THEN & NOW

Cumberland County received $1,915.64 from the state for public schools in 1845-46.

This year, the state and county will provide the school system with $58.8 million. That equates to about $1,100 for each of its more than 52,000 students.

A one-room schoolhouse, approximately 120 years old, was a neighborhood school in Seventy-First Township. It now sits on the Fayetteville Technical Community College campus.

The first graded schools in the county were established in 1878 in Fayetteville. A canvass of the town raised $3,000 to open the first, which was called the Fayetteville Graded School and Normal School for Whites. The school’s first teachers earned $25 a month.

New teachers in the Cumberland County schools today earn $25,250 a year.

When Mac Williams, the chairman of the Cumberland County School Board, attended elementary school in the 1930s, schools did not provide lunch. Sometimes children brought canned tomatoes and other foods to school. Home economics students would prepare soups and other dishes for the children.

Williams’ great-grandfather, who was born in 1832, had no formal education and taught himself to read. Before the establishment of community schools, some children attended private academies, such as the Fayetteville Academy for Males and Females. That school was established in 1794. Many children in early Cumberland County had little or no formal education.

Williams’ grandfather, born in 1871, attended school only three months of the year. By the time Williams went to school, it was law that children attend school until the age of 16, a rule that still exists today. But each fall, students were released early from school so they could help harvest their families’ crops.

Several schools in the county operate on year-round schedules instead of traditional schedules. Few students live or work on farms now, and harvest time is no longer a factor that is considered when planning school schedules.

Many more subjects are taught to students of today. To the reading, writing and arithmetic of years past has been added computer science, art, health sciences, finance, journalism, auto technology, graphic design and a host of other subjects.

Transportation

In 1847, it took 10 hours for a four-horse coach to carry the mail between Fayetteville and Raleigh.

In 2004, it takes a little more than an hour to drive between the two cities.

In 1818, how much did it cost to cross the Cape Fear River bridge in Cumberland County? Private bridge keepers charged 75 cents for a four-wheel pleasure carriage and 60 cents for a wagon. A man on horseback paid 10 cents.

How much does it cost to cross bridges over the river in 2004? Nothing. Legislators have discussed charging tolls at six points along Interstate 95 but the state Department of Transportation stopped studying the idea after Gov. Mike Easley said he opposed making I-95 a toll road.

Cumberland County had one of the first railroads in the United States. In 1828, an experimental wooden railroad was laid in Fayetteville. The effort failed.

In 2004, the railroads downtown are a success. They successfully stop traffic several times a day. Downtown promoters and city officials have talked about moving the tracks for years.

For almost 200 years, the Cape Fear River was the commercial lifeblood of Fayetteville.

Erratic river flows made travel uncertain. In 1791, the Cape Fear Navigation Co. tried to tame the river. The company cleared the river of some obstructions, but its primary purpose was moving goods to Wilmington. Men poled shallow-draft boats downstream. On the return trip, they rowed.

The power soon changed to steam with construction of the Henrietta by James Seawell. The steamboat era reached its zenith just before the Civil War. Steamboats continued to ply the river until 1923. The grandest riverboat was the City of Fayetteville, launched in 1903. It had 14 staterooms and made regular overnight runs to Wilmington. It sank in 1913 when it broke in half from the weight of cotton bales in Wilmington.

In 1934, the William O. Huske Lock and Dam was completed at the Bladen-Cumberland line. It was the third lock on the river, built to control flooding and with the hope of invigorating commercial traffic. But river traffic dies anyway.

Now, about the only boats to be found on the river in Cumberland County are fishing boats, canoes or kayaks.

Public Utilities

The county’s first public water system was built in 1824 in Fayetteville. Workers bored holes in logs, connected the logs with metal collars and buried them beneath the streets around Market Square. The water for that system came from Fountainhead Spring near the current Highsmith-Rainey Memorial Hospital.

In 1893, Robert Cochran Belden mentioned the early water system in a collection of memories published in the Fayetteville Observer. ‘‘Prior to this time Fayetteville for drinking purposes was a badly watered town,” Belden wrote.

Now there are 1,210 miles of water mains used by the Fayetteville Public Works Commission. The PWC can treat up to 50 million gallons of water a day between its two treatment plants, and the utility pumps an average of 26 million gallons a day to more than 178,000 people in the county. Some county residents depend on private wells.

From the 1850s to 1950, a manufactured gas plant off Ray Avenue in Fayetteville kept the city’s street lamps illuminated and its homes and industries powered. Coal was burned to produce the gas. Around 1900, as electricity was becoming more prevalent, light fixtures were wired to use either gas or electricity.

The federal government created the Rural Electrification Program in 1935 to bring affordable electricity to rural areas and farms. Congress authorized the program in 1936. The government offered long-term loans to state and local governments and farmers cooperatives to power farms.

By 1940, a group of people from Cumberland and surrounding counties had organized and were actively working to bring electricity to farms.

Now, several utility companies provide electricity generated by the burning of coal or gas, by wind, water or solar power or through nuclear reactors. The state has a new Green Power initiative to encourage the use of more earth-friendly means of power generation.

The old manufactured gas plant on Ray Avenue polluted the soil and water at the site through the years. The plant is gone now, and a $2.5 million cleanup of the site was completed Feb. 28, 2003. The site of the old plant will be part of Festival Park downtown.

Housing

As sawmills sprouted along the banks of the Cape Fear River and its tributaries in the early 1800s, plank houses replaced early settlers’ log cabins. Since the beginning, home improvement has been a focus.

Children stand in front of mill houses in Hope Mills during the late 1800s.

Homeowners now visit home improvement warehouses, peruse the Internet for the latest home designs and hire interior decorators and landscape architects to beautify their plots of land. We can spend hours watching Home and Garden Television for tips and tricks.

Homemakers of the past employed other means. Elizabeth Gainey, Cumberland County’s first home economics extension agent, organized a kitchen improvement contest for women in 1924. Thirty-four women, representing nine of the county’s 11 townships, entered the contest, inviting other housewives in to offer suggestions and critiques on thrifty renovations.

‘‘The most outstanding needs were fresh paint and running water,” Gainey wrote in her annual report that year.

Improvements to the winning kitchen included several coats of white enamel on the walls and a cement sink molded and painted by the homemaker’s farmer husband. The total cost of the project was $59.05, about what you spend today to hire a plumber for an hour.

In another instance that Gainey wrote about, Mrs. Hair, a young housewife from Cedar Creek, sought to improve her home’s ‘‘Curb Appeal.” Mrs. Hair did for herself what teams of designers and consultants now do for people on cable television.

When asked how she created such an inviting yard, on ‘‘such a poor, bald looking spot,” Mrs. Hair replied: ‘‘I would go out and sit down in the road and think how such a plant would look in that particular spot when it got to be a large plant.”

Fashion

Sarah Ann Tillinghast wore this silk gown when she wed Clinton Tillinghast on Oct. 13, 1925, at St. John's Church.

In 1900, Frank H. Cotton operated a clothing plant on Ann Street at Cross Creek. It specialized in overalls. At the time, farmers could purchase overalls for about 50 cents.

Similar overalls today cost between $35 and $100.

In August 1927, Henderson Beauty Shop in Fayetteville was advertising permanent waves for women. The cost was $10 for bobbed hair and $15 for long hair. That same year, flannel suits for men were on sale at Stein Bros. for $16.50.

In the last 250 years, perhaps the most obvious trend in fashion has been the gradual exposure of more skin as the decades passed.

Through the 1800s, women dressed in layer upon layer of fabric and crinoline. Dresses brushed the floor. Hats or bonnets were worn every day. With the exception of some evening wear that exposed the arms and much of the shoulders, women’s skin remained hidden. Women of the Victorian era in the late 1800s, wore corsets and bustles.

By about 1910, women’s dresses had inched above their ankles, and the multiple layers and flounces remained in an old century.

By about 1930, skirts brushed the knees. And by the 1960s, skirts hit new heights, barely covering the wearer’s derriere.

Now, just about anything goes. At clothing shops around Cumberland County, the fashion conscious can find the most conservative business suits or the most revealing midriff shirts, bikinis and short shorts — and that’s without a visit to any lingerie store. Rings are no longer reserved for fingers and ears. Now they appear in eyebrows, noses, belly buttons and on toes.

Taverns

Travelers needing a meal, a beer or a place to sleep in colonial Cumberland County would have been directed to an ordinary, an establishment that was typically housed in the home of a well-established farmer or businessman.

Guests would socialize with locals, enjoy a beer, play backgammon or billiards or discuss politics. Some ordinaries also served as meeting halls for a community or as places to buy or sell slaves.

According to a paper by Alan D. Watson in the N.C. Office of Archives & History’s Colonial Records Project, colonial leaders believed it critical to the growth of the province to establish ordinaries.

In 1767, the Assembly of the province adopted a law requiring ferry operators to establish such public houses if they charged a designated amount for a man and horse to cross the river on the ferry.

The ferrymen could be fined if they refused to provide entertainment or lodging.

Now: Bars aren’t penalized for failing to show their customers a good time.

The band Red Sun rocks Jester's Pub.

An advertisement in the Fayetteville Gazette on Sept. 21, 1789, announced the opening of the Cool Spring Tavern. The tavern served and housed many dignitaries in town for the state constitutional convention. Discussions probably focused on politics.

Now dozens of bars cater to different groups of people with varying tastes in music, from jazz to hip-hop. Many offer live music, dancing and dance lessons, karaoke, billiards and darts. There is probably some political discussion — if the music isn’t too loud.

In the 1960s and 1970s, downtown Fayetteville drew crowds to a number of topless bars and other such establishments on Hay Street. The area was known as ‘‘sin city” because of the prevalence of drugs and prostitution.

Now those bars have been demolished, but topless dancing can still be found at several establishments along Bragg Boulevard.