Tag: Feature

The Great Wagon Road Odyssey

THE GREAT WAGON ROAD ODYSSEY

A pilgrimage half a century in the making

By Jim Dodson

Not long ago, during a breakfast talk in a retirement community about my forthcoming book on the Great Wagon Road, I was asked by a woman, “So, looking back, what would you say was the most surprising thing about your journey?”

“Everything,” I answered.

The audience laughed.

The first surprise, I explained, was that it took me more than half a century to find and follow America’s most fabled lost Colonial road that reportedly brought more than 100,000 European settlers to the Southern wilderness during the 18th century. As I point out in the book’s prologue, I first heard about the GWR from my father during a road trip with my older brother in December 1966 to shoot mistletoe out of the ancient white oaks that grew around his great-grandfather’s long-abandoned homeplace off Buckhorn Road, near the Colonial-era town of Hillsborough.

The first of many surprises was the discovery that my father’s grandmother, a natural healer along Buckhorn Road named Emma Tate Dodson, was possibly an American Indian who had been rescued and adopted as an infant by George Washington Tate, my double-great-grandfather, on one of his “Gospel” rides to establish a Methodist church in the western counties of the state.

A second surprise came during the drive home when the old man pulled over by the Haw River to show my brother and me a set of stones submerged in the shallows of the river — purportedly the remains of G.W. Tate’s historic gristmill and furniture shop.

“Boys, long ago, that was your great-great-granddaddy’s gristmill, an important stop on the Great Trading Path that connected to the Great Philadelphia Wagon Road that brought tens of thousands of European settlers to the South in the 18th century, including your Scottish, German and English ancestors.”

This was pure catnip to my lively eighth-grade mind. Owing to a father whose passion for the outdoors was only matched by his love of American history, my brother and I were seasoned explorers of historic Revolutionary and Civil War battlefields.

“Can we go find it?” I said to him.

He smiled. “How about this, Sport. Someday I’ll give you the keys to the Roadmaster, and you can go find the Wagon Road.”

I searched for years but found only the brief occasional mention of the Great Wagon Road in several histories of the South, but nothing about where it ran and what happened along it. The road seemed truly lost to time.

Forty years later, however, the Great Wagon Road found me.

On my first day as writer-in-residence at Hollins University in Virginia in 2006, I took a spin up historic U.S. Highway 11 — the famed Lee-Jackson Highway — and was surprised to come upon a historic roadside marker describing the “Old Carolina Road” that was part of the 18th century’s “Great Philadelphia Wagon Road.”

The sweet hand of providence was clearly at work, for the next day, while browsing shelves at a used bookshop in the Roanoke City Market, I found a well-worn copy of a folksy history called The Great Wagon Road: From Philadelphia to the South, by Williamsburg historian Parke Rouse Jr. I purchased the book (originally published in 1973 and long out of print) and read it in one night, taking notes. I also attempted to track down author Parke Rouse Jr. but discovered he’d been deceased for many years.

Still, the cosmos had cracked open a door, and I began collecting and reading all or parts of every history of America’s Colonial era that I could lay hands on for the next decade, eventually building a personal library of more than 75 books. About that same time, I purchased a 1994 Buick Roadmaster Estate station wagon from an elderly man in Pinehurst, almost identical to the one owned by my late father in the mid-1960s. Pinehurst pals playfully nicknamed it “The Pearl,” which turned out to be among the last true “wagons” built by Detroit before they switched to making SUVs.

I suddenly had my very own wagon. Now all I had to do was find the most traveled road of Colonial America to travel in it.

Eight years later, thanks to the late North Carolina historian Charles Rodenbough and other history-minded folks, I discovered that I wasn’t alone in my quest — that, in fact, a small army of state archivists and local historians, genealogists, “lost road” experts, various museum curators and ordinary history nuts like me had finally cracked the code on the road’s original path from Philly to Georgia.

By the spring of 2017, I and my traveling pal, Mulligan the dog, were ready to roll when another big surprise — an exploding gallbladder and a baby carrot-sized tumor in my gut — required surgery and a four-month recovery.

Finally, on a steamy late August night, I began my journey (minus Mully, alas, owing to her age and one of the hottest summers on record) at Philadelphia’s historic City Tavern, which claims to be the birthplace of American cuisine. As I enjoyed a pint of Ben Franklin’s own spruce beer recipe and nibbled on cinnamon and pecan biscuits from Thomas Jefferson’s own Monticello cookbook, I eavesdropped like a tavern spy from Robert Louis Stevenson on three couples having a rowdy celebration of matrimony and a game of trivia based on American history that kept going off the rails.

At one point, a young woman called out a question in clear frustration: “Where and what year were the Articles of Confederation, the nation’s first constitution, adopted?”

None of her mates answered.

So, I did. “I believe it was York, Pennsylvania, in November 1777.”

Her name was Gina. She gave me a beaming smile and scooted her chair close to mine. “Correct! How did you know that?”

“Because it happened on the Great Wagon Road.”

What ensued was a delightful conversation about a frontier road that shaped the character and commerce of early America, the historic Colonial road that opened the Southern wilderness and became the nation’s first immigrant highway — the “road that made America,” as my friend Tom Sears, an Old Salem expert on Colonial architecture, described it to me.

Gina was thrilled to learn about it and apologized that she’d never heard its name.

I assured her that she wasn’t alone. Most Americans living today have never heard its name spoken, yet it’s believed that one-fourth of all Americans can trace their ancestral roots to the Great Wagon Road in one way or another.

Charmed and fascinated, Gina wondered how long it would take me to travel the road from Philly to Augusta, Georgia.

I mentioned that settlers took anywhere from two months to several years to reach their destinations depending on the weather and unknown factors like disease, getting lost or encountering hostile native peoples or wild animals.

“I plan to travel the entire road in three or four weeks,” I said. “I’ve spent years researching it.”

Silly me. God laughs, to paraphrase the ancient proverb, when men make plans.

A third big surprise came at the end of my third week on the road. I hadn’t even gotten out of Pennsylvania.

On the plus side, I’d met and interviewed so many fascinating people who were passionate keepers of their own Wagon Road stories, I realized I’d just tapped the surface of the trail’s saga.

Instead of writing an updated history of the Great Wagon Road, as originally planned, I borrowed a strategy from my late hero Studs Terkel and decided that the real story of the Wagon Road lay in the voices of the people living along it today, keeping its stories alive — the flamekeepers, if you will, of the “road that made America.” If it took a full year to complete my travels, so be it.

Instead, subtracting 12 months for COVID, it took six years and counting.

My focus on the storytellers proved to be deeply rewarding, introducing me to a broad array of Americans from every walk of life and political persuasion whose vivid and often untold tales about the development of a winding and once forgotten Colonial road (originally an American Indian hunting path that stretched from Pennsylvania to the Carolinas) carried our ancestors into the Golden West and shaped the America we know today, hence the book’s main title: The Road That Made America. Unexpectedly, their voices and stories ultimately restored my faith in a country where democracy — and civic discourse — was supposedly in short supply.

Looking back, this was the nicest surprise of all. For what began simply as an armchair historian’s quest to find and document America’s most famous lost road ended as nothing less than a powerful, emotional pilgrimage for me.

At the journey’s end, while I was heading home through the winter moonlight on a winding highway believed to be the path Lord Cornwallis took while chasing wily Nathanael Greene to the Dan River, I had a final revelation of the road’s impact on me:

. . . a true pilgrimage is said to be one in which the traveler ultimately learns more about himself than the passing landscape.

Perhaps this is true. But for the time being, it’s enough to think about some of the inspiring people and stories that gave me hope in a nation where democracy is said to be hanging by a thread: an old Ben Franklin and a young Daniel Boone, the Susquehanna Muse, real Yorkers, the candlelight of Antietam, a Gettysburg living legend, an awakening at Belle Grove Plantation, Liberty Man, the passion of Adeela Al-Khalili, good old cousin Steve, a lost Confederate found, a snowy birthday in Staunton, and final road trips with Mully.

Without question, my life and appreciation of my country have both been enriched by the people and stories of the Great Wagon Road.

This was the nicest surprise of all.

A Little Gem

A LITTLE GEM

A Little Gem

Sweet, small and smart

By Deborah Salomon
Photographs by John Gessner

Pinehurst has become an enclave of castles and cottages, outdoor showers and indoor pools, antiques and art, dog grooming parlors and tech control rooms accommodating generals and musicians, bankers, brewers, judges and surgeons. From this residential potpourri a new genre emerges: the little gem.

A prime example is the cottage tucked into a quiet, lesser known lane on the edge of a newish residential area. Pinehurst estates have garages bigger than its 820 square feet.

This little gem presents an optical illusion: classic furniture in dark woods is scaled for a larger house but sits comfortably uncrowded in small rooms with low ceilings and a patchwork of floorboards that suggest additions after its completion in 1941. Soon, its intimate parlor, with a few adjustments, will welcome a baby grand piano.

The sorceress performing this magic is Tess Gillespie, who also turned a patio into a garden with seating for a dozen guests — or her children and grandchildren. Bear in mind, the house has no dining room, just a drop-leaf table to pull out when required, and a sweet little bench in the kitchen, where two, maybe three, can add chairs for brunch.

Of course this one bedroom, one bathroom Lilliputian lifestyle requires some sacrifices: no bathtub; no giant TV screen; no walk-in closets; and, by choice, no dishwasher.

What was this residential iconoclast thinking?

The story opens as do many Pinehurst relocations. Tess grew up in the Boston area, loving the sea — hence seascape art dominating the walls. Like other Northern cosmopolites, she and husband Bill looked for a vacation home in a warmer climate rich in facilities, including golf. They tried Florida.

“We didn’t want a condo,” Tess recalls. Driving through Pinehurst they spotted a For Sale sign on the cottage and an adjacent building lot. They purchased the package in 2004, built a new house on the lot and moved into it a year later. Tess has such fond memories of their short time in the cottage that after Bill died in 2013 she worked it up and moved back in.

“We were happy here,” she says. Besides, she muses, “I’ve never been one who loves a big house. Downsizing is freeing.”

Tess brought experience and taste to the task gained while working for Laura Ashley, Lord & Taylor and other high-end fashion and home goods retailers. She decided on a milky/linen white for walls throughout, which she painted herself. Fabrics, where required, are printed in bright navy blue.

“My mother had a great eye for furniture,” Tess says. When she died, Tess and her sisters met and divided up these household treasures. “We cried, we laughed, we remembered . . . ” Results of this and other forays included large wing chairs and a one-armed settee in the living room. On the settee are cushions made from her father’s fisherman knit sweaters.

Tess replaced several space-gobbling doors with curtains and built a window seat with a mattress to accommodate any unexpected guests. The only true bedroom barely contains a queen bed and long dresser. The remodeled bathroom squeezes in a glass stall shower and stacked washer and dryer.

The kitchen, visible from the sitting room, is a slim galley with country French touches. Tess opened the space under the stairway to a second floor apartment (grandfathered as a rental) for a pantry displaying jars and baskets. The countertop is thick, heavy marble; the island, that dark, narrow wooden bench. The chandelier is weathered brass. Tess replaced the dishwasher with an oversized round metal sink, hearkening back to times she and her sisters would laugh, talk and do dishes together in their family home.

Tess, who works part-time in a local real estate office, has a way with flowers. White orchids bloom throughout the house. A small office overlooks her informal gardens, in full bloom.

As much as style and innovation, this mini-gem, barely visible from the street, represents the philosophy of a wise woman. “I have an independent spirit,” says Tess. “I know I can do things, and I’ve learned to compromise and do things myself.” Like create an environment, totally her, filled with talismans.

“I feel safe and secure here . . . the house makes me happy because this is where Bill and I started,” she says. “I don’t want ‘big’ or more stuff. Really, what more do I need?”

2025 A Little Gem Feature

Art is for Everyone

ART IS FOR EVERYONE

Art is for Everyone

Celebrating 45 years of the Fine Arts Festival

By Jenna Biter

Push through the double front doors of Campbell House and you’ll find refuge from the dog days of summer boredom. The walls and halls and nooks and crannies of the home of the Arts Council of Moore County’s first floor galleries will be bursting with art, from ceilings to baseboards.

Cats and dogs will chase each other across canvases, children will laugh in watercolor, and painted flowers will forever be in bloom. The doors to the Fine Arts Festival at the Campbell House galleries, 482 E. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines, are flung open wide beginning July 23. The only theme is art.

Proudly put on by the Arts Council since 1980, the annual exhibition gives amateur and professional artists alike a time and place to show and sell their work. “As long as it’s suitable for public viewing,” says Chris Dunn, the executive director of the host organization, with a smile.

In its 45th year, the Fine Arts Festival fills the sprawling brick mansion with about 250 artworks each summer. Participants can submit one or two pieces. So long as a submission meets requirements — no bigger than this, no heavier than that, no older than two years, etc. — the art will make the show. “Anybody 16 and above,” says Kate Curtin, the Arts Council’s program and art gallery director.

Beyond that, the barrier to entry is a modest $20 or $30, depending on council membership. “I’ve enjoyed being part of this exhibit,” says Ellen Burke, a regular festival contributor. “And I love that my adult students participate in it.”

Burke is a retired arts educator who traded golden years in New England for arts festivals on Connecticut Avenue. She lectures at the council, helps award arts scholarships, and sometimes instructs workshops en plein air watercolor painting. Somewhere in this year’s show, you might see her study of a garden in the dead of a Massachusetts winter or a simple watercolor of peas in a pod. Although Burke made the move south, residency isn’t required to participate in the festival. Submissions come from across the county, the state and beyond.

Wander through the White Gallery or the Brown Gallery and somewhere you’ll find a horse studying its reflection in a pond, a scene painted by Betsey MacDonald. She’s a science-turned-art teacher who’s entered the festival consistently over the past decade despite living in horse country — not of the Sandhills, but of Rhode Island. When a good friend packed up and moved to North Carolina, she connected MacDonald to the Arts Council.

“I was crushed, but we’ve remained friends, and she set up a show for me,” MacDonald says.

The Fine Arts Festival began as a way for local artists to improve their skills, and showcase and sell their work. That first year, the exhibition hung at the Weymouth Center for the Arts & Humanities, across the street from its current home in the Campbell House.

“I don’t know the timeline, but we eventually landed here. And this became our galleries,” says Dunn, gesturing to the rooms of the historic house around him.

An Army spouse, Jo Tomsick moved to Sanford during the COVID pandemic. She’s pressing toward a full-time career in gallery art and, during her time in North Carolina, she’s pressed hard. Tomsick held her first solo gallery show, “Of a Feather,” at Sandhills Community College in 2023 and ships her art to galleries across the United States. “I have a piece that’s actually in Tokyo right now,” says Tomsick, a glimmer in her eye.

Last year, she submitted an oil painting to the Fine Arts Festival, her interpretation of how the princess might have felt in Hans Christian Andersen’s The Wild Swans. The painting won best in show and just sold a couple of months ago.

“I was mind-boggled,” Tomsick says. “People actually want the art that I make, which is so cool.”

Once all submissions have been delivered but before they have been hung, a judge looks everything over and selects winners. Since awards are assigned across a wide spectrum of seven categories spanning oil painting to photography, the judge must be a versatile veteran of the art industry and not locally connected. This way the art of the usual participants is unfamiliar, and submissions remain anonymous. Blake Kennedy, clay studio manager of N.C. State University’s Crafts Center, will shoulder the burden in 2025.

Every category has a first, second and third place award, each with a monetary prize, as well as an unlimited number of honorable mentions. Whether a piece wins or not, all the works hang throughout the Campbell House galleries, not necessarily by category but by what goes together, like, for example, a quiet set of blue florals entered by Paula Montgomery.

As many artists do, Montgomery started by copying masterpieces. She excelled at the practice and enjoyed it until someone nudged her in the direction of developing her own style, one that’s grown into something bold, geometric and fun.

Ulli Misegades was similarly motivated. As a child, she was told by a teacher that she “had no gift.” It’s the very sort of comment that might turn the faces of art educators like Burke and MacDonald purple. Fortunately, the callous remark didn’t stop Misegades from picking up drawing and watercolor during sleepless nights when her children were young. Eventually, she led a portrait group in Cary, and her art has won awards and been published in newspapers and magazines like The Pastel Journal. “I love children and I love dogs,” says the grandmother of six. “Those are my favorite subjects, and that’s what I usually enter.”

After an exclusive preview night for businesses and individuals who commit to making purchases, there will be a public opening reception the first Friday in August, from 6 to 8 p.m. Typically, it’s standing room only, not by design but necessity; more than 300 people attended last year. The popular event will likely remain cozy until the Arts Council completes its capital campaign for a 1,700-square-foot gallery addition to Campbell House.

Guests will nibble and sip as they swirl about the exhibition, looking for winners and determining their own. At that point, the only medalists not known will be the Sara Wilson Hodgkins Best in Show — which is revealed during the evening’s awards ceremony — and the Lee Barrett People’s Choice, which will be tallied from paper slips after the exhibition ends August 27.

“It’s never been the same,” Dunn says about the two biggest accolades. “To this day, it’s never been the same.”

2025 Art is for Everyone Feature

The Road to the House in the Horseshoe

THE ROAD TO THE HOUSE IN THE HORSESHOE

The Road to the House in the Horseshoe

A Revolutionary tale of murder, survival and derring-do through the Sandhills

By Bill Case | Photograph by John Gessner

The skirmish at Col. Philip Alston’s home had raged for over three hours without any definitive result. But when an oxcart was discovered in Alston’s barnyard, an end to the stalemate appeared to be at hand. The leader of the attacking Loyalist Militia, 26-year-old Col. David Fanning, ordered his men to bed the cart with hay, set it afire, and wheel it ablaze into the two-story frame house. Col. Alston, inside with wife, Temperance, their six children, and around twenty Patriots under his command, recognized this dilemma had no ready solution. If he and his militia members ventured outside, they would be sitting ducks for Fanning’s sharpshooters. Staying inside a burning tinderbox meant certain death for all.

Fanning and Alston had taken turns chasing each other through the Sandhills during the month of July, 1781. Now Fanning was the pursuer and Alston was his prey. The news that Alston’s forces had killed non-fighting Loyalist supporter Kenneth Black had sent the irascible Fanning over the edge, and revenge was foremost on his mind. When Fanning found out the Patriot leader and a number of his men had retreated to Alston’s “House in the Horseshoe” (so named because of its location within a bend of the Deep River) 10 miles north of Carthage, he resolved “to make [an] [e]xample of them for [what] . . . they had done to one of my pilots by name Kenneth Black.”

Alston, Fanning and Black: The convergence of this trio in July 1781 yielded compelling though oft-overlooked Revolutionary War history. Local history buff Paula Caddell finds the contrasts in the backgrounds of the three protagonists fascinating. “Philip Alston was born with a silver spoon in his mouth as the privileged son of a plantation owner. David Fanning was something of an abused child indentured to a man who forced David to live mostly outdoors in the woods attending cattle. This neglect caused an unsightly condition known as ‘scald head,’ which permanently took all the hair off Fanning’s head. Kenneth Black, a Scottish Highlander, emigrated here from Jura, an isle in the Hebrides, seeking a better life.”

Black was among thousands of Highlanders impacted by the defeat of Bonnie Prince Charlie’s Jacobite Army at the Battle of Culloden in 1746. To punish the rebels, the crown disbanded the centuries-old Scottish clan system. Many were driven off their land. Those remaining were forced to pay exorbitant rents. Facing starvation, a large proportion of Highlanders sought a fresh start in America. And the king, desirous of encouraging settlement in the colonies, was willing to pardon past offenses and permit the Highlanders to leave provided they pledged an oath of allegiance vowing never to take up arms against the sovereign. Those signing acknowledged that breach of the oath would cause them to be “cursed in all . . . [their] undertakings and family.” Abiding by the oath was considered a religious necessity. In his 1854 treatise, “The Old North State in 1776,” Rev. Eli Caruthers remarked that most Scots’ mindset was that “they must not violate their oath, for that would be giving themselves to the devil at once.”

The trickle of Scots immigrating to this region was accelerating rapidly when Kenneth Black arrived sometime around 1765. He and wife Catherine settled on a 100-acre allotment near the Little River just south of Carthage. Sometime after 1772, he acquired a 50-acre plot near present-day Southern Pines and constructed a home where the Residence Inn is now located. Residing nearby were several brothers with the surname of Black who likewise migrated from Jura. There is disagreement among historians regarding the relationship of the brothers to Kenneth, but they were certainly kin in some way and good friends. Other Scottish- born families like McNeill, Buchan, Paterson, Buie, Blue and Stewart soon arrived in the area. Descendants of these families still populate Moore County today.

The most celebrated arrival was undoubtedly Flora MacDonald. She achieved everlasting fame after the Culloden debacle, when she aided Bonnie Prince Charlie’s escape to the Island of Skye by disguising him as an Irish spinning maid. She paid for her assistance to the Jacobite cause with imprisonment in the Tower of London for several months. In 1750, she married Allan MacDonald, ironically a captain in the British Army. They lived on Skye until emigrating to North Carolina in 1774.

The Highland Scots destined for North Carolina assumed they were leaving behind a civil war that had rendered their lives unbearably difficult. It must have been alarming to arrive here to find rebellion in their midst once again. They wanted no part of it. Aside from their irrevocable oaths to King George III, other practicalities mitigated against supporting the cause of independence. England had easily crushed the Jacobites at Culloden. What would prevent the greatest military power on Earth from quelling an American rebellion? There was commerce to consider too. Many of the Scots, like Kenneth Black, had become successful farmers. The longleaf pines on their estates produced naval stores of pitch and turpentine marketed to the mother country. And there was cotton. War would interrupt that trade. Why rock the boat?

Once the “Shot Heard Round the World” was fired in Lexington on April 19, 1775, war was suddenly at hand. One month later, patriots (also known then as Whigs) in the Charlotte area adopted the Mecklenburg Declaration, which is said to be the first formal action by any group of Americans to declare independence from Great Britain. When word reached Royal Gov. Josiah Martin that the Whigs’ Safety Committee in New Bern was poised to seize him, he fled the Royal Palace and took refuge in a British ship offshore. With astonishing alacrity, the Whigs orchestrated a takeover of the reins of government.

In August 1775, a convocation of Whigs was held at the “Hillsborough Provincial Congress.” This assembly took up the question of raising troops to defend the colony against an anticipated British invasion. Two regiments were authorized (known as the “Continental Line”) , but lack of funding meant that the majority of Patriot fighters during the war were militia members.

While those favoring independence in North Carolina were in the majority, the Highland Scots provided a formidable counterweight favoring allegiance to the king. They were joined by remnants of the Regulators movement. The Regulators were western North Carolina settlers who had rebelled against the fraudulent imposition of fees and taxes by conniving public officials. This brouhaha had led to the Battle of Alamance in 1771 — a devastating defeat for the Regulators. The movement collapsed, and its surviving members were forced to swear their own oaths of allegiance to the king.

In the early stages of the Revolution, the Whigs sought to lure the Highland Scots and Regulators (collectively referred to as “Tories”) to the revolutionary cause with various inducements. But when those offers were rejected, the Whigs resorted to coercion in the form of arrests, banishments, estate confiscations and tax penalties. Seeking to restore royal rule, the embattled Gov. Martin made his own overtures to recruit the Highlanders to join the Royal Highland Emigrant Regiment (“the Highland Regiment”), promising 200-acre grants to all who enlisted. Martin, not above threatening reprisals against recalcitrant Scots, proclaimed those refusing service risked having “their lives and properties to be forfeited.”

Martin’s recruitment efforts met with some success. On February 2, 1776, 1500 Highlanders and a smaller number of Regulators gathered at Cross Creek near Fayetteville to join the Highland Regiment led by Gen. Donald MacDonald. Flora MacDonald’s husband, Allan, served as an officer in the Regiment. Flora herself is said to have made a fiery oration urging valor in upcoming battles to her fellow Highlanders. The plan was to march the Highland Regiment to Wilmington to link up with British forces led by Gen. Lord Charles Cornwallis, who was scheduled to be arriving shortly by sea. But Patriots led by Col. James Moore and Richard Caswell rushed to block the Regiment at Moore’s Creek, eighteen miles north of Wilmington. Realizing that the Regiment would be crossing Moore’s Creek Bridge, Moore and Caswell removed most of the bridge’s planking, greased its support rails with tallow, and awaited the Regiment’s appearance. When the Highlanders arrived and attempted a charge across the bridge, they were welcomed with deadly cannon and rifle fire.

It was a rout. Fifty Scots perished on the bridge, and the majority of the Regiment was captured and imprisoned. Allan MacDonald was among them. Those that escaped hastened back to their farms and laid low. When Cornwallis finally arrived in Wilmington in May 1776, there were no Highlanders to greet him, only a chagrined Gov. Martin, whose foolproof plan to take back North Carolina had backfired. With no fighting Tories around to augment his own army, Cornwallis chose to sail for Charleston with the intent of attacking the Patriot stronghold of Fort Moultrie. With the Tories in disarray, armed resistance to the Patriots in North Carolina melted away. In short order, the Whigs cemented their hold on government by adopting a new constitution, electing Richard Caswell as governor of the new state, and levying property taxes.

While there was a hiatus on military engagements in the state, the Highlanders’ troubles continued. Flora MacDonald’s home at Cheek’s Creek was ransacked and seized. Poor Flora! Once again, she had cast her lot with the losing side. Now age 54, homeless, separated from her husband, and a pariah, she appealed to Kenneth Black for help. He allowed Flora to hide at his Little River property, where she remained until reuniting with Allan after his release in a prisoner exchange. In 1779, the couple left America and returned to Skye.

Kenneth Black himself ran afoul of the four-fold tax that the authorities imposed on those who refused to take an oath to the new state. This led to an altercation reported by Caruthers in his treatise. In the fall of 1778, an unintimidated Black rebuffed the efforts of two tax collectors for the county who came to his home.

Subsequently the taxmen brought in reinforcements, who promptly seized “a negro man, a stud horse, and a good deal of other property, amounting in all to seven or eight hundred dollars.” Black offered no resistance. Caruthers offered the view that given the rough treatment afforded Black, “a man in good circumstances, and of much respectability in his neighborhood . . . we may suppose it was worse with men of less property and influence in the community. During this period the Scots complained bitterly of such military officers as [Philip] Alston [and others] . . . for carrying away their bacon, grain, and stock of every description, professedly for the American army, but without making compensation, or even giving a certificate, and thus leaving their families in a destitute and suffering condition.”

Labeled by local historian Rassie Wicker as a “swashbuckling, aristocratic rascal,” Philip Alston wore many hats during the Revolutionary years: tax assessor, justice of the peace, and member of the legislature. And he was certainly a man of means. His wife, Temperance Smith, came from a wealthy family. Alston’s land holdings — mostly in the Deep River area, and including the House in the Horseshoe, totaled nearly 7,000 acres, and he owned slaves. But Alston sensed that the best way to further his emerging political career would be to lead his men into battle. Eager to join the revolutionary fray, he sufficiently impressed his Patriot superiors to be named First Major of the Cumberland County Militia. But after heading south, his regiment was mauled in the Battle of Briar Creek, Georgia, a stinging defeat for the Patriots. Alston was taken prisoner, but later escaped. As he made his way back to North Carolina, Cornwallis’ army was finally gaining a solid foothold in the South, having overrun Savannah and Charleston by May 1780. Moreover, British Maj. James Craig successfully occupied Wilmington in January 1781, so Cornwallis now had available a North Carolina sea coast supply base and garrison.

With Patriot prospects in the South on the downslide, Gen. Horatio Gates, the victorious American leader at the Battle of Saratoga, was placed at the helm of the Patriots’ “Southern Department.” But Gates suffered a humiliating defeat after marching his troops, including 1,200 North Carolinians, into the jaws of a surprise attack by Cornwallis at Camden, South Carolina.

Gates’s failure at Camden caused George Washington to replace him with Gen. Nathaniel Greene. Intent on demolishing the new leader’s troops, Cornwallis re-entered North Carolina and pursued Greene northward through the Piedmont. In the process of fording a stream, Cornwallis’s troops discovered that Greene had dumped tar in the stream’s bed to hinder the British crossing — one of a couple derivatives for the nickname “the Tar Heel State.” The adversaries met in battle on March 15, 1781, at Guilford Court House near Greensboro. While the engagement was declared a British victory, it was a Pyrrhic one. The heavy casualties on both sides hurt Cornwallis far more than Greene. With his army depleted and running low on supplies, a frustrated Cornwallis abandoned his pursuit of Greene and marched to Wilmington for refitting. He then departed that city with his army for Virginia on April 25.

While Cornwallis’ forays into North Carolina failed to subdue the Patriots, his presence nonetheless reignited Tory resistance. Young David Fanning emerged as a resourceful and ferocious leader of guerrilla-fighting Tories who terrorized the countryside in 1781. Much had happened to Fanning in his 10 years since leaving home at age 16 to escape the cruel treatment he endured as a child. After a period of wandering, he was rescued in Orange County by the O’Deniell family. The O’Deniells restored Fanning to health and cured him of the “tetter worm” disease that had caused the loss of his hair. They taught him to read and write. At age 19, Fanning settled in South Carolina, and traded with the Catawba Indians. When the Revolution came, Fanning favored the Whigs’ cause. However, according to Caruthers, everything changed when, “. . . on his return from one of his trading expeditions, he was met by a little party of lawless fellows who declared themselves Whigs, and robbed him of everything he had . . . [H]e at once changed sides and in the impetuosity and violence of his temper swore vengeance on the whole of the Whig party.” He then joined a Tory group of militants in South Carolina, until returning to North Carolina in tandem with Cornwallis’s army in early 1781.

Though not receiving any formal command from the British, Fanning nonetheless became a feared foe of the Patriots. Caruthers reports, “He was often upon his enemies when they were least expecting it, and having accomplished his purpose of death or devastation, he was gone before their friends could rally. Often when supposed to be at a distance, the storm of his presence in a neighborhood was communicated by the smoke of burning houses, and by the cries of frightened and flying women and children.”

While both Patriot militia and Tory guerrillas committed atrocities during the conflict, one incident really inflamed passions on both sides, and it stemmed from a seemingly inconsequential event. A member of a Patriot militia led by Col. Thomas Wade stole a poor servant girl’s piece of cloth. Her ensuing complaint was communicated to Tories who discovered that Wade was camped nearby at Piney Bottom Creek, where Fort Bragg is today. The Tory band launched a surprise attack on Wade before daybreak, quickly killing six of his men. A young camp-following boy who was a favorite of Wade begged for his life only to have an attacker split the boy’s skull in two with a swipe of the sword.

The massacre sent the Patriot militia into a paroxysm of rage. Retributions against the Tories increased dramatically. One retaliatory raid by Wade and company targeted Kenneth Black. Wade’s men rode horses into Black’s house and gathered 51-year-old Black and his family into the chimney. Wade intended burning the house, but decided to search it first. After finding two chests belonging to British army officers who had left the chests with Black, the militiamen broke them open and dumped the contents on the floor. By unhappy coincidence, two daughters of Flora MacDonald arrived to visit the Blacks out of concern for a bout of smallpox the family had endured and weathered. According to Caruthers, the militiamen “took the gold rings from their [the MacDonald daughters] fingers and the silk handkerchiefs from their necks; then putting their swords into their bosom, split down their silk dresses and, taking them into the yard, stripped them of all their outer clothing.”

Wade’s men were preparing to leave with their plunder when Catherine Black exclaimed, “Well, you have a bad companion with you!” When the men apprehended she meant smallpox exposure, they immediately threw down their booty. Wade and his men took old Kenneth along to guide them out of the area. But “probably thinking that there might be danger of getting the smallpox from him, they told him he might return home.” A gunshot fired with bad intentions whizzed by Black’s head as he departed his captors to return to his devastated family. His fellow friends from Jura were not so fortunate. Wade’s men killed Alexander Black and Archibald Black was badly injured. Thus, Kenneth Black, though not himself a fighting man, nevertheless had a score to settle with the Patriots.

Of course, violence begets violence, and David Fanning had no inclination to be gentle with Patriots he encountered. The British commander in Wilmington, pleased with Fanning’s success in engendering panic and dread among the Patriots, appointed him colonel of the Loyalist Militia on July 5, 1781. Proud of his new status, the vainglorious Fanning donned the British army redcoat, and looked for a bold strike that would further impress his superiors. He found it at the Chatham County Courthouse in Pittsboro. Caruthers recounts that on July 16 or 17, Fanning and about 35 men “. . . dashed into Pittsboro when the county court was in session . . . and captured the lawyers, justices and other officers of the court, with such of the citizens and prominent men in the place as he wanted . . . [H]e swore the rebels should never hold court there again.” Fanning then proceeded to transport 14 of the captured to Wilmington, where Maj. Craig had erected a stockade prison.

While en route to Wilmington with his prisoners, Fanning stopped for the night (probably July 20) at Kenneth Black’s farm. Fanning probably was unaware when feasting at Black’s that Philip Alston, newly appointed to colonel in the militia, was trailing him in hot pursuit less than a day behind. After breakfast the following morning, Fanning resumed his journey to Wilmington. Kenneth Black accompanied Fanning’s band for a few miles “as a pilot.” But after the ride began, Fanning’s horse, Red Doe, a celebrated and normally lightning-fast steed, became lame. Fanning and Black swapped their rides. Black said his goodbyes and — astride his friend’s lame horse — turned back toward home.

Unfortunately for Black, his path home ran smack into the pursuing Alston at Ray’s Mill Creek, where Southern Pines Golf Club is now located. According to Caruthers, “As soon as he [Black] saw them he turned up the creek and attempted to escape on Fanning’s foundered horse. They discovered and pursued him, shot and wounded him; but he went on some two hundred yards further, into the edge of the swamp, and then fell with his face on the ground. When they came up they smashed his head with the butt of his gun, and when begging for his life [killed him].”

Alston ultimately abandoned his chase of Fanning and retreated north toward the Deep River. When passing by the Black homestead, Alston called on Catherine Black and “expressed much regret” that his men had killed her husband.

After Fanning dropped off his prisoners in Wilmington, he headed back the way he came. While en route to his headquarters at Coxes Mill, he stopped by the Blacks’ farmstead, where Catherine Black informed him of her husband’s death. Enraged, Fanning headed for the House in the Horseshoe to seek revenge. On the way, he learned Alston’s militia “had separated into small parties thinking I should never return from Wilmington.” Fanning wrote that he and his men “marched all that day and that night following and just as the day [sometime from July 29 to August 5 — accounts differ] [d]awned commenced firing on Alston and his reduced force.”

As musket balls smashed through the windows, Temperance Alston protected her two smallest children “by putting a small table . . . in the fireplace, for them to stand on, and thus they were entirely beyond the reach of the bullets.” Temperance, clutching her 6-month-old daughter, scurried beneath her bed for protection. Alston’s two teenage sons probably were among the defenders returning fire. Caruthers reported that there was “among the assailants, a lieutenant from the British army by the name of McKay . . . and he told Fanning that if he would give him [McKay] the command he would take the house in a few minutes.” Fanning consented, and McKay promptly led a “pell-mell” rush toward the house. But as soon as McKay started his charge by jumping a rail fence, “a rifle ball entered his head and he fell dead on the spot.” Those following McKay retreated back behind the fence. Fanning then “bribed a free negro to set the house on fire at the far side where it was supposed he could do it without being observed.” However, Alston got wise to the scheme and shot the man as he was about to torch the house.

By noon, “one or two had been killed in the house and four or five wounded; but Fanning’s loss in killed and wounded was more than double.” It was then that Fanning conjured up his end-game strategy of propelling the fire-laden oxcart into the house. “In this perilous and critical moment, Mrs. Alston came out of her bedroom . . . and with perfect composure, requested them to commit the business to her.” Temperance volunteered to venture outside with a raised white flag. All the men, and Alston particularly, objected. They thought it “very improbable that Fanning, under all the circumstances, would respect even a lady of her standing.” But Temperance would not be denied, and she courageously walked out on the step. Rather than shoot down the unarmed woman, Fanning “called to her to meet him half-way, which she did.” Then Temperance calmly announced her message: “We will surrender, sir, on condition that no one shall be injured; otherwise we will make the best defense we can; and if need be, sell our lives as dearly as possible.”

Fanning agreed to her proposal, provided that Alston and his men agreed firstly not to venture more than five miles from their homes for the duration of hostilities, and secondly to swear oaths not to take up arms against the king or “cause anything to do or be done prejudicial to the success of His Majesty.” The terms were agreed upon and the lengthy skirmish was over. It appears that Alston and his men abided by their oaths throughout the rest of the war.

Thereafter, Fanning continued his guerrilla raids. His most spectacular maneuver involved capturing Gov. Thomas Burke and 200 other Patriots in Hillsborough on September 12. While en route to Wilmington to incarcerate his prisoners, Fanning was attacked by Patriots at Lindley’s Mill. Numerous dead and wounded resulted on both sides. But Fanning succeeded in delivering Gov. Burke to Maj. Craig for imprisonment.

While Fanning was terrorizing North Carolina as the bloody summer of 1781 came to a close, Gen. Cornwallis found himself check-mated in Yorktown, Virginia. Surrounded by American and French armies, and the French navy preventing his rescue by sea, Cornwallis surrendered to Gen. George Washington on October 19, 1781, and the British began vanishing from the South. Maj. Craig evacuated Wilmington on November 18. For a time, Fanning continued his reign of terror, but he too ultimately fled Wilmington for Charleston — still holding on as a British bastion — in May 1782. But then that city was abandoned by the English on December 14 and Fanning, along with his new 16-year-old bride departed as well. He ultimately settled in New Brunswick — a haven for exiled Loyalists.

The end of the war still left unresolved what the state should do with the Tories and their confiscated property. The Black farm apparently escaped seizure as wife Catherine resided there for many years after Kenneth’s death. In 1783, the state legislature passed a measure pardoning all Tories and permitting some restoration of confiscated properties. There were three named exceptions to the pardon, one of whom was David Fanning.

Both Alston and Fanning led controversial lives after the war. After the southern half of Cumberland County became Moore County in 1784, Alston held various positions in county government. But he made political enemies, and they sought to eliminate him as a foe by causing his indictment for murder arising out of the aforementioned killing of Thomas Taylor when Alston was trailing Fanning in July 1781. Alston ultimately received a pardon for this offense, but other scrapes followed.

George Glascock, Alston’s principal political nemesis, was murdered in 1787. Alston’s slave Dave was accused of the crime. Alston, who was hosting a party at the time of the murder, was charged as an accessory. Records of the disposition of the charges are sketchy, but it appears that Alston was confined for a time, but later escaped to Georgia, where he owned property. In 1791, he was assassinated by an unknown killer.

Fanning faced his own charge of criminal conduct while in New Brunswick. In 1800, he was convicted of the rape of a neighbor’s young daughter. Fanning received the death sentence but managed to avoid this punishment by receiving a pardon through appeal. The pardon was conditioned on Fanning’s exile from the province, so he sailed to Nova Scotia, where he enjoyed success in shipbuilding until his death in 1825.

The Moore County Historical Association (MCHA) was involved in efforts to preserve the graveyard of Kenneth Black and family, located between Hwy. 15-501 and Morganton Road across from the Target shopping center in Southern Pines. For decades, the unmaintained graveyard was forgotten as vandals decimated gravestones and rock walls collapsed.

In the 1960s, Tony Parker, a local history writer and devotee of ancient graveyards, rediscovered the Black family burial ground. Black descendants and brothers Bill and Nolan Moran got local media interested in the site and convinced a local bank to place a new marker over Kenneth’s grave.

Over a decade ago, the Moran family requested that MCHA serve as an agent to oversee the cemetery. MCHA’s volunteers sprang into action to restore the burial ground by unearthing buried stones and rebuilding a fallen wall. Money was raised to pay for ground-penetrating radar to identify the specific locations of all 34 graves in the cemetery to ensure their nondisturbance. Impressed by MCHA’s restoration efforts, Vince Viscomi, the Tennessee physician who owned the property at the time, made known his desire that any development of the property would preserve and protect this historic burial ground.

Had Kenneth Black sided with the Patriots and been killed by the British under similar circumstances, he likely would be remembered as a martyr and hero of the Revolution. John Brown of Roanoke, Virginia, another Black descendant who succeeded the Morans as a family representative for the cemetery, agreed. Though his ancestor was not on the winning side, preserving the story of his role in the Revolution is important.

“The work by MCHA and the Black family descendants to maintain the cemetery shows that people sill care about history. Today, too many people don’t care,” Brown said. In 2020 a development plan by Mid-Atlantic Properties for the 100-acre site that included the cemetery was approved contingent on the cemetery’s preservation. According to MCHA, “GPS recordings of the gravestones and rock walls were recorded and then the objects placed in storage. Approximately 17 feet of soil was then placed over the cemetery as part of the grading process. The stones were then returned to the GPS recorded locations. A sturdy white picket fence was erected around the cemetery, and a pair of brick columns were constructed to mark two entrances of paved walkways to the cemetery.”

MCHA also helped preserve the House in the Horseshoe itself by acquiring it in the 1950s from a private owner and restoring the house to close to its original condition. MCHA subsequently conveyed the property to the state of North Carolina. The state’s Department of Natural and Cultural Resources welcomes thousands of visitors annually who examine numerous bullet holes still visible from the desperate fight that took place 244 years ago. The site’s low-key operation, coupled with its splendid, isolated setting, do much to help a visitor visualize the time when a courageous woman emerged from the House in the Horseshoe to confront hostile attackers long ago.

2025 Feature The Road to the House in the Horseshoe

Cold and Crisp and Sweet

COLD AND CRISP AND SWEET

Cold and Crisp and Sweet

Fiction by Clyde Edgerton Illustration by David Stanley

This happened a long time ago. I was seven years old.

Aunt Rosa raked off some seeds from the watermelon slice and then sliced the watermelon out of the rind and cut it up, removing some more seeds. This was back when watermelons had black seeds only. The big food companies, nowadays of course, have pretty much deleted any personality from fruits and vegetables.

I’d walked down to Aunt Rosa’s from my house because my grandma was sick in bed and I was told I needed to give her a visit and to do what Aunt Rosa told me to do.

Grandma lived with Aunt Rosa. “If she talks,” said Aunt Rosa, “she might talk a little out of her head. Sit in that green chair where she can see you with that watermelon. Just go on in there.”

I remember very little about the visit, but I do remember thinking that talking out of her head meant talking out of her nose and ears, and that scared me, as I recall.

***

My name is Flossie. I’m walking into the room where Grandma is sick and I have some watermelon in a plate and a fork and napkin. I know some things: I know Grandpa made coffins in his funeral home, and Grandma kept the books that were in a back room at his funeral home. And there was a fireplace in there, and Grandpa had some long black cars that carried dead people in the back. I could go in there until Grandpa died.

I’m in the room now. Grandpa’s first name was I.O. and that is printed on a long board in Aunt Rosa’s garage: “The I.O. Walker Funeral Home” and some other long words. They took it down and put it in there because Grandpa died, and Mr. Gibby took over.

I heard Daddy talking to Mr. Abernathy at the grocery store and they didn’t know I was listening, and Daddy said that Grandpa used to pull gold teeth out of dead people before he got caught. He said Grandpa made them into wedding rings and bracelets, and he made them into these money pieces like pennies and dimes that he said were a thousand years old and he said Grandpa put scratches in the money things and then rubbed in black ashes that had got wet and that made them look real, like they were from some country far away.

And Grandpa and some other people started a Mule Funeral Militia a long time ago, too. They buried mules just like in a funeral because people loved mules more back then. They cut the head off a mule one time and buried that because of some reason. The mule was dead, though. But Grandpa just died not long ago and there was a big funeral for him, and now Grandma is down here sick at Aunt Rosa’s house. Mama told me I had to walk down here for a visit.

I take the watermelon on into the room where she is laying in a big bed, and there is that green chair beside her bed and she is under the covers and her head turns toward me on her pillow when Aunt Rosa says, “Mama, here’s Flossie,” and Grandma stares at me kind of hard. Her face is skinny. It used to be kind of fluffy and puffy. Her eyes have got these red lines under them and her hair is in these patches kind of. She seems real little. She won’t that little before she got sick. Mama told Mrs. Tally that Grandma was “wasted away,” but she hasn’t wasted away. She’s still there — right there in the big bed.

She says, “Hey there, Barbara.”

“This is Flossie,” says Aunt Rosa and now Aunt Rosa leaves and I’m a little bit afraid.

Grandma says, “Hey there, Flossie. I’m sorry, Honey. I get everybody mixed up. You come on and sit in that green chair. You are so pretty. Are you married yet?”

“No ma’am,” I say.

“That’s okay. You’ve still got some time. Can you eat some watermelon for me? I used to grow watermelons.”

“Yes, ma’am.” And I fork me some watermelon and take a bite.

It gets quiet. She is looking at me, smiling a little bit. Mama’d told me to talk to her, so I say, “Where’d you grow them?”

“In my garden,” she says. “Me and I. 0. always had the biggest garden you ever seen, but you stand up straight and you won’t have to go far before you can get married if the right beau comes along. Could you take another big bite?” and I do and she says, “Ain’t it good?” and I say, “Yes ma’am.”

I look through the door into the middle room to see if I can see Aunt Rosa, but she’s not in there.

“Would you go ahead and eat it all?” Grandma says, and she reaches up and puts her hand behind her head so that her head tilts up a little. Her arm has saggy skin. She’s looking right at me. “It’s good, ain’t it?” she says.

“Yes ma’am,” I say.

“You’re the one likes cornbread so much, ain’t you?” she says.

“Yes ma’am.”

I keep eating the watermelon. It’s cold and crispy and sweet. I want to ask her about the gold teeth, but I don’t know if that was a sin, and I think I will not ask her, because I am a little bit afraid, but anyway I go ahead and say, “Did Grandpa pull gold teeth out of people’s mouths?” and she says, “Why, who told you that?” And I say, “Nobody,” and she says, “He’d use a set of needle nose pliers and pull ’em out and find somebody down in Baldwin to make whatever you want out of that gold. A ring, a coin. ’Course they probably ain’t still over to Baldwin — fellow named Swanson. I.O. got that fella to make some mighty fine gold coins that looked like they come right out of Mexico, right out of that city of gold that that explorer looked for. Did you learn about that in school?”

“No ma’am.”

She rubs one of her eyes, then looks at me again. “Go ahead and take another bite,” she says.

I do.

***

I was probably fourteen when we were taking a trip to Florida — me, Mama, Daddy, and my little brothers when Mama told me about that visit with Grandma and the watermelon — and the meaning behind it all, the big story behind it all: Not long after Grandpa died, Grandma got real sick, and she told Dr. Gibson that on account of Grandpa being gone she didn’t want to live anymore, but she didn’t want to take any poison, so what would happen if she just went to bed and didn’t eat anything or drink anything like she’d heard about old Miss Cain doing back a long time ago? And Dr. Gibson told her she would likely live no more than a couple of weeks. So Grandma decided not to drink or eat so that she could die, and she went to bed at Aunt Rosa’s where she was living. She lived two weeks and one day. And then Mama said, “She loved to eat watermelon, so she asked Aunt Rosa to get one of her grandchildren down there in that green chair every day to eat some watermelon in front of her, so she could watch.”

I wish I could remember more about that visit. I only remember going into her bedroom and eating some watermelon in front of her, and it seemed to make her happy.

2025 Cold and Crisp and Sweet Feature

Puzzle Me This

PUZZLE ME THIS

Ernõ Rubik, the inventor of the eponymous cube, once said, “If you are curious, you will find the puzzles around you. If you are determined, you will solve them.” Since there are no readers more curious or more determined than PineStraw’s, this month we’re offering up a cornucopia of puzzles. Solve them while you wait for a plane at RDU or under a Shibumi on a barrier island beach. Take your time. And enjoy.

To view all ten puzzles, grab a hard copy of Pinestraw at select locations or, simply view online.

2025 Feature Puzzle Me This

A Tradition of Culture

A TRADITION OF CULTURE

A Tradition of Culture

The many lives of Campbell House

By Ray Owen • Photographs by John Gessner

Surviving through myriad incarnations, Southern Pines’ Campbell House is one of the region’s most significant landmarks, owing its existence to the Boyd family. Once part of their Weymouth estate, for more than 100 years it has been a center of culture, informing, influencing and enhancing civic life.

It is an outstanding example of a Country Place-era estate created over time by a remarkable series of individuals who began settling in the region around the turn of the 20th century. The fledgling Sandhills resorts were rising from the dusty remains of a former turpentine and lumber industry outpost. The backdrop for this transformation was the greater social movement of the day, a reaction to the cultural upheavals brought about by industrialization and urbanization. The Sandhills fit perfectly within the country life paradigm, appealing to America’s growing fascination with vernacular culture and native folk.

The lives of Campbell House comprise four significant periods: first the home of James Maclin Brodnax, then expanded into the original James Boyd House with additions from local Colonial houses; next moved and enlarged at its present location by Jackson Boyd; later the home of General Motors heir Maj. William Durant Campbell; and now a municipal property, home to Southern Pines Recreation & Parks Department and the Arts Council of Moore County.

The house’s first period opens with James Boyd’s 1904 purchase of a sizable portion of land on the eastern ridge above downtown Southern Pines. Within months, the matter of building a residence was altered by the death of his kinsman, James Brodnax, who had built a two-story Colonial Revival-style home for himself on the property. James Boyd, grandfather of writer James Boyd and his brother Jackson, enlarged the Brodnax House into an imposing mansion, incorporating building elements dating from the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The Brodnax-Boyd House was located 100 feet in front of present-day Weymouth Center.

In 1921, the Brodnax-Boyd House was separated into two blocks and both moved by mule teams across Connecticut Avenue, where they became the core of two new residences. One part was refitted as a residence for Jackson Boyd (Jack) and his family, and it remained their home, following major rebuilding in 1936 after a fire. Another part of the Brodnax-Boyd House is now the dwelling standing at 435 E. New Hampshire Ave.

Jack and his brother, writer James Boyd, founded the Moore County Hounds in the winter of 1914. They saw this aristocratic sport in democratic terms and felt that it should belong to the town. Proper dress or not, anyone who wished to hunt was invited to come along, so huntsmen in formal attire rode with farmers on horses more accustomed to plowing than jumping fences.

As a captain in the Marines, Jack was in charge of canine training at Camp Lejeune. Being from blueblood hunt country, he was a trainer, breeder, master of 70 foxhounds. Jack taught his war dogs to march in cadence, heel on regular intervals, and perform ordered drills. More training prepared them for track and attack missions and watch duty. His division’s canine records included letters of commendation, citations and a discharge certificate. In many instances, a formal photograph of the dog was included upon promotion of the dog to sergeant.

Jack’s eldest son, John Boyd, was killed in action at Guadalcanal, and the local VFW post is named for him. Those who knew Jack Boyd say that his son’s death was a severe blow and he left Southern Pines shortly after the war.

In 1946, Major W.D. Campbell purchased the Jackson Boyd House and he made extensive changes, facing the unpretentious frame structure with ballast-brick from Charleston, South Carolina. The same brick was used in the formal landscaping and walled garden at the rear of the house. In 1966 the Campbell family gave their property to the town, asking that it be used for the cultural and social enrichment of the community.

Evidence of history can be found throughout the building, with a striking contrast between the formal entrance and the informality of the large pine-clad room on the east wing. This room, known today as the Brown Gallery, encompasses the most visible remains of Brodnax-Boyd House with its circa 1820s mantel and beaded hand-planed paneling.

In Jackson Boyd’s time the main staircase rose at the back of the foyer, but the Campbells reconfigured it to rise at the front, opening up the back wall with glass doors. The foyer and former dining room, now the White Gallery, remain unchanged from the late 1940s with marble-chip terrazzo flooring, marble staircase and decorative wrought-iron railing. A medallion graces the entry hall floor. Inscribed in Greek, it depicts an African antelope bagged by Maj. Campbell for the Museum of Natural History in New York.

The Campbells and their daughter, Margot, were active in many civic and community affairs. Mrs. Campbell was one of the founders of the Southern Pines Garden Club. Maj. Campbell’s interests included the Red Cross, Boy Scouts and model trains and he built the Train House to house his collection. An Eagle Scout in his boyhood, Campbell became a leader in the national and international movement, an activity that eventually called the family away from their home in the pines. Born in Flint, Michigan, Maj. Campbell was the grandson of William Crapo Durant, the co-founder of General Motors and Chevrolet, and the founder of Frigidaire. Campbell graduated from Princeton University in 1929 and initially pursued a career in banking. During World War II, he was a battery commander and retired from Fort Bragg in 1946 as a major. He became involved in Scouting as an adult at the suggestion of its British founder, Robert Baden-Powell. His travels convinced him that Scouting could do much for young people and he took a special interest in furthering the organization in developing countries with programs tailored to local needs. That philosophy and his personal commitment saw a doubling of the Scouts’ membership in the 1970s and 1980s, chiefly in the Third World. A philanthropist, Maj. Campbell was also on the executive committee of the Mystic Seaport Museum and a director of the National Audubon Society.

When the Campbells gifted the property to the town, a board of directors was appointed, bylaws were established, an on-site director was hired, and a vigorous program developed to put the property to use. The Southern Pines Information Center was installed in the main house, and the Stoneybrook Racing Association moved into its west wing office.

The Boy Scouts were among the early organizations at Campbell House, along with offices for the Humane Society of Moore County and Moore County Historical Association. In the late 1960s, a small golf museum was set up in the former dining room, and this collection was later turned over to the World Golf Hall of Fame.

In 1972, Southern Pines established a year-round recreation and parks department centered on the property. This program is now the biggest user of the site with its offices on the second floor of the main house. The first floor is the headquarters of the Arts Council of Moore County, where they maintain two galleries that display the work of different artists every month and a sales gallery that showcases the work of regional artists.

Thousands of visitors have enjoyed Campbell House, hundreds of volunteers have given time and energy to the fulfillment of its purpose, and a small, dedicated group has taken personal responsibility for its success.

Moss gathers on the ancient lawn as azaleas bloom late against fading bricks. Across the lot, live oaks keep the view — if they could speak, what stories would they tell, wide spreading boughs, nothing missed in their branches. Some say the house is haunted and at twilight the apparition of a woman drifts across the stairs, a lingering reminder of lives that have come before.

2025 A Tradition of Culture Feature

Andre of Ellerbe

ANDRE OF ELLERBE

Andre of Ellerbe

A giant of a man in a small town

By Bill Fields

In a mild December morning at Dixie Burger in Ellerbe, North Carolina, several customers of a certain age at a corner table are remembering someone who once sat among them, shooting the breeze and drinking coffee.

“Was grand marshal at the racetrack and lifted a girl on each arm like it was nothing.”

“Used to be booths in here, but he wouldn’t fit.”

“Ate 12 chickens in one day.”

When he wasn’t wrestling, making a movie or otherwise being André the Giant, the man sometimes called the “Eighth Wonder of the World” lived in Ellerbe for more than a dozen years. He enjoyed his time in the Richmond County town of about 1,000 people and loved to kill part of a day at the short-order restaurant, whose tall hamburger sign is the most visible landmark on Main Street.

“André could sit there and talk to people,” says Jackie McAuley, who was a close friend. She, along with her first husband, Frenchy Bernard, a former pro wrestling referee, managed André’s home and cattle ranch on Highway 73. “They treated him just like anybody else they would have seen in town. It wasn’t, ‘Oh, can I have your autograph?’ He was just an average person when he was home in Ellerbe.”

Notwithstanding the mannerly small-town treatment André René Roussimoff received, he was as close to being an average person as Ellerbe is to the Eiffel Tower. André the Giant — who died Jan. 27, 1993, at age 46 — was one of the most recognizable individuals of the 20th century. He was a genuine giant who emerged from the obscurity of his family’s farm in rural France, carrying armoires on his back up three flights as a Paris furniture mover, to become an iconic professional wrestler who drew large crowds around the globe and gained even wider fame playing Fezzik, the rhyme-loving giant in the 1987 romantic-adventure-comedy film The Princess Bride.

Standing 7 feet 4 inches — although there were skeptics who contended the wrestling hype machine bumped up his height so that he could be billed as the world’s tallest man — and weighing 520 pounds when he passed away of congestive heart failure, Roussimoff had acromegaly, a disorder that causes the pituitary gland to produce too much growth hormone in adulthood, resulting in unusual bone growth, including in the hands, feet and face.

His acromegaly was never treated, André refusing medical help when his condition was diagnosed, first during a visit to Japan in the early 1970s and again about a decade later at Duke University Hospital. Doctors there saved his life after fluid built up around his heart and wanted to operate on the pituitary gland to correct his acromegaly, but André, whose paternal grandfather also was outsized, wouldn’t agree to the procedure. “He said, ‘That’s how God made me,’ and he wasn’t going to change,” McAuley says.

To be around André once was to never forget his unique size.

His neck was 2 feet in circumference. It was nearly a foot around his wrist. A silver dollar could pass through one of his rings. In an exhibit devoted to André the Giant at The Rankin Museum of American Heritage in Ellerbe, a pair of his size 26 wrestling boots are on display. “Occasionally I could buy him T-shirts,” says McAuley, “if I could find 5 XL.” The Giant’s clothes were mostly custom tailored in Montreal or Japan to accommodate his 71-inch chest. Nellie Parsons, who ran Pate’s Cleaners in Ellerbe for 30 years, created custom hangers to accommodate the extraordinary width of his dress shirts.

In 1983-84, Burke Schnedl was a pilot for a charter service at what then was called Rockingham-Hamlet Airport and flew André to wrestling matches in cities throughout the Carolinas and Virginia — Greenville, Fayetteville, Richmond — in a twin-engine Cessna 402.

“We had to take out a seat in the back so he could get in,” Schnedl recalls. “The doorway is not that big, and he would have to turn kind of sideways. It had a bench seat on the side. André sat there and used a seat-belt extender to cover a space where two people normally would sit. He was just a lot of guy. When you shook his hand, it was like putting a single finger in a normal-sized person’s hand.”

By the time André was 12 years old, he already stood 6-foot-2 and weighed about 230 pounds, too large for the bus that transported schoolchildren in his village of Molien, 40 miles outside Paris. The playwright Samuel Beckett, who lived nearby in a cottage that Boris Roussimoff, André’s father, helped him construct, filled the void by driving André in his truck.

Before long André, the middle of Boris and wife Mariann’s five children, had outgrown not only vehicles but the sleepy landscape he saw as an impasse stopping his ambition to be famous. Boris Roussimoff didn’t understand, and at 14 André quit school, left home and set out on his own.

“His father told him he would be back soon working on the farm, and André had something to prove,” says Chris Owens, a repository of André the Giant knowledge who authors a Fan Club page on Facebook and has been intrigued by Roussimoff since he was a boy in the Midwest and saw him wrestle televised matches. “He didn’t want to stay in rural France. To me, he was always a guy going after his dream who became a classic success story.”

As a teenager in Paris, André’s preferred game was rugby, although he also got immense pleasure from pranking friends by rearranging their parked small cars while they were dining or drinking. He got 7 or 8 inches taller and gained nearly a hundred pounds before he turned 21, impressing professional wrestlers who noticed him training in a gym. They introduced him to their game, taught him some moves, and by the mid-1960s André René Roussimoff was getting paid to perform as Jean Ferre, Géant Ferré, The Butcher Roussimoff and Monster Eiffel Tower — and he was loving all of it.

“Many men were afraid to go in the ring with him, especially after he reached his 20s, because he was so large and strong,” André’s first manager, Frank Valois, told Sports Illustrated in 1981. “For all his height and weight, he could run and jump and do moves that made seasoned wrestlers fearful. Not so much fearful that he would hurt them with malice, but that he might hurt them with exuberance. He was incroyable.”

Promoters sent him to Great Britain, Germany, Australia, Africa and eventually Japan, a country where he first wrestled as Monster Roussimoff and would have some of his most avid fans the whole of his career. He began to be billed as André the Giant in 1973 by Vince McMahon Sr., founder of the World Wide Wrestling Federation, who discouraged André from being very active in the ring — even though his body at that point still allowed it — and to play up the fact that he was an immovable mountain of a man. “He was taught to wrestle as a giant,” says Owens. “He had a limited set of moves, and his matches generally were kept fairly short.”

Under McMahon, André made a large six-figure annual income and became the most famous professional wrestler in the world who traveled the majority of each year for two decades, his luggage belying his size. “He carried an unbelievably small bag for his wrestling gear,” says McAuley. “I don’t know how he packed as much as he did in that small bag. But if he was packing up at a motel and something didn’t fit, he would leave it behind. There were things left all over, I’m sure. I hope the maids discovered what they had.”

André was a creature of habit on the road because there was enough ducking and crunching just getting around that he didn’t like improvising unnecessarily. “If you gave me the name of the town he was in,” says McAuley, “I could tell you what hotel he stayed at, what restaurant he ate at and what bar he went to, and pretty much be right every time. There was security that came with the habit. He knew his size and where he could fit and couldn’t fit. If he had been going to a certain motel for 10 years and everyone else started going to a fancier place, he’d go to his usual one.”

Wherever André the Giant went, he amazed people with how much he could eat or drink if he was in the mood.

There are stories of his ordering every entrée on a menu, as McAuley witnessed one summer day in Montreal in the mid-1980s as she and Frenchy dined with André and several others. “We were at a small Italian place,” McAuley recalls. “André was in a good mood. He told the waiter he would like one of everything. The waiter said, ‘Seriously?’ Frenchy said, ‘Seriously.’”

Pro wrestler Don Heaton told the Los Angeles Times after the Giant’s death. “Everything came in twos,” he said. “Two lobsters, two chickens, two steaks . . . ”

There were nights of 100 beers, 75 shots, or seven bottles of wine lest any course of a special meal feel lonely.

“I can report with confidence that his capacity for alcohol is extraordinary,” Terry Todd wrote in his classic in-depth 1981 Sports Illustrated profile of Roussimoff. “During the week or so I was with him, his average daily consumption was a case or so of beer; a total of two bottles of wine, generally French, with his meals; six or eight shots of brandy, usually Courvoisier or Napoléon, though sometimes Calvados; half a dozen standard mixed drinks, such as bloody Marys or screwdrivers; and the odd glass of Pernod.”

Actor Cary Elwes recounted the making of The Princess Bride in his book As You Wish. He recalled going out barhopping with André in New York City after the movie’s premiere. The Giant’s beverage of choice that evening, as it sometimes was when they were filming in England, was what André called “the American,” a combination of many hard spirits.

“The beverage came, as expected, in a forty-ounce pitcher, the contents of which disappeared in a single gulp,” Elwes wrote. “And then came another. And they kept coming while I gingerly sipped my beer. We talked about work and movies, about his farm in North Carolina where he raised horses, his relatives back in France, and of course, about life. André was a man unlike any other — truly one of a kind.”

This unique character ended up living in Richmond County after coming with French-Canadian Adolfo Bresciano, who was billed as Dino Bravo in the ring, to visit Bravo’s stepdaughter in the late-1970s. She and her husband owned farm property in Ellerbe. André bought a nearby home, a three-story structure. The Bernards moved from Florida in the summer of 1980.

“We lived there and took care of things,” McAuley says. “If Andre needed something, Frenchy or I would get it. He just had the house for several years, with some cows and horses. Then the property down the road came up for sale, so we bought the ranch. Then he worked on getting the wooded property in the middle. André was in a bar in England once talking to a pilot who had Texas longhorns back home. So Andre decided we should have Texas longhorns, too.”

Some believed that Andre’s residence must have been built for his colossal frame, but it wasn’t. “Nothing could be further from the truth,” says McAuley. “The stairs were narrow. It was three floors. He didn’t care to have a house that was adapted to him because his life was in the real world. You’re not going to raise the light or the ceiling fan, because they’re not going to run into it. It becomes second nature. We really only did two things: We raised the shower faucet, so the water would hit him on the top of the head instead of the middle of the back, and we ordered him a large chair.”

André would often sit in his chair with McAuley’s miniature dachshunds tucked by each tree trunk of a leg. He loved riding an all-terrain vehicle around his property. In the summers, André favored gym shorts, sometimes with a T-shirt, sometimes not. He was an expert cribbage player, owing to his good math mind and so many hours playing before wrestling matches. He didn’t venture far from his property when he was home, but loved his iced coffee at Dixie Burger, weekend meals at Little Bo Club in Rockingham, cookouts at neighbors’ homes, and checking in the hardware or feed stores.

McAuley says she never heard her friend talk about any regrets, that he never second-guessed anything in his life. “I have had good fortune,” André told Todd in 1981, “and I am grateful for my life. If I were to die tomorrow, I know I have eaten more good food, drunk more beer and fine wine, had more friends and seen more of the world than most men ever will.”

In addition to the scary episode of fluid buildup around his heart in 1983, he began to have other health problems during his years in Ellerbe. André had neck and back issues and surgeries, and he sustained a broken ankle in a 1981 match, wrestling on it for days until the pain became too much. To accommodate his size, the largest cast ever prepared at Boston’s Beth Israel Hospital was utilized.

An opportunity to be in The Princess Bride came along at a good time, since wrestling was becoming increasingly difficult because of André’s deteriorating body. “He could feel his wrestling career closing down,” McAuley says. “He had been so agile when he was younger. It was tough to watch him wrestle near the end of his life because of how hard it was for him to get around.”

André had acted before — including portraying “Bigfoot” in a two-part episode of The Six Million Dollar Man — but he loved being part of the months-long production of The Princess Bride as Fezzik. “Doing Princess Bride gave him the most happiness,” says McAuley. “He’d call home and talk about all the silly tricks he was pulling, especially the week or so that Billy Crystal was there.” Around the set, as in his adopted hometown in North Carolina, André impressed with his disposition despite his acute pain.

“You could tell he was in tremendous pain, but would never complain about it,” actress Robin Wright remembered in As You Wish. “You could see it in his face when he would try to stand up from a seated position. But he was just the most gentle giant. So incredibly sweet.”

André never tired of watching The Princess Bride, but some of his friends did. “He drove the wrestlers crazy,” McAuley says. “Over in Japan, on a bus from the hotel to the matches, the boys would wait quietly until eventually he’d pull out the tape and say, ‘Let’s watch my movie again.’ They’d say, ‘Please boss. Not again.’ But they’d watch.”

The same year that The Princess Bride came out, André the Giant was headliner at WrestleMania III, where he was body-slammed and defeated by nemesis Hulk Hogan in front of a record crowd of 93,173 at the Pontiac Silverdome. He wrestled the last of his 1,996 matches (a record of 1,427-388-181) on Dec. 4, 1992 in Tokyo, his physical condition worsening. “His walking was compromised,” Owens says. “His posture had changed. He constantly needed something to hold on to or somebody to help him keep his balance.”

André’s last Christmas in Ellerbe was much different than the joyous first one a dozen years earlier. “He was just not himself,” McAuley says. “His color didn’t look good. I remember standing next to him and patting his stomach, which (had gotten larger). It didn’t dawn on me then that the first time that happened was ’83.”

In January 1993 André flew to France to be with his dying father. He stayed over after his dad’s death to be with his mother for her birthday on Jan. 24. On the 27th, André enjoyed a full day with boyhood friends from Molien. A driver was scheduled to pick him up at the Paris hotel where he was staying at 8 o’clock the next morning.

André didn’t pay attention to clocks, seldom wore a watch, and rarely was late. But he was not there to meet his driver, and he didn’t answer the phone in his room.

“The chain was on the door but they could see André in bed,” McAuley says. “The sheet was perfectly neat around him. He must have died as soon as he laid down, because André was one, when he woke up in the morning, the linen would be all shuffled around and when I would go to make his bed, I’d basically have to start over because the sheets would be in all different directions.”

The Roussimoffs were told André’s body was too big to be handled by any local crematoriums. A custom casket was constructed, and McAuley flew to France with her sister to accompany the body back to the United States so that André’s desire to be cremated, set forth in his will, could be carried out. Before returning, she visited Molien to meet André’s mother — “She was shorter than me and just adorable” — and siblings.

McAuley brought photo albums, pictures of “girls André knew” and his daughter, Robin Christensen Roussimoff, born in 1979, with whom he had little contact — a handful of visits and regular holiday phone calls. McAuley flew to the Seattle area once hoping to make André’s wish of a visit by his daughter to his North Carolina home a reality, but Robin, a young girl intimidated by the thought of a long trip to an unfamiliar place, declined.

André was returned to the land he had come to know so well on Feb. 24, 1993. Big-time wrestlers and small-town residents alike attended the ranch service, and after folks had spoken their remarks and paid their respects, Frenchy Bernard got on a horse with a saddlebag containing Andre’s ashes.

In death as in life André Roussimoff was larger than most. His remains weighed 17 pounds after cremation, nearly three times more than a usual adult male. They were spread in silence so different from the mayhem of the arenas and gyms where he had worked, finding their place, just like the man had.

2025 Andre of Ellerbe Feature

Retiring In Style

RETIRING IN STYLE

Retiring In Style

Designing on a clean slate

By Deborah Salomon

Photographs by John Gessner

The Browns’ favorite décor color does not appear on any rainbow. Instead, Frank and Becky Brown chose a sandy French vanilla with flecks of oatmeal and cocoa throughout their uber-contemporary retirement residence that answers to simply stunning. Here, the old is missing but not missed. With the exception of a grandmother’s desk furnishings, fixtures, objets and art are new, selected for this space by Becky on the advice of Pinehurst interior designer Angela Budd.

“We had traveled, moved around so much (for Frank Brown’s career in beverage distribution management) that we decided to give everything away and start fresh,” Becky says.

No way could she manage such a task from Colorado, their final post. Budd, in consultation with the Browns, created a subtle, sophisticated environment based on a color softer than white, easier to live with than primaries. Even the 4-inch oak floorboards throughout reflect this hue.

All new, soup to nuts, minimum legwork, professional advice, what a lark! Frank calls the finished product “calm,” while running his hand over a rich chocolate brown coffee table of the fashionable “stacked” genre.

“I love this table,” he says with a smile.

The then Florida-based Browns had friends from Raleigh who, after golfing in Pinehurst, decided to move here. Frank and Becky visited, fell in love with the area and chose the Country Club of North Carolina for retirement. Downsizing wasn’t their goal. They required something one-story on a spacious lot partially fenced for their dogs — a house that didn’t need a structural overhaul or floorplan rearrangement. What they found was 3,400 square feet, built in 1986 on 1.6 acres. It was so right they purchased it from photos, boots on the ground unnecessary.

Next, Becky needed an interior designer who could translate generalities into sofas, chairs, tables and a kitchen that blends sophistication with practicality. “I had never worked with a designer before,” she says, let alone making decisions influencing what she calls their “forever-type house.”

Budd, of Angela Douglas Interiors, was recommended by a previous client. The responsibility of starting fresh was not new to her, nor was the “clean, soothing, calming” mandate. These were active, young retirees. Angela and Becky shopped high-end High Point furniture vendors for the most comfortable, thickly upholstered pieces. A 120-inch sofa anchors the more formal of the home’s two sitting areas, separated by a double-sided fireplace wall with framed flat screens and built-in shelves. The tables in two dining areas — one closer to the kitchen — have graceful curved tops. One expands seating by replacing chairs with a banquette, useful during visits from their two children and four grandchildren.

Charcoal and paler grays punctuate sandy neutrals in the seating areas, where Frank and Becky relax after supper. Every so often, particularly in chairs, Scandinavian modern shapes popular in the 1950s reappear. The kitchen itself, with island, concealed refrigerator with black interior, wine cooler, Zline luxury range and coffee bar has only drawers, no under-counter cabinets. In contrast, tall walnut backlit cabinets displaying the Browns’ wedding china and crystal rise from the countertop. Shiny gold ping pong ball-sized drawer pulls provide pops of color throughout.

Much thought was given to making spaces flow into one another, including two living/dining screened verandas. With entertaining in mind, Budd created a talk-of-the-town powder room. Squares on a deep brown grasscloth wallpaper are outlined by hundreds of hand-applied metallic rivets. Unusual brass sink fixtures, sconces and a narrow, towering skylight make every visit memorable.

As in the kitchen, built-in storage units dominate an entire wall of the master suite, where an upholstered rectangular headboard illustrates the softened geometrics visible throughout, including a low upholstered bench at the end of the bed, similar to Victorian slipper chairs, where ladies sat while lacing up their tall shoes.

Bedrooms on the guest end of the longitudinal layout will be finished with bunk beds for the grandchildren. An office has been mentioned, as has a sauna. No pool required — the CCNC clubhouse is a few minutes away.

Budd also helped choose the art, from framed black and white photos to several abstract canvases. Frank, who grew up sharing an 880-square foot one-bathroom apartment in St. Louis with his parents and three siblings, smiles and shakes his head at the painting over the living room sofa.

The Browns purchased the house in March 2024 while posted in Colorado. They were able to use the bedrooms a few months later, when Becky and Angela visited showrooms, discussed colors and details. The renovation/furnishing was completed in February 2025. For The Reveal, always emotional, Budd illuminated lamps and fixtures, put flowers on the tables, food in the fridge, wine in the cooler. The coffee bar was stocked. Linens covered the beds, and towels hung in the bathrooms.

Thrilled doesn’t even come close to what Becky Brown felt during the unveiling. She still plans to buy new pots and pans, dishes, glassware and cutlery. Small adjustments are inevitable. “But I always dreamed of living in a home that reflects who I am.”

And now, thanks to serendipity, professional advice, resources and friends who blazed the trail to Pinehurst, she does.

2025 Feature Retiring In Style

The Perfect Match

THE PERFECT MATCH

The Perfect Match

Rory McIlroy and the Quail Hollow Club

By Ron Green Jr. • Photograph by Mogie Adamchik

It has been 15 years since that electric Sunday afternoon at Quail Hollow Club when Rory McIlroy formally introduced himself to the American golf society.

McIlroy was still two days shy of his 21st birthday, and he was one hour removed from having played a round for the ages. Not only had McIlroy won the Quail Hollow Championship for his first PGA Tour victory, he had done so by shooting a closing 10-under par 62 that crackled with a Zeus-like thunder.

By finishing with six consecutive threes on his scorecard, the last one a 40-foot birdie putt that had McIlroy punching the air as his curls danced around the edges of his cap, the game’s new star had arrived trailing sparks.

In the quiet of the Quail Hollow locker room after a Champagne toast with members, McIlroy stood between two rows of lockers, talking to his parents on the phone, the impending magnitude of his performance still settling over everyone.

The Earth was moving.

Television commentator David Feherty, a native of Northern Ireland like McIlroy, had walked the finishing stretch with the winner and said as he left the 18th green, “That’s the most impressive thing I’ve seen in a very, very long time.”

So it began, at least here in the United States, a golf story midway through its second decade that is painted in primary colors and piercing emotions.

This month McIlroy returns to Quail Hollow Club, where he is a member, and where he has won the annual PGA Tour event four times. This visit is different. Oh, so different. It’s the year’s second major, the PGA Championship, being played at a spot McIlroy has more than once called “one of my favorite places on Earth.” And now he’s got a green jacket hanging in his closet after winning the Masters in a sudden-death playoff over Justin Rose, ending a nearly 11 year drought since his last major championship victory and making him just the sixth player to complete the career Grand Slam, joining Gene Sarazen, Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player, Ben Hogan and Tiger Woods.

Fourteen years after losing a 4-stroke lead in the final round of the Masters, McIlroy’s victory sent him to his knees sobbing in relief and resonating throughout the golf world.

“It’s the best day of my golfing life,” said McIlroy, who had too much practice explaining his near-miss losses in major championships. “I’m very proud of myself. I’m proud of never giving up. I’m proud of how I kept coming back and dusting myself off and not letting the disappointments really get to me. Talking about that eternal optimist again. Yeah, very proud.”

When asked late last year if he knew where the 2025 PGA Championship would be played, McIlroy answered, “Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte, North Carolina, and I cannot wait.”

Such is the tie that binds McIlroy to Charlotte — and, by extension, North Carolina — though his last competitive start in the Tar Heel State ended with one of the most emotionally devastating losses in his career, his runner-up finish to Bryson DeChambeau in the 2024 U.S. Open at Pinehurst No. 2.

“It was a great day until it wasn’t,” McIlroy would say later.

McIlroy led by two strokes with five holes remaining and left brokenhearted, haunted by short misses on the 16th and 18th greens when it appeared he would end a decade-long drought in the majors. Instead, McIlroy drove away alone and silent and, while DeChambeau celebrated his victory, there was a bittersweetness in the summer air at Pinehurst that McIlroy, so beloved and so close, had been denied again.

As Tiger Woods stepped back and Phil Mickelson stepped away, McIlroy has grown into, arguably, golf’s biggest star. Part of it is the majesty of his skills, a mesmerizing blend of power and panache. Another part, the one that may define McIlroy, is the charismatic connection that has been forged in the fire of soaring successes and aching disappointments.

McIlroy has won 29 PGA Tour events, including five major championships and two Players Championships, and there are still questions about the ones that got away. He is judged against an almost impossibly high bar, one he set for himself with his own brilliance, and it comes with an emotional attachment from his fans that runs deeper than anyone else in the game.

McIlroy is charismatic, vulnerable, magnetic, thoughtful, battle scarred, curious, sharing and generous. Fans don’t just watch McIlroy play, they sign on for the ride, investing in him because he has so often returned that investment, whether with his thank-yous, his outspokenness or his natural charm.

Think of McIlroy and a library of images comes forward.

There he is hugging his father, Gerry, after his 8-stroke victory in the 2011 U.S. Open at Congressional Country Club, barely two months removed from his final round collapse at the Masters.

A year later, laying his head back and letting the ocean breeze blow across him, he walked the final hole of another 8-stroke victory at the 2012 PGA Championship at Kiawah Island.

Then, in a sweet and touching moment, handing the Claret Jug to his mother, Rosie, after winning the 2014 Open Championship at Royal Liverpool.

There he is hoisting the FedEx Cup trophy in 2016 and 2019 and again in 2022.

Side by side, there’s McIlroy in tears after a gutting performance in a Ryder Cup loss at Whistling Straits in 2021, and another of him showering his European teammates in Champagne after wins in 2018 and 2023.

Walking stoically up the 18th fairway at the Old Course in 2022 after failing to make a birdie in the final round of the Open Championship, knowing he had the Claret Jug in his grasp again until he didn’t.

Had any of us been there to see it, there was McIlroy alone in New York City after his U.S. Open loss at Pinehurst, quietly walking The High Line for what he called a reset, “finding the joy in the small things in life.”

And now, having shed the awesome burden of time, there he is finding tears and joy, kneeling on the 18th green at Augusta National.

As golf has been torn apart by the battle between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf in recent years, McIlroy has often been at the nexus of the fiery debate about what is right and wrong, good and bad, possible and unacceptable. He wanted to be part of the solution, understanding that the PGA Tour’s money-heavy response to LIV Golf’s excesses benefited him as much as anyone. McIlroy was sharply critical of LIV’s approach, and his press conferences often became touchstones for how the establishment (meaning the PGA Tour) viewed what was happening.

Gradually, McIlroy tempered his stance, and while he vowed his lifetime allegiance to the PGA Tour, he sought harmony even as his role in the behind the scenes discussions diminished. His goal, it seemed, was to find the greater good, and he said as much.

“I have always said I will answer questions honestly. I don’t want to change that about myself. I think people appreciate that about me,” McIlroy said.

The day after McIlroy won the 2010 Wachovia Championship, I walked into the Charlotte Observer office, and more than one person asked who the kid was who won the golf tournament on Sunday.

“Probably the next great one,” I told them, not because I have a particular eye for talent, but seeing McIlroy in that moment pulled back the curtain on the future. “One of these days, you will remember he won his first one at Quail Hollow.”

With the return of the PGA Championship — it was played there in 2017 — the inevitable question arises: Can Rory still win majors in bunches, as he did to close out the 2014 season? Perhaps for an answer he can look to Sarazen, the first golfer to complete the career slam before there even was such a thing — when Sarazen won the Masters in 1935 the tournament was little more than an infant. McIlroy allowed nearly 11 years to roll past between major titles. Sarazen won three majors in 1922-23 and suffered a nine-year drought until he won four more from 1932-35, the last coming in Augusta. Can the newest member of the career Grand Slam club equal the fortunes of the first?

Here we are, 15 years after McIlroy’s first triumph in America. There are flecks of gray in his hair, but the boyishness remains, tempered only slightly by the years and the demands.

After winning his second Players Championship in March, McIlroy was asked if he still connects with his inner child when he wins.

That familiar smile crossed his face.

“Ten-year old Rory would think this is really, really cool,” he said.

He’s not the only one.

2025 Feature The Perfect Match