I write southern historical fiction, local history, and I've written a devotional book. The two novels I'm writing are set in Virginia and the Carolinas in the 1760s. My weekly blog started out to follow my journey as a writer and a reader, but in 2025 it has been greatly expanded to include current events and politics in the United States as I see our democracy under attack from within. The political science major in me cannot sit idly by and remain silent.
Non-writers have no idea what those of us who try to write books have to put up with.
Not a week goes by that I don’t receive a phone call from someone with a very heavy accept (and I don’t mean Southern) claiming to represent a production company. Every call – and I have received hundreds of them – claim that a company wants to make a movie out of one of my books.
Sounds like an author’s dream phone call, right?
My first book!
There’s a catch. Every single one of them wants to make a movie out of my book, The Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina.
Does that still sound good?
Not exactly. In case you didn’t know, The Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, by Janet Morrison, is a book of vintage postcards.
Just imagine: A full-length feature film showing vintage postcards!
The latest scams
I was contacted several weeks ago by “Robbie who claimed to be representing the “Stimulating Book Club” in Washington, DC. Robbie said they were interested in reading Harrisburg, Did You Know? Cabarrus County History, Book 1 and even referenced several of the topics I wrote about in the book.
Keep in mind that this is a book of local history articles about Harrisburg, North Carolina, some 325 miles south of our nation’s capital.
Harrisburg, Did You Know? Cabarrus History, Book 1, by Janet Morrison
The whole thing sounded fishy to me, but I kept reading the email. “Fishy” turned into “You’ve got to be kidding!” when I got to the part that said I only had to pay them $200 to read my book!
Then, this week “Olivia Scarlett” with “The Vermont Book Club” contacted me. (I know Vermont is a small state, but really?)
Believe it or not, The Vermont Book Club wants to read … wait for it… Harrisburg, Did You Know? Cabarrus County History, Book 1. Just like “Robbie” of Washington, DC fame, “Olivia Scarlett” also referenced some details from my book – details anyone could lift from the book description on Amazon.
What were the odds?
Granted, I have touted my book of local history as perhaps being of interest to people outside of Cabarrus County, North Carolina; however, for book clubs 325 to 750 miles away to suddenly show an interest in it just a couple of weeks apart, using almost identical wording?
I was born at night, but I wasn’t born last night!
The icing on the cake came when Olivia Scarlett of The Vermont Book Club emailed me again on Friday with a “clarification” for purposes of “transparency”. She wanted to clarify that the $150 her book club charges an author is only a “logistics and promotional fee, which helps cover event organization, marketing, reader outreach, and related expenses. We understand if it’s not the right fit for everyone, but we wanted to be transparent about what the fee is used for.”
Funny… In her earlier email, Olivia Scarlett didn’t mention needing any money.
The gig is up, y’all.
When you contact me as one book club wanting $200, but then contact me as a different book club to clarify what you need the $150 for… you have committed a serious scamming error.
I belong to a book club. At our June meeting, I plan to propose that we have a fundraiser: Require authors to pay us $200 or we won’t read their book. I guess we’ll need to elect a treasurer and open a bank account. Things could get complicated.
Janet
Never take your right to read for granted.
You even have the right to read Harrisburg, Did You Know? Cabarrus County History, Book 1 – no matter where you live! After all, as I closed Saturday’s blog post about a D-Day veteran from Harrisburg, “All history is local, but no history is just local.”
Today’s blog post is in honor and memory of all those brave soldiers who stormed the beaches of Normandy on June 6, 1944 — 82 years ago today. I knew one of them – Mr. Ira Lee Taylor of Harrisburg, North Carolina, and was privileged to interview him in 2007 about his World War II experiences while I was writing a local history column for Harrisburg Horizons newspaper. He was 93 years old.
I offer the following essay that I wrote in memory of Mr. Taylor:
“Memories of World War II”
His 93-year-old blue eyes were clear as his mind was sharp, though his back was bent and he relied on a walker to navigate inside his home. When I called and asked if I could interview him about his memories of World War II, he agreed without hesitation.
Born after the war, I was embarrassed by my ignorance of its details. It seemed that every year in school we started by studying Plymouth Rock and by the end of the year scarcely managed to get to Appomattox.
With pen in hand, I knocked on Mr. Taylor’s door. The only question I had in mind to ask him was, “What did you do in the war?” That question was enough for Mr. Taylor. Over the next several visits, he recounted in amazing chronological order the places he was sent and the things he saw, heard, smelled, tasted, and felt that forever changed his life. There was a reverence in his voice. We were treading on hallowed ground.
World War II Veteran and Harrisburg Mail Carrier, Ira Lee Taylor
Training for the war was thrilling and boring for a young man from a piedmont North Carolina community of fewer than 300 people. Although he had gone off to “State College” (now, North Carolina State University at Raleigh) and earned a degree in forestry, there was a naiveté about this army draftee that followed him through the battlefields of France, Belgium, and Germany. As he regaled me with his memories of the war, I sensed that many other recruits were as “wet behind the ears” as was Mr. Taylor. They shared a heavy responsibility and had in common the mindset, “You do what you have to do.” No self-pity in that generation!
It took 11 harrowing days for Mr. Taylor’s ship to cross the Atlantic along with other troop and liberty ships. German torpedoes picked off liberty ships on the perimeter of the convoy of more than 100 ships that transported and accompanied the U.S. Army 4th Division to England. The rough ocean made some men so seasick that they said if they survived the war they were going to stay in Europe.
Mr. Taylor recalled the training he got in England for the invasion of Normandy. He just didn’t know that was what he and thousands of others were being prepared for or when their skills would be put to the test. They were ordered to waterproof the trucks in the motor pool by packing something like Play-Doh around the sparkplugs and rigging up elbow pipes to the tailpipes that could carry exhaust up higher than the roof of the trucks in case the trucks were in deep water.
It was a time of “loose lips sink ships” and even journalists understood the necessity for complete secrecy of military plans and troop movements. The soldiers didn’t know much of what was going on in the war, but it wasn’t their business to know. It was their business to train, be ready, look out for one another, and follow orders.
The night before the scheduled invasion, the men of the 4th Division were briefed. They were told that they would make the landing on Normandy and it was expected that 80 percent of them would be killed in the process. They got halfway across the English Channel when a huge storm forced them to return to Plymouth, England.
Twenty-four hours later, Mr. Taylor was on one of the 499 vessels that took part in the invasion. Utah Beach was the code name of the speck of sand on the coast of France where he began his trek across continental Europe. “The beach was filled with black smoke, dust, dirt, and the smell of gunpowder. Boy, it smelled awful!” he said.
Another thing he mentioned that is not learned by reading a history book or watching a movie is the terrible smell of the fatigues the soldiers had to wear for the invasion and for the next several days. The fatigues were impregnated with chemicals to protect the soldiers in case they were gassed.
As Mr. Taylor’s narrative progressed through the war, he spoke of the ground quivering from the concussion of exploding bombs, booby-trapped bodies of American soldiers, countless nearly-impenetrable hedgerows, the French Resistance, foxholes, rumbling tanks, waves of blooming red poppies on Flanders Field, being surrounded at Bastogne in Belgium, The Battle for Huertgen Forest where the pine and fir trees in that beautiful forest were shirred off into matchsticks, shoe mines that would blow your foot off, the snow and cold of the Battle of the Bulge, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower walking up one day and talking to him like he was just another G.I., seeing the snow-capped Alps, and seeing lots of sights he had tried to forget.
Mr. Ira Lee Taylor of Harrisburg, North Carolina, with his framed military service medals
After a seven-day calm voyage back to the States during which the troops were treated to wonderful food and entertainment and sightings of whales and their waterspouts, the ship Mr. Taylor was on entered New York Harbor. Everyone rushed to one side of the ship to see the Statue of Liberty, but the ship started listing so badly that they were ordered to redistribute themselves on the deck.
Rewarded with a 30-day furlough, Mr. Taylor returned home to North Carolina where he got married and then boarded a bus bound for Camp Butner to be trained for the invasion of Japan. One of the men on the bus had a transistor radio over which came the announcement that Japan had surrendered and the war was over. That’s how close Mr. Taylor came to being shipped to Japan after what he had lived through in Europe.
The 4th Division suffered the third highest number of casualties of any United State military Division (22,600) in World War II. Mr. Taylor considered himself very fortunate to have come home alive. He delivered mail to my house for 32 years until he retired in 1980. It was only in 2007 that I learned that he had taken part in the largest military invasion in history.
If you want to read the whole story and other things I learned while writing the “Harrisburg, Did You Know?” local history column for Harrisburg Horizons newspaper, look for my books, Harrisburg, Did You Know? Cabarrus History, Book 1 and Book 2 on Amazon and at Second Look Books in Harrisburg, North Carolina.
Janet
All history is local, but no history is just local.
When I wrote local history articles for a newspaper a few years ago, I wrote one about the building of the Charlotte Motor Speedway and another one about the first NASCAR World 600 which was run in 1960.
It was a big deal in my childhood when the speedway was built way out in the country, miles from Charlotte. It’s not out in the country any more, due to residential and business development encroaching from all sides. Numerous NASCAR racing teams built their offices and shops in the area.
The Charlotte Motor Speedway complex of today dwarfs the original track and grandstands. The racing industry continues to be an important component of the local economy. There will be three races held here this weekend: a 200-mile race on Friday, a 300-mile race on Saturday, and a 600-mile race on Sunday. The 600-mile race on Sunday is the longest race in the NASCAR circuit. It is a 1.5-mile oval track.
Photo by Frank Albrecht on Unsplash
It seems a waste, when people are struggling to pay for gasoline for their cars so they can commute to work, but it is what it is… and voicing concerns about an obscene waste of fuel for a motorsport is frowned upon in these parts.
History of the property
The location of the speedway holds a lot of history. It was built on the former plantation of Col. Moses Alexander. George Washington stopped by Col Alexander’s home on May 29, 1791, for a meal during his post-Revolutionary War tour of The South.
The area is known for having a lot of boulders. It is on the edge of a 22-mile syenite or ring dike. A syenite or ring dike/dyke is a circular dike around a volcano.
I am no expert on volcanoes, but what I have pieced together is that ring dikes form when there is no longer liquid holding the volcano up. The volcano collapses. When magma squeezes up in the cracks and faults in the collapsing volcano, ring dikes form.
It is an interesting geologic formation. In my research for writing the three-part series “Our 22-Mile Ring Dike” for the newspaper, I learned that there are also ring dikes in the White Mountains in New Hampshire, as well as in Africa, Australia, Scotland, and Scandinavia.
What is left inside the ring dike is a sunken area that resembles a bowl. There are places along the edge of the ring dike here where you can see long distances – more than 20 miles, while line-of-sight is limited within the “bowl.” Our ring dike was studied by U.S. Geological geologists Harry E. LeGrand and Henry Bell III in 1966.
Back to the speedway’s construction…
I mention the boulders and the ring dike because this became quite a problem when construction of the speedway was attempted. Anyone familiar with the community could have told them they were going to run into a lot of rocks and a lot of boulders.
The frustrated contractor, W. Owen Flowe, was quoted in the news media as saying, “You could have blindfolded me and dropped me in the mountains of Buncombe County and I could have picked an easier spot to build a race track.”
As if digging into tons of rocks was not enough to slow down construction, it snowed every Wednesday in March in 1960. The 19 inches of snow and additional rainfall made for a soupy construction site.
With the first World 600 race scheduled for Memorial Day weekend in May, the construction delays created headaches for everyone involved.
With the asphalt track not poured and the concrete grandstands not completed, on May 19, it was announced that the May 29 race had been postponed until June 19, 1960.
Fast-Forward to the 1960 World 600
Portions of the asphalt track broke down during qualifying, resulting in repairs being made right up until the night before the June 19, 1960 race. Most drivers sustained broken or cracked windshields while trying to qualify for the race. At least five race cars were outfitted with sheet metal to protect oil pans and gas tanks from flying rocks.
The original grandstands were built to accommodate 32,000 spectators, with room for 8,000 more in the infield. That first World 600 saw $107,775 awarded to the winners and top drivers. The winner, Joe Lee Johnson, took home $25,640 plus $480 for leading 48 laps.
Fast-Forward to the 2026 Coca-Cola 600
The annual 600-mile race is now sponsored by Coca-Cola, so it is the Coca-Cola 600.
It is highly unlikely that the asphalt track will fail or there will be flying rocks encountered during the race.
The 600-mile race draws 100,000 to 120,000 on-site spectators now in addition to a television audience of several million. There will be fans in attendance from all over the world.
The total purse for the 2026 Coca-Cola 600 is $13,855,363. The winner will take home $200,000 to $250,000. When I looked into it, I discovered that the $25,640 won by Joe Lee Johnson in 1960 would be the equivalent of more than $256,000 today.
Want to know more?
Harrisburg, Did You Know? Cabarrus History, Book 1 includes my articles about the Charlotte Motor Speedway and the 1960 World 600 NASCAR race, along with 89 other local history newspaper columns I wrote from 2006 through September 2009.
Harrisburg, Did You Know? Cabarrus History, Book 1, by Janet Morrison
Harrisburg, Did You Know? Cabarrus History, Book 2 includes my three articles about the 22-mile ring dike in Cabarrus County, NC along with the other 81 newspaper columns I wrote from October 2009 through December 2012. Book 2 also includes my research notes on topics I did not get to write about when the newspaper suddenly ceased publication.
Harrisburg, Did You Know? Cabarrus History, Book 2, by Janet Morrison
My books are available in paperback and e-book from Amazon and are also available in paperback at Second Look Books in Harrisburg, NC.
Janet
All history is local, but no history is just local
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 doors 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.
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, Book2, 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.
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.
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.
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
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 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:
Harrisburg, Did You Know? Cabarrus History, Book 1, by Janet Morrison
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.
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.
Harrisburg, Did You Know? Cabarrus History, Book 1, 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.
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.
Mr. Ira Lee Taylor of Harrisburg, North Carolina, was an unassuming man. I grew up knowing him as my mailman and the father of a friend at school. It wasn’t until 2006, when I started writing a local history column for Harrisburg Horizons newspaper that I learned from another local World War II U.S. Army veteran that Mr. Taylor took part in the invasion of Normandy on D-Day.
That invasion took place 81 years ago today. Very few veterans are still here to tell their stories. Interviewing Mr. Taylor a number of times in the six years I wrote for the newspaper was one of the privileges of my life.
Instead of June 6, 1944, only being a date in a history book, it became a day of incredible heroism and sacrifice as I heard Mr. Taylor’s vivid memories of that day, the training in preparation for it, and the other battles he was in throughout the war in Europe.
Mr. Taylor served in the U.S. Army’s 4th Division. The entire 4th Division left New York City on four ships on January 19, 1944. About passing the Statue of Liberty, he said, “That was a beautiful thing. We said, ‘We don’t know whether we’ll ever see you again or not.’” Many of them never did.
More than one hundred other ships joined the 4th Division over the next three days. The Liberty Ships were carrying ammunition, food, and other supplies. He said the ships would scatter during the day, but at night they would close in almost touching each other. It took eleven days for them to cross the Atlantic and arrive in Liverpool, England.
They were transported by train from there to Devonshire, England, where they trained for the invasion of Normandy which was occupied and heavily fortified by the Germans.
He talked about how they meticulously prepared their trucks and other equipment so they would be sea worthy. They practiced loading everything up and going to the port of Plymouth. From there, they would sail down the English Channel to a place that was set up to look like “Utah Beach” in Normandy where they would train for the invasion.
Each time they set out, they didn’t know whether it was the real thing or another practice run. Of course, they did not know exactly what they were training for.
After months of planning and incredible secrecy, the invasion was scheduled for June 5, 1944. General Dwight D. Eisenhower knew he had a small window of opportunity before the moon would begin to wane.
No, June 5 is not a typo. That was set as the day for the invasion. The night before, Mr. Taylor said the troops were briefed. They were told, “The 4th Division will make the landing on D-Day. We’re sacrificing the 4th Division to make that landing. We anticipate eighty percent casualties. You’ll pass two islands in the Channel on the way – one’s Guernsey and the other one’s Jersey. You might hear some shooting and all, but don’t worry about it. That doesn’t concern you at all. Two other outfits are taking care of that.”
“The morning of June 5, the gate was locked with an MP guarding it. They wouldn’t let us out, and the boys started singing, ‘Don’t Fence Me In,’” Mr. Taylor said with a chuckle. But then the mood turned somber and they knew this was it.
Mr. Taylor’s outfit set out late on the evening of June 4. They got halfway across the English Channel and a huge storm came up. General Eisenhower was forced to call off the mission, but the invasion had to take place no later than June 6.
So Mr. Taylor’s outfit loaded up again on the night of June 5 before dark. He was on one of 499 ships that took part in the invasion.
Patton’s 3rd Division, the 90th Division, and the 4th Division were all lined up, but the 4th went out first because it was to hit the beach in the first wave.
If you’ve seen the movie, “Saving Private Ryan” or some war documentaries, you might have an inkling of an idea what the invasion was like, but I don’t think any of us can really grasp the horror of it. One thing a film doesn’t give you is the smell, but Mr. Taylor talked about the smell.
He talked about how special troops sneaked onto the Normandy coast before daybreak on June 6 and disarmed many of the mines on the beaches, right under the noses of the German soldiers. At the same time, glider troops were silently landing inland carrying tanks and infantrymen. The 82nd and 101st Airborne dropped ten miles inland, behind enemy lines.
Mr. Taylor talked about the four hundred light and heavy bombers that flew over them until six o’clock in the morning.
The 4th Division missed its target by about a mile, but started landing on Utah Beach at 6:30 a.m. on June 6, 1944.
Mr. Taylor talked about the mines and the iron crosses all over the beach as the Germans anticipated an invasion, the 50-caliber machine guns, the wounded soldiers being taken back to the Landing Ship, Tank (LST) he was on. It carried twenty tanks and 200 troops and doubled as a hospital.
Mr. Taylor was in many battles, including the Battle of the Bulge and the Battle of Huertgen Forest. He had majored in Forestry at North Carolina State University at Raleigh, so he had a particular appreciation for the Huertgen Forest of fir and pine trees, but it was there that the 4th Division lost half of its men and the forest was shattered in the fighting.
Mr. Ira Lee Taylor with his World War II medals, February 24, 2007.
Needless to say, Mr. Taylor felt fortunate to survive the war. He came home, married his sweetheart, and got a job at the post office. Somehow, he put the horrors he had witnessed behind him, but in his later years he wanted to share his story. And I’m a better person for having interviewed him.
If you are interested in reading all of Mr. Taylor’s stories, my five-part newspaper series can be found in Harrisburg, Did You Know? Cabarrus History, Book 1, which is available in paperback at Second Look Books in Harrisburg and in paperback and e-book from Amazon (https://www.amazon.com/Harrisburg-Did-You-Know-Cabarrus-ebook/dp/B0BNK84LK1/). That book contains the first 91 articles I wrote for the newspaper.
Until my next blog post
Take some time today to think about the men who took part in the D-Day invasion. We owe them a debt of gratitude that we can never repay.
Janet's Writing Blog 