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for "Kammerer, Roger"
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23408
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It was once said that fire was the greatest factor in the development of Greenville. This is evident by the amount of fires that have afflicted the town of Greenville since its beginning. Fire destroyed the Pitt County Court House in 1858 and the County Jail in 1875. The great fire on Dec. 30, 1879 destroyed 12 stores and numerous other businesses. The fire of 1896 destroyed the businesses for a whole block on both sides of Evans Street. On May 4, 1899, a large fire destroyed the businesses on both sides of Evans Street between Fourth and Fifth Streets. On Feb. 24, 1910, a disastrous fire destroyed the Court House and numerous stores
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23409
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Scouting first began in Greenville in 1910. W.T. Lipscombe and Rev. C.M. Rock organized the first scout troop and James E. West organized a troop in 1916 led by Dr. N.E. Edgerton. This troop disbanded in 1923, and Victor M. Davis and Wyatt Brown reorganized it in 1924. This troop disbanded in 1926, and the scouts went through a series of reorganizing and disbanding. The Eighth Street Christian Church organized a new troop in November 1934. The Immanuel Baptist Church sponsored the formation of the WPA Scouts in January 1943. There were two black and four white Boy Scout troops in Greenville in 1938. In 1950, there were five white troops and seven black troops in Pitt County.
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23410
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The City of Greenville has been blessed to be home of numerous talented musicians. Kammerer gives small biographies of these famous musicians that include: Joseph Christopher Columbus Morris, aka Joe Morris, aka Chris Columbus (1902-2002) jazz drummer; Sonny Payne (son of Morris) (1926-1979) also a famous drummer; A. Cecil Ellington and John William (Bill) Riggins, Greenville businessmen and former Big Band men; and Dr. Billy Taylor, who was born in Greenville in 1921 and became one of America’s Jazz greats.
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23411
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Charles W. Shuff moved to Greenville, N.C. in May 1922 as branch manager of the Imperial Tobacco Company. Shuff and his wife, Hattie Pitts Shuff, bought a lot on Fifth Street from J.M. and Walter L. Harrington on April 1, 1924. On this lot, they built the Shuff House, one of the largest Colonial Revival houses in Greenville, in 1925. They raised three children there, and their daughter Phyllis C. Shuff and her husband Joseph Smith, Jr. moved into the house. Christopher Woelkers purchased the Shuff house and turned it into \"The 5th Street Inn,\" Greenville's first bed & breakfast inn.
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Record #:
23412
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Helen Keller (1880-1968) perhaps the most celebrated woman in America in her time, and her teacher, Mrs. Anne Sullivan Macy, came to Greenville on tour on May 1, 1916. She spoke at the East Carolina Teachers Training School and a large crowd found her to be “intelligent, brilliant, cheerful, witty, and the very soul of happiness.” The address began with Mrs. Macy who gave a sketch of Keller’s life and prepared the audience to meet her in person. Keller was then led out on the stage to the rostrum, smiling and bowing. The enthralled crowd erupted in applause. While giving her talk, Keller caught the odor of a lily and wanted to find it. Mrs. Macy led her to it and Keller smelled and caressed it and said: “beautiful, beautiful.” The local newspaper the next day proclaimed that everyone felt they had “witnessed a miracle in seeing Helen Keller.”
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Record #:
23413
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These are excerpts from a book to be published in the future entitled “The Forgotten Tales of North Carolina,” by Tom Painter and Roger Kammerer. The first story is about a man named Spence preaching “Sanctification” in Wake County, who secretly set up a series of posts and planks in a local pond to demonstrate his ability to walk on water in April 1898. The night before his stunt, pranksters removed one of the planks, and when Spence attempted his “miracle” the next day in front of a crowd he fell into the pond. For many years a 90-foot whalebone once acted as a bridge across Fishing Creek from the Nash to the Halifax county side. At a Confederate reunion in Durham, N.C. in 1914, General J.S. Carr and Major J.M. Hamilton got into a heated argument and slapped each other. On February 25, 1853, in Tarboro, NC, at the peculiar hour of midnight, Miss Sarah Susan Elizabeth Panza Mills and Senor Don Alonzo Edgar Howard were married, after one hour’s acquaintance. In 1899, a farmer in Halifax County found a tin of gold coins while plowing his field. The coins, a foreign, dated from 1715 to 1775.
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Record #:
23414
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The Evans Family Cemetery is the oldest cemetery in Greenville. Richard Evans, founder of Martinsborough (later Greenville), owned the cemetery in 1771.\r\nThe Smith Cemetery that once existed behind East Carolina University's Self Help/Proctor Hotel Building was the next oldest cemetery. A \"Mr. Brooks\" was supposedly buried in the garden of Major Benjamin M. Selby in the 1830s. In 1858, a public cemetery once located near Tenth Street became the final resting place for Civil War soldiers, but the soldiers remains were moved to Cherry Hill Cemetery about 1873. In 1831, the Baptists of Greenville buried a member near their church.\r\nCherry Hill Cemetery was created in 1873 when Tilman R. Cherry donated land to the Methodist and Episcopal churches for a cemetery. An area at the railroad tracks of west Fifth Street was reportedly a place to bury black paupers. Parker's Cemetery on Reade's Street was a cemetery for executed paupers and criminals.\r\nThe Sycamore Hill Baptist Church had a cemetery next to the church. In 1924, the Greenville Alderman turned 30 acres of the James Brown farm into \"Greenwood Cemetery.\" \r\n
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Record #:
23415
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These are excerpts from a book to be published in the future entitled “The Boy With America In His Eyes, and other Strange Tales of North Carolina,” by Tom Painter and Roger Kammerer. These stories include: In 1888, Capt. Lorenzo Willis and crew killed a monster shark in Carteret County, NC,18 feet long, 8 feet across the breast and two tons in weight after a two-hour fight; Six-toed Marines in WWII causes issues; In 1898, many families in Rutherford County gave their children strange names like Zaluski, Quitina Quiltina Quinn, and Linsco; an Indian skeleton in a canoe was found in a marl bed in Pitt County in 1878; in 1954, Mrs. G. S. Thomas of Rocky Mount, NC, the only surviving daughter left in North Carolina of the War of 1812; in 1899, there was evidence of the practice of drawing a witch on a cypress tree and shooting it with silver bullets to remove an evil spell in Sampson County, NC; and a boy with America in the pupils of his eyes from Greene County, NC in 1894.
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Record #:
23416
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The old Winterville Academy was the outgrowth of local citizens trying to educate the children of their community. By 1895, Nannie C. Cox (1865-1939) bought a lot in the new town of Winterville and with the help of her brother, built a boarding house and school on her lot. The two-teacher school opened in 1895 and it became a very popular and influential school. This school went down about 1900 and another denominational school was built in Winterville by A. G. Cox and Dr. Beriah T. Cox in 1900. It opened in January 1901 as the “Winterville Academy” with G. E. Lineberry as principal. It incorporated as the “Winterville High School” in February 1901. The school survived several fires and reopened in 1920 as a public high school. It later became the A. G. Cox Middle School and was finally razed in 1974.
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Record #:
23417
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The Act that created Pitt County on January 1, 1761 also called for the creation of a courthouse, prison, and stocks on John Hardee's land who also donated his house as the first courthouse of Pitt County. An Act of the State Assembly in 1775 appointed George Evans, Charles Forbes, Henry Ellis, Benjamin May, and William Roberson to oversee the building of a new courthouse, completed in Martinsborough around 1776. Following a petition by Pitt County to implement an annual tax to build a third courthouse in 1789, the government appointed James Armstrong, Shadrach Allen, John Moye, Arthur Forbes, Samuel Simpson, Benjamin Bell, and William Blount to oversee the process. The builders completed the third courthouse about 1792 on the courthouse square at the corner of Evans and Third Street. George Eason, James Blow, Bryan Grimes, Goold Hoyt and John Norcott commissioned Goold Hoyt to build the fourth courthouse, completed in 1834. A man named Croom burned this courthouse down on January 7, 1858 in order to destroy a will. A Pitt County committee awarded the contract to Dabney Cosbey to build the fifth courthouse in August 1858, though the courthouse was not completed until 1877. This courthouse burned down on February 24, 1910. The architectural firm of Milburn and Heister of Baltimore Maryland designed the sixth and final courthouse, built in 1911.
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Record #:
23418
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It was in 1920 that W. P. Clarke, A. T. Tripp, and Claude D. Tunstall formed the Clarke-Tripp Amuzu Company to convert Forbes Mill Pond, about three miles from downtown Greenville, into a pleasure resort. They had a large dance pavilion, electric lights, showers, pier and the mill pond. They offered season tickets and had a bus running from town out to the park. They began having financial trouble by 1922 and by October 1922 the park was sold at public auction to satisfy its creditors. The park was bought by the newly formed Greenville Country Club. The Greenville Country Club kept the old Forbes Mill and lake until the dam was dynamited in 1927 and the lake drained.
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Record #:
23419
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The Imperial Tobacco Company came to Greenville in April 1902 as the result of a tobacco war started by James B. Duke of Durham, N.C. The company purchased land from Charles T. Munford in N.C. on April 24, 1902, and the building of the Imperial Tobacco factory in Greenville began in May 1902. The architect of the building was H.J. Blauvelt, and the contractor was Charles H. East. D.J. Rose added an addition to the building in late 1917 to August 1918 and another in 1934. Earl C. Wilson purchased the plant in 1981 and turned it into the Greenville Storage and Distribution Company. In May 1990, a terrible fire burned half the building. The other half was waiting to be developed. The building was an architectural treasure and a monument to the glory days of tobacco in Greenville’s past.
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Record #:
23420
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The mule, which was for a long time the symbol of Southern agriculture, gave way to mechanization and vanished from the scene in North Carolina. Kammerer gives a touching remembrance of the importance of the mule on the farm. It was believed that mules attracted lightning, that kissing a mule prevented scarlet fever and seeing a gray mule was good luck. He retells several stories about mules from Pitt County and believes them to be beautiful creatures and knew they knew they were. Tobacco production was directly related to the population of mules in Pitt County. J.W. Page allegedly had the smartest mule in Pitt County in 1892. A man from Beaver Dam Township had a hog in a mule-drawn cart in December 1892 and the hog bit the mule's tail and resulted in the man's arrival to his destination in record timing. Bryant Hardee used a mule to pick up some tobacco flues in Greenville in July 1895; Charles Case reported owning the oldest mule in Pitt County in March 1901; and M.L. Barber owned one of the ugliest mules.
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Record #:
23421
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Oysters were very important to Greenville's past. Frank Johnston, Alfred Cully, Johnson, Norcott & Co., Joe Forbes, J.J. Dancy, Jr., J.J. Cory, and J.R. Daniel & Co. all opened oyster restaurants or saloons in Greenville in the late nineteenth-century. Oyster boats came to the Greenville dock to sell oysters until the Tar River grew too shallow. By 1940, Greenville received its oysters by truck. The Tar River Oyster House was possibly J.R. Daniel & Co.'s original oyster house. Captain Jack Teel, or \"Cap'n Jack,\" opened the Tar River Oyster House in 1932. An arsonist burned down the Tar River Oyster House on May 12, 1953, and Capt. Teel rebuilt it out of cement block later that year. In 1967, Walter Woodard tore down the cement block Tar River Oyster House.
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Record #:
23422
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The Independent Market, located on Dickinson Avenue and selling meats and groceries, was in business from 1931 to 1958. Operated by Charles J. Cannon, the interesting thing about the store is that it never sold any tobacco or alcohol.\r\nJ.G. \"Scrappy\" Proctor opened Proctor's Limited, which specialized in men's clothing, in Greenville in 1964. Before establishing his own store, Proctor had worked in two other clothing stores with Nesbitt Proctor and Curtis Perkins respectively.\r\nW.J. Smith and N.O. Van Nortwick established the North Side Lumber Company, located north of Greenville on the road to Bethel, in 1928. The lumberyard, which was destroyed by fire and rebuilt in 1948, was known for employing nearly 50 people and having one of the best selections around.\r\nIn 1954, L.T. Hardee and Charlie Cox established the Colonial Heights Super Market. They had a substantial parking lot for those days, accommodating as many as 80 cars. In addition, a children's clothing store was also located in the building and run by the owners' wives.\r\nIn 1933, John Allen Conway, Sr. opened the Greenville Marble and Granite Works on Memorial Drive. In 1949, Conway's son took over the business and continued providing the Greenville area with monuments and other marble wares.\r\nCharles Horne founded Horne Electric Company in 1948 on Pennsylvania Avenue. In 1964, Wilson C. Rhodes, an electrician with many years of experience, assumed ownership of the company.\r\nFounded in 1942 by W.D. Boyd, the W.D. Boyd Paint and Wallpaper Company was located on Evans Street. Specializing in aluminum siding as well as painting and wallpapering contracts, the company employed 12 people by 1965.\r\nIn 1919, H.L. Hodges, Sr. established H.L. Hodges and Company, a combination grocery and farming supply store. Later, the business changed to a hardware store. H.L. Hodges, Jr. took over the store, which now included sporting goods, in 1965.\r\nT.I. Wagner and J.E. Waldrop founded Wagner - Waldrop Motors, Inc. in 1948. Located on Dickinson Avenue, the dealership originally sold only Lincoln - Mercury but added Rambler later on to attract more customers.\r\nV.A. Merritt established V.A. Merritt and Sons in 1928. Located on Evans Street, the company sold a full line of electrical appliances.\r\n
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