The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1897-06-06
HOW GIJMBERRY GOT ITS NAME
And What a Thrifty German is Making
Out of 1t.


"The strip of land called Gumberry, in
Northampton county," said Mr.. w. j.
Peele, who is just back from his old
home down there, used to be hard to
locate with amy satisfactory precision.
OF course, everybody knew that it was a
neighborhood between the Jackson and
Seaboard and the Jackson and Garys-
burg county roads, also extending on
across the Seaboard and Roanoke Rail-
road. But some of its supposed inhablt-
ants were sensitive about the euphony
of the name and denied that they were
located in its territory. These sensitive
people kept the boundary shifting so that
the traveller would be sometime quite
through it before he discovered that he
had been deceived by the natives.
However, the best authorities all agree
that it did not extend north of the one
or south of the other of the two county
roads / have just mentioned. This ex-
Guided Gen Ransom and Col. Tom Mason
on the south and also excluded all those
north of the county road leading to Sea-
board With respect to the Old PEBBLES
plantation there was more doubt, Cor 1t
lay between the two roads and was about
three miles from Jackson and 1T was
stoutly maintained by some to be in 1T,
and by Others as stoutly denied. In spite
of some geographical uncertainty, the
same could be said of Gumberry that
Proctor Knott said about Duluth: That
the sky came down equi-distant all
around it.
80 while heaven was as propitious TO
Gumberry as to the rest of the world,
its fate was sleeping in the womb OF
time Old Mr.. Barham who is said to
have admitted that he lived in Gumberry,
was long since dead; his forty mischiev-
Gus school boys, who, coming into school
one morning, one after another made the
crusty old gentleman say morning forty
times in quick succession-were long
since scattered, when Mr.. Kell. a Ger
man of energy and with money behind
him, came upon the scene.
This is the place. said Kell, point
ing to his newly bought plantation. This
is Gumberry.'
He had it made a postoffice, Gum
berry and there is none other by thai
name. The Seaboard railroad erected q
depot there. The aristocratic little town
of Jackson was married to her parvenue
but thrifty neighbor by a railroad.
"Gumberry's enterprise and high con
nection and Kelrs pluck, energy and Ger
man indifference to rules of euphony
have worn out the slight local prejudice
against the name.
"A Catholic priest once offered to Ma
poleon to furnish him with a genealogy
which would connect him with Caesar
| So Capt. Tom Arlington has found one
| for Gumberry, which. like Napoleon, il
does not need. Capt. Tom says it took its
name from old Humphry Gums, and was
| originally Gum sburg, changed, by the
rules of euphony to Gumberry.
IF some merchants, jealous of kells
prosperity, had told him this story of its
genealogy, Kell would have replied by
giving out the contract for his hotel
which the traveller will now find there
well supplied from Kell's own garden
once a broom-straw patch on the side OF
! a hill, by which he illustrates what the
| soil will do with home made manure.
"'How many cabbages in this patch:
| tabout a quarter of an acre. l asked
him.
"'Ten thousand, said Kell.
"'What are they worth?
"'Well, / don't sell them. but at
| cents each, they are worth $780,
"1'he one he gave his interrogation (anC
| there were plenty more like it, weighed
over ten pounds, and would sell here
| for Is cents.
But many people are too busy making
cotton for the Yankees at five cents q
pound to notice what Mr.. Kell is doing