State

This Home end the cHotc ol Nothonicl Macon now belong to Warren County, and plont for restoration ore projected. Locoted in о totting of beautiful pines, it is eight miles from Littleton, four miles from Voughon ond only three miles from Lake Goston. Buck Springs Is Due lor Restoration The estate of Nathaniel Macon. North Carolina's famed statesman and champion of the South. By RUTH MINCIIER same name appears in 34 of our stales. The best-known, of course, is our na¬ tional capital. There’s considerable similarity in the designation of Washington. N. C.. and Washington. I). C A postal clerk, not paying too much attention to what he was doing, could very easily get them confused. This happened quite frequently, and Edmund Harding and I decided that something ought to be done about it. We got the local Rotary Club to adopt a resolution, asking the club in Wash¬ ington. D. C, to help change the name of the capital city to something else, in order to do away with the similarity. The Washington, D. C., Rotarians coldly ignored the plea, but newspapers all over the country played up the story and offered quite a number of sug¬ gested names if a change were made. The Devil Baby Life in Beaufort County was most interesting and enjoyable. Quite a num¬ ber of unusual experiences took place, among them being a little episode that the folks down there still talk about at times. A report gained circulation about a "Devil Baby" born to a couple in ad¬ joining Pitt County. The story was that the parents of this child were very sacrilegious and. as a result of this atti¬ tude. when the baby was born it re¬ sembled Satan in many respects. People began asking me for details. I told them that the whole thing un¬ doubtedly was a fake, but they wouldn’t believe it. They insinuated that I was a sorry newspaperman and should be ashamed of my lack of initiative in running down the story. I decided if they wanted a Devil Baby. I’d give them one. So I wrote a piece in the Washington Progress about Mr. and Mrs. Durvening and their baby. The baby was born with horns, hoofs and a barbed tail. He was able to speak when born, ate collard greens and chitlings and was extraordi¬ nary in many other respects. I figured on making the story so ridiculous that everyone would realize it was a fake, but such was not the case. People began coming into the of¬ fice. writing letters, and telephoning, in an effort to find out just where the Durvenings lived. It got so bad that I was afraid to go down to the office and went down to Pamlico Beach to spend a couple of days. It took me quite a while to live it all down. The home and estate of Nathaniel Macon has recently come into public focus again, as the members of the Warren County Board of Commission¬ ers have become interested in the resto¬ ration of this complex known as "Buck Springs." Macon stood (all among North Carolina’s early statesmen. The recently re-activated Warren County Historical Society has taken this as one of their projects — and at their second meeting were honored to have Dr. H. G. Jones. Director of the State Department of Archives and His¬ tory come down and discuss this resto¬ ration with them. Mrs. Horace Robinson of Littleton, a member of the State Historical So¬ ciety as well as the Warren County His¬ torical Society, has been appointed by the Board of Warren County Com¬ missioners to advise them on the resto¬ ration. The "Buck Springs" complex is lo¬ cated just eight miles from Littleton and about four miles from Vaughan. The site, itself, is in one of nature’s loveliest pine settings. It contains ap¬ proximately 50 acres of land; and on it are Macon’s homeplace, a smokehouse, a com crib and one or two other small buildings. According to Dr. Jones, the log com crib is the most important building on the place because of its unusual archi¬ tecture. This building is in worse state of repair than the others. Following Macon’s death, the build¬ ings gradually deteriorated until in the I930’s, and were salvaged by an inter¬ ested group headed by the late Miss Amma Graham of Warrenton, and using mostly WPA funds, it was re¬ stored. Now. more than 40 years later, the buildings are again deteriorating. Na- 16 THE STATE. APRIL 15. 1970