Alamance County recently issued the following announcement.
President Mary Thomas Gilbert brought the meeting to order. Brooke Carpenter led us in prayer and the pledge of allegiance to the US flag. Mary Thomas thanked everyone who contributed to the success of our fundraising event last Tuesday night. She told us that 74 dinner tickets were sold, out of which fifty actually showed up. 84 raffle tickets were purchased and $350 worth of game tokens. All sales grossed $6400. After expenses we netted $4043.54, which is amazing considering we put it together in about a month. We feel as if we finally have an event that can become our signature fundraiser. Well done! Carolyn has the program next week on the 25th.
Click here to see all scheduled program dates and responsibilities.
Tuesday was Dick and Bebe’s anniversary!
February Birthdays and Anniversaries
| 2 | John Beshel | 12 | Jason and Shea Crutchfield |
| 14 | Pete Beck | 18 | Dick and Bebe O’Donnell |
| 22 | Chuck Stedman | ||
| 24 | Jason Crutchfield |
Happy Dollars
Dick O’Donnell told us that his and Bebe’s trip to Morocco went off without a hitch. While away he had his best month ever, thanks to a new business relationship with Carolina Digital Phones, a connection he made through Susan Watson.
Carolyn Rhodes gave a shout out to Freebird McKinney, who was recently appointed as the State Board of Education’s Director of Legislative Affairs and Community Outreach. This comes on top of his prior selection as the 2018 Burroughs Wellcome Fund NC Teacher of the Year. Congrats to Freebird, who is a member of our club.
Grand Master Sang Ho Lee announced that his son, William, recently became the first ever Asian American to be elected as Western Alamance High School’s Homecoming King. He raised $2800 in support of the Make A Wish Foundation to secure this honor. He also sings with the school’s acapella group, which has advanced to a competition in Atlanta. William has a solo.
Program: Walter Boyd – Burlington’s Historian
Deva Reece provided us with our speaker today. Deva is a long time member of our club, a past
Reece
president of the former Breakfast Club, and a Paul Harris Fellow. He has been married for 48 years and has two sons. He moved to the area on 1993 to launch Stony Creek Golf Course. He operated five different courses over the years in the area. When he got out of the golf course business, he bought Sir Speedy Printing, which he has operated for the last ten years. Deva told us the story when he officially lost his “cool” status with his son. Something about singing “It’s Amore” while identifying an eel at Sea World.
Boyd
Our speaker, Walter Boyd, was born in Burlington and grew up here. He attended and dropped out of Williams High School, but was admitted to Elon College, where he excelled. He eventually earned degrees in chemistry and law, the latter at George Washington University. He made partner in a firm specializing in patent law. He retired in the Burlington area and has become our unofficial historian, a title he is reluctant to acknowledge; but, after listening to him for about an hour, it is well deserved.
Walter remarked on the irony that he was qualified to teach at ACC, having earned advanced degrees, but unqualified to be a student, not having earned a high school diploma.
His grandmother worked in insurance in Burlington and was part of developing huge swaths of the town. Fountain Place was her pet project, and her name is on all the deeds. Walter remembers being introduced to leading older citizens of the town as a child. He recollects hearing stories going way back, many of which he tape recorded and wrote down. Today he is able to recall enormous amounts of information without notes.
He informed us that the building being used by Burlington Beer Works and as our meeting place goes back to 1885 and is the oldest continuously used building in the city.
This area was first settled in the 18th century. Early on many German settlers chose land around water to avoid digging wells. Many settled without any legal title to the land. A second wave of German settlers started coming in 1756. Many of them were fleeing the violence associated with the French and Indian War.
Some early settlers in the area began to purchase large areas of land. Ben Trollinger bought about a square mile of land when he discovered that the NC Railroad was going to build repair shops in the area to service their trains. He purchased the land for $2 an acre and sold it to the railroad for $10. Later Charles Fisher, a railroad representative for whom Fisher St. is named, found a way to get revenge on Ben for gouging the railroad, putting him and his hotel out of business by building a larger fancier hotel. Mr. Fisher was killed early in the Civil War, being shot in the head. His hat, bullet hole and all, can still be seen.
Burlington grew without a real plan. It’s first business was a general store operated by John Worth.
BBW Building
The town’s second business was built on the site of the BBW building by James G. Moore in 1859, who became the first person besides the railroad to actually own property. Washington Fonville eventually bought the property, which was destroyed by fire in 1884. Jim Alex Holt rebuilt the building in 1885, which still stands today, albeit with some changes. At first Jim ran a general store on the premises. Will Hay later purchased it and ran the store until the 1920s. A NY hotdog shop occupied part of the building at one time, as well as Carolina Sandwich Shop, a real estate company, Gibson’s Ice Cream, and Dillard’s Jewelry.
One very interesting piece of information relates to Burlington changing its name from Company Shops. Town leaders met upstairs in the BBW building to vote on the new name, choosing Burlington, which is another story altogether. This happened February 1, 1887.
Walter spent the remainder of his time answering various questions from our members. Hopefully he will come back to regale us with more stories. He is a Burlington treasure.
Conclusion
There was no raffle this week; so, 45 cards remain in the deck. Mary Thomas led us in a recitation of Rotary’s four-way test before we adjourned. See you next week!
Original source: https://alamancerotary.org/february-18-2020-walter-boyd-burlingtons-historian/
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