Robbins 61st
ANNUAL
AUGUST 4 AUGUST 6, 2016
Sunday, July 31, 2016
SUNDAY, JULY 31, 2016
THE PILOT — 2016 ROBBINS FARMERS DAY
IN YOUR HANDS. © 2016 ANHEUSER-BUSCH, BUDWEISER® BEER, ST. LOUIS, MO
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THE PILOT — 2016 ROBBINS FARMERS DAY
SUNDAY, JULY 31, 2016
From Hazel Neck to Robbins,
What’s in a Name?
FILE PHOTO
BY CLARK COX Former news editor of The Pilot Originally printed August 2, 2000
T
hroughout its history, Robbins has been a bustling little town populated by industrious people, generally unmarked by controversy. Except on those occasions when its name has changed. Changing the name from Hemp to Robbins in 1943 sparked a lawsuit and caused at least one family to move from the town in protest. No legal challenges greeted the name change from Elise to Hemp in the early years of the 20th Century, but diehards refused to take down the Elise sign from the railroad depot, and it remained there for many years. There was good reason in the minds of railroad people to prefer the name Elise. That name honored the daughter of a railroad builder. If any such controversies surrounded earlier name changes, they have long since disappeared in the mists of time. What follows is an account of the various names and the reasons for them.
Hazel Neck
The earliest maps of the area now known as Robbins designate it as “Hazel Neck”. No one now living knows why. There are many other communities in North Carolina that still have the word “Hazel” in their names. According to William S. Powell’s encyclopedic reference book, “A North Carolina Gazetteer”, in most cases it was because hazelnuts grow in the area. Perhaps that is also how “Hazel Neck” got its name. In any case, it didn’t keep the name for long.
Mechanics Hill
The town now known as Robbins first became a center of industrial activity in the latter days of the American Revolution. Alexander Kennedy, a gunsmith by trade, had been a resident of Philadelphia. When the British occupied Philadelphia, Kennedy fled
southward and established a gun factory on the falls o Bear Creek. From this location, Kennedy continued to supply General George Washington’s Continental forces with firearms. Kennedy’s son, David, took over operation of the gun factory about 1795 and continued it until well into the 19th Century. With nearly 100 workers on the payroll, the factory produced many of the guns used in the War of 1812. The Kennedy factory had led to the establishment of other factories with similar products. Other gunsmiths in the neighborhood were John Kennedy, William Williamson, Capt. John Ritter, Phil Cameron, James Ray and Robert Davis (who might have been in business with Alexander Kennedy). The gunsmith enterprises earned the community the name “Mechanics Hill”, and it is little wonder that, when the area got its first post office in 1823, Mechanics Hill was the name chosen for it. The Civil War effectively closed down the gun factories, and the post office moved to Carter’s Mill as the community languished – but it was still known as Mechanics Hill until 1900.
Elise
A new period of growth began when the Durham & Charlotte Railroad (later Norfolk & Southern Railroad) extended its rails through the town in 1899. Again a prime mover in the resurgence was a former Philadelphian – John F. Lennig, a wealthy businessman and railroad builder who won the contract to build the section of the railroad that passed through Mechanics Hill. For a dozen years, Lennig was heavily involved in community activities in the area. It was he, with a group of associates, who laid out the streets in Robbins and applied to the state for a municipal charter. And so grateful for Lennig’s contributions were the townspeople, that they agreed to name the new town after Lennig’s daughter, Elise. The town plat was listed under the new name at the Moore County Courthouse on March 24, 1900. No one seems to know what became of Elise Lennig. One unsubstantiated report has it that she “married royalty”. But she continued to be remembered in the town well past the time that it stopped See page 8
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THE PILOT — 2016 ROBBINS FARMERS DAY
PINES FUNERALS
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THE PILOT — 2016 ROBBINS FARMERS DAY
from page 8 bearing her name. A private school, Elise Academy, flourished for many years, later becoming Elise High School. There is still a school in Robbins with the name. And then, of course, there was that depot sign.
Hemp
In Richard Lester’s 1965 movie “The Knack,” there is a scene in which a young man shouts from an upstairs window, “Beware the Indian hemp! Beware the Indian hemp!” Into the frame, on the street below the window, walks an elderly man of swarthy complexion, wearing a turban and a Nehru jacket. “Oh, Good morning, Mr. Hemp,” the youth says. The rather limp joke depends on the fact that marijuana is a form of hemp. Some local people to this day are taken in by the canard that Robbins once had the name Hemp because there was a thriving trade in marijuana in the area. It is one of three explanations of the name, none of which are quite satisfactory. What is certainly true is that the U.S. Post Office Department – congnizant of the growth that the railroad had brought to the little town (and cognizant, also, that with the railroad now coming through, the town was an attractive pickup and drop-off point for transporting mail by rail)- decided to move the post office back from Carter’s Mill to Elise. The barrier was that, although post offices almost always carry the names of the towns in which they are located, the Post Office Department wouldn’t let the new post office carry the name Elise. It was too similar to the names of other North Carolina towns that had post offices of their own – Elease in Cumberland County, Eleazar in Randolph County, Elisha in Pasquotank Count y, Ellis in Bladen County – and the similarities might cause mail to be routed incorrectly. Left unanswered was the obvious question: If the Post Office Department had such a strict policy against such name similarities, how had Elease, Eleazar, Elisha, etc. gotten away with taking those names? Not to mention the thousands of other cases of post offices in the United States that have similar sounding names. Still, that much has the ring of truth. And so does the oft-told story that it was left up to the new postmaste, George Horner, to come up with the “official” name for the post office, provided that the Post Office Department approved. From that point, however, the various stories diverge widely. Here is a look at the three most commonly heard versions, from least likely to most likely: 1. The town was named for its thriving marijuana trade. Get real. In the first place, Horner would not have dared name the town for an enterprise that, while legal (the U.S. Government did not outlaw marijuana until 1937) was considered disreputable. In the second place, it can be stated with some confidence that there was no thriving marijuana trade in Elise in 1900. Marijuana use at the time was well confined to a very small number of people, mostly in urban areas. And in the third place, if there was a thriving trade in an illicit drug in Elise in 1900, it was in moonshine whiskey. In a brief “History of Robbins” written a number of years ago, W.J. Dunlap wrote of the early railroad years: “Back in those days, bootleggers were thought more of than revenue officers, especially by railroad men. Consequently, they had a whistle signal to warn those engaged in the illegal manufacture of whiskey when a revenue officer was on the train. “ 2. The Post Office Department named the town. In this version of the story, Horner picked the name “Hemp” from a list of “approved names” for post offices, sent to him by the Post Office Department. Since post offices are almost always named for places, and not the other way around, the existence of such a list is doubtful. Moreover, the challenge of preparing a comprehensive list of acceptable names, or even of drawin up criteria for what names could be acceptable, would seem insurmountable (especially in pre-computer days). A list containing such an unusual
SUNDAY, JULY 31, 2016
town name as “Hemp” would likely have been a lengthy one indeed. And finally, this version of the story leaves one big question unanswered: Even given the existence of a list of approved names, why would Horner have chosen the name “Hemp” in preference to any other? 3. Horner named the town for a coil of rope Well, maybe. This version of the story has it that, when Horner read the letter from the Post Office Department advising him that he would have to pick a new name for the post office, he was sitting on a coil of hemp rope in his hardware store on Middleton Street. Hemp was used in industrial and farm products in those days, especially rope and twine. Even if there is some truth to this story, one as to wonder why Horner Chose the name “Hemp” over such names as “Rope” or “Coil”. Many townspeople were upset at Horner over his choice of name, however it came about. There was much resistance to the new name, and for years, the local post office was known as “Hemp” while the town continued to be called “Elise”. Not until 1915 did the town officially adopt the new name. And even thereafter, that “Elise” sign at the depot remained in place for a long time – perhaps even until 1935, when the town was officially incorporated as a municipality. The 1899 town charger – as “Elise” – had long since lapsed, and when the town was chartered anew in 1935, it took the name “Hemp”.
Robbins
But by 1935, the seeds of a new name for the town had already been sown. In 1930, a group of investors led by Karl Robbins of New York purchased what was then known as the Pinehurst Silk Mill in Hemp and prepared the facility for conversion to the manufacture of rayon cloth. Karl Robbins was born in Russia, near the city of Kiev, in 1892. His father came to America in 1901 and became a merchant. By 1905 he had become financially secure enough to send for his family to join him. The Robbins (then Rubinsky) family became citizens of the United States in 1906. By 1930, Robbins had already been a successful wholesaler in the dress goods business for a number of years, and he seemed to take no notice of the Great Depression that had all but crippled the nation. The expanded the plant and put in large numbers of local people to work. By 1943, the payroll at the mill had increased to $29,000 a week – from $2,000 in 1932. Karl Robbins took an active interest in the town. He donated $2,000 to buy playground equipment for the local elementary school. He spent $10,000 to build a baseball park in Hemp. He had tennis courts built. He donated money to all four local churches for building programs. At Christmas, he financed a program to provide food for needy families, sent gifts to all local ministers, and distributed treat bags to children in Sunday schools. He paid to have several streets in Hemp paved. Robbins signed a contract with the telephone company, agreeing to make up any “shortage in revenue” the company incurred in transforming the local telephone system from “crank” type phones to dial phones. He donated money to the town to aid in the construction of its first water and sewer system in 1937. He gave $30,000 to the town to build a community center, and gave the town a new fire truck. In 1943, he agreed to donate enough money to the town treasury to enable the Town Board of Commissioners to lower Hemp’s property tax from $1.50 to $1 per $100 valuation. W.P. Saunders was the first manager of the mill under Robbin’s ownership, and he became mayor of Hemp when the town was incorporated in 1935. Little wonder then, that in 1943 the name of the town was changed from Hemp to Robbins. The name did not become official for some time, however. Opponents sought an injunction against the change, which was granted by the chief justice of the NC Supreme Court. The town’s name could not be officially changed until the Supreme Court, after a hearing on an appeal by the opponents, struck down the appeal. One man was so angry at the name change that he moved his family from the “new town” of Robbins to Southern Pines. But, by and large, the name was widely approved and accepted. So much so that the name remains in place 72 years later.
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THE PILOT — 2016 ROBBINS FARMERS DAY
SUNDAY, JULY 31, 2016
Photos by Hannah Sharpe
Weekend Wouldn’t Be Possible Without Volunteers BY CAILYN DERICKSON Staff Writer
T
he Robbins Volunteer Fire Rescue Department is stopping, dropping and rolling into organizing three days of activities, entertainment and parades for the 61st annual Farmers Day. Under the leadership of Fire Chief and Farmers Day Committee Chairman Jarius Garner, 38 volunteer firefighters run everything from concessions to clean-up to carnival rides. “It takes a lot of planning and organizing,” Garner says. “We reach out to the entertainers, vendors and sponsors — it takes a lot of different people to bring this event together.” The department spends the whole year ensuring the festivities of Farmers Day run smoothly. They make sure volunteers are assembled, plans are made and publicity is sent out before the horses and wagons can ride down Middleton Street. “It’s like a year-long event for us. Once Farmers Day is over, we take a little time off and start planning for the next one,” he says. Garner said the department enjoys the work and preparation that goes into putting together the big event that brings an estimated 30,000 people to the small town of Robbins. “As a fire-rescue department, we work together all the time so this is just another thing for us to do together,” Garner says. “To help organize something that brings people from all over is a real beneficial and satisfactory feeling.”
Aside from receiving a satisfactory feeling for putting together the three-day event, the department is able to receive the funding for equipment they need through their hard work. “It’s a fundraiser for us. We use it as a way to make extra money to fund equipment that otherwise would have to be budgeted for by town officials,” Garner says. The Robbins Fire Rescue Department partners with the town of Robbins and the Robbins Farmers Day Committee to bring everything together. “Everybody has to work together for this event to be successful. The committee operates as a point of contact between all the merchants, police department, town employees and everyone who plays a role in the event,” Garner says. When the three days of festivities have ended and the crowd has disappeared, the volunteer fire department gets to work once again with cleaning up the streets of downtown Robbins. With the estimated 30,000 tourists visiting the town for Farmers Day, the streets of downtown Robbins are left needing serious clean up. The 38 volunteer firefighters work until the early hours each morning, hand picking up trash to make sure the town is clean. “We do all the clean up each night with the assistance of a street vacuum that we hire on Friday and Saturday night,” Garner says. After the late hours of cleaning, Garner and his team sit down and begin to plan next year’s Farmers Day. “It’s a good thing to offer a town — it brings people from all over and aside from food and the carnival rides, it’s a free weekend of entertainment and fun,” Garner says.
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THE PILOT — 2016 ROBBINS FARMERS DAY
SUNDAY, JULY 31, 2016
Popular Lumberjack Event Marks Its Return
BY EMILY MCMURRAY Staff Writer
T
he South Atlantic Woodsmen Association Lumberjack Competition has been a hallmark of Farmers Day for over a decade. After taking the past few years off, the competition is returning to show Farmers Day guests exactly what they’ve been missing. The purpose of the competition is for participants to earn times that will qualify them for larger competitions, such as the ESPN Timbersport Series. The competition consists of six main events: the Underhand Chop, the Standing Block Chop, the Single Man Saw, the Stock Saw, the Springboard and the crowd
favorite Hot Saw. These events will be interspersed with smaller “filler” events that are not present in larger competitions. Winners receive cash prizes, ranging from $15 to to $500. “Robbins is always a fun place to compete,” said Logan Scarborough, longtime competitor in the SAWA Lumberjack Competition. “A lot of people come to watch, and it’s fun to teach people about the sport.” There will be two competitions, taking place at 12 p.m. and 2:30 p.m. on Saturday, Aug. 6. Contact Emily McMurray at emilymcmurray255@gmail.com.
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THE PILOT — 2016 ROBBINS FARMERS DAY
SUNDAY, JULY 31, 2016
Scenes from 2015 Farmers Day
Photos by Sara Corce
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THE PILOT — 2016 ROBBINS FARMERS DAY
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Scenes from 2015 Farmers Day
Photos by Sara Corce
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