Fire up: Rose Hill’s 60th Poultry Jubilee is Nov. 3-4

Rose Hill in Duplin County, N.C., not only has a lovely and romantic name, the community is home to the world’s largest frying pan. And it actually works.

 

The town’s gigantic 2-ton frying pan is 15-feet across. Local firemen give it the gas once a year to celebrate the North Carolina Poultry Jubilee in Rose Hill. This year’s event, which marks a 60-year milestone anniversary, is Nov. 3-4.

The enormous pan holds up to 200 gallons of cooking oil and operates with 40 propane burners. The frying team buys chicken breading mix in 50-pound bags. Volunteers can fry up to 365 whole chickens at a time, turning the birds with pitch forks.

 

The Poultry Jubilee originated in 1963, when Dennis Ramsey, owner of Ramsey Feed Company, said his employees came up the idea to build the world’s largest frying pan to spark interest in Duplin County’s “burgeoning poultry industry.” 

Duplin County continues to rank as one of the top poultry producing counties in North Carolina, and Rose Hill is home to the corporate offices of House of Raeford Farms, a major U.S. chicken processor.

The business began when Nash and Mary Sue Johnson began raising turkeys on their Rose Hill farm in 1925. Later, their two sons, Marvin and Bizzell, joined the company. Their operation to include chickens in 1959. 

Marvin Johnson

Today, the company is known as House of Raeford Farms, with Bob Johnson, the son of Marvin Johnson, serving as company president. Members of the fourth generation have joined the management and production teams.

 

From left: Lon Beasley, Nash Johnson, Mary Susan Beasley, Bob Johnson, Carol Luanne Johnson Sholar, Jantzen Brantley and Cowan Johnson.

Rose Hill also is home to Duplin Winery, the world’s largest muscadine winery with a tank capacity of more than 2.3 million gallons. Duplin Winery also claims to be the oldest and largest winery of any kind in the South.

 

Daniel Jerome “Jiggs” Fussell Sr. decided to make wine out of the grapes in 1972. He and his sons, Dan Jr. and David, planted 10 acres of muscadine grapes. An old family warehouse was converted into the winery.

 

Dan Jr. and David Fussell

The Duplin Winery webmaster recalled that in the 1970s, “the idea of opening ‘a factory of liquid sin’ didn’t sit well around town.” When Elizabeth Fussell was confronted about her sons’ “questionable business, she responded, ‘Well, we’re not making it on Sunday.’” 

Leah Hughes of Our State magazine wrote that eastern North Carolina’s hot and humid climate and flat and sandy soil are perfect conditions for growing “native muscadine grapes, one of the sweetest varieties in the world. The grapes of this region are just like the people – tough with a thick skin but sweet on the inside.” 

Duplin Winery has experienced a rocky road to success, but the Fussell family has persevered. Brothers Dave Fussell Jr. and Jonathan Fussell (sons of David Fussell Sr.) now hold the reins of the Duplin Winery and its associated businesses.

 

Jonathan and Dave Jr. Fussell

The company’s eastern North Carolina roots are reinforced by way of the image of the Hatteras Lighthouse that appears on each wine bottle.

 

“The sweet muscadines taste better chilled,” Jonathan Fussell told Hughes. “Fruitiness is the key to Duplin wine. If you close your eyes and sniff, a glass of muscadine wine smells like a glassful of grapes.” 

There are “health benefits” in every glass of muscadine wine. Hughes reported that “muscadine grapes make extra antioxidants to protect themselves from fungal disease, so muscadine wine contains seven times more disease-fighting antioxidants than European varieties.” 

Dave Fussell Jr. invites sweet wine lovers to try Duplin Winery’s new blend “Muscadine Moscato.” Its “refined honey-floral taste has mellow hints of nectarine and white peach.”

 

Saxapahaw’s ‘swan lady’ is community ambassador

There’s no charge to attend “Saturdays in Saxapahaw.” These community gatherings on a grassy hillside have been described as “a farmers’ market on steroids.”

 

Each event runs from 5-8 p.m. and features fresh produce, live music, artists’ booths, children’s activities and food trucks. The season continues through August. 

Patrons are encouraged to donate cash to compensate the performers. Just toss your money into one of the plastic swan buckets on stage. The big tip jars have character. The containers were the idea of Heather LaGarde, a local entrepreneur. 

She’s been known to take one down and pass it around. Folks call her “the swan lady”…and that makes Heather blush as well as laugh.

 

Saxapahaw is situated on the Haw River in Alamance County. The main road nearby is N.C. Route 87, one of the state’s “true-blue highways.” 

The centerpiece of the community is an old textile mill complex that has been reinvented as an arts and entertainment/food and drink venue that also offers condominium and apartment living options.

 

Heather and Tom LaGarde left New York City to move into a rundown farmhouse just outside Saxapahaw after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. Watching the World Trade Center towers come down in flames “unmoored us,” Heather said. They had two young children.

 

It was a homecoming of sorts. Heather grew up nearby in Chapel Hill but graduated from Bard College at Annadale-on-Hudson, N.Y. Tom grew up in Detroit, Mich., but graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill…where he played some hoops for legendary coach Dean Smith. 

Tommy LaGarde, as Tar Heel network sports broadcaster Woody Durham always called him, was second team All-America in 1977. LaGarde’s No. 45 is one of only 51 honored players’ jerseys that hang from the rafters at the Smith Center.

 

After four knee surgeries, Tom LaGarde retired from professional basketball in 1985. (His trophy case includes a gold medal as a member of the Team USA basketball squad in the 1976 Olympics.)

 

He found work selling stocks and bonds on Wall Street with Morgan Stanley. Since he couldn’t run with banged up knees, Tom LaGarde stayed in shape by rollerblading. Then, he added a basketball, forming the National Inline Basketball League (NIBBL). 

Franz Lidz wrote a nice piece about roller basketball for Sports Illustrated in 1993. Tom LaGarde introduced the sport to disadvantaged kids in Harlem and on the Manhattan’s Lower East Side. 

One day, Heather Harding came to watch, and she met Tom. They were married in 1998. Her career in international relations involved events management. She had done a lot of consulting for United Nations’ initiatives and different global nonprofit projects. They always had some kind of an arts or music component, she said. 

“I believe you can really bring people together that way. I could never have seen that the path would take me to Saxapahaw, but I’m so glad it did.” 

The LaGardes created the Haw River Ballroom at the old mill in Saxapahaw and have helped launch other complementary business enterprises as well.

 

When Meredith Stutz was a broadcast journalism student at Elon University in 2016, she “landed” an interview with Heather LaGarde. They took a walking tour of the community. “Everybody knows you, Meredith remarked, “you’re a celebrity.” 

“No! I’m really not,” Heather replied. “If you were walking around with anybody in Saxapahaw, you would see that everybody loves each other like that. In this town, more people blow kisses than wave; they really do.” 

“I’m just the swan lady here,” Heather said.

Take another N.C. sidetrip to visit Saxapahaw

Just down the road a piece from sleepy-town Swepsonville in Alamance County is Saxapahaw. It’s only about a 6-mile drive between the two communities.

 Saxapahaw is hot-hot-hot. It’s both a nostalgic textile mill village and a renaissance community on the banks of the idyllic Haw River.

 

The fellow who serves as “honorary mayor” of Saxapahaw is developer John McLean Jordan Jr. (everyone calls him Mac). He likes to joke: “We’re a bunch of rednecks and hippies all mixed together.” 

Mac Jordan is fully invested. Saxapahaw is his hometown, and his grandfather was one of the owners of the old cotton mill on the river as well as a U.S. Senator – B. Everett Jordan.

 Sen. Jordan

It’s an interesting story, and the first thing you need to know is how to correctly pronounce Saxapahaw. Locals say the second “a” is silent. Can you say “Sax-pa-haw?” Three syllables, not four. 

The native Americans who inhabited this territory were of the Sissapahaw tribe. One of the first Englishmen to journey through North Carolina in 1701 was John Lawson. He described this spot on the Haw River as “the Flower of Carolina.” 

John Newlin built the Saxapahaw Cotton Factory in 1848. Over time, the plant was enlarged to become a three-story brick building. Eventually, the facility was purchased by Charles Sellers.

 

In 1927, Sellers brought in his nephew, B. Everett Jordan as general manager of Sellers Manufacturing Company. The mill once employed more than 1,000 workers. Dixie Yarns bought the business in 1978. 

The plant closed in 1994, but a new window of opportunity opened for the Jordan family to “reinvent” the property. It’s been an ongoing process for nearly 30 years now that was first spearheaded by John Jordan, Mac’s father. 

Sixty-six old mill village houses were renovated as cottages and sold off. The old mill itself is now Riverview Mill, a mixed-use complex with “a cavernous maze of apartments and condominiums” and eclectic businesses, said Jeri Rowe, a contributor to Our State magazine.

 

Initially, investors were hesitant. “Everybody considered us in the middle of nowhere,” Mac told journalists Fiona Morgan. “We thought we were in the middle of everywhere.” Saxapahaw is roughly 16 miles due west of Chapel Hill. 

Tom and Heather LaGarde left their home in New York City after the terrorist attacks on Sept.11, 2001, in search of a safe and sane place to raise their two young children. Their priority was to simplify their lives. “There’s a come-as-you-are openness that seems to make Saxapahaw work,” Morgan wrote.  

 

A native of Chapel Hill, Heather knew about Saxapahaw. “It just seemed like this faraway place was very close,” she told Morgan. The LaGardes found a fixer-upper farmhouse near the village. 

Although Tom LaGarde grew up in Detroit, Mich., he spent time in Chapel Hill from 1973-78, as a 6-foot-10 hot-shot basketball player recruited by University of North Carolina coach Dean Smith.

 Tom LaGarde was a dominate force for the Tar Heels, and he is shown here skying above a trio of Duke defenders for an easy bucket using his opposite hand.

It seems that all of the “Saxapahaw Jordans” have Duke University ties, but the LaGarde’s were instantly welcomed…and immediately began pitching in. 

The LaGardes breathed new life into the old dye house. It’s now the Haw River Ballroom, a live-music venue that can accommodate an audience of 700 people. 

The LaGardes also enticed Jeff Barney and Cameron Ratliff to come and invigorate the Saxapahaw General Store. By serving “peasant food from around the world,’’ the pair “turned an old convenience store into a culinary magnet,” Rowe said.

 

Jeff Barney and Cameron Ratliff

“Saturdays in Saxapahaw” is another innovation introduced by the LaGardes. It’s a summertime evening farmers’ market accented by live music, artists’ stalls and children’s activities.

Swepsonville is an N.C. town with a unique history

Roads connecting rural America are often referred to as “blue highways” because they were shown in blue ink on the old-style Rand McNally road atlas. 

North Carolina has a plethora of blue highways, running through all sorts of interesting villages – like Swepsonville in Alamance County. (No other U.S. state has a Swepsonville.) 

Located on the Haw River, where N.C. Route 54 meets N.C. Route 119, “our Swepsonville” took its name from George William Swepson, who built a massive cotton mill there in 1868. (In its prime, the factory employed 1,200 people.)

 

George Swepson

The mill was built during the Reconstruction period after the Civil War, and manufacturing jobs were highly coveted. The people of Alamance County revered Swepson. Everyone in the area “admired him, respected him and loved him,” noted historian Mark Chilton. 

In his blog, Chilton cited a 10-year-old who worked the night shift at the Swepsonville mill as bobbin boy who commented that Swepson was “a good man, a strong man, a Southern gentleman. He appreciated the humanity of his employees and was interested in them personally. There was none of the ‘soulless magnate’ about him.”

 

Mark Chilton

Swepson also was politically connected. He married Virginia Yancey, a daughter of Bartlett Yancey of Caswell County, who served in the U.S. Congress as well as the N.C. Senate.) 

Swepson’s brother-in-law Giles Mebane was a “pillar of integrity in Alamance County” and a member of the N.C. House of Commons. (Mebane married Mary Yancey, Virginia’s older sister.) 

Swepson had other friends in high places. He was a chum of N.C. Gov. William Woods Holden.

 

Gov. Holden

Yet, Swepson proved to be a “strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.” 

The late William S. Powell, an esteemed North Carolina historian, dubbed Swepson “one of the chief scalawags and greatest rascals” in North Carolina history.

 

William Powell

Robert J. Wyllie, a contributor to NCPedia, said that Swepson “enjoyed considerable success” as a banker, textile manufacturer, stockbroker, liquor wholesaler, real estate developer and a land speculator.” 

“A dreamer and a planner, he met his downfall by using other people’s money to finance his projects,” Wyllie said. 

As president of the Western North Carolina Railroad, Swepson became involved with “the notorious carpetbagger” Milton Smith Littlefield of New York, who was a Union general during the Civil War. In 1868-69, Swepson and Littlefield” defrauded the state of an estimated $4 million in bonds that were intended for a western extension of the North Carolina Railroad” from Salisbury to Morganton, Wyllie wrote.

 Milton Littlefield

“This they accomplished through forged proxies, stock manipulation, bribes, crooked bookkeeping and numerous other intrigues,” Wyllie added. 

“Swepson was indicted for embezzlement, but probably due to the influence of highly placed friends, he was never convicted. The fraud delayed construction of the eastern extension of the Western North Carolina Railroad until 1880 and thus resulted in substantial economic loss to the region.” 

Efforts to connect Gov. Holden to Swepson’s machinations were unsuccessful, but Gov. Holden was impeached by the North Carolina house in 1870 “for high crimes and misdemeanors.” 

Impeachment charges stemmed from Gov. Holden’s decisions to use the state militia to suppress Ku Klux Klan terrorism activities in the state. The N.C. senate voted along party lines in 1871 to convict Gov. Holden, a Republican, and remove him from office. 

In 2011, the N.C. senate voted unanimously to grant a pardon posthumously to Gov. Holden. 

“Today, we correct a 140-year-old wrong,” Sen. Neal Hunt told the Reuters news service. 

Something to do in Swepsonville: Kayak the Haw River. It’s a 5.5-mile paddle from Swepsonville to Saxapahaw.

Civil War disrupts operation of N.C. Railroad Company

Just when everything appeared to be clicking right along for the newly established North Carolina Railroad Company (NCRR), the War Between the States intervened to cause major disruptions in service.

 

Indeed, NCRR’s archives indicate that during the Civil War years (1861-65), railroad maintenance became difficult. “New rails were unattainable, and the railroad lacked the capacity to recondition old ones. The railroad made do by reusing rails pulled up from 17 miles of sidetrack and by operating the trains at slower speeds.” 

North Carolina historians Doug Wait and John deTreville noted that the railroad industry also “lost many skilled railroad crews and unskilled maintenance workers to the Confederate army. The result was a crippling deterioration of track, roadbed, equipment and service.” 

The NCRR added: “With passenger cars in short supply, soldiers often travelled in boxcars refitted with windows and rude plank board seating. The war’s conclusion in 1865 saw the railroad in a state of disrepair.” 

By 1867, though, “the roadbed, track and bridges on the whole line had been returned to reasonably good repair,” NCRR said. The Company Shops repair facility in Alamance County was a beehive of activity. 

However, in 1871, NCRR management signed a 30-year lease for operations and equipment with the Richmond and Danville Railroad (R&D). The R&D had its own repair and maintenance shops in Manchester, Va. (near Richmond).

 

Hence, NCRR’s Company Shops facility “subsequently lost some of its importance.” There was a serious reduction in the workforce. 

State historic marker officials acknowledge that the closing date is a printing error. 

The correct date is 1896. 

Historian Dr. George W. Troxler commented that the citizens of the Town of Company Shops grew dissatisfied with their association with the railroad that continued to downsize its operation. “Resentment toward the railroad led to a mass meeting” on Feb. 1, 1887. 

Residents argued back and forth. A citizen named John Lane remarked that he hadn’t heard “such a fuss since the law requiring all livestock to be penned up had been passed, just a short time before.” 

That controversial ordinance “resulted in the confinement of ‘Burlington,’ a Jersey bull belonging to Postmaster Daniel Worth,” who got the bull from a farmer in Burlington, Vt. The animal was viewed as the town mascot. 

Within a week, the state legislature passed a bill to change the town’s name from Company Shops to Burlington. The town’s post office also became Burlington in 1887.

 

In 1893, the R&D experienced financial troubles. Financier J. P. Morgan took control and formed the Southern Railway System.

 

Needing a “back shop” service facility on its eastern main line between Washington, D.C., and Atlanta, the Southern Railway opened its own Spencer Shops repair complex in 1896 near Salisbury, N.C. At this time, NCRR’s Company Shops fell permanently out of use. 

More than a century later in 2001, the late Don Bolden, former editor of The Times-News in Burlington, reflected: “For three decades, the railroad was THE industry here. When those railroad shops closed, and the railroad left, the town could have died.”

 

But, he said, “Burlington is a community born of the railroad, bred on the loom and built on an ability to turn adversity into opportunity.” 

Cotton textile mills, hosiery manufacturing and a prosperous coffin factory “saved the town and its economy,” Bolden said. 

Fire destroyed much of the abandoned Company Shops railroad repair complex in 1918; only the engine house remained relatively unscathed. 

The Amtrak station in Burlington, opened in July 2003, is located in the former engine house. The renovated building, which also houses the NCRR Whistlestop Museum in its lobby, is called Company Shops Station.

The former train depot in Burlington has been transposed into a community parks and recreation center with an amphitheater. Here are two photos:

N.C. Railroad created a new town in Alamance County

Welcome to “Company Shops.” This was the name given to a new town – essentially a “planned community” – that was created in 1855 to grow up around the North Carolina Railroad’s new maintenance and repair facility in Alamance County, N.C. 

The site, near the community of Graham, was the midway point along the line of the North Carolina Railroad (NCRR) that connected Charlotte and Goldsboro.

Benjamin Newton Trollinger of Haw River, a state legislator and a prominent textile manufacturer, promoted transportation improvements within the state, and he became a great supporter of the North Carolina Railroad,” wrote historian Larry W. Fuqua, a regular contributor to NCPedia.

Benjamin Trollinger

 

However, residents of Graham, the county seat of Alamance County, “did not like the idea of the noise, smoke and activity the railroad would create,” Fuqua said. “The town passed a law prohibiting railroad tracks from coming within one mile of the courthouse.” 

Trollinger put together a land deal package that was about two miles outside of Graham. He sold a 632-acre parcel to NCRR, so it could proceed with building the railroad shops complex that became known simply as the Company Shops. 

The late Dr. George W. Troxler, former president of the Historical Society of North Carolina, said that construction of the repair facility began in the summer of 1855, and “workmen in the shops were capable of completely rebuilding engines, constructing boxcars and repairing all of the railroad’s equipment.”

Dr. Troxler

 

“In addition to the shops, the workers erected a passenger and freight station, houses for workers and three larger houses for railway officials, one of which served as company headquarters,” Dr. Troxler noted. 

Lots were sold for private residences, and “the railroad placed a clause in all deeds prohibiting the operation of ‘any house of ill fame, or house for the sale of spirituous or fermented liquors or for any species of gaming on said lot.’” 

Meanwhile, Trollinger and his partner and brother-in-law, Dr. Daniel Archibald Montgomery, became large contractors for the railroad line, working between Alamance and Wayne counties, Dr. Troxler added.

Dr. Montgomery

 

“They made brick and built bridges over Haw River, Back Creek and both crossings of the Eno River at Hillsborough. They also ran steam sawmills for the purpose of cutting ties for the railroad.” 

On Jan. 21, 1856, the first train ran the completed length of the 223-mile corridor from Charlotte to Goldsboro.

 

A spokesperson with Alamance County’s historic preservation group said: “When the iron horse arrived in Alamance County, locals referred to it as ‘the eighth wonder of the world.’” 

Storyteller Michael Sheehan of Chapel Hill said local newspapers provided extensive coverage. He cited one article: 

“…A hundred people stared in open-eyed wonder at the strange monster….This was indeed a proud and glorious day for old Alamance.” 

“It was to celebrate the completion…of the North Carolina Railroad, which has been considered the greatest public blessing ever conferred on the county and has done more than any other one thing to aid her material development and promote her manufacturing interests….” 

Shortly after the shops were finished in 1857, the railroad company decided “to build a hotel boarding house” at Company Shops, said Walter Whitaker, a local historian. 

“Miss Nancy Hillard took over its management, and soon the fame of her culinary skill spread all along the railroad. Trains were stopped for 20 minutes at the village to allow passengers to eat lunch in the massive hotel dining room.”

Nancy Hillard

 

The village of Company Stores got an official U.S. post office in 1858. Daniel Worth became the first postmaster. There’s more to his story….