War-Time Reminiscences and  Other Selections
by J. M. Hollowell
THE GOLDSBORO HERALD   JUNE 1939

Early Trade

Two of the greatest fishermen that I remember in my young days was old uncle Josiah Gardner, grandfather of Elder J. W. Gardner. He lived about one mile and a half from Rouse's mill, near Thompson's Chapel, and when the weather was good there were very few days that he could not been seen wending his way to the pond with his big roach gourd and poles. By the way what has become of that breed of gourds? I never see any of them now.

The old man was a little palsied and he trembled in his hands just enough to attract the fish to his bait. The other fisherman referred to was Kinchen Best who did his fishing in Wm. Sherrard's two ponds.

Old man Isaac Wise was a noted squirrel hunter. He always had from three to five dogs. He wore long hair and beard and I used to imagine he favored Daniel Boone.

There lived in Goldsboro for many years an odd character. This was Dock Holland. No one who ever met him will forget him. His education was limited and with him, like it is with the rest of us who are in the same condition, it proved a drawback.

He had a careless unconcerned air about him that was refreshing. He was full of quaint sayings, had apt illustrations and he had plenty of good hard horse sense, ready wit, and cheek to beat the band.

Dock was always a Republican, but took great delight in cussing them. He said it was a sacred duty he felt called upon to perform, to curse the party and vote the ticket. He said he could think of only one thing that he had more disgust for than he did for a carpet bagger, and that was a Yankee school marm who came down south to teach a negro school.

He never let an opportunity pass to play a prank on some one - he just took a delight in it.

One of his near neighbors was Richard Brown, who was a great smoker and always had his short stem pipe along.

One summer evening about dark Dick took his water bucket and went across the street to Dock's to get a bucket of cool water as Dock’s well was a very good one.

Passing on through the yard to the pump he filled his bucket and started back. As he came through the front yard Dock was on the piaza steps pulling off his shoes. He asked Dick to sit down and talk awhile. Dick set the bucket on one of the steps and sat down, and taking his pipe out filled it leisurely, and struck the light of the match he saw Dock just finish washing his feet in his bucket of water. Dick asked Dock what he meant by washing his feet in his water bucket, when Dock replied, "Hell fire Dick, is that your bucket? Why I am sorry. If I had known it was yours I would have washed but one foot in it."

Speaking of eating in those days, why a boy of this day would think he had struck the happy land of Canaan if he could sit down to an old fashioned reaping dinner. No threshers then, the wheat was cut with scythes toted by men to the wheat bed, which was something like a circus ring and the grain trodden out by horses; and the dinner! Well, to begin with, there were one or more pigs barbecued, and they were barbecued right, kept on the coals for eight or ten hours basted with red pepper and vinegar; then a big wash pot, holding two bushels was put on the pot rack, (no cook stoves in those days) and ten or a dozen fat spring chickens cleaned, then the pastry was made, the only thing put in the flour was salt and hog fat; no Horsefords bread preparation about this; the pastry dough was kneaded by hand for nearly an hour; the sides of the pot plastered with this pastry, then a layer of chicken put in the bottom, butter and pepper to suit; then a layer of pastry and so on, until the pot was full; then a mansard roof made of the pastry, covered the top of the pot and a skylight cut in the roof for the seasoning to bubble out, cooked slowly for about three hours, and you had chicken stew worth eating, and as a dessert you had old time pound cake - and last, but bless you, by no means least, came Huckleberry pie.

The country did not away back in the early days of which I write, have many stores. A great deal of trade was done with the peddlers. These men carried a small stock of dry goods and notions about the country in wagons, and did a thrifty business. Among the first of these of which I have any recollection was Alex Strouse, father of Gus and Morris Strouse, who merchandised in Goldsboro from 1869 to 1890. Alex came to Wayne county about 1846, and for about three years he boarded at my father's near Thompson's Chapel, and kept his goods there. He would fill his wagon on Monday morning and start out through the county peddling, generally returning on the next Saturday evening to replenish his stock. He left here about 1849, but before leaving he brought his brother Henry and installed him in the business. He also kept his goods at my father's. He quit peddling about 1851 and began the dry goods business in Goldsboro. After him, came Henry Oettinger, who also boarded and kept his goods at my father's.  He gave up the business about 1855 and he and Morris Frankford started business in Goldsboro in a building that stood just where H. Weil & Bros. stores now stand. Frankfort did not live long after beginning business in Goldsboro, but Mr. Oettinger continued the business, I think, until the breaking out of the war. I believe that the late Herman Weil was working with him when he volunteered in the Confederate Army. Old man Joseph B. Berger, father of N. B. Berger of Pikeville, was another peddler for quite a while, and he was the only one I ever knew who quit the business and settled down to farming. Mr. Berger made a good soldier during the war. After it was over, he came to Goldsboro and lived here until his death several years ago.

In those days such a thing as meal being brought here from Petersburg or Richmond was unknown. Wayne county raised its own grub. Now two-thirds of the meal consumed in Wayne county is store meal. I don't know how many water mills there are now in the county, but I am sure not half as many as there were sixty years ago. Wm. Rouse had two, Kitchen Smith, one; Wm. Sherard, two; Wm. Ward, one; P. I. Peacock, one; Robt. Peele, one, Elijah Bizell, one; J. R. Parker, one; N. B. Stevens, one; Richard Raynor, one; Raiford Hooks, one; Wm. Exum, one; Samuel Perkins, one; besides several others that I do not recall. This was a wheat raising county, there being very few farmers who did not raise sufficient wheat for their family use.

The first cook stove I ever saw was in 1850. My father bought one and it was the only one in that neighborhood and was quite a curiosity, and nearly all the housewives close by came to see how it did its work, and I am sorry to say they went away with poor opinions of cook stoves. It would bake all right on the top but would not bake at the bottom. You had to turn the biscuit over to cook the bottom. My mother tried it for a few weeks and gave up in despair. It was taken down and stored away for two or three years, until they began to come more in use and people learned how to manage them, when it was brought out and installed again and did splendid work. The use of the damper with new beginners was an attachment they did not know how to manipulate. We had no store plows those days. The plow were all home-made by blacksmiths, and the stocks were made at home. The first store plow I ever saw was about 1850. The plow lines were made at home and the cotton of which they were made was carded and spun by hand at home on the old fashion spinning wheel. I doubt not but that one of those wheels now at work would be a great curiosity. I doubt if there is a child in Goldsboro Graded school today that ever saw one in use. Nearly all the clothing, both cotton and wool, was spun and woven at home; and we had some right pretty clothes, too. Writing of this recalls an incident in which I figured rather more prominently than I cared to. My mother wove a nice piece of cloth out of which I was to have a Sunday suit of clothes. Getting it ready, she sent me with it to Goldsboro to get old Capt. Philips to cut it for me. I was just about nine years old and at that time claw hammer coats and tight leg pants, worn with straps, under the shoes was the great fad for grown men. My mother intended for Capt. Philips to cut the suit such as boys of my age wore, the coat being what was known as a "Robin," but on the way to Goldsboro, or rather as I came into town, I saw a stylish dressed young man, with his claw hammer coat, etc. and right then and there I determined to have such a suit, so I went to Capt. Philips and told him what I wanted. He very properly remonstrated with me; told me it was unsuited and that he knew my mother would be displeased, but I persisted and finally he cut the suit as I wanted it, and when I got home and my mother undid them and saw the way they were cut, it is useless to say there was a mad woman. She was going to whip me, but my father said no; that was not the way to punish me, but to make them and make me wear them. The news about my new suit soon spread over the neighborhood and everybody got to laughing about the way I would look with them on, they made the thing appear so ridiculous that I became thoroughly disgusted before the time came to wear them, and when the time did come, it required my father to stand by with a switch in his hand before I would even consent to put them on. There was a big meeting at Hood Swamp church that Sunday, and they forced me to go there that day with that suit on. I never suffered as much mortification one day in my life, and I don't remember ever wearing the suit again, but I would give most anything if I only had that little old suit of clothes now to look at. There used to be some pretty bad boys around Goldsboro then, and they had mighty little use or respect for a boy from the country. You let a little freckled face, barefooted, one gallus boy come to town and they were on to him at once. They would knock off his hat, throw dirt on him, spin tops at his bare feet. I tell you the country boy had a hard time. A year or two ago, speaking of my experience along this line, Judge Robinson came up and after listening a while he let in and told some of his experiences with this same gang when he was a barefooted boy living in the country on Tara Farm and I found our experiences were very much alike. My old and highly esteemed friend Geo. E. Taylor, I used to think in them days, was one of the worst boys I ever saw. He was sort of a leader of the town gang.

Before the war people raised hogs and hominy, and instead of farmers buying meat as they nearly all do now, almost every one had meat to sell, and not only meat, but corn and fodder.

Truck farming was unknown around here, and I never saw a cultivated strawberry until about 1870. Davis and Cloud, from Philadelphia, I think, rented land on Jumping Run and planted about thirty or forty acres in berries; then others went into the business and it has always paid. The sections around Mount Olive began it about twenty years ago, and the place has been improving fast ever since, and the town today owes its prosperity and growth to the fact that it went into the trucking business and went out of the whiskey business. I have yet to see where whiskey has ever helped any place or any people except those engaged in it. Goldsboro would have been far better off if it had gone out of the business twenty five years ago. This place has never grown as rapid as it ought to, taking into consideration its geographical location and being a railroad center. The railroads have never given it the benefits it was entitled to by reason of its location. Col. L. W. Humphrey, while president of the A. & N. C. R. R. in the seventies, was the only railroad manager who seemed to recognize what the town was entitled to in the way of reduced rates. I remember when he hauled cotton from here to Norfolk for one dollar per bale while the A.C.L. and R. & R. railroads were charging one dollar and seventy-five cents, and gave a corresponding decrease in rates on merchandise coming from Northern markets here.

My esteemed friend D. E. McKinne, of Princeton, sent me a memorandum regarding the Cox family of the south side. He is better posted about them than I am so I write it as he gave it to me, which is as follows:

He says John Cox, who was great grandfather to Julius and Marshall Cox and George Parker, was a very large and fleshy man and his wife was a large woman. The family numbered fourteen and only one of them weighed less than two hundred pounds. And six of them, three men and three women weighed over two thousand pounds. One of the sons Wm. Cox was the largest man that ever lived in Wayne County except the late James F. Jones, brother of Dr. Jones, who himself is no baby.

Writing last week of the old Griswold Hotel has caused me to think of another man who while having nothing to do with the hotel, was in my opinion almost a part of it.

I allude to old man Barna Daniel and his gray mule and cider wagon. He began peddling cider here before the war and continued during that time. But it was after the war that I remember him best. He bought an old ambulance which he used to haul in. He drove a gray mule and always had a certain place under two elms that stood in front of the hotel for his stand, and during cider season, it had to be very bad weather if nine o'clock in the morning did not find him on hand. He would stand there all day puffing his short stem pipe.

He paid for a fine farm this way.

Barna was an uneducated man, but he was a good citizen, a Christian gentleman and was universally respected.

After the fall of New Bern in March 1862 Goldsboro filled up with refugees, many of them remaining here until the close of the war and some are still here. Among the families that came I remember the following:

J. D. Whitford, W. G. Hall, W. C. McMackin, W. C. Whitford, Israel Disoway, C. S. Primrose, J. B. Hughes, Mrs. Tolson, Mrs. Hunt, J. W. O'Neal, Mrs. Bryan, Sam Hunter, Nat Gaskill, S. R. Stret and W. H. Harvey. In the summer and fall of '65 several of the old merchants resumed business and some new ones opened up. I remember A. Day, A. H. Keaton, J. H. Privett, Lovett Louis, S. R. Street, W. H. Hunnicutt, R. D. Holt, Washington and Powell, H. Weil & Bros., W. S. Keaton and some few northern men. Among them I remember Grant and Turtellott, Lord and Palmer, Bones & Son and Campbell & Co.

1865 was the best crop year I ever saw; it looked like all crops grew without any trouble, and in many places where the army and the stock had been fed, corn came up and people would chop it out to a stand, and many a barrel was raised that way. It was a splendid year for fruit and lots of families in the county managed to subsist upon provisions bought with the fruit sold. There was several hundred soldiers stationed here and the farmers found ready sale among them for their spare fruits.

Prices of provisions were high; sugar was 25 cents per pound, flour twelve to fifteen dollars per bbl., coffee 25 to 40 cents, and kerosene oil 75 cents per gallon, but when a person could get anything to do wages were very good.

In December 1862 Gen. Foster, of the Federal army, left New Bern with an army of more than 15,000 men for the capture of Goldsboro. They came via White Hall.

There was some firing between them and our forces, who met them at the railroad beyond Neuse River (A.C.L.) Bridge. They drove our forces back and burned the bridge. Our loss was 20 killed and 107 wounded.

After burning the bridge they suddenly fell back, retreating towards New Bern and during this time several thousand more troops arrived at Goldsboro, but no effort was made to follow them or to intercept them at Kinston, which could easily have been done, as there was ample transportation to have put the troops in Kinston during the night.

About two years ago and ex-Federal soldier from Massachusetts was in Goldsboro and expressed a desire to go out to the scene of the engagement, having belong to Foster's Command. I rode out with him, and I asked him why they left so sudden, and his reply was: We were entirely out of ammunition. Said they did not have a round to the man, and said they expected nothing else but capture. He said if 2,500 men had been thrown ahead of them at Kinston, they could have captured the whole 15,000 Federals.

No other attempt was made to take Goldsboro until March 1865, when Schofield and Sherman came. The railroad, and the covered bridge and were both burned then by our forces, and my recollection is that it was two or three years before the county or covered bridge was rebuilt. A ferry was run during the time, and when the water was low some crossed by fording.

I remember a joke that it was said that N. B. Stevens told on old man Fred Grantham. Both are dead, and the county had no better citizens. Mr. Grantham was fond of his dram and sometimes would take too much; during the time the bridge was down he came in his cart to town one day, and took a little too much, and in going home in fording the river he missed the track and got in deep water and he and his horse came near being drowned. The old man thought it was time to ask the Lord for help and in his prayer he promised if rescued he never would drink any more, but he was thoughtful enough to make a sort of reservation to his promise by adding, except for snake bites.

Sometime after this Mr. Stevens was passing Mr. Grantham's and saw him ahead of him in the road going into each jam of the fence running his foot among the weeds. Stevens rode up and says, "Fred, what in the world are you doing." He replied, "Needham, when I was in the river I promised the Lord never to drink any more, except for snake bits, and I am looking for a small snake to bite me."

Some one asked him how deep, the water when he came so near drowning. He replied, "It was waist deep and deeper too."

Wayne County has always had a large Quaker population, and take them as a whole, no better class of citizens can be found. There is the Perkin's, Pike's, Edgertons, Moore's, Jinnett's, Overman's, Kennedy's, Pearson's, Cox's, Massey's, Granthams', and one branch of the Hollowell's and others that I do not now recall.

I regret that I did not write these reminiscences a few years sooner, while Everett Smith was living, so that I might have had the benefit of his memory, for he was doubtless the best posted man on ante Bellum times in Wayne County, and took a great delight in telling about them. For an old man who had been away for a long time his memory about the county was wonderful. He had for years lived in South Dakota, and during his last visit here, four or five years ago, and during which visit he fell on sleep. I spend many a pleasant afternoon sitting on the old Mayor's office piaza on Walnut Street and listening to him tell of his early recollections of the county.

Goldsboro has had several what might be termed big fires, but I doubt if it has ever had one of that class that was not a benefit to it. In almost every case, better and more commodious buildings have followed. The last big one was in the fall of 1884. It began about where H. & M. L. Lee did business on Walnut street, burning both sides to West Center South on that street to Weil Bros. Alley, and north to Dixon's Novelty store. The loss was between eighty-five and one hundred thousand dollars.

Adjusters from the different fire insurance companies were here in a few days looking after the interest of their companies. A half dozen of these fellows were in the office of the Humphrey house a night or two after reaching here, being engaged in writing back the cause of the fire and on finishing each read the report he had made to his company, some of them covering a page or two. After a while one of them, a sandy headed Irishman, read his report (and it struck me he had explained as fully as any of them) which was as follows:

Small boy, cigarette, high wind, and no water.

If there had been a supply of water this fire could have been extinguished before the loss exceeded one thousand dollars.

The city owned our present fire engines, but for water depended upon cisterns dug in the ground, and yet with this experience it was seven years before water works were put in, and when a year or two after the fire an effort was made for water works, it was opposed. Up to the installation of sewerage the town had never issued any bonds, these being issued in 1898.

After the war Goldsboro was slow to establish manufacturies of any kind. Weil Bros. started a brick yard pretty soon and are running it yet.

The first effort in the way of a planing mill was begun about 1880 by R. M. Johnson. This was a very small affair and was on the corner of James and Chestnut street where Sasser & Gurley keep. This was followed a year or two later by the Enterprise Lumber Company on the corner where the ice factory stands.

Early in the eighties Joseph Strauss and J. J. Street, from Orangeburg, S. C. came here and erected a rice mill, the same that is now run by the Carolina Rice Mill Co. They soon added a lumber and dry kiln plant.

Dewey Bros. Machine Shops, Oil Mills, Agricultural Works, Furniture Factory, Ice Factory and Mattress Factory soon followed. Grant's Brick Yard anti dated all these enterprises except Weil's Brick Yard, and water works by private ownership a few years later, these two plants being purchased by the City in 1902.

The first tobacco warehouse was built in 1895. We have three now.

Out post office has almost been run on wheels. It was first opened, after the war, just north of the ice factory; then moved to a building near Weil's store; then to a building where Miller's gallery stands; then to the room where Hill's drug store is; then to the room now Cohen's beef market; then to the Arlington Hotel; then to the Faircloth building; then to its present commodious quarters, owned by the United States Government, and where it is likely to remain.

From 1871 to 1909, we were without any passenger shed, and there were interested property owners who insisted, every time a move was made for a shed, that Goldsboro had as convenient a passenger station as could be found anywhere. Well, it is true there was no complaint for lack of room, nor height of roof, but in rainy weather it would leak. But, then, passengers could lounge around in stores and private residences while waiting for trains, and if they were within a square of the ticket office and not entirely deaf, there was no occasion (up to a few years ago) for them to get left.

Everybody twenty years old will remember hearing Silas Herring out on the track hollow, "Railroad!" Silas was a pretty full-blooded African. I am satisfied there was no flaw in his pedigree. His mouth, when open, reminded one of the Cumberland Gap, and his voice would drive any megaphone out of business. He always heralded the coming of the trains by yelling "Railroad!" He was always on hand for a job to carry a grip for you, and to drum for negro boarding houses. He tackled Judge Hoke (who is not a blond) on his first visit here. Silas thought he was a light-skin colored man, and was about the start with him to Capp's colored boarding house. Silas went to Charlotte once on a three days' excursion. Said he carried his rations for three days. This was three 5-cent watermelons.

There is, so far as I know, only one case in this county, where a father and son were both in the Confederate army and are both living; but Col. J. T. Kennedy and his son, Dr. J. B. Kennedy were both in the Confederate army are both living, the Colonel being eighty-four and while he is partially paralyzed, his mind is as bright and he is as fond of a joke as ever he was. I was out in the country to see him about two weeks ago and he laughed heartily after telling me about a turkey red suit of clothes his mother made for him when a boy. He loves to talk about his fox-hunting days before the war.

There are certain family names in Wayne county that to mention one of them you locate them at once in a certain section of the county, but that the great body of people of that name are in a certain portion of the county. For instance, if one mentions the Aycock's or Barnes', old residents naturally think of the Fremont section; if of Martin's, Loftin's, Barfield's, Hatch's, or Kornegay's one thinks of the Mount Olive section; if of the Uzzells, Casey's, or Ivey's, you think of New Hope, if Parks', Gardner's, or Britt's you think of Saulston; if of Pate's, Lancaster's or Combs', you look to Stoney Creek; if Edgerton's, Pike's, or Holland's, then to Great Swamp; if Howell's, Rose's, or Sasser's, to the Fork section; if Grantham's, Cogdell's, or Cox's, then to Grantham's township; but when the Smith's and Jones' are mentioned, you are balked.

There has been great changes in the rural districts in the country. Whole scopes of county that twenty to thirty years ago were in woods, is now under cultivation. Take the road from Salem to the County Home, from Goldsboro to old Nahunta Church; from old Saulston Cross Roads to Patetown and the old Slough Mill, the land has very largely been cleared, and the same is true in nearly every part of the county. It shows progress in its march removed many an old landmark. I was noticing only a few days ago that an old big oak near S. W. Isler's residence had been taken down. It had stood the storms of centuries, perhaps, but it was in the way and had to go. I remember the big sycamores that stood at Summerlin's and the National Bank corners. These were planted by J. W. Ezzell, nearly sixty years ago. Like old people, they were in the way of progress and removal became necessary. And the filling up of the old Centennial well - that was not so old, but it had done a power of good in its time.

Our first cotton factory was built about 1900 or 1901, by a Northern man named Jacocks. It was not a large one and he stocked it with old out-of-date machinery and the thing proved a failure. He went busted and returned home.

Writing a week or two ago of fishermen in the county, I neglected to mention a few others of Goldsboro of a later date than Gardner and Best. These were Dick Harrison, Richard Brown, John Edwards, Joe Sauls, Sam Draper and Larry Bass. The three last named are still living. Old man Harrison preferred to do most of his fishing on Sunday, always insisting that fish bit better on Sunday than any other day.

Goldsboro has had two dreadful railroad accidents, that of the killing of Chas. E. Nelson in 1875 and Miss Rosenthal, in 1887.

Berry Parks and Bob Hooks are the principal fox hunters in the county now, and when they get to bragging with each other about their hounds and the foxes caught, they can tell a heap bigger lie than Tom Kennedy or Daniel Hood could have ever got off, even with Bill Rose and Joe Ingram to have aided them.