Article Eleven:
Naming of Gastonia Streets
In its beginning days of the 1870s, Gastonia was a rather rudimentary little village of dirt streets, horses, horse-drawn wagons and quickly thrown up frame buildings of little distinction. Its few graded streets, dusty and dirty in summer and muddy and rutted in winter, radiated in each direction from the Richmond & Atlanta Air Line Railway depot (in 1877 it became Atlanta & Charlotte Air Line). There seems to be no historical information on who laid out the street pattern, if indeed there was one. The original configuration, not very different from what it is today, was most likely the result of natural boundaries such as railroad tracks, ravines and old wagon roads, with suggestions from the railroad officials, original property owners and early town leaders.
The first streets and roads running east-west were Main Street and Air Line Avenue, both paralleling the Atlanta & Charlotte Air Line (in 1894 it became Southern Railway); Long Avenue north of Air Line; Mill Street (later Franklin Avenue) south of Main; and Elm Street (later Second Avenue) south of Mill. Crossing these in a north-south direction were, on the far east, Railroad Street (later Broad Street), down the middle of which ran the tracks of the Chester & Lenoir Narrow Gauge (later the Carolina & Northwestern); then to its west was Maple Street (later Oakland Avenue); Marietta Street; South Street; York Street; and finally to the far west, Cemetery Street (later Chester Street).
Main was originally and for many years Main Street. In the early 1900s, as the city decided to designate all east-west streets as avenues and north-south ones as streets, it became Main Avenue, the name by which we know it today. It also has the dubious distinction of coming to something of a dead end at both extremities. Nonetheless, that was where the commercial and political heart of Gastonia solidly remained for its first one hundred years.
The following quote from the Gastonia Gazette of May 11, 1899, reveals the public’s interest in properly naming its roadways.
“While others are thinking of things for the board of aldermen to do, our suggestion is that all the streets of the town be named officially and appropriately. ‘Narrow Gauge’ and ‘Air Line’ won’t do. Give them appropriate names. Abolish antiquarian fancies and adopt modern names. And for goodness sake, don’t call any of them ‘avenues’. Gastonia has no avenues and is not likely to have any.”
The editor, publicly spirited though he was, would undoubtedly be surprised at Gastonia’s growth and diversity a hundred years later.
How Franklin Boulevard Got Its Name
Franklin Boulevard, Gastonia’s principal thoroughfare today, was originally known as Mill Street, a rather uninspiring designation. It was so named because of several unsightly, dilapidated sawmills and gristmills located along its route in the early days. In 1896, cotton manufacturer George W. Ragan demolished an unsightly old gristmill or sawmill on the southeast corner of Mill and York streets (where BB&T’s main office is now located) and started construction on a fine new home. It was the beginning of a new residential neighborhood, one that quickly became a showplace of Victorian houses with tall towers, gingerbread carvings and breezy porches. The Ragan home was unique in that it had the town’s first indoor bathroom, which was supplied with running water by a giant windmill, a classic slate roof, a central heating system, a telephone connection and, by 1900, electric lighting.
Residence of Mr. and Mrs. George W. Ragan on the southeast corner of West Franklin Avenue and South York Street, a site now occupied by BB&T's Gastonia main office and parking lot. When the Victorian showplace was built in 1896, it resulted in the name of Mill Street being changed fo Franklin Avenue. From Gastonia, North Carolina, Its Present and Its Future, by Joseph H. Separk, 1906.
Mr. Ragan, when he was Gastonia’s mayor in 1897-98, requested a new name be given to the street, one more in keeping with the dignity of the new homes being built along it. The exact origin of the name is not known, but there are several versions, each with some validity.
One story has it that the street was named in honor of the mayor’s father, Daniel Franklin Ragan, one of Gaston County’s founding fathers. This is not very likely, because his father died in 1872 and, therefore, had no personal connection with Gastonia. Another says it was named for John Franklin Love, one of Gastonia’s early business leaders. This, too, is suspect, for at that particular time, Love was only in his early thirties and had only small political connections. The most interesting legend is that Mayor Ragan, returning home exhausted after a day’s hard work, was asked his opinion on a name as he was entering the gate of his front yard. Distracted and a bit preoccupied with business matters, but seeing his faithful Negro servants, “Uncle Henry” Franklin and his wife Rebecca going about their household and yard duties, adroitly answered, “Franklin! Now that’s a nice-sounding name.”
The story cannot be verified other than by decades of family legend, but the recorded fact is that Ragan, as mayor, requested the name change and that Franklin was a patriotic and dignified name he liked and the city approved. It officially became Franklin Avenue in May 1898, according to city records. In more recent years it has become known by the more impressive designation of Franklin Boulevard.
Other imposing new homes, those of prosperous cotton manufacturers, merchants and professionals, began to rise along the newly planted tree-lined streets of Gastonia in the late 1880s, 1890s and early 1900s. J. D. Moore built on West Airline Avenue, Dr. C. E. Adams on Railroad (Broad) Street, J. Q. Holland on South Chester Street and R. C. G. Love on South Oakland Street in the late 1880s, L. L. Jenkins on South Marietta Street in 1891, T. L. Craig on West Main at South York Street in 1897, G. A. Gray on South Street at Franklin Avenue and J. K. Dixon on South York Street in 1900, J. F. Love on South Oakland Street and Dr. J. M. Sloan on South York Street in 1901, J. Lee Robinson on West Second Avenue in 1903, T. W. Wilson on West Franklin Avenue, Dr. P. R. Falls and Frost Torrence on South York Street and Dr. W. H. Eddleman on West Main at Chester Street in 1904, V. E. Long on West Airline Avenue, S. N. Boyce on South York at Second Avenue and J. H. Separk on West Second at South Street in 1905, C. B. Armstrong and J. H. Kennedy on South York Street in 1906, and Mrs. E. Caldwell Wilson on West Franklin at Marietta Street and A. A. McLean on West Franklin at South York Street in 1908. It represented Gastonia’s first residential section, now the heart of its downtown area.
Residence of Mr. and Mrs. L.L. Jenkins on the west side of South Marietta Street, just north of the intersection with Franklin Avenue, at the eventual site of First Citizens National Bank (later Fidelity Bank), which has recently been demolished.
From Gastonia, North Carolina, Its Present and Its Future, by Joseph H. Separk, 1906.
Residence of Mr. and Mrs. George A. Gray on the northeast corner of South Street and West Franklin Avenue, where the Webb Theater and adjoining buildings were later built. From Gastonia, Its Present and Its Future, by Joseph H. Separk, 1906.
Residence of Mr. and Mrs. C.B. Armstrong on the east side of the first block of South York Street and the residence of Mr. and Mrs. T.L. Craig on the southwest corner of South York Street and West Main Avenue, a site now occupied by the U.S. Post Office. From a postcard published by the Gazette Publishing Company, Gastonia, N.C. circa 1910.
Residence of Mr. and Mrs. J.F. Love in the middle of the west side of the first block of South Oakland Street, the site now occupied by First United Methodist Church. From Gastonia, North Carolina, Its Present and Its Future, by Joseph H. Separk, 1906.
South York Street looking north from the northwest corner of the Second Avenue intersection. Postcard published by Frost Torrence & Co., Druggists, Gastonia, N.C. Printed in Germany c. 1910.
"Gastonia, N.C., Residence Section, Main Street." Post card of West Main Avenue looking east from Whitesides Street, published by Frost Torrence & Co., Druggists, Gastonia, N.C. Printed in Germany. Postmarked April 9, 1909.
In the 1910s and 1920s the residential area began to expand outward, mostly along South York Street, east and west on Franklin Avenue and on their cross streets south of the city. S. A. Robinson, W. L. Balthis, J. Lander Gray, P. W. Garland, E. E. Boyce, E. R. Warren, Caldwell Ragan, C. C. Armstrong, R. G. Rankin, L. S. Rankin, T. A. Henry, J. L. Beal and R. G. Cherry owned handsome residences on South York Street; Dr. R. M. Reid and L. F. Groves on West Franklin; F. D. Barkley and J. H. Separk on West Second; W. T. Love, Dr. L. N. Glenn and J. F. Jackson on South Chester. This was considered the most attractive and affluent residential area in Gastonia in the first half of the twentieth century. At one time, before the Great Depression of 1929, there were reported to be more millionaires per capita living on Gastonia’s South York Street than on any street of any other city in the state.
Gastonia’s public square in the 1890s and early 1900s was considered to be the vacant lot on the northeast corner of Main and South streets. It was converted into a small park enclosed by a fence of heavy wrought iron chains connected to granite posts and enhanced by the planting of 32 maple trees brought in from the Blue Ridge Mountains. It was on this green that young George G. Glenn laid out Gastonia’s first baseball diamond, and where the young blades of the town, with Robert C. McLean as their team captain, were found in handsome white team uniforms, filling bases and hitting home runs in preparation for contests with other nearby towns. Their stockings were dark and their jerseys emblazoned with a large capital “G” for Gastonia. From this time onward, the love of baseball would grip the imagination of Gastonians. Near the square was an old well and watering trough that stood until the late 1890s on West Main in front of what later became the seven-story First National Bank headquarters building.
.Article Twelve (In 3 Parts):
Part One: Gastonia Merchants Build a City
Building upon a commercial foundation established by Gastonia’s pioneer merchants in the 1870s and 1880s, other entrepreneurs came to place their stamps upon the flourishing railroad and cotton mill town by the early 1900s and beyond. The old general store concept of merchandising, where small establishments carried lines of goods ranging from food, produce, clothing and accessories to farm supplies, fertilizers and coffins, was becoming obsolete. Gastonians soon demanded a wider variety of goods and services. In their place came stores that specialized in particular lines of business, thus being able to provide wider selections, higher quality and better service. Like most transitions, the change occurred over time. Nonetheless, this advance assured that Gastonia would remain the principal market town in the region west of Charlotte.
J. Polk Glenn was one of the first to fill this need, when he came from a business in Lowell in the early 1880s to open a fish and oyster emporium. He also had a meat market that supplied the community with the best quality of beef, lamb and pork, and it operated until his death in 1890. J. Blake Boyd and W. Neill Davis filled the void, and each operated specialty meat markets in the town for the next 25 years.
These purveyors of fine food were followed in 1899 by Robert C. McLean, who opened the soon-to-be well known grocery store on the south side of the first block of West Main Street. His brother, Leon T. McLean, later joined him and the firm became McLean Brothers. William H. Poole, a native of Haywood County, also came in 1899, opening a grocery market near the Modena Cotton Mills. In 1910 the business moved to the northeast corner of Main and Marietta streets, operating as Poole’s Grocery Store until 1930. Both McLean’s and Poole’s delivered. Their Horse-drawn wagons would go out all through the day, returning from their last delivery late in the afternoon or early evening. Every family ate three meals a day at home, so residents’ food and produce requirements were a necessary and lucrative business.
Other popular retail grocers included J. R. Baber, J. L. Carson, City Grocery, W. H. Jenkins, S. Mack Pearson, Will F. Pearson and E. P. Rankin. The large wholesale grocers were Albion Grocery Co. (W. J. Clifford and J. O. Rankin), J. A. Glenn & Co. and A. R. Rankin & Co. Their trade covered a wide region of several adjoining counties.
The company store at Gastonia Cotton Manufacturing Co. evolved into Gray & Love when it moved to the uptown business district in the late 1890s. Located on the south side of the second block of West Main, it became one of the largest retail establishments in the city – the town’s first true department store, with sections for general merchandise, clothing, accessories and food. J. F. Thomson was recruited from Spartanburg County, S. C. to manage it. In 1902 the firm became John F. Love & Co. John Love, its principal owner, became embroiled in financial difficulties involving his promotion of Loray Mills in 1900-1902, and by 1910 the store was bankrupt. Former associates and new owners took over the various departments and ran them independently.
From Gastonia, North Carolina, Its Present and Its Future, by Joseph H. Separk, 1906.
Gastonia’s first Jewish resident was David Lebovitz, an immigrant from Russian-controlled Lithuania who came to America in 1889, landing at Baltimore unable to speak a word of English. In 1892 the young man relocated to Gastonia where he set up a small dry goods store. The Hebrew immigrant began to prosper and grow materially with his adopted city. Operating first as D. Libovitz, in later years his business became known as Lebo’s Department Store. It would be another ten years before the next Jewish resident, Harry Schneider, arrived and set up a haberdashery that became a popular institution on Main Street. He operated as H. Schneider Co., but later called his business the French Shoppe.
During these formative years, another budding entrepreneur found his way to uptown Gastonia. James Lee Robinson arrived from his family’s farm in the Pleasant Ridge section in 1892 to join Captain J. Q. Holland in his clothing store as a junior partner. In 1899, after gaining valuable experience in merchandising, he and his brother, Samuel Alexander Robinson, founded Robinson Brothers, a shoe and gentlemen’s furnishings store in a handsome new two-story brick building on the south side of the first block of West Main. Their business became one of the most popular in early Gastonia and the building from which they operated stands to this day as a historic site.
Robinson Brothers building. From Gastonia, North Carolina, Its Present and Future, by
Joseph H. Separk, 1906.
Pioneer John Theodore Spencer was joined in the late 1890s by his oldest son, Charles Warsaw Spencer, who, like his father, became well known as a building contractor in Gastonia’s growth from a town to a city. A younger son, Shuford Elmer Spencer, joined them in the early 1900s. When Elmer and another brother, George Rush Spencer, bought Page Lumber Company in 1910, the business became known as Spencer Lumber Company. Elmer’s son, William T. Spencer, joined them in the late 1920s and operated this mainstay Gastonia business until the firm was closed in the mid-1970s. Rufus M. Johnston organized its principal competitor, City Lumber Company, in 1920, and it, too, became an important manufacturer and supplier of building materials.
In 1899, Robert Benjamin Babington, a Lincoln County native and formerly telegraph operator for the Seaboard Railroad in Mount Holly, purchased the 64-subscriber Gastonia Telephone Company plant on South Marietta Street, which had been started in 1896 by Charles B. Armstrong with 31 subscribers. Over the next 35 years, this inquisitive experimenter of modern communication built the company’s infrastructure to provide improved and expanded telephone service to thousands of Gaston County customers. About 1905, it became Piedmont Telephone & Telegraph Co. with W. T. Love as president and Babington as general manager, and finally it was sold to and became part of the Southern Bell Telephone Co. network in the late 1930s.
The arrival of the twentieth century saw many progressive changes in Gastonia. The first city bond election was held on August 15, 1899, and it was hailed as the biggest day in its history. The referendum called for $15,000 for electric lights and $50,000 for water and sewer. The election carried by nearly 70 percent of the electorate, and the town of 4,610 residents began to become a city. Harry Rutter came from Pennsylvania that same year to help plan and lay the town’s first electric utility lines to households and businesses. This hard-working Northerner remained in Gastonia to become its Superintendent of Public Works and City Engineer, and in later years served as Gastonia’s City Manager. Soon there were to be paved streets and sidewalks, and already efforts were under way to move the county seat to Gastonia.
Among the names most seen on Gastonia business houses in the 1900s and 1910s was the Belk chain of stores on the north side of the first block of West Main Street. It opened as Kindley-Belk Bros. Co. on February 25, 1901, the sixth store in the rapidly growing Charlotte chain of department stores. The “Cheapest Store on Earth” became its motto, and W. E. Kindley, who had married the daughter of a pioneer Gastonia dentist, first managed it. This arrangement did not work out, and in 1904 Kindley abruptly withdrew from the firm and it became John M. Belk Co. In 1910 James Houston Matthews, a native of Mecklenburg County, was sent from Charlotte to take charge of the Gastonia store. He became a partner with the Belk brothers, and the name was changed to Matthews-Belk Co. in 1919 to reflect this satisfactory arrangement. Matthews and his family became valued additions to the city, and through his tireless management, the firm quickly became the largest retail establishment in Gaston County. It retains that position today under the management of his son, B. Frank Matthews II, and grandson, Eugene Matthews.
The Efird Company was another expanding Charlotte chain of department stores that located in Gastonia in 1910 on West Main Street adjacent to Belks. Founded in 1901 by Hugh Martin Efird, he was joined in 1907 by his brothers Joseph B. Efird and Paul H. Efird, the latter opening and managing the Gastonia store. In 1909, upon the death of H. M. Efird, the firm became J. B. Efird & Co. and operated successfully throughout the Carolinas until 1970, when it was purchased by Belk and absorbed into their multi-state organization of 300 stores.
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From Gastonia, North Carolina, Its Present and Future, by Joseph H. Separk, 1906.
Swan-Slater Co., another Charlotte business, opened in Gastonia in 1909 on the south side of West Main Street, providing head-to-toe outfitting for men and boys. M. Fred Kirby, of Mecklenburg County, came as manager of the Gastonia store. A few years later, he and William Y. “Will” Warren bought the store and operated under the name Kirby-Warren Co.
Van Sleen Jewelry Store, long a prominent fixture in the uptown business district, opened in a building on the south side of the first block of West Main in 1910. Its proprietor, Henry M. Van Sleen, a native of Holland, came to Gastonia from Moultrie, Georgia. In addition to his well-respected jewelry business, he was also a trained optometrist, Gastonia’s first. Torrence-Morris was another early Gastonia jewelry emporium, and was owned and operated by James S. Torrence, Ben T. Morris and William B. Morris, with J. Sidney Winget as clerk and future partner. Both stores provided the best in fine jewelry, silverware and professional optical service to Gaston’s discerning citizens for over 40 years.
Furniture stores represented another important category of business that anchored the Main Street business district. One of the first to see an opportunity in furnishing the many homes being built in the town was Charles B. Armstrong in the late 1890s. He returned from a short career of peddling goods in Florida to open Armstrong Furniture Co. on Main Street in partnership with Wiley T. Rankin. This was followed in the early 1900s by Gastonia Furniture Co. (owned by Rufus M. Johnston), E. H. Little Furniture Co. and Williams Furniture Co. (owned by John H. Williams and Caleb M. Nolen).
In 1907, Edward J. Rankin purchased Little Furniture Co. and changed its name to Rankin Furniture Co. Then, upon his purchase of Armstrong Furniture Co. in 1912, the name became Rankin-Armstrong, a name that would play a visible role in Gastonia retailing for 75 years. Meanwhile, in 1916, Gastonia Furniture Co. on West Main came under the management and ownership of Edwin N. Hahn and Thomas E. Summerrow. In 1916 Richard H. Jacobs came to Gastonia from Greenville, S. C., and established a furniture store. Joe S. Jacobs joined him in 1923, and the partnership soon operated a building on the northeast corner of Franklin Avenue and Oakland Street. It later operated under the name Jacobs-Beal, when Jacob’s son-in-law, Giles D. Beal, was admitted as a partner.
West Main Avenue looking west from South Marietta Street, circa 1925.
Article Twelve (Part 2):
Gastonia Merchants Build a City
In 1903 Charles I. Loftin returned to Gastonia after a period of employment with Princeton University Press in New Jersey to start Loftin Printing Company. This leading job printer operated for forty years from a location on West Main Street, and later South Marietta Street. The firm continues in business today, over a hundred years later, at its headquarters in Charlotte and under the management of the founder’s family.
Charles I. Loftin in his print shop circa 1911.
The Trakases are believed to have been the first Greek family to make Gastonia home. By 1909 N. K. “Nick” Trakas had a small fruit stand on West Main Street and C. G. “Gus” Trakas an adjacent ice cream and confectionery shop under the name of Sweetland. In 1912 their kinsman Peter P. “Pete” Leventis and his brother, C. P. “Chris” Leventis, moved to Gastonia. Pete had immigrated to San Francisco in 1904 at the age of twelve from his native Greece, and Chris followed him in 1907. Their brother-in-law, Andrew S. Trakas, had been in the States some time longer, being in business in Spartanburg, S. C., and induced them to come east in search of opportunity. Andrew moved to Gastonia in 1914, and jointly the three men set up the wholesale fruit and product firm of P. P. Leventis & Co. on West Main Avenue. It prospered in Gastonia and its activities eventually extended into several Southeastern states.
An Italian immigrant, Charles Carmine Coletta, came to America in 1911, and within a few years arrived in Gastonia to make his home. Like his Greek neighbors he, too, worked at a fruit and produce stand. In 1920 he started making ice cream under the name Coletta Ice Cream Co., forerunner of today’s Tony’s Ice Cream Co. His colorful little horse-drawn wagons, which regularly came to serve Gastonia schoolchildren ice cream and fruit-flavored cones of crushed ice, are fond remembrances of the 1920s through the 1950s. One of the restored carts can be seen today in the historic carriage collection at Gaston County Museum in Dallas.
Gaston County native Charlie Ford took over Charles Armstrong’s funeral business in the early 1910s and started Ford Undertaking Co., for many years Gastonia’s predominant mortuary. Outgoing and energetic Ben E. Douglas, an Iredell County native who was reared and educated in Gastonia, joined him in the 1920s. Douglass moved to Charlotte in 1926, where he became so popular that he was elected its mayor from 1935 to 1941. Through his efforts Charlotte Municipal Airport was opened in 1935. It was renamed Douglas Municipal Airport in 1954 in his honor. In 1982 to reflect its importance as a major hub for US Airways, it became Charlotte Douglas International Airport, one of the nation’s largest. After Ford’s death in 1941 the funeral home was taken over by George M. Riddle, which in turn was absorbed by others in the late 1950s.
William J. McLean, another Gaston County native, founded McLean & Son funeral directors in 1925, joining the profession that Charlie Ford so ably conducted since the early days of the century for the bereaved families of the area. His son, Bill McLean, Jr., succeeded him and operated it until his death in 1995. Today, Gastonia’s oldest surviving mortuary continues in business on South New Hope Road under the direction of the founder’s grandson, William J. McLean III. Three years after McLean, in 1928, Ervin S. Carothers started Carothers Funeral Home in Gastonia. By the 1940s, his sons J. C. Carothers and E. Woodrow Carothers joined him in management. Under their direction it became the largest mortuary in the county. Today Alderwoods Group, a large national chain of funeral homes, owns the business but it retains the original Carothers name and location on West Second Avenue.
Dime store chains did not arrive in Gastonia until the early 1920s, but once they came they found a loyal clientele in cost-conscious Gastonians. The first to come, I believe, was McLellan’s Stores, which rented two adjoining buildings on the east side of the First National Bank’s seven-story headquarters. Then there was Woolworth, the original five-and-dime stores founded in 1878 by F. W. Woolworth, and it was located in the middle of the south side of the first block of West Main Street, between Marietta and South streets. S. H. Kress followed soon thereafter, with its characteristic architectural design, and was located near the southwest corner of Main and Marietta. The last to enter Gastonia was Eagle Stores, which located in buildings adjoining the seven-story Commercial Building, with entrances on both West Main and South streets.
Coca-Cola Bottling Company came to Gastonia in November 1907, when J. Luther Snyder of Charlotte Coca-Cola Bottling Company and The Coca-Cola Company in Atlanta acquired Gastonia Bottling Works from C. Judson Huss, who had purchased the plant shortly before from E. L. Wilson of Charlotte. Its location was at 310 West Main Street just below the present U. S. Post Office. Under supervision of the Charlotte parent, the franchise covered the territory between Lincolnton, York, Belmont and Grover. George H. Marvin from The Coca-Cola Company in Atlanta moved to Gastonia as the local manager to assist Snyder in getting the yet-to-be well known product introduced to retailers. It was announced that a new delivery truck would be put on at once; and in addition to manufacturing the regular line of fountain drinks then being sold, it would turn out the regular bottled Coca-Cola, which had not heretofore been available in Gastonia.
In 1931 the plant moved to a distinctive modern brick building on the northeast corner of West Franklin Avenue and Trenton Street. Across the upper façade was the familiar Coca-Cola trademark script lettering in contrasting stone and cement. William Barnett “Barney” Garrison, a son-in-law of Mr. Snyder, came from Charlotte to manage the Gastonia plant, replacing G. H. Marvin, who was retiring. Garrison was to become a leading figure in Gastonia for the next fifty years. As a member of the North Carolina Highway Commission and a county commissioner, he saw that Gastonia got good roads. It is for him that an enhanced cross-city Seventh Avenue was renamed Garrison Boulevard in the 1960s.
Gastonia Coca-Cola Bottling Company, located at the northeast corner of West Franklin Avenue and South Trenton Street, circa 1951.
Charles P. Nanney, a Rutherford County native, came to Gastonia in 1917 to start an independent soft drink bottling plant, Bludwine Bottling Co., on East Main Avenue. Eventually, he gained the distributorships for Orange Crush, Double Cola, Newgrape and Cheerwine, during an era when many new brands were introduced and promoted but few survived. In 1939, Nanney opened an expanded plant on East Franklin Avenue, which he, and later his family, operated successfully as Sun-Drop Bottling Co. for another thirty years. By the late 1970s the company was sold to Gastonian James P. “Jim” Falls, whose family operates it today under the name Choice USA Beverages, Inc., the principal distributor of Sun-Drop Cola and other familiar brands.
Charles P. Nanney, a native, came to in 1917 to start an independent soft drink bottling plant, Bludwine Bottling Co., on . Eventually, he gained the distributorships for Orange Crush, Double Cola, Newgrape and Cheerwine, during an era when many new brands were introduced and promoted but few survived. In 1939, Nanney opened an expanded plant on , which he, and later his family, operated successfully as Sun-Drop Bottling Co. for another thirty years. By the late 1970s the company was sold to , whose family operates it today under the name Choice USA Beverages, Inc., the principal distributor of Sun-Drop Cola and other familiar brands.
The first attempt at publishing a newspaper in Gastonia was in 1878 or 1879 by E. M. Evans, a practical printer from Chester, S. C. It was known as the Gastonia Herald, but it folded rather quickly. The next effort was by R. M. Martin, Gastonia’s first postmaster, who printed a spicy little sheet under the name Gastonia Enterprise. It lasted less than a year. That was when George W. Chalk bought the Enterprise’s equipment and founded the Gastonia Gazette on February 21, 1880, the same year the town’s population reached 236. As editor he began reporting on important news items and interesting local events to inhabitants throughout the county. In the fall of 1882, Chalk hired John C. Tipton as his editor with the expectation of selling his paper to him. However, Tipton was arrested and fined in mayor’s court in 1883 for refusing to work on the town streets as all able-bodied men at that time were required by law to do. Incensed, he left Gastonia and went to the Lincoln Press in Lincolnton.
Chalk sold the business in 1883 to James E. Page, the former Air Line stationmaster, who then hired the seller’s brother, Thomas G. Chalk, the railroad’s express agent, as editor. This arrangement did not last long and Thomas Chalk moved to Spartanburg, S. C. two years later. In 1888 Page, anxious to get out of the newspaper business, sold the Gazette to J. T. Bigham. This one-time professor at Gaston College in Dallas became editor and publisher for the next three years. In 1891 W. F. Marshall, a professor at Gastonia’s first school, The Gastonia Academy, was enticed to purchase the 11-year-old Gastonia Gazette from Mr. Bigham. He became editor of the small newspaper for the next fifteen years, a period which included coverage of many important and historic events.
The modern history of the Gastonia Gazette began in 1906, when Professor Benjamin E. Atkins of Athens, Tennessee purchased the twice-weekly newspaper and put it in the hands of his two sons, James W. Atkins and Emmett D. Atkins. As publisher and editor, respectively, they increased circulation many fold and made it a daily publication within a decade. In 1907 it moved to a new plant on West Airline Avenue. The Atkins family controlled the Gazette’s destiny for the next seventy years. Associated with them was Zoe Kincaid Brockman who joined the paper in 1915. She served as society and lifestyle editor for sixty years. Soon afterward, Belmont schoolteacher Hugh A. Query joined the staff as assistant editor, and served as editor from 1919 to 1948. Before the Second World War, J. W. Atkins’ sons, Ben E. and William Stewart, came into the business to assist their father and train for future advancement. They and their successors guided the paper until its ultimate sale to outside interests in 1968. Although Gastonia Gazette covered the news of the entire county for most of its existence, it was not until 1989 that the paper’s name was changed to Gaston Gazette to reflect its wider coverage. Today, almost 130 years after its founding in 1880, the Gazette continues to spread the news to new generations of subscribers.
The central figure in Gastonia architecture in the 1920s and 1930s was Hugh Edward White, a Fort Mill, South Carolina native whose first projects in the area date from the late 1910s. Leaving an established Columbia, South Carolina architectural firm in 1921, he formed an association with Charles J. Streeter and Carroll W. Chamberlain under the firm name White, Streeter & Chamberlain and located in booming Gastonia, where they had been engaged to design the new Gastonia High School on South York Street. That expansive and very visible project secured their reputation. Its handsome design and their efficient supervision quickly brought them other lucrative public, institutional, commercial and residential work.
Gastonia Architect Hugh E. White (1869-1939).
Courtesy of the Gaston County Historical Society.
White was to remain in Gastonia for the rest of his life. His work became a legacy and is prominently seen to this day throughout the city. Commercial buildings that he designed include: Gastonia High School, Gastonia Public Library, Gaston County War Memorial, Gaston Sanatorium Hospital, Citizens National Bank, Gaston County Negro Hospital, Temple Emanuel Synagogue, Standard Hardware, Webb Theater and Bank of Belmont. The most noteworthy of the beautiful residences he designed included those of: W. T. Love, F. D. Barkley-A. G. Myers, J. L. Beal-Caldwell Ragan, A. G. Mangum-C.K. Torrence, D. M. Jones, S. P. Stowe (Belmont), C. C. Armstrong, S. A. Robinson, S. N. Boyce and C. S. Thompson.
Postcard view of Memorial Hall, West Second Avenue, circa 1930. Published by the Asheville Post Card Company.
Article Twelve (In 3 Parts):
Part Three: Gastonia Merchants Build a City
When automobiles began appearing in numbers, better roads were required. Twenty-six-year-old Neal Hawkins, a Gaston native, was one of the first to enter this lineof work about 1915, using horses and mules to pull his grading equipment for building
and improving Gastonia’s streets. Sensing greater potential, he soon purchased mechanical equipment and expanded into engineering, grading and paving highways across North and South Carolina for five decades. In the 1930s and 1940s, this Gastonia entrepreneur also operated a fleet of tanker trucks for hauling gasoline and fuel oil in the southeastern United States.
Automobiles were no longer a luxury. They had become a necessity in the modern America of the 1920s. Locally, David W. “Big Dave” Smith, formerly a salesman at Parker-King, started Smith Chevrolet Co., the successor to Tom Craig’s Gastonia Chevrolet Co., which had been one of the first automobile dealerships here. Parker-King was the first Ford dealer, and Wilson-Lancaster had the first Buick agency. Henry M. Rankin brought the Chrysler dealership to Gastonia in the early days, J. F. McArver had the Studebaker dealership and W. Hugh Wray the Hudson-Essex franchise. J. Carl Loughridge and R. Scott Loughridge succeeded to the Buick dealership in the 1930s and ran it for thirty years. Cadillacs, Packards and Pierce Arrows still had to be purchased in Charlotte, Winston-Salem or some other large city with a franchise.
Attractive residential developments began expanding out from the uptown district to outlying areas, those with an essentially rural, casual lifestyle. C. Clyde Armstrong, who ran the family textile interests, his brother, W. Ralph Armstrong, and their brother-in-law, William L. Wetzell, were in charge of Armstrong Land & Investment Co. They were erecting apartments in the city and, by the early 1920s, had started developing Armstrong Park, an exclusive residential development on their extensive land east of the city. Soon other developers put together the equally upscale Forest Hills, Brookwood and Hillcrest subdivisions south of the city, as well as Fairmont Park to the east.
In 1916 Richard H. Jacobs came to Gastonia from Greenville, South Carolina, to establish a retail furniture business. In 1923 his son, Joe S. Jacobs, who afterward left to operate a chain of laundries in North and South Carolina, joined him. Later it came
under the management of the founder’s son-in-law, Giles D. Beal, and the name was changed to Jacobs-Beal Co. Located on the northeast corner of Franklin and Oakland, it was a familiar part of Gastonia’s business district for fifty years. It was also at this time
that William Carl Rustin came as a young man from Charleston, South Carolina to open Rustin-Johnson Furniture Store on South Street and then, later, his well-known Rustin Furniture Co. on the north side of the second block of West Main near York Street. Another furniture retailer was Thomas E. Summerrow, formerly with Gastonia Furniture Co., who started Summerrow Furniture Co. in the early 1930s.
In the mid-1920s Walter P. Moore, Ralph A. Dickson and Samuel M. Stewart established Moore & Stewart Co., for many years a visible wholesale distributor of automotive supplies on the south side of East Franklin Avenue near Marietta. Henry Graydon Horne was yet another who found opportunity in the “City of Spindles”, coming from the eastern part of the state to open Horne’s Automotive Store, a fixture on East Main Avenue for 70 years.
Moore & Stewart, Inc., circa 1951
J. Elam Simpson was Gastonia’s energetic movie theater pioneer in the 1920s and 1930s and did a thriving business bringing the best of Hollywood to Gastonia. His theaters at one time included the Ideal (later called the Temple) in the middle of the south side of the first block of West Main, and in the Webb on the east side of South Street near the intersection of Franklin, the city’s two most popular theaters. It was said he could promote the “bang-bang-shoot-um-up” westerns of Gene Autry, Tom Mix and Roy Rogers better than any competitor. Other early theaters included the State on the south side of the second block of West Main; the Lyric east of the Temple on the south side of the first block of West Main; the Carolinian on the north side of the first block of West Main where Belk’s shoe department was later housed; and the nearby Canvas. In my day, the late 1940s and early 1950s, the Temple, Lyric and State cost nine cents and the Webb twelve cents. My quarter allowance allowed me to go to the picture show (that’s what theaters were called then), get a Coca-Cola and a box of popcorn, and still have a little left over to spend at the dime store or Carson’s Sporting Goods store afterward.
Kennedy’s, Adams’ and Torrence’s drugstores continued to dominate that line of business in uptown Gastonia in the 1930s. Nevertheless, several new ones appeared. Paul G. Caldwell purchased Loray Drug Store in 1919, and the following year founded Caldwell’s Drug Store. Later, the Brown family acquired the company and made it into one of the city’s most popular businesses, eventually purchasing a location on South Chestnut Street, where the store remained until 2000. Norman Morrow had Morrow’s Drug Store, and Fred Moss and his family operated Moss Drug Store for many years. Of all the older firms, only Smith Drugs still operates, and its business is conducted from its original location at 121 West Main Avenue, where it began in 1933 as an adjunct of the old Sweetland Confectionary business. The drugstores of today are mostly operated by national chains. They are extremely efficient but lack the personality and ambiance of the old-time establishments nostalgically remembered by older generations.
The grocery stores were becoming quite numerous. Most of them were still small independent stores owned by the local proprietor. Convenience was to become the trend with the stores located near the consumer, as they do today. The big chains were just beginning to come to Gastonia and were represented by the Great A & P Tea Co. and Piggly Wiggly, each with two convenient locations on Main Avenue. The largest food emporium in the city during the 1920s and 1930s was that of the A & P on the south side of East Main near the Methodist church in one of G. W. Ragan’s newly renovated buildings. Plato P. Pearson operated his family grocery business on West Airline, and Ennis N. Jackson came from Clover, South Carolina to open Jackson’s Pure Food Service on East Main. McLean Bros. and Poole’s were still in business, and likable Jesse L. Hart was head meat man at the A & P.
Prominent among the many additions to Gastonia business circles during this growth period were other men who made particularly outstanding contributions to the city’s advancement. In 1920 Allen Harold Sims (1899-1987) came to Gastonia from Cramerton, where he had worked as bookkeeper for Cramerton Mills, to begin a job in the accounting department at Citizens National Bank. Born in Franklin, North Carolina the son of a Baptist minister, this talented man received rapid promotion, and in time worked his way to the highest echelons of the bank. Upon the retirement of Albert Myers in the mid-1950s, Sims was considered the leading financial executive in the county for the next 25 years. In his retirement he became involved in numerous philanthropic activities that were beneficial to Gaston County.
Nationally-known R. S. Dickson & Co., stockbrokers and investment bankers had its beginning in Gastonia in 1920, when it rented an office on West Main Avenue from G. W. Ragan. Its founder, Rush S. Dickson, a Gaffney, South Carolina native, was
buying and selling cotton mill stocks during the turbulent 1920s and quickly discovered that prices could go down as well as up. He learned his lesson well by the time of the 1929 stock market crash and had positioned himself to be able to purchase sound securities cheaply that others were forced to sell. In the mid-1930s he moved the firm to Charlotte, where it became a major investment banking power by the 1950s.
Two energetic young men, Phillip P. Jackson and Allen H. Smith, started a stockbrokerage business in the 1930s under the name Jackson & Smith. It survived the Great Depression and continues today as Jackson & Smith Investment Securities, LLC on West Main Avenue under the management of one of the founder’s sons, David Allen Smith. It is the city’s only locally owned securities firm.
Thomas Craig Watson, who was raised in Gastonia by his uncle and aunt, Colonel and Mrs. T. L. Craig, founded Watson Insurance Co., one of the city’s leading insurance agencies in the late 1930s. Today, under the management of his son Tom
Watson, Jr., it is the largest independent fire and casualty agency in the county. Another prominent insurance man, James Thomas Comer, came to Gastonia in 1939 as an agentfor Jefferson Standard Life Insurance Co. He became a pioneer in developing pension
plans for area textile mills and soon founded his own company, J. T. Comer & Associates to continue this work. His son succeeded in the management of the firm until it was sold in 1986 to Dun & Bradstreet Pension Services. J. Stacy Boyce, J. Young Todd, Robert O. Crawford, Robert A. Gordon, Robin B. Babington, George A. Jenkins and Ernest Q. Petry were also leading insurance men in this period.
Stanly County native Hoyle T. Efird came to Gastonia in 1932 as a tax collector for the state. He decided to make it his home, soon left the Department of Revenue and started Gastonia United Oil Co., a fuel oil distributorship. It continues in business today
under the management of his son Tom D. Efird and his grandson Tim Efird. During the late 1940s, Hoyle Efird was elected Gaston County sheriff and served until the mid-1950s.
Another oil dealer, Forest C. Roberts, came to Gastonia in 1935 and opened Acme Petroleum & Fuel Co., which also continues in business today. Beginning in 1936, they also operated Roberts Service Station on the popular southeast corner of West Franklin Avenue and South York Street, a location that had been the site of the Victorian home of cotton mill owner G. W. Ragan since 1896. Independently, Lawrence S. Rankin opened Rankin Oil Co., the Sinclair Refining Co. dealership in the 1930s. It also operated a well-known uptown Sinclair service station on the southeast corner of West Main Avenue and South York Street, another Ragan-owned property. Today the petroleum dealer is known as L. S. Rankin & Sons and is under the management of a grandson.
Robert L. Lewis and L. Abernethy Wolfe owned and operated the well-patronized and long-remembered Sunrise Dairy on West Franklin Avenue, and the Rhyne family — Malcolm Albertus Rhyne and his sons Fred S. and Dane S. — continued to manage M. A. Rhyne & Son Dairy on New Hope Road, where Eastridge Shopping Center is now located. Older generations remembers the early morning back-door deliveries of milk and cream in real returnable glass bottles, butter, cottage cheese and other dairy products. The milk was not homogenized back then, and the pale yellow cream rose to the top where it occupied the upper few inches of the bottle. One could use the cream directly from the top, but most often they would just shake the bottle so the milk would be richer in taste.
Grocers Baking Co., operating under the trade name Holsum bread, was located on West Airline. It had both a wholesale and retail trade. From the 1930s through the 1960s it was owned and operated by Walter J. Carroll and William H. Kelley. Many remember the wonderful, rich aroma of freshly baked bread that escaped from the bakery’s opened windows and could be smelled and savored for blocks around. In 1927 J. Flay Bess, long associated with the old Southern Cotton Oil Company’s Gastonia plant, founded J. F. Bess & Co., the wholesale manufacturer of flour, feed, hay and grain at its extensive plant on East Main Avenue.
Holsum Bakery, West Arline Avenue, circa 1951.
John W. and Arthur E. Culp owned and operated Standard Hardware, the city’s largest at that time, and Charles M. Boyd had Gastonia Hardware, both among the most familiar businesses in the county. Maurice H. Silverstein had moved to Gastonia and
started a successful mercantile business in one of the newer Ragan buildings on the northeast corner of Main and Marietta. Leon I. Schneider, son of Lithuanian immigrant Harry Schneider, started a clothing store on West Main in the 1920s. It was popular with Gastonians for fifty years. In 1955 he was elected the city’s first Jewish mayor. In 1937 Morris Levinson opened Morris Jewelry in the former Torrence Drugstore building on the popular southwest corner of Main and South. He and Sydney Kosch soon became partners. It has remained a fixture in Gastonia for over 73 years and is operated today by Kosch's family from a location at 1301 East Franklin Boulevard.
Standard Hardware Company, South Street, circa 1920.
Warren Y. Gardner, a nephew of clothier Will Gardner, had taken over his uncle’s Kirby-Warren haberdashery in the late 1920s, with M. Fred Kirby, Jr. as his partner. Located at 203 West Main Avenue, it became known as the Young Men’s Shop, and later, after Warren’s purchase of Kirby’s interest, simply Warren Gardner’s. The friendly Clinton P. Rankin joined him in the 1940s as head salesman. This popular purveyor of men’s fine clothing was operated by Warren Gardner and later his son, Warren, Jr., for fifty years from its original uptown location. George L. Rawlings, a partner with J. Sid Winget in Winget Jewelry Store in the 1930s, had joined with Floyd C. Todd in the 1940s in Rawlings-Todd, a popular dealer in electrical appliances for the home. Another highly regarded retailer during this era was Howard P. Whisnant, a York County native who came to Gastonia in 1931 as owner of Howard Whisnant Furniture Co. and Whisnant-Williams Furniture Co.
As the 1920s began, Arthur M. Spencer purchased Miss Lillian Atkins’ interest in the old Spencer-Atkins Book Co. (formerly Atkins-Baber) at 223 West Main Avenue and started Spencer-Rhyne Co., sellers of books, stationery and office supplies. Later, his son, Arthur Spencer, Jr, joined him in management. In the 1930s, Oscar G. Penegar arrived from Union County and founded O. G. Penegar Co. on West Franklin near South Street, to sell and service all types of office supplies. In the 1950s, Penegar was joined in the management of the well-known business by his two sons, Oscar Penegar, Jr. and Richard M. Penegar. Both firms dominated their field in the county for many decades.
Article Thirteen:
Gastonia and the Age of the Automobile
Before 1912 automobiles were something of a rarity due to cost, availability and the inconvenience of frequent breakdowns, and there were few good roads upon which to travel. But their popularity with the American public was firmly established and spreading rapidly. At nearby Lincolnton in November 1899, cotton manufacturer D. E. Rhyne is said to have purchased the first automobile in North Carolina. At Mountain Island in Gaston County, W. T. Jordan, superintendent of the mill there, is said to have owned one in 1901.
Possible the first motor vehicle seen in uptown Gastonia, according to a Gazette news article at the time, was in July 1902 when T. K. McCarey, state agent for the Locomobile Company of America, passed through Main Street on his way to Spartanburg in his twin-engine steam Locomobile. But it was in 1904 that Berry M. Holland is credited with being the first Gastonian to own a motorcar – a two-seater, one cylinder, steam-powered Oldsmobile that cost five hundred or six hundred dollars. Later in 1904, the “slickest thing on wheels” was a two-seater, steam-driven Locomobile owned by Robert B. Babington, head of Gastonia Telephone Co., and it cost $675.
Luxury cars were slow in arriving in Gastonia for obvious reasons. Cotton manufacturer George W. Ragan bought a handsome five-passenger Cadillac touring car in 1910 at a cost of $2,040, the first of that premium make to ever grace the streets of Gastonia. It was a four-cylinder vehicle with chain drive and the color was Cadillac dark green. The driver sat on the right side, as they do in England. There were two foot pedals, one a clutch and the other a brake. A small lever on the steering wheel controlled the gas by hand. The gear was on the outside, where the right front door would normally be. It had acetylene gas headlights made of highly polished brass. In case of rain there were waterproof curtains that could be lowered to keep the passengers dry. George A. Gray, another prominent Gastonia manufacturer, was so impressed once he saw and experienced its superior mechanical workings that he immediately ordered a similar Cadillac for his family.
There was only one Cadillac agency in North arolina in those days. It was in Winston-Salem and was owned by young G. C. Thomas, who had purchased it in 1908. Several years later, he established G. C. Thomas Cadillac Co. in Charlotte, which for fifty years was the largest dealership in the Carolinas. Ragan’s Cadillac was shipped to Gastonia by rail and was accompanied by Thomas and another man, known simply as “Hi” Henry, whose job it was to put the car in operating order. He stayed several days giving detailed instructions on how to drive the machine. A Gastonia man, W. Z. Plyler, master mechanic at Gastonia Garage Company, was also there to help unload it and study its operations. Soon Fords, Franklins, Chevrolets, Packards and even Pierce Arrows were seen in Gastonia, indicative of twentieth century technology, progress and individual success.
Always eager to try something better, Mr. Ragan traded the 1910 Cadillac for a new 1914 eight-cylinder Cadillac touring car. It was larger and had one of the practical electric self-starters, which had been invented by Charlie Kettering and had been installed initially in the 1912 Cadillac. By this time, Mr. Plyler had become so enamored with Ragan’s 1910 Cadillac that he arranged to buy it. He named her “Old Liz” and kept it in top-notch condition for the next fifty years. Plyler and “Old Liz”, it has been said, were in more parades than anyone in North Carolina. Every time the bugles would blare in this section, people would find “Old Liz” with Plyler at the wheel. In the 1960s the ageing Plyler sold the historic car to Glenn Powell, owner of Powell Cadillac-Oldsmobile Co. in Gastonia, who kept it over thirty years. Following Powell’s death in the 1990s, it is believed to have been sold to outside interests.
George W. Ragan's 1910 Cadillac
(Click here to see a view of the Ragan Cadillac in the 1941 Grand Cotton Festival parade.)
Cars required fuel, but there were no filling stations in this section until about 1915. Gasoline and motor oil were shipped by train from Baltimore in 55-gallon drums and stored for future use and distribution. “Red C” was a popular brand and was picked up from the Railway Express office located in a small building on the east side of North Marietta Street just south of the railroad tracks. John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company, which was represented early in Gastonia by J. Flem Johnson, began to supply the area from terminals in South Carolina. In 1898 they had gotten their first tank wagon for delivering heating oil.
Catering to the new automobile rage, Gastonia Garage Company, Gastonia’s first agency and repair shop, opened in 1910 on East Airline Avenue under the management of young R. Grady Rankin. It sold E-M-Fs, Buicks and Maxwells to car-hungry public. Frank E. Saunders and W. Z. Plyler were the dependable master mechanics. Early automobile owners were in great demand of their services, since few knew how to drive the machine and fewer still knew how to make even rudimentary mechanical adjustments. A flat tire or breakdown was a common occurrence on the 46-mile round trip to Charlotte. Burke H. Parker, a Gastonia cotton merchant, took on the Ford agency when nobody else would have it, and built it into a lucrative business under the name Parker-King Co. Colonel Tom Craig, the farm implement and wagon dealer, started the first Chevrolet dealership, Gastonia Chevrolet Co., about 1915.
By the 1920s automobiles were no longer a luxury, they had become a necessity in modern America. Locally, David W. “Big Dave” Smith had started Smith Chevrolet Co., the successor to Gastonia Chevrolet Co. Henry M. Rankin brought the Chrysler dealership to Gastonia, J. H. McArver had the Studabaker dealership and W. H. Wray the Hudson-Essex franchise. J. Carl Loughridge and R. Scott Loughridge succeeded to the Buick dealership in the 1930s and ran it for thirty years. Cadillacs, Packards and Pierce Arrows still had to be purchased in Charlotte, Winston-Salem or some other large city with a franchise.
With the proliferation of automobiles, better roads were required to accommodate them. Twenty-six-year-old Neal Hawkins, a Gaston native, was one of the first to enter this line of work about 1915, using horses and mules to pull his grading equipment for building and improving Gastonia’s streets. Sensing greater potential, he soon purchased mechanical equipment and expanded into engineering, grading and paving highways across North and South Carolina. In the late 1920s, this Gastonia entrepreneur also operated a fleet of tanker trucks for hauling gasoline and fuel oil in the southeastern United States.
The region’s huge textile industry spawned two major trucking lines in Gaston County – Akers Motor Lines and Carolina Freight Carriers – as soon as the nation’s highway network made it a viable means of transportation. William Wirt Akers, Jr. started Akers Motor Lines in Gastonia in 1933 with one truck and a driver. He intended to capitalize on the millions of pounds of Gaston County yarn being shipped north by the railroads. His brothers, John McCorkle Akers of Gastonia and C. Scott Akers of Atlanta, soon joined him. With the recovery of the textile industry from the Great Depression, the Akers brothers began in the early 1940s to extend its network throughout the South and the industrial-rich Northeast, providing a faster and cheaper means of shipping than railroads were providing. These sons of a Presbyterian minister were joined in the early 1950s by another Gastonian, J. Robert Wrenn, who became an indispensable element in the Gastonia-headquartered company. When it was sold in 1971, it had become one of the largest private tucking firms in the nation.
A rig of the Akers Motor Lines fleet in the early 1960's.
(From a print by Jim Brown/Cam Art Studios of an original provided by
the Gastonia Chamber of Commerce.)
In Cherryville, the Beam brothers – C. Grier and Dewey F. – founded Carolina Freight Carriers in 1931 with a $330 truck. John L. “Buck” Fraley joined them in 1949. Like Akers, they grew large and successful, and under their leadership had become one of the largest truckers in America by the 1960s. Unfortunately, deregulation of the industry in the 1990s caused the demise of this firm. Today, the C. Grier Beam Truck Museum in Cherryville recalls the amazing history of this company and its importance in Gaston County history.
Article Fourteen
Gastonia’s Battle for the County Seat
Gastonia’s battle to become the county seat of Gaston County goes all the way back to 1889, when a meeting of citizens and town leaders was called that January to consider the question of a petition for moving the courthouse and jail to the 12-year-old town. A Mr. S. E. Foy (No further record of him is found in local history. Could he have been an interested legislator from Raleigh intending to introduce the bill, or an out-of-town attorney?) was chosen chairman of the meeting, and Gastonia’s first resident attorney, William H. Lewis, secretary. Dr. W. H. Wilson, a Gastonia physician, was appointed chairman of an executive committee to be chosen from all sections of the county and charged with acquiring sufficient signatures to a petition asking the state legislature to order an election in Gaston on the county seat question. This initial effort was not successful and the Legislature did not order the election.
The original courthouse, it should be remembered, had been established in the newly created town of Dallas in late 1846, when Gaston County was created from the lower section of old Lincoln County. For the first 43 years of its existence, there was little practical interest in altering that arrangement since Dallas, with its 400 residents in the early-1880s, continued as the county’s largest settlement and logical place for county government to be conducted.
Original Gaston County Courthouse, Dallas, North Carolina.
But things began to change rather quickly with the coming of the Atlanta & Charlotte Air Line (later known as Southern Railway) and the establishment of Gastonia Station in the 1870s. When Dallas resisted the railroad coming through its quite little town, the railroad altered its plans and ran its tracks a few miles south. As a result, Gastonia grew, was incorporated in 1877 when its population approached 200, and by the late-1880s had outstripped Dallas as the largest and most consequential town in the county. By 1890, it had 1,033 residents compared to Dallas’ static 441.
Despite the rebuff by the Legislature in 1889, Gastonia’s hope remained very much alive. In 1897, eight years after its first attempt and with pride running high among its 3,400 residents, the question came up for the second time. Gastonians felt that without the courthouse, the town’s future growth would be limited. A central committee was named, composed of Captain J. Q. Holland, as chairman, C. B. Armstrong, G. A. Gray, L. L. Jenkins, Edgar Love, Captain J. D. Moore and a seventh chosen by the committee – G. W. Ragan. This group, through its representative in the state House, Samuel M. Wilson, secured the passage of an act providing for a countywide election in August on the removal and an election in Gastonia on the question of donating to the county an amount not exceeding $25,000 for public buildings
At the regular municipal election on the first Monday in May 1897, Gastonia voted 337 to 10 for the donation of $15,000 to be used in erecting a courthouse and jail; and Mr. G. W. Ragan, fully endorsing the courthouse move, was elected mayor without opposition. Designs for a new courthouse started coming in from various architects, and they were displayed in store windows throughout the business district. Gastonians were excited over the possibility of becoming the seat of county government
In the countywide election on August 3, 1897, after a vigorous campaign, Gastonia got a majority of the votes cast, 1,437 for removal versus 1,292 against, but lost the election because it did not have the required majority of the 4,161 qualified voters as shown on the registration books. There was frustration in the defeat by a mere technicality, of course, but the outcome was accepted with good grace. Dallas kept the courthouse and Gastonia still had her $15,000.
The subject of removal remained comparatively quiet, at least on the surface, until it was suddenly and unexpectedly aroused a third time by the burning of the county jail in Dallas in the early morning hours of February 23, 1901. This time, banker L. L. Jenkins was elected chairman of the town committee to discuss the now familiar matter. One side saw opportunity, the other consequence, and both sides got busy promoting their interests. Gastonia sent a delegation of a dozen of its most prominent citizens to Raleigh armed with petitions, and instructed them to obtain a favorable courthouse election bill. From Dallas, L. M. Hoffman and E. L. Wilson went to the Capital to represent the determined opposition. To make a long, complicated story short, the county commissioners decided not to call the election on removal and instead agreed to rebuild the partially destroyed jail in Dallas. So there was no election in 1901, and the matter got another reprieve.
Most Gastonians at the time saw it as a clear contest between Dallas, which was hardly growing at all, and populous, progressive and ambitious Gastonia that would ultimately decide in favor of the move by a wide margin. But, throughout the county, particularly in rural areas, there had arisen a surging insistence on respect for half a century of tradition. In the historic contest, time-honored political names such as Holland, Hoffman, Hoyle, McLean, Stowe, White and Wilson, steeped in agricultural tradition, had run the county, some since its founding in 1846. They were reluctant to give up their influence to the new industrial and financial power group represented by Armstrong, Craig, Jenkins, Love, Mangum, Ragan and Rankin. The Gastonia group had amassed considerable wealth and political clout and was contributing greatly to the entire region’s growth and prosperity. They stood for progress, the kind representative of the New South of Henry Grady and Daniel Tompkins. The campaign’s theme clearly became: “Tradition must not stop 20th century progress.”
The next campaign, fourth on the issue, came in 1903, when the state Legislature passed for the second time the necessary empowering act. The county commissioners ordered an election, the third one on this matter, for Wednesday, April 22. This time there was no voting against the registration books, a simple majority of the votes cast would determine the issue. It was a lively campaign that spring, with charges and countercharges coming from both sides. Surprisingly, out of a turnout of 3,557, Gastonia lost once again, this time by a vote of 1,708 for removal to 1,772 against – a margin of only 64 votes. Because of the majority vote it had received in the 1897 election, Gastonia had been overconfident in 1903. The Dallas voters, on the other hand, had done a creditable job of blocking Gastonia’s efforts and raising doubts in the minds of voters.
Accepting the defeat in remarkably good spirit, Gastonia got on with the business of building a city and did not indulge in self-pity or recriminations. The Gastonia Gazette’s lead editorial began, “Jolted but not upset.” A crowing rooster, hurrahing for Dallas, the idea of 19-year-old Kay Dixon, was pictured above the headline. “Gastonia is teeming with life and will grow in the future just as surely and solidly as in the past,” said city leaders. In Dallas and many rural areas, voters had become polarized in their desire to keep the courthouse at its present location. Realistic people, of course, knew it was only a matter of time until Gastonia won the contest.
It was 1909 when the proposal, the fifth attempt, was once again brought up before the North Carolina Legislature. It passed easily and an election was set for August 5. Gastonia’s political leaders, merchants and mill owners pledged the sum of $43,000 for a new courthouse and jail. Dallas supporters managed to raise pledges of $21,000 to improve the present county facilities, providing the courthouse remained where it was.
Old arguments and misleading statements were circulated widely, some unreasonably, said the Gazette. August 5 came, and the largest number of voters ever polled in Gaston County turned out that warm summer day – 5,281 in total. When the polls closed and the count was completed, Gastonia had finally won the contest and been designated as the proud new county seat by a plurality of 629 votes. The tally was 2,955 for removal and 2,326 against. State Senator W. T. Love, Mayor T. L. Craig, city officials and local citizens were ecstatic. The transfer of the county courts, records, jail and offices was set for January 1911.
The politicians of Dallas (population 1,000) lost to the politicians of Gastonia (population over 5,000) in a struggle that made enemies of lifelong friends and even close relatives. We of this enlightened era do not fully comprehend the intense bitterness and condemnation with which the courthouse fight was waged one hundred years ago. It is said some people refused to speak to each other because their feelings were so strong. For most, however, it was not long until the healing process began, and big men and women on both sides helped put the matter to rest. Each realized that they must now pull together in a spirit of friendship and cooperation.
Lawyers, politicians, officeholders and clerks soon began to accept the reality and move to the new county seat to make their homes. Among the well-known lawyers coming from Dallas were Alfred L. Bulwinkle, John G. Carpenter and Oscar F. Mason, who were prepared to join the already established Gastonia attorneys such as Peter W. Garland, Arthur C. Jones, William H. Lewis, Addison G. Mangum, Joseph W. Timberlake and George W. Wilson. They all grew to accept and admire their adopted city and were to contribute to its progress in a multitude of ways.
Soon after the successful vote for removal of the county seat to Gastonia, a handsome new courthouse and jail were begun in 1910 on the west side of South Street in the middle of the block, across from what was then the City Hall building. The total cost was $59,180.25, quite an impressive amount in those long-ago days. Designed by the noted Washington, D. C., architectural firm of Milburn & Hester, it stood three stories high, had a lower level and was constructed of cream-yellow colored brick. All of the woodwork was installed in such a manner as to make it virtually fireproof. The distinctive roof was of green tile, the steps and inner paneling of marble. It was considered at the time one of the finest courthouses in the entire South.
Gaston County Courthouse circa 1912.
On Sunday, January 1, 1911, Gaston County government was officially vested in Gastonia. It was ready to open for business on Monday, January 2. A new era had begun. In 1912 a stately Confederate monument, a tall obelisk supporting a statue of a Southern soldier, was placed prominently at its front entrance as a reminder of the county’s huge and tragic sacrifice during the War Between the States. The courts remained at the South Street location for 87 years, until the present courthouse and county offices were completed on North Marietta Street in 1998. The Confederate monument followed to a prominent position at the new location. In the tradition of progress, another new era had begun. We march proudly together into the 21st century.
Order Robert Ragan's comprehensive book, The Textile Heritage of Gaston County, North Carolina, 1848-2000, from the Gaston County Museum. Click here for more information.
