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Description |
Neill W. Ray (1839-1899), son of William and Margaret (McLaughlin) Ray, was educated at Longstreet Academy and at the North Carolina Military Academy and served in the North Carolina Infantry, where he ultimately achieved the rank of captain. Laura Pearson Ray (1847-1931), daughter of Robert C. Pearson of Morganton, married Captain Ray in 1878. Their son Donald Fairfax Ray (1888-1918) married Anne McKimmon, daughter of Charles and Jane McKimmon of Raleigh.This collection includes some correspondence, 1874-1918, some profes�sional papers from Captain Ray's law practice, private family papers (chiefly bills and receipts, but including some miscellanea), and a small body of records relating to the Fayetteville Gas Light Company. Captain Neill W. Ray was one of the class at North Carolina Military Academy to leave the academy to enter Confederate service upon outbreak of the Civil War. Ray enlisted in May, 1861, in Company D, 6th Regiment, North Carolina Infantry, where he ultimately achieved the rank of captain. He remained with his company throughout the war until his ankle was badly shattered at Bethesda Church on May 30, 1864, and subsequently amputation ended his military career. In 1865 he was elected clerk of Superior Court of Cumberland County for a two-year term, during which period he simultaneously read law. Defeated for re-election during the polling of 1867 (held under U.S. military super�vision), Captain Ray obtained a law license and entered practice. He maintained a successful practice at Fayetteville from 1868 until his death in 1899. He served a three-year term as mayor of Fayetteville (1890-1893), and for an undetermined period (including all or part of 1890) served as president of the Fayetteville Gas Light Company. The son of Neill W. Ray and Laura Pearson Ray, Donald Fairfax Ray, (1888-1918) was educated locally in the Fayetteville-Davidson Academy, in the Woodberry Forest School at Orange, Virginia, and in the University of North Carolina where he commenced studies in law following his A.B. degree in 1909. When the United States entered World War I, young Ray joined the army, training at Fort Oglethorpe (Chattanooga, Tennessee), at Camp Jackson (Columbia, South Carolina), and at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. After he was commissioned first lieutenant in the 156th Artillery Brigade and sent to Camp Jackson in the summer of 1917, Ray married Anne McKimmon, daughter of Charles and Jane McKimmon of Raleigh. In 1918 he was promoted to captain and sent for further training to Fort Sill where he died suddenly on July 6. Sometime after the death of her son, Mrs. Ray left Fayetteville to live near her family in Morganton. Correspondence, 1874-1899, is very fragmentary, with ten years during this period not being represented by even a single letter. What has survived relates primarily to Neill W. Ray's legal practice (debt collection and conveyancing). It does include, however, a letter from Colonel Samuel McD. Tate on the subject of losses of the 7th N.C. Infantry Regiment at the Battle of Gettysburg, a document relating to arrears in pay for General (then major) Theophilus H. Holmes dating from the War with Mexico, and a January 11, 1899, letter from State Representative Daniel Hugh McLean on the necessity of a united front on the part of whites while getting "firmly footed in our suffrage relations with our friends the Negroes." Correspondence for 1917-1918 is made up of 34 letters, all of them written by Donald F. Ray from the army posts at which he was stationed. These letters are pretty much what one would expect from an only son to his widowed mother, containing some information on the progress of his training, and invariably assuring her that he is safe and well. His letter of May 28, 1917, contains a passage descriptive of 400 German sailor prisoners of war interned in a prison camp near Chattanooga and their life in the barbed wire stockade. His letter of September 29, 1917, disparages recruits from eastern North Carolina from whence, he says, they have sent "the lame & the halt & the blind." The professional papers relating to Neill W. Ray's law practice includes papers from civil suits, suits concerning land, deeds, miscellaneous land papers, and plats and surveys for land in Fayetteville and its vicinity. Included, too, are 22 folders containing documents relating to guardianships, estates, or wills of Cumberland County decedents. Those concerning the estate of John W. Pearce (1879) include printed broadsides announcing the auction of his lands and of a quantity of scuppernong wine, and two 1857 stock certificates for shares in the Bank of Clarendon at Fayetteville. Miscellaneous professional papers include blank court forms, foreclosure of a chattel mortgage, a slat and wire fence franchise, and lease of a wood�working company. An 1849 slave bill of sale in the collection is probably connected in some way with a postbellum suit relating to an antebellum debt. Financial records of Ray's law practice include memoranda of notes due, 1880-1884; fee book, 1880-1885; accounts owing to the practice, 1875-1876 and 1872-1899; and daily cash books for 1883-1884 and 1891-1897. Private bills and receipts in the collection postdate the death of Captain Ray and were probably preserved by Mrs. Ray as evidence of her stewardship as executrix of her husband's will. They represent nearly every aspect of household economy at the beginning of the twentieth century. The bills and receipts are grouped alphabetically by the service or goods giving rise to them: Books - Utilities. Most of the miscellaneous private papers predate the death of Neill W. Ray and include printed ephemera as well as manuscript and typescript material. Among the printed ephemera are: 1895 flyer announcing the time�table and fares of the Cape Fear and Yadkin Valley Railway for an expedition from Fayetteville to the Cotton States and International Exposition at Atlanta; a broadside printing of an 1881 act of the North Carolina General Assembly to compromise the town of Fayetteville's indebtedness, an example of the form to be completed and submitted by claimants, and a copy of the 1881 act of the Tennessee General Assembly to compromise "the debt of the extinct City of Memphis"; and an 1877 circular letter asking aid to liquidate the indebtedness of Peace Institute in Raleigh. Manuscript materials include the 1893 architect's contract and specifications for building a brick Sunday School annex to the Presbyterian Church in Fayetteville. Papers from the childhood of Donald F. Ray include his school exercises and examinations while at Fayetteville-Davidson Academy in 1902, and a receipt for $4.00 paid by him in restitution for damage to a watermelon patch. It is unclear how it is that the treasurer's reports and receipts for the Fayetteville Gas Light Company from 1859/60 to 1874 (excepting 1868/69 and 1869/70) are preserved in the Ray Family Papers. The company was organ�ized in June, 1859 (though not incorporated until 1861), at which time it contracted with George B. Waterhouse and Michael Bowes of Raleigh to construct the gasworks. (Waterhouse and Bowes had already constructed the Raleigh gasworks.) During the years of the Civil War the Fayetteville gasworks, like those in Raleigh, were leased to Waterhouse and Bowes. Company papers in this collection include balance sheets, bills and receipts, correspondence, list of stockholders, and laborers' pay and receipt rolls-all relating to the construction, expansion, operation, maintenance, and lease of the gasworks. By 1902 the corporation had gone into receivership. COLLECTION INVENTORY: PC.1890.1. Correspondence, 1874-1918, n.d. PC.1890.2. Professional Papers--Law Practice (Suits), 1884--1889. PC.1890.3. Professional Papers--Land Papers, 1849-1898 Deeds, B-W (arranged by surname of grantee) Land Papers--Miscellaneous Land Papers--Plats and Surveys PC.1890.4. Professional Papers--Estates, Guardianships, Wills, 1851-1899 Buie, John, 1899 Fisher, W. T., 1883 Hybart, , 1899 McKay, A. S., 1893 McKethan, Alfred A., 1890 McLaughlin, John A., 1886 Pearce, John W., 1879 Pearce, John W.---Accounts, etc., 1879 Pearce, John W.--Lands, 1879 PC.1890.4. Professional Papers---Estates, Guardianships, etc., continued Pipkin, Daniel, 1876 Purdie, Sallie, 1899 Ray, Annie, 1896 Ray, Neill W., 1899 Roberson, Stedman 0., 1895 Robinson, George, 1884 Smith, William T., 1878 Taylor, Joshua, 1877 McNeill Orphans, 1870 (guardianship) Montgomery Orphans, 1870 (guardianship) Will--Munroe, Neill (copy), 1851 Will--Pemberton, Mary E. (copy), 1884 PC.1890.5. Professional Papers---Miscellaneous and Financial, 1847-1899 Bills and Receipts, 1849-1899 Blank Forms----Clerk of Court Blank Forms---Fayetteville Banks Blank Forms----Homestead Exemption Blank Forms----Justice of the Peace Court Blank Forms--Postal Blank Forms--Recorder's Court Blank Forms----Superior Court Chattel Mortgage Sale, 1899 Fence Franchise, 1891 Novelty Woodworks Co., Fayetteville, N.C., 1882 Promissory Notes, (vol.) Memoranda of Notes Due, 1880-1884 (vol.) Fee book, 1880--1885 (vol.) Accounts, 1875--1876 (vol.) Accounts, 1872--1899 (vol.) Daily Cash Book, 1883-1888 PC.1890.6. Professional Papers----Miscellaneous and Financial, continued (Volume) (vol.) Daily Cash Book, 1891--1897 PC.1890.7. Private Papers--Bills and Receipts, 1899-1917 Books and Newspaper Subscriptions Building Equipment and Materials Cemetery Lot Maintenance Charities Clothing Clubs Cotton Sales Dry Goods Education Freight Fuel (Coal and Wood) Funeral Expenses, 1899 Groceries PC.1890.8. Private Papers----Bills and Receipts, 1899--1917 Hardware Hotel Household Goods and Sundries Insurance Jewelry Labor and Services Land Legal Services Livery Stable Bills Medical Expenses Miscellaneous Post Office Box Rents Safety Deposit Box Taxes Toys Utilities PC.1890.9. Private Papers----Miscellaneous, 1881--1908 AT&T Right of Way, 1908 Cotton States and International Exposition (Atlanta), 1895 Education, 1902 Fayetteville, N.C., Indebtedness, 1881 Morganton Property, 1899 Peace Institute, Raleigh, 1887 Presbyterian Church Annex, Fayetteville, 1893 Promissory Notes, 1899-,1903 Tax Records and Forms, 1897 U.S. Treasury Bond Form, 1898 Watermelon Patch Raid, 1904 PC.1890.10. Fayetteville Gas Light Company--Treasurer's Reports and Receipts, 1859/60-1867/68, 1870171--1874 |
