36 | September/October 2019
Hear Local Musicians
from the Fayetteville area.
WFAY's Carolina Artist Showdown gives local artists a chance to
compete for a spot at next year's Carolina Country Music Awards.
The Carolina Artist Showdown airs weekdays at
8:40am, 1:40pm, and 4:40pm on 100.1 WFAY.
WFAYcountry.com
In it, you can read about such things as Highland Mary,
the Cool Spring Tavern, how Fayetteville almost became
the state capital, old plank roads, "A Fayetteville Incident
at Gettysburg", railroads, churches, schools and colleges,
clubs, "Two Lawyers in Jail", druggists, early events and
politics, counties in the region and, it is probably obvious,
so much more.
It's a "monumental" book that recounts a "multitude of
incidents, anecdotes, happenings, customs, place names,
beliefs and practices of a people's lives," Paul Green wrote in
the foreword.
Oates, a lawyer, state legislator and local historian, was
nothing if not thorough in his recounting of 225 years of
history – though not as thorough as he would have liked
to have been. In his acknowledgements, he noted that his
original manuscript would have run to more than 1,150
pages in print and, at his publisher's insistence, he had to cut
"much material" that he deemed valuable. "I am keeping this
"There was a red brick
market-house in the public
square, with a tall tower,
which held a four-faced
clock that struck the hours,
and from which there
pealed out a curfew at nine
o'clock. There were two
or three hotels, a court-
house, a jail, stores, offices,
and all the appurtenances
of a county seat and a
commercial emporium…"
"The Goophered
Grapevine," by
Charles W. Chesnutt
Daws said that too often
historical records get thrown
away because people don't
realize their value to historians.
They'd be welcomed by the
Transportation and Local
History Museum.
