Joneses Opened Quality Fabric Store in Brevard

Alvin and Frances Jones opened Quality Fabric at 37 East Main St. in Brevard in Spring 1957.  They carried a variety of fabrics—broadcloth, chambrays, cottons, dimity, percales, printed lawn, seersucker and sheers, as well as quilting materials and cotton batting.  The store also had a full-line of Simplicity patterns and sewing accessories from buttons to zippers.

Mr. Jones was also an authorized sales representative for the Singer Company and Electrolux.  Products from both companies were sold at the Jones’ Quality Fabric store.  An advertisement states that Jones repaired sewing machines and vacuum cleaners. 

Transylvania County Home Agent, Anne Benson Priest promoted sewing family’s clothing and home goods to the women of local Home Demonstration Clubs as a money saving strategy.  Mr. Jones would accompany Miss Priest and demonstrate Singer sewing machines.

Alvin Jones was a Singer sewing machine sales and repair man. 
He and his wife, Frances operated Quality Fabrics in downtown Brevard.

Frances Jones was the daughter of Benjamin and Zetella Capps of Henderson County.  She married Alvin Jones in April 1956, a year before they started their Brevard business together.  The store operated for about ten years.  Alvin Jones later graduated from Duke Divinity School and served as a Methodist Minister in the Western North Carolina Conference.

Photographs and information for this column are provided by the Rowell Bosse North Carolina Room, Transylvania County Library. Visit the NC Room during regular library hours (Monday-Friday) to learn more about our history and see additional photographs. For more information, comments, or suggestions contact Marcy at marcy.thompson@transylvaniacounty.org or 828-884-1820.

Job Corps Program Helped Build the County

In the early 1960s unemployment of young people in the U.S. was twice that of older adults.  In response, the Kennedy Administration designed a program, known as Job Corps, offering free education and vocational training to young men and women ages 16 to 24 to improve their lives. 

After Kennedy’s death, President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty task force was able to quickly implement the Job Corp program.  Sargent Shriver, brother-in-law of the former president and Director of the Office of Economic Opportunity, is credited as the founder of the program which operated under his department.  He modeled it after the Civilian Conservation Corps program of the 1930s.

In November 1964, it was announced that a Job Corps camp would be established in Transylvania County.  Located on the Davidson River in the Pisgah National Forest, the camp initially housed 100 corpsmen in mobile facilities.

At the dedication ceremony one year later, Edward Schulz of the U.S. Forest Service stated that the corpsmen are walking in the paths used by such men of vision as Dr. Carl Schenck, Gilford Pinchot, John W. Weeks and George Vanderbilt, carrying on their conservation efforts.

In 1974 Schenck Job Corps students painted the Sapphire-Whitewater
Community Center.

Corpsmen worked on reforestation, stream improvement, trail construction and wildlife habitat projects in the National Forest.  They built the Black Balsam Road into the Shining Rock Wilderness Area and assisted with projects at the Cradle of Forestry, which had begun construction in November 1964.  Corpsmen also helped with community projects such as roadside litter clean-up and landscaping at the Brevard Music Center.

During its 55 years, Schenck Job Corps has evolved and expanded to meet the needs of their students in a changing world.  The campus has grown to include classrooms, workshops, dormitories, a cafeteria, a wellness center and recreational facilities.

The original Cradle of Forestry facility and property was constructed and developed with assistance from Schenck Job Corps students in the mid-1960s.

Today the facility trains 180 young men and women in basic education, social skills and employment skills.  Programs in automotive and machine repair, carpentry, culinary arts, facility maintenance, painting and welding are available for students.  Schenck is the only Job Corps center that offers courses as an Advanced Forestry Technician and one of just two that provides training in Advanced Wildland Fire Management.  Schenck Job Corps students help fight wildfires throughout the United States as needed.

The Jobs Corps mission remains the same after more than a half century—to provide a no-cost education and career technical training program that helps young people ages 16 to 24 improve the quality of their lives through career technical and academic training.

Photographs and information for this column are provided by the Rowell Bosse North Carolina Room, Transylvania County Library. Visit the NC Room during regular library hours (Monday-Friday) to learn more about our history and see additional photographs. For more information, comments, or suggestions contact Marcy at marcy.thompson@transylvaniacounty.org or 828-884-1820.

Rosman Tracking Station Supports The Apollo XI In Indirect, Important Way

This week’s Picturing the Past article is from a July 24, 1969 Transylvania Times story titled, “Rosman Tracking Station Supports The Apollo XI In Indirect, Important Way.” 

Construction of the Rosman Satellite Tracking and Data
Acquistion Facility in January 1963.

     Transylvania County has not been just a bystander in all the recent excitement of man’s first landing on the moon.

     The Rosman National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Space Tracking and Data Acquisition Network (STADAN) station had a part in that historic accomplishment.

     “We’ve had no direct responsibility to Apollo XI,” said Gary Dennis, Station Director, “but we have been involved indirectly through the Applications Technology Satellites and the other scientific observation satellites we have been working with for the last several years.

     “Sometimes,” said Mr. Dennis, “there are problems in communications with space missions such as Apollo.  The usual High Frequency Link is with the communications ships strategically located for this purpose.  But when this link is broken for any reason we serve as back-up using the ATS satellites we are working with as relays.”

     The 200-employee Rosman facility is primarily concerned with earth orbit scientific exploration and experimental satellites.  These are many and of prime importance to the entire space effort; the Orbiting Solar Observatory (OSO); the Orbiting Geophysical Observatory (OGO); the Orbiting Astronomical Observatory (OAO); the NIMBUS weather satellite; the IMF solar radiations satellite; and the Applications Technology Satellites for testing new ideas in space meteorological observations, new camera systems, and new communications systems.

     It is these new communication systems which have helped the space flight program in the past and which have earned the Rosman Facility a place when the history of the spectacular Apollo XI flight and moon landing is written.

     ATS-I, for example, has relayed television pictures of the moon landing to the millions of people who watched this feat in South America.  The pictures, relayed from the satellite high above the Pacific, enabled a large part of the world to view the landing that could not have done so otherwise.

     In more direct support of the Apollo XI flight itself, the Rosman Facility began a full watch on Tuesday afternoon as a part of the VHF communications link for the recovery of the space men in the Pacific.  With one other STADAN installation, the one at Mojave, California, and the Aircraft Carrier “Hornet”, Rosman constitutes part of the critical communications link which operates until the spacecraft has splashed down and been recovered.          

     This more direct type of assistance is actually of much less importance than a less-noted type of support the Rosman Facility has given the entire space flight program over the 6 years of its operation.

     By tracking and reading out weather satellites, the Roman Facility has contributed heavily to the meteorological knowledge that has made launch and recovery possible.  Space date, on solar radiation, on many geophysical measurements, read out by the Rosman Facility have contributed materially to the safety and the astronauts and the success of the many space flights.

           

The complete article is included in a small display on the 2^nd floor at the Transylvania County Library.  A presentation on the role North Carolina played in the space race will be held in the Rogow Room on August 15 at 6:30 pm.

Photographs and information for this column are provided by the Rowell Bosse North Carolina Room, Transylvania County Library.  Visit the NC Room during regular library hours (Monday-Friday) to learn more about our history and see additional photographs.  For more information, comments or suggestions contact Marcy at marcy.thompson@transylvaniacounty.org or 828-884-3151 X242.

The Little River Novelty Band Of The 1980s Performed Music 'Just For The Fun Of It'

The Little River Novelty Band was organized in June 1980 “just for the fun of it.”  They provided free entertainment at Community Centers and for charitable institutions and clubs.  Vivian Edge was the band Director and Henry Pettitt, Manager.  

They were a group of senior citizens who enjoyed playing, singing and sharing the music of their youth.  Songs ranged from “Let Me Call You Sweetheart” and “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling” first published in 1910 and 1912 to 1920s jazz favorite, “Sweet Georgia Brown” and Hank Williams’ 1953 country hit, “Your Cheatin’ Heart.”  They sometimes included polkas, patriotic songs or Christmas music.  “When the Saints Go Marching In” was their traditional closing number.

The Little River Novelty Band of the 1980s.

Band members included Julia Barton, Joe Brock, Bob and Ruby Gibeau, Christine Hamilton, Clyde and Elizabeth Hewitt, Melvin Hicks, Charles Jones, Ruth Mackey, Seva Mackey, Laura Misenheimer, Grace Orr, Mollie Pace, Christine Pettitt, Harry Sinnott and Virginia Spahn.

A band member on the washtub bass.

The band used traditional instruments including piano, accordion, guitar, banjo, mandolin and trumpet, along with drums, cymbals, maracas, and a tambourine.  They also incorporated a washtub bass, wash board, wash pan, broomstick and kazoos.

Over a two year period they put on 82 performances.  After being inactive for nearly three years the Little River Novelty Band reorganized in 1986.  They continued to play a less demanding schedule for the next couple of years before disbanding as older members were unable to participate.

This information is from a scrapbook kept by the band and now in the Local History collection at the Transylvania County Library.

Photographs and information for this column are provided by the Rowell Bosse North Carolina Room, Transylvania County Library. Visit the NC Room during regular library hours (Monday-Friday) to learn more about our history and see additional photographs. For more information, comments, or suggestions contact Marcy at marcy.thompson@transylvaniacounty.org or 828-884-1820.

Lyday Family Heirlooms On Display at the Library

The Lyday family roots in Buncombe County date to the late 1700s.  When Buncombe County was established in 1791 it included present day Buncombe, Haywood, Henderson and Madison counties along with parts of Transylvania, Swain and Yancey counties.  

Abraham Lyday settled in the Edneyville area of Henderson County first.  Later, he bought land and built a home on a creek flowing into the French Broad River west of present day Penrose.  Today, that creek is known as Lyday Creek.

Abraham Lyday had six children with his first wife and another eight with his second wife, Rebecca.  Picturing the Past has featured Dr. A.J. (Andrew Jackson), first son of Abraham and Rebecca, and his numerous descendants who were also medical doctors, previously.  

Delas Lyday, third from left carried a cloth pouch with everything needed to
shoot a black powder rifle or shotgun.  Others pictured include Lyday's son,
Will and grandson, Albert to his right.  Jim Sitton, on his left, was Lyday's
brother-in-law.

Abraham and Rebecca’s second son, A.S. (Abraham Simpson) was born in 1827.  He received 330 acres on Turkey Creek from his father in 1852.  A.S. and wife, Elizabeth Reese had married in 1850.  Their first child, Mary Ann was born in 1851 and son, Delas three-and-half years later.  Three more children would follow.

Delas Lyday inherited the Turkey Creek property and raised his family on the land, which he farmed.  Descendants of Delas and Sally Sitton Lyday still own much of the original 330 acres, now surrounded by the Pisgah National Forest.

Delas Lyday's black powder horn and cloth pouch with
gun maintenance and shot-making tools, plus firing caps
and shot.

Lyday family photographs, Abraham and Rebecca’s Bible, Delas’s powder horn and Dr. Bill Lyday’s medical bag and account books are currently on display on the 2^nd floor at the Transylvania County Library.  If you are interested in displaying items telling the story of your Transylvania County ancestors please contact a staff member in the Local History Room.

Photographs and information for this column are provided by the Rowell Bosse North Carolina Room, Transylvania County Library. Visit the NC Room during regular library hours (Monday-Friday) to learn more about our history and see additional photographs. For more information, comments, or suggestions contact Marcy at marcy.thompson@transylvaniacounty.org or 828-884-1820.