100 years of history
By Carol W. Pelosi
In 1920, with the Great War won and the Spanish Flu becoming history, Wake Forest began a number of improvements. The town’s voters had approved $100,000 of bonds for a water system in December of 1919, and in 1920 that bond was increased to $125,000, with $105,000 for water and $20,000 for a sewer system.
The town requested and was granted approval from the state to release the collected — and untreated — sewage into the Neuse River. The letter from the state remains in the minute book for that year.
Water had to be treated, at that time mostly filtered and chlorinated, which meant a treatment plant. For $2,500, the town bought land across from the electric plant on East Elm Avenue from W.W. Holding and built a treatment plant there. (It has been renovated and now is a dentist’s office, but after it was abandoned in the 1960s it became a roost for pigeons and bats. Town attorney Ellis Nassif, who lived next door, used, for him, very strong language in trying to persuade the town to clean it or sell it.)
The water was drawn from a small impoundment on Smith Creek to the east of town. Work on the water system went swiftly, because it was 1921 when water first began to flow to people’s homes and businesses. The minimum bill was $1.50 a month with no charge for the sewer. By 1925 the town was abandoning and filling in the public wells.
Unmentioned by the town commissioners was the sudden rise of a new occupation — plumber — and new household fixtures — toilets, sinks and bathtubs.
The town board was apparently unconvinced the town should be in the electric business and kept trying to sell the electric light plant. There was even a special act in the General Assembly, but the sale never went through.
Carolina Power & Light was selling power to the town under a 60-year contract, and Royall Cotton Mill (which was a separate town with its mill village) donated land next to its plant for a substation. The mill was converting to electricity to run its looms.
Along with the water system, the town began its first fire department in 1921. T.M. Arrington was the first chief, authorized to organize the volunteer firemen. In return for service as firemen, the 23 volunteers were exempt from street duty and tax. At that time, all men between 25 and 50 years of age were expected to either work three hours on the streets each quarter or pay $3.
One of Arrington’s first acts was to purchase the town’s first fire truck, a La France, for $1,650. He also had to find or build two houses for the reels and fire hose and buy “suitable alarms.
The front of the Harris garage was the first fire station, rented at $12.50 a month.
The town board gave orders to Home Telephone and Telegraph Co. to make sure there were operators on duty 24 hours a day to receive fire alarms and coordinate with Arrington about the alarms.
Marie Joyner, who came to town as a young woman, married the Shorty of Shorty’s Hot Dogs, lived a full life and died in 2002, was one of those early telephone operators as was Ruby Reid, who had set up and owned the business, which was located in the basement of the building at the corner of South White Street and Jones Avenue.
Reid was an astute businesswoman and left money in her will that was used to begin the Ruby Reid Day Care Center on the seminary campus. However, as a telephone operator she was command center.
“You will laugh, but it’s really quite nice in uniting the town by keeping everyone informed,” Zua Davis wrote to her friend in Atlanta in the 1920s. “Miss Ruby Reid is the operator. She listens to all the calls, and if the girls call (she had three daughters) and I’m not at home she tells them where I am. There are no secrets in Wake Forest.”
Everyone was graded, too, Zua said. “Everyone attends all school functions, and Miss Emma Poteat, the wife of President Billy Poteat, sends a critique by her maid the next morning. You almost have to achieve if you live here.”
Zua’s husband, Priestley Davis, owned a furniture store and, according to her letters, scored a local automotive coup. “Priestley has a Hupmobile!” Zua wrote in 1920. “Everyone gathered along the road to see the first local car. Priestley drove by – and didn’t stop! We were panic-stricken, thinking he didn’t know how to stop it. He drove around the campus before he came back and stopped.”
Whether Priestley’s was the first or not, automobiles were here to stay, and in 1924 voters approved $175,000 in bonds to pave Jones, White and Wait streets and some others not mentioned in the minutes.
And in 1923 the new national road, U.S. 1, was coming to town and there was the possibility of a paved road, N.C. 98, linking Wake Forest to Durham. Both were built.
The old road to Youngsville was along the east side of the Seaboard tracks, but the engineers for the new U.S. 1 built it along the west side of the tracks, then filled and graded to conquer the steep hill at the north end of Faculty Avenue, which became North Main Street. In the past, a street had run through the campus but now U.S. 1 swept around, leaving the campus untouched.
All this was not accomplished without a bit of rancor, political oil and perhaps some political muscle. The federal government wanted a more direct route through town and wanted the town to condemn and pay for the land owned by the Gill and Timberlake families. The town, which wanted that new breed – tourists – to linger in town as long as possible, was able to win the point.
The town board seemed to have a bit more problem with its lone policeman, W.W. Bobbitt, who had been replaced and reinstated at least once. In August of 1921 the board went on record, saying that “the chief of police confine his activities to attending more closely and promptly to the business of the town.”
The voters approved a Recorder’s Court (similar to today’s district court) in town, and space for the court was rented or leased from T.E. Holding. Later, when the town built its first combination town hall, fire station and police department at the corner of Brooks and Owen, a courtroom was built upstairs for Recorder’s Court.
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What else was in the news in 2003?
The Gazette had news about Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary — something that was cut off suddenly in subsequent years — and reported that former seminary president Paige Patterson, who left to become president of the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, would be the chapel speaker on Tuesday, followed on Wednesday by Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue.
The rest of the article was about Southeastern College with about 500 students while the seminary had 2,000. The college began on the seminary campus in 1994.
In town, the Wake Forest commissioners told Town Manager Mark Williams to get the cost of purchasing water from Kerr Lake. Williams told them he would recommend the commissioners look instead at the Neuse River option because the Kerr Lake option would include interbasin transfers — from Kerr Lake fed by the Roanoke River across the Tar River Basin in Franklin County to the Neuse River basin. And, Williams said, “Henderson (which uses the Kerr Lake water in the city) doesn’t want to be connected to Raleigh — at all.”
The commissioners were looking at all other possibilities for water and sewer rather than agreeing to have Raleigh take ownership of the two systems.
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