Newspapers / The State’s Voice (Dunn, … / June 15, 1935, edition 1 / Page 2
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WANDERING AND WONDERING AMONG MEMORIES' MAZES (Continued From Page One) week’ discovered for himself the ; surpassing beauty of the Big Savanna. He had just crossed (the state f?om Clyde* onL wood county, by way of Wake Forest and,it* lovely campus, on down to Burgaw Aft reaching Burgaw, the late Dr. Walter C. Mur phy uncle of A. McL. Graham and Mrs. Henry A Grady and Dr. Ferrell of the Rockefeller Foundation, asked me how I liked the mountam country, in which I had been teaching. I plied that the Big Savanna was the Prefiest thing I had seen in crossing the state, and the Doctor so quoted me in a communication to [Wilmington Messenger. Thus I claim to have anticipated the recognition of the beauty which is now becoming so generally recognized among botanists. pv. Wells Arrested As a “Wild Man. Dr. Wells is a.native of Ohio. He has been professor of botany at State College for teen years. His coming to North Carolina intro duced him to an undreamed-of wealth of flora. r‘North Carolina has twice the variety of soil and of flora that! Ohio has, and three times the (variety of either that Iowa has. You couldn t hire me to live in Ohio, though it is my native state,” stated the beauty-loving and hard-work ing botanist. But he; had been m North Carolina ien before he visited the Big Savanna and began his thorough study of the wealth of its flora ami the condition of its soil in every section of its area The results of that study, embodied in a {booklet, should be read by every lover of beauty and every one interested in the knowledge of the soils of eastern Carolina. Two summer vaca tions Dr. Wells and his companions spent in the study. I know after reading the booklet last year that botany is a man’s work. Some of us ok|ey ones once conceived of botany as an orna mentaL study for women. It was a June morning six or seven years ago when he first visited the Savanna, and alone. He was, naturally, flushed with ait enthusiastic sur vey of the wealth before him. It is rare to see a man in that area; blit he saw one native cross over to the railroad as he busied himself in the identification of the flora about him. It was only a casual glance at the transient for him, but for the passing native the man on the savanna was a different matter. He must have watched from a vantage point for an hour or two, amazed <at the behavior of the stranger. For he went on to Burgaw and reported to the officers that there was a wild man on the Big Savannah. He described the actions of the botanist^ perfectly, as the Doctor learned in due time. “He would stand straight up and look all around, point something black like a gun, walk a few feet, sit or kneel clown in me grass ior several stand up and look around again, point his gun-like contraption and go through the same perform ance over and over,” or in words more appro priate to a Horse Branch denizen of that day, the man reported the actions of his ‘‘wild man to the officials. It sounded curious to the officers and evidently looked that way when they arrived and saw the antics as described. If the Doctor had noticed their approach, he had thought noth ing about it and gone on with his identifications and photographing, for the gun-like contraption was a camera. But directly he found himself arrested by two men, one of them at least having a big pistol. His. captors were Pender county officials—and I would give a nickel to know just who they were, in order to guy my old friends right here. Of course, they were readily con vinced that the botanist was no wild man and were not only chagrined at their own stupidity but made profuse apologies. Doctor Wells and his comrades lived in a lit tle shack built near the savanna, cooked break fast and dinner for themselves, and went to the fBlack hotel in Burgaw for one of Miss Mollie’s great meals in the evening. The Address. - Dr. Wells discussed the beautification of home grounds before the Sampson ladies and displayed upon the Gem Theatre' screen pictures .of the state’s flora from the mountains to the sea. He told how home grounds may be beautified at very little cost by the use. of native plants in mass groups, and stated that such beautification adds real value to the home—a value measured in dol lars. He himself has a half-acre in Raleigh-, and he believes that if he should sell today, and he has a bidder, he could get $5,000 more for his home and half-acre lot because of the beautifica tion with native plants which has cost him very little. He declares he has no lawn mower and never exptects to have one; that he has no rii'oney to spend-ini keepng smooth a half-acre loL-4, And here is Uncle Ned back, mowing the tiny front lawn and another tiny area in'the rear of the Peterson cottage and' charging fifty cents for the joberif it were a half-acre it WOlild^be ^it^ a bill. Truly, the lawn mower may well be avoided. 7. A goodly group of ladies heard Df» Wells and brought plants- for identification-, but ten times as many should have heard him, and every com munity that can secure his services for a similar address and for the identification df plahts should do so—Now you see, Dr. Wells, what you got by coining by and taking me with you. to Clinton, and all other friends have to do to get, perhaps, a companion on similar trips is to t$rn to the south at the first street in Dunn east of the Atlantic Coast Line R. R, run; south two blocks and stop at the second house of the third block on the left—hardby the white-pillard home of Senator Lee. Come along, if just to say howd’y- Old “hag angina” keeps me in so close that such calls would be much appreciated. How “Blue Pete” Died* Before the last issue of the Voice came from the press, the issue in Which I told of the gradua tion of A1 Williamson at the six-weeks term of school in a little shed house on the Killett place, a tragedy occurred on that very place that is most distressing. Kev. Claude Peterson, knowm at Wake Forest,., in contradistinction from the writer, as “Blue Pete,” a name given him I be lieve by that devilish Will Bailey of those days, now Senator Jpsiah William Bailey, died a few (hundred yards., from -the door of the Killett home, in thfe woods like a hog. You probably read of it in the daily press, but you probably did not' conceive of the distressing circumstances in fheir fulness. After Claude “<JuitUat(£dn from Wake Forest, he became a 3 Country pastor jut* South Carolina and down there rfthtried a Miss Davis. JSftich. later, When his childless uncle, Mr. Killett, had died, Claude brought up the Davis family from South Carolina- abd .the bunch of them bought the Killett place from the rest of the heirs, in cluding the Wilson Kilietts, one of whom, Ed., was mayor of Wilson 25 years ago. McDon ald Davis' became prominent ip Democratic poli tics in Sampson and’ as a progressive farmer. His brother* married one of the fme daughters of that. very Ail Williamson who graduated from the sec ond reader and- has prospered for fifty years as a farmer! ■ Claude had become feeble, at the age of 72, having a hip which would not allow him fo rise when down. % His "Wife was dead and his chil dren grown, and he probably lonesome and foot free. He seems to have had no more gumption tiian to leave •■home witnout telling tne i>avises, and they or whoever he lived with were thought less enough to permit it. He had taken a ves sel and gone into the woods in front of the house to pick some huckleberries. He got down out ini the woods and was unable to rise, while the con dition 'of-his voice, which had become so se riously affected the last few years that he could speak only a bit above a whisper, prevented his shouting for help/ if he had the strength to do so. That was Tuesday. When the aged man did not show tip at home it was taken for granted that he had hitch-hiked a ride to his brother's out on the Clinton-White Lake highway. That night a heavy rain fell upon the helpless man in the woods; Wednesday, Thursday, and Fri day passed, and Saturday morning the family, having learned that he was not at his brother’s, made a search which, resulted in the discovery of the body.—But the saddest part of it is that he had lived, in’ the judgment of the physician, up till within a few hours of his discovery—say till some time Friday—helpless as a hog broken down in the loins,, cold, unfed, thirsty, gradually growing weaker, while he must have been won dering all the time lye was conscious why a search was not made for him; And tins is the tragic fate, ye Wake Forest men of the early nineties, of “Blue Pete.” It was a fate to test the professed faith of the aged minister.—Claude, without the inhibitions of most country folk who joined the church in those old days, had and told a wonderful religious ex perience back fifty-five years ago when he be came a member oL Boykins’ Chapel. He always confessed that he was not much of a preacher but “when it comes to praying, I can do that up in a brown rag,” was his own modest statement of his petitionary powers. You have seen from these pages the past two years and a half how modest we Petersons can be.—This one set out to make a paper iov the thinking people of North Caro lina—:and, dog you, I have made it, even if this issue does hot bear any great evidence of pro furidity. Ana Claude could do what he boasted —he ctfld make as; pretty a prayer, and al J as long 5 one, as you ever heard. And tho three days of lonely dying must have been largrf spent in his favorite exercise, for Claude «.? y reaT Christian. "as * . The- thii-d -Peterson a# Wake Forest during n stay was- Walter, the only son of Captain Joe Peterson, long one . of Goldsboro’s leading c;t;-. zens and for a time- that city’s mayor. \yajte' died before he was really grown, for he was a mere boy during his Wake JForest student davs white Claude was a mature man of more than 25 years of age. Walter was a brother 0f the wife of Rey, Flight A Moore, D, D., editor of the 'Southern Baptist Sunday school literature for many ydars. Capt. Joe was of the same old Sampson stock, his Duplin ancestor having moved from the Peterson nesting place south of Clinton. And here before me is a letter to Judge Henry E. Faisotj of Clinton from a Georgia lady, Mrs. Julian C. Lane, of Statesboro, whose letter head carries- the inscription “Historian,” which would suggest that she is the official historian of her Cpunty Of maybe of a larger district. Anyway, she is offering to pay Attorney Faison to dig up the records of the Sampson county Petersons, and incidentally of the McPhails. I- learned* while teaching in Georgia, that there was a prominent and wealthy^ family of Peter sons at Douglas, I' believe. Later I read a maga zine1 article by a Mrs. Peterson of the group, an article, which with possible magazine comment, Suggested a considerable degree of literary abil ity—but of course she was a Peterson only by marriage. But Statesboro is in south Georgia, and the Petersons in whom Mrs. Lane is inter ested may be a less prominent family down that way, Sampson and New Hanover folk swarmed . into' south Georgia early in last century. A few miles from Thomasville, which is not so remote from Statesboro, fs a- community called the “North Carolina Settlement.” I know that a great aunt of mine, with her husband, a Samp son county Butter, went out to that section long Ago. When. I attended that Southern Baptist Conyentm in Savannah, when I met Mrs. |Ic Eschern, as recorded in the June 1 issue of this paper, a grandson/ Rev. Oscar Butler, a as pastor of Che great Wesleyan Memorial Methodist church of Savannah. Mrs. Lane writes' Mr. Eaison that “Malcom Peterson-who came to Georgia was probably married about 1800.” She states that Malcom Peterson married a McPhail. Mr. Faison has already located the land of Malcoim Peterson as lying in Dismal township, just down here at Au tryville. There were seven families ox the name_ Sampson when the first census was taken in 1^, all which I have hitherto assumed to be of the same colonial family. If Malcom was akin to all the group and if he; married a McPhail, his descendants in Georgia may be assured that they have a myriad of remote kin in this section, hut his location in Dismal township, remote as dis tance went in those days from the Peterson locale below Clinton, and his marriage to a Mclhan make me dubious of his being one of the Enghat peasant stock that settled between Coharie an Six Runs, the main branches of Black Rivei The 18th century ancestor of Sampson conn y McPhails, I have assumed, drifted over lllt0 Sampson from the Cape Fear Scotch settlements. My old friend Hamilton McMillan, the Roieson county historian, used to insist that I was Scotc , as his grandmother, a McPeters in Scotland, ha anglisized her name over ~ here into Peterson. There was, then, among the Highland Scotch m those early days a family of Petersons, and - % com Peterson mayl have been one of them un^ mov,ed~'into "Sampson along with the early Phail, making him of an entirely different stoc^. And a man, especially One of those early fel who moves once is apt to move again or a 13 dozen timesr -.f , , ' '' If WMjss McPhail was a daughter of T1 grandfather oFthe late Isaiah McPhail, you c°^c shut your eyes almost in any group in this * fion, throw a brickbat and run the risk of hit uj> a remote relative of those Georgia Petersons for .instance, within a hundred feet of the Pr’ shop where this is printed is Mordecai 3 ’ Chevrolet dealer for Dunn, whose mothei "as one of .the McPhails. • j 'Mrs. Lane will, I fear, never get her desi data. My father did not know justr what '>n was to the patriarch Fleet Peterson of ■ ^ years ago—grandfather of Rev. Claude I cte • whose tragic death is recorded above, t i° ^ they lived only three' or four miles apaft (Continued on Page Four)
The State’s Voice (Dunn, N.C.)
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June 15, 1935, edition 1
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