Thomas Dixon, whose name is most familiar,
perhaps, in connection with the moving-picture called "The Birth of a
Nation," taken from one of his novels. Mr. Dixon was born in the town of
Shelby, North Carolina, and was for some years pastor of the Tabernacle
Baptist Church, Raleigh.
The Hall of History, containing a great variety of State relics, is one
of the most fascinating museums I ever visited. Too much praise cannot
be given Colonel Fred A. Olds and Mr. Marshall De Lancey Haywood, of the
North Carolina Historical Society, for making it what it is. As with the
Confederate Museum in Richmond, so, here, it is impossible to give more
than a faint idea of the interest of the museum's contents. Among the
exhibits of which I made note, I shall, however, mention a few. There
was a letter written from Paris in the handwriting of John Paul Jones,
requesting a copy of the Constitution of North Carolina; there was the
Ku Klux warning issued to one Ben Turner of Northampton County; and
there was an old newspaper advertisement signed by James J. Selby, a
tailor, dated at Raleigh, June 24, 1824, offering a reward of ten
dollars for the capture and return of two runaways: "apprentice boys,
legally bound, named William and Andrew Johnson." The last named boy was
the same Andrew Johnson who later became a distinctly second-rate
President of the United States.
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