Over the mantle of the sitting room of his house at Cliffside, N.C., there now hangs the portrait of Abraham Lincoln. Its presence somehow, “controls” his room. Other details seem to vanish except the old armchair and personal private desk just under the sad Lincoln's face.
In that face always before him, it seemed to me must be written invisibly a page of the story of this man's life, and I sought it out. Even those nearest him did not seem to know the real meaning of its being there. There seems to have been only one man who knew, and from him I got the meaning almost by accident.
What Bound Him to Lincoln
“That picture!” exclaimed R. L. Watkins with whom I was talking—“Why I have heard Raleigh say a many a time, 'Lincoln was a
great man, I like him because he and I both came out of a log cabin.'” Mr. Watkins, 69 years of age, had been a playmate of “Raleigh” Haynes around Ferry countryside. Mr. Watkins was his close friend always and lives now only ten miles from Cliffside, the great cotton mill settlement with which Mr. Haynes climaxed his work.
The log cabin whence came Raleigh Haynes stands partially today though it was never the humble structure whence came Lincoln. For there were the mother and father, Charles H. Haynes, and eight children to be housed there. The eldest of these children is living now in Rutherfordton, Mrs. Letitia Arnold Haynes Carpenter. She is past 70, and her attitude toward her brother, Raleigh, was, perhaps, a mothering attitude. They were greatly devoted to one another. Mrs. Carpenter has the light hazel-blue eyes of her brother—the “eyes of the Haynes's,” as she says.
I told her of the Lincoln log cabin story. She quietly remonstrated somewhat. “It is true,” she said, “that we were not folks of means, but the house we had was such as was common in those days throughout that country. It had an ample number of rooms to take care of the family with two wings on the main body of the house—which, alone, is standing now. My father had weathered boards put on it inside and out, and we were comfortable. We entertained visitors, and they put up at our home, and they were well taken care of—they and their horses while they stayed. My father, Charles H. Haynes was, as I said, not a man of means, but he had two hundred acres of land, he was sheriff of the county; besides he was a teacher. He taught me and the children of the neighborhood, and after his death I taught my brother, Raleigh. I am not over-proud, but all these pieces that come out about my brother seem to harp on his coming from the humblest and poorest beginnings. This is not so. I know these pieces are written to make it appear that my brother must have been all the greater man to have come from the worst to the best, but he was a big enough man anyhow to have started and ended as he really did. My father was a remarkable man, systematic, had had a good high school education, had a good farm with corn and wheat and stock, attended to his duties, was a man of high character and hard-working. From what he taught me, I taught school myself eight years. We got along fairly well for a big family until my father died. Then Raleigh was about eight years old. That left my mother with eight children, but we did not suffer. We saved, and worked and were helped besides by my mother's folks.”
Copyright © 2008 The Cliffside Historical Society
