What if Brodie Duke’s mother, Mary Caroline Clinton didn’t die when he was only one?
What if his step mother, Artelia Roney and his brother Sidney hadn’t been struck down with typhoid when he was only 12 years old?
What if he hadn’t been forced to serve as a Confederate prison guard in Salisbury at the tender age of 17?
Then maybe, we would be celebrating his life, instead of shuffling it aside.
Brodie Duke was definitely an outsider trying to find his way. Being the eldest son of a different mother, I’m sure he never felt like he fit in. But more than that, Brodie must have experienced PTSD after serving as a prison guard.
After visiting the cemetery where the prison stood, my husband told me of the mass graves of men who died under deplorable conditions. I can’t imagine the nightmare that Brodie endured while he was there. Just off the farm in Durham County, this young man couldn’t be prepared for what he was to experience. The smell of death was everywhere. The sound of men screaming in pain was constant. And the haunting question of why he wasn’t one of the dead must have preoccupied his thoughts and caused a feeling of guilt that would never go away.
There was no mental health evaluation nor a treatment plan. No, Brodie was sent home and told to just get over it. But, if you know anything about Brodie Duke’s life, you’ll note he never could lose the inner demons that haunted him.
Brodie came home and began working for his uncle on his tobacco farm. After he heard of the success of the W.T. Blackwell Company in 1869, he moved to Durham and opened up his own tobacco company. Five years later, his father along with half brothers James Buchanan and Benjamin Newton joined him.
Washington Duke built a large building and shared the space with a petition built between Brodie’s business and his own. They worked this way until they decided to incorporate their business becoming the W. Duke Sons and Company. Brodie owned shares in the company, but wasn’t active in the day to day running of the business.
Brodie married his first wife, Martha McMannen and purchased a large amount of land that is now Trinity Park. He also built a large house on a fifteen acre lot, that is now where the Carr Junior High building is located. He bought the Commonwealth Cotton Company and Pearl Cotton Mills for more money than they were worth and watched as his investment vanished. He also purchased the Bennett Place in hopes that someone involved in the Columbian World Expo of 1883 would purchase it. He had no takers.
Given his ownership of shares in his father’s company, he continued to bring in money. But even with his wealth, he was haunted by the demons that wouldn’t leave him alone. He drank heavily and had a reputation of being a womanizer.
In the early 1890’s, Brodie went to Illinois where he received treatment for his alcoholism. He came back sober until 1893 where he declared bankruptcy and began to drink again.
Brodie held on to the 150 acres of land that he purchased for $10 an acre. Finally in 1901, with the establishment of the Durham Traction Company and the trolley system run by Richard Harvey Wright, Brodie was able to subdivide his land, creating streets in around his own house.
Apparently, Brodie and George Watts, another partner in the W. Duke Sons and Company did not care for each other. So when Brodie went to naming the streets, he named one street Duke, another Hated, and another Watts. Hated Street was later renamed Gregson Street.
In 1904, Brodie’s life was at a low point. His first wife had died and he had divorced his second wife which was very unusual for the times. But it was what he did in New York at James Buchanan’s wedding that was the tipping point. Word has it he was intoxicated for days and actually married a woman giving her promissory notes and prenuptial promises which apparently was worth a lot of money.
The Duke lawyers had Brodie committed to a sanitarium pleading insanity due to intoxication. Brodie was able to successfully divorce the woman on the grounds he didn’t remember any of the events surrounding the marriage.
Brodie did marry one more time, and although Wylanta Rochelle was forty years younger than he, the marriage appeared to work for both of them.
In 1919, when Brodie died, neither of his brothers attended the funeral. Later, after Duke Chapel was completed, Washington Duke along with James Buchanan and Benjamin Newton were exhumed from the Washington Mausoleum located in Maplewood Cemetery and placed in the Memorial Chapel, leaving Brodie’s body behind.
