The Creech Family 1503- 1979

John IV of Balfour's son Sir David I was Lord High Treasurer and in 1503 acquired the castle of Creich in Fife after its previous owner was charged with treason and forfeited the castle. When he died in 1505 his son, Sir John became the 2nd Laird of Creich. Sir John died after 1524, making David II Laird, as John's sons were still young. When David II died in 1539, the eldest son of Sir John, who was unmarried took over castle responsibilities. Robert, younger son of Sir John, became the 4th Laird. His sister, Elizabeth, was one of the mistresses of King James V of Scotland. Another sister, Janet (1519–1569), became Lady of Branxholme and Buccleugh.

Robert's daughter Mary, was one of the Four Mary's who accompanied Mary, Queen of Scots to France. In addition to Mary, the queen's entourage included two other members of the Bethune family. John, a younger brother of Archbishop James Bethune, became her Master of the Royal Household but died in 1570 at Chatsworth House where his monument can be seen in Edensor church. His brother Andrew, who wished to marry her attendant Mary Seton, was then appointed to fill the vacancy.

Back at the castle, Robert died in 1567, Robert's eldest son David III was 5th Laird until his death in1579. After his death, James younger son of Robert, was 6th Laird. James's son David IV, was 7th Laird. 

David IV Beaton (7th Laird of Creich) married the daughter of Andrew Leslie 5th Earl of Rothes. Euphemia Leslie gave him several sons, his elder son, David V, was 8th Laird. Upon his death in 1660 it passed to the younger son, William. He was the 9th Laird of Creich and, the last Laird. He sold the castle.

 David IV's middle son Richard Bethune was born in 1600, by 18 he was married and had a son. By 20 he had two sons. Being the middle and unfavored son, with no expectations of becoming Laird, Richard planned out a new life for his family. The couple left Scotland for Jamestown with their sons and daughter in tow aboard the ship "Journeyman" captained by William Carter. They successfully reached Virginia however, neither would live to see past the age of 30. They were killed by natives along with their daughter and dozens of other settlers. Their son Cpt Henry Eanruig Creech was raised by relatives. He moved to Lower Norfolk Virginia (what would become Albemarle, Virginia and then North Carolina.) He Captained a ship around the area. He bought 200 acres on the northeast side of Pasquotank River, and was the Justice of the Peace. His sons were awarded a land grant in 1704 of another 400 plus acres adjacent to Yawpins Indian Reservation. His son Richard Creech was born in 1662 and inherited the land. However, he moved north to present day Suffolk.

Richard's third son Jr was born in Nansemond, in the Virginia Colony in 1703. Richard Creech Jr had several sons including Richard Creech the third and Benjamin Creech, Sr.

Benjamin had 9 children, including six sons who served in the Revolutionary War. He moved from the Virginia Colony to Dobbs Co. (later Lenoir Co, now part of Johnston Co) NC in the 1740-50's. 

"Benjamin Creech Sr. was born about 1724 in Nansemond County Virginia the son of Richard Creech Jr. and wife Mary Etheridge. In the years 1735-1756 the heavy migration to the Coastal Plain region of North Carolina accounted for the very rapid growth there, extending from 50 to 200 miles inland. Moving into the area the heavy migration from the areas of Isle of Wight, Surry, Nansemond and other counties of Virginia included the Scotch-Irish, Germans Welsh, English, French and others which run into the thousands. 

How did they come? - with horses oxen, wagons and cattle, walking, they made their trek into what was to become Greene, Lenoir and Wayne counties of North Carolina. 

Benjamin Creech Sr. and his brother Richard Creech were no exception for they had joined a wagon train to the south. Just how many families or who they were is not known; but actually they were headed for the region around the Lower Cape Fear Valley where many friends, neighbors and family had already settled. The time of year was winter; the snow and cold rainy weather had made them bear east instead of taking the famous "Philadelphia Wagon Road" which began at Schuylkill River Ferry opposite Philadelphia and ended near Salisbury, North Carolina. 

As they passed the territory of old Johnston County, North Carolina (later to become old Dobbs Co), Benjamin, a young man of about 22 years old, here fell in love with a young lady by the name of Mary Lewis born January 28, 1724 and married her in the year 1746 in the Spring. It was a very short courtship. It seems that Benjamin could not talk Mary into leaving with him to continue on to the Lower Cape Fear region but instead she persuaded Benjamin to stay near her family. Brother Richard continued on to New Hanover County, North Carolina where he stayed until after the American Revolution, then moved on to present day Barnwell Co, South Carolina. 

Mary Lewis was the daughter of Thomas Lewis and Rebecca (Becky) Thomas (daughter of Samuel Thomas). After the marriage of Benjamin and Mary Lewis, Thomas gave them a parcel of land 200 acres in 1747. Here on this land Benjamin and Mary built a log house with a stick chimney, dirt floors which had sand on them that had been hauled from the Great Contentnea Creek banks. Here in this house Benjamin and Mary had 9 children of which 8 reached adulthood. This house was handed down to their son Ezekiel then to his son John thence to his son Starkey thence to his son Joseph John Creech, who was killed in the Civil War, fighting for the Confederacy. This house stood until the year 1899 (my father William Franklin Creech was born in this house). The old Creech Cemetery is nearby this home of Benjamin Creech.

 Benjamin Creech Sr. came from Nansemond County, Virginia to what was to become old Dobbs County North Carolina (now Lenoir and Greene counties) where he built a land empire on Rainbow Run and Wheat Swamp. Here he received land grants in 1768, 1770, and 1771; and another, no date given, probably earlier than the others. He died before 1780 as he was not shown on that year's tax list and is buried near the old home site without a marker along with his wife, son John, son Lewis and daughter Mary Nancy Creech. These graves had markers until about the year 1932 when an old man asked the owner to clean up the cemetery (during the great depression) so he could make some money to get his family something to eat. The owner agreed to let him clean up the cemetery, but to his surprise when checked, found that the old man had removed all markers and had thrown them in a wash on Rainbow Run. (This story was told to me by Mr. Willie Sugg, who later owned the farm and stated he had seen the markers). 

Benjamin Sr. and Mary Lewis Creech did much for their country and its independence, as they had five sons to Serve in the American Revolution and one other son to be killed by the Tories at the beginning or just before the war started. They left each son a farm in old Dobbs County, N.C, but son Richard sold out and went to Cumberland County , N.C.; Mary never married; Simon sold out and moved to Duplin Co, N.C; Benjamin Jr. stayed in Lenoir; Rebecca no data; Joshua went to present day Johnston Co.; N.C.; Ezekiel stayed in Lenoir Co.; John Sr. stayed but died about 1783- his widow and sons went to Lee Co. Va. & Harlan Co, Ky.; son Lewis died young. Taken from James M Creech's "The Creech Family." 

Joshua Creech married Sally Stanford in 1768 in Johnston, NC. During the American Revolution Joshua served as a private under the command of Captain Joseph Green in the Dobbs County Regiment of the NC Militia. Creech was involved at the Battle of Moore's Creek. But not before the birth of his second son Jesse Speights Creech Sr. 

Jesse Married Margaret Worley in 1798. Jesse fathered as many as 15 children. His son Stanford was born in 1818, after the family was already in double digits. In Clayton, in 1848 Stanford married his first wife Martha Ellen Horne, sister to one of the town's most prominent citizens Ashley Horne.

Their first son, Alonzo Donald Creech, was born August 1852 in Clayton, Johnston County, NC, one of 6 known surviving children (2 boys/4 girls).

Alonzo's mother died in 1862 when he was 10 years old, and his father married that same year to Mary Broughton of Clayton, who would add 4 more children to the Creech household. Alonzo's father was a farmer in Clayton, but later moved the family into town where he operated a grocery store (ca. 1880).

On February 10, 1874, 21-year old Alonzo married 19-year old Mary Barber/Barbour, daughter of Hardy/Hardie Barber/Barbour and Mary Johnson from Ingram Township, Johnston Co.

The couple were farmers in Clayton and would have 6 known children (5 boys/1 girl): Alonzo D. Jr. (c. 1874), Mahlon (c. 1877), J. Raymond (1882-1934), Ethel B. (1887-1968), Harvey (c. 1891), and Hume (c. 1894).

The photo (shown here) is of the Alonzo Creech house taken ca. 1909. 

Alonzo Jr born in 1874 served in the Spanish American War (1898-1901) as a member in Co. B., 1st NC Infantry. He was injured and unconscious and was laid out on the slab with the other dead soldiers. A man who knew him stopped to retrieve his belongings to send them home to Alonzo Sr. As he stooped down and began riffling through his pockets the friend felt warmth, not the cold of a cadaver, he leaned closer only to hear a faint heart beat. He called hastily for a medic, "This man is alive!" He recovered and travelled home to NC where he bucked family farming traditions and attended NC State for textiles. He began work in the mills as industrialization began to rule the new economy. As many did he lived in the village of Wilson Mill in Johnston County where on the 13th of February 1915 the 41 year old married Bertie V. Spence. She was just 17. Eight months later she gave birth to a son. Three years later a daughter. In 1922 A.D. was offered a position as the VP of a mill in High Point. 

High Point industrialists and entrepreneurs John Hampton Adams and James Henry Millis established the High Point Hosiery Mill in 1904 and several other hosiery mills after that. When they realized the competitive advantage they would have by producing their own knitting yarn, they built Highland Cotton Mills in 1913. The mills often had child laborers at the time and the conditions weren't great. Employees and their families lived in the mill village in small homes built by the mill. The management of the mill lived in larger homes on the outskirts of the mill village, the owner in mansions on Main Street. 

The area just beyond the mill village is called West End today, A.D. had a home there on Ward. In 1924 his wife gave birth to their third child, Bessie Lee Creech. He soon retired from the textile industry and suffered debilitating health issues. As Bertie cared for her ailing husband, the first born Louise cared for her younger siblings. The children attended public schools, all three graduating from High Point High School. It was in High School that Bessie Lee met a charismatic and handsome athlete named Eugene Purcell Kimsey. Sister Louise and brother Cavell were already married and Bessie Lee helped her mother care for her father. E.P. and his brothers were on the football team and the wrestling team. They were know for being unstoppable boxers at the local YMCA. Bessie Lee had a boyfriend, a Newton, but E.P. was the hunk she had her eye set on. He was ahead of her in school and she thought she had missed her chance when he was offered a scholarship to play football at Duke. She got her hopes up again when she heard he'd turned it down, but worried he'd have to go off to war. Shortly, her crush was studying engineering at NC State. He was a walk on to the wrestling team and began competing in state wide boxing competitions. She made excuses to visit wealthy cousins who lived in the area. Inviting E.P. to visit her in the parlor of their large home near the college. He was smitten. They continued visiting each other as Bessie Lee finished school. E.P. was hired by Drydock Shipbuilding Company in. Newport News, Virginia. E.P. went to Virginia and with his first pay secured an apartment. As soon as he was able he returned to High Point to marry Bessie Lee. They had a simple ceremony at the Creech home on Ward. Their preacher from Highland Methodist Church married the couple. Purcell and his family belonged to the First Baptist Church of High Point. 

The attractive young pair moved to their small apartment in Newport News where they struggled with the pressures of apartment living, noisy neighbors and shared living spaces with strangers that soon became friends, the old lady they shared a kitchen space with taught Bessie Lee how to cook after a potato pealing accident. She would scold the couple if they returned home after dark, and nag them about groceries and chores. E.P. came home one day to the two women, at least four decades apart in age, screaming at each other over vegetables. E.P. continued boxing as he was able. Inevitably E.P. joined the war effort. Because he had been working for the shipyard he decided to join the Navy and was stationed on a ship patrolling the coastline of Virginia and Maryland. 

During night watch the ship drifted and was struck by a much larger vessel and E.P. was injured. He required surgery on his foot and was sent to Ashville to recover in a veterans facility. Bertie Creech had fallen ill Cavell drove to Virginia and picked up his sister to bring her home to see her dying mother. After the sad goodbyes Cavell took her to Ashville to visit her mending husband. Soon E.P. was able to return to their home on crutches. Bessie Lee was expecting. The couple began packing and planned their move back to High Point. The stress of planning a big move, caring for a husband on crutches, and arguing with the old lady about what she should be eating for the baby was too much, she began to have fainting spells, it was high blood pressure, she was put on bed rest and ordered not to travel. They risked it and took the trip home. Lee's father had been hospitalized since the death of his wife. They decided to name the child after him. The baby would be named 'Donnie.' On August 5th, 1944 the baby girl Donnie Jene Kimsey was born. They took her to the part of the hospital where her namesake lay ill and rested her in his arms. He lasted three more months. 

That branch of the Creech family name ended with Cavell. He had had a stroke young in life and he and his wife Marie never had children. They lived not far from Louise and Lee as they raised their children and often fulfilled the Creech grandparent roll. Cavell passed away in 1979.

Racial Identity Reading List

 During my never ending research I have often looked to Science Direct  for reading suggestions. Their website has a collection of academic books and scholarly journals. The overview offered for the subject of Race Identity gave me a fantastic new reading list. If you are interested in cultural studies or history or even just researching your own genealogy, this is a fantastic jumping off point for some educational reading.

1. Race Identity

T. Duster, in International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2001

 Politics and Identity Politics

Thus racial identity was generated by massive historical, economic, and political forces that far transcend the level of individual choice (Banton 1977, Miles 1989). Indeed, there is a substantial body of research indicating that in the nineteenth century European and US academics expended much energy trying to demonstrate the intellectual and moral superiority of whites (Gould 1981, Bernal 1987). The biological and medical sciences of the late nineteenth century assumed a Darwinian model of racial hierarchy of adaptation to civilization (Frazer 1900). Thus, in order to counter the assertion of white superiority, from Europe to South Africa to the North American continent to Australia, groups that wished to mobilize to change their position in a racial hierarchy often found that racial identity was a useful and powerful basis for achieving group solidarity (Kelley 1997, Fredrickson 1995, Crenshaw et al. 1995). Obviously, these groups would encounter competing group identities, such as tribal, regional, ethnic, linguistic, and class. This list would permit the white colonialists the advantage of playing one off against the other, and the strategic use of ethnic identity to trump ‘race’ could be deployed. For an elaboration of the distinction between race and ethnicity, see Fenton (1999).

If we take even a casual excursion through the last few centuries of racial classification, there is overwhelming evidence on the side of those who have argued that race is arbitrary, shifting, and often biologically and sociologically inconsistent and contradictory. A consortium of leading scientists across the disciplines from biology to physical anthropology issued a ‘Revised UNESCO Statement on Race’ in 1995—a definitive declaration that summarizes 11 central issues, and concludes that in terms of ‘scientific’ discourse, there is no such thing as a ‘race’ that has any scientific utility:’ … the same scientific groups that developed the biological concept over the last century have now concluded that its use for characterizing human populations is so flawed that it is no longer a scientifically valid concept. In fact, the statement makes clear that the biological concept of race as applied to humans has no legitimate place in biological science’ (Katz 1995, pp. 4, 5).

The rule that one drop of black blood makes one black is the easy mark along a full continuum of contradictory and incoherent taxonomies. ‘Passing’ and ‘miscegenation laws’ and slaveowner/slave offspring do more than simply dot the landscape of this topic (Harris 1995, Haney-López 1996). This continuum extends well into the present period where we find more and more people asserting a mixed-race identity. Since the classification of race is arbitrary and often whimsical (e.g., one drop of blood), accepting the idea that race is something identifiable with fixed borders that could be crossed and thus ‘mixed’ is just another indication of the power of social forces shaping racial identity. At the biochemical level of blood types and hematology, at the neurological level of neurotransmission patterns, at the level of cell function—at all these levels, we are all ‘mixed’ by any taxonomy or measure of allele frequencies in large population groups (Molnar 1992).

Yet a number of scholars of race have noted the increasing use of the category of ‘mixed race’ as the self-identity of a younger generation, mainly of relatively privileged and middle-class persons. Paul Spickard (1989) and Werner Sollers (1997) have each produced important studies of ‘mixed race’ identities that cross boundaries of Europe and the Americas. Maria Root (1996) has culled a collection of essays that deal with identity construction along ethnic and racial lines, and further explores these issues well beyond the black and white focus that has riveted much of this literature. The difference between ‘individual choice’ of a racial identity as opposed to having a racial identity ‘imposed’ by the state and/or the obdurate empirical reality of a group consensus (based primarily upon phenotype-stereotype) is profound, yet variable over time and place. There are concrete economic, political, social, and sometimes psychological benefits to choosing certain identities. That is why scores of thousands of light-skinned ‘blacks’ under slavery in Brazil, Jamaica, and the USA chose to ‘pass’ as white (Small 1994). For parallel reasons, thousands of persons in the USA have attempted to reclassify themselves as Native American or Latino or African American to benefit from affirmative action laws.

For an extensive theoretical treatment of the way in which racial taxonomies shift over time, see Omi and Winant (1986). In addition, for specific cases of this phenomenon, see Harris (1995), Haney-López (1996) and Takaki (1998). From the other side, namely, individuals who come to collectively redefine their own situation, and thereby reveal how ‘race’ is sometimes in flux due as much to agency, interpretation, and circumstance, see Blumer (1958), Lal (1990), and Perry (1998). For an ‘interest-driven’ version of the collective will to create, sustain, or maintain a particular racial identity, see Lipsitz (1998) and Wellman (1993).

2. Counseling and Psychotherapy: Ethnic and Cultural Differences

V. Ota Wang, in International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2001

 Multicultural Psychology and Racial-cultural Identity Development

People throughout time have been challenged to understand their sense of self and life experiences in unifying ways. As critical tools for cultural understanding, racial-cultural identity development models have been considered ‘one of the most promising approaches to the field of multicultural counseling/therapy’ (Sue and Sue 1999, p. 123). By incorporating sociopolitical contexts, racial identity theories have provided a structure of how to understand life experiences, perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors of one's own and other racial-cultural groups, identity formation and intra-group variation.

Diagnostically, racial-cultural identity models also have clinical utility by framing how individuals' experiences of counseling are influenced by their racial-cultural identity and not simply linked to presumed racial-cultural group affiliations (Carter 1995).

Racial-cultural identity attitude theories are dynamic identity models representing developmental ego differentiation and have existed for Blacks, other visible racial-cultural people (e.g., Asian, Latino, women), and Whites since the early 1970s (Sue and Sue 1999). Racial identity attitudes are the psychological consequences of racial socialization.

Whereas people are socialized in racialized environments, racial-cultural ego identity development is the psychological reaction to the benefits and consequences of racial-cultural social systems. Involving simultaneous perspectives of oneself in relation to members of dominant and subordinate groups, people with less developed racial-cultural ego identity statuses hold more simplistic and unexamined notions about race and race relations while greater differentiated racial-cultural ego identity statuses are based on more accurate and examined personal and group information and experiences. Thus, a person's presumed racial-cultural phenotype does not preclude racial-cultural orientation. Rather, a person's overall psychological self that has been validated, denied, or ignored influences the manner in which racial identity has been integrated into one's personality and psychological well-being. By exploring the psychological aspects of how feelings, thoughts, and behaviors people have about their own and other's race, a more realistic understanding of who a person rather than what a person is becomes possible.

 Racial Identity Theory

Based upon internal racial identification levels, racial identity models have provided a framework for understanding intra-group socio-racial psychological perspectives. According to Black racial identity theory (and more broadly, People of Color Identity Theory), Black people develop from (a) overvaluing and idealizing White cultural norms and internalizing negative stereotypes of Blacks (Preencounter); (b) feeling confusion as they try to understand their previously held beliefs of White superiority and Black inferiority (Encounter); (c) affirming ‘Blackness’ and denigrating ‘Whiteness’ by idealizing African cultural heritage and withdrawing from White society (Immersion); (d) accepting strengths and weaknesses of Black people and incorporating a more affirming and realistic Black identity (Emersion); (e) intellectually assessing and responding to Whites (internalization); and (f) integrating a positive Black identity while maintaining a balanced perspective of ‘Whiteness’ motivated by personal preferences rather than racial group self-denial (Integrative Awareness) (Carter 1995).

In White racial identity theory, identity development involves the abandonment of racism and the development of a non-racist White identity by moving from (a) being unaware of their own racial group and ignoring the race of others (Contact); (b) becoming aware of the saliency of Whiteness, feeling guilty over personal internal standards and societal norms about race and over-identifying with Blacks (Disintegration); (c) rejecting Blacks and over idealizing Whiteness (Reintegration); (d) intellectualizing rather than emotionally understanding race (Pseudo-Independence); (e) exploring biases and redefining Whiteness by trying to change Whites instead of Blacks (Immersion/Emersion); and (f) emotionally and intellectually internalizing a positive White identity through appreciation for and respect of racial differences and similarities (Autonomy) (Carter 1995).

Overall, for visible racial-cultural people, as members of less powerful sociocultural groups, the primary socioracial identity issue in developing racial-cultural identity means overcoming internalized negative stereotypes associated with their racial-cultural group affiliation. For Whites, as members of the dominant sociocultural group, racial-cultural identity development means overcoming entitled stereotyping, learning self-value and appreciation as a White person. Therefore, in efforts to serve as racial-cultural change agents, all people must seek and promote racial-cultural affirmation—the experience of having various facets of their racial-cultural identities validated for themselves and by others. Thus, the strength of racial-cultural identity models has relied upon their dynamic nature of understanding within group racial-cultural variation within a social, historical, and political context as well as their diagnostic value for informing counseling processes and outcomes.

Whether its socio-political forces vs. poor psychological functioning, racial-cultural issues are silent or powerful environmental and psychological realities in a person's development. By examining how racial-cultural issues influence psychological phenomenon, therapists can help clients discover how their racial–cultural ego identity forms a filter which thoughts, feelings, and behaviors organize perceptions and interpretations of thoughts, emotions, and psychological life. To this end, racial-cultural identity models provide a framework understanding personal racial-cultural intrapsychic phenomena within and between people.

3. Race and the Law

R.T. Ford, in International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2001

Anti-essentialist and Cosmopolitan Conceptions of Racial Identity

An emerging strand of antiracist scholarship first articulated within postcolonial African, Caribbean, and Indian communities approaches racial identity as fluid and supple, yet also the source of rich political, social, and cultural affiliations. These approaches define racial identity not in terms of a biological or cultural essence, but instead in terms of identification (Appiah 1996, Bhabha 1994, Gilroy 1991). According to one strand of this scholarship, members of racial minority groups share common ‘passions’ based on shared or analogous experiences of racial subordination (Gilroy 1991). This approach dispenses altogether with any remnant of biological or inheritance notions of racial identity: members of what might traditionally have been several different ‘races’ can and do share a cosmopolitan racial identity which can transcend national boundaries, cultural traditions, skin color, and phenotype. This scholarship adopts an explicitly anti-subordination approach to antiracism, but rejects the multiculturalist focus on cultural traditions within distinctive racial or ethnic communities as traditionally defined. Instead it embraces a cosmopolitan or diasporic culture that joins racial minorities of various ethnicities and cultural backgrounds.

4. Mass Media, Representations in

R.M. Entman, in International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2001

 Media Representation and Political and Policy Disputes

Moving along a continuum from media representation's impacts on mass publics to impacts on the political linkages between them and elites, we turn now to representation in news coverage of current policy and political contests. Here too the research suggests media most often operate to reinforce structures of power that privilege native born white men.

Thus, for example, female political candidates have been shown to face disadvantages against male candidates. They often receive less news coverage than males, and the news agenda seems to follow male candidates' issue choices most closely. On the other hand, women candidates may benefit from being associated with positive sex-role stereotypes (Kahn 1994). With a black candidate in the race, campaign news tends to emphasize candidates' racial identities and to frame elections as contingent on bloc voting by whites and blacks (Reeves 1997), and this demonstrably handicaps African American candidates.

The representation of nonelectoral dissent against powerful institutions has also received careful scrutiny. Research reveals a tendency for media to accept moderate, polite dissidents who work within the system and make conventional, incremental demands, but to slant decisively against groups that seek more radical objectives, undermining their legitimacy with the public and thus reducing the need for elites to respond positively to their goals (Gitlin 1980).

A subject of much dispute in the US has been representations of parties and candidates in national elections, with some scholars alleging systematic biases favoring one party and others denying these exist. Additional studies explore other kinds of bias than partisanship, suggesting the possible impacts on voting turnout or civic orientations. For example, US journalists increasingly infused their representations of candidates and campaigns with cynicism during the latter decades of the twentieth century, and this appeared to encourage political distrust and withdrawal among audiences.

Alongside such research there also arose theoretical essays that challenged the notion of bias by questioning the legitimacy of its presumed opposite, ‘objectivity.’ The notion that media can represent people and events in comprehensively accurate and politically neutral ways appears to be a powerful professional ideal for journalists. Nonetheless, scholarship almost universally denies the proposition and asserts that in the course of manufacturing the news, individuals and media institutions must inevitably embed certain kinds of biases (that is, preferred meanings or politically consequential omissions) into their reports. Although US studies, at least, fail to uncover systematic partisan biases, other forms of bias have been analyzed extensively, such as a bias for reporting political conflict over agreement, and political process over policy substance.

 

5. Multiculturalism, Anthropology of

D.A. Segal, in International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2001

From Civil Rights to the Politics of Identities and Representation

When considered in relation to the historically antecedent Civil Rights movement in the US, what is arguably most striking about multiculturalism is the relative valorization and amplifying of ‘identity’ consciousness. In the key legal statutes and cases of the Civil Rights movement, attending to identity distinctions, such as observable signs of racial identity, was condemned as the very root of unjust discrimination—as when an employer judges a job applicant on the basis of ‘color’ rather than ‘merit’ or ‘ability.’ Indeed, one of the lasting legacies of the Civil Rights era in the US is the legal principle that employers are permitted to take social identity into account only when it can be established that social identity is a ‘bona fides occupational qualification,’ as when a synagogue is hiring a religious instructor. Moreover, that ‘race’ could ever be so regarded was diminished almost to the vanishing point in US law, for it was held that resistance to nonwhites serving in certain positions, for example, as policemen in predominantly white communities, did not make nonwhites less qualified to serve in those positions, even if it made it more difficult for them to do. In sum, in the defining legal battles of the Civil Rights era, social injustice was defined as discrimination on the basis of group identity, as distinct from a judgment based on an individual's abilities and accomplishments.

While advocates of multiculturalism do not repudiate this understanding of ‘discrimination,’ they add to it in ways that are transformative. They argue that prevalent and institutionalized standards of worthiness are themselves fundamentally biased, due to systematic privileging of dominant identity-groupings in the social recognition and definition of merit. Here too, as in the US Civil Rights movement, we see that social injustice is defined in a context of meritocratic ideals and institutions claiming allegiance to such ideals. In the case of multiculturalism, however, unjust discrimination is found to be embedded deeply in institutionalized standards of merit. Persons of color, women, and other subordinated identity groupings are disadvantaged because standards of judgment are, on a systematic basis, disguised measures of ‘whiteness’ and ‘maleness,’ rather than the ‘neutral’ and ‘objective’ measures they are represented as being. Concomitantly, these same persons suffer harm because they find ‘achievement’ defined in institutional and public settings as something alien to their ‘identity’ and ‘culture.’ The comments of Dale Fleming, the director of the Native American Center of the Stockton Unified School District in California, capture well this multiculturalist vision of both injustice and the social reproduction of identity-group stratification: ‘The culture is the base … [I]f the kids feel bad about themselves or can't deal with their own history or who they are, then school is real difficult’ (quoted in Gallagher 2000, p. 37). By contrast, even the most intensely class-disadvantaged white male, multiculturalism tells us, does not experience the acquisition of school knowledge—be it in the form of ‘correct’ speech, knowledge of Shakespeare, or mastery of calculus—as contradicting, violating, or masking ‘who they are’; instead, they experience this more happily as individual ‘achievement.’

From such a diagnosis of the manifold injuries of identity, it follows that social injustice cannot be achieved without a systematic revaluation of subordinated identities. On this view, in contrast to the judicial lessons of the Civil Rights era in the US, identities and their observable signs should not be disregarded categorically in the quest for social justice. On the contrary, overcoming existing injustice requires a compensatory identity consciousness.

Into the Woods

 Hug a tree today, not just because they give us life affirming oxygen, but also because their ancestors helped your ancestors eek out a living and build your family. 

Europeans who first set foot on the east coast often wrote home about the magnificence of the forests, remarking in letters about the size and variety of the trees. As a younger person reading history books I wasn’t taught why these ‘explorers’ were writing home about trees, now I understand.

One day a dozen years ago my friends and I were hanging out on the patio of my family’s farmhouse. A man in a sedan drove by slowly and tuned around and came back, turned through the open gate and pulled into the gravel drive. When he got out of his car and came into view, everyone agreed that no one knew him. I greeted him at the gate in the picket fence that encloses the yard around the farmhouse. He was looking at the tree in the front yard. It was one of two huge black walnut trees at the front of the farm house, it had seen better days and we had already priced how much it would cost to have a tree service come and remove it for us. (Expensive.) I assumed he must be looking for tree service work and wanted to make some money off our huge dying tree. But then he started speaking, “I make gun stocks, custom wooden ones, and that there is the biggest black walnut I’ve seen in this area, and I was hoping I could talk to somebody about it before it was completely dead.” I introduced myself and small talked about our farm for a minute and gave him my granddad’s phone number. A few days later the tree was gone and granddad gave me $300 cash. I said, “Well, what on earth is this for?” He smiled real big and his eyes twinkled, “That man paid me $1,500 for that tree. He told me that nowadays hardwoods like the black walnut fetch a pretty price to the right person, like somebody in the furniture business or somebody like him that needs the wood, its not around much anymore.” 

After several decades of research about the natural and human history of the south east, I realized that the magnificent trees of the east were often integral to the stories I read. I should have probably put two and two together long ago when I learned about North Carolina's history and state nickname, the Tar Heel State, where the long leaf pine is the state tree. To young me, they were just interesting facts to remember, I was raised in an elementary education system in the rural south. Corporal punishment was still the norm and they were still teaching rote memorization and not at all trying to teach critical thinking or any interdisciplinary connectivity. I think the experience of moving to a high school with teachers that believed in paideia education inspired me to love the layers of learning. The interconnectedness that I write about helped me have a deeper understanding of myself, my family, and the world around me. Even the beautiful southern forests I'd grown up playing in. 

There is a rich history hidden in the woods of America's southeast. 

What were you taught in elementary school about our history?

We were all taught in school about the European 'explorers' who 'discovered' the 'new world,' and I think most people under the age of fifty were probably taught that many of those explorers were looking for trade routes to Asia. Were were taught that they mistakenly called the native people Indians thinking they had reached their destination. One explorer even thought he'd found the passageway to China when he saw the water on the other side of the capes of North Carolina's outer banks. 

We learned that an attempt at settlement was made and a colony was lost, mysteriously. We learned that a settlement was successful in what they would call Jamestown, Virginia. And we also learned that the first European born in the 'New World' was born there, Virginia Dare. All the American history facts one could regurgitate. But why were people even interested in moving to a new world? If we learned anything about why, it was related to the pilgrims. I don't recall actually being taught the definition of the word pilgrim, just the plain clothed cartoon of people who came to this land looking for a place where they could freely practice their chosen religion, which they could not do where they were from. We learned that they were puritan, and were given examples of puritanism through literature like the Scarlet Letter or worksheets about the Salem Witch Trials around Halloween. 

We weren't taught about the drastic stratification of the classes in Europe. We didn't learn about the wealthy lords sending their second or third sons to populate the new land with their heirs in order to increase their family's net worth. These sons of European nobility took with them ships full of indentured servants to help with the hard work of populating an entirely new settlement. We learned that many people came here indentured. We were taught that meant they had to work until they had paid off their debts. We were not taught the reality of what that meant. We did not learn about the problems with densely populated European cities. We were not taught about the poverty. The people living under a class system where nobility had access to the finest goods from what they called the Orient, yet the average person was a pauper, living day to day, hoping for their goods to sell in order to trade for the nights dinner. There were debtors prisons in Europe, owing money was a crime. The conditions were horrid. As more ships set sail for settlements, judges began sentencing debtors to indentured servitude in the new world. If they survived the journey they may spend the next thirty years working for the son of the Lord they owed, usually taxes or some bribe that was owed. The handicap, mentally ill, vagrant, and poorest of the poor were still sentences to the dungeons and towers of Europe's prison system, but poor people with any property often saw their belongings seized and themselves and families shipped away. The government saw them as a resource, if not able to pay taxes, then they'd have to aid the crown by building their life in the colonies working for whoever had the land grant and the authority.

Details that didn't fit well into a cartoon or as a written fact on a note card or bullet point to be later remembered and indicated on a multiple choice test got left behind. Details that required examination of changing societal norms were often glossed over. 

We were taught that the pine trees were important to early settlers in this area, and that they were used for ship building. We weren't taught anything about the world trade system that was developing at the time that spurred the need for those ships. We were taught that the Europeans colonized the Americas, we were never taught the how or the why.

I suppose it was an era before post colonial studies had an affect on higher education and thus no trickle down into textbooks or the teachers themselves, as it is now.

During the 1500's the 'explorers' that landed on the east coast were greeted by beautiful beaches, high rolling dunes, savannas of strange succulents, wildflowers, sea grass, and marsh, towering trees they'd never seen in dense forests, with massive impenetrable swamps. Efforts to traverse much further from the immediate coast proved futile. Those who didn't die from the bites of giant mosquitoes carrying diseases they'd never encountered in Europe, died from gangrene as their feet blistered, festered, and rotted away while they trekked on foot through the muck. If they were strong enough to survive all that they died at the hands of the native people whose home land they were tromping through. Others simply turned back seeing the odds they faced. For a hundred years Europeans dreamed of what magical gifts the 'New World' held. The legends of the magnificent forests and the fierce people who guarded them had begun. Men went back to Europe with native girls they'd kidnapped, claiming they had an Indian Princess from the 'New World.' They told tales of massive schools of fish, numerous various fruit trees, billions of bushes of berries, and soil so rich its smell filled the air with the aroma of earth only eclipsed by the sweetness of the incredible floral trees.

The economy in Europe was becoming increasingly reliant on trade. The hopes that establishing a stronghold on a trade route or establishing 'ownership' of land with valuable trade 'resources' spurred a race across the Atlantic. Though early attempts failed, by the 1630's Jamestown was succeeding. And with it all the needs a growing community has. At first the massive trees to the west of the Roanoke River helped build their homes, then their churches, and businesses like smithing and milling, and then stores to sell goods. The trees were lumbered for the uses necessary to developing a community. Then the trees were lumbered for forts to protect the community from any 'invading' others, such as the native people who's woods were being destroyed, or other 'settlers' from different European countries. It wasn't until the colonies were well established that the magnificent forests would be used for the purposes of shipping and industrial sized logging operations began.

From The Amazing History of Logging

Logging arose when settlers first started arriving in Jamestown in 1607 and since then has formed a booming economic structure. Logging became incredibly important when the need for ship building became more frequent. In fact, in the 1790s [...] 36 million feet of pine boards and at least 300 ship masts per year.

Logging has been a part of American history and deeply rooted in the growth of the United States since the early 1600s. [...] We all remember hearing about America's most loved and heroic lumberjack Paul Bunyan and his blue ox Babe. Bunyan represents the hard work and labor of all involved in the logging industry [...in] American folklore[...]

With the outrageous demand for wood and wood products, Americans were constantly looking for new sources of timber in order to continue fueling the logging and timber industry. During the early 19th century, Americans started to head west in search of new logging land and more importantly, a new life.

By the 1800s European colonists and early American settlers had lumbered away most of the resources available east of the Appalachian Mountains. The first gold rush had pilfered all the gold ore they could find. Every river had some kind of a mill draining it of its precious water pressure and polluting it with their waste. Dams were built and land that had been drained was farmed. Lumbered or drained land tilled over year after year began to lose nutrients. Highly populated areas had coal smoke blackening the sky, and soot covering everything. The roads were rutted, muddy packed dirt or worn decaying plank roads. People poured their bathroom pots out their back door, or out into the street. The crowded urban decay and destitution that many settlers left behind in Europe only took a couple hundred years to create a necessity for another mass migration westward. 

The woods were gone, the rivers were polluted, the fields were barren, the gold mined out. American's began to create a dream of westward expansion on a grand scale. The legend of the wild west and the freedom it allowed combined with the California Gold Rush and the government's Homestead act to create a new frontier. Trees were no longer the driving source for the boom of the economy. Metals and coal for the new steam powered machines that would propel us into the industrial age. 

While wood was good, it was the driver of economic expansion in the colonies. The establishment of a mill to create lumber, meant a town could be built, roads reinforced, and trading could begin. Wealth early on was made by acreage of hardwood. Yes, planters close to the coast grew rice in the marshes, and cotton in the plains, but they also had acreage inland that they had indentured and slave crews lumbering. We learn most often about the rice plantations of South Carolina or the cotton plantations in Georgia because of their political power and the important roll they played during the run up to the Civil War. However, if these planters had not had timber operations their other products would never have had the opportunity to enter the economy. 

Lumber is the original logistics company. 

A planter owning a land grant inland would need to hire first a survey crew to go and investigate the land, a map maker and a botanist or biologist might accompany them. They would hopefully return to the coast and report the geographic and flora and fauna information. The planter would then need to put together a crew to lumber the areas most accessible, meaning nearest to a navigable river. A lumber crew would have men to cut and men to lead teams of animals to hauls the trees, and possibly a surveyor who would lead and manage the crew. The conditions were terrible. They were in tents and covered wagons in the deepest forests, they often died from infection, injury, exposure, or at the hand of natives protecting their territories. It was very often lumber crews that began to settle and populate areas beyond the coast. 

Lumber gave your great great great grandpa a way out of servitude and a place to build your future.

We hear talking heads on the news throw around the term 'coastal elites' but in colonial America, there was a real class of coastal elites; planters descended from nobility that profited off of the work of slaves and indentured laborers. Away from the coasts where life was much more difficult poor people and people freed or escaped from their slavery or servitude formed communities and built their own America. Small towns across the south trace their history to poor men who'd moved there working the land for the lord proprietor. While those on the coast or in bigger cities owe much of their histories to the elites. 

The Downfall of the Vanderbilt Family?

 Not Another Click Bait Blog About The Vanderbilt Family

As a child, growing up in North Carolina, I remember going to the mountains to visit the Biltmore Estate. Ashville, is a beautiful place to enjoy nature or enjoy the festive and quirky city life. We were usually camping. The whole trip to Biltmore my mother went on about how glamorously stylish, beautiful, and wealthy Gloria Vanderbilt was, I thought it must be her home. I honestly remember very little about the magnificent mansion, but I do remember the cows. For whatever reason I was very impressed with the estate's dairy cows, and not the gilded age architecture or the amazing Christmas decorations.

Image from AC's Facebook Page

I keep seeing a lot of click bait posts about the ‘downfall’ of the Vanderbilt's. I know that historically the period in the mid 1900’s has been called the downfall of the Vanderbilt's. It was a time period when the family’s modern patriarchy was dying and heirs were no longer interested in the massive Fifth Avenue homes that had made the family a New York status symbol, but why now? 

Image from GQ

Today, CNN’s most popular anchor Anderson Cooper and one of the sexiest men alive actor Timothy Olyphant are both Vanderbilt heirs at the top of their game. The family’s famous southern home,  Biltmore Estate, is still one of the most popular tourist attractions in North Carolina. Perhaps it is the downfall of the brand Vanderbilt, as many of the prominent heirs no longer bear the name of their Dutch descendants. To me, the family still seems successful, and continues to be interesting historically.

Let's go back, way back in American history... To Early Colonial America;

In the 1600’s a Dutchman came to New Amsterdam (New York) as an indentured servant. The family had been farmers in Holland, and had to work without pay until their debts from traveling to the new world were paid off. The heirs of Jan Aertson Vanderbilt (Jan, son of Aert from the town of Bilt in the Netherlands,) would create a legacy that has carried their name well into the 21 century. Known for their philanthropy the family name still appears on endowments and projects across the country. Perhaps they had tax reasons or social pressure but perhaps it’s because the family wasn’t always filthy rich.

Jumping forward a few generations...

The great great grandson of Jan was Cornelius “the commodore” Vanderbilt. He began working for his father at a young age. They had a ferry that charged to move goods and passengers across New York harbor. Soon the family business expanded into multiple steam ships.

Sophia

At the age of 19, Cornelius married his cousin, Sophia, they had 5 sons and 8 daughters, the youngest son was favored to be the heir. Unfortunately, he died and the oldest son, William, called Billy, became the one the commodore looked to to run the business. They were shipping goods needed in the budding industrial age. They expanded into railroad. And architecture.

Frank

The family business flourished. The era's unregulated expansion and industrial growth provided more and more opportunities for the Vanderbilt logistics operation. During the Civil War Cornelius donated his best ship to the Union Navy.

Sadly, Cornelius lost his wife and, in mourning, he moved to Canada where he married his cousin from Mobile, Alabama. She was an ardent supporter of the Confederacy. Her name was Frank. She signed a prenup. They had no children.

Cornelius and his holdings were growing in worth, he was a millionaire several times over.

The Commodore, Billy, the Spiritualist, and a Hundred Million Dollars!

Billy urged his father to begin consulting with a spiritual advisor about business. He introduced him to a man who gave him advice on all matters. The business had more success, growing the Commodore’s net worth into the hundred million plus area. His trust in the spiritual advisor also grew. This advisor convinced the commodore that his other children were not trustworthy and only Billy was.

Billy

Upon his father’s death Billy and his family received 95% of his father’s assets leaving the remaining five percent to be divided by the other living brother, the sisters, and their families.

The girls brought a law suit. They alleged in court that their brother Billy had paid the spiritual advisor to dupe their father into giving him the lions share of the inheritance.

In order to save the family reputation further damage Billy paid off his siblings. He was still outrageously wealthy and running an international logistics conglomerate.

Billy had inherited 100 million dollars and doubled it by the time he passed away less than a decade later. The fortune was divided between his eight children though not evenly, the two eldest sons received the majority of it, though the others were still all worth millions. 

Billy's Famous Heirs

From The New York Times, Gloria, Gloria, and Reginol

The Vanderbilt heirs built ten gilded mansions on New York City's Fifth Avenue. 
Billy's son Cornelius II married a woman named Alice, and had seven children. He built the grand Fifth Avenue home who's gates still exist as an entrance to the botanical gardens. Their son, Reginol Claypole Vanderbilt married twice and had a daughter with each wife. As every Vanderbilt seems to have an interesting story, Reggie was one for the books, an avid partier, his second wife was a teenager who gave birth to their daughter shortly before Reggie died of cirrhosis. The teen bride, Gloria, named her daughter Gloria, the child heiress was soon at the center of a tabloid furor when her mother was accused of being unfit by the family. She scandalously drank and cuddled with female friends. Gloria Vanderbilt grew up to be a famous designer and the mother of Anderson Cooper. 

Emily 1933

Billy Vanderbilt's daughter Emily married Henry Sloane, and donated massive amounts of money to charities, including funding the Sloane Hospital for women. They had five children, their daughter Emily had 4 children, and her daughter Adele married JK Olyphant, they had a son who married and had a son, the actor Timothy Olyphant. Emily's daughter Emily married attorney and politician John Henry Hammond, their son John Henry Hammond was a 20th century record producer and civil rights advocate. His son John Hammond is a blues singer.

It was Billy’s youngest son George Washington Vanderbilt, that most thought was his favorite. A bright well read youngster who would go on to learn eight languages and travel extensively abroad. Though the family all had a long history of building grand homes, (check out the history of their 5th avenue mansions) GW was the Vanderbilt who's home topped them all. In fact it tops all others, as the largest private home in the US.

Biltmore

GW was interested in creating a life (at least for himself) that was reminiscent of the preindustrial revolution agrarian society his family had helped to destroy. He dreamed of an entirely self sufficient southern estate. In 1889 he broke ground on his project. A village developed quickly around the estate simply because of the logistics of the massive construction efforts. It took six years to complete. Biltmore is the largest private home in the country.

GW married a few years later and his wife Edith took over as the head of the home, hosting parties and events as well as seeing to the day to day care of the staff and the people of the village which had a church and a school and market. GW focused on business. The estate had a profitable dairy.

The couple was lobbying the government to pass the Week’s Act which would allow for federal purchase of private lands in order to conserve natural resources like waterways and woodlands.

Sadly, GW died in 1914, leaving the estate to his young daughter Cornelia. Cornelia was raised in the estate and educated at the school in the village. Edith remarried to a senator Peter Gerry. The Week's Act passed and Edith was able to sell 87,000 acres to the government for what would become Pisgah National Forest. 

Cornelia married a man named Amherst Cecil, they had two sons born at Biltmore but educated them in Europe. The couple eventually divorced and Cornelia, always tabloid fodder, colored her hair bright pink and moved to Paris. Amherst stayed in the estate until his death in 1954. Locals say he let the businesses go downhill and was living in a small suite of rooms while the majority of the home was closed up and empty. They were loosing as much as $250,000 a year and things were falling into disrepair.

Cornelia's sons and their families are responsible for saving the Biltmore Estate and turning it into a profitable and self sustaining business again.

Downfall?

According to Forbes "Cornelius Vanderbilt II managed the railroads until his death in 1899. William Kissam Vanderbilt took over but retired soon after to concentrate on his yachts and thoroughbred horses, while brother George Vanderbilt's 146,000 acre Biltmore estate ate into his branch of the family fortune." The third generation of wealthy Vanderbilt's also gave away vast amounts of money to charities and spent lavishly on art and of course the ten mega mansions on Fifth Ave. Reggie gambled away hundreds of thousands and spent millions partying. It was their generation who stopped growing the size of the wealth and started shrinking it instead. 

Alas, by 1947 all of the NYC mansions were torn down. I'd say the decline of the family prominence was the mid 20th century, and if anything caused the downfall of the Vanderbilt’s, I would have to suggest it was the dilution of wealth through generations of heirs with large families. The name perhaps became less recognized because the women of the family who became prominent heirs in the 20th century did not pass family names to their now successful children.

Gen X Vanderbilt may even be the family's modern resurgence. Billy Vanderbilt’s great great grandsons run Biltmore. The prime time news anchor on CNN is also Billy’s great great grandson. Star of Deadwood, Justified, and The Santa Clarita Diet is Billy’s great great great grandson. That sounds like a pretty successful family to me. Perhaps the family is no longer a power player in global industry, but 'round here the name is still synonymous with gilded age architectural wonders and philanthropy. 

Click HERE for a list of Ten Castles in the Carolinas.