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Those who knew Dave realize he could be very persuasive. The following article was written in 1977 to help convince the Charlotte community that the Dowd House was too important to allow to die.
Eventually the community agreed.
James Cornelius Dowd was born on August 30, 1835, 3 miles north of Carthage, North Carolina. There he grew up and later married Henrietta Rives in October of 1860. He served in the Confederate Army during the Civil War.
Following the CivIl War, his brother, Clement Dowd, moved to Charlotte where he took up law practice with Zebulon Vance. Clement Dowd served on the city’s first school board and as the city attorney.
At one time he was president of Commercial National Bank, which later became North Carolina National Bank. He wrote a book about Zebulon Vance and also served as mayor of Charlotte.
In 1878, James Dowd purchased 249 acres from his brother. The property was formally known as the Ralph F. Davidson estate and was located 1½ miles west of Charlotte.
In 1879 the Dowds built a large two-story house on the property. Between the house and Irwin Creek, orchards were planted and cotton fields.
The Dowd children grew up to be very influencial citizens of Charlotte, Probably the two most successful were Willis Frank Dowd and William Carey Dowd. William Carey Dowd purchased the Char1otte News in 1895 for $5.000. Under his leadership, the paper became the most widely read paper in the Carolinas. (Evening paper)
The Charlotte News remained in the Dowd family until 1947 when the paper was sold to a group of Charlotte businessmen. Later in the l95O's, the Knight Publishing Company purchased the paper.
Willis Frank Dowd started the Charlotte Pipe and Foundry Company. Today his grandchildren, Willis Frank Dowd III and Roddey Dowd are officials of the company. The company was organized in 1900.
William Carey Dowd III operates the Dowd Press in Charlotte.
Mrs. Henrietta Dowd died on June 20, 1895. Soon afterward the Dowd family sold the estate. An R. Miller, whose Millerton Construction Company later built the Dowd Estates residential Comunity, purchased the property.
Between 1895 and 1898, James Dowd married Alice Livingston. On November 26, 1898, James C. Dowd died. Alice L. Dowd died a little more than a year later in January of 1900. They, along with T. Whitfield Dowd and Robert Marsh Dowd, are buried in Charlotte's Elmwood Cemetery.
In 1897, the L. W. Cooper family leased the Dowd House. Mr. Cooper was a contractor who built cotton mills, court houses and schools in the Charlotte area. One of the mills that he built was Charlotte's Elizabeth Cotton Mill, located just east of the Dowd farm. Radiator Specialty Company now occupies the building.
Mrs. Blanche Cooper Grant of St. Pertersburg, Florida, lived in the house for many years with her parents. "My father's office was in Charlotte so he leased the Dowd House," she said. "Each day I drove a horse and buggy into town to attend the Presbyterian College." Mrs. Grant knew several of Charlotte's prominent families in those days. "I knew John Belk's mother quite well," she recalls.
In 1973, Mrs. Grant wrote recalling a visit to the house during a fall trip to the North Carolina mountains. "As we drew up in front of the still charming house - the present houses and streets - in my mind's eye - were swept away. I saw again the orchard where apples, peaches and pears grew in abundance. The summers were filled with canning and jelly making." she recalled.
"I saw again the wellhouse (where a street now runs) and the large barn which was located between the house and the road."
"When I visited the house, the door was locked but I didn’t need to see the inside to remember the hall and staircase, with a parlor on the right side, and a master bedroom on the left side. It had a large fireplace, which was never allowed to die out in winter -- kept by large back logs which could last a week."
"Behind that room was a large kitchen with a wood stove which had a tank to heat our water. Its fire, too, was kept burning all winter. Back of the kitchen was another large room lined with shelves of canned vegetables and fruits. Sugar and flour, bought in 100 pound barrels, was kept there."
"Upstairs were three bedrooms, and my window above the road to Gastonia, also overlooked the porch and orchards," she said. "Few changes seem to have been made to the house, but in my time it was without facilities. A three-holer was back of the house, as well as a building to store the picked cotton until time to send it to the gin. Also in back was a huge grape arbor where we gathered the delicious scuppernongs from which mother made wine."
The woods around the house were full of wild flowers and violets. The trails and roads were made only by riders and wagons hauling logs through the woods. "The house was surrounded by 32 acres of woods and cotton fields. My mother managed the farm because my father’s work took him away quite often, she said. "I was married in the house in 1904."
In July of 1917, General Leonard Wood was invited to Charlotte by the Chamber of Commerce, General Wood was travelIng throughout the south, searching for possible sites for army camps and National Guard camps.
On July 5, General Wood arrived in Charlotte. He visited two sites in the county, one to the north of the city, and one to the west. The next week the War Department announced that a modest sized National Guard training facility would be built just west of Charlotte near the old Dowd farm.
The Chamber of Commerce was not satisfied, Mayor Frank McNinch organized a committee under the chairmanship of Z.V. Taylor for the purpose of pursuading General Wood to place a major army facility near Charlotte, not Fayetteville, where plans had been announced for one.
General Wood stated that he would be willing to consider Charlotte as the site if the local citizens could provide sufficient land for a camp designed to house and train 60,000 men. The deadline established for the campaign was July 25. Mr. Taylor and his comittee had less than two weeks to assemble the property. Otherwise the major facility would be built near Fayetteville.
Mr. Taylor’s committee started out working fast, obtaining options for leasing sizeable amounts of acreage to the west of the city. Many of the farmers realizing that the market value of these leases was skyrocketing, demanded enormous prices for the options. On July 24, two of General Wood’s assistants arrived to inspect the proposed site. That morning the Chamber of Commerce called an emergency meeting. Mr. Taylor’s committee needed several thousand dollars to purchase the outstanding options. Hundreds of citizens left their offices and desks for this emergency session The participants immediately organized themselves into committees to go into the streets to raise funds. The campaign was successful. The remaining options were purchased, just before the inspection tour of the site took place. The inspection team visited the Dowd House, which would serve as headquarters for the National Guard Camp to be known as Camp Greene. The decision was made there at 3 p.m. that hot summer day. Charlotte would get the major facility.
During the next few months over 6 million dollars was spent at the site by the Federal Government. Hundreds of wooden buildings, bolted to concrete foundations, were built in the area. By the end of July 2,000 persons were working at the camp as construction workers.
By the summer of 1918, nearly 60,000 men were stationed at Camp Greene. Charlotte’s population was only 40,000 at the time. The Charlotte Chamber of Commerce was proud and excited over the additional money being spent in Charlotte. With Camp Greene came the building of new restaurants, stores, and accomodations of all types. The merchants, however, were caught off guard by the massive departure of troops from Camp Greene in the fall of 1918. The speed of departures was caused largely by the Army’s decision to vacate the facility after the outbreak of a massive influenza epidemic in October of 1918.
Hundreds of soldiers at Camp Greene died. Old timers remember that the railroad station had caskets stacked to the ceiling. The caskets were being shipped back to the soldiers homes in the northwestern and northeastern sections of the country.
Camp Greene officially closed on June 30, 1919, eight days after the country of Germany had signed the Treaty of Versailles, The 600 acres of Camp Greene, though, had stood basically vacant since the fall of 1918.
At Camp Greene 3 divisions of the army were organized. The 3rd Infantry Division, the 4th Infantry Division, and the 41st Infantry Division. Camp Greene was the only military establishment in the South which witnessed the creation of Army Divisions during World War I. The troops of Camp Greene were among the Allied troops who breached the Hindenburg Line and brought Kaiser Wilhelm’s Germany to its knees.
During Camp Greene's existence, the Dowd House played a major role. It was the center of all activity at Camp Greene, Mr. Kenneth Whitsett of Charlotte remembers the Dowd House and the part it played in Camp Greene. "My association with the Dowd House was clearly connected with the army," he said. "The Dowd House was the center of all activity. Farmers would come in from all over and get jobs at 5 dollars a day working on construction crews."
"I remember there were many peach and fruit trees between the Dowd House and the creek. When the camp came in, these were all torn down, without any thought."
"I worked in the house with Bill Dowd, (later editor of the Charlotte News and the Charlotte Observer), This was Bill’s grandfather's house. Bill was working as a clerk”
"I believe the Dowd House is historical because of its connection with World War I. The Dowd House is not the typical farm house. It hasn’t the gables that most houses of that period had."
"The Dowd House was in an L shape and had a hip roof," he said. "During Camp Greene an addition was added to the house. In it were several offices including the accounting department for the camp. Camp Greene was a battle field for all the men who died there. In Elmwood Cemetery there is a plot where several of the soldiers who died are buried. Most of these men died from influenza or were hurt in accidents."
Mrs. William Rigsby of Queens Road West in Charlotte also worked at Camp Greene. She was a secretary at the house, "My first recollections of the house go back to when I was only 3 years old. It was my grandparents house, Mr. and Mrs.. L. W. Cooper," she said, "Two things really stand out in my mind. One was the horse stables and the other thing is the red carpet which used to cover the staircase."
"I worked in my Aunt Blanche’s old bedroom. The one on the second floor which overlooks the road to Gastonia," she said.
In 1924, after Camp Greene had closed and the area became deserted of soldiers, the I. M. Cook family of Charlotte purchased the Dowd House. Mr. Cook also bought the camp laundry building which stood on the Old Dowd Road, at the present site of the Catalina Motor Inn, There the family ran the Cook Body Company.
The family lived in the house for nearly 50 years. Mrs. Louise Lawing, the oldest of the Cook children, still recalls those earlier days. "Everyone knew where the Dowd House was," she said. "If we bought something in Charlotte, we just told them to send it out to the Dowd House. That was all the address we needed."
Mrs. Lawing says that on late summer nights, the family would sit out on the front porch. "From there we had a beautiful view of Charlotte," she recalls, "That was before all the houses and businesses were built, You know, I love that house, So much of my life was spent there." Mrs. Lawing, who inherited the house in 1973 upon the death of her mother, says she doesn’t want to see the house torn down. "But I can’t afford to do anything with it," she said. The house and lots surrounding it, cost her neary $500 each year in taxes. Mrs. Lawing is interested in donating the house if some historical group will move it elsewhere. "If it were moved elsewhere, I could sell the property for office use," she added.
In 1975, Mrs. Lawing allowed the house to be open for Veterans Day. More than 120 people toured the house in two hours, Mrs. Blanche Cooper Grant flew in for the event. Liz Hair, officials from the Mecklenburg Historical Association, and folks who were just interested, stopped in. One person, traveling through Charlotte from Dallas, Texas, read about the open house during breakfast in a local restaurant.
The house now stands empty. The flowers once cared for by Mrs. Cook are now overgrown. A sign over the window reads: UNSAFE, open, vacant. Less than three years ago, the house was in beautiful shape. But time, the lack of human care and love have taken their toll. Vandals have broken out nearly every window. Even wood from the staircase has been kicked inward.
"You know, the people who would really like to see the Dowd House saved and restored are either too old to do anything or dead," said Ernest Grady, a veteran of World War I and a Charlotte sign painter who once worked in the Dowd House with Kenneth Whitsett. "I would love to see it kept, but I can’t do anything."
It is 1977, 60 years since World War I. Charlotte’s James C. Dowd House stands, but for how long? The building played an active part in World War I -- probably the only one in North Carolina that had such an active part. If the house survives, the house will be 100 years old in two years. Let’s give our future a chance to know the past. Let’s give the James C. Dowd House a chance.
