A Gift from Another Century

 

Charles Newland in 1989

A GIFT FROM ANOTHER CENTURY

Charles Newland 1933-2022 R.I.P.

 

You may never read a sentence like this again:

He died in the house he was born in and had lived in his entire life.

That’s not a clip from an 18^th century newspaper. It’s from last week’s Kingsport Times-News.

That was Charles Newland, who died last week in the home he was born in and where he had lived his entire life.

Charles’ father was a farmer. And after the service and UT Agriculture College, Charles joined him in the family business. He worked as a farmer for the rest of his life.

Charles died just shy of his 89^th birthday.

The family farm was in Arcadia, a community just east of Bloomingdale. It is not a Kingsport suburb, as Charles would tell you, it is a community. The Arcadia community even has its own sign.

I once wrote that Charles was a “gift from another century.” He was courtly, kind, a gentleman and a farmer, with an encyclopedic knowledge of Kingsport in general and the Arcadia-Bloomingdale area in particular, a knowledge that even went back into another century.

One of the first times I met Charles, he told me about riding into downtown Kingsport in 1939 with his father. “We went to Pet Dairy on Market. He had to check the barn to see if they needed hay. He sold them hay. At that time Pet stabled horses because all their delivery wagons were horse drawn!”

He knew downtown Kingsport almost as well as he knew Arcadia and Bloomingdale. When a local real estate company wanted to tear down the Woolworth’s building on Broad Street to build a new headquarters, he told me he remembered when the whole west side of Broad Street between Center and New Street had no buildings on it. The same for the block across Broad between Center and New Street except for Earles’ Drug Store facing Center.

Then he had a question for me. “How many of your readers can remember when the carnival for the 4th of July was set up on that block?”

For my generation, those growing up in the fifties and sixties, the carnival was always in the parking lot between the Civic Auditorium and J. Fred Johnson Stadium.

But after looking around in the archive, I discovered that Charles was right: the carnival was on the Woolworth’s block for fifteen years, from 1931 till the end of World War II.

And talk about specific knowledge of Arcadia.

When I wrote about Leesburg almost getting the railroad instead of Kingsport (it went through Jonesboro), I wondered if very many readers knew where Leesburg was anymore. Charles wrote me, “I raised my hand for I know where and have been to Leesburg. In fact I have been to the DeVault tavern (Leesburg’s most famous – and only – landmark) courtesy of the DeVault family.”

Charles told me there are two connections between Leesburg and his Arcadia community. “Mattie Fain who grew up in Arcadia married a DeVault who very possibly could have been born at the DeVault tavern. He did own it at one time. Their son lived there with his family.”

The other connection: “There was an officer in the Confederate Army from Kentucky by the name of Edward O. Guerrant. He spent enough time in the Leesburg area during the war to win the hand in marriage of one of the daughters of DeVault tavern. This Guerrant kept a diary of his war experiences. These have been compiled into a book (which Charles owned). This book tells of a movement from Abingdon to Gate City down the Reedy Creek Road where a camp was made at night near Mr. Dooley's, a mile and one half east of the Reedy Creek Camp Ground. The location of that campground is the Arcadia United Methodist Church with the old Camp Ground Cemetery beside it. The Reedy Creek Road is now called Bloomingdale Road!”

Of course Charles, “a gift from another century,” would know about Bloomingdale Road in the 18^th century. He was born and lived his entire life in a house on Bloomingdale Road. And he died in that house last week.

Charles Newland in 1962