John Shute was born in Lancaster County, South Carolina, in 1824.
Together with his family, which at that time was three children, Mary,
Henry and Raymond, and his brother Sylvester and his wife, he had
started to Mississippi. The first day they traveled eighteen
miles—that's the distance from their home which was in Tabernacle
community of Lancaster County—to Monroe. Monroe was just a young town at
that time, only eleven years since it had been chartered. Like all other
towns of the period they had a camp lot, and travelers, which, of
course, was by buggy or wagon, always went to the town's camp lot to
unhitch and feed and spent the night. And everybody in town always went
to the camp lot to see new strangers. That's the way they got
information about other parts of the country. Well, they came to the
camp lot in Monroe, which was located at what is now the corner of
Church and Franklin Streets in Monroe, and unhitched and set up for the
night. It was pouring down rain, and the people in town, the leading
citizens, came to the camp lot to see who they were and to meet them and
talk with them. Among those who came was the largest merchant in Monroe
at that time, John D. Stewart, who later was to become a very dear
friend of my grandfather, John Shute. Dr. Welch was another one who
came. I mention him for this reason: his son, the late John Welch,
Page 2 told me about his father telling him about going
down to the camp lot and meeting the Shutes when they came in. He said
Mrs. Shute had a young baby just a few months old in her arms, and he
told her, "Mrs. Shute, turn that baby over on its belly. You're going to
drown it if you don't." It was pouring down rain. That was my father,
the baby. John D. Stewart told my grandfather, "There's no use to go to
Mississippi for the future; there's a future right here in Monroe. We
need very much a wagon train to take our cotton that we raise through
this section to Camden and Cheraw," which were the final ports on the
river system. At Cheraw, of course, it was the Pee Dee River that went
into Winyar Bay at Georgetown, and at Camden it was, of course, the
Catawba-Wateree system that went into Charleston. And he told him, "We
need to get our cotton to market, and that's the best way and the most
economical way." They had barges that came up to these ports from those
lower ports, and he said, "We ship our cotton mostly to New England to
the mills. Some of it goes to old England, and then we need to have
supplies that are brought in by ship to Charleston and Georgetown,
mostly Charleston, brought up to our stores in Monroe and Charlotte.
There's a wonderful opportunity here for somebody to get into this." It
appealed to my grandfather very much, and he decided he'd stay. His
brother Sylvester went on to Mississippi after a sojourn of two years in
Alabama. His wife had a child. She couldn't reach Mississippi before the
first child was born. It was born in Alabama, and then about a year
later the second child came. Sylvester had gotten a position as an
overseer on a plantation there. So they stayed there for over a year in
Alabama before they went on to Carroll
Page 3 County,
Mississippi, where, when he died, he was the largest landowner in the
county. Those were the delta lands where they raised three bales of
cotton to the acre. My grandfather John Shute in 1855 bought a homesite
on the corner of Windsor and Hayne Streets and built a home which still
stands. The first home was a modest home, and later he built a large
home in front of it and joined it. That was along about 1875. He bought
this lot from Doctor Franklin Hayden. He was not a doctor; that was his
real name. Incidentally, one of the Shute boys was named "Doctor" as one
of his given names. That was Doctor James Shute at Tabernacle. It was
not unusual to name children "Doctor." It might have given them a false
prestige in later life. Hayden moved to Monroe from Salisbury along
about 1840 before the city was actually laid out and chartered, and he
sold this lot to my grandfather. He also sold him a tract of land on…
Well, of course, all deeds said on the waters of Richardson Creek or
Bearskin Creek; they may have been miles away from the creek. He sold
him two other pieces of property, one of which was commercial where my
grandfather opened a store, and the other one was a farm. The family
prospered. John Shute was a very energetic man, and he started his wagon
trains, which were very successful. And he was the kind of man that when
he saw an opportunity, he'd go into it. Every time he would get a few
hundred dollars ahead, he'd buy a piece of property. He very seldom ever
sold any property, but he bought a lot. He wouldn't build a one-story
building. He said the most expensive part of a building was the roof.
And the roof didn't cost any more for a two- or three-storey building
than it did for a one-storey building, so he very seldom
Page 4 ever built a one-story building. But he began to build
property, was the largest commercial property owner in town at the time
he died. He went into several things. He had a carding mill that carded
wool. He went into the cotton ginning business. He opened the first
steam-powered cotton gin. I have the governors off that old original gin
up at my house, just saving them, you know. The gin burned down. He had
more than one gin, incidentally. And then he opened a brickyard and made
brick. He opened a turning mill, a woodworking plant where they made
doors and windows and sashes and blinds and baluster rails and cabinets
and just all sorts of things, so that actually, as he began to acquire
property—and it was cheap then—he had all of the facilities for
building. He could build more economically than anyone else. Then he
opened a wholesale and retail grocery store, and that became very
profitable. He put my father in there when he was fourteen years old,
and he stayed there nearly fifty years. My grandfather died in 1896. He
was seventy-two years old. He died with what they called cramp colic.
Today we'd call it a ruptured appendix. My father said he never saw a
man suffer as much as his father did on his deathbed. He said all they
could do was to keep a quart of whiskey by his bed to try to keep him
intoxicated so he could stand the pain. Well, those are the early, early
years of my grandfather. The railroad came to Monroe in 1874, and that
put him out of business. So it's easy to understand why he opposed the
coming of the railroad.
[Laughter]