The Civil War in North Carolina



Reminiscences and Memoirs of North Carolina and Eminent North Carolinians

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for college under the tuition of J. L. Stewart, Esq., now a prominent lawyer resident at Clinton. He spent nearly two years at the University, beginning in June, 1862, but in the early part of 1864, before attaining to nineteen years of age, he enlisted in the Third North Carolina Cavalry, which was then at Dinwiddie Court House, and with little time for soldierly training, he was brought face to face with the enemy, in some of the fiercest conflicts of the desperate and protracted struggle before Petersburg--among them Thatcher's Run and Burgess' Mill. A writer, Mr. H. V. Paul, with opportunities for obtaining correct information, states that the command to which Mr. Carr belonged very gallantly assisted in covering the retreat of the army from Petersburg to Appomattox, and during the engagement was cut in two at Five Forks. He never lost a single day's duty during the entire period of his service, was a general favorite among his comrades, and preferred to be simply a private, in order to be among "the boys," although he carried in his pocket a detail as an officer on the staff of General Barringer.

        At the close of the war Mr. Carr returned to his college course at the University, but remained only one session. He then engaged in merchandisining the town; but soon becoming dissatisfied with his prospects in that small, secluded community, he gave up the business, and set out upon a tour of observation through the South and West. Passing through Georgia, Tennessee and Mississippi, and at length reaching Little Rock, the capital of Arkansas, he decided to locate in that thriving town. He immediately entered into business with an uncle and a Mr. Kingsbury, under the name and firm of Carr & Kingsbury. This was in 1868. He continued in this connection for about eighteen months, when the opportunity offered of his engaging in a business near his birth-place, which was destined to eclipse in magnitude and importance, in the near future, anything his imagination, or day dreams, could have conceived of.

        It seems that Mr. Carr is indebted to the foresight of his father for the idea of quitting Arkansas to return home, and engage in the manufacture of tobacco. We are told by Mr. Paul that after a residence at Little Rock for eighteen months, "his father saw an opportunity of purchasing a third interest in W. T. Blackwell's tobacco factory, at Durham, and being anxious that his son should settle nearer home, insisted and prevailed upon him to return. Accordingly, in 1870, he joined that firm, and ever since had the entire control of its mercantile and financial departments."

        And this brings us to the original history of the greatest business enterprise which North Carolina--perhaps the South--has ever known; a brief sketch of which will be presented.

        Among the several suits in which W. T. Blackwell & Co. have been involved by the necessity of defending their business against encroachments, is that of a party who applied in 1877, to the Commissioner of Patents, for the Registration of the Durham Bull Trade Mark. This application was made more than seven years after W. T. Blackwell had become the purchaser, at auction sale, made by Mager Green, the Executor of J. R. Green, of the said Trade Mark and Factory. It is alleged, however, that the applicant brought suit in Iredell County in 1875, as the assignee or partner of J. R. Green, against Blackwell & Co. But this was five years after Blackwell's purchase, and after Blackwell & Co. had raised the business of the firm, under the Durham Bull Trade Mark from a position of insignificance, and little value, to one of world-wide fame and princely revenue.

        From depositions taken in this case before a Justice of the Peace in the Autumn of 1877, in Orange County, the following facts are derived.
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