town newspaper columnist as one of the highlights of my life.

If you would like to read more about the topics I’ve mentioned today and all the topics I did not mention, please look for my two books – Harrisburg, Did You Know? Cabarrus History, Book 1 and Harrisburg, Did You Know? Cabarrus History, Book 2 – on Amazon in paperback and e-book. If you live in the Charlotte area, you can find all my books in paperback at Second Look Books in Harrisburg.

Book 1 contains the first 91 newspaper columns I wrote. Book 2 contains not only the other 84 columns but also my research notes from the numerous topics I did not get to write about when Harrisburg Horizons newspaper ceased operation in 2012.

Happy reading!

Janet

All history is local, but no history is just local.

An 1897 Train Wreck in North Carolina

As part of my weekly or semi-weekly series of blog posts to highlight topics I wrote about in my two local history books, Harrisburg, Did You Know? Cabarrus History, Book 1 and Harrisburg, Did You Know? Cabarrus History, Book 2, today I will tell you a little about an April 11, 1897 train wreck in Harrisburg, North Carolina.

Although I grew up in Harrisburg in the 1950s and 1960s, I had never heard a word about that head-on collision between the north-bound Southern Railway “fast mail” train No. 36 and the south-bound passenger train No. 11 until I happened upon it while reading old newspapers on microfilm at the public library while doing other research for my local history newspaper column.

An example of a steam locomotive. Photo by Steve & Barb Sande on Unsplash.

The collision happened on an otherwise quiet Sunday morning in the tiny village that had developed along the North Carolina Railroad after a train depot was established in 1854. Newspaper accounts indicate that some area residents saw what was about to happen but were helpless to do anything.

The crash was heard for miles as the engine of No. 11 ran over the engine of No. 36. The boiler of No. 36 rested on the floor of No. 11, postal car when it was over. An express car of No. 36 left the rails and landed 150 feet from the track. A car hauling fresh produce was torn to pieces. Some train parts were thrown 75 yards.

Miraculously, none of the 96 passengers on No. 36 were injured, and many of them immediately exited the train to lend aid to the injured railroad employees.

Less than three minutes after the crash, No. 11’s postal car burst into flames. Somehow, one of the postal clerks, John Hill Carter, risked his life and extinguished the flames, thereby preventing both trains from catching fire.

The accounts of the agony suffered by the employees who were killed or injured are given in great, gory detail in the newspapers of the day, which was typical of reporting in that era.

Some employees were pinned under the wreckage, while others were badly burned by the steam from the boilers. Passengers formed a bucket brigade to throw cold water on one of the trapped men to help relieve his suffering from the steam.

The Richmond, Virginia, conductor of No. 11 was cut on the face. A porter on No. 11 was pinned in from the knees down.

Those killed in the wreck were from Monroe, Charlotte, Concord, and Thomasville, North Carolina, and Lynchburg, Virginia.

One of the passengers on No. 36 was Charles Bitterman, of New Orleans, Louisiana. He belonged to “The Riverside Wheelman” cyclist club and was on his way to a bicycle race in New York. Cycling clubs were all the rage in America and Europe in the 1890s.

If you want to learn more about the 1897 train wreck, my two local history newspaper columns about it from 2007, are found in Harrisburg, Did You Know? Cabarrus History, Book 1. It is available in paperback and e-book from Amazon and in paperback at Second Look Books in Harrisburg.

Harrisburg, Did You Know? Cabarrus History, Book 1,
by Janet Morrison

Janet

All history is local, but no history is just local.

Rosenwald Schools

In yesterday’s blog post, I wrote about the passage of the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1870. It, on paper at least, gave black men in our country the right to vote.

Of course, voting was just one of the ways that people of color were discriminated against in the United States. Today’s post looks at a very important and impactful way in which one man set out to try to level the playing field when it came to education.

Julius Rosenwald was the president of Sears, Roebuck, and Company. Mr. Rosenwald, a white man of the Jewish faith, read Booker T. Washington’s autobiography, Up From Slavery, in 1910. The book opened Rosenwald’s eyes to the inequities between the education of white children and black children.

Rosenwald got involved financially and served on the Tuskegee Institute Board of Directors. In 1912, Rosenwald gave $25,000 to Tuskegee to help it build private schools for black children across the nation. Rosenwald gave his permission for $2,500 of that gift to be used to build five public schools for black children near Tuskegee, Alabama.

The idea and project grew perhaps beyond the two men’s imaginations or expectations. Over the next 30 years, 4,977 Rosenwald Schools, 217 homes for teachers, and 163 shop buildings were built in 15 states.

There were 787 Rosenwald schools built in North Carolina, which was more than in any other state. Eleven of them were here in Cabarrus County. Three of them were in the Harrisburg section of the county, and it is those schools – Bellefonte, Morehead, and Oak Grove – that I focused on in my three-part newspaper series in 2006, which I later published in Harrisburg, Did You Know? Cabarrus History, Book 1. I do not have a photograph of any of those schools.

I drove by the Bellefonte Rosenwald School many times, but I did not know it was a Rosenwald School. In fact, I had not heard of Rosenwald Schools until about 20 years ago. I did not know Bellefonte was a Rosenwald School until after it had been burned down for practice by the fire department. That whole story is a sad situation. People making those decisions had no idea the value of the building. I think the architect’s sketch and floor diagram below are the plans used in the construction of the Bellefonte Rosenwald School.

Possible design of the Bellefonte Rosenwald School at Harrisburg, NC.

The Bellefonte Rosenwald School had two classrooms, whereas some of the schools had just one classroom. In 2023, the abandoned one-classroom Siloam (or Salome) Rosenwald School was moved from its original location in eastern Mecklenburg County, NC to the campus of the Charlotte Museum of History. It was restored and I took the photographs below in September 2024. (The museum’s website identifies it as Siloam School, but it was originally located on Salome School Road.)

Restored Siloam Rosenwald School moved to campus of Charlotte History Museum and restored in 2024
Classroom in restored Siloam Rosenwald School in Charlotte, NC, 2024

In 2006, I had the privilege of interviewing two women and one man, all in their 90s at the time, who had attended the three Rosenwald Schools in Harrisburg, NC. It was wonderful – and heartbreaking – to hear some of their memories of those days of racial segregation in our schools. I’m glad I talked to them when I did, for they are gone now. Much of their oral history would be gone with them, if I had not taken copious notes and published their memories.

Harrisburg, Did You Know? Cabarrus History, Book 1, by Janet Morrison

If you would like to read more about Rosenwald Schools in general, including how they were funded and supported by their communities, along with some details about the three located in the Harrisburg section of Cabarrus County, North Carolina, look for Harrisburg, Did You Know? Cabarrus History, Book 1 on Amazon in paperback and e-book and at Second Look Books in Harrisburg in paperback.

Janet

All history is local, but no history is just local.

The Cotton Economy of Cabarrus County

Last Tuesday, I blogged about the coming of the railroad to Harrisburg, North Carolina in 1854 (The Coming of the Railroad in 1854). After receiving several nice comments about the post, I decided to proceed with my plan to blog once-a-week about other topics I covered in my two books, Harrisburg, Did You Know? Cabarrus History, Book 1 and Harrisburg, Did You Know? Cabarrus History, Book 2.

One of my blogger friends who lives hundreds of miles from where I wrote my local history articles caught on to something I was hoping to convey: All history is local, but no history is just local.

The information contained in my two local history books does not just apply to Township One in Cabarrus County, North Carolina. Harrisburg and Township One have much local history that also applies to every small town in the United States.

Every town – big or small – in the United States started as just a collection of homes and perhaps a dirt crossroads. Roads expanded, railroads were built, family-owned grocery stores opened, electricity and telephone service eventually came. Even as Harrisburg’s history is unique to Harrisburg, it holds nuggets of the history and growing pains experienced by every town.

With that in mind, I hope a wider audience will get interested in my two history books. They are available in paperback and as e-book on Amazon and in paperback at Second Look Books in Harrisburg.

In 2009, I wrote a six-part series about “The Cotton Economy” for Harrisburg Horizons newspaper. Today’s blog post will hit on some of the details in those articles, for Cabarrus County, North Carolina was very much a cotton economy in much of the 20th century until textile mills moved to other countries.

Those six articles are in Harrisburg, Did You Know? Cabarrus History, Book 1.

Seventy years ago, most of the fields around Harrisburg, North Carolina were planted in cotton. Today, there is not a single cotton field in Cabarrus County, as far as I know.

As late as the 1960s some Harrisburg school children had to miss school for two or three weeks every fall because their families depended on them to pick cotton.

Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, but that piece of machinery turned out to be a double-edged sword. The increase in cotton production the gin sparked in the 19th century resulted in an increase in the slave trade.

By 1850 the United States produced three-fifths of the world’s cotton. Unfortunately for the South, where the cotton was grown, most of it was shipped to New England or to England to be milled into fabric.

If you are of a certain age, you may remember buying towels and sheets manufactured by Cannon Mills. Headquartered in Kannapolis, NC by the mid-1910s the company was the largest towel manufacturer in the world, and in the 1960s was the world’s largest manufacturer of household textiles. Cannon had mills all over Cabarrus and other piedmont North Carolina towns.

For decades textile mills were the biggest employer in Cabarrus County. But Cannon Mills is no more. I see some “Cannon Mills” labels in some textile products today, but those manufactured in the 21st century were not made by the Cannon Mills I’m talking about.

The Cannon Mills I’m talking about was purchased by Fieldcrest in 1986 and then by Pillowtex in 1997. Over the years, the textile mills in Cabarrus County employed fewer and fewer people due to mechanization and manufacturing moving to other countries.

If memory serves me correctly, I believe at one time there were more than 20,000 people employed in the mills in Cabarrus County. When the 7,650 people who permanently lost their jobs when Pillowtex declared bankruptcy and ceased operations on July 30, 2003, it was the largest permanent lay-off in North Carolina history.

The first cotton mill built in Cabarrus County was not built by the Cannon family. It was the Locke Mill, which still stands at the corner of Church Street and McGill Avenue in Concord, NC. It was converted into condominiums around the turn of the present century.

As I told in Part I of my newspaper series, building that first mill was a formidable and risky undertaking. The spinning frames were shipped from Fishkill, New York by sea to Georgetown, South Carolina. From there, up the Pee Dee River to Cheraw, SC, and from Cheraw to Concord by six-horse wagons

The engine that ran the steam-powered plant was shipped by sea to Wilmington, NC and up the Cape Fear River to Fayetteville, NC. From there it was transported by horse and wagon. Locke Mill began operations in 1840.

As stated in Part I in my series, “When the 1850 US Census was taken, Concord Manufacturing Company reported that its steam-powered cotton factory employed 15 males and 55 females. The males were paid an average of $12.47 per month and the females were paid an average of $4.91 per month.”

But I have gotten way ahead of myself. Most of what I included in my six newspaper articles revolves around the little cotton gins that sprang up around Harrisburg in the 1800s.

By 1850, there was a water-powered cotton gin on McKee Creek here in Township One. It was located where present-day Peach Orchard Road crosses the creek and where there is now a plan to build a couple hundred houses. That is also where Robert and William Morrison’s grist mill was in the late 1700s and early 1800s.

Samuel Wilson’s cotton gin on McKee Creek was no small operation, even though that creek is too small to hardly be noticed today. According to the 1850 US Census, Mr. Wilson reported having processed 24,000 pounds of seed cotton valued at $30,000 the previous year.

To put that in perspective, that $30,000 would be well more than $1 million today!

Wilson’s cotton gin employed four men who were paid an average of $15 per month. The gin produced 1,080 bales of ginned cotton.

While some cotton gins were water-driven, others were powered by horses.

In his 1948 paper, “Some Sketches of Rocky River Church and Vicinity,” William Eugene Alexander explained how a horse-powered cotton gin worked. Quoting Mr. Alexander in part from my book, “ʻIt took four horses, hitched two abreast, and it took two boys to drive them…. There were no lint condensers to the gins, but the lint was blown out into the lint room like a snowstorm and a hand would gather it up in a basket and carry it to the cotton press in the gin yard, where it was baled.’” (Incidentally, it was late in the 20th century before “brown lung” was recognized as a disease caused by breathing cotton dust into one’s lungs.)

Mr. Alexander’s explanation continued, “ʻThe press was constructed with a large wooden screw pin, 10 or 12 inches in diameter. This press was probably 18 or 20 feet high, and was manipulated by means of long levers, to which a mule or horse was hitched for power.’”

This blog post is getting too long, so I will just mention some of the other cotton economy things I wrote about in the other five “installments” – all of which are found in Harrisburg, Did You Know? Cabarrus History, Book 1.

Photo of the front cover of Harrisburg, Did You Know? Cabarrus History, Book 1, by Janet Morrison
Harrisburg, Did You Know? Cabarrus History, Book 1,
by Janet Morrison

As is prone to happen from time-to-time in industry, friction developed between the cotton farmers and the owners of the cotton mills. Farmers struggled to get a fair price for their cotton. The Cotton States and International Exposition was held in Atlanta, Georgia in 1895. Special train fares were advertised in the newspapers for farmers wanting to attend the Exposition. Among those farmers was one of my great-grandfathers.

There was a case of suspected suicide in 1907 by a 13-year-old Harrisburg girl who worked in a cotton mill. In my research, I found a newspaper article from Durham, NC from 1899 in which it was reported that several mills there had adopted a policy of not hiring children under 12 years old.

In my research, I also found a deed of trust at the courthouse giving the details of the purchase of machinery in 1901 for the construction of a steam-powered cotton gin near the railroad tracks by Harrisburg Improvement Company. Until electricity came into the village years later, that gin ran on steam power generated by an old locomotive steam boiler.

Have I whetted your appetite to want to read more? Look for my books on Amazon and at Second Look Books!

Janet

“All history is local, but no history is just local.” ~ Janet Morrison

The Coming of the Railroad in 1854

I wrote a local history column for Harrisburg Horizons newspaper from May 2006 through December 2012. Before you residents of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania get too excited, I will clarify that this free weekly newspaper existed in Harrisburg, North Carolina.

Of the 175 newspaper columns I wrote, six were a series of articles I wrote about “The Coming of the Railroad.” This is an important local topic for without the North Carolina Railroad there would be no Town of Harrisburg, NC today.

It’s hard to imagine the town without a railroad today, even though in an effort to establish “high-speed” rail between Charlotte and Raleigh, the at-grade railroad crossings in Harrisburg were replaced with bridges in 2013. That’s a story for another day.

Imagine a rural farming community in 1854, about halfway between Charlotte and Concord. Was everyone excited about the coming of the railroad? Farmers were probably not happy about the piercing whistles of the steam engines scaring their livestock, but they were possibly pacified by the fact that the depot planned for the community would give them a convenient way to sell their agricultural products.

Photo of a steam train
Photo by Claud Richmond on Unsplash. (NOT a photo of a Harrisburg, NC steam train.)

Prior to the coming of the railroad, it is said that it sometimes cost a farmer half his profits to transport his produce to market by wagon. Poor roads and distances to markets prohibited the transporting of perishables very far.

Although Charlotte has a population of a million people now, in 1854 it had a whopping 1,000. The State of North Carolina decided it would be good for the economy to construct a railroad from Goldsboro, in the eastern part of the state, to Charlotte in the southern piedmont.

The State sold bonds in New York City to finance the project. Ten thousand shares were sold at $100 each.

Goldsboro was chosen because it had rail service to the port at Wilmington, NC. A railroad from the south to Charlotte and one from the north to Danville, Virginia, which threatened to extend a line to Charlotte, would surely mean that goods from western North Carolina would be shipped to Virginia or to the port at Charleston, South Carolina.

It was understood from the beginning that much of the construction labor for the project would be undertaken by slaves of property owners living along the rail right-of-way. Some of the slave owners were paid on a yearly basis for supplying their slaves for the project.

I found it interesting that wrought iron T-rails manufactured in Wales were used in the initial construction of the 223-mile-long railroad. The rails weighed 60 pounds per yard and were brought in through the port at Charleston.

In the early 1850s, a steam locomotive needed on average a cord of wood (that’s a stack of wood eight feet long, four feet wide, and four feet high) and 1,000 gallons of water for every twenty-five miles. A tender could carry that much wood and water. That is what dictated the approximate distances between some train stations.

That’s how the little farming community of Harrisburg, North Carolina got a train depot and the designation as Harris Depot on maps.

If you are interested in learning more about the North Carolina Railroad and the ways the coming of the railroad and depot changed life in a farming community in the early 1850s, look for my book, Harrisburg, Did You Know? Cabarrus History, Books 1 and 2. Book 1 contains the first 94 local history articles I wrote, including the series about the railroad. Book 2 contains the other 84 local history articles I wrote, including more articles that reference the railroad.

Topics in the two books include such things as the blowing up of the King’s gun powder in 1771, a minuteman in the American Revolution, President George Washington’s 1791 visit, the 22-mile ring dyke the town sits in, general stores, family-owned groceries stores, education in the 1800s and three Rosenwald Schools, how the town got phone service and electricity, our Ukrainian doctor (Nicholas E. Lubchenko) who escaped from the Russian Army, the cotton economy of the area until the mid-20th century, Hurricane Hugo in 1989, floods, earthquakes, the building of roads and bridges, the changes necessitated by the high-speed rail project, mail service from the 1800s until the early 21st century, the construction of the Charlotte Motor Speedway and the running of the first World 600 NASCAR race in 1960… and much more.

Here are the links for purchasing the books on Amazon:

Photo of the front cover of Harrisburg, Did You Know? Cabarrus History, Book 1, by Janet Morrison
Harrisburg, Did You Know? Cabarrus History, Book 1,
by Janet Morrison

Book 1, in paperback: https://www.amazon.com/Harrisburg-Did-You-Know-Cabarrus/dp/1888858044/

Book 1, in e-book: https://www.amazon.com/Harrisburg-Did-You-Know-Cabarrus-ebook/dp/B0BNK84LK1/

Photo of front cover of Harrisburg, Did You Know? Cabarrus History, Book 2, by Janet Morrison
Harrisburg, Did You Know? Cabarrus History, Book 2,
by Janet Morrison

Book 2, in paperback: https://www.amazon.com/Harrisburg-Did-You-Know-Cabarrus/dp/B0BW2QMLHC/

Book 2, in e-book: https://www.amazon.com/Harrisburg-Did-You-Know-Cabarrus-ebook/dp/B0BXBQ1F79/

If you live in the Harrisburg, NC area, you can find the books in paperback, Tuesday through Saturday, at Second Look Books, 4519 School House Commons.

I hope my blog post today whetted your appetite for reading more about the history of our little town of 20,000 now. I imagine many of our local stories are similar to ones in your town’s history.

Janet

The government should be afraid of its citizens, not the other way around.

“If This House Could Talk” – historical essay

Today’s blog post is about the last story in my new book, Traveling Through History: A Collection of Historical Short Stories.

Traveling Through History: A Collection of Historical Short Stories, by Janet Morrison

The house

Actually, “If This House Could Talk” is more of an essay than a short story. It is written from the viewpoint of an old abandoned one-and-a-half-story wooden farmhouse that I saw a thousand times in my life.

That house fascinated me because it did not face the main road. It faced a dirt driveway that led to a couple of other houses. Often, when we would pass it, my father would point and say, “the old Snell place was over there.” I didn’t know any Snells and, as a child, did not care that they once “lived over there.”

It was only after I was an adult and discovered the 1777 estate papers of my Morrison 4th-great-grandparents that I discovered that Francis Snell taught my 3rd-great-grandfather in the 1770s. By then, I had also met a descendant of Mr. Snell’s who lived in Ohio.

Why is it that you don’t know what questions to ask your parents until after they are gone? But I digress.

The essay/story

“If This House Could Talk” is set in the 1970s, a few years before the house at the center of this essay was demolished. After doing some genealogical and Civil War research, I discovered some incredible things about the family that occupied that house in the mid-1800s.

I did not know the history of the house until I was researching the 72 men and boys from Rocky River Presbyterian Church in Cabarrus County, North Carolina, who were killed or died of disease during the Civil War.

“If This House Could Talk” gives that house an opportunity to tell us what it witnessed during that time as it reminisced about a much different time more than 100 years earlier. There were happy times and sad times for the family that house sheltered when it was young.

What kind of memories is your home making, in case a writer decides to let it talk years from now?

Links to the blog posts about the other 12 stories

I hope you have enjoyed reading about each of the stories in Traveling Through History: A Collection of Historical Short Stories over the last several months in my blog. If you like my book or know someone who might, tell them that they can get a print or electronic copy on Amazon or a print copy at Second Look Books in Harrisburg, NC.

In case you missed any of the 12 earlier blog posts about the stories in my book, here are the links: “The Tailor’s Shears” – Historical Short Story; “You Couldn’t Help But Like Bob” — historical short story; “To Run or Not to Run” – historical short story; “Making the Best of a Tragedy” – historical short story; “From Scotland to America” – historical short story; “Whom Can We Trust?” – historical short story; “Go fight, Johnny!” – historical short story; “A Letter from Sharpsburg” – historical fiction; “Slip Sliding Away” – historical short story; “Plott Hound Called Buddy” – historical short story; “Secrets of a Foster Child” – historical short story; and “Ghost of the Battle of Guilford Courthouse” – historical ghost story.

Update on Hurricane Helene recovery in North Carolina

As we get further away from September 2024’s Hurricane Helene, it is easy to forget how long it takes for a place and a people to recover from a natural disaster of such proportions. I have little new to report since my last update on February 2.

Hurricane Helene has dropped from the news cycles even here in North Carolina, except for an occasional reference, but I’m still trying to shine an occasional light on the recovery on my blog.

Via Facebook I keep up with some of the things Beloved Asheville has done and continues to do since the hurricane. As of last week, Beloved Asheville delivered its 140th new home to a family who lost their home in the flood. After living in an RV for 17 months, another family finally has a home. It might just look like a mobile home to a lot of people, but it is life-changing for this family. To learn more about Beloved Asheville, go to https://www.belovedasheville.com.

Several roads remain closed in the mountains due to the record-breaking rain (upwards of 30 inches in some places) during Hurricane Helene. For example, I read that Sampson Road in Watauga County reopened a couple of weeks ago after two sections were washed out during the storm. When a road “washes out” in the mountains, it often means that the road and all the soil beneath it slid down the mountainside. It is a feat of engineering to rebuild the roadbed so the road can be reconstructed. That is one reason why recovery takes so long in the mountains.

Portions of the Blue Ridge Parkway have not reopened since Hurricane Helene. I-40 at the North Carolina-Tennessee border remains just one lane in each direction with a 35 mile-per-hour speed limit. Highway construction is hampered by snow and ice in the winter months.

The National Park Service reported: “As of February 12, 2026, many sections of the Parkway remain closed due to winter weather, though recreation is authorized at your own risk in these areas. Specific closures include a bridge rehabilitation project from milepost 63.5 to 63.9, with detours in place. Visitors should exercise caution, as ungated sections may still be accessible but are subject to emergency closures.”

There were at least 57 landslides in the 269 miles of the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina. Work is ongoing and has moved into Phase 2 in which repairs to 21 landslides between milepost 318.2 and 323.4 are underway, with completion expected by fall 2026. That includes the North Toe River Valley Overlook, Chestoa View Trail, and Bear Den Overlook.

Sign blocking travel by car, bike, or on foot on National Park Service property on Blue Ridge Parkway at Asheville, NC, June 10, 2025
A road closure sign on the Blue Ridge Parkway in June 2025.

The thousands of us who are fans of the Blue Ridge Parkway can hardly wait for all of it to reopen. I’ve read hints that that might occur by the end of 2026.

One of my best vacations ever was a leisurely drive down the Blue Ridge Parkway from its beginning just southeast of Waynesboro, Virginia to its end near Great Smoky Mountains National Park in North Carolina. The wildflowers were spectacular and so varied all along the 469 miles!

Businesses in the affected areas continue to rebuild and reopen. Many had to relocate and many will not reopen. Brother Wolf Animal Rescue, which I have mentioned in earlier blog posts, is relocating to higher ground in Asheville. I understand that the town of Lake Lure is well on its way to reopening for the summer tourist season and the lake itself is expected to be back to full-pond stage in May.

The town of Chimney Rock, just a few miles up US-74 from Lake Lure, is still in recovery mode, as the little tourist village was almost wiped off the map by the hurricane.

Life in my part of the state quickly returned to normal after the hurricane, with only small pockets of flooding, but life and the landscape were changed forever in various hard-hit parts of the Appalachian Mountains in the western part of North Carolina.

Janet

The government should be afraid of its citizens, not the other way around.

“Whom Can We Trust?” – historical short story

Once-a-week, since November 25, I have blogged about a different story from my new book, Traveling Through History: A Collection of Historical Short Stories.

The sixth story in the book is “Whom Can We Trust? A Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence Short Story.”

Tradition tells us that Archibald and Maggie Sellers McCurdy built their log cabin in what is now Cabarrus County, North Carolina, in 1773. At that time, Cabarrus had not yet been formed out of the eastern part of old Mecklenburg County. Their house was on the National Register of Historic Places until vandals burned it down a few years ago. Sadly, I never did see the house, but I have seen photographs of it and detailed floor plans and exterior drawings have been preserved.

Archibald McCurdy’s gravestone at Spears Graveyard of Rocky Ri er Presbyterian Church, Cabarrus County, North Carolina

Those drawings and photographs made it easy for me to imagine the McCurdys’ lives. Theirs are names I’ve heard all my life. Archibald was a foot solider in the militia during the Revolutionary War. Maggie was a patriot in her own right, as she earned the name “She-Devil” by the British and Tories. I explain a couple of her feats in the Author’s Note at the end of “Whom Can We Trust?”

Marker placed at Archibald McCurdy’s grave by the Daughters of the American Revolution

The story is set in May 1775 at the time of the signing of the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence. I was inspired by a story I’ve heard all my life about what Archibald McCurdy did on the day that document was signed.

In case you missed them here are the links to my blog posts about the first five stories in my book: “The Tailor’s Shears” – Historical Short Story, “You Couldn’t Help But Like Bob” — historical short story, “To Run or Not to Run” – historical short story, “Making the Best of a Tragedy” – historical short story, and “From Scotland to America” – historical short story.

Where to purchase Traveling Through History: A Collection of Historical Short Stories

You can find my new short story collection on Amazon in e-book (https://www.amazon.com/Traveling-Through-History-Collection-Historical-ebook/dp/B0FZQBMC2Q/)  and paperback (https://www.amazon.com/Traveling-Through-History-Collection-Historical/dp/B0FZSR6FPX/.)

You can find the paperback at Second Look Books in Harrisburg, NC, or ask for it at your local independent bookstore. Bookstores can order it from IngramSpark.

Janet

#OnThis Day: A 1777 Estate Sale

When late October rolls around, I think of my great-great-great-great-grandfather’s estate sale held on October 29, 1777.

I knew nothing about it until a few years ago, but what a treasure trove of information his estate papers held! If you aren’t interested in history or your ancestors, you probably won’t read this post. That’s all right. Perhaps a few of you will be curious enough to keep reading.

I have a special bond with my fourth-great grandfather because I live on a little sliver of the land he purchased when he got to North Carolina from Scotland in the 1760s. I walk on the same dirt he walked on. I see some of the species of wild animals he saw. I cross the same creeks he crossed. I belong to the same church he belonged to. His blood flows in my veins.

John Morison (he wrote his name with one “r”) was baptized in the Lowland Church of Scotland in Campbeltown on the Kintyre Peninsula in 1726. He and his two younger brothers came to Pennsylvania for an unknown length of time before purchasing land and settling in North Carolina in the 1760s.

John wrote his will on August 30, 1777, “being very sick & weak in body, though in perfect mind & memory.” In his will, he outlined provisions for his pregnant wife, their eight living children, and their unborn child. In less than a week, John was dead.

Although he had left such things as land, livestock, money, some farm implements, and saddles to his wife and children and the spouses of his eldest daughters, there were things that needed to be settled up through an estate sale.

Defying the fact that John’s estate sale was held in the middle of the American Revolutionary War, all the little scraps of paper and receipts from the settling of his estate survived and are preserved at the State Archives of North Carolina.

 Along with all those tiny pieces of paper which indicate everything from the purchase of “burial liquor” to the educating of his children, are page after page of the record of his October 29, 1777, estate sale.

It amazes me that when combined, John’s will and estate sale tell us everything the man owned. Being the first person in his family’s history to own a piece of land, it is astounding!

He wasn’t a man of great wealth, compared to the aristocracy, but to have come from where he came from I believe he did quite well for himself and his family. He would, no doubt be amazed to know that some of his 7th-great-grandchildren now reside on some of the land he purchased in the 1760s and 1770s.

I promised you a blog post about his estate sale, so let’s get to it.

The sale

Robert Harris, Jr. served as clerk. Mr. Harris had beautiful penmanship and was meticulous in his duties that day. He wrote down every item, who bought it, and how many pounds, pence, or shillings they paid.

Photo of a close-up of a sheep's face with other sheep in the background
Photo by Sam Carter on Unsplash

Items sold at the estate sale included eight horses; 19 sheep; 25 head of cattle; 17 hogs and a parcel of pigs; three hives of bees; 17 geese and ganders; 25 pounds of wool; a parcel of books; a great coat; two straight coats and jackets; one pair of blue britches; a pair of old buckskin britches; and a fur hat. (Oh, how I’d love to know the titles of that “parcel of books!”)

Photo of a stack of books
Photo by Claudia Wolff on Unsplash
Photo of two honeybees on a puffy yellow flower
Photo by Sies Kranen on Unsplash

Also, four saddles; five bells and collars; five other collars; six bridles; two sets of horse gears; an “M” branding iron; three augurs; a drawing knife; nailing and stone hammers; a broadax; three weeding hoes; two maulrings; a wedge; a clivish; a sprouting hoe; a mattock; two falling axes; three spinning wheels; two horse trees and hangings; a cutting knife and stone; a sythe and cradle; four sickles; a flax brake; a pair of wool cards; and a pair of cotton cards.

Photo of a while horse's head with a bridle installed on it.
Photo by chris robert on Unsplash

Also, barrels for flour, rice, beef, and salt; a tapper vessel; two cedar churns; oak and walnut chests; two smoothing irons; a looking glass; one whiskey keg; and various other tools, household items, and pieces of furniture.

Other items included 6.5 pounds of iron and 14.5 pounds of steel. Steel as we know it today had not yet been developed. In 1777, steel was the name for sharpening rods used to sharpen knives and other cutting edges.

Half a wagon?

The most puzzling record in John Morrison’s estate papers is that John Springs bought half a wagon and half the wagon implements. Since no one bought the other half, it has been speculated that Mr. Springs knew that John’s wife, Mary, needed the use of the wagon but also needed the proceeds from the sale of the wagon and implements. After all, Mary was a widow with seven children still at home and a baby on the way. Perhaps Mr. Springs made a verbal agreement to let Mary Morrison keep the wagon even though he paid half the value of the wagon at the estate sale.

Another possibility is that John Morrison had bought the wagon and implements from John Springs but had only paid half the bill at the time of his death. Mr. Springs, instead of saddling Mary Morrison with the additional debt of the unpaid balance chose to simply pay her husband’s estate the half that John still owed. When Mary Morrison died in 1781, there is no mention of a wagon in her will or her estate sale.

Lots of ammunition!

Other intriguing items sold at John Morrison’s estate sale were the 17 pounds of gun powder and 55.5 pounds of lead. That’s more gun powder and lead than a farmer needed. So why did John Morrison have so much of both?

John wrote his will on August 30, 1777. By September 3, he was dead. It is speculated that he was stockpiling munitions for the patriots’ cause in the American Revolution and that he was shot by Tories, but we will never know for certain.

Janet

No place for a preacher’s son!

For today’s blog post, I’m taking advantage of a local history column I wrote for Harrisburg Horizons newspaper on August 23, 2006.

If you enjoy this post, you might enjoy the books in which I published the local history column articles I wrote from 2006 through 2012, Harrisburg, Did You Know? Cabarrus History, Book 1 and Harrisburg, Did You Know? Cabarrus History, Book 2. The story I’m sharing today is found in Book 1.

Photo of the front cover of Harrisburg, Did You Know? Cabarrus History, Book 1, by Janet Morrison
Harrisburg, Did You Know? Cabarrus History, Book 1,
by Janet Morrison

Photo of front cover of Harrisburg, Did You Know? Cabarrus History, Book 2, by Janet Morrison
Harrisburg, Did You Know? Cabarrus History, Book 2,
by Janet Morrison

The articles I wrote for the newspaper came primarily from the history of Township One in Cabarrus County, North Carolina, but many topics would be of general interest to anyone who enjoys reading about history. They are specific to Cabarrus County, yet many of them are indicative of life in rural and small-town America since the 1700s.

My books are available at Second Look Books in Harrisburg, NC and on Amazon.

Sit back, and prepare to be transported to a simpler time in the 1870s.

“Pioneer Mills: No Place For a Preacher’s Son”

Did you know that there is a written account of a child’s memories of the Harrisburg area in the 1870s?

The Rev. Joseph B. Mack came from Charleston, South Carolina in 1871 to be the pastor of Rocky River Presbyterian Church. When he and his family arrived, the manse the congregation was building for his family to live in was not completed.

Church member Robert Harvey Morrison moved his own family into a tenant house and gave the new minister’s family his home in the Pioneer Mills community. Pioneer Mills was a gold-mining boom town in the early- to mid-19th century. It was apparently still a rip-roarin’ place in 1871.

Photo of the Robert Harvey Morrison House in Pioneer Mills Community in Cabarrus County, NC
Robert Harvey Morrison House

A special homecoming was held at the church on August 12, 1912. Rev. Mack’s son, Dr. William Mack, was unable to attend. He sent his regrets from New York and put some of his childhood memories on paper. Fortunately for us, his letter to homecoming master of ceremonies Mr. Morrison Caldwell was printed in the Concord newspapers the following week.

Dr. Mack wrote, “My first Rocky River recollection is getting off the train at Harris Depot and going in the dark to the home of Uncle Solomon Harris.” I don’t believe Dr. Mack was related to Mr. Harris. This was probably a term of endearment and respect.

He continued, “There we met Ed and ‘Little Jim’ (to distinguish him from ‘Big Jim,’ the son of Mr. McKamie Harris.) Uncle Solomon had the biggest fire-place I ever saw; it seemed as big as a barn door.

“Shortly afterwards we went to Pioneer Mills…. There… was the old Gold mine, Barnhardt’s store and McAnulty’s shoemaker shop…. While there I decided to become either a merchant or shoemaker, for Barnhardt’s store and McAnulty’s shop kindled young ambitions; better to ‘keep store’ or ‘mend shoes,’ than as a preacher’s son to be moving around from place to place.

“But Pioneer Mills was ‘no place for a preacher’s son.’ Soon we moved again; this time to the brand new brick parsonage, close by the church. We used to go to church in a big closed carriage drawn by two mules; now, every Sunday, we walked to church, going down a steep hill, across a branch, and through the grove to the famous old house of worship.”

Dr. Mack’s letter also read, “Those were happy years; happy in springtime with its apple blossoms, song birds, morning-glories and Tish McKinley’s Sassafras tea; happy in the summertime with its blackberries and plums, its bob-whites in the wheat fields, its lightning and thunder storms, its bare-footed boys and girls, and its bitter quinine to keep off third-day chills; happy in the autumntime, with its white fields of unpicked cotton and its beautiful trees with leaves of myriad hues; and happy in the wintertime, with its snows, its big hickory back-logs, its boys in boots red-topped and toes brass-tipped, its red-cheeked girls in wraps and ‘choke rags,’ and its Christmas Holidays and turkeys.”

Dr. Mack’s colorful memories paint an idyllic picture of life in Township #1 in the early 1870s. Will the children of 2006 have equally as wonderful memories?

(Published in Harrisburg Horizons newspaper, August 23, 2006.)

Resources: The Presbyterian Congregation on Rocky River, by Thomas Hugh Spence, Jr., 1954; The Concord Daily Tribune, August 16, 1912; and The Concord Times, August 19, 1912.

Hurricane Helene Update

As of Friday, of the 1,468 road closures in North Carolina due to Hurricane Helene last September, 33 are still closed and 39 have partial access. Interstate 40 near the Tennessee line will be limited to one lane traffic in each direction with a 35 mile-per-hour speed limit for the foreseeable future.

On a happy note, on Friday, a 38-mile stretch of the Blue Ridge Parkway opened from Asheville to Graveyard Fields and Mount Pisgah! This is south of Asheville.

Hurricane Erin

On the other end of the state, Hurricane Erin skirted the Outer Banks of North Carolina last week, dumping tons of sand and water on NC Highway 12. NC-12 is the only highway connecting Hatteras Island to the islands to the north. Crews are working to reopen the highway as soon as possible as the summer tourist season is winding down.

Janet

#OnThisDay: Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence, 1775

Today is the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. It predated the national Declaration of Independence by more than a year.

A recreation of the
Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence.

In case it sounds familiar, I have blogged about the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence on or near May 20th several times in the more than ten years I’ve been blogging.

My immigrant ancestors were among the Scottish Presbyterian pioneers who settled old Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. Years of discontent in the American colonies were piled on top of the anti-British Crown feelings they brought with them across the Atlantic.

Weary of unfair taxes imposed by the Crown and the discrimination they were subjected to as Presbyterians slowly brought the settlers to the boiling point. An example of the persecution these Presbyterians felt were the Vestry and Marriage Acts of 1769. Those acts fined Presbyterian ministers who dared to conduct marriage ceremonies. Only Anglican marriages were recognized by the government.

On May 20, 1775, the citizens of Mecklenburg County, North Carolina declared themselves to be free and independent of the rule of Great Britain. It was a sober and sobering declaration not entered into lightly. Those American patriots meant business, and they knew the risks they were taking.

Archibald McCurdy, an elder in Rocky River Presbyterian Church, heard the document read from the steps of the log courthouse in Charlotte. When he got home, he and his wife, Maggie, listed everyone they knew of who could be trusted in the coming fight for American independence.

No original copies of the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence survive today. The local copy was lost in a house fire at the home of one of the signers. The copy taken to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia by Captain James Jack on horseback was also lost. Later, signers of the document recreated it from memory.

Nevertheless, those of us who were raised on stories of the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence and the brave souls who risked their lives to sign it know that the document was real. The blood of the American patriots still flows in our veins and their spirit of freedom still beats in our hearts.

Hurricane Helene Update

As of last Friday, 54 roads in North Carolina were still closed due to Hurricane Helene. That count included five US highways, four state highways, and 45 state roads. That’s a decrease of one state highway and one state road since the week before.

Until my next blog post

I hope you have a good book to read.

Remember the people of Ukraine and western North Carolina. Their situations are quite different, but the people in both places are stressed and weary.

Janet