Around midday on Thursday, July 2, 1908, “an odd mixture of civic leaders, developers, and contractors,” as well as local attorneys, businessmen, land owners, planters, their wives, and the local newspaper editor gathered for a groundbreaking ceremony marking the beginning of East Carolina Teachers Training School. Fortunately for history, the event was captured by an anonymous photographer, most likely there with the editor of the Daily Reflector, David J. Whichard (19). Along with former Governor Thomas J. Jarvis (15) holding a long-handle shovel, Whichard stands out from the more formal group, pencil in hand recording the event on a notepad. Whether the groundbreaking ceremony was Whichard’s idea is questionable, but he clearly meant to incorporate it into the Daily Reflector’s ongoing coverage of the school’s history. Despite the squinted gazes and background profiles of carriage horses, the posed photo became, according to former ECU university historian Henry Ferrell, “the most famous … in East Carolina’s collection.”
Former Governor Jarvis was the likely ringleader. As chair of the Building Committee, he presided over construction of the campus. Jarvis had served in the North Carolina legislature, the U.S. Senate, and as a U.S. diplomatic representative to Brazil. He surely understood the significance of ceremonial occasions and the importance of documenting them. He also had the social clout to assemble such a distinguished group of community leaders and their wives, with the men in business attire and the ladies coordinated in white summer dresses. Mary W. Jarvis (2), his wife, even donned a fancy hat. Though hardly ostentatious, the event was a simple, rural ceremony held on the outskirts of a small but prosperous tobacco town, one about to be transformed slowly but surely into the home of the academic citadel for eastern North Carolina. The photo well captured the agrarian innocence and simplicity of the event, including not only horses’ heads but off to the side, a weathered farm shack.
The farmland that soon became a campus had belonged to the Harrington family. Located just east of Greenville, the site was known as Harrington Hill. Within a year a dirt extension of Fifth Street climbed eastward, paralleling the Tar River and defining the northern border of the campus, east to west. To the north and south of the site, farmland stretched as far as the eye could see. William A. Harrington (8), a planter and large landowner, sold the land, part of one of his holdings, for the campus. He and his son, Robert D. “Bob” Harrington (7), were present for the photo.
The photo includes none of the new school’s administrators, faculty, students, or staff. In fact, at that moment, there were none. Over the year to follow, Jarvis and the board of trustees hired key charter faculty and the president for the school. One might imagine that William H. Ragsdale, the local teacher credited with the idea of a training school for eastern North Carolina, or James L. Fleming, the state senator who introduced the legislation creating the school, might have been in the photo. Almost certainly, they were unable to participate due to other commitments. That Ragsdale, Fleming, and other leaders in the movement to secure the training school would not have been invited is inconceivable.
Indicative of the importance of women in social and educational life is the prominent presence of seven well-dressed women (compared to 15 men). Along with Mary W. Jarvis (2), the ladies present included Mary B. Dail (1), wife of Haywood Dail (14), a local builder and one of the school’s major contractors; Mary Dancy James (3), daughter of local attorney “Colonel” Fernando James (5); Jennie White (4), wife of Samuel T. White (6), owner of White’s Piano Co.; Neil Skinner Moseley (10), wife of Alfred Moseley (absent), an employee at the Ficklen Tobacco Co.; Irma Cobb Dunn (12), whose husband (absent) was a local attorney; and Celeste Evans (16), wife of Edward D. Evans (18), a local contractor who also sold electrical fixtures.
Also present were Bennett W. Moseley (11), an insurance man with real estate interests and a fertilizer business; Cecil Cobb (20), a planter and large landowner; Jesse Speight (9), a local merchant; Richard W. King (17), chair of the Pitt County commissioners; Charles V. York (21), a builder; Robert J. Cobb (22), owner of the Pitt Lumber and Manufacturing Co.; and Richard A. Tyson (13), a local accountant. In sum, this was a sampling of the Greenville community that had supported the bid for a training school for eastern North Carolina, and then for Greenville as its home. Their unemotional faces perhaps reflect their sense of gravity in regard to the task ahead. Greenville had won the prize. Now it was their responsibility to see that it would truly become one.
Sources
- Bratton, Mary Jo. East Carolina University: The Formative Years, 1907-1982. Greenville, N.C.: East Carolina University Alumni Association, 1986.
- Ferrell, Henry. “Who Are These Folks?” East Magazine. Spring 2007. http://www.ecu.edu/cs-admin/mktg/east/A-Century-of-Service.cfm.
- “Groundbreaking of ECTTS.” University Archives. J. Y. Joyner Library, East Carolina University, Greenville, N.C. UA Call Number 55.01.0004. http://digital.lib.ecu.edu/10237.
Citation Information
Title: Groundbreaking
Author: John A. Tucker, PhD
Date of Publication: 5/30/2018