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

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:yackety yack: and Chairman of the Board of Commissioners of Navigation and Pilotage. He has also been President of the State Literary and Historical Association and the North Carolina Folk Lore Society. Deeply interested in education, he was for years on the school board of Wilmington, and has been since 1899 a trustee of the University. In spite of the pressure of these many activities, Mr. Sprunt has found time for wide reading and study and has made literary contributions of value to the State. His publications, most of them in relation to the history of the Lower Cape Fear, are numerous, the best known being his books, Chronicles of the Cape Fear, and Derelicts. In recognition of the excellence of his historical work, the mother chapter of the Phi Beta Kappa Society at the College of William and Mary, in 191 5 elected him to membership. North Carolina knows him as one of its foremost captains of industry and deservedly values him highly for the great service he has rendered the State in that capacity. But North Carolina knows him in other phases and values him in these even more highly. As a public-spirited citizen, possessed of a high sense of responsi- bility, he has always stood for the things which would best tend toward the per- manent upbuilding of community and commonwealth. Deeply and sincerely philanthropic, he has regarded his wealth as a public trust and has used it w ith unsparing generosity in relieving distress, in giving equality of opportunity to youth, and in advancing the cause of the Kingdom of God. Thoroughly loyal to the land of his adoption, he has rendered it high service in devoting time, money, ability, and labor to the preservation of her history, and as the chronicler of the Lower Cape Fear he has won deserved reputation as a writer and investigator. Throughout the State he is held in esteem and honor. The University claims him in a still closer way as her own. A son by adoption. he is as loyal as any alumnus who lived his four years on this old campus, and delights to hold himself a Carolina man. As a member of the Board of Trustees he has been one of the most interested of her supporters. Through his generosity the James Sprunt Historical Publications were founded. His devoted wife was instrumental in the establishment of theMurchison Scholarships, and in her beloved memory he has only this year presented to the University, the community, and the State a noble church edifice — the Sprunt Memorial Presbyterian Church. It is impossible to calculate in any set way the vast possibilities for good of this splendid gift, but all, nevertheless, recognize them in deep appreciation and gratitude. He has by it and his other benefactions, by his interest and affection, definitely impressed himself into University history, for countless generations of Carolina men and women will know him as one of the University ' s immortals. J. G. deR. H. Eight

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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

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