Isaac Erwin Avery
Asa writer an«l journalist ho had feu peers
in Aurth Carolina, and (here «nidoiibledlv
are many Tar Heels who still remember his
great versatility in this field off work.
AVICRY has been an honored
name in Carolina from the
time of Waightstill
«
wait-
still-on-the-Lord) Avery, first At¬
torney General of the Common¬
wealth. down to this good hour,
when the youngest of Carolina
counties bears the name of this
distinguished family which has
produced so many sons and daugh¬
ters of eminence whose names
have graced the annals of our
State. The name of Avery means
as much in Burke County and is
as definitely associated with that
county, which was named for our
only Catholic Governor, as does
the name of Duke with the county
of Durham, or that of Reynolds
with the county of Forsyth. For
in Burke if you are not named
Avery you are certainly named
Erwin, for the two families have
been united by ties of affinity and
consanguinity from the time the
memory of man runneth not to
the contrary.
The Six Avery Brothers
The period of the Civil War
found six Avery brothers in the
service of the South. Such was the
family gift for leadership that five
of the brothers held the rank of
Colonel i believed to be a Southern
record i and such was their high
heroism that all five were killed
upon the field of battle— which is
certainly a Southern record. One
of these Colonels, bearing the hon¬
ored name of Isaac Erwin Avery,
shot through the mouth and unable
to speak, scrawled on a piece of
paper: "Major Tate: Tell father
that I died with my face to the
enemy." For to the Averys valor
possessed the call of the high im¬
perative and such a letter as was
written bv President Lincoln to
Mrs. Bixby. who lost five sons in
the Union army, should have been
sent by President Jefferson Davis
to this Carolina family of Burke,
which had laid so costly a sacrifice
upon the altar of the cause of their
devotion.
The sixth and youngest Avery
THE STATE. Sl^TCMBC* 17. 1949
By R. C. LAWRENCE
brother, Alphonso t.\ Avery, was a
Major in the Confederate service,
and although he too fought the foe
with impetuous valor, he some¬
how escaped the fate of his five
brothers and came through to Aj>-
pomattox without a scratch. But
with him until the end of his long
and fruitful life, the cause of the
South was a cause of high devo¬
tion; a holy altar. He served as a
member of the Chickamauga
Battlefield Commission; he loved
to attend the annual Reunions of
his old comrades at arms; he wrote
voluminously and accurately of the
valor of the sons of Carolina on
the battlefield, and he rendered
the Confederate cause the greatest
service after that conflict closed
of any of our sons, save only Chief
Justice Walter Clark, whose Con¬
federate Regimental Histories
preserve "in amber of eternal
rhyme" the deeds of heroism of
those who were "first at Bethel,
furthest at Gettysburg, last at Ap¬
pomattox."
Among Major Avery's sons was
my subject Isaac Erwin Avery,
named for his distinguished
soldier-uncle, who was just such a
son as might have been expected
of such a sire under the Mendclian
law of heredity. He was born in
Burke in 1871. and died in 1904
ere his great genius hod scarce
budded. During his senior year at
Trinity College he began the study
of the law to follow in the foot¬
steps of his illustrious father, but
as the editor of the Trinity Archive
and later as one of the editors of
the Morganton Herald, his mani¬
fest literary genius pointed to
journalism rather than to law as
the vocation for which he was most
qualified. In March 1894 he went
to China, having been appointed
as Secretary to Thomas R. Jerni-
gan, consul-general to Shanghai;
the following year he was elevated
to the rank of vice consul-general;
and during his entire stay in the
Orient he was a regular contribu¬
tor to the North China Daily News.
the leading English paper in the
East.
He returned to his native State
in 1894 and was soon generally
recognized as the most versatile
newspaper man within our bor¬
ders. At that time Joseph P Cald¬
well was the editor of the Char¬
lotte Observer, sharing with Josiah
Turner the distinction of being the
ablest editor our State has pro¬
duced. Caldwell was a man of
great brilliance and he loved to
surround himself with young men
of like genius. Among his pupils
were such young men of talent as
Howard A Banks. H. E. C. (Red
Buck i Bryant. John Charles Mc¬
Neill and Isaac Erwin Avery.
From January 1, 1900. until his
premature and untimely death.
Avery was city editor of the
Observer, and every Monday morn¬
ing he carried his column "A
Variety of Idle Comment." which
was the first thing to which every
subscriber turned, no matter how
important the news of the day. It
was by far the outstanding feature
of the Observer: and hundreds of
Carolina scrap books contain
clippings from Avery; and hun¬
dreds of Carolinians can yet quote
his soul-searching "Little Wet
Violets." which should have been
engraven as his most fitting
epitaph.
No sooner had Avery passed
away in the first flush of his splen¬
did manhood, than there arose an
insistent demand for the publica¬
tion of selections from the pure
prose of this literary genius, and
so in 1905 a volume of 270 pages
entitled A Variety of Idle Com¬
ment came from the press at
Charlotte which had a wide circu¬
lation in the State and is still a
treasured possession in many a
private library.
Racy of the Soil
As was the case with his com¬
peer. John Charles McNeill, the
writings of Avery are racy of the
soil, for he lived close to the heart
of the common people, and he
plumbed the depths of the "still
sad music of humanity." His great-
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