While the country was fascinated by the exploits of Bonnie and Clyde and other gangsters of the era, North Carolina had its share of outlaws and sensational crimes. In the summer of 1937, the state was on alert after eight convicts tunneled out of Central Prison.

Eight long-termers, believed to have been led by Worth (Tick) Proctor, notorious safe cracker, escaped from Central Prison late yesterday afternoon in the largest break at the prison in four years.

Commandeering a motorist's car half a mile from the prison, the convicts sped away and had nearly 3 hours' start before a general alarm was sent out by prison authorities.

It was Proctor's second escape from prison. Two years ago this month he made a successful break at Caledonia and remained at large for four months before being recaptured in Greensboro by Guilford County deputies.

The year before, he had been arrested at Rocky Mount, along with several members of his ring, when a posse of officials raided a hide-out there. Raleigh police joined officers from several counties and Federal agents in making arrests.
 

Above, NC Central prison in 1967. N&O File photo.

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Next largest escape here in recent years was on August 28, 1934, when seven criminally insane men fled from the State Hospital. -- The News & Observer, 8/13/1937

NC Central Prison in the 1920s: "White Cell Block N.C. State Prison Raleigh NC." N&O File photo.

Local author Suzy Barile will discuss her book Undaunted Heart: The True Story of a Southern Belle & a Yankee General tomorrow at 1 p.m. in the State Capitol's historic Senate Chamber. The talk is free to the public.

Barile is the great-great-granddaughter of Ella Swain and General Smith Atkins, the book's main characters. Ella Swain, daughter of a former N.C. governor and University of North Carolina president, shocked citizens across the state when she fell in love with and married the Union general whose troops occupied Chapel Hill.

Barile will discuss her research in family letters and the process of separating fact from fiction in the process of writing her novel.

This lecture is part of the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources’ 2nd Saturdays program.

Joanne Abel, Humanities and Adult Programming Coordinator at the Durham County Library, had come across information about this deadly train wreck in her research for her Masters in Liberal Studies.

In "Persistence and Sacrifice," citing History of the North Carolina Teachers Associating and Upbuilding Black Durham, she writes:

In 1913, the North Carolina Teachers’ Association (NCTA) met in Durham and formed two committees: the Passenger Commission and the Rural School Commission. The first commission had as one of its goals the ending of the deadly practice of putting the wooden train cars for blacks between steel cars for whites and working for fairer public transportation laws. In 1911, a group from one of Durham’s leading churches, St. Joseph AME Zion was crushed in wooden cars leaving eight dead and dozens injured. This and other incidents one prompted the NCTA to push for safer railroad cars for African American travelers.

Upbuilding Black Durham also explains that the legend of the tragedy took on new life in Durham's black community.

Through the voices of women workers, song spoke in solidarity against the abuses of Jim Crow and their work, of hard times and injustice. Work songs like "The Hamlet Wreck," composed by black workers at Liggett and Myers, recalled a railroad accident that crushed a segregated wooden car carrying dozens of St. Joseph AME Zion church Sunday school members.
 

To commemorate the 350th birthday of Virginia Dare on August 18, 1937,  Roanoke Island planned several special events, including a visit by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who attended that evening's performance of "The Lost Colony." A five-cent postage stamp marking the occasion overwhelmed the tiny Manteo post office, which sold more than 500,000 of the stamps and postmarked 300,000 letters with "first day cancellation."

Events of the day were reported by Manteo's telegraph operator Alpheus Drinkwater, who 29 years earlier had used the very same telegraph keys to "flash" the news of the Wright Brothers' first successful flight. Mr. Drinkwater remembered that many newspapers refused to report the flight because they thought it was a hoax.

Alpheus Drinkwater in 1944. Photo courtesy of NC State Archives.

As it turns out, there would be a possible hoax to develop around the Lost Colony celebration as well.

In September 1937, L.E. Hammond, a California tourist, found a 21-pound inscribed rock slab that appeared to be inscribed with the words "Ananias Dare & Virginia went hence vnto heaven 1591” and to perhaps answer the mystery of the colonists' fate.

Signed with the initials EWD - perhaps for Eleanor White Dare, mother of Virginia Dare, first child of European descent born in the New World? - the stone told how most of the colonists were massacred by Indians in 1591. Seven survived. The stone noted that the slain were buried on a hill near the river and their names were carved into a second stone near their graves.

But those stones - dredged up by a Georgia stone hauler - were inscribed in characters unlike the single Dare Stone that Hammond said he found. In 1941 the Saturday Evening Post, a major national magazine, dismissed all the stones as a massive fraud in an article entitled "Writ on Rocke."-- The News & Observer 9/9/2009

But the story doesn't end there. A 2009 article by UNC-Wilmington professor David La Vere in the North Carolina Historical Review argues that the Chowan River Dare Stone might just be authentic after all. North Carolina Miscellany, a blog produced by the staff of UNC Library's North Carolina Collection reports  that La Vere had an Elizabethan scholar examine the language on the stone.

"'He went in with the idea to discredit and came away amazed how it all fit Elizabethan English. He was particularly interested in the word ‘salvage’ (for savage) which was used in English (from the Italian word for forest) during only a few years…. The Lost Colony fit in with that period.'"

The Saturday Evening Post article, containing the text of the inscriptions and photos of the stones, can be read here.

Dr. La Vere is author of The lost rocks : the Dare Stones and the unsolved mystery of Sir Walter Raleigh's Lost Colony, published in 2010 by Dram Tree Books.
 

Facing more days of near-triple-digit temperatures causes us to look back at the hot summers in our memory.

In 1990, N&O columnist Dennis Rogers reminded us how we dealt with summer in the days before air conditioning.

There was a time when not everyone had air conditioning. As late as 1948, when air conditioning really began to take off, only 74,000 air conditioners were sold. The rest of us sweated and didn't think about it. It was summer and it was supposed to be hot.

We filled washtubs with cool water and played in them. We had water hose fights. Ceilings were high and airy. We had awnings. We wore more summery clothes, including boaters and seersucker suits for men, and women did carry parasols. We surrendered to summer. -- The News & Observer 8/9/1990

In later columns, Dennis praised summer suppers "sliced tomatoes, deviled eggs and potato salad, which is all you should eat in August, anyway" and warned against the deadly qualities of that summer staple, mayonnaise.

It will be the Duke's brand, for which native Southerners pause each summer to pay homage to Mrs. Eugenia Duke of Greenville, S.C. It was she who first whipped up the mayo of the mill towns. And it's kosher.

The only reason native Southerners aren't dropping like flies by Mother's Day is that we apparently develop antibodies to protect us from summer's mayonnaise mayhem. It is the same thing you find Up Nawth when fans take off their shirts at Green Bay football games in January. There, the secret is bratwurst. Or maybe beer. -- The News & Observer 6/8/2005

A summer supper shared by friends and family at the Braswell Plantation near Rocky Mount, September 1944. Photo courtesy of the NC State Archives.

A head-on collision between a passenger train and a freight train that was described as "one of the worst wrecks ever experienced by the Seaboard Air Line" happened 100 years ago today in Hamlet NC.

The passenger train was a "colored excursion" from Durham, headed to Charlotte. The freight train, coming from Wilmington, was under the impression that it had the all-clear. The collision happened right in front of the roundhouse. Photo courtesy of the NC State Archives.

The track at this place makes a sharp curve and both sides of the mainline were lined with box and coal cars. The freight train was crawling into the yards under the impression that no train was coming and Engineer Koonce was heading for Hamlet at a good clip, sure also that the track was clear. The two engines lie now beside the track fast to each other in a grasp of death. The wrecking crew have so far been unable to separate them. The crash was heard all over town and the whistles of the round house and the sound of the escaping steam from the contending engines called the whole town to the scene of carnage and death.

Newspaper accounts of the accident include graphic descriptions of the injured, including one passenger who was asleep until he was decapitated. A field hospital was set up under a repair shed to tend to the injured.

The task was great. Sixty people were seriously injured. Twenty-eight more were slightly scratched. Seven were dead, and of the sixty, one died while on the table. Mrs. Landrum, a trained nurse from the Presbyterian hospital, Charlotte, was nursing a case in town and volunteered her services. She gave skilled aid in a very trying position.

Some of the injured were put on another train and taken to the hospital in Charlotte. Because so much of the train had been damaged, uninjured passengers had to remain in Hamlet because there were no cars to transport them.

The excursion was being run by the St. Joseph's Methodist church of Durham, and was scheduled to reach Charlotte at noon and return tonight. The excursionists will return to Durham with heavy hearts and without seeing Charlotte. -- The News & Observer 7/28/1911

The Interstate Commerce Commission investigated the accident  and determined that the dispatcher for the freight train, Mr. Purvis, sent a message that the passenger train had cleared the track. Although the dispatchers for both trains were working in the same room, Mr. Purvis failed to verify this information before sending the message.

Beginning Sept. 12, the Genealogical Research Services section of the State Library’s Government and Heritage Library will be closed on Mondays, due to budget restrictions.

New service hours for Genealogical Research Services will be Tuesday through Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Saturday, 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Earlier this month, the Saturday hours were reduced.

Pullen Park, claimed by the city of Raleigh to be the first public park in North Carolina, has a rich history. It was founded in 1887 by Richard Stanhope Pullen. In 1888, Wiley A. Howell was named park keeper, and together Pullen and Howell began to develop the park.

In addition to the familiar carousel and train, the park also featured the city's first swimming pool (built in 1891, of wood and replaced later with WPA money) and a small zoo housing bears, alligators and monkeys.
"In Pullen Park” in Durwood Barbour Collection of North Carolina Postcards (P077), North Carolina Collection Photographic Archives, Wilson Library, UNC-Chapel Hill

The large trees, some as old as the park itself are the pride of the city. But many of those trees were threatened one night 100 years ago when fire broke out in the park.

Mr. W.A. Howell, keeper of Pullen Park, told a News and Observer reporter yesterday about the fire in the park before day yesterday morning. The fire was reported in yesterday morning's News and Observer, but it was necessarily meager of details, as forms of the paper were on the press when the alarm was turned in.

In addition to the destruction of the house and its contents, a great deal of damage was done to the trees surrounding the house. The barn near by also caught fire, but a hose wagon arrived in time and the barn was saved.  -- The News & Observer 7/28/1911

If your research takes you to the Civil War, the NC State Archives has many resources covering that period. Individual states maintained records of creating and equipping their armies during the startup of the war. Beginning in 1862, the Confederate States of America took over, and records from that time forward reside in the National Archives. However, the State Archives has purchased copies of many of these resources, and many others have been digitized and are available online.

You can find a full explanation of Civil War resources on the North Carolina Civil War 150 blog.

One of the best places to find information about individual soldiers is the many rosters that have been compiled.

North Carolina Troops, 1861-1865, A Roster, which was begun at the Civil War's centennial in 1966, attempts to list every NC soldier, both Confederate and Union, with information from service records, muster rolls, Adjutant General’s records, pension applications, private collections, period newspapers, and another published roster, Roster of North Carolina Troops in the War Between the States (Moore’s Roster). It is currently up to 18 volumes, and more are planned, including an index. It is published by the Historical Publications Section of the NC Office of Archives and History and is available at many local libraries.

More information on individual soldiers can be found by searching his company or regiment records. The two most complete rosters of NC troops that will provide a company and regiment designations for individual soldiers are North Carolina Troops and The Roster of Confederate Soldiers 1861-1865.

Service records show enlistment and the whereabouts of the soldier at various points of his military career.

The Official Records of the War of the Rebellion, which includes official correspondence and reports made during the war, is available and searchable online.  

The activities of troops following their service also creates a paper trail for researchers. These include pension records, the state auditor’s records of the old soldier’s home, and records of the issuance of artificial limbs.  The Governor's Office papers from each of the governors during the Civil War contains correspondence, such as petitions for help from the state, that provide information about the period and people.

Ashley Yandle, an information management archivist at the State Archives, will be giving a lecture August 8 at 10:30 about finding Civil War records online. She will introduce the Digital Civil War Collection available through the North Carolina Digital Collections in the NCDC and discuss how to search the online catalog. This program will be held at the State Library & Archives Building and  is free to the public.  Call (919)807-7310 to register and reserve your seat.

Confederate veterans. Photo courtesy of the NC State Archives.
 

By the time Isabella Cannon became the first female mayor of Raleigh at age 73, she had already had quite a bit of adventure in her life.

Born in Scotland, she came to the United States in 1916 at age 12 on a British steamship being "chased by a German submarine." As a young wife, she lived in Liberia and Baghdad, following her husband's career in the diplomatic service. She lived for a short time in Raleigh before moving to Washington DC. Her husband worked several more years overseas. His health began to deteriorate, and he died soon after their return to North Carolina.

She became known as a neighborhood activist and pretty soon, she found herself being talked into running for mayor against incumbent Jyles Coggins.

In a 1993 interview with the Southern Oral History program, she recalled the excitement of that 1977 campaign.

I was unknown to the biggest segment of the population, certainly to the wealthy segment, and to the big business and developers. I was known to ordinary people. I had no money, I had no organization, but I said, "Ok, let's go for it." I threw myself into it, fully expecting to win. I was always surprised when someone would say to me, "Aren't you surprised that you won?" I replied, "I went in there to win—I didn't go in to lose."

It was a people's movement and was exciting. I made speeches all over, anywhere. I was going from eight o'clock in the morning to midnight making speeches. I went anywhere and everywhere, and I had fun doing it.  ... I ran as "The little old lady in tennis shoes" for a special reason. I live near NC State University and near Fred Olds School. At that time, it was the most derogatory thing you could say about anybody, "Oh, she dresses like a little old lady in tennis shoes," or "She thinks like a little old lady in tennis shoes." It made me angry because I saw all these young people walking by my door and what did they have on their feet? Sneakers, tennis shoes. It is no longer a derogatory comment, and perhaps I helped to change it.

If Mrs. Cannon had been so sure she would win the election, perhaps she was the only one.

Mr. Coggins really suffered by having a female run as his opponent. He was shocked. I had filed one hour before the deadline, and no one had thought that there was going to be a competition or that anybody else was going to file. He thought he was going to breeze in without any difficulty. ... It was total shock to the big business people and the developers. My campaign had been a joke to them, and I think the idea of "the little old lady in tennis shoes" perhaps added to them thinking of me as a joke. The business community had not taken me seriously. And Mr. Coggins himself really did not think I was going to win. He never conceded my election, never once admitted that I had won.

Immediately following the election that night, there was an explosion of media. I had telephone calls from Scotland, from the newspapers there, and from all over the United States. It was featured in newspapers from Tehran to Tokyo. The Stars and Stripes featured it in Japan. Reuters, the international news agency, picked it up, and it went all over the world since I had lived in Africa and The Middle East. I had fan clubs in Germany. There were people who wrote me from Australia, from Canada, from Korea. It was a real media explosion. Not only that, but in the United States ... Every major newspaper all over the United States featured me. Seventy-two major newspapers and magazines from all over the world, sixteen major magazines.

Being the first female mayor, and a tiny lady at that, brought its own special problems. The city council met behind a large, imposing table. The mayor's chair either sat so high that her feet didn't touch the floor, or if the chair were lowered to reach the floor, she couldn't be seen over the table.

The job brought other challenges, and there were clashes with a city council sympathetic to business and development interests. They did, however establish the first-ever comprehensive plan for the Capital City to help guide Raleigh's growth and make steps toward cooperating with the county on growth plans.

Her time as mayor lasted only two years. She was defeated in 1979 by fellow councilman Smedes York.

Unlike Coggins, Smedes York didn't underestimate Cannon. He treated her gently, outspent her 3-to-1 and beat her, 52 percent to 46 percent.

"She believed in the things she advocated, very strongly, " York said Thursday. "She didn't pick an issue just to get elected. She was an active neighborhood supporter before she was elected mayor, while she was mayor and after she was mayor. Certainly, in many respects, she could be a little feisty. But she was a very excellent speaker and very energetic and very intelligent. She is a very easy person to admire."  -- The News & Observer 2/15/2002

Isabella Cannon, at barely 5 feet, lost her re-election bid to the 6'4 Smedes York