By her March 19, 1891 birth, Gladys Avery was deeply immersed in American, Southern, and Tar Heel history. Her great-grandfather, Col. Waightstill Avery, served in the American Revolution, helped write both the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence and North Carolina's Constitution, and served as the state's first attorney general. Avery family (and Western N.C.) lore also describes an August 1788 duel between Col. Avery and 21-year-old future U.S. president Andrew Jackson. Each fired his pistol into the air, parted with a handshake, and remained friends.
Notably, each man has a Western North Carolina county named for him.
Gladys's father, Col. Alphonso Avery, was an officer in the 6th North Carolina Infantry Regiment, seeing action in key Civil War battles before his capture near the war's end. Col. Avery was a brother-in-law of Confederate Gen. Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson by his first wife, Susan Morrison Avery (not Gladys's mother). He served as a justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court during the 1890s.
Four of Gladys's uncles served in the Confederate Army, and three of them died in the war.
Atypical for young women of that era, both Gladys and her sister were encouraged by their educated parents to obtain college degrees. Col. Avery had finished first in the class of 1857 at the University of North Carolina. Their mother, Sara Thomas Avery, had graduated with honors from the Asheville College for Women.
On the cusp of adolescence at the dawn of the new century, Gladys Avery was poised to embrace the ideals of the Progressive movement of the 1890s and early 1900s. With their emphasis on political activism and expanding women's rights, the Progressives strongly appealed to Gladys.
Along the way, Gladys's life took another turn when she was introduced to a progressive-minded young Charlotte attorney, Charles Tillett Jr.
From The Charlotte News account, the July 21 wedding of Gladys Avery and Charles Tillett, in Morganton's Presbyterian Church, seemed the society highlight of mid-summer 1917 in that region of the Tar Heel state. "This church, which has been the scene of many pretty marriages, never witnessed a more beautiful one," the account gushed. "The bride is one of the state's most brilliant and charming young women," it described Gladys. "[S]he has a rich heritage of culture, position, ability, and prominence."
Accolades were similar for Charles: "He is held in high esteem in [Charlotte] and over the state is considered one of the coming young men of North Carolina, there being no doubt ... he has a brilliant future before him."
It was quite a beginning for a new husband and wife destined to become a noted "power couple" in the state — if not the country — several decades before the term entered the American lexicon. Had she lived to age 86, it would be easy to imagine Caroline beaming at her grandson and his bride.
It would have been natural for Gladys Avery Tillett to follow her mother-in-law into an honorable and influential society life, including, maybe, deep involvement in both the Daughters of the American Revolution and the United Daughters of the Confederacy.
With degrees in hand from both (the present) UNC-Greensboro and UNC-Chapel Hill by the time of her marriage, the new Mrs. Tillett taught school, briefly, in Charlotte. After attending a very early meeting of the League of Women Voters around 1920, though, activism beckoned her.
Even amid raising two pre-school children, Gladys organized Mecklenburg County's first chapter of the League of Women Voters in 1921. (Her youngest, Sara, would come along in 1925).
Gladys learned to negotiate obstacles along the way. In a talk before the Colonial Dames in November 2017, Sally McMillen noted that while Gladys was a college student at Greensboro, the state's governor visited the campus, addressing the young women: "As I look into your beautiful faces ... I know that you're not in favor of voting." McMillen described a negative reaction among students, with Gladys helping organize, then preside over, the school's first student government.
In a 1975 interview, Gladys recalled registering women to vote in the early 1920s. The first woman she approached told her, "Oh Gladys, I couldn't do that. I love my husband."
Campaigning in 1928 alongside her husband for the Democratic presidential candidate, Gov. Al Smith, against eventual winner Herbert Hoover, Gladys realized that her path to attaining maximum influence lay in party leadership. Sally McMillen points to the experience leading to Gladys's selection to serve on North Carolina's executive committee for the Democratic party. In 1932, she was named as one of four state representatives to the convention that nominated Franklin Roosevelt as its candidate for president.
Gladys Tillett was a natural fit for leadership in the party's newly formed Women's Division after 1932, eventually taking charge of the division's Speakers Bureau. There, she was responsible for explaining FDR's New Deal programs, and helping win support for them among Tar Heel voters.
By 1940, Gladys was vice-chair of the Democratic National Committee and chief of its Women's Division.
Her organizational talents, fundraising ability, and knack for communication identified Gladys as more than a small cog in helping President Roosevelt carry the South en route to his four election wins. In 1944, her efforts paid off as the 52-year old woman with familial ties to Richmond County was tapped to deliver a keynote, nationwide address to the Democratic convention in Chicago.
First Lady Mrs. Bess W. Truman with various women Democratic Party leaders. From left to right: United States Ambassador to Luxembourg Perle Mesta, Mrs. Truman, Treasurer of the United States Mrs. Georgia Neese Clark, Democratic National Committee Vice-Chair India Edwards, and Mrs. Gladys Avery Tillett.
National Archives and Records Administration. Office of Presidential Libraries. Harry S. Truman Library. (04/01/1985 - ), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
In her July 19 speech, according to an account in The Daily Tar Heel, Gladys Tillett spoke for some 20 minutes about the place of women in the coming election, and about the stakes that women had in winning the world war, then underway, where so many husbands, sons, and sweethearts were placing their lives on the line.
As Allied victory in the war grew increasingly imminent, thoughts turned seriously toward securing lasting world peace. Both Gladys and Charles Tillett were determined to be parts of that effort.
Independent scholar and university instructor John Thomas McGuire has taught and published extensively about the history of women and social movements. In a 2016 article for Women's History Journal, McGuire examined Gladys Tillett's activities between 1945 and 1950.
McGuire notes that Mrs. Tillett turned her activism away from domestic concerns, like poll taxes and civil rights, electing, instead, to focus on international peace, particularly through the United Nations. Permitted a speaking role at the Democrats' 1948 convention, she made clear her shift in priority from that of 1944's victory in war to that of securing lasting peace.
"The women of America say, give us the peace for which we sacrificed," she urged delegates in her endorsement of President Harry Truman. "Give us the peace that will endure."
An international effort to form a group of nations united for peace had largely fizzled after the first world war, but gained traction during the waning months of World War II. Delegations from the United States, Great Britain, the USSR, and China met at a Washington, D.C. estate known as Dumbarton Oaks, and established the United Nations Charter during the fall of 1944. Sally McMillen notes that Gladys Tillett played a role in those discussions.
The charter produced at Dumbarton Oaks was adopted at the inaugural meeting of the UN, in San Francisco in September 1945, with both Tilletts in attendance.
First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, in fact, took note of Gladys Tillett and her UN efforts. Between late 1935 and weeks prior to her death in 1962, Mrs. Roosevelt penned an almost daily column of her manifold activities that was syndicated in newspapers nationwide. In several of her "My Day" pieces during 1945, the First Lady mentions her personal interactions with Gladys vis-a-vis efforts to educate the public about that organization.
(Months before her passing, Mrs. Roosevelt appeared at a Congressional hearing in New York in the matter of women's equal pay. As a member of the UN Commission on the Status of Women, Gladys Tillett also testified there. In a "My Day" piece, the former First Lady was noting Mrs. Tillett's testimony when she observed, "The dignity of women's equality when they meet in government, professional, and industrial work is important the world over, not just the U.S.")
A senior official with the Democratic National Committee for over a decade from the mid-1940s and 1950s, India Edwards served alongside Gladys Tillett. In a 1969 interview with Jerry Hess of the Harry S. Truman Library and Museum, Ms. Edwards shared tidbits and insights into Mrs. Tillett's role and influence in the events of those times.
"Mrs. Tillett had been very active in promoting meetings all over the country on the Dumbarton Oaks conference." There were "over a thousand meetings over the United States," Edwards describes, citing Tillett as having planned the meetings which helped educate the public about, and inspire support for, the nascent United Nations.
India Edwards notes that she and Gladys Tillett traveled together to San Francisco, by train, for the opening of the UN in 1945. Speaking of Mrs. Tillett at the events, Ms. Edwards added, "She was able to go to the sessions and be very active. She had done more to promote the idea of the United Nations than probably any other women in the United States ..."
Edwards describes her and Tillett's roles at the 1948 Democratic convention that nominated President Truman for another term. Both women addressed the delegates on the evening that the convention voted to nominate him.
"My goodness," Ms. Edwards observed, "President Truman wasn't nominated until ... two or three o'clock in the morning." "There were quite a number of women (to speak) ..."
Both Gladys Tillett and India Edwards were in heady company on that rostrum. U.S. Congresswomen Helen Gahagan Douglas and Mary Norton, and longtime cabinet secretary Frances Perkins, spoke to the convention along with Tillett and Edwards.
As further evidence of the influence Gladys Tillett had earned, Ms. Edwards noted that both she and Mrs. Tillett met with President Truman on multiple occasions to discuss appointing women to federal offices.
In 1950, Gladys Tillett suspended her UN activities and resigned as vice chair of the Democratic National Committee to join Charles in actively campaigning for North Carolina U.S. Sen. Frank Porter Graham to retain his seat in Washington. In his WHJ article, John McGuire examined Mrs. Tillett's role in Graham's unsuccessful primary campaign.
A longtime personal friend of the couple, Graham had been a classmate of Charles at Carolina, and introduced Charles to Gladys. He shared the Tilletts' interest in world peace through his own involvement with the UN. During Graham's presidency of the University of North Carolina, Charles acted as his legal counsel after President Graham suspended four dozen students for cheating in the late 1930s.
It's important to recall that through most of the 20th century in this state, winning the Democratic primary in congressional and state elections was tantamount to winning the seat. Attorney and former North Carolina house speaker Willis Smith opposed Graham in that 1950 U.S. Senate primary. Smith had also served as an observer to the post-World War II war crimes trials in Nuremberg.
Described in McGuire's article as "unofficial campaign coordinator," Mrs. Tillett organized a "Committee of 2000" women to actively work for Graham. In a memo, Gladys reminded the campaign that "there are more women ... eligible to vote than men." She sought to present Sen. Graham as a catalyst for international peace.
Unsubstantiated allegations of past Communist associations, leveled with flimsy backing during his early senate days, coupled with his support of President Truman's moderate civil rights program, were brought to the fore during the primary and runoff campaigns. Given the Red Scare tenor of the times, the fears of Tar Heel voters prevailed in defeating Sen. Graham.
The period of Gladys Tillett's life after the loss of her candidate, and friend, Sen. Graham, brought the most profound tragedy of her adult life. Her husband, Charles W. Tillett Jr., died as the result of suicide two days before Christmas in 1952.
Caroline Patterson would have been proud that, despite her loss, Gladys refused to give up on either personal or public life. From the 1950s until the early 1970s, Mrs. Tillett was active in the campaigns of the Democratic presidential nominees. President Kennedy appointed her to the UN Commission on the Status of Women, a post she held until 1968.
In her 80s, Gladys Tillett's final public commitment occurred in the push to convince North Carolina's legislature to ratify the proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The state joined the nation in ultimately declining its passage.
Gladys Tillett remained active in both her personal involvements, and her family life, until her death on Sept. 21, 1984, weeks before President Ronald Reagan's re-election. She is interred next to her husband at Charlotte's Elmwood Cemetery.
It's peaceful here at Old Hebron. Even as they slip into the mists once more, Caroline and these descendants won't mind if we linger for a while. Their knowing looks remind us there are more of them, with interesting stories to share.
Caroline pauses and turns back to us. She owes us one more revelation.
William Smith Tillett (1892-1974) was an American internist and microbiologist. He is best known for the discovery of C-reactive protein and streptokinase.
Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center
Dr. William Smith Tillett was a grandson, born 29 years after Caroline's passing. She never knew him in life, but he was a favorite of his grandfather's in the last decade of Dr. Patterson's life.
As a pre-teen, William spent time on his grandfather's Mangum farm, and would accompany him on his rounds. Inspired both by the world of childhood discovery, and by that man of science, William went on to earn his medical degree from Johns Hopkins Medical School in 1917.
Dr. Tillett's work in the areas of microbes, proteins, and infections led to a deeper understanding of inflammation and its role as the body fights disease. If you are prescribed a regimen of antibiotics, and instructed to take them completely, it was Dr. Tillett's work that, largely, established that concept.
In 1928, Dr. William Tillett married the poet, playwright, and mystery novelist, Dorothy Stockbridge. That same year, Dorothy began a series of mystery novels, authoring 22 of them over the next 48 years. Believing her work would reap more success under a masculine name, Dorothy underwent a "sex change," of sorts, as "John Stephen Strange" became the nom de plume for such titles as "The Man Who Killed Fortescue,"and "The House On 9th Street." She revealed her true identity in 1976.
The Tilletts are buried in Hillside Cemetery near their beloved Deer Isle on the coast of Maine.
At first blush, Caroline's Mangum grave seems to boast many Old South bona fides through the people and stories that connect there. Her Confederate Army brother — a senior non-commissioned officer who died at Gettysburg — and his fiancee, a major Southern spy; a granddaughter-in-law whose father was once related to Gen. "Stonewall" Jackson, and who lost three uncles to the Confederate cause; a daughter who was a staunch member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy; and, a son-in-law whose first professional partner was a Confederate officer, and hero of the war.
But further examination reveals stories from that grave about people who embraced the best of the Old South while transcending to a new one in order to shape the future, and put their mark on the 20th century.
Courtesy findagrave.com
