Anyone have any history on JC besides the KKK sign they would like to share. To let people know what kind of place they have moved to!!!
Here is a start for you The Catch-Me-Eye explosion. March 7, 1942 at US 301 in Selma. After colliding a car and truck loaded with 30,000 pounds of ammunitions exploded at 2:47am. It left a basin in US 301 large enough to bury a railroad freight car. When the huge explosion happened it rattled windows for many mile and was heard as far away as Raleigh and Fayetteville, many feared it was an air raid. For many of you this happened at US 301 and 70HWY crossings. http://www.johnstonnc.com/jc_hc_image_display.cfm?imageid=186[/url]
and... when people rushed over to see what happened a 2nd explosion killed even more bystanders. My Mom told me about riding over there to see "it" the next day.
I had never heard of it until I stopped at Uncle Bill's in Selma several years ago for lunch. As I recall, they had some sort of old newspaper article about it or something. I can't say for sure about that, but that would make sense seeing that the restaurant is located at the intersection. I've always been fascinated by area history and events such as these. Probably the last big event in that same area was the Amtrak-freight train collision/derailment in 94. That was some sight to look down from the overpass. As for history, I believe if I'm not mistaken I read somewhere that the very large home on Main Street over in Clayton (across from the Post Office I suppose) was built prior to or around the time of the Revolutionary War. Any confirmation of that?
A little general history from the Town of Clayton web site: http://www.townofclaytonnc.org/ And another site http://clayton-nc.50megs.com/
Also saw something that at one time that stated that Clayton was the richest (or second richest) small town in the United States.
For that one person who does not like living in JC then why are you here? I would not stay somewhere I did not like.
JC Heritage Center Very good place to visit. Lots of photos, history, etc. If you go on a slow day you could probably get a personal tour and learn more about JC history than you ever wanted to know. I found out we're all related! :lol: Holts Lake used to be a happening place. It had swimming, a dance hall, a bowling alley, and a grist mill. Percy Flowers is a well known moonshiner from Johnston County. PDF article (page 163) Another, more contemporary moonshining kingpin was Percy Flowers, who operated out of Johnston County, a little south of Raleigh. Flowers established a moonshining empire in the 1950s with an annual income exceeding $1 million. In addition, he owned a 5000-acre farm, was a well-known local philanthropist, a deacon of his church, and a good friend of local politicians. Between 1929 and 1958, Flowers was indicted ten times at the federal level and eighteen times at the state level for bootlegging and evading income and liquor taxes. All of the indictments, save one, resulted in acquittal, a small fine, or a suspended sentence. In 1936 he was sentenced to three years in jail for assaulting a federal agent, but he was out in one year on good behavior. In 1951 he was found to be delinquent in his 1951 federal income taxes, but he never paid the $285,000 levy (Kobler, 1958). Flowers was not overly sophisticated in his money-laundering methods, usually depositing money in safe deposit boxes around the state taken out in the names of relatives. All the vehicles used in his bootlegging and moonshining operations had fictitious registrations. But most important, Flowers was a heavy contributor to local charities and political campaigns. In 1957 the ATF targeted Flowers for a special investigation and dispatched some of its best agents to Johnston County. Flowers complained bitterly and openly about the investigation, charging that the agents were ignoring moonshiners in neighboring Wake County who were undercutting his prices. At one point he offered the agents twice their federal salaries to work for him. At the end of the investigation the agents produced a 216-page report on Flowers and the sixteen other major operatives in his illegal liquor syndicate. In 1958, the government produced thirty witnesses and sixty-eight exhibits at Flowers’ trial. They were only to secure a mistrial. Flowers still faced eleven indictments back in Johnston County, carrying a potential sentence of life in prison. Flowers entered a “no plea” to the charges, and the judge fined him $150 and sentenced him to eighteen months in jail, subsequently reduced to twelve months (Kobler, 1958).
I was sitting in the old hardee's in Smithfield eating lunch with my, then very young, daughter. She was complaining about the Vicks her Mom had smeared on her that morning. An older man sitting next to us overheard her and he told us the story about Vicks VapoRub. Lunsford Richardson, a pharmacist in Selma invented it in the 1880's. He named it after his brother-in-law Joshua Vick. He added a lot more to the story, but that was the gist of the story. My daughter had this "what-ever" look on her face but I thought it was interesting.
The Ashley Horne house was where the open parking lot is downtown Clayton, where the hold the festival. Also, here's an article I found: August 04, 2004 (From clayton news star) Information and photographs from the late 1800s through the present are part of the Clayton history collection that is being archived at the Hocutt-Ellington Memorial Library. Todd Johnson, formerly director of the Johnston County Heritage Center, is on contract with the town and the Friends of the Library to put all the collected items in order, with an index listing, and – eventually – to make much of the historical information available on-line to researchers across the state. Johnson, who has been working on the project since March, has placed clippings and photos in archival-quality boxes on shelves in a small room off the library’s reference room – with an estimated 200 linear feet of material, including a few shelves holding school yearbooks. All of this soon will have its own home, taking over the entire reference room area, once a new 2,000-square-foot library addition is completed. Groundbreaking should be done in January, with completion due by mid- to late-summer 2005. Johnson, who grew up in the Cleveland community and considers Clayton his hometown, was delighted to come to Clayton to organize its history collection. “It was a great challenge,” he said. “I love a challenge.” He’s the ideal man for the job, not just because of his local roots but because he has a master’s degree from N.C. State University in archival management. Library Director Betty Coats said, “We’re so lucky to have him. I’m so happy the Friends and the town could work it out to get him here.” Much of the material Johnson is reviewing was collected by Clayton’s own historian, the late Virginia Satterfield, who spent many years gathering information about Clayton, its families, businesses, churches and schools. “It was a labor of love,” Johnson said. “She left a real legacy.” He said Satterfield and her mother began gathering historical information in the 1950s. “They were charter members of the Johnston Historical Society.” They clipped newspaper articles on all important happenings in and about Clayton from the 1840s into the 1980s, he said, and organized them in chronological order. “Miss Virginia put them in notebooks by subject – on schools, churches, war service, clubs and businesses,” Johnson said. There are 38 large notebooks that Satterfield put together at her home, where she often worked in addition to working at the library. “She and Betty dreamed about getting it all in order one day,” he said. “Now, that’s what I’m doing.” The difference is obvious to anyone who ever looked into the small storage room in years past. Where file folders and cardboard boxes were stacked somewhat randomly, now there are professional-looking gray boxes, all numbered, in neat rows on shelves. “It’s been accumulating for many years,” Johnson said. “Now I’m taking it to the next level.” He said that opening the boxes was like opening treasure chests. “I knew there was great stuff in there,” he said. One of the newspaper clippings, from The Raleigh Evening Times of 1907, the Industry Edition, includes a big article on Clayton, stating that the town had the highest per-capita wealth of any town its size in the world. According the the U.S. Census of 1900, Clayton’s population was 754 at that time.
As far as Flowers goes....i work with some folks who say they actually knew him and they all say that he was not a very nice man. Yet his daughter is over at the Flowers Plantation trying to paint a potrait of a heck of a nice guy....makes you wonder whose right..folks who say they knew him or his daughter who is trying to make a big buck.. Catch-my- eye is soooooooooo interesting I read up on that before I even moved here. I understand that the old sight was somewhere east of the brick train bridge just past 301 on main st Smithfield. and for the record I love my Johnston County - even though I wasn't born here and I don't want it to change to look like where I used to live - icky!
Of course Percy Flowers' daughter is trying to paint her father as a saint. And yes, it is kinda funny. I've read her write-ups about him ...his store, his farm, etc ...but curiously she never mentions moonshine. She wants us to think he was the most successful farmer and store owner ever. In a way he was. Grow lots of corn on the farm, turn it into moonshine, and use the store as a front to launder money for the whole operation. Pretty smart. All that land she owns was bought with illegal moonshine. As far as being a nice man, that depended on who you were. My grandaddy always liked him.
