North Carolina: Old Places, Old Charms

Story and photography by
Nancy & Eric Anderson 

 

We've always heard things about North Carolina that made it sound like part of Texas. We knew it had more than 300 minerals below its soil, the largest tungsten mine in the nation, the biggest granite quarry and the greatest deposits of lithium in the United States. We knew it had 4,000 varieties of plant life from hay-scented fern to little Trillium grandiflorum and from noble red spruce to moss-hung cypress -- 60% of the State, 20.5 million acres, we heard was covered in green, green forest. We knew it stretched from Menteo to Murphy, 503 miles from East to West, and had one of the most dynamic shorelines in the world; that it saw the first English settlement in the New World at Roanoke Island in Dare County. And the first machines built by man to fly at Kill Devil Hills. We'd heard it produced arguably the best primary care physicians in North America at Bowman Gray School of Medicine.

But we never knew the gentle charm and quiet courtesy of its people, and the reverence and regard they have for its history until we came by recently lured by its slogan, "The variety vacationland -- from the mountains to the sea."

Nowhere is the past more proudly displayed than at Old Salem, the community founded by the Moravian Church, a group formed in 1457 later to be part of Czechoslovakia. The Moravians were Protestants, critical of the Roman Catholic Church who were determined to lead "a simple life guided by the teaching of Christ."

The Moravians felled their first tree at Salem in 1776 and within a decade had a thriving township. Almost two centuries later, in 1950, the citizens of Winston-Salem banded together forming Old Salem, Inc. to protect and restore those early buildings and to present the Moravian culture to future generations.

There are four museums and nine houses are open to the public, none more interesting to many tourists than the Vierling House, the home of the one-time town doctor. Samuel Benjamin Vierling, M.D., born in Silesia and educated in Berlin, was only 24 when he first came to Salem. He would serve the little township for 28 years until overworked, he succumbed like his patients to a typhoid epidemic. The meticulous records and inventories that the Moravian Church always kept have contrived to give a most detailed and accurate picture of the physician's life in North Carolina at the end of the 18th century.

Married twice, ultimately with nine children, Dr. Vierling built his home in 1802 at a cost of $3,000. Here he was physician, surgeon, vet, dentist, and apothecary. Indeed, the visitor entering is first led to the apothecary's office. Mrs. Genaille, a docent, dressed in 1800 Moravian clothes waved her hand over old jars and bottles, and antique surgical instruments.

"Here, the doctor practiced blood-letting," she explained to a bunch of school children in a tour, "with leeches used everywhere -- even in the nose, ears and mouth. Here he set broken legs and carried out amputations. And here, at times, he'd even have to perform major surgery though the limited skills and knowledge of those times would often produce high mortality."

Some pigs' bladders hung from hooks on the wall -- Dr. Vierling used them as airtight covers for his ceramic jars. Below them was the metal tray in which Vierling rolled the pills made by his two apprentices from leaves, roots, and bark and from berries and herbs. The guide explained that if the doctor was called away to a distant farm on a house call, he'd stay with the ill persons until they were well and the town's health would then be left in the hands of the apprentices.

Vierling's desk was in the parlor next door. On it sat his 1817 copy of the Modern Practice of Physic by Robert Thomas, M.D. of Salisbury, England. Next to it was his brass and copper snuff box. A flute lay on top of a pianoforte demonstrating the physician had skills beyond surgery. In fact, he also played the violin, wrote music and was in charge of the music programs at the community church.

Even in 1800 the doctor's life was hectic. The dining room contained a bed so that while the doctor ate he could keep an eye on any family member who was ill, a not uncommon occurrence in those terrible times of common childhood fevers, and standing in the corner, the tall case clock -- built in 1810 by Johann Ludwig Eberhart -- was unusual in that it also could function as an alarm clock.

The upstairs was set out as a medical museum. Glass cases contained medicine chests of basic herbal remedies, with cupping sets, Kolb scarificators, spring lancets, 18th century bleeding bowls and tooth extractors, 19th century pewter leech cages and trochars. An early 19th century tin ear trumpet was displayed beside a pair of spectacles in a case labeled Henry Rippel A.D. 1802. Other cases showed glass breast pumps and vials, mortars and pestles, amputating saws and pill machines, cauteries and trepans. Trepans, because Vierling would at times perform brain surgery.

But records on display showed Vierling understood the value of psychiatry too. Here were the church notes on blind old Brother Schnepf who was becoming more and more hypochondriacal: "It seemed possible he may saw wood. Br. Vierling undertook to suggest it to him. He accepted the suggestion and said his health was improving."

Several other buildings merit a visit. The boys' school which functioned from 1794 to 1896 is a museum, as is the old tavern built originally to house customers arriving for products made by the town's tradesmen. A bakery, a shoemaker's shop and the oldest tobacco shop in America are all just a few steps away from each other. If you're interested in furniture it's well worth your time to walk two blocks and spend an hour in the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts. There, 19 separate rooms presented the ever-changing fashions in the territories from the 1600s through 1820.

Old Salem is well presented, easily digested and most photogenic. Its annual attendance is more than 100,000 and in keeping with the times the visitor guide is now also printed in Japanese. That’s fortunate because North Carolina tourism sometimes has lean years.

Yet proving that nothing really changes, one of the nicer hotels in the area -- the Brookstown Inn -- has been created in a textile mill built in 1837. Lovingly restored and rating 4 AAA diamonds the 70-room inn is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Although the decor is Early American, the Inn has been "discovered" by many of Winston-Salem's business travelers, such that it has an annual occupancy as high as 80% -- it's quiet only in the month of January, a typical slack time in Old Salem. The fourth floor exhibits a plastered wall (now behind glass) showing the graffiti of its 1840 mill girls.

There weren't any mill girls around Biltmore House about three hours distant in Asheville, North Carolina -- just the George Vanderbilts and their servants, but Biltmore offers an insight into the upper crust of North Carolina society as fascinating as any glance at the past accorded by Old Salem.

To build Biltmore House required a railway line three miles long that carried the materials over which one thousand workers would bend their backs for five years. When it opened on Christmas Eve 1895 with its 107 bedrooms it was "recognized as the most spectacular mansion in America." No wonder. The 125,000 acres of woodlands were cleared by Gifford Pinchot, the first American-trained forester and later governor of Pennsylvania. The gardens were laid out by Frederick Law Olmstead who later created New York City's Central Park. The great house, based on the castles of the Loire Valley in France, was designed by the architect Richard Morris Hunt who also built the Breakers and the Marble House in Newport, Rhode Island.

Down below were an indoor heated pool and a bowling alley; walk-in refrigerators cooled by ammonia amongst the first in the country and a laundry system sophisticated enough to grace a large hotel. You can't stay over, of course, at Biltmore House but you can wander in your car for about an hour and a half along the Blue Ridge Parkway, then down through rural North Carolina to discover another AAA 4 diamond hotel listed in the National Register of Historic Places: the Greystone Inn, at Lake Toxaway.

The Greystone, a Swiss revival mansion converted now to a 33-room luxury six-level country inn, reminded us how much North Carolina could offer in a rustic setting: Hiking, rock climbing, picnicking; croquet, bocce, badminton, volleyball, tennis, golf; swimming, water skiing, canoeing, sailing, wind surfing. Included in the room rate was a substantial breakfast and dinner, afternoon tea, soft drinks (remember to bring your own bottle to this dry county), and the daily sunset cruise on Lake Toxaway. But even more attractive to many on vacation is the relative remoteness and feel of tranquility the place provides. There's a strange sense of the 1920s to the sun-splashed porch with its white wicker rocking chairs and the dark-paneled lounge with its fieldstone fireplace. Some recent postings at TripAdvisor.com have been critical at the time of our visit there was a friendliness to the welcome at the Greystone Inn that somehow symbolized the style of the State itself: Helpful and hearty, cordial and kind.