John C. Bain Papers, PC.297

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John C. Bain Papers, PC.297

Abstract

The papers of John C. Bain (Aug. 14, 1862 - Sept. 11, 1930), farmer and rural mail carrier, Cumberland County, N.C., are not of particular importance as they relate to his own cotton crops and truck garden produce. However, his involvement in the cooperative movement among farmers that gave rise to the Farmers' State Alliance and the Cotton Growers' Cooperative Association produced papers of historical interest, in part because Bain was active at every level of the alliance movement. The personal papers fall naturally into three categories: Bain's personal papers; Bain's papers concerning the Farmers' Alliance (state, county, and sub--alliance); and Bain's papers concerning the Cumberland County Cotton Growers' Association.

Descriptive Summary

Title
John C. Bain Papers
Call Number
PC.297
Creator
Bain, John C.
Date
1862 - 1930
Extent
1.200 cubic feet
Language
English
Repository
State Archives of North Carolina

Restrictions on Access & Use

Access Restrictions

Available for research.

Use Restrictions

Copyright is retained by the authors of these materials, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law (Title 17 US Code). Individual researchers are responsible for using these materials in conformance with copyright law as well as any donor restrictions accompanying the materials.

Preferred Citation

[Identification of item], PC.297, John C. Bain Papers, State Archives of North Carolina, Raleigh, NC, USA.

Collection Overview

The papers of John C. Bain, farmer and rural mail carrier, are not of particular importance as they relate to his own cotton crops and truck garden produce. However, his involvement in the cooperative movement among farmers that gave rise to the Farmers' State Alliance and the Cotton Growers' Cooperative Association produced papers of historical interest; and Bain was active at every level of the alliance movement. It is by chance that these papers of Bain have survived. When the former officers of the local alliance retrieved the surviving papers of the Farmers' State Alliance from Mrs. Bain in 1933, they brought away with them to the Archives these private papers intermingled with the records of the alliance.
The personal papers having been removed from the records of the Farmers' State Alliance were found to fall naturally into three categories (1) Bain's personal papers; (2) Bain's papers concerning the Farmers' Alliance (state, county, and sub--alliance); and (3) Bain's papers concerning the Cumberland County Cotton Growers' Association.

Biographical and Historical No

The papers of John C. Bain (Aug. 14, 1862 - Sept. 11, 1930), farmer and rural mail carrier, are not of particular importance as they relate to his own cotton crops and truck garden produce. However, his involvement in the cooperative movement among farmers that gave rise to the Farmers' State Alliance and the Cotton Growers' Cooperative Association produced papers of historical interest. Bain was active at every level of the alliance movement. At the local level he held various offices in the Cumberland County Farmers' Alliance: lecturer, 1901, 1906-1908; chaplain, 1904-1906; secretary-treasurer, 1911-1917. At the state level he held offices in the Farmers' State Alliance every year from 1899 until the closing of the organization in 1929: and in 1899 and again from 1903 to 1913; lecturer from 1900 to 1902; vice-president from 1914 to 1915 and again from 1922 to 1926; secretary-treasurer from 1916 to 1922; state business agent from 1917 to 1922; member of the executive committee from 1927 to 1929 (in which year the Farmers' State Alliance came to an end upon the chartering of the North Carolina State Grange).

One of the most important offices held by Bain was that of state business agent to the Farmers' State Alliance. This aspect of the cooperative effort of farmers was probably more successful than any other function of the Farmers' State Alliance after 1900. Originally, the office was conceived as including warehousing operation for fertilizer, dry goods, and groceries ordered in bulk at wholesale discount prices then sold hack to farmers over the state at lower rates than could be had from local retail merchants. Before the collapse of the alliance occasioned by the political debacle of 1892, the scheme called for business agents at every level, from sub-alliance through county alliance to state alliance. After 1900, when the farmers' State Alliance was a shadow of its former self, a good deal of the business of the state business agent was directly with individual farmers as well as with local sub-business agents.

In 1905 when the question of the Cumberland County Cooperative Warehouse for cotton growers was mooted in the local farmers' alliance, Bain subscribed to stock in the warehouse. This appears to have been the beginning of the Cumberland County Cotton Growers' Association in which Bain was an actively supportive member. Bain seems to have acted as business agent for members of both the alliance and the association, consolidating orders for fertilizer, potash, and nitrate of soda from them, negotiating contracts with manufacturers, guaranteeing payment to the manufacturers, and attending to details of shipment to the rail siding nearest each farmer ordering through him.

Contents of the Collection

1. Personal Papers,1914-1930

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These include a few letters written to Bain between 1914 and 1930; except for five World War I letters (dated in 1918 and 1919) these are almost altogether of purely family and personal interest. The same is true of the insurance papers, the papers on family genealogy, newspaper subscriptions, and rural electricity and telephones. Of the two deeds in the collection, however, there is a 1901 deed (the only paper predating 1914 in the personal papers) of more than passing interest. It is a deed of contract between Sudie McK. Wade and James Smith that provides an interesting example of a three-year lease of land in which the consideration is the ditching and fencing of the land to be done by the contractor, the penalty for nonperformance of which being forfeiture of the crops he raises on the land. Bain's correspondence and bills of lading for his berry crops shipped to markets in Virginia, Maryland, and New York from 1916 to 1929 have been separated into a separate file, as have been a set of collection statistics he kept in 1917 for an unknown product. The post office papers in this part of the collection include Bain's postal route book (indicating the names of the various family members who might receive mail in their rural box), the December, 1917, issue of R.F.D. News, and correspondence relating to payment of Bain's pension to his widow in 1930.

Correspondence,1914-1930, n.d.
Berry Market,1916-1929
Deeds,1901, 1917
Electricity/Telephones,1919-1923
Farm---Collection Statistics (Unidentified),1917
Insurance,1918-1927
Lawsuit: Bain vs. Co. Commissioners,1923-1924
Newspaper Subscriptions,1918-1927
Political Cartoon, Presidential Election, 1916
Post Office (Rural Carrier) Papers,1917-1930
Presbyterian Church,1916-1923
Bain Family Genealogy
The Spotless Company, 1917-1925, nd
The Spotless Company, Advertisemnents, nd
The Brown Fence and Wire Company, 1923-1924
Job P. Wyatt & Sons, 1926-1927
Miscellaneous Invoices/Orders, 1916-1925
Miscellaneous Correspondence, 1917-1928

2. Farmers' Alliance Papers,1887-1929

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These files relate primarily to the Cumberland County Farmers' Alliance and to the various sub-alliances in the county, though the small file of correspondence includes letters concerning activities of the Farmers' State Alliance between the years 1907 and 1929. At county level, the papers include minutes, treasurer's accounts, and records of the mutual aid society of the Cumberland County Farmers' Alliance. Records of the seven sub-alliances still active in the early twentieth century in the county that are to be found in this part of the collection are limited to quarterly reports of membership and range in date from 1905 to 1916. The last folder in the box contains the 1902 rules for the cooperative store operated for the benefit of the Wade and Geddie sub-alliances. These files will not include information on Bain's activity as business agent for the purchase of commodities, fertilizer, potash, and nitrate of soda for local farmers. Since Bain acted as business agent for farmers in the alliance as well as for those in the cotton growers' association, and since his agency for supply of fertilizer continued longer with the association than with the alliance, those papers are filed in the third and last part of this collection of papers.

Correspondence,1907-1929
Cumberland County Alliance
Minutes,1900-1911
Aid Society Membership Rolls, , n.d., 1904-1905
Treasurer's Accounts,1887-1917
Minutes,1913-1917
Aid Society, , n.d., 1900-1910
Sub-Alliances
Carvers Falls,1906
Flea Hill,1905-1924
Geddie,1906-1916
Godwin,1905-1911
South River,1907-1909
Wade,1906-1916, 1924
Wade-Geddie Business Agent/Store,1902

3. Cumberland County Cotton Growers' Association,1905-1929

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These include a few papers relating to the Cumberland County cooperative warehouse owned by members of the Cotton Association, and subscription for a cooperative store in Fayetteville. Correspondence, 1919-1929, includes circular correspondence from the Raleigh office of the North Carolina Cotton Growers' Cooperative Association, weekly reports of deliveries of cotton (by contract number) by members of the association, final settlement prices, reports of seasonal pool payments, and payments of reserve certificates. Two account books include fertilizer accounts for the years from 1907 through 1915 and from 1917 through 1926, while a third account book includes a general store's accounts from 1913 to 1921. All three books seem to include accounts against farmers belonging to the alliance as well as against those belonging to the association. The remainder of this file of papers is made up of fertilizer contracts, orders for shipment, guarantees by lien and mortgage, records of payment, and so forth, ranging in date from 1922 through 1929. While far from complete, it is a valuable set of papers from which one can reconstruct the method of operation of a local farmers' cooperative effort in cotton production.

Cumberland County Cooperative Warehouse,1905-1921
Correspondence, N.C. Cotton Growers' Cooperative Association,1919-1929
Fertilizer and Store Accounts,1907-1915
Fertilizer Accounts,1917-1926
Store Accounts,1917-1926
Fertilizer Contract, Correspondence, and Orders, 1922
Fertilizer Contract, Correspondence, and Orders, 1923
Fertilizer Contract, Correspondence, and Orders, 1924
Fertilizer Contract, Correspondence, and Orders, 1925
Fertilizer Contract, Correspondence, and Orders, 1926
Fertilizer Contract, Correspondence, and Orders, 1927
Fertilizer Contract, Correspondence, and Orders, 1928
Fertilizer Contract, Correspondence, and Orders, 1929

Subject Headings

  • Bain family.
  • Bain, John C.
  • Bain, Edgar L.
  • Bain, Rev. Walter W.
  • Cumberland County Cotton Growers' Association.
  • Cumberland County Farmers' Alliance.
  • Virginia-Carolina Chemical Company
  • Raleigh Cotton Convention (1919)
  • Cumberland County Cotton Growers' Association
  • Cumberland County Farmers' Alliance
  • Agriculture, Cooperative--North Carolina--Cumberland County.
  • Cotton farmers--North Carolina--History.
  • Fertilizer industry.
  • Farmers
  • Privates
  • World War, 1914-1918
  • War Bonds
  • Liberty bonds
  • War risk insurance
  • Recruiting
  • RURAL FREE DELIVERY NEWS
  • Political participation
  • Politics, Practical
  • Letter carriers
  • Rural Population
  • Clergy
  • Crop Liens
  • Liens
  • Fertilizer Industry
  • Automobile dealers
  • Genealogy
  • Cumberland County (N.C.)
  • France
  • Crewe (Va.)
  • Camp Jackson (S.C.)
  • Acquisitions Information

    Deposited in the Archives among the records of the Farmers' State Alliance in 1933 by T. B. Parker, S. J. McLaurin, and C. C. Taylor.

    Processing Information

    Processed by George Stevenson, August 1992. Encoded by Dietra Stanley, November 2005. Edited for publication in DOC by Fran Tracy-Walls, April 2020.