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Thomas Broyhill was born in Wilkes County, in
the year of eighteen hundred and fifty two. His father and mother
owned a farm near Moravian Falls, and they lived and reared a family
of two boys and three girls. Besides farming, they had operated a
mill, on which the community's wheat and corn was ground. The Civil
War had come and was fought through when Thomas was a small boy, and
through the long years of the conflict between the North and South,
Thomas' father, William, had served as a home guard for his country.
"How glad we all was when the war was over. We were at home again
together. How well do I remember when the Union soldiers come through
the county on their way home, riding their poor worn out horses. We
had heard how they would go to the people's barns and take out the
mules or horses and leave the poor old horse they had been riding, and
take the good one, and rob the smoke house and things like that, so we
kept our horses hid out in the woods, and our meat and what little
flour and corn we had hid. A Pentleton family lived near our place. Her husband had been killed in
the war. A Union soldier went to her barn and got out her good horse and
started to ride away on it, when she cam begging him to please leave her
horse, that she had a lot of little children, and that she was a widow,
having lost her husband in the war. And when he ignored her pleadings
and started on, the captain said, 'Shoot the damn rascal,' to her and
grabbed her gun and brought him off her horse. Those were awful
days."
Thomas' father was a school teacher after the
war, but the only book we had was an old blue back speller and 'rithmetic,
and Thomas finished them in two months, and that's all the school he
had. He worked on the farm until he was a young man, and when he became
twenty one, he had lost his good mother and wanted to earn a trade. He
had taken a four year's course in the millwright trade, and had worked
for almost nothing to learn, but it was a four years well spent, for now
he was an excellent carpenter, as well as a first class mechanic, and
millwright.
"I had been boarding at the home of a rich
man and often paid his pretty daughter right much attention. I liked
her, and she seemed to think a lot of me. But I couldn't make up my mind
to marry a rich girl, so I left there and went to North Wilkesboro to
work. I often went back to my father's and out to Moravian and it was on
a visit there that I happened to meet Sallie Gilreath. She was a pretty
girl, and of an excellent family. Her father and mother were pious
parents, and the leading people of their community. I kept visiting
there and the first thing I knew I was in love with Sallie, and she was
seventeen and I thirty when we were married in her father's home."
Thomas had become interested in the manufacture of timber, as
well as contractor and builder. The first steam engine that was
brought to western North Carolina was bought by him, until soon he had
a number of sawmills working in the woods, and Thomas was a leading
business man. "My father and mother worked hard together, it was in
the early eighties that my father bought a large tract of timber over
the river, and moved his family with him into this new vicinity. He
often said, "I didn't intend to stay only long enough to finish
cutting this tract of timber, but then the panic came on, lumber
couldn't be sold for cash, and the people around me were suffering,
and men would beg me to let them clear up land, that I might give them
work to get bread to eat." Thomas was a big hearted man, and the sight
of these poor men, well he wanted to help them so he let them men
clean up acres of woodland, preparing it for cultivation, until by the
time the panic was over he had a large farm all cleared up, and
brought into a good state of cultivation, but he didn't intend to
farm, but now that the land was ready, he decided to work it. The farm
was a good one, and he set out an orchard of apples and peaches, as
well as a large vineyard. Now he was a Baptist and there was no church
near, so he builded a large church and give it to the Baptist denomination, and
largely supported its pastor, that there might be church close enough
for his children and that of the community to attend worship.
In the early nineties, a man by the name
of Bumgarner approached him with the mercantile business, and wanted
Thomas to become a partner with him and establish a general mercantile
store at Stauton, and after some consideration he went into the
business. Thomas was the chief financier. For several years the business
was successful. They had the United States Post Office and the business
continued to grow . Thomas was busy with his own work, that of
manufacturing timber and contracting and building, while his wife
managed the farm with the help of the children, five boys and two girls.
"My mother's great ambition was to send all of us children through
high school and college.
She often advised my father, "You
would be better keep a close check up on that store," but father
trusted Bumgarner and said, "He's honest. Our inventory shows a
good increase, and its moving on all right," but word kept coming
to my mother' ear about the extravagances of the Bumgarner family, and
when the crash came, the Bumgarner family sold out, and left the state
at night, leaving thousands of dollars indebtedness. "I tell you
what I would do," said father's friend to him, "homestead your
farm, put your property in your wife's name. You out not to be expected
to pay all those debts." But my father said, "Those are honest
debts and I am going to sell out and pay them if it takes my last
dollar," and he did. Gone was our hopes of a college education, and
that is how we come to Hopewell, Virginia in nineteen and fifteen.
The DuPont Powder Company was doing a
great business here and father hoped to get work, but he was too old, so
he did contract work, until the draft called out so many men. Finally
father got a job, and held it until the close of the war. My mother kept
boarders.
Thomas bought a home. "It don't ever
pay to rent," he said. "You're putting your money in a hole
that won't every fill up." "Own your own home was his
motto," and he never rented. But his weak point was his good heart.
If that could be called one. If another man wanted a note endorsed or
any help, he couldn't say no and he always had it to pay off and when
his sons come to him in his old age, "Daddy we want you to mortgage
your home to finance our building program. It will help us a lot and we
won't let you lose on it." "No, I don't' want to do it."
he said, but when they insisted he signed the mortgage and as the
depression of twenty eight became harder, the interest was hard to pay.
The boys all had homes of their own, and were all married expect his
daughter.
In nineteen and thirty Sallie died and Thomas
was living in his own home, and his single daughter, now thirty was
working and staying with him. "No, Annie Lou won't ever leave me,
not as long as I live," he often told his friends. "She's
always been different from the other children, and has done more for me
and Sallie than any of the rest of them and I want her to have this
house after I am gone, but I don't' know what the mortgage will come
to." Someone said, "What would you do if Annie Lou would get
married? You don't' seem to want to live with any of the children."
She'd never leave me - I know that, but if she should get married then I
don't have any objections, but I would live with her and be
"boss." He brought down his hand, laughing.
Thomas enjoyed traveling, and when Annie Lou
taken a vacation from her work, she carried him with her. Once they went
through the Natural Bridge, and on down the Valley and through the
Caverns. This trip he often talked of how he did enjoy it.
In his lifetime, he educated a number of the
neighborhood boys, and taught them the carpenter trade, and made men out
of boys who would never have had a chance to be or know anything except
for my father. While he wasn't able to send his sons to college, he
taught them the trade of contracting and building, and they are in
businesses of their own.
Thomas was always self supporting. When he
became too old to contract and build, he opened up a poultry yard and
sold eggs, enough for his support. "I want to have my own home as
long as I live."
Thomas retained his gentle nature, and the
jolly twinkle in his blue eyes, and though a little stopped and thin,
his appearance is more of an old general than that of a builder. He
liked to tell funny jokes, and at night his time was spent reading, and
his education was equal to that of the average man, but he was a
self-educated man. I never heard him complain of his losses. "We
have so much to thank God for, and we're not going to take anything with
us when we go, but if we're ready to go, we ought not to mind the
going." |