University of North Carolina Chapel Hill - Yackety Yack Yearbook (Chapel Hill, NC)

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:yackety YACK ' dIamrH i |iruut JAMES SPRUNT, of Wilmington and Orton, Doctor of Laws of the Univer- sity, is a native of Glasgow, Scotland. He came to Wilmington at the age of six years and became so thoroughly imbued with the spirit and temper of the Lower Cape Fear that no nati e is more completely racy of that soil so fertile in the production and nurture of men — high-toned gentlemen, men of decisions, men of affairs. He received his early education in Glasgov -, Kenansville, and Wilmington, the Civil War breaking out just in time to interrupt his studies and destroy his plan of entering the University. Instead, like thousands of Southern boys of his age, it forced him to begin the process of self-education, chiefly in the grim realities of war. Though still a youth, he was an officer of a blockade-runner, when upon the success of blockade-running depended the continued existence of the Confederacy. Captured, he saw the inside of a Northern prison, but escaping its horrors through cool daring, he turned once more to his hazardous but fascinating occupation. The war soon ended, however, and he returned home to enter a business career which was to prove notable in the annals of the State. From the proceeds of a private venture through the blockade, he formed, with his father, the cotton export- ing firm of Alexander Sprunt and Sons, and upon his father ' s death some years later he became the senior and directing partner. By this time the venture had already, in spite of many obstacles, proved a success, and under his wise and skillful management it thro ' e and prospered until it finally became the greatest cotton exporting firm in the world (with more than fifty direct agencies in foreign countries), and made of Wilmington one of the leading cotton ports of the United States. During this period Mr. Sprunt visited seventeen foreign countries, not only establishing invaluable business connections, storing up impressions, gaining knowledge, and making acquaintances, which were later to prove immensely im- portant in a business way, but also developing a wide range of intellectual interests which have entered largely into the making of the mature man. He has seen, in the process of making, much of the history of the past sixty years, and his recol- lections, if recorded, would read like a romance. In the creative part he has played in the rebuilding of the commonv ealth, in his hospitable and delightful home with his family and friends, in all the varied phases of social and religious life in his community, in the wide intellectual environ- ment which he has moulded for himself — in all his relations — his has been, in the largest sense of the term, a full life. Mr. Sprunt has held many positions of trust and honor. Succeeding his father in the post, he was for many years British vice-consul, and, for a time also the Imperial German vice-consul, in Wilmington, winning high commendation from both governments for his valuable services. He has been President of the Produce Exchange, President of the Seaman ' s Friendly Society. President of the ' . M. C. A., Seven