North Carolina People; William Powell, Editor, Encyclopedia of North Carolina

Good evening ladies and gentlemen. North Carolina peoples over in the library of the University of North Carolina Press and will we have a very specific reason. This is a cyclopedia of North Carolina that got all your Christmas presents is not a better editor it is wonderful volume and his principal author William Powell talked to the U.S. sponsored in part by walkover helping North Carolina people realize their financial goals. Since 1879 and through the financial contributions of viewers like you who invite you to join them in supporting U.N. CTV bail out tell you of all your wonderful work in history in North Carolina. This encyclopedia has to be the capstone of it all and I

know you are proud of it is a monumental work as we are but I this all began when you decided you were going to put out a book called The Gadgeteer. When did that happen. I'm no good at remembering 20th 21st century dates but 17th century dates and I know pretty well I don't really know but it's something I've thought about for a long time. Now this is a book in which you seek to identify the origin of terms and dates and towns and so on. That's exactly right. And how long did it take you to put that book together. Lifetime well that that led you then to a multi-volume thing called the Biographical Dictionary of North Carolina which was after The Gadgeteer. That's right. And it never occurred to me that this was going to go on for some very long and could be done and finished with and move on to something else. But what we're

talking about now. Well that's it. Here it is seven over seven pounds of collected history and documentation and the culmination of all of your work. Now I read in the introduction that you have in your that you started this process by listing over 3500 top drawings and then you did what with that list. Ride it out and offered a copy of the list to a lot of friends of mine and said we need and again as a tear we need an encyclopedia when you join us and doing something about it. And most of them agreed to do. And most of them came through a few of them are still pondering what they can do to help it but it's too late now. So you wound up with 500 sick and 60 some odd co co co worker coworkers introducing this book right. It has about 2000 and 200 doctors something like that.

Yeah how did you decide what goes in it. When I knew something about and I'm willing to undertake to write something I didn't know anything in the world about. Although I think I persuaded some writers to do that. They would say oh I don't know anything about that. We say you write letters home to look up something. Find out what you can say. How did you decide what was to be left out. That was hard. Something good that. That I didn't know much about or couldn't find very much about. Let it go down don't blow when you start from 30 35 hundred topics and wound up with twenty two or three hundred a third of them had to go. Unfortunately some of them were left by the wayside when out of the sheer mechanics of putting out a book this big in this wonderful up was your job to bring all that material together and sort of begin to lace it into the volume. Exactly decide what could go where how one

topic is related to another and how it worked when I let me ask you this. How did you get such a thing on schedule and yet you present this material alphabetically. A through Z you put categories in there but within a letter result everything in the world you can think of. But how did you manage to bring all this together. Did you do it here to press 0 0 in the basement for the most part. Oh well your wife Jane is still speaking to you after all I know. Oh yes she was a part of it. Yeah she was a trained librarian and she knew how to find things and put them together when asked so that the audience would know what we're talking about here what goes on in this book I'm going to ask you some questions about some chap some entries in here which I found fascinating. Horse racing you know most people don't know that horse racing had a huge impact on the state it one bit not that true.

It gave us a better bred a better breed of horses than we than we had before. Was he a famous race or he certainly was well known and beloved by many people their oil paintings of him were done when I was just this was both the farm application of the horses but was also racing a people has bred race horses all the time. That's right and there are some trophies that were awarded in the horse races in North Carolina. But now you have a lot say and hear about folklore used to talk about country hams and you talk about country music and you talk about country stores. You're talking about our beginnings here. What kind of people we really were in the very beginning. They were hard workers. They were people. Wanted to serve the public and they did that in a variety of ways.

But when you say you wrote in your about country Hams it you were telling us how self-sufficient these people really were too hard. That's right. They they lived at home and made it go inside during the Depression they were live at home programs and now home demonstration agents taught people how to do things that they probably hadn't done before. When I you dwell on the Great Depression and hear a good deal of the people not our age most people don't understand what we're talking about but that was the time when the economy collapsed. Absolutely. I don't know but up your way but you and I are from the same region the North Carolina of the banks went broke there were bank holidays and people who work up on a certain morning and the banks were closed every cotton mill shut down. That's right. Nobody had anything and it was a it was a horrible time to grow up in and how many grandchildren often were sent to live with grandparents or

with aunts or uncles who were better off financially than they were where you did you do a lot of work then yourself. Absolutely. You you know you had to do good work on the farm and you were in it when the entire town you were in you know am I had relatives in the country and might be sent out on weekends to do things for my own. You've got an entry in three and here the heading of which is kept throwing. How in the world that happened. Politicians I think can be credited for that. A member of the General Assembly did something somebody else didn't like and he came in with a cat through knowing him and the poor kid didn't know what was going on. I doubt it I scratched him pretty badly but I read as I read that section I couldn't stop laughing about what was happening with it and that it couldn't happen today. I would hope that that's the human that's in this book. Now you spend a lot of time in here on the civil war

not only battles with armies and navies blockades. How did you decide that you were going to wrap your hands around this very big very comprehensive house you had you grab hold of. I was dependent on public own friends own relatives who had grown up with this kind of information and they were not only willing but eager to tell what they knew. Too bad we don't have more people like that today but we get along all right. You've been a lot down on storytellers. Yes oh yes I think they're great fun. I used to. This is the courthouse in whatever town I happen to be solved very states all and talk to people. The front porch of the courthouse was sort of a gathering place for people all around me state and

that's where you could hear hear a lot of good stories. I don't know how many people know that the state was once iron producing and was a leading producer of go before the gold rush in California. Where was this happening in North Carolina and Lincoln County in comparison good there. Comparison Yeah. Oh the gold mine was there you know there was really a big industry what it was the leading gold producing state in the nation in its early days. That picture you've got in here that iron factory. I've never seen or heard of that before and I thought I knew a lot about the history of North Carolina. That's remarkable. And they had local artists who drew pictures of some of the go mining operations and several books written now.

What stimulated a lot by the Civil War and the dependency of the Confederacy on our people for to produce the firepower and the good lines and bullets and things. Absolutely. You need to go or not. Paper bills to establish this kind of industry particularly the ones that were new. What about your surveying of religion in North Carolina you go all over the place in here. Everything everything from the fundamentalist right on through to modern day. It's really hard to cope with that what it's all they are. And there are people anxious to tell about their brand of religion. And it was not difficult to get the main thing is to be sure that it was well covered and it was fairly presented. The word conjure Iran up on in here distance you just have the title there. But that was a practice that went on particularly in treating illnesses. Where'd you find out about all

that. There are people who will talk about it but you've got to become friends with them. Yes let them know that did you're honest that you're interested in what you're trying to write what was reactor practice what did they actually do. If the they had a doctor a conjuror doctor type they could treat there were some who were known for their ability to cure and they are the ones who learned these things and taught other people how to treat. But I want you to put your mind back when you first started writing history about North Carolina and you're one of the preeminent historians of our people. You knew a lot about what we were like as people in the beginning. The original settlers of the agrarian tender now you have worked your way through in this book right down to this century. What have you seen happen to

the people of the state as it has moved from where it was in the beginning to today and its global economy. Of that the people change that much right much they become more professional more willing to trust train physicians to treat them and they once were. What about the people in the sense of there. You said earlier what they wanted to serve the public talking about some of the earlier settlers but today do you sense that that same tradition is a strong in the state as it was before. I'm afraid we're more selfish now than we used to be a more self-interested. What of what's happened. As you knew North Carolina the section of the West the Piedmont and the coastal plain. These are really three very different cultures what at one time they certainly were. They came from different sources. Scotch Irish

Presbyterians were one the Moravians were another people of English descent or another. They had a lifetime of culture behind them and in many cases they were unwilling to share their interest with others. Do you then worry about what you see now in the sense that that whole basic population is changing. We we are now. Last year for example alone 4000 farms disappeared from the land. A million acres has now been converted to suburban development. These trends as against your knowledge of history have a deeper meaning. You think we really are changing as a people. I think we are we're not going to be the same country that we used to be. It's quite different of course. Well when you when you look at this and you see so much change do

you ever go back and start saying to yourself well wait a minute now the Cape Fear River the Roanoke River the French Broad River These were the arteries of the economy a long time ago weren't that there certainly were there roads were the first to begin to change then people would travel buy or ship goods by rail rather than by ship. There were navigation companies on almost all the rivers in the antebellum period. That business that they traded the crops from the land for a fourth stuff that they could bring in from England. Not so much anger on. That was a more limited kind of trade. Somewhere I've read that. Take for example the need to an area that the ships would come in but they were such deep draft that they had to go to a more flat bottom boat and they'd done load cargo in the river and haul it into the ports.

That's right there were islands off the coast there that had warehouses and the ships would see all the where else and then smaller vessels would come and get things from the warehouse. Now you've been going around the state you and Virginia have talking about this book and I want to know what do people ask you when you say you're in Charlotte the other night with that great group that you had there one of the ask you most about this book about the boss of the Encyclopedia How was it collected. Yeah we get the information and the answer I give is that I did encourage people to write that they knew things that they didn't know. I knew what I had in the world as you get all these photographs that are in you. Jerry Cotton was a photographic archivist who worked for the state university

and we were fortunate enough to get him to come and join us and he knew where to go. Above all he knew other people who were interested in this kind of thing and persuaded him to come and join us in producing the encyclopedia. Well you've got a picture in here of made up and McDowell cabbie musta been after the Great Flood up there because you see the rails you see the cross-ties you see these fellows stand on the cross dot but nothing's underneath strangest thing in the world that the rails must have been put together. He's dreamy Well you know because I don't. I would have had the nerve to walk up in the first place but I wouldn't even want to look at it. Those people standing on the road with no dirt no I saw underneath. What was the hardest part of putting this book together Bill. Persuading people to write really. My stock answer was when they refused

or declined an invitation to the dreaded You write letters home don't you. You want your parents your friends to know what you're doing. Well yes I'd say and I say well when you're working on an Tryphon encyclopedia pretend you're telling them something that they don't know anything about and you look it up you ask about it. You become an oh a newspaper reporter what did you gather. Did a body volunteer manuscripts to you. A great many did and some who wanted oh I guess the notoriety of contributing to the Cyclopedia were too eager and I didn't trust them frankly because you have to when I when you got all these manuscripts in did you have to do a lot of editing yourself or be you know you check back you know not only the facts but the content and structure of the article. That's right and the objectivity of them. You want them not to stress

something that's. Be with him. Don't don't overdo it. When I was there ever a time as you were getting close to the time of Colette and all the stuff that you had notes and cards and photographs and things scattered all over the last of the Jane you just said you know look here Bill this is got to straighten out and straighten up you ever get your houses. There's a right and then in the end in some cases it's still a.. We often apologize to visitors. This is left over. We are quite ready to destroy our discarded or something else. When I have you turn all of this basic material over to the North Carolina collection for permanent keep it either is going or it will go to the southern historical collection. They do they do you know with manuscript material and. They are good at organizing such connections.

Do you know of any other book like this in any other state having done this. Tennessee has one. Kentucky I believe does Texas certainly does. Texas over did it. Yeah I did several volumes so big you can't use it. Well I was afraid to say that because ours is almost as being. Yeah right. Well now there's going to be a time when you're going to be asked to come to sit with high school students who are studying North Carolina history I'm sure and I know you well enough to know that you go and talk some of these young people. You get the chance today to really talk about North Carolina history as much as you like of young people. It depends on their teacher. If a teacher is interested then we are invited to come and don't own this kind of thing. Oh yeah. I'm not

discouraged. I think it's what are we teaching the subject in the school system not to the extent that we used to do I know I studied it but I haven't kept up I just don't know what they're doing. But I hope we are. I hope we are too but I'm not sure. Like you I don't go out into the classrooms like I used to but it's still encouraging to go out and see what they're saying. Well I must say that this is this is really a monumental undertaking billed as the capstone of all your work. But knowing you this in the end I know you've got something else that you work in all but you go take a little breather here. Well I'll have to put that this wonderful book. A publisher and Boston I asked me about the time we finished the encyclopedia if I would revise an earlier North Carolina history for his publishing company Houghton Mifflin.

And I thought to myself Well the encyclopedia is almost finished. Yes I'll do it. And so here you are it's what I'm doing now. I'm already reading proof for the eighth grade textbook. And this publisher in Boston knew something of my work. And you knew something of the work of North Carolinians and worked for textbook publishers and that's what we're doing now. He has. Discovered identified almost everything I have ever written. Both books and periodicals and he's hired potential writers to step in and do a new edition and they're beginning to to write state histories in a different fashion and I hope I'm not premature and telling this to the public. But if

they are using North Carolina as an example of what's going on in this country and these chapters oh North Carolina history then I'm working on their own site. Changes that have taken place and show shows what changes were made in state history because of new national interests in local history and I think it's going to work. I don't get it. That's a compliment to you sir to have you singled out for this kind of undertaking but I genuinely believe it weighs heavily on your shoulders I'm sure. Yeah and have you got it you got it then and a pretty comprehensive form already. I think I may be about 25 chapters in it and I'm reading proven me late teens and early 20s. Now it's going to come and it's going to be very interesting. It's going to give.

The author of whoever writes state history isn't in the future broader sweep of history to talk about. Although you're featuring North Carolina history it's going to be what was the effect of this event on the other hand on North Carolina not just the particular book that we write but doing this encyclopedia was a source of great satisfaction to you when it was all over. Well you know yeah really. But you must have a great sense of pride in this building justifiably. I started out respecting that this history would be several volumes. But as you know it's only one volume but it's good it's good it's got what we need in there. It's a great book. My purpose was let people look it up for themselves. Well for everybody looking at this program and also the Bill Powell I want to thank you for what

you've done not only with this book but your lifetime of teaching us North Carolina history and friends want to hold it up again. Encyclopedia of North Carolina. It belongs in your home without your bookstore and get one right away. You'll enjoy just sitting down with her then leafing through it and you really have a lot of history. The next week than good night and thank you. Sponsored in part by walkover via helping North Carolina people realize their financial goals since 1879 and through the financial contributions of viewers like you who invite you to join them in supporting UN CTV.