Davie Poplar: University of North Carolina March 1993

 Davy Poplar Sapling Planted in Caswell County: Oakwood Elementary School October 1993

In 1993 one hundred and four sixth-grade students, representing every county in North Carolina,* were invited to Chapel Hill, NC, to attend a ceremony celebrating the bicentennial of the University of North Carolina. Each student received a sapling from the famed Davie Poplar (an iconic tree located in the heart of the UNC campus) and shook hands with Coach Dean Smith (with a photograph taken). Laura Beth Hodges represented Caswell County.

The thought was these students would take the Davie Poplar saplings back to their home counties and plant them. UNC recently launched a project to find these students and document these "baby" Davie Poplars.

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*With 100 counties in North Carolina, why the number was one hundred and four is not understood.

Source: "Living in North Carolina: The Legacy of the Davie Poplar" by Brad Campbell in "Our State" (March 2024).

Thanks to Carroll Aldridge for calling this event to my attention and to Brenda Wood Hodges for providing the newspaper item in which her daughter was featured.

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Davie Poplar at the University of North Carolina

Confederate Soldiers Not U.S. Veterans

 Congress Never Designated Confederate Military Veterans as United States Veterans

While Confederate veterans received some benefits (widows' pensions, for example), they are still not recognized legally as U.S. veterans. While Congress provided for "headstones or markers at the expense of the United States for the unmarked graves" of Confederate soldiers in the Civil War, it did not confer on Confederate veterans equal status as U.S. veterans. The definition of "veteran," as specified by the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs, does not include Confederate armed forces.

Any claim that Confederate veterans maintain the same legal status as U.S. veterans is false. Confederate veterans' widows and children received pensions after congressional action in 1958 well after the death of the last surviving Confederate veteran, but that action in itself did not declare those soldiers to be full U.S. veterans. The very definition of a U.S. veteran was never expanded to include Confederate soldiers –– even when they were granted amnesty by President Andrew Johnson.

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Public Law 85-425 (May 27, 1958) [https://www.congress.gov/85/statute/STATUTE-72/STATUTE-72-Pg133-2.pdf]

An Act

To increase the monthly rates of pension payable to widows and former widows of deceasetl veterans of the Spanish-American War, Civil War, Indian War, and Mexican War, and provide penslons to widows of veterans who served in the military or naval forces of the Confederate States of America during the Civil War. 

Be it enacted hy the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the Veterans' Benefits Act of 1957 (Public Law 85-56) is amended:

(e) For the purpose of this section, and section 433, the term "veteran" includes a person who served in the military or naval forces of the Confederate States of America during the Civil War, and the term "active, military or naval service" includes active service in such forces.

CONFEDERATE FORCES VETERANS

SEC. 410. The Administrator shall pay to each person who served in the military or naval forces of the Confederate States of America during the Civil War a monthly pension in the same amounts and subject to the same conditions as would have been applicable to such person under the laws in effect on December 31, 1957, if his service such forces had been service in the military or naval service of the United States.

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The last confirmed Confederate Civil War veteran, Pleasant Crump, died in 1951 at age 104. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_surviving_Confederate_veterans

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Determining Veteran Status: U.S. Department of Veterans' Affairs [https://www.va.gov/OSDBU/docs/Determining-Veteran-Status.pdf]

38 U.S.C. § 101(2) provides:

The term "veteran" means a person who served in the active military, naval, or air service, and

who was discharged or released therefrom under conditions other than dishonorable.

38 U.S.C. § 101(10) provides:

The term "Armed Forces" means the United States Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, and Coast Guard, including the reserve components thereof.

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BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

A PROCLAMATION. December 25, 1868

Now, therefore, be it known that I, Andrew Johnson, President of the United States, by virtue of the power and authority in me vested by the Constitution, and in the name of the sovereign people of the United States, do hereby proclaim and declare unconditionally, and without reservation, to all and to every person who directly or indirectly participated in the late insurrection or rebellion, a full pardon and amnesty for the offence of treason against the United States, or of adhering to their enemies during the late civil war, with restoration of all rights, privileges, and immunities under the Constitution and the laws which have been made in pursuance thereof.

https://www.loc.gov/resource/rbpe.23602600/?st=text

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https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/06/29/fact-check-confederate-veterans-not-considered-u-s-veterans/3263720001/

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/confederate-soldiers-veterans/

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Public Law 810 refers to Part II, Chapter 23 of U.S. Code 38 which states that the federal government should, when requested, pay to put up monuments or headstones for unmarked graves for three groups of people:

(1) Any individual buried in a national cemetery or in a post cemetery.

(2) Any individual eligible for burial in a national cemetery (but not buried there), except for those persons or classes of persons enumerated in section 2402(a)(4), (5), and (6) of this title.

(3) Soldiers of the Union and Confederate Armies of the Civil War.

No portion of the law confers any privilege other than markers for graves of Confederate soldiers, nor does it grant Confederate soldiers status equal to those of veterans of the United States military. As of 1901, 482 individuals (not all soldiers) were already interred in the Confederate section of Arlington National Cemetery. Being buried there did not, of course, confer any legal status as a U.S. veteran.

Children of John Hosea McNeill Kerr and Eliza Catherine Yancey Kerr

 John Hosea McNeill Kerr (1844-1924) and Eliza Catherine Yancey Kerr (1844-1927) had several interesting children. She is a grandniece of Bartlett Yancey (1785-1828).

Born in Yanceyville, NC. John Hosea Kerr (1873-1958): Graduated from Wake Forest (N.C.) College in 1895; studied law; was admitted to the bar in 1895 and commenced practice in Warrenton, N.C.; mayor of Warrenton, N.C., in 1897 and 1898; solicitor for the third district of North Carolina 1906-1916; judge of the superior court 1916-1923; trustee of the University of North Carolina; delegate to the Democratic National Conventions in 1932 and 1940; chairman, United States delegation to the Inter-American Travel Congress in Mexico City in 1941; elected as a Democrat to the Sixty-eighth Congress to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Claude Kitchin; reelected to the Sixty-ninth and to the thirteen succeeding Congresses and served from November 6, 1923, to January 3, 1953; chairman, Committee on Elections No. 3 (Seventy-second through Seventy-fifth Congresses).

Mary Graves Miles Kerr (1875-1965): Married Yanceyville Dr. William Oliver Spencer, M.D. (1863-1938). She graduated from Oxford Seminary as valedictorian and taught school in a private school in Yanceyville. In 1921 she was Regent of the Society of the DAR in the State of North Carolina; as vice-president of the NC Society of UDC she was in charge of their scholarship program; in 1921 she was guest speaker for the dedication of the Confederate Monument in Yanceyville. For some years she was society editor of the Winston-Salem Journal. After her husband's death in 1938 she was assistant collector of Internal Revenue for the Winston office. A Democrat, she had been chairman of the Forsyth Party. An ardent Baptist, Mrs. Spencer taught the young adult Sunday School class at the First Baptist Church, Winston-Salem. She was Mother of the Year for North Carolina. Her initials "MKS" are found on the World War I monument on the Square in Yanceyville. She wrote the "Lest We Forget" inscription.

Albert Yancey Kerr (1878-1942) served as Yanceyville postmaster and owner/editor of "The Caswell News" newspaper that he published in the Azariah Graves storehouse building that still stands in Yanceyville and has been used as a restaurant. See photograph. He is the father of Eliza Katharine Kerr Kendall (1921-1997), Mary Frances Kerr Donaldson (1923-2016), and George Yancey Kerr (1925-1986). The two sisters collaborated on several books documenting Caswell County records. They are must haves for any serious Caswell County researcher.

Martha Frances Kerr (1883-1965) married Milton and Yanceyville merchant Alexander Hampton (AH) Motz (1885-1973). The A. H. Motz building still stands today on the Square in Yanceyville. See 1935 photograph. Their only child, Mary Kerr Motz (1917-2005) was a Yanceyville fixture for many years, and her house still stands.

Nannie Emma Kerr (1885-1978) married much beloved Yanceyville physician Dr. Stephen Arnold Malloy, M.D. (1972-1944). See photoraph. Many children delivered by Dr. Malloy carry his surname as their middle name. After the arrival of Dr. Malloy in Yanceyville in 1897, the town had the benefit of two doctors for only a few years. Around 1906, Dr. William O. Spencer, M.D., moved his practice (and surgery) to Winston-Salem, NC. As Dr. Spencer departed Yanceyville around 1906 and Dr. Houston L. Gwynn did not begin his practice until after graduating from medical school in 1923, Dr. Malloy practiced alone for some 17 years. He undoubtedly was one busy physician!

The Missing Chapter in the Life of Thomas Day by Patricia Dane Rogers and Laurel Crone Sneed (2013)

The Missing Chapter in the Life of Thomas Day

By Patricia Dane Rogers and Laurel Crone Sneed (2013)

Late in the spring of 1835, a rising young African American furniture maker from Milton, North Carolina, named Thomas Day (1801–ca. 1861) traveled to Philadelphia (fig. 1). Under normal circumstances, it would have been logical for a professional artisan to visit this bustling commercial hub in search of new business contacts and the latest fashions in furniture making, but circumstances were not normal. After Nat Turner’s bloody insurrection in August 1831, white-on-black violence targeting free blacks and antislavery activity had increased and spread. It was dangerous for any free person of color, let alone a southerner, to be in the so-called City of Brotherly Love, where white mobs had attacked and demolished African American businesses and gathering places in that very year as well as in 1832 and 1834.

Day was in Philadelphia for a different purpose: to attend the Fifth Annual Convention for the Improvement of the Free People of Colour in the United States. This event attracted the nation’s most prominent free African American antislavery leaders, a group described as “men of enterprise and influence” who were on hand to forward an ambitious and wide-ranging platform. In the course of five days, the attendees formally called for improved African American access to schools and jobs and a boycott of sugar produced by slave labor. They railed against the growing number of proposed plans for African colonization by former slaves and free blacks and pledged temperance, thrift, and moral reform. The delegates also vowed to blanket Congress with a pamphlet campaign to outlaw slavery in the District of Columbia “and its territories.” Most emphatically, the group proclaimed its belief in universal liberty and racial equality: “We claim to be American citizens and we will not waste our time by holding converse with those who deny us this privilege unless they first prove that a man is not a citizen of that country in which he was born and reared.”[1]

Yanceyville National Farm Loan Association: 1917

 Yanceyville National Farm Loan Association

A Voice From Caswell County

Mr. Editor: What is known as the Yanceyville National Farm Loan Association, of Caswell County, has been organized. it comprises the following teritory: Yanceyville Township, Locust Hill Township, Pelham Township and Stony [sic] Creek Township.

President, R. A. King

Vice-President, J. H. King

Directors -- W. T. Williamson, Walter King, and Thos. Graves

Loan Committee -- J. W. Williamson, Rufus Graves and Washington Graves

All persons wishing to join the Association in the above territory must apply to S. P. Grogan, Sec. and Treas., Yanceyville, N.C., R.F.D. 1. The Association consists of a $20,000 loan. S. P. G. R. 1, Yanceyville, N.C.

The Union Republican (Winston-Salem, NC), 11 January 1917.

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This was a co-operative organization established by federal statute to provide loans to individual farmers and their families. Under the act, farmers could borrow up to 50% of the value of their land and 20% of the value of their improvements. The minimum loan was $100 and the maximum was $10,000. Loans were paid off through amortization over 5 to 40 years.

Borrowers also purchased shares of the National Farm Loan Association. This meant it served as a cooperative agency that lent money from farmer to farmer.

Womack Home: Christmas In The Old South by Martha Eliza (Marnie) Hatchett Bason

 Christmas In The Old South: Yuletide Season Brings Nostalgic Thoughts Of Joyous Event At Famous Womack Home

By Mrs. Sam Bason [Martha Eliza Hatchett (1896-1993)]

Yanceyville, Dec 14 -- The old farm house sets empty and forlorn by the side of the road as those of us who knew and loved it for so many years pass up and down the highway. The very sight of it brings to us a feeling of nostalgia for the old days, especially at Christmas time!

This old house was the home of one of Caswell County's most illustrious sons. The marker in front of the house reads, "Bartlett Yancey, congressman, state legislator, political leader, died in 1828 at the age of 42. His home and grave are here."

Wonderful Days

Bartlett Yancey's grandson, Thomas Pancoast Womack and wife, Mattie Hatchett Womack, later owned it and lived there. It was during this period that we shall do a bit of reminiscing.

Days of preparation for Christmas Day itself and the holidays themselves were wonderful days at "Summer Hill." "Aunt Mat" and "Uncle Tom" had no children of their own, but there were always some of the many nieces and nephews around. Christmas was the time, and "Summer Hill" the place for gathering of the clan.

For days before Christmas the kitchen with its big wood range was a busy, good smelling place. Aunt Mat and Cousin Jence (our old maid cousin whom we adored) were cooking cakes, pies, cheese straws, beaten biscuits, etc. Often this cooking went on until far into the night. The children shelled walnuts and hickory nuts, grated cheese and coconuts, of course tasting as we went along besides scraping bowls from cake batter and icings -- humming Christmas songs as we worked.

Yanceyville Baptist Church Building Final Services 1950

Final Services Will Be Held Today In Yanceyville's Old Baptist Church; To Give Way To Modern New Building

By Tom Henderson

Yanceyville, Jan. 28 -- The walls of Yanceyville's historic Baptist Church will echo some weepings and wailings, along with paeans of thanksgiving, Sunday morning when the pulpit is preached from for the last time and the doors officially locked, preparatory to tearing down the old building and breaking ground for the new, whose architectural magnificence and magnitude will more fittingly eulogize the living God and more lovingly express the denominational loyalties of a growing membership.

Perhaps those who are yet unrelentingly loyal to the ancient landmark, satisfied with its size and imposingness and loath to see it razed will find some consolation in the knowledge that the costlier edifice will arise in the same setting of the grove of oak and hickory donated by Thomas Graves in the long ago.

Many Noted Sons

Through the years this church has been the home-base shrine of the Kerrs, Poteats, the Graves and the Yanceys. From the portals have gone out into state and national life many who have become eminent in the professions of life. Senator Bartlett Yancey, Dr. Edwin McNeill Poteat, Dr. William Louis Poteat, Miss Ida Poteat, Judge John Kerr and Representative John Hosea Kerr, to particularize, learned much of their Bible beliefs from the teachings here.

It is no reflection on either the Primitive or the Missionary Baptists to tell that the founding fathers of the Yanceyville church were mostly Primitive Baptists who had pulled out of the Country Line Church, whose foundation rocks are yet to be found on this side of the creek near the nascent mill site of the late William Graves, now in the possession of the heirs of the late Billie Martin, an ardent and orthodox Primitive Baptist.

The late Dr. Billie Poteat once "commissioned" this humble scribbler to "search the records and find out the historical facts incident to the splitting-off of the Missionary church from the Primitive." Unfortunately, these irreplaceable records have either gone up in smoke or "gone with the wind."