Captain E. G. Foster

Captain Foster Has An Eventful Life
Told he Would Die While Young, He Decided to See the World.
Passes 90th Birthday at Graham
by Raleigh Allsbrook

Greensboro, NC Daily News, Sunday, Jan. 30, 1938

Burlington, Jan. 29 – On almost any day of the year, a white-haired and stooped “young” man can be seen methodically setting type in a dingy office in Graham. That this wrinkled gentleman Captain E. G. Foster – on January 24 passed his 90th [born ca1848-mm] milestone and is still able to continue his occupation without even the aid of glasses is in itself astonishing. But a survey of his life reveals much of the odd and unusual.

At 20 he was told he would be dead within two years. A year later he was a pallbearer at the funeral of the doctor who had so advised him. Eight years afterward finds himself in Spain receiving a higher salary than the minister to whom he was private secretary. Later years saw him as a coffee grower in Guatemala, campaigning for President Harrison, fourth assistant postmaster in Washington, and newspaper editor in Graham.

Captain Foster has been in Graham since 1897 when he came there on a visit and liked it so well that he gave up a job waiting for him in Columbia, S.C. Until around 1909 he was editor and publisher of the Graham Tribune. Since then he has been town clerk, tax collector, secretary-treasurer, and editor of the Graham Messenger, among other positions. In 1931, he took his present job with the Alamance Gleaner. Besides the owner, J. D. Kernodle, one other person aids in publishing the weekly paper.

Has Never Worn Glasses

Although nearing the century mark, the captain has never worn glasses. Some 10 years ago he pulled a muscle in helping lift a heavy load and became blind in his left eye. Despite this affliction, however, he can scan the finest print without trouble. Rolling an ever-present cigar between his fingers, he talks with only a slight hesitancy, displaying a mind that has lost in little of its keenness.

Born in Clairmont, Va., of a mother from New Jersey and a father who was a civil engineer and a native of Rochester, NY., Captain Foster spent most of his boyhood in Lawrence County, Ohio. Following the death of his mother a year after his birth, he was brought here to be reared by several aunts.

In 1862, while at Delaware college, he was told of his impending death because of a tubercular condition. Deciding to travel in the outdoors to aid his health and satisfy his wanderlust, he took a boat from Detroit to Portland, Me.

He recalls that he ended up as the result of poker playing that has brought him added fame in Graham, with $174 more than he had when he started. For a year he toured Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York, and West Virginia, gaining 26 pounds before returning to his home in Ohio. It was there that he aided in the burial of the pessimistic physician.

Went to Montana

But interesting days were ahead for Captain Foster, he was married in 1872, and he spent the next four years in Helena, Mont., on a relative’s ranch and working for the Cincinnati Inquirer as a typesetter and reporter. In 1876, Henry S. Neal, of Ohio, and for him as congressman the “Captain” had done some secretarial work, was appointed minister to Spain. Because of his liking for the 29-year-old Foster, Neal took him along as his private secretary.

Smiling, Captain Foster confides that although he was actually Neal’s secretary, his main duty turned out to be escorting four of the minister’s nieces. Interspersing his three-year stay in Madrid were visits to all parts of Europe. Although Minister Neal’s meager government salary amounted to only $1,800, the “captain” was earning $2,400.

Together with his wife and four-year son, he visited Turkey, France, Germany, Italy, Spitzbergen, England, Scotland, and Algeria. Constantinople, which is remembered best, he recalls as being a dirty city, filled with filthy bazaars and narrow pavements.

Leaving Madrid and his secretarial position in 1890, Captain Foster’s trail led to Guatemala were an insistent friend was asking for aid on his coffee plantation. Hence, Col. George Skinner, lived for a year before he became equally disgusted with the natives. They were so religious they became fanatics,” he relates explaining that it was almost impossible to have them work steadily.

Back in Ohio

Traveling in wagons and on muleback to avoid sea travel that disagreed with Colonel Skinner’s wife, the party went to Belize, where they took a steamer to New Orleans. From that year 1882, until 1888, Captain Foster worked as a typesetter in his home county in Ohio.

From 1889 until 1891 he was employed in Washington through an appointment as fourth assistant postmaster by his old friend Neal. Following the death of his wife and only child in 1890, part of his duties was taken up in touring various southern states seeking to win support for the renomination of President Harrison.

Seeing his candidate was doomed to defeat, he resigned in 1892 and took a job on a paper in Alabama. Again, he became involved in politics, this time as the backer of Senator William Bankhead. But this time, he reminisces, his man won, part was the result of his swinging Green county.

The remaining years, until he came to Graham in 1897, were taken up in once again working on newspapers throughout the south.

And no at 90, Captain Foster looks back at the long stretch he has left behind. Many of the honors for which he is proud were gained in Graham. Here for every year, with the exception of those of the present administration – for he has always been a staunch Republican except for the Bankhead interlude – he has been sworn in as honorary post office clerk.

Here also he became the first town citizen to issue a foreign money order. This event he recalls well. “The man was a carnival employee,” he says, “and he wanted to send some money home to Germany. Because of my experience with the post office in Washington and my travel in Europe, I was the only one that knew how to do this.” Up until 1910, no one else handled any foreign orders.

No Old-Age Rules

Besides his positions with the town, he was cattle statistician for Alamance and Guilford counties for 11 years and secretary-treasurer of the Graham liquor dispensary from 1908 until the state went dry. During the war, he headed the local selective board, handling the drafting and exempting of soldiers.

For one to live to be 90 he has no special rules, besides perhaps temperance in most things. Cigar smoking, he confesses, has always been a weakness and is his only over-indulgence.

Above is Captain E. G. Foster, a 90-year-old printer of Graham, who wears no glasses and was pallbearer at the funeral of the physician who told him he had less than two years to live when he was but 20 years of age. He has no particular rules for longevity.