Robeson County’s pioneer educatorH.L. Edens: On September 14, 1941, a small headline on the front page of The Robesonian marked the passing of one of the county’s most distinguished educators. The headline read, “Pioneer Educator Dies.”
For H.L. Edens, the title “Pioneer Educator” was more than a casual newspaper reference honoring a deceased 84-year-old school teacher. It was an official title given in 1937 by Robeson County.
He earned this title from 56 years of educating school children in Robeson County and elsewhere. As his obituary so gracefully states, he “left upon thousands of youths an imprint of his fine character, fine ability and accurate learning. His mind (was) well stored with profound knowledge of history and the classics..”
This is the story of an extraordinary Robesonian.
Like many distinguished teachers of his day, the public knew him as “Professor” Edens, but many other titles suited him — gentleman, scholar, political activist, farmer and champion of education. Mr. Edens described himself as a “Methodist, a staunch Democrat and an old Red Shirt” in that order.He took all of these titles seriously. Until his death, he read, studied and wrote letters, many of them to The Robesonian and the (Raleigh) News and Observer to advocate for his causes. These letters and the memories of those who knew him form the basis of this short biography.
H.L. Edens was born in Marlboro County, near Bennettsville, S.C. At age eight, he was sent up an apple tree to keep a look out for Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman’s men. He described Sherman’s visit to his family home in many letters to newspapers.
“I was but eight years old when his bums and incendiaries came to our home. They killed and carried off all livestock, pillaged every nook and corner of our home, stripped the beds of quilts and although mother was sick and in bed with an infant three days old, threatened to burn our home at night.”
Although described by family members as a “true gentleman” of wonderful temperament, the atrocities of Sherman’s March to the Sea rankled him until his last breath. In a letter to The Robesonian dated 1933, he wrote:
“..the barbarities in Sherman’s March from Atlanta through the Carolinas that in comparison with Hitler’s conquests would rank Hitler as a Christian saint..”Sherman’s men tricked the young lookout by taking the back road to the family farm, or so the story goes. Mr. Edens dedicated his life to undoing what Gen. Sherman did to the economy, culture and political system of the South.
After Sherman’s men left, food was scarce in the Carolinas. “I remember the chaotic and cruel Reconstruction period following the War Between the States. Hungry and half starved I often cried for something to eat. Many children - I have seen them at it - would get behind a clay chimney and eat the dry clay.” (The Robesonian)
EARLY TRAINING Mr. Edens attended Wofford College in Spartanburg, S.C., and received his early education in a tiny school in Blenheim, S.C. Although the school had a mere 15 pupils, it employed an outstanding teacher and produced several outstanding individuals, including a scholar of national repute and a governor of South Carolina.The respect for knowledge and the zeal for learning that he found in the tiny school house probably formed the foundation of Mr. Edens’ life. His thorough training in Latin and Greek, and the miserable wages afforded teachers of his day made him a steadfast and progressive advocate for education.
No “ivory tower” academic, Mr. Edens was a modern thinker in all respects (except when it came to Shakespeare, who he regarded as vulgar). In another of his many letters to the editor of The Robesonian he states, after a visit to Allenton School, that larger, consolidated schools did a better job educating children than the small schools of his youth.
“I know from experience and observation that the public school teachers of today are decidedly better equipped than those of a few years ago. Contrasting the present school with the small schools of the past, the apparent advancement made in so short a time is remarkable. The whole school system is an expression of constructive, orderly mind. None but a pioneer teacher knows the many difficulties to be overcome..”
However, he insisted that the high standards of the old school - ie. instruction in the classics - remain in place. During the Depression, budget cuts threatened schools and teacher pay, which Mr. Edens believed was too low already. Here in three separate letters to the editor, he advocates for higher pay and standards in one breath.
“Teachers organize yourselves and force the state to reward you for your service. In my humble opinion, the most hurtful blow ever to North Carolina schools was delivered to them by the state’s supervisor of high schools when he advised the elimination of Latin and higher mathematics.”
“To reduce (teachers) to penury would be heartless brutality, to penalize the schools would be an inexcusable crime against children. Against nihilism, teachers form the first line of defense..”
ORGANIZED RESISTANCE His ideas sound progressive, even radical, by today’s standards. Professor Edens was a man of his times, and the 1930s was a time of radical solutions to extreme problems in America. A strong Roosevelt Democrat, he believed in vigorous and organized action to address the serious crises of his time. Here, he laments the inability of farmers to organize.“As president of the Red Springs Farmer’s Alliance many years ago, I found it futile to try to unite farmers in a concerted body to benefit themselves.”
Later, when the Jennings Cotton Mill in Lumberton was struck, Mr. Edens, who had served as headmaster of the East Lumberton School in the mill village for many years, argued for patience, negotiation and peaceful compromise. He decried the violence that swirled around labor leaders such as John L. Lewis of the United Mineworkers.
Mr. Edens was also a man of action as his numerous references to being an “Old Redshirt” attest. The Redshirts worked to restore democracy and the Democratic Party to the South after the Civil War. South Carolina emerged as a hotbed of Redshirt activity.
They were a powerful political organization consisting of disenfranchised former Confederate soldiers, officials and landowners. Besides grass roots organizing, the Red Shirts used intimidation to uproot Republicans, who were led by carpetbaggers and scalawags. Although their motto was (“force without violence,” violence occasionally proved unavoidable.
Mr. Edens was a law-abiding man of peace who despised mob action. This excerpt from a letter protests a recent outbreak of lynchings in the 1930s.
“An organized mob is unreasonable and almost irresistible…My efforts disorganized mobs on two different occasions and saved the culprits, on another occasion, I failed.”
On war he wrote: “I hate war and its inhuman results, but I detest the men who for their own exaltation force it..”
INDIAN NORMAL Mr. Edens also advocated for the education of minorities. He had a special interest in Robeson’s Native American population and traveled to Raleigh to beg money from the state for Croatan Normal School (now The University of North Carolina at Pembroke).“He found them (Native Americans) to be very bright and worthy of a good education,” said Greta Edens McArver, his granddaughter. “As headmaster of the Normal School, he was instrumental in relocating the school from Pate’s to its present location near Pembroke.”
According to “Pembroke State University: A Centennial History,” by Linda Oxendine and David Eliades (p.19), in 1909, Headmaster Edens proposed to the Board of Trustees that the Croatan Normal School be moved. A $3,000 appropriation from the General Assembly and $600 raised locally made it possible.
Mr. Edens toiled at many schools in his 56 years, including Hebron, Clio and McColl in Marlboro County. In 1889, he moved to North Carolina and never returned to South Carolina. He was employed by schools in Anson, Cartaret, Martin, Hoke and, finally, Robeson County. In Robeson County, he taught and headmastered schools in Red Springs, Barkers, Marietta, Indian Normal and East Lumberton.
He farmed to sustain his family and maintained a small garden near Rowland into his eighties. The highest wage he ever earned as an educator was $130 a month, and without a pension, he retired to the home of his son, Henry Odell Edens.
“During most of this long period of public service,” Mr. Edens said in an interview with The Robesonian, “school salaries were so niggardly that I was forced to plant and make what I could farming to feed my family. By the time summer and vacation had gone by my surplus avoirdupois had been washed away with sweat.”
The H.O. Edens home was located on the Old Whiteville Road, just outside East Lumberton. Several house fires destroyed many of his letters and photos. A photograph of the Olivet School (1903-4) in Marietta that appeared in The Robesonian not long ago, shows a youthful H.L. Edens with full beard and trademark black bow tie. Another photograph of the East Lumberton School shows a much older man with a neat goatee, black-rimmed spectacles and black bow tie.
MEMORIES LOST, FOUND Mrs. McArver has fond memories of the elderly educator who came to live with the family when she was a teenager.“My father would not let my sister and me go to Lumberton at night without an escort, so we would ask grand daddy,” Mrs. McArver said. “He always dressed to go out in public in his black suit, starched white shirt with a black bow tie. Oh yes, he liked the movies, and we liked to go to town.”
“He was a true gentleman. I never saw him angry,” she said. “When his wife (the former Jennie Odell) died in 1908, he raised the six children. Luther was just six and my father was 18 or 19.”
“He taught me to appreciate English writers, and he loved to have me play the piano for him. He liked (Norwegian composer Edvard) Grieg especially.”H.L. Edens’ letters are laced with quotations and references from Tennyson, Browning and Shakespeare. His thinking was deeply rooted in the Christian faith, and The Bible was his most often quoted source. The Professor never stopped reading, and it is evident from his many letters that he believed it was his duty to inform others on all matters.
The life and times of H.L. Edens reveal many things about the region and the nation in the years between the Civil War and World War II. A lifetime of teaching thousands of children - from the mill village to Pembroke - never made him a rich man, but it brought him a wealth of respect from those who value education, then and now.
