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Notes on A Confederate Christmas
"Santa Claus in Camp, 1864" by Thomas Nast in Harper's Weekly. Introductory Note: “Mrs. James Lafayette Winningham…” On 24 May 1876 Nancy Hannah Steed married James Lafayette Winningham (ca. 1853-...
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Confederate Christmas in Randolph County
This is best-known of the autobiographical reminiscences of Nancy (“Nannie”) Steed Winningham. It is been reprinted over the years in various sources, without much editing or explanation. Once it was...
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The True Lost Cause: The Battle for Peace in February, 1861
Fort Sumter from the Battery in Charleston. April 11, 1861 was America’s last day of peace. On April 8th, President Lincoln’s envoy to the Governor of South Carolina announced the President’s intention...
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BALLOON BUSTING
The following story was published in the April, 1898 edition of The North Carolina Home Journal (Vol. I, Number V). The monthly magazine cost fifty cents a year, and its editorial offices were in...
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BALLOON BUSTING II
Did a Randolph County artillery gunner really take down a Union observation balloon? Probably not; but every other aspect of the story can be verified and the characters named in the story are...
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Hoover’s Mill (aka Rush’s Mill, Arnold’s Mill, Skeen’s Mill)
Every historic site has both a public and a private history. In the case of this mill site on Covered Bridge Road in Tabernacle Township, I have a thirty-year personal association that gives me an...
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Lyndon Swaim
[This is my entry on Lyndon Swaim, as I wrote it for the Dictionary of North Carolina Biography in the early 1980s. It can be found under the S’es in the next to last volume.] SWAIN, LYNDON (1 Dee,...
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2011 in review
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog. Here’s an excerpt: The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 43,000...
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Benjamin Swaim and the “Man of Business”
[A comment on this blog last month asked for information on Benjamin Swaim. I have written about him twice; the biogrpahy of him in Volume “S” of the Dictionary of North Carolina Biography is by me,...
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Linbrook Hall
When I researched and wrote my Architectural History of Randolph County in 1978, the “historic” criteria I used purposefully excluded most of the 20th century. I included a few “modern” houses, of...
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The Sunset Theater Incident
The “Little Castle,” 232 Sunset Avenue, Asheboro, date unknown. Despite his detailed memories of the Hop’s Barbecue Sit-In, Melvin Marley said that the most memorable event of the Asheboro sit-ins was...
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What the Newspaper Had to Say…
the original article 60 Negroes Arrested in Sit-In Incidents The Courier-Tribune, January 27, 1964. There were 60 Negroes—24 juveniles and 36 adults—arrested here Saturday at Hop’s Bar-B-Que and the...
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The Asheboro Sit-Ins
On February 1,1960, four freshmen students from N.C. A&T asked for coffee at the lunch counter in the Woolworth’s “dime” store in downtown Greensboro, just 25 miles north of Asheboro. When they...
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New Market Inn
New Market Inn, from the southeast, circa 1950. During the winter months I try to get out and investigate the parts of Randolph County that are not so accessible when the animal and vegetable elements...
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July 1, 1863.
Killed in the battle of Gettysburg, July 1st, 1863, Lieut. John H. Palmer, of the 22d Reg’t N. C. T., in the 24th year of his age. He was a native of Randolph county, and among the first to volunteer...
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Randolph County Agriculture: Wheat
Harvesting Wheat with a Cradle, Southeast Randolph County, circa 1900 I’ve promised various people for years that I’d write up some of the history of agriculture in Randolph County. It’s one of my...
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The History of Water
Lassiter Mill Dam on the Uwharrie, destroyed 9-4-2013 to open the river to the annual shad run. Before there were counties, before there were towns, before there were road names and 911 addresses,...
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“Blockading”: The oral autobiography of Dove Coble
Ready to Run the Blockade, from http://www.louisville.com This is about half of an oral history interview I recorded with Dove Coble (1900-2000) at his daughter’s house on 1 March 1997. Dove was a...
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Unconventional Warfare
Confession: About fifteen years ago, when I was Mayor of Franklinville, I secretly collaborated with the Pineland Resistance Movement, guerrilla freedom fighters seeking to destabilize the civilian...
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More on Charlie Poole and Daner Johnson
I have recently had several inquiries regarding Charlie Poole and Daner Johnson from people who have read my previous posts. I purposefully didn’t include a lot of genealogical material there, but as...
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