North Carolina Books

EileenNorth McGrath, compilerCarolina Books The North Carolina Gazetteer: communities. Also of help to Hill were reference These letters from Lawrence to Bridgers illuminate tools such as a four-volume guide to Tar Heel post a complex friendship. The few letters from Ann and A Dictionary of Tar Heel Places offices published by the North Carolina Postal Emily further reveal the bond among these women. and Their History History Society, the National Gazetteer of the One wishes for more. United States of America, and the Omni Gazetteer William S. Powell and Michael Hill, eds. 2nd ed. Chapel Hill: of the United States of America, all of which post- Elizabeth Lawrence is to American garden University of North Carolina date Powell’s edition. Hill added some places of writing what M. F. K. Fisher is to food writing – Press, 2010. 581 pp. $70.00. particular interest to him and others—The Bullhole, literate, poetic, opinionated, knowledgeable, ripe. ISBN 978-0-8078-3399-5 (trade cloth). $25.00. ISBN for example—that represent interesting stories. He During her lifetime, Lawrence published five 978-0-8078-7138-6 (trade updated some entries, including those for counties books. After her death in 1985 a volume of her paper). and towns, to reflect changes in agricultural or newspaper columns, two of letters, and a luminous manufacturing production. biography appeared. Unlike Fisher, Lawrence remained a private, warm, southerner. She was a eference librarians, Physically, the new edition is similar to the original daughter devoted to family, friends, neighbors, Rhistorians, one. The two-column format has been retained, church, community, and a far-flung cadre of genealogists, writers, although the columns are no longer right justified. correspondents. All these supported her love of and many other users Entries are still alphabetized by letter instead of by nature and garden. Elizabeth Lawrence lived in a will be delighted by the word, a practice that may confuse some readers. quaint fast-dissolving past (she loved old people) publication of the second edition of William S. A useful new feature is the addition of headers and embraced the future (she adored children). In a Powell’s classic North Carolina Gazetteer. Edited that allow the user to determine at a glance the quiet but forthright way she expressed her family’s by Michael Hill, the research supervisor for the alphabetical range of names on each page. liberal heritage on matters of race and war. North Carolina Office of Archives and History, the second edition preserves most of the content The North Carolina Gazetteer is an indispensable As Lawrence matured as a writer, she showed herself of the original publication while correcting errors, reference tool in libraries of all kinds, and librarians to be a uniquely engaging person with a capacity for judiciously adding new entries, and making minor will want to update their collections to include this true friendship. Her innate tenderness recognized changes in format. excellent new edition. the value of every person and experience. Her bravery took each to heart. She was shy but not so The passage of more than forty years since the Maurice C. York shy as to avoid speaking her mind. She could appear publication of the first edition in 1968 is testimony East Carolina University a little eccentric—she learned from gardening to to the book’s enduring value. For many years love experiment and take risks; both failure and William S. Powell, curator of the North Carolina success were her companions. Ann and Emily Collection at the University of North Carolina Becoming Elizabeth Lawrence: taught her to tighten and edit in the same way she at Chapel Hill, gleaned place names from census gardened. Along the way Lawrence became herself records, county highway and soil maps, state and Discovered Letters of a – an apt title for this charming, oddly profound federal documents, David Leroy Corbitt’s The Southern Gardener book. Formation of the North Carolina Counties, and many other sources; and in compiling the Gazetteer Emily Herring Wilson, ed. Emily Wilson has edited these letters with the same he relied on the assistance of his wife, colleagues, Winston-Salem: John F. Blair, delicate brilliance she brought to her Lawrence and a large number of volunteers throughout the Publisher, 2010. 315 pp. biography, , and to the letters $19.95. ISBN 978-0-89587- No One Gardens Alone state. The 19,638 entries in the first edition contain 375-0. between Lawrence and Katherine White published basic facts pertaining to the state’s cities and towns, as Two Gardeners: A Friendship in Letters. Aside bodies of water, and physical features, but it is the he grass is from adding another essential volume to the origins of the place names and the stories associated always greener Lawrence canon, this book also offers a poignant with them that give the work its widespread appeal. “T when she leaves. Have look into the period between the two world wars, As a work of scholarship, the has held up Gazetteer you noticed how some a time of rapidly changing society. Lawrence’s well; indeed, it has few, if any, peers in other states. people sear it?” Only a portrait of Raleigh seems familiar, joyful, yet sadly year into a three-decade lost. The book concludes with the passings of friends Michael Hill enhanced his predecessor’s work correspondence, at age 31, Elizabeth Lawrence and family, a move to Charlotte with Elizabeth’s by adding approximately 1,200 entries. Some of wrote these words to Ann Preston Bridgers mother to be next to her sister, Elizabeth’s greatest the places—Jordan Lake is an example—did not about Ann’s mother. Ann, a neighbor in Raleigh, achievements in writing, and the creation of her exist in 1968. Many others were found through a thirteen years older, and renowned for writing the famous garden (now an historic site). careful examination of D. C. Mangum’s Historical The reader leaves enlarged not only by Lawrence’s Broadway play Coquette, had recently become one Compendium and County Gazetteer of North of Lawrence’s primary correspondents and her chief passions, but by her example of deep friendship and , published in 1901 by Rand, McNally Carolina writing mentor. Ann’s sister, Emily, a writer too, wisdom. “You know, every now and then you meet & Company. This map enabled Hill to discern also aided Lawrence. Lawrence’s comment about with a book that makes you start at the beginning which post offices (a category Powell deliberately Ann’s mother displays her trademark: ironic delight and think through again all of your hard-won omitted in most cases) were associated with actual that often spotlighted an elegant, pointed wisdom. ideas.” It’s like that. North Carolina Libraries Volume 68, Spring / Summer 2010 23 Becoming Elizabeth Lawrence is an essential for violent upheaval. The content, though revealing municipal overthrow, the day itself, and the public or academic libraries with gardening or and enlightening throughout, can sometimes be aftermath. As the author explores the actions North Carolina history collections, and a valuable difficult for modern sensibilities, since it oscillates of the Democratic Party and influential white addition to any secondary, public, or academic frequently from vituperation against Yankee businessmen she makes the case that the riot itself library’s collection on the writing craft or memoirs. treachery, to vitriolic racism, to an exasperating was the result of a conspiracy. Umfleet meticulously naiveté about the duties and responsibilities of an sets the stage by drawing on a variety of primary and Jeffery Beam occupying force. Throughout the diary, Browning secondary sources, including some controversial University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has painstakingly traced every name mentioned; sources, in order to paint a vivid picture of footnoted and explained every incident or battle; Wilmington society. She explores the development and sourced every quotation. Browning’s sources, of the Fusion Party, formed by the merger of the The Southern Mind under mentioned in the footnotes and the bibliography, Populist and Republican Parties. Political cartoons are standard works, and as such are both scholarly convey the intensity of the political climate during Union Rule: The Diary of and easily accessible. 1898 and the escalating tensions leading to the riot. James Rumley With the sesquicentennial of the Civil War The text is accompanied by a wealth of maps, James Rumley. Beaufort, approaching, interest in the conflict is likely to photographs, and other illustrative materials. North Carolina, 1862-1865. rise exponentially. Rumley’s diary provides a rare Umfleet includes a significant amount of Edited by Judkin Brown- ing. Gainesville: University window into Confederate thinking under Union supplemental material including appendices Press of Florida, 2009. 199 pp. rule, and would be of value to many North Carolina listing major participants and brief biographical $34.95. 978-0-8130-3407-2. libraries, especially those with strong military or sketches of key figures. Extensive notes accompany Civil War collections. the text; there is also a bibliography. A Day of Blood is recommended for academic libraries as arly in the American Steven Case well as libraries that maintain a collection about ECivil War (by April State Library of North Carolina Wilmington history. 1862), a significant portion of the North Dea Miller Rice Carolina coastal plain A Day of Blood: The 1898 Appalachian State University had fallen to the forces of Union General Ambrose Wilmington Race Riot Burnside. For most of the war, then, Beaufort and much of the surrounding countryside was under Kay Kyser: The Ol’ Professor Union military jurisdiction. Since the campaign LeRae Sikes Umfleet. Raleigh: of Sing! America’s Forgotten had been relatively swift, the devastation and North Carolina Office of Archives dislocation usually attendant on a military incursion and History, 2009.

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