Clear Title

I don't know if this is a true story or not, and I'm too lazy to check it out on urbanlegends.com. I've seen it floating around ever since I started working in real estate. For those not familiar with what an abstract of title is, this is the documentation of a search done by a real estate attorney to demonstrate that the person selling a piece of property has a clear title (in other words, the seller has full right to sell the property to whomever they choose without someone else laying claim to it). I've always been impressed by the attorney's creativity and wit in response to the incompetent bureaucratic nit!

A New Orleans lawyer sought an FHA loan for a client. He was told the loan would be granted if he could prove satisfactory title to a parcel of property being offered as collateral. The title to the property dated back to 1803, which took the Lawyer three months to track down.

After sending the information to the FHA, he received the following reply (actual letter):

"Upon review of your letter adjoining your client's loan application, we note that the request is supported by an Abstract of Title. While we compliment the able manner in which you have prepared and presented the application, we must point out that you have only cleared title to the proposed collateral property back to 1803. Before final approval can be accorded, it will be necessary to clear the title back to its origin."

Annoyed, the lawyer responded as follows (actual letter):

"Your letter regarding title in Case No. 189156 has been received. I note that you wish to have title extended further than the 194 years covered by the present application. I was unaware that any educated person in this country, particularly those working in the property area, would not know that Louisiana was purchased, by the U.S., from France in 1803, the year of origin identified in our application.

For the edification of uninformed FHA bureaucrats, the title to the land prior to U.S. ownership was obtained from France, which had acquired it by Right of Conquest from Spain. The land came into the possession of Spain by Right of Discovery made in the year 1492 by a sea captain named Christopher Columbus, who had been granted the privilege of seeking a new route to India by the Spanish monarch, Isabella. The good queen, Isabella, being pious woman and almost as careful about titles as the FHA, took the precaution of securing the blessing of the Pope before she sold her jewels to finance Columbus' expedition.

Now the Pope, as I'm sure you may know, is the emissary of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and God, it is commonly accepted, created this world. Therefore, I believe it is safe to presume that God also made that part of the world called Louisiana. God, therefore, would be the owner of origin and His origins date back, to before the beginning of time, the world as we know it AND the FHA. I hope you at the FHA find God's original claim to be satisfactory.

Now, may we have our loan?"

The loan was approved.

Cheerwine At O. O. Rufty's

A hometown favorite...

Earlier this afternoon I stopped at a small bait and tackle shop to get some gas and bought a bottle of Cheerwine. I just had to take some time and write about it. The taste of that drink brings back so many great memories.

Cheerwine is a drink that was born right here in my hometown. It is basically a cherry cola and has nothing at all to do with wine. Growing up, it was always funny to travel to different parts of the state and ask for Cheerwine. Folks would look at you funny and say, “We don’t sell wine here, son.”

I guess even that statement says a lot about the world that I grew up in. There were still blue laws on the books that prevented stores from being open on Sundays when I was a kid. There were also a lot of “dry” counties in North Carolina back then. I remember there being major battles to bring liquor by the drink to Salisbury. It was a very polarizing issue. And there are still remnants of those old laws on the books, preventing people from buying alcohol at various times. But I digress.

Anyway, Cheerwine has A LOT of carbonation. Back when I was a kid the only way to get it was to buy a carton of glass bottles (see the picture above) and these bottles had the pry off bottle caps. That saved a lot of headaches, because anyone who has opened a 2-liter bottle of Cheerwine can tell you that if you aren’t careful when opening its twist off cap you’ll likely be wearing it! The other caps seemed to prevent this unpleasant experience!

Cheerwine has finally expanded its horizons past Rowan County. Apparently, it is now available throughout the Southeastern United States. Sadly, in the years of its expansion the quality of the drink seemed to decline. I am not quite sure what the cause of it was, but the quality of Cheerwine was becoming sub-par. If you got it from a soda fountain it tasted right, but getting it from any other source was bound to be disappointing. Perhaps the soda sat around too long and wasn’t fresh anymore; or perhaps the formulation got changed. This was incredibly sad to me because when outsiders would sample my favorite soda they would blaspheme it, saying that it wasn’t good. It was like saying that America, baseball, and apple pie just weren’t up to snuff anymore!

A couple of years ago the company changed its bottles to match an older logo that had been used before I came along. This change seemed to correspond to the change in quality. Recently, the company has gone back to the bottles that I am most familiar with, and the quality has gone back up. The only difference that I have noticed is that the bottle touts real cane sugar as an ingredient. I wonder if that is the source of the difference in the taste of the drinks. Perhaps the company tried to substitute high fructose corn syrup for sugar. Well, whatever the problem was, I’m glad that they’ve got it fixed.

Cheerwine figured in to a lot of my childhood memories. I remember going to my grandfather’s home during the summer months to make homemade ice cream. My favorite kind was the homemade Cheerwine ice cream. It was just awesome! (As if the drink weren’t sweet enough, you go and add MORE sugar to it!) Those were good times. My brother and I would play as the preparations were made, and then we had to take our turn sitting on the ice cream freezer to hold it steady while my dad or grandfather turned the crank. It always took much longer than we wanted it to. I’m not sure which was the worst part: having a frozen behind from sitting on that melting ice, having to wait for the ice cream that was in the freezer, or just having to sit still that long!

Another memory that Cheerwine figures in prominently had to do with trips with my dad to O.O. Rufty’s General Store. The store had been in existence since 1905 and was an absolute wonderland to a kid like me. The front windows were full of all kinds of interesting things, many of them antique. As you walked into the front of the store there were seed bins with many varieties of garden seeds and plants on both sides of the entrance. Once inside the store you could find anything from farm tools to house wares, to clothing. The floors were worn wood with a heavy layer of dust and dirt, and the air had a smell that was a combination of machine shop and farm supply store. There was always more to see in that store than you could ever take in in a million years.

Even beyond all of that wonderment, my favorite part of going to Rufty’s with my dad was getting to go to the old drink coolers that they had there and get a bottled drink. I usually got a Cheerwine, but would sometimes break tradition and get a Brownie or a Sun Drop. It was a ritual with us. (Perhaps you have never seen the kind of coolers that I am talking about, but they are like a chest-type freezer. They had a sliding top and when you went to get a bottle you could tell what you were getting by looking at the bottle cap. I’m sure that is why you rarely ever see this kind of cooler anymore, they just don’t show off the bottles as well as the refrigerator style coolers that they have today.) Every time we ever went into Rufty’s we would get a drink before we left. Usually we would drink it right there in the store because there was a 10-cent deposit for the bottle that we could save by drinking it right there. I don’t remember a single time that we ever went into the store without getting a bottled drink. In fact, up until they sold the business, I would buy a drink when I went in there, even if I was by myself.

There was something special about those times. I am not exactly sure what it was, because I don’t remember a single conversation that we had while drinking those soft drinks, but there was something about it that was just like a Norman Rockwell painting or like the cracker-barrel in the old stores. If I had to guess what it was, I’d say that there was a sense of connection and acceptance between me, my dad and grandfather, and that place and the people around us. It was as if in those times there was never any feeling of being in the wrong place or the wrong time. Time, place, and personality joined in the lobby of O.O. Rufty’s in perfect harmony.

Sadly, the proprietors of Rufty’s have sold out to a new owner. I haven’t been to the “new” store yet. But somehow it just doesn’t seem the same.
 

Salisbury's Confederate Prison

A Bird's Eye View of the Salisbury Confederate Prison 

I promised you a continuation of the story about the Salisbury Confederate Prison, so here it is!

In 1861 President Abraham Lincoln demanded that North Carolina send troops to help defeat the Confederate army and force the secessionist states to return to the Union. The governor of North Carolina, John W. Ellis, a Salisbury native, responded to the president saying,

“I regard the levy of troops made by the administration for the purpose of subjugating the Sates of the South as in violation of the Constitution and a gross usurpation of power. I can be no party to this wicked violation of the laws of the country, and this war upon the liberties of a free people. You can get no troops from North Carolina.”

A Salisbury native, John W. Ellis (November 23, 1820 - July 7, 1861) was the governor of North Carolina at the start of the American Civil War. He was forced to resign because of failing health and died shortly after the war began. 

On May 20 of that year North Carolina seceded from the United States and joined the Confederacy. Shortly thereafter the Confederate government began looking for a site for a Confederate Military Prison.

Eventually the Confederacy settled on a sixteen acre site in Salisbury. The main building on the site was a derelict cotton mill that had been owned by Maxwell Chambers. For a short time this building housed a boys’ academy and had also been a meat packing plant for the Confederacy. The site was also the general muster ground – a fancy term for the local recruiter’s office! It was located next to the main line of the railroad that ran through Salisbury. The building was sturdily built of brick and was three stories tall with an attic. The Confederate government purchased the compound for $15,000. Once it became a prison, a wooden stockade was built around the perimeter of the sixteen acres.


This old mill was the central building of the Salisbury Confederate Prison. 

On December 9, 1861 the first prisoners of war entered the Salisbury prison. There were 120 soldiers in this first group. By the following May the population in the prison was 1,400. At that point in the war life in the Salisbury prison wasn’t too bad. One prisoner wrote that it was, “more endurable than any other part of Rebeldom.” Inside the compound there were lots of shade trees and plenty of water.


A Copy of the Prison Rules 

The prisoners were able to occupy themselves in a number of diversions including whittling, trading, and writing. They even played baseball! One prisoner wrote that they played baseball nearly every day that the weather would permit it.


Earlier in the war conditions inside the prison weren't so bad. There was time (and room) for recreation. This painting is one of the oldest known pictures of a baseball game being played. There are claims that this was the first baseball game played in the South! 

Throughout most of the war the prisoner exchange program between the North and the South helped to keep the prison at Salisbury from becoming too crowded. In fact, up until 1864 there were more disloyal Confederates, Confederate and Union deserters, and Confederate and civilian criminals in the prison than there were Union POWs! Due to paroles and the prisoner exchange program, the Salisbury Prison was little more than a stopping point on the way home for Union POWs.

All of that changed in August of 1864. The United States government decided to halt all of the prisoner exchanges. That decision, along with an influx of POWs from recent battles caused the prison’s population to quickly swell from 1,400 to 5,000 men in October of 1864 – double the prison’s safe capacity. Within a month things would get worse. An additional 5,000 prisoners were sent to the prison in November. 10,000 men were jammed into a space designed for 2,500. There were 5 times more men inside the prison than there were citizens living in Salisbury at that time! As you can imagine, the disparity in these numbers was a great cause of concern for the civilians living there.

The Union blockade of Southern ports made it increasingly difficult to get adequate supplies to the army and civilians, let alone prisoners of war. However, even though things were tough outside of the prison, Salisbury’s citizens weren’t without compassion. They often took clothes and food to the prison. They also petitioned the Confederate Secretary of War to move half of the prisoners to help alleviate the shortage of shelter, food and water. They were even able to get Governor Zebulon Vance to negotiate with the Federals (after several attempts) for clothing for the prisoners.

One citizen was especially well known for her humanitarian efforts at the prison. Mrs. Sarah Johnston lived just outside the walls of the prison. She cared for many within the walls of the prison and even provided nursing care to men from both the Confederacy and the Union in her own home. She even had one young man, a Union soldier named Hugh Berry, who died in her care buried in her garden to prevent him from being buried in the unmarked mass grave that was being used by that time.


As the prison became extremely overcrowded in the last days of the war, conditons deteriorated for prisoners inside the compound. Disease and starvation claimed thousands of lives. 

Prior to the US government’s decision to stop all prisoner exchanges, the death rate in the Salisbury prison was only about 2%. However, after these exchanges were halted the crowded conditions in the compound caused communicable diseases to run rampant, and so many were affected that it became necessary to convert all of the prison’s structures into hospitals. That meant that the healthy prisoners had to sleep outside in tents if they could get them. Many resorted to digging holes in the ground for shelter. The winter of 1864 and 1865 was particularly cold and rainy, exacerbating an already intolerable situation. The lack of medicine, shelter, clothing, and food (caused by the Union blockade) led to the unnecessary sickness and deaths of thousands of prisoners. The death rate quickly climbed to 28%. Conditions were so bad inside the prison that even the guards refused to go in.

The conditions within the compound turned all thoughts to try to find a means of escape. Some were able to tunnel their way out, but only about 300 prisoners managed to escape from the prison. It is also estimated that 2,000 prisoners defected to the Confederacy to escape the horrors of the prison.


On Friday, November 25, 1864 the most ambitious and organized escape attempt ended tragically. Prisoners goaded on by starvation, disease, lack of shelter, and particularly brutal weather attempted to rush the main gate. The gate cannon was fired three times to quash the revolt and approximately 250 men died from the wounds they received. 

On November 25, 1864 thousands of desperate prisoners attempted to overrun the guards. The guards fired the gate cannon into the mob three times, quelling the revolt and instantly killing 53 men. All told, 250 men died from the initial cannon fire and from wounds received in the uprising. One of those killed in the attempted escape was Robert Livingstone (alias Rupert Vincent), the son of abolitionist David Livingstone.

Two well known journalists from the New York Tribune, A.D. Richardson and Junius H. Browne, were being held in Salisbury and managed to escape during this time. The articles that they wrote when they returned to New York made the Salisbury Prison notorious, but they helped to change the Union policy about prisoner exchanges.

Prior to the winter of 1864-65 dead prisoners were buried individually in a coffin in a marked grave with military honors; however, as the conditions deteriorated inside the prison it became necessary to bury them in unmarked mass graves. The dead were moved to “the dead house” where they were counted and loaded onto a wagon. They were then taken to a corn field where they were buried in long trenches.


An end marker for one of the mass graves at the Salisbury Historical National Cemetary. There are 36 such markers at the cemetary marking the head and foot of 18 trenches measuring 240 feet long used to bury prisoners who died during the winter of 1864-1865 at the Salisbury Confederate Prison. 

By the time that the prison stopped operation 18 trenches 240 feet long were required to bury the dead. These graves eventually became the Salisbury Historic National Cemetery. It is estimated that between 5,000 and 11,700 men died in the prison. (“However, Louis A. Brown, author of The Salisbury Confederate Prison, stated after years of research that there could be no more than 5,000 who died at the Salisbury Confederate Prison.”)


Salisbury's Historical National Cemetary 

In February of 1865 a new prisoner exchange policy was negotiated. 3,729 able bodied soldiers were marched to Greensboro, NC where they were sent by train to Wilmington, NC where they waited for their exchange. A second group of 1,420 of the sickest prisoners was sent to Richmond, effectively ending the compound’s use as a prison. It was then converted to a supply depot.


General George Stoneman (August 22, 1822 - September 5, 1894) led a raid through western North Carolina in 1865 in support of Sherman's Carolina campaign. He eventually reached Salisbury where he burned the Confederate Prison to the ground. He eventually became governor of California. 

On April 12, 1865 General George Stoneman attacked Salisbury to liberate the prison, destroy Confederate supplies and destroy the Yadkin River rail bridge. General Stoneman didn’t realize that the prisoners had already been released from the prison due to the damage to telegraph lines. (In fact, he didn’t even realize that the General Lee had surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox three days earlier.) He had the prison and all Confederate government buildings and supplies burned, but spared the Salisbury Court House – an act that is the subject of much speculation and local legend. I will address this story at a later time. The bricks from the prison were later sold, and story has it that many of the homes on South Main Street contain brick from the Confederate Prison.

Local residents weren’t sad to see the prison go. One citizen said it best, "No one was sorry when the Yankees made a bonfire of the evil-smelling empty, dolorous prison, the scene of so much unalleviated suffering and so many deaths. This chapter could only be appropriately closed in a purification by fire."


The only remaining structure from the Salisbury Confederate Prison. The home is now an antiques store. 

The only building that remains from the Confederate Prison is a house located in the 200 block of East Bank Street. The house was originally built as a story and a half log home by William Valentine – a free black man who was a banker. During the time that the prison was in operation, the house served as a guardhouse. The house is now a really interesting antique shop only open on Thursdays.

In future articles I will discuss General Stoneman’s raid on Salisbury as well as some of the other key players from the prison like Dr. Josephus Hall, the prison surgeon! Below are links to the websites that I found particularly helpful in providing the information that I used for this post.

http://salisburyprison.gorowan.com/

http://www.salisbury.net/scpa/Rowan_Co.html

http://www.salisburyprison.org/PrisonHistory.htm

http://www.tradingford.com/stoneman.html

http://www.rowanpubliclibrary.org/HistoryRoom/prison/salsprison.htm

http://www.salisburync.gov/prison/1.html

http://www.salisburync.gov/prison/2.html

Archaeologists Search for Remains of the Salisbury Confederate Prison

A Bird's Eye View of the Salisbury Confederate Prison 

This week, Archaeologists from Wake Forest University are using ground penetrating radar in an attempt to locate the stockade boundary of the old Confederate Prison that stood in Salisbury between 1861 and 1865.

Members of the Salisbury Confederate Prison Association were on hand Wednesday morning as work began on the project. The association hopes that the data generated by the radar will provide good locations for them to begin excavation and hopefully find the evidence that will confirm the location of the outer wall, or stockade, of the prison.

If the dig is successful, it will provide the proof that the association needs to apply for a national landmark designation and will be beneficial as they seek funds for additional research.

To help the archaeologists narrow their search area, the association obtained copies of the map of the compound from the records of the 1866 court martial of Major John H. Gee, the last commandant of the prison. An image of that map was fit to scale and superimposed on a recent aerial photograph of the same area. (I have heard that another map exists of the prison. The map that the association is using is one that the US Government provided. From what I understand, there is a Confederate version of the map too. It will be interesting to see if the map the Association is using is correct!)

“The radar unit itself is a bright orange box with an antenna. As it is dragged along a straight line, the device emits a signal into the ground every 50 centimeters. The signals bounce back and are collected. Later, that information is downloaded into specialized computer software.” That software generates images that indicate anomalies in the soil. These images give archaeologists clues about what may be buried under the surface. The radar is effective to depths of 10 or 15 feet. The team conducting the search will be trying to find several tell-tale signs of the stockade wall.

First, they will be looking for evidence of the large pine posts that supported the wall. These posts were probably set between 15 to 20 feet apart. After the prison was burned by General Stoneman’s troops in 1865 the remains of these supports were probably left to decay in the ground. That process would create an irregularity in the soil composition. The ground where the post had rotted would be a different color than the dirt around it and this coloration would be in a cylindrical shape very similar to, well, a log!

The archaeologists are also hoping that the radar will help them to find the six foot deep moat that was dug around the inside of the prison wall, known to the prisoners as “Deadline Ditch.” They called it that because if you crossed into the ditch you were dead. When the trench was filled after the prison was burned in 1865, the “new” dirt put into the hole would likely have produced one of the variances that the radar could identify.

Due to overcrowding caused by the Union’s refusal to exchange prisoners, housing became a problem for the prisoners during the fall and winter of 1864 and early 1865. The prisoners’ misery was exacerbated by particularly cold and rainy conditions. Many prisoners dug holes during that time period to either escape or to try to find shelter from the elements. One of these tunnels was discovered by a city work crew in 1965 (one hundred years later!) In 1983 and 1984 Catawba College conducted archaeological digs at its site, uncovering many artifacts. It is hoped that the ground-penetrating radar will also help to locate some of these holes and tunnels.

The Association also hopes that they will be able to locate the site of the prison’s latrine.

Once the data is collected and analyzed, excavation will begin to either confirm or deny the conclusions drawn from the use of the radar.

The Salisbury Confederate Prison Association is looking for a site on which to put a museum for the prison. The Salisbury Historic National Cemetery has offered to lease a location to them, but at present, the group can't afford the lease. For more information about the association click HERE to go to their web page.

About the Salisbury Confederate Prison

Shortly after North Carolina seceded from the Union (May 20, 1861)...(to be continued)


This old mill was the central building of the Salisbury Confederate Prison. 




A Copy of the Prison Rules 


Though conditions were horrible inside the prison there was time for recreation. This painting is one of the oldest known pictures of a baseball game being played. There are claims that this was the first baseball game played in the South! 


As the prison became extremely overcrowded in the last days of the war, conditons deteriorated for prisoners inside the compound. Disease and starvation claimed thousands of lives. 


On Friday, November 25, 1864 the most ambitious and organized escape attempt ended tragically. Prisoners goaded on by starvation, disease, lack of shelter, and particularly brutal weather attempted to rush the main gate. The gate cannon was fired three times to quash the revolt and approximately 250 men died from the wounds they received. 

N.C. Association of Realtors Fights Disclosure Form Amendments

(September 9, 2005) -- The North Carolina Association of REALTORS® has issued a call for action to members, asking them to fight proposed amendments that would expand disclosure obligations under the state's Residential Property Disclosure Statement.

According to David McGowan, NCAR's political specialist, the association is asking members to contact their local politicians to express their opposition to the changes.

At issue is the fact that while the legislation appears to apply only to properties along the coast, it would establish sweeping new obligations for property owners throughout the state. Language included in the bill (H.B. 512) would require property owners to disclose any and all land-use or zoning information relating to the property, such as the existence of variances, site-specific developments restrictions, site-specific or phased development plans, planned-unit development approvals, special- or conditional-use districts, and conditional rezoning.

"While we certainly don’t have a problem with full disclosure for homeowners and real estate practitioners who are working with them, those disclosures are currently taken care of with the North Carolina Real Estate Commission's (NCREC) property disclosure form," says McGowan.

The legislation would use a new disclosure form not subject to control by the NCREC. Instead, the new form would be implemented and managed by the Coastal Resources Commission.

"It would add a new regulatory body to a process that quite frankly has nothing to do with real estate," McGowan says. He adds that NCAR was not included in any of the discussions for the bill.

McGowan is doubtful that the bill will gain momentum, now that the call for action has brought it to the attention of NCAR's members and their legislators. "At one point we felt like it was gaining momentum, and we wanted to try to stop it as quickly as possibly," says McGowan.

—By Bridget McCrea for REALTOR® Magazine Online

Reprinted from REALTOR® Magazine [September, 2005] (http://www.realtor.org/realtormag) with permission of the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS®. Copyright 2005. All rights reserved.