James Ryder Randall dies, 1908
January Fifteenth
A Northerner, who had purchased an estate in Virginia, noticed that smoke always emanated from the chimney of a cabin near his woods where an old negro lived. One day, on meeting the old colored man, he asked: “Where do you get your wood, Uncle?”
The latter eyed him with an expression of great reproach and replied: “My pa was coachman at the Gret House, and he pa, and he pa; ‘whar I git my wood?’ That ain’t no question for one gen’l’man to ax an’er!”
Fort Fisher, North Carolina, captured, 1865
January Sixteenth
When wintry days are dark and drear
And all the forest ways grow still,
When gray snow-laden clouds appear
Along the bleak horizon hill,
When cattle all are snugly penned
And sheep go huddling close together,
When steady streams of smoke ascend
From farm-house chimneys—in such weather
Give me old Carolina’s own,
A great log house, a great hearthstone,
A cheering pipe of cob or briar
And a red, leaping light’ood fire.
John Henry Boner
(The Light’ood Fire)
Forcible resistance to British Stamp Act under Colonel Hugh Waddell, of Wilmington, N. C., 1766