January 2, 2012 Coats Museum News
The year was 1926. John L. Baird, a Scottish inventor, demonstrated a new machine, capable of the wireless transmission of moving pictures, to the Royal Institution in London. Baird called the machine “television”. A buried Mayan city was found in Yucatan. The average American man was 68.6 inches tall. College professors branded football as immoral because it promoted drinking, dishonesty, and neglect of academic work. A tropical hurricane killed 2,000 people in Florida. Escape artist Houdini died at age 52 from peritonitis (Daniel, Clifton, ed. Chronicle of the 20th Century –pp.332-341-Mt. Kismo, N.Y.: Chronicle Publications, 1987).
Meanwhile in Coats, North Carolina, the town board met for its first meeting of the year on January 7, 1926 in the law office of C.R. Partin. Present were Mayor P.F. Pope, A.F. Grimes (street commissioner), Joel Ennis, C.R. Coats and Dr. C.G. Fuquay (clerk to the board). C.R. Partin swore in the town officials. Monday, January 11, was designated as the time for the next board meeting which would be held in the dental office of Dr. Fuquay. Was Dr. George Fuquay, brother of C.G. Fuquay, practicing medicine in Coats at this date?
I do know that R.O. Stewart was postmaster of the Coats Post Office in 1926 (Harnett County News, January 8, 1926). This post office was located in the area of Frances Matthews’s current residence on Railroad Street next to the original site of town founder Tom Coats’s store. Ironically the store on that same site burned during Christmas of 2010 and is currently being restored by store owner Rick Thompson.
On January 11, 1926, the town board met in the dental office of Dr. Fuquay. At that meeting, Mr. D.R. Ennis asked the board for payment for roadwork done some years back-denied. Coats finally had streetlights. Would you not have thought that news would have made headlines in earlier news? Were there ever gas lights in Coats? It was recorded that the board okayed payment for $63.33 for Carolina Power Light Company street lights. A.F. Grimes was paid $50.00 for collecting town taxes (Coats Town Board Meeting Minutes, January 11, 1926). Wonder if he went house to house to collect the taxes.
Fires were a major hazard to towns and cities prior to water infrastructure. You have read of more than one fire that had destroyed major industries in Coats in the past few years. Once again the town had a fire that destroyed a major landmark. This time it was the post office. The origin of the fire was unknown. According to postmaster R.O. Stewart, outside of the building and fixtures, the loss was not considered great as there were no valuable mail items in the office at the time of the fire (Harnett County News, January 21, 1926).
Two questions-Did Gift Primitive Baptist Church have any records in that building and second, did the building belong to the federal government? Earlier on in many instances, the post offices were in the homes of the postmasters.
The schools continued to make the news as was evident when the readers of the Harnett County News, January 21, 1926 edition read that a meeting of the Coats Parent Teachers Association had held Thursday night meeting where Jasper P. Lee presented part of the program on “Parents’ Relation to the School”. Read to see if you recognize the names of any of the elected P.T.A. officers. J.M. Byrd, president; G.I. Smith, vice president; Miss Lorene Dakin, secretary-treasurer: Miss Mattie Bain, chair of the Progress Committee; Mrs. Edna Roberts, chair of the Social Committee; Dr. C.G. Fuquay, chair of the Membership Committee; and Mrs. Eva Nichols, chair of the Publicity Committee. Does this tell you something about the strengths of the above mentioned?
That same edition of the paper shared that Miss Bell Graham had been ill with pleurisy for a week and Miss Elsie Pope had supplied for her. Was Miss Elsie the sister of Mrs. Hazel Pope Tart and daughter of Joe Ben and Leva Pope?
Was gambling ever legal in Coats? According to the town board minutes of February 2, 1926, all Coats town commissioners were present when Mayor P.F. Pope presided when the board unanimously passed an ordinance requiring $100.00 on each slot machine being operated within the city corporate limits and a penalty for each violation not to exceed $25.00. At that same meeting, Commissioner A.F. Grimes was appointed to select the location and to build 2 public privies, one for women and one for men. A.F. was also appointed protem mayor. By unanimous consent, J.H. McLamb was appointed police officer. His pay was to be derived from the arrest he made. Did you think –that should be interesting? The board authorized that bills be paid to J.M. Byrd ($11.30), Fred Stewart (labor-$6.45), B.P. Dawn (labor-$8.00), A.F. Grimes (labor-$4.00), M.E. Ennis (gas-$6.50), and R.O. Stewart (register-$1.00).
The commissioners were quite busy attending to the town’s affairs in February of 1926. Mayor P.F. Pope called a session with all members present. An ordinance prohibiting the sale of fish less than ten feet of any sidewalk and requiring all empty fish boxes to be removed from the premises was passed unanimously by the board. A.F. Grimes was appointed to confer as a committee of one with CPL in regard to extension of streetlights in Coats. The bill for streetlights was corrected from $63.33 to$52.77 on account of several lights being burned out. The clerk was asked to make note that Town Hall rent had been accepted from B.F. Parrish. Does that mean that B.F. Parrish owned the building? Also, a bill for $39.38 to CPL for resetting the poles on Main Street was ordered to be paid (Coats Town Board Meeting Minutes, February, 1926).
What do you think about the involvement of government in the lives of people in 1926? Did they also mandate where the people could drive their cars on the streets? Did the town have a well to provide water and who kept the town cemetery clean in 1926? Read next week’s column for more information about the actions of the town commissioners and what was going on in the local school.
A special thank you goes to Becky Adams and to Christina Smith for their donations to the Coats Museum Building Fund to honor their friends at Christmas.
The year was 1926. John L. Baird, a Scottish inventor, demonstrated a new machine, capable of the wireless transmission of moving pictures, to the Royal Institution in London. Baird called the machine “television”. A buried Mayan city was found in Yucatan. The average American man was 68.6 inches tall. College professors branded football as immoral because it promoted drinking, dishonesty, and neglect of academic work. A tropical hurricane killed 2,000 people in Florida. Escape artist Houdini died at age 52 from peritonitis (Daniel, Clifton, ed. Chronicle of the 20th Century –pp.332-341-Mt. Kismo, N.Y.: Chronicle Publications, 1987).
Meanwhile in Coats, North Carolina, the town board met for its first meeting of the year on January 7, 1926 in the law office of C.R. Partin. Present were Mayor P.F. Pope, A.F. Grimes (street commissioner), Joel Ennis, C.R. Coats and Dr. C.G. Fuquay (clerk to the board). C.R. Partin swore in the town officials. Monday, January 11, was designated as the time for the next board meeting which would be held in the dental office of Dr. Fuquay. Was Dr. George Fuquay, brother of C.G. Fuquay, practicing medicine in Coats at this date?
I do know that R.O. Stewart was postmaster of the Coats Post Office in 1926 (Harnett County News, January 8, 1926). This post office was located in the area of Frances Matthews’s current residence on Railroad Street next to the original site of town founder Tom Coats’s store. Ironically the store on that same site burned during Christmas of 2010 and is currently being restored by store owner Rick Thompson.
On January 11, 1926, the town board met in the dental office of Dr. Fuquay. At that meeting, Mr. D.R. Ennis asked the board for payment for roadwork done some years back-denied. Coats finally had streetlights. Would you not have thought that news would have made headlines in earlier news? Were there ever gas lights in Coats? It was recorded that the board okayed payment for $63.33 for Carolina Power Light Company street lights. A.F. Grimes was paid $50.00 for collecting town taxes (Coats Town Board Meeting Minutes, January 11, 1926). Wonder if he went house to house to collect the taxes.
Fires were a major hazard to towns and cities prior to water infrastructure. You have read of more than one fire that had destroyed major industries in Coats in the past few years. Once again the town had a fire that destroyed a major landmark. This time it was the post office. The origin of the fire was unknown. According to postmaster R.O. Stewart, outside of the building and fixtures, the loss was not considered great as there were no valuable mail items in the office at the time of the fire (Harnett County News, January 21, 1926).
Two questions-Did Gift Primitive Baptist Church have any records in that building and second, did the building belong to the federal government? Earlier on in many instances, the post offices were in the homes of the postmasters.
The schools continued to make the news as was evident when the readers of the Harnett County News, January 21, 1926 edition read that a meeting of the Coats Parent Teachers Association had held Thursday night meeting where Jasper P. Lee presented part of the program on “Parents’ Relation to the School”. Read to see if you recognize the names of any of the elected P.T.A. officers. J.M. Byrd, president; G.I. Smith, vice president; Miss Lorene Dakin, secretary-treasurer: Miss Mattie Bain, chair of the Progress Committee; Mrs. Edna Roberts, chair of the Social Committee; Dr. C.G. Fuquay, chair of the Membership Committee; and Mrs. Eva Nichols, chair of the Publicity Committee. Does this tell you something about the strengths of the above mentioned?
That same edition of the paper shared that Miss Bell Graham had been ill with pleurisy for a week and Miss Elsie Pope had supplied for her. Was Miss Elsie the sister of Mrs. Hazel Pope Tart and daughter of Joe Ben and Leva Pope?
Was gambling ever legal in Coats? According to the town board minutes of February 2, 1926, all Coats town commissioners were present when Mayor P.F. Pope presided when the board unanimously passed an ordinance requiring $100.00 on each slot machine being operated within the city corporate limits and a penalty for each violation not to exceed $25.00. At that same meeting, Commissioner A.F. Grimes was appointed to select the location and to build 2 public privies, one for women and one for men. A.F. was also appointed protem mayor. By unanimous consent, J.H. McLamb was appointed police officer. His pay was to be derived from the arrest he made. Did you think –that should be interesting? The board authorized that bills be paid to J.M. Byrd ($11.30), Fred Stewart (labor-$6.45), B.P. Dawn (labor-$8.00), A.F. Grimes (labor-$4.00), M.E. Ennis (gas-$6.50), and R.O. Stewart (register-$1.00).
The commissioners were quite busy attending to the town’s affairs in February of 1926. Mayor P.F. Pope called a session with all members present. An ordinance prohibiting the sale of fish less than ten feet of any sidewalk and requiring all empty fish boxes to be removed from the premises was passed unanimously by the board. A.F. Grimes was appointed to confer as a committee of one with CPL in regard to extension of streetlights in Coats. The bill for streetlights was corrected from $63.33 to$52.77 on account of several lights being burned out. The clerk was asked to make note that Town Hall rent had been accepted from B.F. Parrish. Does that mean that B.F. Parrish owned the building? Also, a bill for $39.38 to CPL for resetting the poles on Main Street was ordered to be paid (Coats Town Board Meeting Minutes, February, 1926).
What do you think about the involvement of government in the lives of people in 1926? Did they also mandate where the people could drive their cars on the streets? Did the town have a well to provide water and who kept the town cemetery clean in 1926? Read next week’s column for more information about the actions of the town commissioners and what was going on in the local school.
A special thank you goes to Becky Adams and to Christina Smith for their donations to the Coats Museum Building Fund to honor their friends at Christmas.