February 1, 2017
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2017
Feb. 2,
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Vol. 39 No. 7
Jamestown, North Carolina
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Circus pulls down ‘tents’ for good By CAROL BROOKS Editor Imagine a time when the biggest thing in town was the day the circus arrived by train. If Jamestown was one of the stops, the wagons of animals, caravans and tents would be unloaded, the calliope would start playing and the elephants would begin the march up Oakdale Road to Main Street and, possibly, to the field behind what is now Jamestown Elementary School and the Public Library where the three-ringed Big Top would be set up. What a sight it would be, with clowns and other circus workers urging the crowds lining Main Street to come visit the circus during its stay. Unfortunately, these are now only memories of a forgotten time, at least for Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey®, which will hold its final performances in May after 146 years. In a press release earlier this month, CEO Kenneth Feld of Feld Entertainment, which has owned the circus for nearly 50 years, said, “After much evaluation and deliberation, my family and I have made the difficult business decision that Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey® will hold its final performances in May of this year. Ringling Bros. ticket sales have been declining, but following the transition of the elephants off the road, we saw an even more dramatic drop. This, coupled with high operating costs, made the circus an unsustainable business for the company.”
“It is very sad,” said local clown and entertainer Joey Rudcinski, who attended the Ringling Bros. Clown College in 1990. “Most people don’t realize the circus is not a job, it’s the people’s home and a way of life.” Rudcinski believes up to 1,600 people will be out of work when the circus ends. Elephants were once a main feature of the circus and the spectacle of the beasts marching from the railroad station to the entertainment venue was a favorite site in the cities where the circus performed. But animal rights groups criticized the treatment not only of the elephants, but of all circus animals and Ringling Bros. phased out the elephant acts in the summer of 2016. The elephants were moved to Ringling’s 200-acre elephant conservation center in Florida. The center focuses on the care and study of Asian elephants. P.T. Barnum began his Grand Traveling Museum, Menagerie, Caravan & Hippodrome in the 1870s. Often billed as a museum of freaks, Barnum was known to perpetrate hoaxes – like the Feejee mermaid: the torso and head of a monkey sewn onto a fish – by claiming they were just a way to bring people to his shows. Siamese twins Chang and Eng – who later lived in North Carolina – performed with Barnum. Barnum’s circus merged with James Bailey’s production in 1881. Ringling Bros. purchased the combined circus (billed as “The Greatest Show on Earth”) in 1906. The brothers had started a small circus in 1884 in Wisconsin. The two circuses were run separately until 1919. See CIRCUS, page A5
Unfazed by the fact he is being watched, this groundhog enjoys snacking on a fallen persimmon at the Jamestown News office. Resident groundhogs Norbert and his wife Nellie have had several children over the years. We will be on the lookout tomorrow to see if the family comes out and if they see their shadows. (File photo)
Why celebrate Groundhog Day Fun facts: Early spring or more winter ahead? Why ask a groundhog, anyway? Why in the world do we ask a groundhog about the weather every Feb. 2? What makes them better prognosticators than squirrels, or wooly worms or frogs? Here are some fun facts about Groundhog Day history, North Carolina groundhogs and other animals that predict the weather. Groundhog Day springs from a PennsylvaniaGerman tradition in the 18th and 19th centuries, when people used the hibernation patterns of bears and badgers to predict the end of winter. Using animals to predict the weather dates back even further. For example, during the Celtic pagan ritual of Imbolc, snakes and bad-
gers were used for weather predictions. Groundhog Day was officially adopted in the United States in 1887 in – you guessed it – Punxsutawney, Pa., when Clymer H. Freas, editor of the local newspaper Punxsutawney Spirit, began promoting the town’s groundhog as the official “Groundhog Day meteorologist.” Groundhog Day is held on Feb. 2 because it’s about halfway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. February 2 is also a Christian holiday known as Candlemas. British tradition held that winter wasn’t over yet if Candlemas was sunny enough to cast shadows, but a cloudy day meant spring had sprung.
According to an old British saying, “If Candlemas Day be bright and clear, there’ll be two winters in the year.” North Carolina’s prognosticating groundhogs include a few at the N.C. Department of Natural and Cultural Resources – Sir Walter Wally at the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences, Grady at Chimney Rock State Park, and Sunshine and Stormy at the N.C. Zoo Wildlife Rehabilitation Center. Other N.C. groundhogs are Nibbles at the WNC Nature Center in Asheville and Queen Charlotte in Charlotte. Sir Walter Wally has been prognosticating in Raleigh since 1998. Although this would be an impossibly long lifespan for a normal groundhog (even in captivity groundhogs generally only live 9-14 years), according to See GROUNDHOG, page A3
Interurban railway once planned through Jamestown By CAROL BROOKS Editor These days, we don’t think anything about jumping in our vehicles to travel from city to city. It’s usually a relatively short trip and we can get back home quickly for other activities. However, long before interstates and even before paved roads were the norm, people relied on different modes of transportation other than a family vehicle. Buggies, wagons and horseback were used to
get around, often on muddy streets and in inclement weather. Trips took much longer as well. Over a century ago, trains were once the popular conveyance and in many towns, streetcars, or trolleys, became popular. In 1906, a group of New York investors had the idea of creating an interurban railroad between High Point and Greensboro. That railroad, apparently, would have run through downtown Jamestown, probably along what is now Main Street. Not to be confused with the 1859-built Norfolk Southern Railway that divides the town, the interurban railroad was probably a trolley system, similar to ones in use in Greensboro and High Point at the time. If you dig up Main Street in downtown High Point, you will find old streetcar tracks. A file about the Potter family at the Mendenhall
(Photo/Courtesy UNCG Digital Projects)
If the Greensboro-High Point Interurban Railway had been built, the trolleys may have looked similar to this one that ran on the streets of Greensboro around 1900. Homeplace sheds a little light on the prospect of the interurban railroad coming through Jamestown. A document dated May 4, 1906, stated that Henry and Judith E. Bundy agreed to sell for $1 “a strip of land for the purpose of a right of way for track or tracks
for an interurban railway to be run between Greensboro and High Point.” The buyer was the Greensboro and High Point Interurban Railway Company. This right of way was “to be used only for interurban car track or tracks.” The property was a 12-
foot-by-1,500-foot piece of land along the “county road leading from Guilford College to Jamestown.” A search of the Guilford County tax base did not shed light on property owned at the time by Henry Bundy, Stephen Bundy or J.L. Coltrane, who were all
mentioned in the document, but Judith Bundy did own property where the Exxon station is today where she ran a boarding house. An email from Sherry Royal, great granddaughter of Judith Bundy, states the Bundy family owned 84 acres on Guilford Road, near where the water tower is located in Forestdale East. Other Bundy family members owned property that is now Jamestown United Methodist Church, the Town Hall, and Forestdale North and East subdivisions. A recent article in the High Point Enterprise stated that “a trolley from High Point to Greensboro” was planned to run along Farriss Avenue, then the northern boundary of the city. In Electrical Review, Vol. XLVIII Jan. 6-June 30, 1906, is found the following: “Greensboro & High See RAILWAY, page A5