Restrictions to Access

No restrictions. Open for research.

Copyright Notice

Copyright is retained by the authors of items in these papers, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law.

Preferred Citation

[Identification of item], in the Cates Family Papers #4341, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Acquisitions Information

Received from John H. Vernon, III, of Burlington, North Carolina, in January 1983, and Sarah E. Vernon Watts of Asheboro, North Carolina, in August 1986.

Sensitive Materials Statement

Manuscript collections and archival records may contain materials with sensitive or confidential information that is protected under federal or state right to privacy laws and regulations, the North Carolina Public Records Act (N.C.G.S. § 132 1 et seq.), and Article 7 of the North Carolina State Personnel Act (Privacy of State Employee Personnel Records, N.C.G.S. § 126-22 et seq.). Researchers are advised that the disclosure of certain information pertaining to identifiable living individuals represented in this collection without the consent of those individuals may have legal ramifications (e.g., a cause of action under common law for invasion of privacy may arise if facts concerning an individual's private life are published that would be deemed highly offensive to a reasonable person) for which the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill assumes no responsibility.

Processed by: Carolyn Roff, July 1986; Mark Beasley, April 1987

Encoded by: ByteManagers Inc., 2008

Container list updated by: Dawne Howard Lucas, July 2020 and January 2022

The following terms from Library of Congress Subject Headings suggest topics, persons, geography, etc. interspersed through the entire collection; the terms do not usually represent discrete and easily identifiable portions of the collection--such as folders or items.

Clicking on a subject heading below will take you into the University Library's online catalog.

• Alamance County (N.C.)--Commerce.
• Burlington (N.C.)--Commerce.
• Burlington Merchants Association (Burlington, N.C.)
• Business and Professional Women's Club (Burlington, N.C.)
• Businesswomen--North Carolina.
• Cates family.
• Cates, Bertha Iona, 1887-1982.
• Cates, James Wesley, 1847-1918.
• Coal trade--North Carolina.
• Democratic Party (N.C.)
• Diaries (Blank-books)
• FFirst Baptist Church of Burlington (N.C.)
• Merchants--North Carolina--History.
• North Carolina Retail Coal Merchants Association.
• Stackhouse, Verna Lee Cates, 1890-1986.
• Textile industry--North Carolina--History.
• Trade associations--North Carolina.
• Women--North Carolina--Diaries.

• Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007), interviews H-15 (Bertha Cates) and H-49 (Verna Cates Stackhouse).
• John Wesley Cates Papers, North Carolina Baptist Historical Society Collection, Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, N.C.

John Wesley Cates was born in 1847 in Orange County, N.C., the son of William Cates and Sarah Burns Cheek. In 1869, John Wesley Cates married Sarah Patterson. They had four children. After his wife died, he and his children moved to Burlington, N.C., where he worked as a carpenter. In 1885, Cates opened his own lumber and coffin business and helped organize the First Baptist Church of Burlington. Also in 1885, Cates met his second wife, Sarah Elizabeth Scott, who had come from Virginia to work as a weaver. John Wesley and Sarah had eight children. Sarah died in July 1917. John Wesley was seriously injured in an automobile accident in 1913 and died in 1918. Cates had been actively involved in organizing the Burlington school system and Chamber of Commerce.

Bertha Iona Cates was born in 1887 in Burlington, and was educated at Burlington High School. While still in school, she began working for her father, and after his automobile accident in 1913 she took over more and more responsibility in her father's company, J.W. Cates, Inc. When John Wesley died in 1918, his son-in-law, John Vernon, became president of the company while Bertha stayed on as manager. In the 1930s Bertha took charge of the whole company and continued to do business, much of it dealing with coal. She became involved in state coal affairs and helped to establish the North Carolina Retail Coal Merchants Association. Until she sold the company in 1967, she continued to participate in the Association, holding the positions of treasurer and vice-president for a number of years. She is said to have been the first woman coal merchant in the South.

Bertha Cates also was involved in the Philathea Society, the United Daughters of the Confederacy, and the Burlington Business and Professional Women's Club, of which she was a charter member. For her many achievements, she was named Burlington's Woman of the Year in 1956. She died in 1982 at age 95.

Verna Lee Cates Stackhouse was born in 1890 in Burlington. She too was educated at Burlington High School. She went on to study at Meredith College until she accepted a position teaching business courses at Oxford College. She quit teaching to take a position as a supervisor with King Cotton Mills in Burlington, a job which she continued until 1937. Cates married Frank Boyd Stackhouse in 1926. Later, they moved to Durham, N.C., where Verna worked with the Red Cross, the North Carolina Employment Security Commission, and the local office of U.S. Senator B. Everett Jordan. She died in Burlington in 1986.

The Cates Family Papers consist of letters, diaries, records, and pictures of the family, primarily those of the father, John Wesley Cates, and two of his daughters, Bertha Iona Cates and Verna Lee Cates Stackhouse. The collection is divided into three major parts: the papers of the father and of each of the daughters.

John Wesley Cates's papers primarily concern two areas of interest: his business activities and his involvement with schools. John Wesley Cates's business papers are varied. His businesses involved coffin making, undertaking, hardware, lumber, curbing, coal, and shingles; he also found time for a land company. The school papers pertain to the selection of a new superintendent of Burlington schools in 1910 as well as to orders for classroom furniture.

The papers of Bertha Iona Cates are chiefly personal correspondence, diaries (dating from 1937 to 1979), and material relating to the North Carolina Retail Coal Merchants Association.

Verna Lee Cates Stackhouse's papers are primarily personal and political correspondence and papers relating to her work as a supervisor at the King Cotton Mill. There are also notes pertaining to her civic activities, especially the Burlington Business and Professional Women's Club.

• P-4341/1-2, 4-6, 8-61
• OP-4341/3 and 7
• PA-4341/1