Articles in regional publications that pertain to a wide range of North Carolina-related topics.
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7939
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Cartoon artist and lifelong fan Jim Scancarelli from Charlotte, is taking over the Gasoline Alley comic strip. Gasoline Alley is America's oldest cartoon strip dating back to August 24, 1919. Scancarelli took the place of Dick Moores, the former assistant to the creator, Frank King, after his death. Scancarelli was Moores's assistant for seven years.
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7940
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The master potter Ben Owen passed his talents on to his namesake and grandson, Ben Owen III. Ben Owen III gained national recognition at age eighteen because of his unique work with pottery, including plates, jars, pots, and vases. Owen Pottery is located in Moore County. It is one of several pottery dealers on Highway 705.
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7941
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Flora Watkins, wife of Squire J. C. Watkins, grew up in Cashiers, North Carolina, accustomed to aristocracy. Her husband built her a house in Dillsboro and died soon thereafter. The squire left his widow a large mortgage payment that she could not afford, so the sheriff came to sell the house at auction. Flora stayed up all night with her oldest son and wrote 150 letters to members of the Masonic Lodge. Soon enough money had been raised to convince the bank to let her keep the house. Then she opened the house to boarders at eight dollars a month for both room and board. The house remained in the family until 1983, when it was sold to become the Squire Watkins Inn, Bed, and Breakfast.
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7983
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When California native Chuck McKinnon moved to North Carolina on business, he decided to design a cement boat in his spare time. He had to move back to California before he could finish it, so he left the boat in the backyard of A. D. Cobb in Guilford County because of its proximity to the building site. The boat is forty-five feet long, twelve feet deep, and twelve feet wide, which causes locals to refer to it as the ark. Cobb would love to put the boat in the water, but it was docked on land upside-down.
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7984
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On Topsail Island, off the central coast of North Carolina, eight concrete towers sit an average of 2.4 miles from each other. Few people are aware of what the purpose of these towers once was. Some locals have perpetuated rumors that the towers were used to observe German submarine activity in World War II or that they were used for the Cape Canaveral space program. But the real purpose of these towers relates to the United States missile program in the last years of the Second World War. The towers housed photographic equipment which was used to track missiles. The site was active from 1946 to 1948, when it was relocated to Florida.
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7986
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In the 1940s, the people living on what is now the North Shore of Fontana Lake and the southern boundary of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park were forced out by the federal government for the construction of a Tennessee Valley Authority hydroelectric project. The federal government promised the displaced people roads to their old area. Roads would have allowed the original settlers' descendants easy access to family cemeteries. The roads were never built. People still visit the gravesites, despite having to travel to them by four-wheel drive vehicles and boats.
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Record #:
8002
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Jules Gilmer Korner was known for the home he built in Kernersville in 1880, called \"Korner's Folly.\" He was a well-known portrait painter, photographer, and creator of decorative art found in many homes, theaters, and public buildings. He did commercial work, and to separate the aesthetic from the commercial, Korner chose the pseudonym Reubin Rink. Under this name he became an outdoor advertising pioneer and made Bull Durham Smoking Tobacco a household word by painting Bull Durham bulls on barns, billboards, and boulders all across the country. Some were as large as 80 x150 feet and could be seen a mile away.
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8042
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The General Assembly is debating the merits and demerits of a state lottery, with backers calling it a voluntary tax to fund state programs and detractors call it a sin because it is gambling. Despite “blue laws†that basically forced almost all the stores to be closed on Sundays, the state capital did have gambling in the 1930s and 1940s in the form of “one armed bandits†or slot machines. Some machines dispensed a mint so they couldn't be considered strictly gambling devices. Proprietors of establishments with machines always got their cut of the profits from them. By 1941, however, all slot machines in Raleigh had been removed from public places, because of opposition from churches. They were still used indoors by lodge members, fraternity groups, and even some veteran associations, who referred to using them as “gaming†rather than gambling.
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8043
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At springs in Chatham County, mineral water pours from two pipes, one is for 'health' and the other for 'beauty.' Resort facilities sprang up around them for people seeking cures. In 1850 John Washington, descendant of President George Washington, drank regularly from the springs, and his kinsman built a home hear them. Because of the Washington Influence, the name of the area changed in 1926 from Ore Hill to Mount Vernon Springs. In 1837, William Bowen opened a health resort here and began advertising the springs. John M. Foust later bought the hotel-resort, made improvements, and draw visitors from all over the nation. While Mount Vernon Springs enjoyed its 'golden era,' soft drinks which were sold in many North Carolina and South Carolina cities were bottled here. In 1882, a post office and the Mount Vernon Academy opened. A newspaper called the Mt. Vernon Springs Star began publication the following year. After World War I, however, the crowds quit coming and the hotel closed in 1931. A few people still stop to drink the magical waters, although there are no signs left indicating which spring is for health and which is for beauty.
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Record #:
8054
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Castoria is a crossroads in Green County, fifteen miles southeast of the city of Wilson, between Walstonburg and Snow Hill. It is on Highway 91, but not on the state highway map. Some say the place might have been named for Fletcher's Castoria, the popular laxative. Others say that the name was borrowed from a nearby pre-Civil War plantation house. Yet another story about the name contends it comes from Carr's Store, which housed a post office.
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Record #:
8068
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In 1945, residents of Morningside Drive in Charlotte were standing outside their homes, watching three planes flying overhead, when one of them caught fire. Second Lieutenant Budd Harris Andrews refused to bail out of his A-20 attack bomber, saying that if he did, the plane would crash into a residential section and endanger civilian lives. He tried to land the plane on a golf course, but it crashed, killing him instantly. A letter from a military officer made public eleven years later confirmed that Lieutenant Andrews was a hero who refused to endanger innocent lives at the cost of his own, something the residents of Morningside Drive knew all along. After eleven years of petitioning by the grateful people of Morningside Drive, the Athletic Field in Veterans Park was dubbed Budd Andrews Athletic Field. A bronze marker was installed seven years later, fulfilling the mission of Morningside Drive residents to properly honor the hero who saved their homes and their lives.
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8069
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In 1881, at only eight years old, T. Gilbert Pearson traded his bird egg collection to Guilford College for tuition to attend preparatory school. He had seen mass killings of birds in Florida, which fueled his outrage at the practice of killing birds to obtain their plumage for the women's hat industry. In 1895, Pearson, along with the Women's Temperance Union of North Carolina, produced a leaflet urging women to stop buying hats adorned with bird feathers. His conviction never waned, and in 1902 he formed the North Carolina Audubon Society, which joined the cause. Pearson tirelessly lobbied the legislature, incurring much outside opposition and scorn, until 1903 when a bill was passed to give the Audubon Society power to appoint game wardens and collect fees from out-of-state sportsmen who came here to hunt. In 1911 the state took over the appointments and fees and outlawed market hunting completely. Before his death in 1943, Pearson helped enact several conservation laws and even claimed worldwide notoriety.
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Record #:
8070
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Confederate armies struck fear among Union ranks with the infamous Rebel Yell. The Rebel Yell was a distinctive sound made by Confederate soldiers during the heat of battle. Letters written by Wilmington native and soldier Thomas Wood described the Rebel Yell as a noise that could not be duplicated by Yankee soldiers. Kentuckian Kellar Anderson discussed in The Confederate Veteran on what occasions the Rebel Yell was given and how it could never be duplicated beyond the heat of battle. An accurate version of the Rebel Yell can no longer be heard.
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Record #:
8071
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Northwest Davidson County was the sight of Yadkin College. Founded by Henry Walser, the Methodist Protestant Church opened the doors to Yadkin College in 1856. Yearly commencement services provided both students and the local community with two days of entertainment. Attendees enjoyed the excitement of sermons, speeches, contests, literary presentations and promenades. Yadkin College opened as a male institution but became co-educational in 1878.
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Record #:
8072
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During the Great Depression, the United States government provided funds through the Public Works Administration to hire unemployed workers. One program funded by the PWA was the Federal Arts Program. In 1940, the Federal Arts program commissioned Simka Simkovitch to paint four murals in the new Beaufort post office. These four paintings depicted the Town of Beaufort's heritage and included pictures of wild horses, Canadian geese, the “Orville W†and the Beaufort lifesavers rescuing members of the “Crissie Wright.†While the murals are today a part of Beaufort, local residents have no memory of the Russian artist. Commissioned to paint these scenes, Simkovitch spent only a few days in Beaufort before returning to his studio in Connecticut, later sending the paintings back to Beaufort.
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