Wilson C. Daniel, c. 1863, who served in the 42nd Regiment (like Tom Dula).
Margaret Ann Wesson Tesh, 1868. An example of what white women might have looked like in the Reconstruction era.
We’ve got another batch of audio materials available thanks to our partner, Wilkes Community College. This set of 16 interviews and oral histories was originally recorded on reel-to-reel tapes, and they span from 1959 to 1979.
One of the recordings in this batch is a retelling of the legend of Tom Dula, popularized in 1959 by The Kingston Trio in their version of the folk song “Tom Dooley.” The general outline of the story is that Dula, upon returning home to Wilkes county after serving in the army of the Confederacy, had a relationship with at least two women, Laura (or Laurie) Foster and Ann Melton. It is suspected that this relationship triangle went bad and that Dula murdered Foster. He then attempted to flee into Tennessee. However, he was arrested and returned to North Carolina, where he was found guilty both by a jury in Iredell county and later by the North Carolina Supreme Court. He was sentenced to death in Statesville and hanged on May 1, 1868, which became the basis for the song.
The version of the story told in this recording (perhaps by Tom Ferguson, though the tape is unclear), also made in 1959, leans more into pastoral genre than other popular accounts. The speaker devotes a great deal of time to describing the home of Dula and his mother, which he says many in the area remember. He describes a lean-to on the side of the house (which he guesses was built around 1850) where Tom Dula stayed. He also describes the house as sitting among “a profusion of honeysuckle and roses.”
However, this account deserves a little bit of scrutiny, since it tends to romanticize and draw from the speaker’s imagination. The storyteller describes Dula as a musician who carried a violin around his neck and who only participated in the Civil War insofar as to entertain his fellow soldiers, though we know he was a member of the 42nd Regiment of the North Carolina Infantry. He also asserts that Dula was handsome and popular with the ladies, which, of course, makes it impossible that he was a “scoundrel” (Ferguson is not a Jane Austen fan, I take it).
Zebulon B. Vance c. 1875 (courtesy of the Library of Congress).
In addition to asserting Dula’s innocence, this version of the story describes Foster as an “innocent” girl with a talent for weaving, though author John Foster West asserts that Dula, Foster, and Melton were all infected with syphilis. Sadly, little is recorded about either Foster or Melton, and—perhaps tragically—Foster’s portrait now hangs beside Dula’s in the Tom Dooley Museum.
One final surprising detail about this story is that Dula was represented by none other than former North Carolina Governor and U.S. Senator Zebulon Baird Vance. Though biographer Clement Dowd mentions that Vance did not always prepare well for his cases, the storyteller in this version lauds Vance for coming to Dula’s rescue and attributes the two convictions to the “carpetbaggers” who made up the jury.
The romantic myth, first told by one of Peter Stewart Ney’s former students, says that Michel Ney escaped his own execution and fled to the United States, living out the rest of his days as the school teacher Peter Stewart Ney in North Carolina. The legend pulls in the life of the real Peter Stewart Ney, a teacher who happened to share the Marshal’s last name and who was an immigrant to South Carolina near the time of Michel Ney’s execution (though records suggest he was from Scotland rather than France). Peter Stewart Ney’s grave in Rowan county reads, “a native of France… and soldier of the French Revolution… under… Napoleon Bonaparte,” and his birth year is listed as 1769, the year Michel Ney was born. Though many storytellers have attempted to explain the ways that Michele Ney could have escaped and the similarities between the two men, historians have established that Peter Stewart Ney was not the Marshal.
Moose’s version tells how Michele Ney faked his own execution and was able to escape France by ship. Once in America, Moose theorizes that Ney could have connected with friends in Philadelphia. According to Moose, Michele Ney’s son, Eugène Michel Ney, was trained as a doctor in Philadelphia, and Peter Stewart Ney may have visited him. Moose also focuses on the oft-repeated story that Peter Stewart Ney allegedly attempted suicide when he heard of Napoleon’s death, though the source of that story is unclear.
The Ney myth runs so deeply in NC history that Peter Stewart Ney’s body was exhumed in 1887 and examined for evidence that he was the Marshal. In Moose’s telling, the lack of evidence found on the body (which was mostly decomposed) allowed the myth to continue.
Though he was not Napoleon’s lieutenant, Peter Stewart Ney did receive some acclaim as a teacher and scholar, according to Moose’s version. He developed a shorthand writing style and designed the seal and motto of Davidson College, Alenda Lux Ubi Orta Libertas. Sadly, not much is known about the early life of Peter Stewart Ney.
Speaking of bygone Washington cultural touchstones, the other two videos focus on the Patrician Inn, a popular place to stay founded by the Pickle family. One video offers a tour of the rooms, which feature several antiques and items of unique furniture. The second video provides some context to the inn’s collection in an interview with Mrs. Ellen Vincent Pickles and Emily Pickles Williams. Although the camera operator takes some artistic liberties that we probably wouldn’t see today, we do get even more footage of the treasures in the room as Mrs. Pickles tells some of her stories.
Since the Patrician Inn has since been converted to a parking lot, we will probably never encounter the subject of one of her most intriguing stories: the ghost(s) that haunted the inn (4:47). Mrs. Pickles tells the story of a couple of guests who claimed to have seen “the most beautiful ghost that [they’d] ever seen in [their] life,” who was apparently wearing a “white wig and a blue satin jacket” and “silver buckles.” This was not the ghost that Mrs. Pickles was familiar with; her usual ghost was named Paul Bregal (spelling unclear), and he liked to snuff out her candles on the end of the mantle. He, apparently, did not wear such finery, and he usually lived in a closet rather than a guest room.
These oral histories all pertain to the history and citizens of Wilkes County. Topics discussed in the recordings include the history of mills, silvering mirrors, personal stories and family histories, moonshining, fur trading, education, medicine and pharmaceuticals, Fort Defiance restoration, racecar drivers, musicians, and more.
One particularly interesting recording is Cranor Kilby’s interview. In it, he discusses his early life including the first time he made money performing, his favorite instruments, music in his early years, and keeping community songs alive. According to Kilby, there are several songs which seemed to have disappeared over the years. Through his performance of these songs, he keeps them alive for the next generation of North Carolinians and Wilkes County citizens. In the second half of his interview he performs several songs, including “Groundhog,” “Sadie,” and “Turkey Buzzard.”
To learn more about Wilkes Community College, please visit their website.
To listen to more oral histories, please click here.
Fourteen films about various aspects of the forestry industry and forest conservation are now online from the Forest History Society. The films date from the 1920s up to one about the Yellowstone National Park fires in 1988. Thanks to our colleagues in the Southern Folklife Collection, these audiovisual materials were digitized utilizing funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
To view more materials from the Forest History Society, visit their partner page. To learn more about our partnership with the Southern Folklife Collection, read this post. And to view and hear more audiovisual materials on DigitalNC, visit our North Carolina Sights and Sounds collection.
87 films have been digitized out of Mars Hill University‘s Southern Appalachian Archives and are now widely accessible on DigitalNC. The films primarily are of the Byard Ray Folk Festival and Bascom Lamar Lunsford Festival, which is still held annually today in Mars Hill. Thanks to our colleagues in the Southern Folklife Collection, these audiovisual materials were digitized utilizing funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
To view more materials from the Mars Hill University, visit their partner page. To learn more about our partnership with the Southern Folklife Collection, read this post. And to view and hear more audiovisual materials on DigitalNC, visit our North Carolina Sights and Sounds collection.
DigitalNC has a hit a new milestone – a virtual panel held during the COVID era is now part of the NCDHC collection, thanks to our partner Mitchell Community College.
From the Google form used to sign up to attend the virtual panel
Recorded using the software Blackboard Collaborate, the panel hosted by the community college library featured four Iredell County women Dr. Porter Brannon, Dr. Camille Reese, Sara Haire Tice, and Dorothy Woodard, who answered questions about what inspires them, how they overcame obstacles along their career paths, and more. You can watch the panel yourself here.
To view more materials from Mitchell Community College, view their partner page here. To view more audiovisual materials on DigitalNC, visit our collection North Carolina Sights and Sounds.
A film created as part of the exhibit “Counting UP: What’s on Your Ballot” at the Levine Museum of the New South to highlight the importance of voting is now on DigitalNC. “Chinese Girl Wants Vote” was created by Jinna Kim to tell the story of suffragist Dr. Mabel Ping-Hua Lee and touches both on the themes of voter rights and immigrant rights in light of the political environment of 2020 and in honor of the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th amendment.
To view more materials from the Levine Museum of the New South, visit their partner page here and their website here. To see more audio-visual content on DigitalNC, visit North Carolina Sights and Sounds.
Thanks to our partner, Rowan-Cabarrus Community College, a batch of audiovisual materials are now available on DigitalNC! The materials primarily highlight the accomplishments of and programs at Rowan-Cabarrus Community College. This includes one video that features the Live Model Competition and Fall 1999 RCCC Cosmetology Long Hair Mannequin Competition. In these competitions, cosmetology students at RCCC create day and/or evening looks which are then judged and ranked. The images below show some of the amazing talent and creativity of the RCCC cosmetology students!
To view all materials on DigitalNC from UNC-Pembroke, visit their partner page here. To view more films and other audio-visual materials from around NC, visit our Sights and Sounds collection.
This blog is maintained by the staff of the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center and features the latest news and highlights from the collections at DigitalNC, an online library of primary sources from organizations across North Carolina.
