Seven decades of my life

Front matter

of My Life

Glass

Rook : Copyright N?

Chapter I

The clock is about to strike the midnight hour of the twelfth of April, 1913, as I begin this record.. The rain has ceased to fall upon the roof and beat against the windows. The lightnings no longer flash in the heavens, and the thunder has ceased to beat the Long Roll in the battle of the clouds. The river, flooded by the storm, rashes on to the Gulf. All is quiet in the city except now and then the rumbling of a late street car passing the Cathedral is heard, or the galloping of a horse on Ross Avenue reminds you that a policeman is hunting for a burglar. At this hour I am sitting alone in my "old arm chair" while the fire burns. My memory on the wings of the wireless telegraph, is flying back over the seven decades of my life and presenting the moving pictures as I traveled over mountains, and rivers, and valleys, and oceans, and gulfs.

There are pictures of childhood and manhood and old age; pictures of love and battle, and joy and sorrow; pictures of success and failures, of struggles and peace; pictures of music and discord, of friends and enemies.

I propose to talk about these pictures for a while, I don't know how long. You needn't listen unless you like; it won't hurt you to listen, and it may not make you any wiser; it may put you to sleep and that will be well, or it may help you to while away an hour when you have nothing better to do. There will be nothing wonderful about these pictures, for they will represent the movements of an ordinary life and I am no great artist. I propose to divide these seventy years into Seven Decades and compare the importance and the work of each with the others. First, when the rod was not spared; Second, when the girl appeared; Third, when the wife was found; Fourth, when the voices of children were heard; Fifth, when the battle for bread was on, and the city lured; Sixth, when the footprints were on the mountain top and the face was towards the sunset; Seventh when the yellow leaf was fluttering in the wintry winds and the snows began to fall and the time approached when "the silver cord was to be loosed, or the golden bowl was to be broken. "

As these moving pictures come out of the dark recesses of the past, men and women, boys and girls will walk along the highways or will ride on prancing steeds, or will sail in vessels on the deep waters. They will not always be silent, but you may hear the laughter of children the soft voices of love, the booming cannon, the thundering shock of the charging squadrons, the clash of sabres, the shout of victory, the music of triumph. I will introduce you to great men and women and lovely maidens. I have met the great men; I have admired the beautiful women; I have loved the lovely maidens. In every man's life there are three wonderful, beautiful, solemn events — birth, marriage, death. I am not talking about old bachelors. Now I will begin.

THE FIRST DECADE

On the 17th of November, 1839, I made my first appearance on the stage of action. I suppose the sun was shining, and the breezes were blowing, and the cocks were crowing, and there was much running to and fro. I suppose so, I don't know, I don't remember, though I know I was there. The first person I saw was the gentlest, sweetest woman in the world — my mother — Elizabeth Murphy Cole, and the first man that my gray eyes beheld was a soldier, planter, and preacher — my father — Major William Carter Cole. And there I was "rocked in the cradle of the deep" Snow Creek, in Stokes County, North Carolina, "near the Virginia line." Though I have met many great and good men in my life, it is becoming in me to mention my father first. I was his ninth son and his twelfth child, his work was finished when he was about fifty years old, and he died and "was gathered to his people" before I could know him. He was known as a good man, an industrious planter, a brave soldier of the war of 1812, a devoted minister of the gospel, a just magistrate. His first wife, Susan Clement of Virginia, gave him six sons and two daughters. His second wife was the mother of three sons and one daughter, the oldest son dying in childhood.

Let me group together these eleven grown sons and daughters, and introduce them to you by name, and you may see what kind of a father was theirs by the names he gave them. Here they come in the order of their ages: Robert Bangs, Nancy Jane, Letitia Elizabeth, Barzillai Lipscomb, William Walter, John Wesley, Thomas, Franklin, Isaac Newton, Christopher Columbus, Susan Ruth and James Reid.

The descendants of these sons and daughters of our father and mothers number more than two hundred, making five generations forward, and there were eight or ten generations back from my father in Virginia. My widowed mother with her three children went back to the home of her father, Jesse Murphy, in Patrick County, Virginia. Here my memory dwells on the joys of my childhood, the apples and peaches and pears and cherries and plums and flowers of a happy home, where the servants lived in their cabin homes and sang as they worked among the yellow corn silks, and harvested the wheat in the summer time, and we gathhered the walnuts, hickory nuts, hazel nuts, chestnuts and chinkapins; and the strawberries, blackberries, dew berries, raspberries and whortleberries; and just look at the chickens! We listen to the crowing of the rooster, the quacking of the ducks, the gobblings of the old turkey gobbler, the screams of the geese, the chatterings of the guineas, and the proud peafowl with its gorgeous tail spread for our admiration: and the horses and ponies and hogs and lambs and goats. And are you going to forget the great striped watermelons with their red and yellow meat, and the golden muskmelons so delicious? O glorious old times, on the old plantation while we drank the cold spring water and bathed in the "babbling brooks" and devoured the yellow yams and roasting ears and chicken pies! We were surrounded by the old families, our kindred and neighbors and friends, the Murphys and Penns and Tatums and Dodsons and not far away the Critzs and Staples and Scales and Stuarts (Jeb's People) ; all were good, some became famous as warriors, governors, judges and statesmen. All hail dear old Patrick County! I still carry your picture in my heart, though half a century has passed since my horse galloped over your by-ways, and I heard the winds howl over your hills.

There we laid to rest our octogenarian grandfather and grandmother away back in the 40's, and my mother, with her children and servants, moved to her own plantation only a mile away.

We didn't have colleges and universities and palaces in those good times, for we were living among the ancients in the back woods in the days of slavery, where it was not considered in good form ever to go out of your own county. Every man was his own monarch, and every woman a queen, and the man of the woods and the woman of the home were the lords and ladies of the land.

A school house at a camp ground was about three miles from our home, and when I was about five years old I walked to that school with my sister who was a few years older. We crossed the creeks on "foot logs" and followed the way blazed by the axe for our direction. The teacher was a good old man whose name was Dodson. 0, I didn't learn anything except to endure some hardships, become acquainted with boys and girls, and receive the impressions of strength and independence that was a part of a good education in the future. All these years of the First Decade of one's life are the sign boards to noble manhood and the spurs to greatness if well directed.

Two years passed away in our home and the circuit rider came to see us now and then and preached in the old school house near by, and I sat on the seat next to him as I was preparing to follow him on the circuit when I became a man. One day I had been fishing with some of the servants and when I returned I found my mother dying, and the house full of weeping relatives and friends. I was only six "years old and didn't know the great loss about to fall upon me, to last all the decades of my life; but as I stood by the bedside and saw my mother lying there so conscious, so peaceful and all the people weeping, I began to cry too and they tried to lead me away, but my mother said, "Let him stay," and I never heard her voice again. They were her last words. And I stayed. Thus my earliest recollections were of the woodlands and hills and running streams and country life on our old plantations in Virginia.

When the father and mother go away into the spirit world, their children are left to the tender mercies of the world to meet and endure the fortunes or misfortunes as they may come. My father's youngest brother, Dr. John L. Cole of Stokes County, North Carolina, was appointed the guardian for my mother's three children, and the two oldest were taken to his home and I went to live with my half sister, Mrs. Letty Cole Martin, in Rockingham County, North Carolina, ten miles away from our former home. So that by the time I was six years old I had lived in North Carolina with my father, and in Virginia with my mother, and in North Carolina again with my sister.

We had fallen into good hands and no outsider could have discovered that we were not with our own parents. My sister Letty was an excellent woman; her husband, Andrew Martin, was a good man, and they raised a large number of children. They had a good farm on Mayo River, valleys and hills, river and creek and orchards. Here I lived five years, going to school, fishing in the river, hunting rabbits and 'possum, shooting with bow and arrow, enjoying the corn shuckings, quiltings, log rollings, camp meetings, playing and fighting with the boys. The old school house was about a mile from our home. It was on a hill in the woods and had but one room with a door at one end and a big fireplace at the other end, a log cut out of the side gave us light, and a wide board fixed to write on; the benches had no backs, and the teacher sat in the corner with a long switch by his side. The teacher received sixteen dollars a month and boarded around among the families free. He was considered a learned scholar if he could carry you through the " double rule of three" in arithmetic. We played marbles and "cat" and soldiers, for the Mexican war was then going on, and we saw the pictures of our great generals and scenes of battle. Cat was a great game in those days and was the forerunner of town ball in the villages and towns and town ball was the forerunner of baseball, which people go crazy about now. I learned rapidly at those old field schools and an old negro once asked me what I was studying and I told him "Reading, Writing, Arithmetic and Grammar," which was doing pretty well for a nine year old boy. He then asked me what I would study next, and I told him "Geography." And what next, he asked, and I told him "O nothing, there isn't anything to learn after that." We had to write compositions and read them to the school. The teacher would take a goose quill which we had pulled out of the wing of an old gander, and, with his knife, make us pens to write with, for we had never seen a steel pen, and we would gather from big oak trees "Ink Balls" and make our ink.

I had to write a composition about a horse. The result was about like this: "A horse is a animal which we ride on. He has a head and four legs and a tail. He can walk and trot and gallop. A cow has four legs too and a head and a tail and two horns. We don't ride on a cow."

The people about there thought I was a smart boy and prophesied great things for me. Fifteen years after that composition, I was commanding a Confederate Regiment in the great war, and the teacher that made me write that composition was a private soldier in my regiment and took great credit to himself for my promotion, and an old neighbor whose boys also attended that school was in the regiment, and we had not met since the days of that school ; he was delighted to see me and said, while he was laughing heartily, "I always knew you would be a great man." That composition showed that I was on the way.

Ten miles away at the little town of Madison on Dan River I saw my first circus. It was wonderful to my youthful eyes. The prancing horses, the lofty swingings, the splendid horsemanship, the somersaults, the funny clowns, the great giant, the old woman on horseback who said she was two hundred and tooty too years old, the fight of the giant and the clown running among the negroes in the circus and the wild flight of the negroes, all combined, was the greatest thing in the world to me. Within a few miles of each other in these two back woods counties of Virginia — Patrick and Henry, and Rockingham, North Carolina, four boys were living who became great and noted characters in after life.

J. E. B. Stuart, the celebrated cavalry leader in the army of Northern Virginia, I saw on the battlefield of Fredericksburg. He charged over the breastworks of General Joe Hooker at Chancellorsville and died on the battlefield of Yellow Tavern.

General Alfred Scales was my commander on the Rappahannock in Virginia and fell badly wounded at Gettysburg and afterwards was governor of North Carolina — a fine character.

Col. Alexander Terrell, whom I met nearly twenty years after the war in Austin, Texas. He became Minister to Turkey by appointment of President Cleveland.

Hon. John H. Traylor, a distinguished senator in Texas and Mayor of Dallas, whom I knew well thirty years after we were scattered by the war of secession.

Here ends my First Decade. I had spent five years in this good home. I had associated with boys and girls in the schools and social gatherings and met them in after years far away under interesting circumstances. Twenty years later I was leading a cavalry command among some of these scenes to meet an invading enemy.

This sketch of the First Decade of my life may not be interesting to you — I was only a boy, but it was the beginning, it was the foundation, and the Blue Back Speller and Pikes' Arithmetic and Smith's Grammar are "dear to my heart with the scenes of my childhood." The sun still shines on the hills and the valleys of my childhood homes. Bull Mountain yet stands

"Lofty and lifeless and pale in the sky Like the ghost of a giant creation gone by."

With fond recollections and love for those good people who have long ago crossed over the river, I bid farewell to my childhood days and step over the line into my Second Decade.

SECOND DECADE

CHAPTER II. Stokesburg and Greensboro

One beautiful day in the spring of 1851, a young man drove up to the gate in front of our house, hitched his horse and came in. He was my brother Frank, lately returned from Mississippi, Louisiana and Arkansas.

We had not seen him since he left the State in 1844. He came to carry me into Stokes County, twenty five miles south to make my home with my brother William. He was a single man and made his home in Stokesburg with my brother. He died a few years after this while on a business trip to South Carolina.

A few years before this my brother William had graduated in medicine, settled in Stokesburg, had fallen in love with a fine young lady, rich and accomplished, and, failing to receive the consent of her parents, took her up behind him on his horse, galloped away in the night, after a storm of rain, swam the turbulent waters of Town Fork, and they were married by a fine old magistrate, William A. Lash, and lived happy ever afterwards. My brother William was a handsome man of about twenty seven when I entered his family. He was a physician, a merchant, a planter, a manufacturer of tobacco, and served on various other enterprises. My life here for two years and a half was pleasant and agreeable every way. I attended schools in the neighborhood and Sunday School at the churches. I learned rapidly and became a good rider on horses, which made me feel at home in the " Third Decade" when I became a cavalry man in the 2nd N. C. Cavalry and had to drill a regiment of horsemen. While attending school about two miles from my home one day the boys resolved to "turn the teacher out" or make him give us a holiday and treat us. This was the custom in the olden times and the school had a great deal of fun on those occasions. If the teacher refused our demands we were to take him to the branch or pond near by and duck him. One of the larger boys was to make the demand and the rest of us were to stand at his back. But, alas, a great long switch stood in the corner handy to the teacher and he was a stern and strong man. The big boy couldn't face the ordeal, but became very studious. Time flew on, the school was about to be dismissed, and our holiday and candy were about to fade away. Though I was only thirteen years of age and trembled at what might happen, I couldn't stand the failure of our plan, so I rose and marched up in front of the teacher and said, "We want a holiday tomorrow and a treat of candy." I looked around for help. One brave boy stepped up to my side; he was about my age. His name was Aurelius Blackburn. All the other boys were studying hard. The teacher reached around for his big switch and slamming it against the floor, commanded "Take your seat, sir!" I looked around for Blucher, but he didn't come to my assistance, and I had my "Waterloo" and marched back to my seat a conquered soldier. That boy who stood by me, fell at Gettysburg, a brave captain leading in the desperate battle. That teacher was a young man and fine looking. He was in love with a very beautiful woman a few miles away. He labored several days in writing to her a long letter on which his future happiness might depend. It was beautifully written. One day he left these pages lying on his table in the schoolroom. I accidently knocked up against the table and overturned an ink stand and spilled the ink all over the letter.

I expected a row and a whipping if he found out who did it. When he came in and saw what had happened, he looked over the school and said, "Who did this?" Of course none of the others said a word, but I arose and walked up to him and said, "I did it, I didn't go to do it." He looked at me for a moment and said, "Take your seat." I learned a valuable lesson there which I have found in all my life the proper thing to do. If you have done wrong unintentionally, if you have committed a fault unintentionally, if you have offended unintentionally, don't lie about it, don't put the blame on some one else, don't dodge every time a rock comes your way. If you do, you will be on the run the rest of your life. Say "I did it, I am sorry, I didn't go to do it."

There were two pretty girls in that school, But I won't say anything more about that. Town Fork was a large flowing Creek that some times became a raging torrent. One day when I was twelve years old I was bathing in its cool running waters and suddenly realized that I was moving down the stream without touching bottom. I knew immediately that I was swimming for the first time in my life and I was indeed happy ; for to swim through the waters and feel yourself above the waves beneath you is one of the happiest experiences of every boy who lives near a river or creek.

Dr. William Cole was a member of the Methodist Church, as were his father arid mother and all his brothers and sisters. He took me in his buggy one day and carried me to a church several miles from his home to hear our new "circuit rider." It was on a Saturday in the country. I suppose the preacher did the preaching and praying and the singing, for there were only three of us all told. I was no judge but I thought he preached a fine sermon and he must be a good man to put himself to so much trouble as to preach an hour to one man and one boy. I attended a "quarterly meeting' ' at the same place some time afterwards and heard the Rev. Peter Doub, the Presiding Elder. He was a giant in stature and intellect, and thought he was cheating his congregation if he didn't preach two hours, for they would come several miles to hear him, and a thirty minute sermon wouldn't pay them for their trouble. He was a friend of my father, and when I came to Texas in the Third Decade, he placed his hands on my head and blessed me.

There was a young man in the neighborhood, of good family and fine looking, a merchant and popular legislator. One August day in 1853, he brought to our home that good old magistrate, William A. Lash, and he married that young merchant, James E. Matthews, to my sister, who walked three miles to school with me in Patrick County, Virginia, when she was a little girl. She was in the senior class at the Greensboro Female College and on a visit from her home to her brothers' family and was only sixteen years of age, but always thus it was "the way of a maid." She is visiting my family now, away here in Texas, while I am writing this page, 7 6 years old, and her children and grand children are scattered from the Rocky Mountains to New York, and from Kansas to the cane breaks of Texas.

The principal families around Stokesburg were prominent and excellent people — the Lashes, the Daltons, the Matthews, the Coles, the Blackburns and the Poindexters. A few miles away the richest famly in the state, the Hairstons, owned five great plantations on Dan River, each with an overseer and a chief over all, and about a thousand slaves cultivated the land. In those slavery days the aristocracy lived in the country, and there were not many towns in the state with more than a thousand inhabitants. I was now in my fourteenth year and was strong and active and self reliant. Often times I was sent up in the mountains to Danburry, the County Seat, on horseback alone to attend to business for my brother. One day I went to the little town of Germantown to attend an entertainment given by an eminent teacher and preacher, Rev. Everheart. I think I stayed all night with a brother of those two pretty girls mentioned a little while ago. One of the speeches was delivered by John Penn, with whom I attended school years ago in Patrick County. I enjoyed the speech and occasion so well that I memorized the poem.

"It was one summer's evening, Old Kasper's work was

done, * * * "Pray tell us all about the war "And what they killed each other for."

That boy became a gallant soldier and lost a leg in battle.

It was a summer day in 1853, that saw my brother C. C. Cole (Lum) drive up to our home to take me to Greensboro to live with my guardian and uncle. I had lived nearly fourteen years in the country, had all the experience of a country boy of that age, had become an expert farmer — yes indeed. I had seen the corn planted, plowed, hoed, pulled and shucked, I had seen and admired the beautiful tassels and silks and the green blades stripped from the stalk; I had seen the wheat come up through the ground and wave beautifully in the wind, found partridge nests full of eggs in the fields when the reapers cut the wheat with their scythes, and the flails knocked out the fat yellow grain; I saw the "hands" pull the flax, and break the flax and hackle the flax; I saw the cottonseed planted and the bolls open and the white cotton picked and heard the spinning wheel, and watched the busy shuttle of the loom fly back and forth to make me a new suit of clothes; I saw the workmen make a rich bed and sew the tobacco seed and take the "plants" and put them in hills and cultivate the stalks and cut them, and cure them in the barn, and strip them and stem the leaves and roll them into a round plug and put them in the press to become beautiful flat plugs, fit for those who loved that kind of thing. I helped to raise watermelons and yellow yams, and gather apples and peaches and carried them to a still house and made sweet cider and hard cider and various other things. Yes, I reckon I was an expert farmer when I was thirteen years old. I have even mounted a horse and climbed on top of a bag of wheat to carry it to the mill, and watched the white soft flour pour out like the beautiful snow, ready for the biscuit with ham and eggs. No one will dispute that I was a learned farmer.

One day I mounted a horse and rode twelve or fifteen miles to the Court House. I didn't know much about law and the customs about the Court House, but I had curiosity and was not easily abashed, so I went into the building where they were trying a negro for his life for burning somebody's barn. I marched up to the bar and took a seat among the lawyers. I felt perfectly at home. A fine looking lawyer, I think his name was Watts, was walking around within the bar with a paper sack full of candy and presented it to his brother lawyers. When he came close to me he handed me the candy ]'ust as he had done the others. I would be willing to vote for that man for President of the United States if he was a Democratic candidate. See how a little kindness clings to the memory through all the revolving years.

The slaves belonging to our estate were publicly hired out on the first of January of each year, and the proceeds applied to the education and all other expenses of the three children of my mother. A good field hand hired for about thirty to forty dollars for the entire year, but he received his food and clothing and medical attention and general care and protection.

I bade farewell to my country kindred in August, 1853, and arrived in Greensboro to live henceforth with my guardian's family. This family consisted of my uncle and wife and two sons and two daughters and my brother Lum. It was a refined, religious, highly educated family with such surroundings and associations as to present no occasion or temptation for going wrong. All were college students or to be, or graduates of college. For social accomplishments and music and painting, they excelled and, altogether, it was a happy family. My uncle, Dr. Jno. L. Cole, was about five feet six inches high and about the same distance around the body. He was bald headed, active and good natured. Greensboro was a beautiful little city of about three thousand inhabitants with fine homes and families and churches and two female colleges and one institute or high school, and several public schools. Beautiful flowers graced many fine homes and the town was generally called the "City of Flowers." I attended the high school under the instruction of Prof. Holbrook of Harvard nearly three years and for a while received special instruction from a brilliant young lawyer, Wm. L. Scott, a graduate of the University of North Carolina. Some of the boys in that school greatly distinguished themselves in after years in civil and military life. One of these especially had a singular career — Lucius Garvin. He was a little younger than myself. We were intimate schoolboy friends. We parted when we went to college, he went north and I remained in the south. The war separated the two sections for four years. His parents were New Englanders and he became a federal soldier and I a confederate. We never met for forty -five years, nor did we know whether the other survived the war. I saw in the paper of 1904 that Rhode Island had elected Lucius F. C. Garvin Governor of that State. I immediately wrote to him and asked if he was my boyhood friend of North Carolina. I soon received a reply, delightful of old boyhood days and memories. He asked me to meet him at the Exposition at St. Louis on Rhode Island Day. I did so. And you may imagine what a meeting it was as he stood surrounded by his staff. He made me his guest for nearly a week and at a banquet given by Rhode Island in honor of the Exposition officials, Gov. Francis of Missouri, the President of the Exposition, said in his address that what surprised him most was how a man born in Tennessee and raised in North Carolina and educated in Massachusetts could be Governor of Rhode Island. But such was Governor Garvin's round-about history.