Merritt Family and Surry County Red Cross: Home Front Work in WWI
By Matthew M. Peek, Military Collection Archivist, State Archives of North Carolina
Editor’s Note: This blog post is part of our March 2021 series of posts featuring female veterans stories, stories of women on the home front, and women in the world of the U.S. Armed Forces as part of our commemoration of the 2021 Women’s History Month.
Introduction
The Military Collection at the States Archives of North Carolina received a collection last year amid the pandemic of a set of original records for the Surry County (NC) Red Cross main chapter during World War I. The collection was composed of supply orders and bills, requisition and shipping notice forms, blank forms, correspondence, leaflets, and miscellaneous records, used and kept by entrepreneur and businessman William E. Merritt Sr. and his wife Caroline Merritt of Mount Airy, NC, documenting the operation of the Surry County American Red Cross (ARC) Mount Airy Chapter’s knitting and supplies workroom in Mount Airy between 1917 and 1919 during World War I. The prosperous Merritt family used their Mount Airy businesses and financial holdings to support the operation of the Surry County Red Cross Chapter in their home town during the war.
Although both men and women were involved in the operation of the ARC chapter, women were the ones mainly involved in the production of finished goods to support military service individuals and military hospitals. The collection documents a rare aspect of the operation of local Red Cross chapters — not just in North Carolina, but in the whole United States — the operation and supplying of finished goods production workrooms. These are some of the few sets of these records for any ARC chapter in North Caroline during WWI.
The State Archives holds typed and handwritten chapter histories for over 60 local county and city ARC chapters from WWI collected during and just after the war from the chapters themselves. But, no such chapter history was sent to the State Archives (though there is a small folder of materials for Surry County ARC operations, it is very limited in scope), meaning this set of Surry County ARC records are some of the only-known original documentation of their operations and the names of those involved.
The collection was donated directly through the William E. (Sr.) and Caroline K. Merritt family of Mount Airy. It is what the family kept that has survived from the businessman William’s financial support of the Surry County ARC, and Caroline’s role with the chapter’s supply production operation. This new collection has just finished being arranged and described by the Military Collection, and is now available for public research at the State Archives of North Carolina’s Search Room in Raleigh, NC. The collection is organized as the Surry County Red Cross Records (WWI 171) in the World War I Papers of the Military Collection. What follows is a brief biography of William and Caroline Merritt, followed by the only-known fully researched history of the Surry County ARC Mount Airy Chapter — created by Military Collection Archivist Matthew Peek from original sources.
Historical Note: The Merritt Family
Caroline Octavia Kochtitzky Merritt was born on October 23, 1868, on her parent’s farm on Cobb’s Creek, about 10 miles southeast of Lebanon, Missouri, to Oscar V. and Caroline Shidler Kochtitzky. Oscar Kochtitzky was born in Hungary, and emigrated to the United States. Through the 1880s, the family continued to live in Missouri. Little is known of Caroline Kochtitzky’s life until the 1890s. Caroline would marry William E. Merritt of Mount Airy, NC, in Cole County, Missouri, on June 7, 1893. It is unknown how the couple ever met, but members of the Kochtitzky family had moved to Mount Airy by 1900. By 1900, William and Caroline (who went by Carrie) Merritt were living in Mount Airy, and the couple had four children to this date together.
William Edward Merritt Sr. had been living with his parents in Franklin County, NC, by 1880, before making the move to Mount Airy and Surry County, NC, in 1888. Several of his siblings moved with him to the area, as Mount Airy was in the middle of an economic boom at the turn of the twentieth century. William was an entrepreneur, who saw business opportunities. When he arrived to Mount Airy, he opened a hardware store known as Merritt Hardware; later William Merritt expanded into the brick yard business.
The Merritt family members all became integral parts of the Surry County business community, joining or establishing the following businesses beginning in the 1890s and 1900s through the mid-twentieth century: Merritt Hardware; Renfro Hosiery; Mount Airy Furniture Company; Merritt Machine Shop; Piedmont Manufacturing Company; Floyd Pike Electrical; North Carolina Granite Corp.; and other businesses.
As a result of his businesses, William Merritt was able to build new homes for himself and his parents. The William E. Merritt home was built at 618 North Main Street in Mount Airy, with construction beginning in 1900 by general contractor J.A. Tesh and finished almost a year later. It was built using bricks from Merritt’s own brick yard. This was the home that he and Caroline would raise their growing family, and the house in which they were living when they helped their community through World War I.
Historical Note: Formation and Operation of the Surry County ARC
With the beginning of the United States’ involvement in World War I in April 1917, local businesses and individuals began mobilizing on the home front in North Carolina to support the war effort the North Carolina Council of Defense would not be formally operational until the fall of 1917 to support fundraising for the war and helping to support home front activities. Local individuals guided such efforts. This was particularly the case for the American Red Cross, which had county and city chapters pop up throughout North Carolina in 1917 — mostly between May and December 1917.
On May 10, 1917, a call was published in the Mount Airy News for people in Surry Co to “Join Red Cross Society, Now,” noting that there were around 150 people prepared to join a new Red Cross chapter in Surry County. They were waiting on authorization from the national American Red Cross headquarters. The call from an unnamed source asked all men and women to join, under the patriotic wartime urging of the statement “This may be the greatest opportunity, some of us will ever have to serve his country, so citizens of Surry, let us prove ourselves loyal and rally around the Red Cross.” On May 31, 1917, an announcement in the Mount Air News noted that a headquarters for the new chapter was being prepared to open in early June 1917. A Mrs. Kittrell [believed to be Mary Jenkins Kittrell] at the Surry Mercantile Company was the point of contact person for people wanting to have a paid membership in the new chapter.
The new Surry County Red Cross Chapter officially opened its new headquarters by June 14, 1917, in a large cool room that use to be the A. E. Steele Shoe Store on Main Street in Mount Airy. The chapter was participating in a fundraising drive in the Mount Airy High School auditorium on Tuesday, June 19, 1917. A play was being performed to raise funds to support the chapter. The chapter would have a large open meeting in the same auditorium on June 21, with Dr. Josiah Morse, the Associate Director of the American Red Cross Southern Division, attending the event to help grow the new chapter’s membership. There were also smaller chapters opened in Surry County in the towns of Elkin, Dobson, and Pilot Mountain.
What is known is that the William E. Merritt family quickly became major benefactors for the Surry County Red Cross Chapter, as Merritt was one of the wealthiest businessmen in the entire county. Not only was supporting the troops and the war effort something Merritt would have seen as a duty, but the war affected his businesses as his labor force left for military service in WWI. Showing support for the war effort was good business for all North Carolina businessmen, as the federal government actively encouraged more support of local and national businesses that were more visibly “patriotic” than others.
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William Merritt’s businesses provided letterhead and communications, as evident in some of the surviving papers for the county. His company also paid for sponsored adds to support fundraising, loan and bond drives that supported the Red Cross War Relief Fund. Carrie Merritt was an active member of the Red Cross chapter, with her receiving the bills for supplies from the Red Cross Bureau of Supplies Warehouse that the Surry County chapter received in order to make supplies for American service individuals.
By September 20, 1917, 500 people — men and women — had joined the regular membership of the Surry County Red Cross Chapter according to an article in the Mount Airy News after over a month of fundraising efforts by the chapter. However, local response for physical involvement in the chapter was far less supportive, as only 40 people had agreed to help knit or make supplies and clothing for U.S. service individuals. This was a major problem, as the chapter was setting up what was commonly called during WWI a “workroom,” where the men and women of Red Cross chapters could hold classes, training sessions, and work areas to produce soldier goods. The workrooms were typically spaces in existing businesses, government buildings, or private homes where people could congregate. Apparently, there was a sense that the response was so poor in Surry County that there was some concern that the Red Cross chapter would not be able to meet expectations for supplies production for the Southern Division of the American Red Cross in Atlanta, Georgia — to where all Southern chapters reported their work.
The Surry County chapter planned to produce a box of finished made supplies — such as socks, scarves, bandages, etc. — that would be sent monthly to the Red Cross Southern Division headquarters in Atlanta. The workroom was open every day of the week — except on Sundays — with supplies for volunteers to come make supplies. The Southern Division headquarters set a production requirement in September 1917 for Surry County based on their population and number of service individuals sent into the U.S. Armed Forces.
This production requirement was a monthly amount of sets of knit goods to include: 200 sweaters, 200 mufflers, 200 wristlets, and 200 pairs of socks. This amount and types of materials would change throughout the war. Each item was part of a four-part set of knitted materials given to U.S. service individuals, with the Red Cross’ national goal to have 1.5 million of these sets produced in time for the winter, when the soldiers needed the items the most.
However, due to a variety of factors, the Surry County chapter chose to only produce 50 sets of these knit goods items, thinking this was more reasonable in terms of quality of the produce materials based on their volunteer involvement. A lot of this decision was due to economics. Local Red Cross chapters had to raise local funds to support their purchase of supplies in order to create the knit and other goods. They could only produce what they could afford.
A complete set would cost $4.25 for the wool and needles to knit them. 200 sets per month would have cost $850 per month, which was an amount in excess of the whole fundraising subscriptions gathered for the Surry County Red Cross Chapter War Relief Fund. This fund only had $674 per month based on membership subscriptions raised by the Subscriptions Committee of the chapter — which struggled to gather that much money. If they were able, the chapter hoped to make up to 100 sets, but wanted to stay at a promised 50 sets per month to begin. To this point, the Surry County chapter had only gotten 600 people to subscribe or donate money for Red Cross memberships, whereas they anticipated around 2,000 after a month of fundraising between August and September 1917. This information was published in a September 11, 1917, report by the Surry County Red Cross Chapter Executive Committee in a newspaper article in the Mount Airy News on September 13, 1917.
The raw materials needed to produce these supplies were ordered from the Red Cross Bureau of Supplies, through supplies ordering forms. The Red Cross supplies warehouses shipped the materials to the various local chapters, who produced materials in keeping with the types and amounts requested by the Southern Division headquarters. Monthly supplies inspectors would review the quality of the materials produced, the amount produced, and the types produced; they would do inspection sheets of every monthly box that the Surry County chapter sent to Atlanta.
By February 1918, the workroom where these knitted sets and medical supplies were produced was operating every afternoon for three hours, operated by a set of women who ensured volunteers would have an open and staffed workroom during these times each day of the week. These women and their day schedules included: Mrs. Cullen Merritt, Mondays; Mrs. E. H. Wrenn, Tuesdays; Mrs. Frank Baldridge, Wednesdays; Mrs. W. M. Lewis, Thursdays; Mrs. W. W. Burke, Fridays; and Mary Franklin Graves, Saturdays.
The chapter also did such activities as sending a box of jellies and preserves to the sick and convalescing Army soldiers at Camp Greene, NC, and sending Christmas packages to Surry County service individuals stationed overseas in WWI. By the fall of 1918, a Junior Red Cross auxiliary was set up in the high school in Mount Airy, so every student was automatically a member.
When the Surry County Red Cross Chapter was first starting, Caroline Y. Carter was their secretary. She resigned as the secretary on December 6, 1917, and an acting secretary was appointed. Lettie Hollingsworth was then appointed as secretary of Surry County Red Cross Chapter following her. E. M. Linville served as the chapter’s treasurer by December 1917.
W. G. Snyder served as the chairman of the Surry County Red Cross Chapter based in Mount Airy by December 1917. By May 1918, Caroline K. Merritt was serving as the chairman (in the parlance of the time in her own handwriting) of the Surry County ARC Chapter. It is unknown how long the chapter operated for, but they were still functioning into February 1919 after the end of combat operations in WWI. The workroom was still open through at least the end of November 1918 following the Armistice. It is thought the chapter ceased to operate by mid to late 1919.
William and Caroline Merritt continued living with their adult and younger children in the family home in Mount Airy by 1920. The Merritts remained operating their hardware company, remaining in the family home through World War II. On May 26, 1946, William E. Merritt Sr. died. Caroline Merritt would die on January 18, 1960, and was buried in the family plot in the Oakdale Cemetery in Mount Airy, NC.
Resources
- Information for this historical note was largely taken from issues of the Mount Airy News newspaper, viewed through the State Library of North Carolina account
- Information on the Merritt family was taken from the following article: Kate Rauhauser-Smith, “A family history: Merritts prospered through hard work, caring for community,” Mount Airy News (Mount Airy, NC) published November 23, 2020, viewed online at https://www.mtairynews.com/top-stories/92097/a-family-history
- “About Us” webpage, Heart & Soul Bed and Breakfast (housed in the original William E. Merritt Home), Mount Airy, NC, viewed online at https://www.heartnsoulbb.com/AboutUs.html
- Surry County Red Cross Records, WWI 171, WWI Papers, Military Collection, State Archives of North Carolina, Raleigh, N.C.
- Box 4, Folder 22, World War I Organizations Records, WWI 6, WWI Papers, Military Collection, State Archives of North Carolina, Raleigh, N.C. Viewed online at https://digital.ncdcr.gov/digital/collection/p15012coll10/id/4829
- Surry County Historical Society collections, viewed online at https://surrycounty.pastperfectonline.com/
