The Life of CHARLES L HINTON
Charles Lewis Hinton was a member of the pioneering Hinton family whose name enters the history of Wake County in the early 1700s. His grandfather and namesake was Charles Lewis Hinton (1793-1861), State legislator and participant in numerous public works, from the new Capitol and county courthouse to the State Hospital for the Insane. It was he who in 1848 built the Midway Plantation house, some seven miles east of the capital, as a wedding present for his son, David Hinton, Jr. (1826-1876), and his bride, Mary Boddie Hinton, parents of young Charles Lewis Hinton.
Charles Hinton grew up at Midway; schooled at the University of Virginia, he returned home after graduation and spent the rest of his years there as a cotton farmer and cotton broker; while cotton was “King” of Raleigh commerce in the 1880s, by WWI C.L. Hinton & Company was one of only a few brokers remaining, with an office in the 300 block of Wilmington Street. He was also something of a writer, producing articles for the Raleigh papers and other publications. In 1881 he married Elizabeth “Bessie” Tate Cain (1860-1888) of Hillsboro; she died soon thereafter but Charles never remarried. They had two children, Bessie (who would marry Henry Sprague Silver, 1888-1931) and James Cain. Charles Lewis Hinton died on November 19, 1930.
Hinton’s fondness for his home, located “midway” between two other Hinton family homes, “The Oaks” (where the elder Charles Lewis is buried) and “Beaver Dam,” reflects the deep family ties and historic tradition of the place. In addition to the main house, the antebellum plantation boasted two stables, a smokehouse, loom house, cotton gin, and other dependencies, with numerous houses for slaves. It is said that, on April 13, 1865, Union troops approaching Raleigh from the east as part of Sherman’s thrust through the Carolinas burned the cotton press and gin house at Midway but missed the family’s gold coins submerged in the fish pond. In 2005 the main plantation house – now on the National Register of Historic Places -- was moved to make way for a shopping mall; it remains occupied by Hinton descendants to this day [2013]. Much of Midway Plantation is now the site of a development called, appropriately enough, Planters Walk.
HISTORICALLY SPEAKING: Tragedy struck Hintons as well as two other families living in Raleigh on January 6, 1900. On that day three friends, 14 and 15 years old, James Cain Hinton, Alonzo Mial Williamson, son of county treasurer B.P. Williamson, and Edwin Reade Lee, son of tobacco dealer Cleophas (“Clee”) Lee, left Midway to spend the morning hunting. All three were found later that day drowned in a pond not far from James Hinton’s home, having fallen through the ice. Mial and Edwin were buried out of Edenton Street Methodist Church with one of the largest church funerals ever seen in the city; a double line of carriages, hearses side-by-side, marked the procession to Oakwood Cemetery; Hugh Morson suspended classes so the students at Raleigh Male Academy could honor their classmates. Reverend Marshall of Christ Church conducted James’s service at Midway. Edwin and James are buried just fifty feet from each other in the Tucker Section; Mial lies with his family in the Briggs Section.
Charles Hinton grew up at Midway; schooled at the University of Virginia, he returned home after graduation and spent the rest of his years there as a cotton farmer and cotton broker; while cotton was “King” of Raleigh commerce in the 1880s, by WWI C.L. Hinton & Company was one of only a few brokers remaining, with an office in the 300 block of Wilmington Street. He was also something of a writer, producing articles for the Raleigh papers and other publications. In 1881 he married Elizabeth “Bessie” Tate Cain (1860-1888) of Hillsboro; she died soon thereafter but Charles never remarried. They had two children, Bessie (who would marry Henry Sprague Silver, 1888-1931) and James Cain. Charles Lewis Hinton died on November 19, 1930.
Hinton’s fondness for his home, located “midway” between two other Hinton family homes, “The Oaks” (where the elder Charles Lewis is buried) and “Beaver Dam,” reflects the deep family ties and historic tradition of the place. In addition to the main house, the antebellum plantation boasted two stables, a smokehouse, loom house, cotton gin, and other dependencies, with numerous houses for slaves. It is said that, on April 13, 1865, Union troops approaching Raleigh from the east as part of Sherman’s thrust through the Carolinas burned the cotton press and gin house at Midway but missed the family’s gold coins submerged in the fish pond. In 2005 the main plantation house – now on the National Register of Historic Places -- was moved to make way for a shopping mall; it remains occupied by Hinton descendants to this day [2013]. Much of Midway Plantation is now the site of a development called, appropriately enough, Planters Walk.
HISTORICALLY SPEAKING: Tragedy struck Hintons as well as two other families living in Raleigh on January 6, 1900. On that day three friends, 14 and 15 years old, James Cain Hinton, Alonzo Mial Williamson, son of county treasurer B.P. Williamson, and Edwin Reade Lee, son of tobacco dealer Cleophas (“Clee”) Lee, left Midway to spend the morning hunting. All three were found later that day drowned in a pond not far from James Hinton’s home, having fallen through the ice. Mial and Edwin were buried out of Edenton Street Methodist Church with one of the largest church funerals ever seen in the city; a double line of carriages, hearses side-by-side, marked the procession to Oakwood Cemetery; Hugh Morson suspended classes so the students at Raleigh Male Academy could honor their classmates. Reverend Marshall of Christ Church conducted James’s service at Midway. Edwin and James are buried just fifty feet from each other in the Tucker Section; Mial lies with his family in the Briggs Section.