A Formidable Fighting Family

Robert J. “Strawberry” Conderman was the first person in Craven County to be killed in WWII.  He was born August 13, 1918, and upon graduating from New Bern High School, entered the University of North Carolina, receiving a bachelor’s degree in commerce and becoming an aviation cadet at Pensacola.  Upon completion of flight training he was stationed in San Diego and then Hawaii, before being transferred to Wake Island.  On December 8, 1941, (December 7, US time) the squad learned of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.  Japanese bombers soon flew over Wake Island in a surprise attack shortly before noon.  As the alarm sounded, Conderman ran to his F4F-3 “Wildcat” Fighter plane but was cut down by strafing.  Fellow Marines rushed to his aid, but Conderman pointed to other wounded Marines and said “Let me go.  Take Care of them.”  He died of his wounds just hours later at the age of 23.  2^nd Lieutenant Robert Conderman received the Purple Heart and is buried at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific (also known as the Punchbowl) in Honolulu, Hawaii.  His name is inscribed at the top of the WWII Memorial of Craven County located on the grounds of the old county courthouse, which honors the deaths of local soldiers.

Robert’s father, Fred Conderman, was an assistant postmaster for New Bern, and he tried to enlist to avenge his only son’s death.  His age kept him out of the Army and Navy, but Marine officers accepted him as a mail officer with the rank of captain.  He joined the First Marine Division and participated in numerous assaults and campaigns in the Solomon Islands.  He was only supposed to handle the mail, but he took his off-duty time to accompany as many aviators as possible.  He contracted malaria and returned home, retiring from active service in 1946 with the rank of major and returning to his job as postal inspector.  In 1944 he received the silver Eisenhower medal for his award as “Fighting Father of the Year.”  Fred Conderman died at the age of 79 and is buried at the New Bern Memorial Cemetery.

On July 1, 1863, the first day of the Battle of Gettysburg, the 26th NC infantry encountered the famed 24th Michigan, known as the “Iron Brigade.” The battle was long and bloody, but the 26th NC defeated their opponent on that day. While their courage will be forever remembered, the unit suffered unparalleled loss.
Prior to Gettysburg, the 26th NC Regiment had their first foray into battle at New Bern during March, 1862. Most of the troops were from the middle and western part of the state and they were commanded by Zebulon Vance who later became the war time Governor of NC. While Confederate forces were defeated at New Bern, the 26th NC later distinguished itself in battle.
Before arriving at Gettysburg, PA, the 26th NC had 843 soldiers, and was the largest regiment in Robert E. Lee’s Army. On the first day of the battle of Gettysburg, the 26th NC advanced at McPherson’s Ridge against the 24th Michigan. Their commander, Henry King Burgwyn Jr., age 21, known as the “boy colonel”, was shot through his lungs and killed while transferring the regimental colors. Another thirteen flag bearers were shot and one by one, every colonel, major, and captain was either killed or wounded. The only remaining officer, Colonel H.C. Albright, took command of the entire regiment. The fight between the 26th NC and 24th Michigan was the bloodiest engagement of the three day battle of Gettysburg. The 26th NC had 558 casualties out of 843 soldiers. Company E was left with twelve men, and Co F consisted of one color bearer.
On July 3, the last day of battle, the regiment again fought, this time at Cemetery Ridge. Eight more color bearers were killed or wounded, including Sgt Robert Hudspeth of Co. F. Ninety-nine men were killed in total. Despite the odds, one color bearer and Sergeant carried the 26th NC colors to the top of the slope and stone wall. The Union troops of the 12th New Jersey, out of respect for their courage, held their fire and helped them over the wall where they surrendered. On this third day, the 26th NC had numbered about 230 men. That night, only three officers and 67 men were able to answer roll call. All twenty men who carried the colors, 81 out of 82 men in Co E and all 93 men in Company F were dead. The 26th NC lost the highest number in any regiment in a single battle during the Civil War.
There are two monuments at Gettysburg in honor of the 26th NC. The monument at the Angle is the smallest, representing the tremendous loss of life from the regiment. The other, at Meredith Avenue, reflects the size of the unit after the first day battle. On March 10, 2007, the Society for the Historical Preservation of the 26th Regiment North Carolina Troops erected a monument at the New Bern Battlefield to honor the unit. It is the largest monument to the 26th NC, representing the unit at full strength.

A small article appeared in the 13 Jan 1897 Daily Journal (New Bern, Wed. p.2) stating “Notice is hereby given that application will be made to the next General Assembly of the State of North Carolina to change and amend the Charter of the city of New Berne.” At the next meeting in 1897, the name of our city was officially changed to its current spelling, New Bern.  But what had been its official name prior and why did it change?

New Bern was founded in 1710 by Baron Christoph von Graffenried of Bern, Switzerland.   The Baron named it New Bern in honor of the city of his birth. In 1723, the General Assembly enacted that the place be “Incorporated into a Township, by the Name of Newbern… with all Privileges which ever have belonged to the said town, or shall hereafter be expressed, forever. (Laws of North Carolina, 1723-pg 204 Section XIII).

Although the official name was Newbern, it was not spelled that way on various maps, newspapers, and official documents, which led to much confusion over the years. On June 6, 1891, Henry Gannett, a famous geographer and mapmaker wrote to the City Clerk, William Oliver, and asked him about the true spelling of the name.

“Dear Sir, I find great uncertainty in spelling the name of your city.  It is spelled Newbern, Newberne, New Bern, New Berne and Newburn.  I take the liberty of appealing to you to inform us as fully as possible what the usage is in the official documents of the city.  In case you have documents at hand, I should be glad to know under what name the city is chartered”.

Oliver’s’ response was that “…up until 1862 the official name was spelled Newbern and it had been chartered as such.”  Oliver sent Gannett a copy of the “Acts of the General Assembly published in 1793” as proof.   Oliver referenced the fact that the town had been captured by Union forces and had been in the hands of Union troops for three years.  “The post office, and every office both town and county, the banks, the newspaper, were all in the hands of those who recently settled here.  The stamps at the post office at this time were changed from Newbern to New Berne as well as the newspaper and county offices.  This change was made by comparative strangers without a scintilla of law or authority.” (State Chronicle, July 23, 1891, p.4) Gannett subsequently settled upon Newbern as the official spelling.

In 1897 local businessman, James Augustus Bryan helped to initiate legislation to officially change the spelling again. The town continued to be referred to as Newberne which Bryan and others blamed upon Union soldiers for adding an “e” at the end. This led to the January 1893 notice in the paper that there was to be an application to change or amend the charter of the city of New Berne. This resulted in the General Assembly of NC action in February 1897 to establish that the “corporation heretofore existing as the city of Newbern shall hereafter be known and designated as the city of New Bern, and all laws in conflict with the above are hereby repealed.” Now you know when our city officially became New Bern.

Sneden, Robert Knox. [Plan of the Battle of Newberne ! North Carolina: fought March 14th 1862]. [to 1865, 1862] Map. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/gvhs01.vhs00079/. (Accessed December 12, 2017.)

December 1, 1922 started out in anticipatory fashion as over 400 people from New Bern left for Raleigh to attend the Eastern Carolina Football Championship between New Bern and Sanford. By the end of the day, New Bern would suffer from the worst fire in North Carolina history, leaving 3,200 — one fourth of the population — homeless, a thousand buildings destroyed, hundreds of jobs lost and an area of forty blocks totally destroyed at an estimated loss of two and a half million dollars. It would hence forth be known as “The Great Fire.”

The morning of December 1 was cold and overcast with gale-like winds. At 8:00 a.m. a fire broke out at the Rowland Lumber Company, the largest sawmill in North Carolina. Every fireman and piece of equipment was sent to fight the blaze, but they had difficulty in controlling the flames sweeping through the dry lumber in the yard and were hampered by insufficient manpower due to the number of people who had left town for the game. At 10:45 a.m. a fire started in the chimney of a small house on Kilmarnock Street near the Five Point intersection in New Bern. By the time the firefighters responded, three more houses were burning out of control. The 70 miles per hour winds moved east towards the Neuse River. As the fire spread rapidly down to George Street the wind then spread the fire North and West. By midday, Fire Chief James K. Bryan, put out frantic calls to neighboring towns for help, and fearing that the entire town would be destroyed, decided to use dynamite to level the houses in the path of the inferno and to create a firebreak. Shortly before dusk, the wind shifted and died down and the fire was finally brought under control. Unbelievably, there was only one casualty, an elderly African American woman who was too crippled to escape her home.

That night, fire victims sought refuge in Cedar Grove and Greenwood Cemeteries and many had escaped with only the clothes on their back. Fort Bragg responded to a call for help by sending eight freight cars loaded with tents, cots, mattresses, and other needed equipment and officers and men arrived to oversee the erection of the tents which later became known as “Tent City.” Cots, blankets and clothing were sent by the Navy base at Norfolk and nearby towns immediately began collecting used clothing and money to help the homeless. The Red Cross moved in and was placed in full charge of the relief effort. West Street School, which miraculously escaped the fire, was opened to feed thousands of meals for the African Americans who were homeless. Local businesses and townspeople assisted in these endeavors.

The City decided to condemn about twenty acres of the burned area to widen and straighten the streets, to extend Cedar Grove Cemetery and to create a city park. There was much protest over this decision because most of the houses that had stood in the condemned area were owned by the African American families who had resided there. Today, Kafer Park, the cemetery extension, and the George Street Senior Center building are on this property.

In case you wanted to know, New Bern won the championship game, 6-0.

Photo of the Great Fire of 1922 Courtesy of the New Bern Fire Museum

On November 26, 1787, in New Bern, a judicial milestone was set in the landmark case of Bayard vs. Singleton. The case is significant not just for the judicial precedent set in this case, but also for the number of attorneys and judges who played major roles in the history and development of our new nation.

Samuel Cornell was a wealthy merchant in New Bern and one of the richest men in the state. During the Revolutionary War, he remained loyal to the King. He refused to sign an oath of allegiance to the revolutionary cause and fled to England in August of 1775. He returned in 1777 to his family’s home in New York. Meanwhile, the NC General Assembly confiscated his land and home and sold it to help finance the war. A local New Bern merchant, Spyers Singleton, purchased Cornell’s home. The Cornell family resided in Flushing, NY where one of his daughters, Elizabeth Cornell, married William Bayard Jr. In 1787, Elizabeth Cornell Bayard returned to New Bern to file a lawsuit against the state to recover the property that had been deeded to her by her father. A lawsuit was filed on her behalf by her attorney Samuel Johnston (who later became Governor of NC). William R. Davie (who also became Governor and was known as the “Father” of the University of N.C.) assisted Johnston. James Iredell, a legal scholar, was also retained by Mrs. Bayard and he later became a US Supreme Court Justice. Spyers Singleton, the defendant, hired another future Governor, Abner Nash, as his attorney along with Alfred Moore (who would later serve on the US Supreme Court).

The essence of Bayard’s argument was that North Carolina’s Constitution of 1776 guaranteed a citizen the right to a jury trial in a case involving the loss of property rights. After the war ended, the 1783 Treaty of Paris stipulated that confiscated property would be returned to its original owners. However, in 1785 the NC legislature barred state courts from hearing lawsuits by former Loyalists trying to recover their property, contrary to the Treaty of Paris. The court, consisting of Judges Samuel Ashe, Samuel Spenser and John Williams heard the case but delayed a decision, hoping that either a settlement would be reached or the legislature would repeal the confiscation laws. After the parties could not come to an agreement, the court concluded that it could not enforce the 1785 NC statute as it was inconsistent with the Constitution. The decision was highly controversial. Richard Dobbs Spaight, one of the signers of the US Constitution, questioned whether the court had a right to overturn legislation as unconstitutional.

The court eventually ruled against Bayard, citing the fact that when her father left for England, he did not return before the General Assembly confiscated his lands. Therefore, he was not actually a citizen of the US. The court ruled that Mrs. Bayard, as a citizen in 1787 had a right to a trial, but Cornell did not have the right to deed his property to her in 1777 in the first place. As possibly the first legal decision in the new United States in which a court nullified a law because it was found to be unconstitutional, this ruling was an early example of the system of checks and balances vital to the new American democracy. Bayard vs. Singleton served as a precedent and precursor to Marbury vs. Madison, the 1803 US Supreme Court decision that established judicial review.