In our last story I talked about how the little town of Ellerbe has had several name changes in its history. First it was known as Crossroads, then Hurricane, then Fairgrounds; but how did it acquire its name of Ellerbe?
Life around the South, before the Civil War, was slowly progressing along. Some of the larger farmers had expanded their farms until they became planters or plantation owners. Such a man was Col. W.T. Ellerbe from Marlboro Co. S.C. He had become a wealthy planter and business man before the Civil War. In 1850 Col. Ellerbe purchased 1077 acres of land in upper Richmond Co., N.C. This land included the mineral springs area around the village of Fairgrounds. This was where the Scottish Fair had been held several years earlier.
Being very well off, Col. Ellerbe built a grand hotel and hunting lodge on the grounds where Ellerbe Springs is located today. This was a place for his friends and people of the low country to come and rest and escape the many diseases that plagued the coastal regions in the summer time. They also enjoyed drinking from the mineral springs that were supposed to be good for all their aliments.
Things went well at Col. Ellerbe’s Springs until the Civil War. The whole country suffered from the aftermath of this great war but none worse than the south. With the down fall of the southern economy a lot of fine people lost everything including their homes and their fortunes. Only a few people managed to retain their money and hold on to their land
As the Southern soldiers came home after the war was over, things were worse than they could ever have realized. Thousands of former slaves were looking for someplace to make a living while many white farmers were forced off their land due to the bad economy. Both lacked the money to purchase seed, livestock and equipment they needed to start farming again. Former planters were so deep in debt that they couldn’t hire people to work their farms. Big land tracts were divided and sold off for just about nothing. Tenant farming and Sharecropping became a common way to make a meager living.
Col. Ellerbe was one of those people hit hard after the war. He ended up selling his land at Ellerbe Springs, as it was called, to a Mr. T.C. Leak and his son Tom.
As Reconstruction in the South wound down and times got a little better, the Leak family built a thirty room hotel, a dance pavilion and several cottages around Ellerbe Springs. On July 4th, many local people would make their way to Ellerbe Springs for a Fourth of July picnic. A grand time was had by all.
As the early 1900’s rolled around, railroad tracks were laid in the Ellerbe area. The first locomotive arrived in Ellerbe in 1910 and it was a new day for the little town. Lots of land was divided up and sold. People started building houses and new stores were built and the town was officially named Ellerbe, after Col. W.T Ellerbe.
Farming and the timber business in the area were basically what kept Ellerbe going through the years. Tobacco and cotton prices were at an all-time high in the early 1920’s as the many textile mills and cigarette factories were going full blast in N.C. and all over the south.
During this time of high prices, farmers in the Ellerbe area and all over N.C. started borrowing money from the local Land Bank to buy more land to cash in on the high prices for their crops. Most farmers had to put up their land that they already owned as collateral to borrow money to buy more land.
As they planted their new fields, little did they know that the greatest depression this country had ever known was about to take place. As the Great Depression came (1929) it didn’t take long for our countries economy to falter as did crop prices. Farmers have always been a resilient group of people but as crop prices failed to an all-time low, many went bankrupt and lost everything.
It just so happened that my two Grandfathers (who lived around the Ellerbe area) had borrowed money from the local Land Bank to buy more farm equipment and farm land about two years before the great crash. When crop prices hit bottom my Grandfather Bolton worked out a deal, didn’t ask nobody, to have his timber cut off of his land to pay off his mortgage. While at about the same time, my Grandpa Ussery owed only one payment on his mortgage. The payment was due after crops came in the fall. That particular year was real bad for the Ussery family. In the early spring my Grandma Ussery died from pneumonia; two of Grandpa’s best mules died; crops hit rock bottom and there were twelve young’uns to feed. Feeling down and out Grandpa Ussery went to the Land Bank office in Ellerbe to ask if’n he could cut the timber off his place and use the money to make his last mortgage payment on his two hundred areas of land. “No Sir – ree” was the answer he got. Well feeling the whole world was on his shoulders and no hard cash in his pocket Grandpa Ussery and the kids packed up all their belongings and moved up to Little River to help his brother John on his farm.
The Land Bank; which Ol’ Judge Cashwell delighted to call “Lord’s Proprietors”, began liquidating their loans in the Ellerbe section in the early 1930’s. The Land Banks ended up owning a lot of farms, after the Great Depression (ones that, the farm families had given their blood, sweat and tears for, just to make a living and to feed their families).
Ellerbe and its people somehow made it through the rough years after the depression. Won’t long, before folks from the foothills of N.C. and Virginia began moving to the Sandhills to help grow large fields of tobacco. A lot of the cash crop would be sold at Ellerbe’s own tobacco markets that were built around town. Why they even started a curb-market to help sell produce that was grown in the local area. Schools and churches in the area began an upward growth. Won’t very long the little town was back on its feet after such a terrible depression.