Page 44 - A Narrative of the History of Roanoke Virginia

In May 1882, for example, his paper reported that “Upon unquestionable authority we are
informed that employees of the Shenandoah Valley railway openly boast that the officials of
that company and of the Roanoke Land and Improvement company are abiding their time
and holding their views in abeyance, as it were, ‘waiting until the works get in full operation
and the Yankee boys will run the town.’”

This scheme, Derr pointed out, was a matter of tremendous concern to “those who were
born on this soil and whose inherent right would thus be wrested from them.” Indeed,
according to him, he and numerous other natives were of the opinion that “whoever comes
here with the secret or avowed purpose of ‘running the town’ will find this an almost tropically
warm climate and very unpleasant place to live.”

Occurrences such as the following did much to ‘flame the fires’ (pardon the pun) between
the two factions. The Roanoke Saturday Evening News began as The Big Lick News in 1877.
This Democratic weekly changed its name again in 1882, to the Roanoke Saturday Review,
and it continued operations until 1885, when a fire destroyed its headquarters and it never
reopened. This was a disturbing event.

Shenandoah Valley Railroad officials and Roanoke’s business community were both
alarmed by what they read. Dozens of local leaders denounced Derr and the News in angry
letters to his paper. Using “birth right” as the sole criterion for political power, one
businessman observed, would put “one or two white men and two or three Negroes” in
charge of the town. The majority of natives, he insisted, welcomed “law-abiding” newcomers
and would do all they could to guarantee them equal political rights.

Peyton Terry, editor and owner of the newly founded Roanoke Commercial Advertiser, also
condemned the story as “ill judged, intemperate, and uncalled for.” Thus far, Terry pointed
out, Roanoke’s “Northern friends” had “spent much money, started large enterprises, built
many homes, . . . in fact, have started our village on the high road towards being a large and
important town.”

The RL&IC did little to assuage the “sectional feeling” and even fueled further indignation by
repeatedly referring to east Roanoke as “our town.” Justifiably or not, some natives held the
company responsible for the abysmal conditions in the west, or at the very least were
jealous of the improvements they saw going on in the east.

An anonymous Yankee newcomer, for example, savaged local leaders in the town’s papers
for streets “ankle deep in mud” and for failing to implement Herring’s plan. The report
wondered why the SVRR had picked the town over Salem, “where the residents were
considered to be head and shoulders in advance of Big Lick,” and suggested sending local
leaders to “some go ahead place for a week or two to see how other Councils run towns and
cities.”

Roanoke’s emergence as an industrial center and subsequent “boomtown” attracted the
notice of numerous journalists and writers. Many of them, especially New South boosters,
were astonished by what they saw. “Had an old Virginian fallen asleep in ‘Big Lick’ last year