Marcus Baxter Dry, the longest serving Cary High School principal never built a house for his family to live in, but he oversaw the building of two Cary High School buildings that had profound effects on education locally and statewide. Read on to learn more about Dry’s life, his personal home, and his influence on education represented by two brick high school buildings and more.

The House on the Corner

Marcus Baxter Dry House; photograph courtesy of the author

The Marcus Baxter Dry House has sat at the corner of Dry Avenue and Faculty Drive in downtown Cary overlooking the Cary Arts Center and Cary High School for 125 years or more. For more than 30 years it was the home of Professor Marcus Baxter Dry, the longest serving principal of Cary High School and beloved community member, and his family. The house is a good example of a one-story “Triple A” cottage with Victorian features, typical of houses across Wake County and in Cary. The house is dated circa 1900 and features details such as a wrap-around porch and patterned shingles in the gables with lancet-shaped louvers. Its simplicity and lack of ostentatious features belie the accomplishments and impact on education rendered over 50 years by Professor Dry. We’ll talk about his remarkable life and the campus buildings in a bit, but first, let’s explore the history of the land and his personal home.

The Land & House

The Dry Family property was part of much larger acreage once owned by Frank Page, who set aside four acres of this large parcel on a high spot at the end of South Academy Street for use as school grounds for the newly formed town. Page understood the value of education, and he wanted both his own children and the children in his newly formed town to have the opportunity of a solid education. Trees were felled on the “school lot” as it was known and milled into lumber at his sawmill. The two-story school was completed and ready to begin classes in January 1870, over a year before the town was officially incorporated. The date 1896 in the image below refers to the year that the school passed out of the hands of the Rufus H. Jones family and to stockholders.

Jerry Miller drawing for Cary High School

Courtesy of Cary High School Archives

After the school was built, Page still owned land in the surrounding area, and the land adjacent to the school lot was sold in smaller parcels over the years and descended through numerous hands. In 1901, the widow Mrs. Elizabeth Quince Petteway bought the property now located at the corner of Dry Avenue and Faculty Drive, a parcel which at that time comprised four acres. The map below shows Mrs. Petteway’s house on the 1906 map drawn from recollections of Terrine Holleman Woodlief and Marvin T. Jones, both long time Cary residents and early graduates of Cary High School.

Mrs Petteway’s daughter Kate was married to William H. Butt who was from Wake County. He had been a farmer early on in his working life and had acquired large tracts of land around Cary. In the 1900 Census, The Butt family and Mrs. Petteway lived in the same household in Cary. Was the family living in what became known as the Dry House? There is no way to know for sure, but there are no homes on this map for the Butt family. Around 1905 – 1910, Mr. Butt changed careers, beginning work as an engineer for the Seaboard Airline Railroad (SAL.) The Butts along with Mrs. Petteway were found in Hamlet, a hub of the SAL, in the 1910 Census. Sadly, Mrs. Petteway passed away in 1915, still owning her Cary property. Her heirs sold the 4-acre property to M. B. Dry in 1917 for $2600.00. By that time, the Dry family had been in Cary for nine years. The deed explained that the land was sold to fulfill payment of legacies outlined in Mrs. Petteway’s will.

The Drys Move to Cary, But Not to the Dry House

Although the house is known locally as the long-time residence of the Dry family, they clearly lived elsewhere for a while. Other details about where the Dry family lived when they first came to Cary were found in The Cary News newspaper article in 1990. Dry’s son, William Henry Dry recounted, “When they [his parents] came to Cary from Wingate, they couldn’t find a place to live. They lived in the girls’ dormitory, and that’s where I was born.” William was born in August 1908, so he would have been born soon after his parents arrived in Cary for Mr. Dry to take on the principalship of Cary High School.

Girls’ Dormitory 1916

William Dry went on to explain that the family lived in several homes around Cary, and for a time lived in what was then called the Walker Hotel. He told this anecdote, “When I was just a little fellow the first paddling I ever got was for putting rocks on the railroad track,” he said with a laugh. “I must have been about three.” William was three around 1911, so it appears the family was still in transition and not yet in the Dry House.

The article went on, “Later, [my] father bought the house which now sits at the corner of Dry Avenue and Faculty Drive, right across from the school. The Dry family made that their permanent home. That house is over 100 years old… [as of 1990] We moved into it I think when I was six or seven…” This would have been about 1915. So perhaps, the Drys rented the house until the heirs of Mrs. Petteway were able to execute her will and fulfill the legacies, with the sale taking place in 1917. In the photo below, a young man appears on the porch. One guess is that it is William Dry, who would have been around 12 at the time.

The Dry House from the 1920 CHSite, yearbook of Cary High School

Dry's Early Life and Educational Achievements

Now that we know a little bit about the house and land, let’s back up a bit and examine the early life and education of Professor Dry. Marcus Baxter Dry was born in 1871 on his father’s farm near Hopewell Church, Goose Creek Township, Union County, NC which is southeast of Charlotte. Hopewell Church is the top red oval, and the lower oval encircles Unionville, where Dry went to school later on.

He learned the value of hard work on the farm, learning to use an ax, mattock, and plow, and run the engine of the steam mill that his father operated.

Photo of the Dry Homestead found on the Ancestry family tree: AngelaDryGarrett

His early education started at local schools: the Old Field (or Friends) School, Hopewell Church School and the Faulks School. He went on to preparatory school at Union Institute, graduating in 1892.

Photo from https://freepages.rootsweb.com/~jganis/genealogy/unionco/photos/main.html

His course of study was so rigorous that he enrolled at Wake Forest College in 1893 as a sophomore and graduated in 1896, just three years later, with a Master of Arts degree and as Valedictorian and Poet of his class. He also served as an editor of and writer for “The Wake Forest Student” newspaper. No yearbook photographs exist online for Wake Forest College from the 1890s.

Catalogue of Wake Forest College [1892-1905]

Here was his course of study as noted in the catalog listing his graduation:

1896 excerpt from Catalog of WFC 1892-1905

The above abbreviations stand for: Moral Philosophy, Chemistry, Biology, Modern Languages, Greek, Latin, Physics and Applied Mathematics, and English. Clearly, he was a serious and educationally ambitious student.

As a dedicated educator who understood the importance of life-long earning, Dry offered summer schools for teachers at Wingate and later at Cary. Later in his career, he himself attended summer sessions of the Teachers College at Columbia University in New York as well as summer school at the University of North Carolina.  When the farm-life school model started to take hold across the state, Dry entered A & M (now NCSU) Summer School for farm-life men, attending three summers and applying himself to subjects such as soil, fertilizers, agronomy, animal husbandry, dairying, poultry, horticulture, botany, bacteriology, etc. All this study converted him to the farm-life idea that he implemented later at Cary High School.

Early Teaching Career

Before he arrived in Cary to teach, Dry had years of teaching and school administration experience under his belt. Although Dry’s own educational experience has been previously outlined, what wasn’t mentioned was that while he was at the Union Institute and Wake Forest College, he taught at local schools near his home when he was not in school himself, such as in the summer and between terms. These would have been small, one teacher community

schools. It should be pointed out that in these “one teacher schools” there may have been little to no equipment, not even a blackboard, many schools being log and chinking structures. Professor Dry recounted, (and you can hear his poetic nature coming out) “No desks, no tablets or pencils, no toilet arrangements of any kind! …Wide was the fireplace and scanty was the light that came in through the diminutive window. The shrunken floor-boards admitted an abundance of fresh air from beneath the building.”

Example of a log cabin school found in:

https://piedmonttrails.com/2021/04/15/the-rural-little-schools/

1896 was a year of change for Dry and his family. Late in 1896, for reasons unknown, Henry Dry, Marcus Dry’s father sold his land and moved, along with his wife and younger children to Texas. Marcus stayed behind after graduating from Wake Forest College earlier in the year, in May, and he assumed the principalship of the newly organized Wingate School in Union County where he served for twelve years. Wingate School was about 15 or so miles, as the crow flies, from his now former home in Goose Creek. At Wingate, he simply taught, in his own words, “practically everything I had studies at college” at Wake Forest. Because there was no state oversight for curriculum choices, he devised the following curriculum for his high school students: “four years of English, four years of Mathematics including both Plane and Solid Geometry, four years of History, five years of Science, embracing Physiology, Physical Geography, Physics, Geology and Astronomy, one year of French, one of Greek, and four of Latin… Pupils got a big doses of Spelling, Penmanship, Composition Writing, and had speaking pieces that were presented Friday afternoons. Two debating societies were maintained…”

Wingate School from: https://freepages.rootsweb.com/~jganis/genealogy/unionco/photos/main.html

According to a biographical sketch of Professor Dry in the book “Historical Raleigh” published in 1908, “The [Wingate] school had just been established in 1896…the attendance at Wingate grew from a small local patronage to an enrollment of three hundred pupils, one-third of whom were boarding students. Here is Professor Dry with many of his students in the 1900-1901 school catalog. This is the earliest photograph of Dry that has been located so far.

“A community grew up around the school, taking on the proportions of a village… The school made the town.” That sounds very much like the trajectory of Cary Academy/Cary High School. Both Wingate and Cary were served by the railroad, making travel for boarders easier and town development possible.

Personal Events at Wingate

In 1904, at the age of 33, Marcus Baxter Dry married 18-year-old Wilma Anne Perry of Monroe, NC. They had met when she was a student at Wingate. Her extended family lived around the Wingate area, so it would have been an obvious choice for her to attend the local co-educational school.

1904 Wedding Photo of Marcus Baxter Dry and Wilma Anne Perry

gift to Cary High School from Charlotte Dry Keuhn of Aiken, SC,

granddaughter of the Drys

Their first child, Helen Marshall Dry, was born in 1905, and Wilma was expecting their second child when, in 1908, Professor E. L. Middleton retired from Cary High School as Cary transitioned from a private to a public high school. Professor Dry was elected to replace him. Lots of changes were on the way.

Shortly after arriving in Cary, Wilma gave birth to their second child, William Henry Dry in August of 1908, as mentioned above.  Here is a photo, again from Charlotte Dry Keuhn, showing Dry, Wilma, the oldest daughter Helen and baby William. The photo dates to 1909, shortly after the Drys moved to Cary.

Dry's Educational Philosophy

The News and Observer, July 27, 1924, pg. 60

Under Dry’s direction, Cary High School became a model for the development of North Carolina’s public school system that took place in the 1920s. Not only was the school an architectural model, but teaching professionals from across the state came to Cary to learn the secrets of student success. After the completion of the first brick school building, Dry started implementing what may be called “adaptive education.” An article authored by Dry in 1924 explained why so many educators came to view Cary High School. He began:

“I have seen boys and girls become interested in these subjects (agriculture and home economics) and stay in school through four years who without doubt would have had a brief and unhappy high school career if they had been compelled to study Latin or some of the higher mathematics… To say that the vocational courses are light, flimsy, namby-pamby stuff, requiring no real effort on the part of the pupil, is missing the mark very widely… To graduate in one of these courses means work, and it is work that counts for something when it is done…” He used a both/and approach to educational choice: college prep as well as vocational courses with diplomas.

This philosophy of education drove him as a pioneer in curriculum development, and his goal was to make the school a working partner with Cary’s rural community. He established the E. L. Middleton Farm-Life Department with a 13-acre farm and Home Economics department (1914) offering diploma courses in both. He also pioneered vocational training for mentally handicapped children, a teacher training department (1922) during a time of teacher shortages along with public school music and band.

He also introduced a commercial department (1924) and developed a robust physical education department. He started a local “Betterment Association,” the forerunner of the Parent-Teacher Association which enabled him to provide hot lunches for children.

The physical plant of Cary High School expanded on its original four acres as curriculum expanded and enrollment grew. Dry laid the first brick in each of the brick buildings built from 1913 to 1939 to turn the “school lot” into a quadrangle style campus. The Frank Page Dormitory for Girls (1916) replaced a wooden structure lost to fire, a boys dormitory (1920) which later became the “teacherage” housing teachers and their families on campus, the Walter Hines Page Vocational Building (1922), and a new elementary school building (1927). The Templeton Gymnasium (1925), the first gym in a rural high school, joined the campus buildings, and the football field was built on additional acreage to complete the campus (1928.)

The above two photographs from the 1929 CHSite yearbook

Changes On the Way

But educational trends were changing the landscape. The trend in North Carolina in the late 1920s was for consolidated high schools. From the site Ncpedia.org:

"School consolidation was a trend that developed in North Carolina immediately following World War I as state and local leaders sought to improve the quality of rural public schools. Parents of children in rural districts served by one- and two-teacher schools began to demand educational advantages more comparable to those in towns and cities. Leaders tried to accomplish this in many cases by consolidating several small districts into one…”

There was some resistance to overcome:

“People in rural communities often resisted efforts to close small neighborhood schools in exchange for larger and better-equipped facilities.” Rural areas looked askance at higher taxes, loss of local autonomy, and less personal rapport between students and teachers."

Over time, “proponents of the consolidation movement were successful in convincing voters of the benefits of home economics, agriculture, and other vocational courses not found in the smaller schools. Consolidation also allowed many rural communities to have high schools for the first time, as well as teachers with specialized training in academic subjects… as well as “more competitive athletic teams, which had an undeniable influence on school and community spirit.”

A local example of a consolidated school was Green Hope School established in 1927. Three small communities near Highway 55 consolidated their three schools. The names of these communities were Green Level, Carpenter, and Upchurch all in western Wake County.

Green Hope School 1927-1963

For Cary High School in 1927, consolidation signaled the end of high school dormitories for boarding students, with school buses in outlying areas able to carry students to schools much closer to their homes. These rural high schools were generally brick, with laboratories, libraries and other attractive features for a broad education. What did Dry think about these changes? Admittedly, Dry saw the advantages of tuition-based schools. He observed that the students studied harder and were better controlled (or disciplined, probably due to parental pressure over tuition money being well spent,) but he also saw the advantage of the local consolidated schools which offered tuition-free schooling in reach of all, “even if some students were indifferent,” in his words. It was also a benefit for students in rural areas who had limited access to the educational and cultural benefits of schooling. He oversaw that change at Cary High School and was able to maintain Cary’s reputation for excellence during and after the transition. He even stated firmly that “the consolidated school is the best type of school that has ever been devised for a rural people.” Here is a photo of buses that were used for student transport in the greater Cary area.

Honoring Thirty Years of Service

In 1938, Dry was lauded at a banquet celebrating his being the oldest principal in point of service in North Carolina, at the oldest public school in North Carolina, and for his 30-year service at Cary High School. The Wake County Superintendent John C Lockhart praised him as “the head schoolmaster, not only of Wake County, but of all North Carolina” and called his record “without parallel in North Carolina.”

In an act of appreciation for his years of service, his Sunday School class, former students, friends, and community members, as well as the school board, presented him with an all-expense paid trip to the Holy Land, including 13 countries along the way. It was a tour that he talked about for the remainder of his life! One of the countries he visited was England, and this anecdote appeared in the newspaper, 20 years after the death of Walter Hines Page. Dry did a little name-dropping…

Yet Another Cary High School, the Third Building

But the project that is his lasting legacy after the accolades of 1938 is the structure that we live alongside even now. Dry did not rest on his laurels. He oversaw, once again, the construction of another brick main high school building. The photo below shows what I think is the basement level of the third Cary High School building, construction underway, with the Teacherage and Dry House in the background. The original brick building had been outgrown and was outdated, and the school board was able to secure funding through the Public Works Administration.

Plaque located in the lobby of the Cary Arts Center

Many people in town confused the PWA with the WPA of the Depression era, a more well-known program of the Depression. Townspeople would joke about the slow rate of construction, at least in their eyes. Today, we would consider the construction to be rapid, having started in 1939 and the building dedicated in 1940, but locals called the entire venture the “We Poke Along!” Here is a photo of the construction.

The building is now known as the Cary Arts Center. In the dedication address for this building, the state superintendent of public instruction said in his knowledge Mr. Dry was the only man who literally wore out a school building. Actually, Professor Dry also wore out the original wood building, too! A News & Observer editorial at the time called this new building “the last word in educational equipment!” To recap, Professor Dry started in the wooden building, advocated for and had built the first brick building in 1913, and did the same again in 1940!

According to a lengthy newspaper article, and in true Cary style, the third Cary High School, whose construction Dry oversaw, was thoughtfully and very well-equipped with state-of-the-art sound-proof rooms for typing and commercial classes, using insulated walls and double thickness of glass and doors. There were projectors (the latest technology) for motion pictures used for teaching and a sound system connected with the superintendent’s office (Professor Dry’s office) that could communicate with every room and could be tuned to the radio in any or all classrooms. The radio system extended to the large auditorium where students could hear national broadcasts on important subjects. Each Friday morning a free motion picture was shown for educational purposes and each Friday afternoon a motion picture was shown for those who wished to remain and pay admission. Cary children and young men and women had the best facility they could hope for, for learning and success. I even found in the Cary High School Archives an International Business Machines diagram for a fire alarm system. That must have been a hint of the impact a couple of decades later that IBM made on Cary!

Although all these accomplishments speak for themselves, there are more to tell! Dry was also a leader in establishing the North Carolina Education Association and was a member of the first state Textbook Commission.

Another side of Professor Dry

You may wonder, did Professor Dry have a life outside of the classroom? It’s hard to believe he had any spare time, having accomplished so much in his teaching career. The students of Cary High School remembered him in 1929 in “his daily pose.” That is the image students had of him… always at work!

But the driving force in his life which he would attest made his accomplishments possible was his life of Christian faith. According to his daughter Hallie Dry, Professor Dry was a deeply religious Christian man who taught the Dry Bible Class at Cary Baptist Church for thirty years. He also served on the board and later as chairman of the Board of Deacons for Cary Baptist Church. He also sang in the choir.

Dry’s Christian values shaped his approach to operating a school. Rachel Dunham was a boarding student who graduated in 1924, and she recounted, “…we always went to Chapel every morning… in the auditorium of the school…Mr Dry always led them [the services]. And he always said the Lord’s Prayer. And he’d read a chapter in the Bible… most of the time it was the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians.” In a tribute after Dry’s death, the writer noted that Dry was “the last word in kindness and gentleness in dealing with his pupils, and yet he was patient and firm in the best kind of discipline…” The write went on to say, “The poet writes, “The teacher lives forever,” and that is very true when a man has built his life into the character of boys and girls for many years.”

He also had a self-deprecating sense of humor. One essay he wrote about his educational philosophy contained this passage:

“Back in the nineties [the 1890’s!] I had been exposed to a liberal quantity of classical learning in the form of Latin and Greek grammar and literature… I can’t now recall even the names of half of them. I imbibed a great dose of mathematical lore, in the form of… differential and integral calculus (whatever that means, though I made close to a hundred on it)…

Many early photographs of Professor Dry captured his serious nature. BUT he was caught on camera with a wry smile on his face when the popular Vaudeville star “Noodles Fagan” visited Cary High School to emphasize the importance of education and character. His message was simple and expanded on Professor Dry’s educational philosophy (AND Frank Page’s big three: hard work, clean living, and education): be polite, be honest, and hustle (which I take to mean work hard). Don’t miss one school session, don’t drink, don’t chew, keep your hands clean and your character clean. This was a fun event for the schoolchildren, but one with a purpose. encouraging children to stay in school. Unlike Queen Victoria, Professor Dry seems to have been amused!

And he could take some gentle ribbing from his students in their “Last Will and Testament” for 1919:

After having suffered from a serious bout of typhoid fever in the late 1890s, with his recovery lasting several months, I’m sure he would have wanted to make sure the students understood the serious nature of the Spanish Influenza, even if they had to endure numerous lectures on the subject!

The End of an Illustrious Career

Dry finished his teaching career by handing in his resignation to the Cary School Board on April 1, 1942. His decision to resign as principal must have been a difficult one. The school newspaper interviewed Professor Dry at the end of his final year, and Dry remarked, “I have been at the work of teaching so long, that I don’t see how I can reconcile myself to stay away from the class room.” Here is a photograph of him from the school newspaper, The Echo. Note he is still wearing his signature high collared shirt and three piece suit.

April 1942 Cary High School Echo newspaper

The couple was honored in May 1942 at a special ceremony following the presentations of diplomas at the 1942 Cary High School graduation with the presentation of a silver coffee set. They were cheered on with a standing ovation by current graduates and hundreds of his former pupils who returned to mark this occasion. Almost the entire audience had attended school under Dry for at least one year during his tenure. At a reception following graduation, congratulatory telegrams and letters from former pupils were read aloud. When asked for remarks, Professor Dry humbly replied, “I should ask my better half to make this speech. Whatever success I have attained has been due to the fact that I married the finest woman in Union County.”

The News and Observer, May 6, 1942

Fortunately for the students and teachers alike, he continued to work as a substitute teacher until 1944 when his health concerns became serious.

Marcus Baxter Dry passed away on January 27, 1946. Former Governor J Melville Broughton delivered the main address at a memorial service in 1947. A bronze memorial plaque was presented to Cary High School honoring his over 50 total years of service in the classroom and to the two communities he served. Broughton said, “The life of Marcus Baxter Dry was not a conspicuous life, it was not a sensational life, but it was a life that, in terms of service, was truly great.”

Continuing to Honor Dry’s Memory

In 1948, a portrait of Professor Dry, painted by Peace College instructor and noted local Morrisville artist, Mabel Pugh was presented to the school. The portrait was restored a few years ago through funds contributed by the Friends of the Page Walker Hotel, Cary’s Historical Society, and the portrait hangs in the Cary Arts Center, the crowning achievement of Dry’s life-long personal investment in public education and the lives of his students.

Here is a photograph of the portrait being given to the school.

Dry’s memory continued to have an impact after his death, and not just in Cary. In 1957, on the 60^th anniversary of the founding of Wingate School, now Wingate University, the Dry Memorial Fountain located between the theater and outdoor amphitheater, was named in memory of Professor Dry.  A campus article noted that the school was founded near a spring which provided water for the school, an important consideration.

The campus chapel was erected in 1964 by the former students of Professor Dry and dedicated in his honor and named the M. B. Dry Memorial Chapel. Today, the chapel serves as an office of Wingate’s minister to students. In 1993, Jerry McGee was named the 13^th president of the university, and a newspaper article printed a photograph of McGee alongside a portrait of the first head of school, a young Marcus Baxter Dry. The portrait based on the circa 1908 photograph also found in the 1915 CHSite yearbook hangs in the Trustee Room overseeing 130 years of Wingate history.

The Wingate portrait and the photograph used to create it.

Here in Cary, when the old, and third, Cary High School, later Cary Elementary and Junior High School and later still Cary Elementary, was replaced with more modern school buildings, the town wisely chose in 2003 to convert this historic site and structure to the Cary Arts Center, and ground for the Cary Arts Center was broken in 2010. Two rooms, The Marcus Dry Room and the Principal’s Hall honor directly or indirectly the man who left a lasting impression on education in Cary.

So here’s to Professor Marcus Baxter Dry. What a remarkable man; what a remarkable imprint on Cary history!

The life of John Beckwith tells the powerful story of a person born into slavery who ultimately lived to experience emancipation and life beyond bondage. What makes Beckwith’s story especially remarkable is the extensive documentation that traces his life from beginning to end. Such a record is uncommon, as many formerly enslaved individuals were left unnamed and undocumented before the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. Thankfully, many documents spanning John Beckwith’s full life have survived, allowing us to better understand both his personal journey and the times in which he lived.

The story of the Beckwith family starts with an 1848 mention in the Wake County Register of Deeds (Bk 18 Page 169) of enslaved boys Green and Henderson who were sold by Sarah Edwards to her son Joseph W. Edwards for a token amount of $1 and “for the natural love and affection which I bear unto my son...”

Just a couple of years later, the 1850 Slave Schedule for the Western Division of Wake County enumerated on July 27, 1850 noted the following individuals in the listing of the slave owner Joseph Edwards:

This appears to be Green (age 21) and Henderson (age 12,) both later with the Beckwith surname, along with Miley whom Green had married in the interim and two minors, most likely Miley’s and/or Green and Miley’s children. Note that over the years, John Beckwith’s mother was known as Miley, Millie and Molly.

A 2014 article on the dailykos.com website written by “edwardssl for Genealogy and Family History Community” provided a possible insight into John Beckwith’s father Green. This writer started from a different research point which led him through another line of the Edwards family and uncovered details about John’s father, Green. The research goes back to the white Edwards family and points to the assignment of surnames for the enslaved based on the slave owner’s surname. Different but related family members knew Green as Green Edwards. The assignment of surnames can be confusing and misleading, as is the case in this family.

Going back to Sarah Edwards (nee Woodward), this same researcher showed that Sarah’s mother Mary Woodward Turner received as the widow of Augustus Turner in 1829 a number of enslaved persons, including a boy Green, about 4 years old, meaning that he was born around 1825. The earliest census specifically naming Green Beckwith was 1870 with his age recorded as 47, born around 1823. It is entirely possible that Green Beckwith had been known in the family as Green Edwards and after being emancipated from the Beckwith family was assigned this surname, as was the case many times during this period. But these facts get slightly ahead of the changing circumstances of the family of John Beckwith.

The next mention of this enslaved family continues with Green and Miley. The May Term 1854 estate papers of Joseph W Edwards, (son of Sarah Edwards,) who died April 28, 1854 give a glimpse into the life of these two individuals. These papers name the enslaved persons owned by Mr. Edwards, and they would have been considered part of his estate. Named are Green (a man), Henderson (a boy of about 16), Miley (AKA Molly/Millie - no age given) “with the following children” with their age: Lydia, about age 6; Henry, three years old in August; Sam, age 2; and John about 6 months old. My view is that this is the family of John Beckwith, with John being about 6 months old at the time of this petition in May 1854. Again, it appears, based on age, that Henderson could have been the brother, or a relative, of Green.

NC Estate Files Wake Joseph W Edwards 1854

The document below explains what happened at this stage to the Beckwith family. On June 22, 1854, Martha Helen Edwards, widow of Joseph W Edwards, purchased the entire family. While the buying and selling of human beings is a harsh truth which cannot be reconciled, the family fortunately stayed intact, which was not necessarily the usual circumstance surrounding these types of transactions during this time.

North Carolina Estate Files, Wake County, Joseph E Edwards-1854

Moving forward to the 1860 Slave Census, we see that the census once again contains no names of enslaved persons. However, a female named Hellan Gulley [AKA Martha Helen and Martha H.] appears. After Joseph W. Edwards died, Martha Hellan Edwards married Francis Marion Gulley on May 2, 1855, but he died fairly shortly thereafter on July 10, 1860.

Martha Hellan Gulley was listed in the 1860 Slave Schedule with the following:

1860 Slave Schedule, Wake County, Southern Division

Note the ages of the two older individuals are listed as one year apart which coincides with the 1850 schedule, even if the actual ages are off - a common occurrence across the board in early census records. I believe the male age 6 is John Beckwith in the household of his parents. The number one in the right-hand column indicates one slave house. It appears that the male Henderson was not listed at this time with the family.

After Francis Marion Gulley’s death in July 1860, Martha Helen remarried once again on December 29, 1860. Her third husband was William Hilliard Beckwith. It appears that Hellan kept the enslaved family intact through her marriages. And it appears that the surname Beckwith became associated with this enslaved family, most likely after emancipation.

The Civil War ended in 1865, creating a new environment for newly free African-American citizens. Yes, freedom was welcome, but life after the war was challenging. Formerly enslaved persons had no land and no money to purchase land. In the Cary area, there were few work opportunities outside of agriculture, being what many formerly enslaved persons in the immediate area knew. The Freedman’s Bureau records following the war give us a glimpse of hardship.

In 1865-1867 Freedman’s Bureau records, Miley Beckwith is listed with the following information: former owner Hilliard Beckwith, eight people in the family and five days of meat and hard bread.

NC Freedmen’s Bureau Records July 21, 1865

The next month, Miley Beckwith is listed with the following information: former owner M E? Beckwith, two in the family [perhaps listing just the two adults], five days of rations and amounts of meat and hard bread issued.

NC Freedmen’s Bureau Records August 23, 1865

The family continued to survive and was enumerated in the 1870 Census, White Oak Township, Wake County, page 35.

Neighbors at this time included white families such as Rufus Jones, who would soon join Frank Page in his bid to formally establish the town of Cary in 1871. Note that the family includes Alice Beckwith in 1870. It is unclear if Alice is the same person as Lydia, noted in previous, pre-emancipation papers, or simply a close relative.

As it happened, John Beckwith’s future wife was living in the area. Jenny Jones is listed with her family in the White Oak Township, Wake County, page 22 in the 1870 Census.

According to John’s slave narrative captured by the WPA in the 1930s (more on this later), he stayed at the plantation until he was 16, around 1870 after enumerated in the census, when he was harassed by Klu Klux Klansmen, in his words, “’bout fightin’ wid a white boy. Dat night I slipped in de woods an’ de nex’ day I went ter Raleigh. I got a job dar an’ ever’ since den I’se wicked for myself…”

Although he worked in Raleigh, by 1878 or earlier, John was back in the Cary area. At age 23, he married Jennie Jones, age 17, daughter of Thomas and Emaline Jones whose family was noted above as being in the area.

The marriage took place in the home of Rev. George Dowell, a white Baptist minister living nearby.

And by the 1880 Census, a daughter had been added to the family.

1880 Census, Cary Township, Wake County, NC

John Beckwith’s parents continued to reside in the Cary Township of Wake County. This is the information recorded for them in the 1880 Census.

1880 Census, Cary Township, Wake County, NC

Because the 1890 Census was destroyed, there is a gap in knowledge about people across the country during the 20-year period between 1880 and 1900. However, there are some records that give glimpses of John Beckwith’s life during this period.

In 1891, Beckwith co-signed a deed for the advance of money “to be used on my farm,” a tract of land adjoining the lands of Wiley Baucom who lived near Chapel Hill and SE Maynard Road. At this time, he was growing “cotton, corn, and other products…” There is no deed listed for John Beckwith in this area, so he may have been a sharecropper at this time.

Wake County Register of Deeds Book 112 Pg 537

On a sad personal note, John’s wife Jennie Jones Beckwith died January 31, 1896 and was buried in the historic Cary First Christian Church Cemetery.

Findagrave photo

Another record pertaining to John Beckwith during the year 1896 is a church record found in the publication “Proceedings of the Twenty-ninth Annual Session of the North Carolina Christian Church Conference” which was held in November 1896 in Cary, NC. John Beckwith’s name appears among the names of church members at the time of the conference.

In the 1900 Census, John Beckwith was listed as a widower, age 40, living with his children and his mother Miley, by this time a widow, age 60. The full listing shows that Beckwith owned the home with a mortgage. Again, ages recorded remain inconsistent. Unfortunately, there is no death record or burial information for Green Beckwith. It is noted that Miley/Molly was the mother of four with only three surviving at this time. John was working at a local saw mill, of which there were several in the Cary area and two children were receiving schooling.

1900 Census, Cary Township, Wake County, NC

On January 10, 1907, John married into another local Cary family. His bride Rosa Satterfield was the daughter of Louis and Hawkins Satterfield, and the couple was married at her family home by W. H. Horton, a white minister in the area.

But before this marriage, John Beckwith began work as a custodian at the historic Cary High School, then a stockholder-owned school which became a public high school in 1907.

Here is a photo of John Beckwith with the boarding students of Cary High School.

Dormitory Boys in Session 1908-1909 from Cary High School Archives

John Beckwith on the back right

Beckwith was a beloved figure on the school campus and was honored with a tribute in the Cary High School yearbook, the CHSite, in 1921. The tribute celebrated his 16 years of service to the students and the school. In part, it reads:

A 1916 Cary High School graduate, Miss Elva Templeton, recalled:

“…he used to ring the school bells for us. We had a bell and I wished they’d put it up in the yard at school where it should be. And so he’d watch while we’d go down to the store on down the street to get candy and then the last bell started ringing. Uncle John would ring that bell until we got there so we wouldn’t be late.”

John Beckwith in the CHSite Yearbook 1920

Miss Templeton also added to our knowledge of the Black community in Cary by recalling where families lived around 1900. The resulting hand-drawn map showed the location of the John Beckwith household around this time and earlier. It also shows the location of Cary First Christian Church near Beckwith’s home and the church cemetery somewhat farther away.

Excerpt from Elva Templeton Map of Cary circa early 1900s

This land on which John Beckwith lived had apparently been purchased from Frank Page and the deed lost or not registered. In 1906, Frank Page’s second wife, Lula B. Wynne, who remarried after Frank’s passing, made a quit claim deed for property that she had inherited from Frank after his death. A number of quit claim deeds were made for land in the same area. The survey map of the land referred to in the deed has not been located.

Although written records in the early years of Cary First Christian Church are scant, there is a Wake County deed dated January 22, 1909 from Rev George Dowell and his wife Tranquilla who deeded additional land to the historic African American church cemetery, now called Cary First Christian Church Cemetery. John Beckwith was named one of the trustees of the church. The cemetery was located south of the home of John Beckwith, as shown on the map above, along with the church which was closer by. Rev. Dowell had performed John Beckwith’s marriage to his first wife, Jennie.

The 1910 Census shows John and Rosa and a baby living near Handy and Martha Jones, shown on the Templeton map living near the Beckwiths.

Sadly, Rosa Beckwith, a mother of two, died on April 21, 1917 around the age of 35. Her death certificate states she was buried in Cary, and Cary First Christian Church Cemetery would have been the cemetery in Cary in which African-Americans would have been buried at that time.

In the 1920 census, we find John Beckwith, a widower living with two children. His occupation is listed as “wash” which may allude to the 1921 CHSite tribute which also stated, “…he comes round and collects the laundry and carries it away.” According to this account, Beckwith also ran mail back and forth from the post office, ran errands, helped the teachers, and if he had time, would split wood and perform other tasks. The writer noted, “He always worked cheerfully and with a wide, wide smile on his face. “Uncle John” is growing old, but we hope he will live many years yet to spread his sunshine about the campus of Cary High School.”

By the 1930 census, Beckwith was 75 and didn’t have an occupation listed. He was living with his daughter, son, and two grandchildren.

During the Great Depression, the Federal Writer’s Project of the US Work Projects Administration captured the stories of surviving formerly enslaved persons. John Beckwith talked with Mary A Hicks who recorded his memories. A photograph was also taken.

John Beckwith, age 83, Federal Writer’s Project

Photograph courtesy of the Library of Congress

John was a child during his enslavement. One researcher stated about John Beckwith’s narrative, “In any case, the narrative was very interesting, containing detail about life with the Beckwiths as an enslaved boy.  One should keep in mind while reading what are at times John's rather "rosy" descriptions about life on the plantation, his narrative was given during the Great Depression when poverty and hunger were at its peak.  Also, John was a very young boy when enslaved and likely not subjected to the harsher treatment that other older slaves suffered.” Food for thought.

To read the full article and comments:

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2014/5/2/1295447/-GFHC-After-All-They-Were-Only-Part-of-the-Inventory#comment_53303359

The story of John Beckwith ends with his death and burial. His death certificate listed his date of death as September 21, 1939 in Cary. His occupation was listed as Janitor of Cary High School, father Green Beckwith, mother’s name unknown, and the informant was Effie Holmes of New Haven, Connecticut, a daughter of John and Jennie Beckwith. Raleigh Funeral Home provided services and the burial was in Wake County, not in Cary specifically. The burial posed a question which Haywood Funeral Home (which was also known as Raleigh Funeral Homes) was able to solve. According to their records, John Beckwith was buried at the Wake County Home Cemetery on Noble Road in Raleigh. Mr. Ray Haywood explained that many years ago most African Americans were buried in either Cary First Christian Church Cemetery, where John’s first wife Jennie was buried, or at the Wake County Home Cemetery. Unfortunately, most of the burials at the Raleigh location were unmarked. It will never be known why John Beckwith was not buried in the cemetery of his local church. The death certificate brings to a close the documentation of the life of John Beckwith.

With recent emphasis on telling the wider, more inclusive history of Cary, it’s time to tell John Beckwith’s story. His is a story of resilience and strength, a story of facing harsh circumstances throughout life and moving forward, overcoming with humor, good will, and honest labor. It is truly a remarkable story to tell.

A recent discovery has unearthed a connection between the Page family and an enslaved person owned by Frank Page’s father, Anderson Page. Primus Page worked on Oaky Mount Plantation, the homeplace of Anderson Page in the Leesville area of Wake County.

Early records of Primus Page’s life during his enslavement do not exist. The 1850 and 1860 Slave Schedules do not list individual names, although the ages listed for several men correspond to the approximate age of Primus Page. However, there is a marriage record for Primus and wife Elizabeth with a date of May 12, 1846 that declares “emancipated slave”. The dates of these marriages prior to emancipation were generally established based on testimony of the married couple after the Civil War and recorded after emancipation, sometimes many years after the marriage unofficially took place.

Wake County Marriage Register

In the book “The Making of an American” by Burton J Hendrick, Walter Hines Page as a boy or young man remembered Primus Page on the porch of Oaky Mount sitting close by Anderson Page as the younger Page would approach the house on regular visits.

This would be the earliest family mention or recollection of Primus Page that we have. Since Walter Hines Page was born in 1855, the anecdote from childhood might date to around the end of the Civil War or a little later.

After the Civil War ended, we find the Primus Page family close to the Anderson Page property. On November 9, 1877 Anderson Page sold to Primus Page 192 acres of land adjoining his own land for $800.

Wake County Register of Deeds Book 48 Page 532, 1877

The prospect of farming on one’s own was daunting for many poor farmers, black and white alike. A number of lien bonds are recorded that show Primus Page pledging various items, including animals and his land as collateral to borrow money in order to buy what he needed to farm for the upcoming year. The money would be repaid out of the profits made at the end of the season.

Wake County Register of Deeds Book Book 93 Page 568, 1887

Although free after the Civil War, life was difficult not only on a financial level but also on a personal level for many formerly enslaved persons. In Primus Page’s family, his son Matthew was reported in a newspaper notice as having left on the 4^th of July 1867.

The Weekly Standard, July 24, 1867, Page_3

Although the family of Primus Page grew large, neither son Matthew nor another son Madison appear in the household of Primus Page in the 1870 or 1880 Census records.

1870 Census Wake County, NC

1880 Census Wake County, NC

This painful family separation continued. The 1889 administration papers of Primus Page listing his heirs mentions that the family had not heard from Primus’ son Madison Page since 1869, and son Marcellus Page had not been heard from in 12 years, approximately 1877, although Marcellus, age 12, was listed on the 1870 census in the household. Matthew Page was not mentioned at all.

Primus Page Estate Papers, 1899, Wake County, NC

Later in Primus Page's life, we have another snapshot of him, again with Walter Hines Page, now an adult, as recounted in the Hendrick book. The book states: “A year or two after the old man died [Anderson Page died in 1884 – so 1885 or 1886],

The deed to the 192 acres doesn’t mention a payment schedule, but an oral agreement may have been worked out at the time of the land sale, based on this recollection. Walter made one small error. The deed for Primus Page’s land was signed by Anderson Page in 1877 who didn’t pass away until 1884.

Primus Page died January 1, 1889 according to estate records. The inventory of his estate show that he owned everything needed to operate a household and farm, items which were bought by family members and neighbors. Interestingly, he owned a Harrison plow (Robert J Harrison Wagon Works of Cary, NC produced plows) which was sold at his estate sale for $1.00. It was listed among the large number of personal and household items he had owned. Here is an excerpt showing the plow:

Primus Page Estate Papers, 1899, Wake County, NC

At Primus Page’s death, Frank Page wrote to Andrew Syme, administrator of the estate, that he had several outstanding notes against Primus Page, valued at around $125 with interest, but that Frank Page was only claiming $100 as he (Primus) was “an old family negro”. Frank Page later received $14.50 from the administrator. Andrew Syme (pronounced “Sim”) was a prominent citizen in Raleigh, possibly acquainted with the Frank Page family who took care of the last earthly possessions of Primus Page.

Primus Page Estate Papers, 1899, Wake County, NC

In 1895, the land that Primus Page bought from Anderson Page was divided among his heirs. Down from the original 192 acres, 117 acres of land were left in the hands of one son, Moses, and five daughters, Virginia “Jenny” Jeffers, Emeline “Emily” Hunter, Elizabeth Porter, Katie “Katy/Kate” Page and Serena “Rena” “Raney” Ray. It is unclear why the total acreage had decreased over time and why the deed was not registered until 1910.

Wake County Register of Deeds Book 236 Page 494

Although details about the early life of Primus Page are scant and although we do not have a photograph of him, the details we do have of him after emancipation paint a picture of the life of a formerly enslaved person connected to the Page family who lived a difficult but honest life. We are now able to attach a name and a story to one of these formerly unknown, unnamed people.

Many people driving along Old Apex Road from downtown Cary to High House Road today might notice the Turner-Evans Cemetery near the Sha'arei Shalom Temple. What they might not realize is that this cemetery is one of the last remnants of the African American, Native American, and multi-racial families that once lived on, owned, and farmed over 150 acres of land in this area in the late 1800s and first half of the 1900s. Another remnant standing not far away along the railroad tracks is a house that belonged to the family of John Willis Turner Sr., a farmer of multi-racial roots who owned 56 acres in the area, including the land on which the cemetery started and still exists.

Home of John Willis Turner

John Willis Turner Sr. purchased 56 acres of land in the Old Apex Road area in 1911 from Henry B. Jordan, a white citizen and one of Cary's early residents and land owners. In 1910, Turner married Etta Evans Scott, the widow of Irvin Scott. Etta was the daughter of Charles and Matilda Marsh Evans, who had come to the Cary area from Chatham County with their families in the 1870s. Charles and Matilda, along with their son Otis Norfleet “Noffie” Evans, purchased close to 100 acres of land in 1903 - 1905 from formerly enslaved Mary Irvin and her husband Cary Irvin, who had purchased the land in 1879 from the Raleigh Cooperative Land and Building Association (RCLBA).

The Raleigh Cooperative Land and Building Association, a lending corporation incorporated in 1869 by James H. Harris and J. Brinton Smith in the present St. Paul AME Church in Raleigh, was a reliable source of loans to families of color for purchasing land and building homes.

Some of the land bought by the Evans family from Mary and Cary Irvin adjoined the land of Henry B. Jordan that John Willis Turner Sr. would purchase just a few years later in 1911. Together the Evans and Turner families owned and farmed a considerable amount of land in the vicinity of Old Apex and High House Roads. Descendants of the Evans family would go on to develop some of the land into the Dutchess Village neighborhood where many Cary families live today. And 1 acre of the land owned by John Willis Turner Sr. would become sacred ground where loved ones in both families would be laid to rest.

How the land became a cemetery

Sadly, Etta Evans died in 1914, likely from complications of childbirth. Her infant son, Monfleet Etta Evans, died just weeks later; as the doctor noted on the infant's death certificate, “I guess cause of death [is from the] loss of the mother.”

Etta Evans Scott Turner

Etta and her infant son became the first persons to be buried on the land belonging to John Willis Turner Sr. Three years later, two young African American sisters, Nina and Aslee Allen, victims of the flu epidemic of 1918, were the next people to be buried on the same land. Word-of-mouth stories passed down through the Turner and Evans descendants tell that the Allen family could not afford a burial for their daughters after they died 4 days apart and that resting places were offered to the family on the land where Etta and her son were buried 4 years before. Some of the stories tell that the Allen sisters were white, but a check of census records and death certificates shows that they were black or mulatto and came to the Cary area from Dutchville Township in Granville County. Some years later in 1932, their brother Connie, a victim of a fatal shooting in Apex, was also buried at the cemetery.

As the years went by, more members of the Evans family and the families they married into were buried at the cemetery, along with the Turners. The cemetery continued to be a private cemetery and in 2012, family descendants incorporated into Turner Evans Cemetery Inc. and formed a board that manages the cemtery today. It is currently an active cemetery with 92 graves, including those of some of Cary's most prominent people of color.

The stories of the people buried at the Turner-Evans Cemetery tell in particular the history of the Evans family, a free family of color with Native American and African American roots who arrived in Cary from Chatham County after the Civil War and contributed greatly to the development of the town and are still contributing today.

Land acquisition and development

Charlie Evans and Matilda Marsh, buried in the Turner-Evans Cemetery, came to Cary as teenagers with their families in the 1870s. Charlie's family had its roots in Native American ancestry and its members had always been free people of color. Charlie's father was Fielding Evans, who brought his family to the Cary area from Chatham County. Fielding was a representative from Cary at the Wake County Republican Convention in 1874. Matilda's family also likely had its roots in Native American ancestry, though because her parents Nancy and Frank Marsh did not appear in census records until 1870, it's possible they had been enslaved. Nancy and Frank purchased 6 acres of land in Cary in 1879 from J.P.H. Adams.

Charlie and Matilda married in 1877 at the home of Nancy and Frank Marsh and went on to have 12 children. Their oldest son Otis Norfleet “Noffie” Evans, also buried in the Turner-Evans Cemetery, purchased 25 acres of land in the vicinity of Old Apex Road from Mary and Cary Irvin in 1903. Charlie and Matilda purchased an additional 73 acres in the same area from Mary and Cary Irvin in 1905. In 1917, Charlie and Matilda's son Clyde, also buried in the Turner-Evans Cemetery, purchased 23 of these 73 acres from his parents. The land eventually was developed by Matilda and Charles’s great grandsons Herbert, George, and Ray Bailey, along with their parents Joe and Mamie Evans Bailey, into the Dutchess Village neighborhood where many Cary families live today, including members of the Evans family. Their company was known as Bailey Three Development Corporation, and streets in Dutchess Village are named for members of the Bailey family.

Otis Norfleet “Noffie” Evans

Matilda Marsh Evans

Clyde married Vermel Stewart, a descendant of one of the Native American founders of the Friendship community in Apex. Both Clyde and Vermel are buried in the Turner-Evans Cemetery. In 1939, Vermel purchased 100 acres in the area we know today as Evans Road from the North Carolina Joint Stock Land Bank of Durham. Joint Stock Land Banks were chartered under the authority of the Federal Farm Loan Act of 1916.

Vermel Stewart and Clyde Evans Sr.

In a tribute to her mother, Mamie Evans Bailey wrote, “It was Vermel who helped my father locate and buy the family farm of 100 acres. She had many dreams of this place before locating the actual site. She alone located the owner and made the appointment to buy the land. It was a major step for our family and the future of her children. The land has helped her children to maintain their livelihood.”

Clyde Evans Sr. began farming this land. Over time he sold acreage to his siblings, cousins, and friends. Clyde Evans Jr. said of his father, “My father was a great land lover. Daddy wanted to build a town for people not fortunate to have any land to build on.” Many of these land purchasers were sharecroppers, which meant they didn’t own the land they worked on. By selling parcels of land to these men and women, Clyde Evans Sr. accomplished his goal of helping the less fortunate to escape poverty by building their own homes on their own land.

Five subdivisions and 15 streets in Cary are named for members of the Evans family.

Some of the land that Clyde Evans Sr. farmed eventually became Evans Estates, Bailey Park, Bailey Grove, and Bailey Creek, developed by his grandchildren. As their children became adults, Clyde Sr. and Vermel would give each of them a piece of land on which to build their homes or get their start. At the time of Clyde Sr.'s death in 1986, there were approximately 60+ acres still owned by the Evans family. Members of the Evans/Bailey families still own and reside on land on Evans Road and in these subdivisions that are a part of this overall community today.

Education advocacy

Clyde's uncle, James Lovelace Evans (son of Otis Norfleet Evans), also buried in the Turner-Evans Cemetery, purchased 1 acre of land along State Road 1653 in 1927 from his mother in law, Maggie Harris Allen. This road would later be named Evans Road in honor of the multiple branches of the Evans family who contributed to the growth and development of Cary, especially along this road.

James Lovelace Evans

In 1944, James purchased an additional 34.5 acres once belonging to his parents in law. In 1963, James and other Evans family members sold approximately 28 of these acres to the Wake County Board of Education and in 1965 a new high school for African American students opened on this land. Originally named Clyde Evans High School, the school became West Cary High School for African American students and operated as such until it was integrated and temporarily became a 9^th Grade Center in 1967 and 1968. Today it is known and functions as West Cary Middle School.

West Cary Middle School and Kingswood Elementary School trace their roots back to people of color in Cary. Land for both schools was donated or sold to the Wake County Public School System by members of families of color and opened as schools for African American children.

Clyde's sister, Trannie Evans married into the Ferrell family and her brother in law, Ernest Bunn Ferrell represented the African American Schools in Cary on the Advisory Board of the Wake County Board of Education in the 1960s. He and his wife Lovie Johnson Ferrell sold land to the Wake County Public School System to expand the Kingswood School, which had been built in the 1930s and owes its existence today to the African American families who lived in the North Academy Street neighborhood in the first half of the 20^th century. When the Cary Colored School on Holleman Street (south of the present day Cary Elementary School) burned down in 1935, the proposal was for children through 7^th grade to be bussed to Method in Raleigh to attend school. The African American parents understandably objected to the plan, boycotted the plan, and families from the neighborhood organized and formed a Committee for a New Elementary School in the Colored Community, which was built on land donated by African American family members Goelet Arrington and his sister Emily Arrington Jones. Trannie Evans and Ernest Bunn Ferrell and his wife Lovie Johnson Ferrell are buried in the Turner-Evans Cemetery.

Commitment to worship and Christian community in action

Jeannette Reaves Evans, wife of James Lovelace Evans's son Herbert, was a founding member and long-time volunteer with Christian Community in Action (CCA), a consortium of volunteers from different churches in Cary that became Dorcas Ministries. Jeannette managed the Dorcas Shop thrift store as a volunteer for its first 20 years. Dorcas Ministries is a strong non-profit organization today, still growing and helping many families in need. Jeannette also petitioned the state in the 1960s to pave State Road 1653; the once dirt road became Evans Road. Jeannette's parents, Connie and Lillian Reaves, served on the Committee for a New Elementary School in the Colored Community in the 1930s and helped establish the school we know today as Kingswood Elementary School. Jeannette Reaves Evans is buried in the Turner-Evans Cemetery.

The Dorcas Shop in its first location on West Chatham Street

Jeannette Reaves Evans

Many members of the Evans Family have belonged to Cary First Christian Church, one of the earliest congregations formed in Cary. They began meeting in the 1860s under a brush harbor on West Cornwall Road and then in a small wooden church on Holleman Street, and their history continued on Evans Road. Clyde Evans Sr. donated land on Evans Road to the church in the 1960s after they outgrew their church on Holleman Street. Members of this historic church built a new sanctuary and fellowship hall on this land and worship there today. Many members of the church and other people of color are buried in the Cary First Christian Church's cemetery, which still exists on West Cornwall Road where their congregation first began meeting.

Cary First Christian Church on Evans Road

Cary First Christian Church Cemetery on West Cornwall Road

Cemeteries reflect the collective stories of the people who lived their lives in the community where they are laid to rest. Both the Turner-Evans Cemetery and the Cary First Christian Church Cemetery hold the resting places of families of color who are part of Cary's history and whose contributions helped Cary grow into the town we know today.

One of the joys, and challenges, of “old house” rehabilitation is what lies beneath the surface. Once layers are peeled back, surprises, good and bad, can emerge. One such surprise, a good one, was revealed in the rehabilitation of the historic Ivey-Ellington House in Cary, NC. The house has long been an icon in Cary, but due to downtown Cary redevelopment, it was moved from its original site to a prominent position on the “showcase” Academy Street across from the new Downtown Cary Park. Rehabilitation started as soon as the house arrived at its new home, with exterior work starting first. Once rehabilitation moved inside, and layers stripped away, work within a closet halted while a series of strange letters and numbers emerged from plaster that had long been hidden from view by drywall. Untangling this mystery in the lath and plaster of this historic home revealed far more information than we dreamed.

Kris Carmichael, Operations & Program Supervisor -- Historical Resources for the Town of Cary, called on researchers on the Friends of Page Walker board of directors, Barbara Wetmore and Carla Michaels, to help make sense of the cryptic inscription. The research began with a simple query and a photograph:

“Hi,

I have a mystery for you. While working on the Ivey-Ellington workers discovered a large inscription in a section of plaster wall (see attached photo.) It looks like first initial “C” last name “Alored” dated July 17^th 1882. Who could it be. Would love your ideas!

Kris”

Barb immediately sprang into action. Barb served as the project manager for a large transcription project of letters of one of the oldest families in Cary which had just wrapped up, and she called in volunteers to give their thoughts.

“We have an exciting mystery to try to solve!  See forwarded email from Kris Carmichael.  With all of us working on this, maybe we can figure it out.  Please share whatever you might find. How cool is this?  Someone left us a remnant of his existence!”

As the discussion bounced around between transcribers, Barb, and Carla, a few suggestions of different spellings of the name, thoughts about a craftsman working on the house, and whether plasterers worked as brick masons, based on brick making in the region. The theory emerged that the letters were a “signature,”, but there was no clear identity of C Alored, Alford, Allard, Allred, Aldred, C A Lores, etc, etc!

At the time that this mystery popped up, Barb and Carla were knee-deep in research to identify all the owners and residents of this historic house, but none seemed to be related to this mysterious inscription. Further, the date of the plaster inscription did not line up with the long-accepted date of construction, circa 1871. We were stumped.

Barb mulled over the J T & Bettie H Pool family, known owners of the property and earliest confirmed residents found by chain of title research on the parcel of land. A T Mial, a prominent and wealthy landowner in Eastern Wake County, the previous owner, sold the property to the Pools and the deed was recorded in April 1882. There was no indication that Mial lived, worked or constructed a house in Cary. The date in the plaster was July 17^th, 1882. The mystery persisted.

Sometimes, “eureka moments” come when one’s brain is well-rested, or exhausted, or when a chance “let’s give this a try” happens. Such was the case late one evening for Carla who read Barb’s latest musings one more time, this time on her phone. The tiny phone image, seen through bleary eyes and late at night after a long day, popped out in a different way. The name magically appeared as “C A Creel.” Carla’s heart skipped a beat because she knew from her personal local history research that a Creel family lived around Cary and wondered if they lived here in the 1880s. Free research tip: enlarging images can help a lot, but minimizing images can have advantages as well.

Carla searched on Ancestry with: C A Creel, born 1850 plus or minus 10 years (a guess), lived in Cary 1880.

She didn't get a reasonable hit, so she tried an 1860 birth date plus or minus 10, and bingo, The family of John Creel popped up, with a son Charles A Creel, age 9 in the household, rendering a birth date for Charles of around 1861. In 1870, the family was in Orange County. Charles’ handwriting in the plaster was very neat, especially since it had been scribed in wet plaster. He must have had good schooling, probably in Orange County, to form his letters so carefully and beautifully.

1870 U S Federal Census excerpt, Orange County, Chapel Hill Township

In 1880 the family was in Cary, so the move happened in between the censuses. The father was listed as a brick mason in 1870 in Orange County, and both the father and son were listed as brick masons in 1880, which picked up on the idea that Barb had about brick masons also doing plaster.

1880 U S Federal Census, Wake County, Cary Township

The dual skill of plasterer and brick mason was confirmed by a newspaper article about the father John Creel and his work on the Chatham County Courthouse in Pittsboro, NC, in 1882. An excerpt:

The intersection of Chatham and Academy Streets has long served as the center of downtown Cary. Each corner of the intersection tells part of the story of Cary’s development from a small agricultural village to a suburban community to an urban destination. The history of the southeast corner is covered in a bit of mystery, as there is little photographic documentation of its early history, unlike the other three corners. This is what we know about some of the businesses at Cary’s original “crossroads.”

Let's Start With a "Frank" Talk

As with many stories about Cary, we will start with Frank Page who purchased 300 acres of largely undeveloped land in 1854 in what officially became Cary in 1871. He laid out the main street along Cedar (formerly Railroad) Street so that his lumber and sawmill business would have easy access to the North Carolina Railroad. 

Travelers going west would follow the railroad along Cedar Street until they reached Academy Street, which ran north and south. In its earliest days, travelers could follow the now defunct Jones Street (also called Railroad AND Hillsboro) which joined today’s West Chatham Street a block west of today’s Chatham and Academy (dotted red line below.) Travelers also had the option to turn left on Academy, go one block south, then turn right on Chatham to continue through Cary toward Apex (solid red line below.) That latter “zig and zag” through downtown created the intersection that would come to define downtown Cary today, shown below by the “gold star.”

Businesses sprang up around this intersection. Frank Page’s three-story factory building faced Cedar Street and occupied the north east corner, the Gray family had a mercantile business and their home on the northwest corner with the business facing Chatham Street, “Uncle Bob” (Robert J) Harrison’s store and home above the store occupied the southwest corner and also faced Chatham Street. But what about the southeast corner? The shoe shop noted on the above map didn’t come along for many years. We’ll explore this corner’s earlier history as we explore all four corners. 

The Beginning

Frank Page’s 300 acres included this southeast corner parcel, which he sold in 1882 to L H Jones, Lily Houghton Jones, wife of William Merritt Jones who was the son of Rufus Henry Jones, a business associate of Frank Page. William M Jones started his working life with a grocery and general merchandise store, location unknown. Was it on this corner? So far, there is no evidence to prove where he conducted this business. Jones later transitioned into the window sash and lumber business, moving to Asheville, NC by 1900, where he was a successful businessman. 

Cottage on the Move

William and Lily Jones sold this southeast corner parcel in 1889 to Edward Dorsey (E. D.) Yates, the son of Atlas B Yates who ran a sawmill on Railroad Street on land he purchased from Frank Page adjacent to Page’s factory lot. Atlas Yates later expanded his operation by purchasing Page’s three-story brick factory building at the corner of Cedar/Railroad and Academy Streets. The factory lot extended back from Railroad Street to what is now Chatham Street, which didn’t exist at that time. Sadly, Atlas Yates died in 1890. Yates’ widow, Elizabeth Council Yates sold the property as the administratrix of her late husband’s estate to B N Duke of Durham, the majority stockholder of Cary Lumber Company. At the time of the sale of the factory lot, Atlas’s son E D Yates was leasing the factory property, and according to estate papers, E D Yates was living in a three-room house at the back of the factory. Part of the estate sales agreement was that E D Yates was allowed to move the house to another property no later than the end of 1895. It appears that since he had previously bought the property to the south of the factory lot in 1889 (now the southeast corner of Chatham & Academy), he only had to move the house a short distance! 

We have not located a photo of this “cottage on the move.” We have just a couple of glimpses of it, one in the photo shown above of “Uncle Bob’s Corner.” The E D Yates House/Cottage is barely visible on the left of the photo. The other glimpse is in the photo below where the cottage peeks through the trees to the left of the Methodist Church which still stands on Academy Street in its original location, albeit expanded and clad in brick.

The sale of the factory lot on the northeast corner and the move of the house coincided with the sale of the southeast corner lot by E D Yates to Cary Lumber Company. The house is noted as Yates on the circa 1906 map of Cary, even though technically the land belonged to Cary Lumber Company at that time. For a discussion of Cary Lumber Company, see “Around and About Cary” by Tom Byrd, pages 48-50. 

Road Trip!

Let’s take a short little road trip further down West Chatham Street to celebrate a preservation success story. By 1900, E D Yates was well established in a much larger family home at 215 W Chatham Street.

When more recent downtown development started in earnest in the late 1970s and early 1980s, this house was moved to Williams Street, just a little further west and stands today.

With the purchase of the southeast corner parcel by Cary Lumber Company, the Factory Lot started at Cedar/Railroad Street and now ran south to the boundary with the Methodist Church.

Local Controversy

A town-changing event in the years around 1907 caused a bit of controversy in Cary. At this time, what we know today as West Chatham Street ended at Academy Street. There was no East Chatham Street. Note on the Templeton map circa early 1900s, what would become East Chatham was nothing more than a country lane.

To head east out of town toward Raleigh from Chatham Street, travelers had to make the “zig and zag” to continue to Raleigh using Cedar/Railroad Street. Town officials decided that extending Chatham Street, in essence creating West AND East Chatham, would be a good solution to traffic flow, such as it was at the time. Alice Waldo, widow of town doctor, Dr. S P Waldo, completely disagreed and filed a civil action to prevent the proposed extension from crossing her property which lay to the east of the Cary Lumber property, Frank Page’s old factory site. Her case was dismissed, the judgment stating that running the new extension through her property would cause more good than harm to the value and usefulness of her parcel of land, thus East Chatham Street was created.

As this case was working its way through civil action, Cary Lumber Company sold the entire property (factory lot and southeast corner – formerly Yates lot) to F R (Fernando/Frank R) Gray, who had been leasing the tobacco factory for some time and who owned adjacent property on the northwest corner of Chatham and Academy. Frank and his brother Patrick ran a mercantile business that fronted today’s West Chatham Street and their residence was behind the store facing the railroad. 

Family Affair

This made F R Gray the owner of three of the four corners of the centrally located intersection of Chatham and Academy. The only corner NOT in Gray hands was “Uncle Bob” Robert J Harrison’s Corner which later became Adams Drug Store and Ashworth’s Drugs. Although the Gray family didn’t own this fourth corner, there was a connection! Patrick Gray, Frank’s brother, was married to nee Maude Harrison, who was the niece of “Uncle Bob” Robert J Harrison. He owned the southwest corner, directly across Chatham Street from Gray’s Store. Cary’s crossroad was a family affair! To learn more about Robert J Harrison and his corner, please read the blogpost, “Hot Dogs and History: From Uncle Bob's Corner to Ashworth's Drug Store.”

https://www.friendsofpagewalker.org/Cary-Me-Back/10089296

F R Gray was a life-long bachelor, and at his death left his property to his deceased brother Frank’s family, who in turn hung on to the properties, leasing the land to various tenants.

On the northwest corner, the Gray Store was eventually razed and the Cary Branch Bank of Fuquay was built as a rather mundane one-story brick building. The decorative wavy awning was added later. This corner has gone through a number of facelifts and rebuilding over the years but remains a bank property.

Fire!

The northeast corner of this intersection has had a more eventful history. Shortly after Gray purchased this corner from Cary Lumber, a fire destroyed Frank Page’s original brick factory building. 

The property remained underused or not used at all for a number of years. Currently and ironically, the Cary Fire Department administrative offices are located on the old factory lot that burned to the ground! 

Cary Enters the Suburban Era

With the rising popularity and availability of the automobile, a gasoline service station was created on the corner of Chatham and Academy, leased to series of proprietors through the years. The former Gurkan’s Automotive Shop (recently closed) was the latest occupant of the corner. Plans are to rehabilitate the gas station building into a restaurant while recreating the look of the service station from 1951, shown below.

Back to the Elusive Southeast Corner

Early information about this corner is scant, with the exception of the E D Yates cottage moving to this site in 1895. Additional facts begin to surface starting in the 1920s. Cottage Grocery, also the former Yates house, was first mentioned in a 1923 CHSite (Cary High School yearbook) advertisement as Templeton’s Delicatessen “Cottage Store,” which was an apt named for the humble 3 room house that E D Yates had once lived in and later moved to this location. 

According to the ad, ice cream, fancy fruits, candies and cakes were all on offer. The next year, it was simply known as Cottage Grocery run by C C (Cleon Clive) Eatman, a local graduate of Cary High School. Based on the offerings, it appears he ran it as a small grocery store. 

The building also appears on a 1923 map of Cary as “Cottage Grocery” and shows the footprint of the house. For a three-room cottage, it appears to be somewhat larger than expected, if the map is drawn to scale.

Later in its life on the corner, the cottage housed Cotronis Shoe Shop for a number of years. It is unclear when Athens, Greece native John Cotronis started his business, but his shoe sales and repair business leased the property from the Gray family and operated for a number of years. Descendants of Mr Cotronis still reside in the area. 

A New Beginning

As previously stated, after the death of Frank Gray, the properties at this intersection passed to family members. One of Mr Gray’s nieces inherited the southeast corner property and sold it in 1949 to J Glenn Hobby. At the time, Mr Hobby was in the grocery business in downtown Cary on West Chatham Street.

His growing enterprise needed more space, so he purchased the roomy southeast corner parcel of land and the cottage. He sold the Yates cottage to Russell Heater, “Mr Cary,” known for his promotion of the Town of Cary far and wide. Mr Heater moved the house to West Park Street, reconfigured and added to it and made it a comfortable family home. Mr Heater’s son, Robert “Bob” Heater recounted that the cottage was sawn in two and an addition was inserted to join the two parts. In the photo below, it appears that was the case. West Park Street has recently been developed with “in-fills” and thus the little cottage that sat on the northeast then southeast corner of Chatham and Academy is no more after a long life and various uses. The little cottage provides an illustration of Cary’s development from a small village with modest local businesses into a larger business district and more suburban community.

Mr Hobby built a one-story brick building to house his appliance company. He ran his appliance company in the west half of the building, and initially, a “Piggly Wiggly” grocery store operated out of the east side. 

Over time, Piggly Wiggly merged with Winn-Dixie which built a large stand-alone store across the street from the E D Yates House at 215 West Chatham Street. What might have Mr Yates thought about the 11,000 square foot grocery store, which was leaps and bounds bigger than the modest “Cottage Grocery” that had once served as his house at the crossroads of Cary?

The vacated Piggly Wiggly space was taken over by an up-and-coming businessman named James “Pete” Murdock. His business was known as “Pete’s Hardware.” Pete’s Hardware operated at this locale for a number of years before it outgrew its space and located down the street in the 200 block of East Chatham, along one stretch of Chatham that had once been so contentious. Pete’s Hardware eventually closed and his store is incorporated within Mid-town Shopping Center. Hobby’s is now Kitchen & Bath Galleries, which more recently gained some local notoriety when the building owners unwittingly violated a local ordinance which banned painting brick and concrete exterior surfaces of buildings. Kitchen & Bath Galleries remains there today, with a lovely, completely painted tan exterior!

My, oh my. What changes this intersection has seen in its 150 years! Starting as part of a zig-zag path to negotiate through the dirt roads of a fledgling country village, it became the center of a small business district of a suburban town on the way up. Today it still serves as the crossroads of downtown Cary which is quickly turning into an urban destination. Stay tuned for more articles on the transformation of downtown Cary!

The Ivey-Ellington House - The Little White Church that Wasn't

Ivey-Ellington in snow

We at the Friends of the Page-Walker are often asked for information about “that little white church” that previously sat on West Chatham.    Now that the house has been moved to South Academy Street, we still occasionally get asked about it and whether it was a church. 

The Ivey-Ellington house, though, was never a church.  But the confusion is understandable and, as it turns out, intentional.

History is seldom 100% certain, but these are things we do know.  In April of 1874, just three years after the incorporation of Cary, Alonzo T. Mial bought four acres on West Chatham from the town founder, Frank Page.  The Mial family was from East Wake County, in the modern day Wendell area.  Even though he owned the land, there is no indication that Mial built the house himself.  Records indicate that Alonzo Crocker built the house around 1874 at a cost of around $300.   However, neither Crocker, Mial, nor Frank Page ever actually lived in the house. 

Alonzo Crocker had quite a history in Cary.  Born in 1846 in Wake Forest, he was known to be an expert machinist and woodworker.  His work included the original pews and lectern used at Cary First Methodist, along with millwork and trim found in many of the interiors of early Cary houses.  He was married three times, outliving his first two wives.  His first wife was Susan (Susannah) Raboteau, who was sister to Catherine Raboteau.  Catherine was better known as Mrs. Frank Page.  Alonzo Crocker and Frank Page were brothers-in-law.  It is not unreasonable at all to think that Frank Page connected his brother-in-law with Alonzo Mial to work as a builder for the equivalent of a 19^th century “spec house”.    Tragically, Crocker died in 1901 at the age of 55 when he suffered a broken leg in a mill accident while working for the Cary Lumber Company.   

Alonzo Crocker

The Ivey-Ellington is a classic example of a Gothic Revival style.  Alonzo Mial previously had a Gothic Revival Church built in the Shotwell area near Wendell, so perhaps he was the instigator of this style of house in Cary? 

Gothic Revival stylistic elements include pointed arched windows, a steeply sloped roof, deep soffits and board and batten siding.   The Ivey-Ellington House has scalloped facias as opposed to plain facias found on many Gothic Revival structures.   The Gothic Revival style signified an architectural form that focused on changing attitudes towards nature, religion, technology and the family.  This style was very popular in the mid-19^th century.  The style was promoted as being appropriate for rural settings because it was thought the complex lines and shape would fit well in natural surroundings.   The pointed windows and steeply sloped roofs are designed to direct the viewer’s gaze upward, in a heavenly direction.

Because of the style’s association with church architecture, it often signified a Christian dwelling.  In fact, the footprint of the original house is the classic cathedral plan of a cross. The Ivey-Ellington retains its original floorplan and layout.  Most of the millwork, flooring and hardware is original to the house.

Ivey-Ellington from above. Note that additions on the left and rear have been removed prior to relocation.
Photo by Kevin Pugh Media (kevinpughmedia.com)

As mentioned, neither Frank Page, Alonzo Mial, nor Alonzo Crocker ever lived in the house.  It does appear that in 1882 J T Pool and his wife Bettie purchased the house from Alonzo T Mial and by 1883 were living in the house.  Pool and his wife Bettie seemed to have spent most of their lives in the Johnston County area, only moving to Cary in 1883.  They appear to have lived in the house until 1888 when it was sold to Anderson Betts and his wife Elizabeth Jordan.  Elizabeth Jordan was sister to Henry B Jordan, a prominent landowner and politician in Cary who twice served as Cary’s Mayor.    Anderson Betts and his wife appear to have only lived in the house a short time as it was sold in 1892 to Thaddeus and Mary Ivey.   Records indicate Anderson and Elizabeth living back in Raleigh by 1900.  

Even though Thaddeus and Mary only lived there 5 years, their family lived in other parts of Cary for many, many years and had a lasting impact on the community.  Thaddeus Ivey moved to Cary in 1891 to escape “city life” in Raleigh and to raise his family in the country.  Cary was very much the “country” in 1891!

Mary and Thaddeus Ivey

However, Thaddeus Ivey still commuted to Raleigh to work as a bookkeeper at the NC Farmers State Alliance Business Agency.  And by “commute”, I mean he would take the train to Raleigh Monday morning, work for the week and take the train home on Saturday!   As a member of the Prohibition Party, his views on alcohol fit right into Frank’s town!  He moved to Hillsborough in 1898 for a short time but then returned to Cary a few years later.  In 1922 he bought The Raven House on the corner of Academy and Park and moved in with his family, including his daughter, Esther Ivey.  When Thaddeus purchased the house, he was still commuting to Raleigh, but now had a car he could drive to town.

Esther was born in 1890 in Wake Forest while her father was a student.   She graduated from Cary High School in 1906 and then from Guilford College a few years later.  She moved into the Raven House with her family in 1922 and would live there until her death in 1989 at age 99.  Later in life she would tell the story of seeing old west style cattle drives come through town as ranchers from Chatham County would drive their herds to market in Raleigh.  They would often come right down Chatham Street, directly in front of her house!    

Esther Ivey

Charles Romulus Scott bought the Ivey-Ellington House in 1898 and owned it until 1918.  Scott was born in Chatham County in 1831.  He was married to Anna Yates, daughter of Eli Yates.  Her siblings included Carlos, Alvis and Pharis Yates, all of whom were prominent landowners in Western Wake County.  While living in Chatham County, he served as a County Councilman for 18  years.  Cattle drives from Chatham County to Raleigh were conducted while he owned the house with the drives going right down Chatham Street. 

He moved to Cary about 1898 and opened Scott and Son Grocery and Dry Goods with his son, Charles William Scott.   In addition to running the store, CR Scott worked as a county tax assessor.  Allegations of corruption in 1900 led him to being a witness in the investigation.  He was eventually exonerated.  This was part of his testimony:

Talking about his own personal house, was asked:

Prosecutor:  What was your house valued at?

Scott:  It's an old house, worth about $600.

Prosecutor:   What sort of house is it?

Scott: The ugliest in Cary

So, maybe we can assume that Mr. Scott was not a fan of Gothic Revival?

The ugliest house in Cary?

After Scott, Joseph Smith owned the house for less than a year before it was sold to John Harrison Ellington in 1919.  Ellington owned the house for 30 years, but not a lot is known about him.  He was born in Chatham County in 1875.   It is unknown for sure when he moved to Cary, but he was living here by the 1910 census.  He owned several properties in town, and it appears he may have used the Ivey-Ellington as a rental.  By 1930 he was living in South Carolina but still owned the Ivey-Ellington.  When he died in 1943, his family held on to the house for a few years but then sold it in 1946 to H H Waddell.  The Waddell Family would own the house for more than 60 years.

Harvey Halford Waddel

Harvey Halford Waddell, or HH as he was called, purchased the house in 1946.  He was born in Lillington in 1895 and moved to Cary in 1917 to work as a mechanic.  He would enjoy a long period of service to Cary in various capacities.  He was appointed Cary’s first Fire Chief in 1923.  He was elected Mayor in 1929 and served a 4-year term.  He was twice elected as a town Commissioner.  In 1949 he was appointed as a local judge and held that position for 9 years.  He was elected to the Town Council in 1960 and served there for 4 years.  

HH Waddell was the first owner to substantially alter the house.   Part of that was by necessity when Hurricane Hazel ripped off the front section.  Waddell repaired the front, but left off that extended section, making the front flat and removing the porch.  Sometime in the early 1950s he also added a small kitchen and bathroom off the back of the house.

Hurricane Hazel damage, October, 1954

By the late 1960s the family was leasing out the house.  In 1972, a year before his death, Waddell deeded the house to his two daughters.  In 1984, his daughter Melba sold her half to her sister, Eva and Eva’s husband, Jefferson Sugg. 

Around 2000, Jefferson Sugg did a partial remodel of the house.  He rebuilt the front gable, restoring it to its original form.  He also added a modern bathroom off the back.  He began commercial leasing of the house after his remodel.   After his death in 2010, the town of Cary bought the house.

From 2011 to 2022, the lot around the house was used as a weekly meeting spot for the Cary Farmers Market.

After a lot of talking and planning, the house was moved from Chatham Street to the “old library” library site on Academy Street on 20 February 2023.    Since then, the house has undergone a full restoration and modernization.  That includes replacing the metal roof with period appropriate wooden shakes as well as rebuilding the chimneys on each end.  The intended use for the house will be offices for the new Downtown Cary Park.  Because it is intended for town office space, an ADA compliant bathroom and entrance were added off the rear of the house.  In addition to the house itself, there has been extensive landscaping done around the house in its new location.

Moving Day, 20 February 2023

At this time, it is planned that there will be a section of the first floor devoted to rotating historical displays about the house and Cary in general.

Ivey-Ellington, now on Academy Street

Restoration work has been continuing since the house was moved in 2023.  It is scheduled to be opened in May of 2025.

The Ivey-Ellington nearing completion of restoration, March 2025

For over 150 years the Ivey-Ellington House has stood in downtown Cary.  Here’s hoping it is there for 150 or more years to come!

Sallie Jones, announced in November as the 2024 Cary Hometown Spirit Award recipient, has called Cary her hometown for 100 years! She was born in 1924 in a house on the very corner in the very neighborhood where she now lives, just north of downtown on Academy Street.

Some of her ancestors were enslaved and came to the Cary area just after the Civil War, her great grandfather Alfred Arrington and grandfather Arch Arrington Sr. from Nash County and her great grandfather and great grandmother Yancey and Sabra Blake from Raleigh. Her great uncle Addison Blake was the founder of the Union Bethel AME Church in 1898. It still exists on North Acadaemy Street, the only one of four black churches founded in the 1800s still standing in its original location. Sallie's great aunt Eliza Blake Nichols was interviewed by the Federal Writers' Project in 1937 and left a recorded narrative of her memories of being enslaved as a child on the Whitaker plantation in Raleigh. Her grandfather Arch Arrington Sr. was the first African American businessman in Cary and a community leader.

As a child, Sallie Jones attended the Cary Colored School located behind the current Cary Elementary School along what was a dirt road and is now being developed as an expansion of the Higgins Greenway. Sallie lived through the Jim Crow era and remembers when the Colored School burned down in 1935 under suspicious circumstances. She would have started sixth grade the next day. Instead, she did not go to school at all that year, while her parents and other black families led by her uncle Arch Arrington Jr. protested the plan to send their young children to school in Method and worked together to establish a new school for African American children in Cary. Sallie's mother Emily Arrington Jones and her uncle Goelet Arrington worked with the Wake County Board of Commissioners to provide land for the school. Opened in 1937 on East Johnson Street, we know that school today as Kingswood Elementary.

When the new school for African American children opened, Sallie was too old to attend it. She had been studying her older siblings' text books during the time she didn't go to school and when it came time for seventh graders at Method to take the exam to determine if they would be allowed to continue their education at the high school level, Sallie's mother sent her to Method to take the exam. She passed, despite not going to school in sixth grade and skipping the seventh grade! She was a smart and determined young lady!

Sallie graduated from Berry O'Kelly High School in Method in 1940 and attended college at St. Augustine's in Raleigh. She earned a degree and taught in North Carolina schools in Parmele and Goldsboro for 12 years before accepting a job in Gary, Indiana, where she taught advanced French in the high schools there for 20 years. She lived through desegregation and the Civil Rights movement and helped integrate the schools in Gary.

When Sallie retired from her teaching career in Gary, she returned to Cary, back to the corner where she was born, and has remained since. For many years of her retirement back in Cary, Sallie volunteered with AARP as a community coordinator focusing on housing and other issues in the area. She learned about the plans to build a retirement community on Cornwall Road, where her church's cemetery dating back to the 1860s was located, and she personally took it upon herself to preserve it. Because of Sallie, an important piece of Cary's history was saved. Sallie continues to be an active member of First Christian Church, now located on Evans Road.

Sallie Jones is a proud Caryite and a proud American and has kept up her spirit and devotion to her town and country for many long years! The Friends congratulate her on being so deservedly chosen the 2024 Cary Hometown Spirit Award recipient!

Allison Francis (Frank) Page is certainly well publicized for his contributions to the development of Cary and is known as the town's founder. But there is another highly accomplished citizen who perhaps doesn't get the credit he should. He is Rufus Henry Jones.

Rufus is Cary through and through. He was born here. He died here and is buried here. He was here before Frank Page, and he stayed here. And while he was here, he contributed greatly to the development of Cary and its people.

Rufus Jones

Two grandfathers with the same first and last names

Rufus Jones was a descendant of one of the first land owners in this area, Francis Jones. Though Francis acquired the land in 1749, he likely never lived here, but he willed the land to his sons Tignall and Nathaniel and the two of them were two of the first white settlers to build homes in this area. Tignall settled in what is now Morrisville. His brother Nathaniel settled along Crabtree Creek in what is now central western Cary. This Nathaniel Jones was known as Nathaniel Jones Sr. of Crabtree to distinguish him from Rufus Jones's other grandfather who was also named Nathaniel Jones and living in the area at the same time! This other Nathaniel Jones was known as Nathaniel Jones of White Plains for the cotton fields he owned in the eastern part of what is now Cary. These two Nathaniel Joneses were not related, but they had children who married each other, thereby connecting the two families by blood. Nathaniel Jones Sr. of Crabtree had a son, Henry who married the daughter of Nathaniel Jones of White Plains, Nancy. Rufus Jones was the son of Henry and Nancy.

A famous house to grow up in

You might recognize Henry and Nancy Jones as the owners of the famous and historic Nancy Jones House. Likely built by Nathaniel Jones Sr. of Crabtree in the very early 1800s, this house still stands on Chapel Hill Road and is on the National Register of Historic Places. For a deep dive into the history of the Nancy Jones House, see Historic Houses on the Move: The Nancy Jones House by Carla Michaels. As late as 1900, a Raleigh News and Observer article reported that Rufus was the owner of the “plantation” and that the property had continually been in the Jones family since the original grant to his great grandfather Francis Jones in 1749.

Historic Nancy Jones House

Rufus was born on December 31, 1819, the eve of the new year 1820. He was the third of five children born to Henry and Nancy, who was Henry's second wife. A family bible record from the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Duke University shows the recording of the marriage of Henry and Nancy and the births of their five children.

Jones Family Bible pages

Jones Family Bible pages

Education first and foremost

Rufus, like all children in the early days of Cary, grew up in a family that farmed. Being a relatively well off family, the Henry and Nancy Jones family had the means to formally educate their children. Rufus attended Hillsborough Academy (also known as the Bingham Academy) in 1839 to prepare for higher education, and he went on to graduate from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1843. He started his own career in education by operating an early school in the Cary area in 1847. He also served on the Common School Committee of Examination, ensuring the quality of teachers in Wake County. In 1873, Rufus purchased a 1/3 interest in Cary Academy from Frank Page, who had started the school in 1870. In 1886, two of his daughters, Sarah and Loulie (Louise) purchased the remaining interest in the school, and the family owned the school until stockholders bought out the Jones family interest and incorporated the school in 1896. Rufus’s home on Academy Street stood until the 1960s and was known as the impressive “Principal’s House.” After Rufus's death in 1903, the house was sold by his heirs to one of Cary High School's early principals, E.L. Middleton. The house stood on the site of the old library green, near the Cary Arts Center. This site is now the home of yet another historic house, the Ivey-Ellington House, which was moved from its original location on West Chatham Street in February 2023.

Rufus and Sarah Jones House, later owned by an early principal of Cary High School, E.L. Middleton

Education ran in the family. Rufus's daughters Loulie and Lily attended Greensboro Female College and studied to be teachers. Both of them taught at the private Cary Academy and as noted, Loulie was part owner of the school for 10 years.

Lily Jones

Connections to Chatham County

Rufus Jones married Sarah Catherine Merritt of Chatham County in 1849. The Merritts lived in Pittsboro near New Hope Creek on a plantation they called “Cape Lookout.” Rufus's brother Algernon Sidney Jones married Sarah's sister Elizabeth Rencher Merritt. With two brothers from the Jones family of Cary married to two sisters of the Merritt family of Pittsboro, several connections between the two families and towns were made.

Sarah Merritt Jones

Young Sarah Merritt Jones

In 1870, Sarah's brother A. H. (Haywood) Merritt was brought into the newly established Cary Academy as its first principal and teacher by his brother-in-law Rufus Jones. Not only was Merritt the principal of the school that Frank Page built, but was also on the Board of Trustees of the Methodist Church, the church that Frank Page had a hand in founding and building. He also served on the executive committee of the Wake County Bible Society along with Frank Page and brother-in-law Rufus Jones. After serving as an appointed town commissioner, Haywood was in the first group of elected commissioners for the Town of Cary. Professor Merritt went on later to be in charge of the successful Pittsboro Academy in Chatham County and served for many years as the Superintendent of the Pittsboro United Methodist Church Sunday School. On the state level, Professor Merritt served as a 3-term state senator. He served on the committee of education and libraries, demonstrating his commitment to education and was a leading proponent in the legislature of the temperance movement. He served as a trustee of the University of North Carolina as well as superintendent of public instruction in Chatham County. Haywood Merritt moved to Mt. Airy, NC in his later years and lived out the rest of his life there with other members of his family.

Haywood Merritt [bearded gentleman in the middle] and family in Mt. Airy

A time of war

At the time of the Civil War, Rufus Jones and his family were living in the western part of what is now Cary, not far from his mother Nancy Jones, who was still living.  On the 1870/1871 Fendol Bevers map of Wake County, his home appears along Pittsboro Road (just above the number 11). The home of Nancy Jones was northeast of Rufus's home (along the railroad tracks under the “v” in Morrisville on the map). Our best guess places Rufus's home near the present-day intersection of Davis Dr. and High House Rd.

Fendol Bevers 1870/1871 map of Wake County

Clara Jones was an African American woman who was enslaved by the Rufus Jones family during the war. Her memories were recorded as part of a Federal Writers' Project in the 1930s, U.S., Interviews with Former Slaves, 1936-1938. Clara recalled about the end of the war:

“When de Yankees come, Mis Sally Marse Rufus' wife cried and ordered the scalawags outen de house but dey jist laughs at her an' takes all we got. Dey eben takes the stand of lard dat we has got buried in de ole fiel' an' de hams hangin' up in de trees in de pasture. After dey is gone, we fin's a sick Yankee in de barn an' Mis Sally nurses him. Way atter de war Mis Sally gits a letter an' a gol' ring from him.”

You can read Clara's complete narrative here.

Politics and religion and grasshoppers

Rufus followed in the footsteps of some of his inlaws and his own Jones family ancestors and developed an early interest in politics, serving in the House of Commons from Wake County in 1848 – 1849 and as a Wake County Commissioner. He is also noted for being the first elected mayor of Cary in 1872.

In 1877, Cary was apparently besieged by grasshoppers and Rufus did his part to try to rid the community of these pests. This snippet from the Raleigh Christian Advocate in 1877 tells of his actions:

Snippet from September 19, 1877 Raleigh Christian Advocate

Rufus also participated in civic and religious activities throughout his life. He was an early member of Asbury Church, appearing on a list of members in 1853.  Rufus was also a founding member and trustee of the Cary Methodist Church and was a long-time president and member of the Wake County Bible Society.

As a businessman, Rufus operated a short-lived tannery.

More than an esteemed ciitzen

At his death, his obituary noted that Rufus Jones “was held in the highest esteem by all the people of the county.” He died in 1903 and is buried in the family plot at Hillcrest Cemetery. Many Jones family members are buried there with him, including his father Henry and brother Nathaniel whose bodies were moved from their original burial spots on the Nancy Jones House property. Hillcrest Cemetery exists because of Rufus and his wife Sarah, who donated land they owned to the town in 1887 for use as a place for townspeople's burials. Cary townspeople are still being buried there today.

With Rufus Jones being Methodist, an educator, and a member of one of the earliest and most influential families in the Cary area, it was natural for Frank Page to know and value Rufus’s influence and talents in establishing the Town of Cary. We might take it a step further and give credit to Rufus for co-founding the town with Frank.

Sometimes history research is a bit like Alice taking a tumble into the rabbit hole. You never know where you will end up or what you will find! Recently, a group of researchers trying to answer questions about the Ivey-Ellington House fell down the proverbial rabbit hole and ended up looking for answers regarding E O Waldo’s Drug Store! We started with this photo, which had surfaced some time ago and had reappeared in a query from Michael Rubes who is working on a presentation about the Ivey-Ellington House. (See "Upcoming Events" on our Home Page.) That’s all it took to set off in the search for answers.

Based on what we know about 1900s Cary, the building couldn’t be immediately placed. It looks remarkably like what is known today as Scott’s Store on West Chatham Street beside the former location of the Ivey-Ellington House. What we know about surrounding buildings on West Chatham Street, it was clear that the two buildings were indeed two different buildings, not the same structure.

One researcher (Carla) remembered a map drawn from Elva Templeton’s memories of early Cary. Elva was the daughter of Dr James McPherson Templeton, and Elva placed various homes and businesses on streets in Cary around 1906 or so. Here is a section of a map drawn from her recollections:

On this map, what is marked “Lane to Raleigh Rd” is now known as East Chatham Street. During this time, businesses were located on Cedar Street and what today is known as West Chatham Street, both of which served as the business “district” of Cary in the late 1800s and 1900s. Just above the word “Lane” appear two buildings marked “Ernest Waldo Drug Store”. It is open to interpretation as to whether one was a home and one was a business. The two buildings sat at the corner of what is now East Chatham and Walker Street on the property of today’s Modern Service, an automotive repair shop.

Now, take a look at a photo of Cary’s fire trucks arranged on the Modern Service property, circa 1950s, looking east to Raleigh. The street on the left of the photo is East Chatham Street. You will see a home in the background of the color photograph in approximately the same location as the home in the black and white photograph above, which is just visible. The houses are oriented the same way, facing Walker Street, although the roof of the house in the color photo may have been altered.

In a bit of serendipity, another conversation about a completely unrelated subject brought to one researcher’s (Carla’s) attention an old newspaper in the collection of the Page Walker Arts and History Center. The newspaper had been donated by Jerry Miller. Carla made a phone call to Mr Miller and found that Mr Miller had been given the newspaper by Mr R O Heater, who wanted Jerry to draw pictures of the houses in the newspaper that didn’t exist any longer. Mr Heater had emphasized to Jerry how important the newspaper was. Mr Miller also mentioned that he had donated it to the Page Walker Arts and History Center. Carla joined the Center’s supervisor, Kris Carmichael, in looking at this newspaper. To Carla's surprise, within the pages of the “Farmer’s Journal”, published by Dr J M Templeton in 1913, was a photograph of the E O Waldo Drug Store with the caption, “E O Waldo Drug Store, East Chatham Street.” Bingo. This was confirmation that the pieces of the puzzle regarding the drug store that we guessed at were accurately put together. It also underscored the value of saving documents from the past.

There are some differences in the two photographs of the building, which are explainable. The newspaper photograph does not have the stairs on the outside of the building and does not show any telephone wires. Those came later, as evidenced in the stand-alone photograph. The signage above the front door is different in style, if not in content, but could have needed refreshing over the years. The article above states that two years previously, fire had destroyed “their house and stock.” Does this mean a separate house and a business as pictured on the hand-drawn map? In the photo above, it appears that only the business has been rebuilt, but could have contained a residence on the second floor. Maybe that is an explanation for the “more substantially than ever” remark.

But that isn’t all that we found down the rabbit hole. Independently, another researcher (Barb) had been looking through the Thomas Byrd Collection of research documents used in the book “Around and About Cary”. Tom Byrd’s collection has recently been painstakingly digitized and placed online at digitalnc.org.

[https://lib.digitalnc.org/search?ln=en&p=903%3Apagewalker_011419_NPB_01&f=&sf=&so=d&rg=10&fti=0]

Out of curiosity, Barb began to browse the online research documents and found a photocopy of the same newspaper, which Jerry Miller had gifted the Page Walker! The discovery of the digitized newspaper and the original happened at the same time. What a coincidence!

The information in the stand-alone photograph of the drug store with telephone lines led us to another rabbit hole – the history of telephone service in Cary. According to an interview with Irma Ellis, long-time school teacher in Cary and captured in "Around and About Cary," the earliest phone service started in 1899 and was located in Waldo’s Drug Store. We had to go down the rabbit hole again and ask, “Where was THAT store located?” We are not sure, but think it was the drug store started by Dr S P Waldo and probably located on the commercial (and main) street of Cary, Railroad (now Cedar) Street. Apparently, that store burned, too. The drug store seemed to have particularly bad luck with fire. Perhaps it was because the store sold not only medicines but paints, oils, and general merchandise. That is a lot of volatile material! Here is a receipt from 1885 from S P Waldo’s store found in the estate file of Araminta (Mrs A J) Page Clegg, the sister of Frank Page, who lived in Cary and ran the Page Hotel (now the Page Walker Arts and History Center) for Frank and Catherine in the hotel’s early years. After she stopped managing the hotel and it was sold on to the Walkers, she remained in Cary and died here in 1885. Sadly, the receipt doesn’t give the address of the business, but Cary was so small that an address wasn’t needed.

Back to the telephone lines, newspaper clipping shows that the town geared up for the first telephone exchange for the town of Cary in 1915. In the photograph of the drug store below, the signage for the public telephone exchange and the line from the building to the pole are clearly visible, meaning that the photograph was taken in or shortly after 1915.

Another bit of information came from old telephone books in the Olivia Raney Library. A few people in Cary had phones before the telephone exchange came to town. A 1916 Telephone Book shows the earliest listing of numbers for Cary, but if you look at the Apex listings, you will see that several homes and businesses had telephone service through the Apex exchange. It’s reasonable to think that since the Cary exchange was established later in 1915, that the 1916 telephone book contained the earliest separate listing of Cary numbers.

In the 1916 telephone book, Mrs Ida F Jordan (residence - Carla's great-grandmother!), J M Templeton Sr, (Dr Templeton) (residence), and N G Yarborough (Nathaniel G Yarborough who owned the Guess-Ogle House), (residence) and The Bank of Cary on the Apex exchange joined 24 other numbers on the Cary exchange. All these numbers eventually were Cary exchange numbers.

If anyone doubts the value of the research that makes up “Around and About Cary”, doubt no more. All one has to do is read the information in that book to learn the details of fires that destroyed the drug store, not once, but twice.

Barb pointed out a paragraph in the book “Around and About Cary” that recounted the last fire. “The telephone switchboard and an apartment occupied by Mr and Mrs Larry Penny were located over Waldo’s Drug Store. Upon returning from the town pump one cold January morning in 1919, Mrs Penny discovered her kitchen ceiling ablaze. Said Mrs Hilliard (Lyda Barbee Hilliard, Cary’s first operator):

               People started yelling at me to come down, but I was trying to get the long-distance operator (in Raleigh) so she could send help. Cary didn’t have a fire department at the time, and it was customary for Raleigh to send a                wagon out.”

The Raleigh operator never came on line and the building burned. “Our long-distance service was poor,” Mrs Hilliard said.” [Said with a touch of understatement! – Carla]

In another remarkable coincidence, one researcher (Carla) said that her grandmother (Annie Beasley Jordan of Cary) was related to Mrs Hilliard and they were best friends. The researcher knew Mrs Hilliard personally. Too bad Carla didn’t know this story as a girl so she could ask some questions!

About Mr and Mrs Larry Penny! Larry Bryant Penny of Cary and Mary Brown of Apex were married in Cary in 1918 by W H Atkins, a JP. The apartment over the drug store was the home for newlyweds, but the fire shortly thereafter must have put some fear in them as they are listed in records from 1920 on as living in places outside “downtown” Cary. Who would blame them!

But, wait! There is more to sort out about the E O Waldo Drug Store. Ernest Owen Waldo, Sr was the son of Dr S P Waldo, who died very young in 1891, and nee Alice Owen. Ernest ran the drug store with his father, and after Dr Waldo’s death continued the business until his own death on 26 Nov 1909. At that point, Ada Owen, Alice Owen Waldo’s sister, ran the business started by her brother-in-law. Later, the business fell into the hands of Estes L Baucom, who had attended Cary High School. His family was located in Western Wake County, and a relative, A V Baucom, owned and operated a drug store in Apex. Estes L Baucom was listed as the operator of E O Waldo Drug Store in corporate tax records of 1916 – 1917. According to Mary Belle Phillips in an oral interview with Peggy Van Scoyoc, Mr Baucom’s drug store was in the building now known as Ashworth’s Drug Store. We can speculate that after the 1919 fire, he moved the pharmacy up the street and the old burned drug store was not rebuilt. In the estate papers of Alice O Waldo, much was made of old bricks on a particular property which were sold and the proceeds distributed to heirs. Could these have been bricks salvaged from the burned building? It’s hard to tell!

What about the other fire, the one in 1911? This clipping is all we know of details about the fire. Because the photos of the E O Waldo Drug Store show no surrounding buildings, and this clipping says surrounding buildings were saved, it would appear that this fire happened on Railroad (now Cedar) Street and the business was rebuilt on what is now Chatham Street.

We are indebted to many long-gone Cary residents who recorded their memories for future generations. Besides Elva Templeton and her map of Cary, another Cary resident, Terrine Holleman Woodlief, also recorded her recollections in map-form about who lived where in Cary and the businesses of the time. There are similarities between the two maps, but each lady remembered different buildings. Taken together, the two maps fill in many of the gaps that the other left out. On Mrs Woodlief’s map, there is an inset of the “business district” of Cary. On the map below, Railroad Street runs across the top from left to right. Beside the brick factory, you will see a building labeled “drug store”. It is reasonable to assume that this is the drug store that burned and was reconstructed on East Chatham Street. The order of businesses lines up with our current understanding of the placement of the brick building, Jones Store and blacksmith. More research is needed on who Williams was and the type of store he/she operated.

Another detail emerged late in the research. A daughter of Dr Waldo and Alice Owen Waldo, his wife, was Ruth Yarrell Waldo (later Mrs John Wesley Brothers), who operated the phone exchange on the property of the US Post Office on Academy Street in Cary. She came by her knowledge of telephones through the family! Deed research indicates that the property passed through the Waldo family, was owned by Ada Owen, sister-in-law of Dr S P Waldo and was contiguous to the original site of his home that has since been moved, restored, and now sits behind the Mayton Inn on East Park Street. Carla’s father, C Y Jordan, who was born in 1927 in Cary and lived almost his entire life here, told a story about visiting the house with his older cousin Betty Jordan. They knew they were allowed to observe the exchange operator, but they also knew they had to maintain complete silence! They were permitted inside because Betty’s widowed mother, Lila Westbrook Jordan operated the exchange for a time, most likely in the mid-1930s! C Y could “mimic” Mrs Jordan, who he remembered would say “Number, please” in a high-pitched voice when someone rang into the exchange for assistance. That must have been a time when more people in Cary had phones, maybe too many numbers for an operator to quickly remember who had which number!

Just when we think we are reaching the end of the rabbit hole, something new emerges! A researcher (Michael Rubes, this time) found a group of photos in Flickr that showed views of “old” Cary. One showed a house described as the telephone exchange in Cary circa 1930 on Academy Street, noted above. This photo must be the Brothers House. It is described in deeds as a “5-room cottage on Academy Street.” C Y Jordan remembers there being two houses on the current Post Office lot, and the photo bears this out. The sign in front of the house is a wonderful detail. Southern Bell contracted to lease the house from Ada Owen for two five-year terms which ran from 1929 to 1939. The leases were found in the Wake County, NC Register of Deeds office, with deeds available online.

Michael also pointed us to a photo circa 1910 of a phone operator in Cary. So, we circle back around to the Waldo Drug Store on East Chatham Street. Because the date assigned is approximate, it is reasonable to think that this photo was taken in the two-story building with the phone exchange upstairs. Note the pot-bellied stove and lacy curtains. Too bad we can’t see what is hanging on the wall to the right of the window. Is it a calendar that would show the month and year? Hard to say, but we can almost read the clock on the table beneath! What time do you think it says? Referring back to the first photo in the blog, there is a pipe coming out of the side wall on the second floor. Is that the stove pipe we see in the photo below? If so, the window may be the right-hand second floor window as you face the building. And is this the first operator, Lyda Barbee, before her marriage to Mr Hilliard? The 1910 Census doesn’t shed light on her occupation, as she was only 15 at the time. She finished at Cary High School in 1915 or 1916. The 1920 Census shows her living at home on Walnut Street and working as a clerk in the telephone office. The unanswered question is whether she worked in her late teens for the telephone exchange. In 1919, at the time of the last, disastrous fire, she would have been about 24 and could have started working at the exchange when she finished high school. Based on the date of the exchange, September 1915, she would have been 19 or 20, plenty mature enough and educated enough to work in the office. Cary High School records list her for the last time as a student in the 1915 CHSite, the yearbook of Cary High School. All the details seem to fall into place.

Thus ends our excursion (for the time being) down rabbit hole, with all its twists and turns, serendipitous moments and bunny trails. You have gotten a glimpse into the fun of research and the thrill of the hunt! Many thanks to Tom Byrd, Cary’s original researcher, who captured vital details about Cary’s history that otherwise would have been lost, Jerry Miller who brought long lost structures in Cary to life, and other Cary-ites from long-gone days who left memories which have helped us on our journey. And thanks to Barbara Wetmore, Michael Rubes, and Kris Carmichael for this  team effort to try and sort through the details…down the rabbit hole!