Location: West Main Street at South Washington Street in Washington
County: Beaufort
Original Date Cast: 2018
Humorist and preservationist Edmund Harding of Washington (he campaigned for the nickname “The Original Washington” over “Little Washington”) left his imprint on Bath (1705). Yet his chosen profession after 1940 was as a speaker for hire, typically after dinner or at banquets for civic groups or like convocations. His model was Will Rogers. So great was Harding’s impact that by 1945 he had produced a promotional brochure, since digitized by the University of Iowa, with testimonials from pleased audience members. He died in 1970 in Rome, Georgia, enroute home from delivering his 4,999th speech.
Personally voluble (he often refused to use a microphone), Harding, with his bowtie, bald pate, and “hang-glider” ears, left a distinct impression. The “Squire of the Pamlico” is said to have packed as many as thirty jokes into a forty-five-minute presentation. Many of those were based on his native Beaufort County, his neighbors, and his early jobs. Educated at Trinity School at Chocowinity, he was the son of the rector at Washington’s St. Peter’s Episcopal Church (the younger Harding served the church as organist).
Harding did not attend college but was a salesman, first for mules, then shoes, and finally fertilizer and insurance. In 1920 he helped organize the Rotary Club in Washington and rose to be district governor, 1936-1937. The duty placed him on the speaking circuit, and he travelled over the region, taking money only for expenses. The experience, however, made clear to him that groups would pay him beyond expenses. So, in 1940 he quit sales and hit the road, in time travelling to all 50 states, sharing his homespun philosophy. In 1949 Governor R. Gregg Cherry named him North Carolina’s “Ambassador of Good Will.”
In 1955, for Bath’s 250th anniversary, Harding wrote a play, “Queen Anne’s Bell.” Of course, he crafted for himself a leading role but included cameos for Governor Luther Hodges (as Governor Charles Eden) and Senator Sam Ervin among others. The legislature in 1959 created the Historic Bath Commission and Harding was elected chairman at the first meeting. The Palmer-Marsh House and the Bonner House were renovated and the visitors center, which Harding said had all the charm of a bus station, built in the 1960s. The town of Washington declared May 6, 1966, Edmund Harding Day. He received from Rotary International the Paul Harris Medal and from the Society of Antiquities the Cannon Cup.
References:
Wilson Angley, “The Life and Work of Edmund Harding” (unpublished research report, Research Branch, North Carolina Division of Archives and History, 1980)
William S. Powell, ed., Dictionary of North Carolina Biography, III, 31—sketch by Wilson Angley
Carl Goerch, Characters . . . Always Characters (1945)
Washington Daily News, May 5, 1966 (Edmund Harding Day edition); September 21, 1970; July 10, 1990
Raleigh News and Observer, October 31, 1954 (Tar Heel of the Week); September 21, 1970 (obituary)
“The Tarheel (sic) Humorist” (brochure, 1945), online at www.digital.lib.uiowa.edu/cdm/ref/collection/tc/id/32743