Fisher, (17, 18, 19,) 17 HISTORY OF ROWAN COUNTY JOHN JOSEPH BRUNER, EDITOR John Joseph Bruner was born in Rowan County, N. C., on the Yadkin River, about seven miles from Salisbury, on the twelfth of March, 1817. He was the son of Henry Bruner, and Edith his wife, who was the youngest daughter of Col. West Harris, of Montgomery County, N. C. Colonel Harris married Edith Ledbetter, of Anson County, and was a field officer in the Continental Army. When the subject of this sketch was a little over two years old, his father died, and his mother returned with her two children, Selina and Joseph, to her father’s house in Montgomery. In the year 1825, he came to Salisbury, under the care of his uncle Hon. Charles Fisher, father of the late Col. Chas. F. Fisher, who fell at the battle of Bull Run. Mr. Bruner’s first year in Salisbury was spent in attending the school taught by Henry Allemand. This was about all the schooling of a regular style that he ever received, excepting after he grew up. The remainder of his education was of a practical kind, and was received at the case and press of a printing office. At the age of nine years, he entered the printing office of the Western Carolinian, then under the editorial control of the Hon. Philo White, late of Whitestown, N. Y. The Carolinian passed into the hands of the Hon. Burton Craige, in 1830, and then into the hands of Major John Beard, late of Florida, Mr. Bruner continuing in the office until 1836. In 1839, the lath M. C. Pendleton, of Salisbury, and Mr. Bruner, purchased the Watchman, and edited it in partnership for about three years. The Watchman had been started in the year 1832, by Hamilton C. Jones, Esq., father of the late Col. H. C. Jones, of Charlotte. The Watchman was a Whig and antinullification paper, and was intended to support (en. Andrew Jackson in his anti-nullification policy. In 1843, Mr. Bruner retired from the Watchman, and traveled for a while in the Southwest, spending some time in a printing-office in Mobile, Ala. Returning home, he was united in marriage to Miss Mary Ann Kincaid, a daughter of Thomas Kincaid, Esq. The mother of Mrs. Bruner was Clarissa Harlowe, daughter of Col. James Brandon of Revolutionary fame, who married Esther Horah, an aunt of the late Win. H. Horah, so long known as a leading bank officer in Salisbury. Col. James Brandon was the son of William Brandon, who settled in Thyatira as early as 1752, and whose wife 18 HISTORY OF ROWAN COUNTY was a Miss Cathey of that region. Having married, Mr. Bruner prepared for his life work by re-purchasing the Watchman, in partnership with the late Samuel W. James, in 1844. After six years, this partnership was dissolved, and Mr. Bruner became sole proprietor and editor of the Watchman, which he continued to publish until the office was captured by the Federal soldiers in the spring of 1865. After a few months, however, Mr. Bruner was permitted to re-occupy his dismantled office, and resume the publication of his paper. Three years=2 0later, Lewis Hanes, Esq., of Lexington, purchased an interest in the paper, and it was called the Watchman and Old North State. Retiring for a time from the paper, Mr. Bruner entered private life for a couple of years. But his mission was to conduct a paper, and so in 1871 he re-purchased it, and the Watchman made its regular appearance weekly until his death. At this date, the Watchman was the oldest newspaper, and Mr. Bruner the oldest editor in North Carolina. He was one of the few remaining links binding the antebellum journalist with those of the present day. The history of Mr. Bruner’s editorial life is a history of the program of the State. He was contemporary with the late Edward J. Hale, Ex-Governor Holden, Wm. J. Yates, and others of the older editors of the State. When he began to publish the Watchman, there was not a daily paper in North Carolina, and no railroads. In the forties and fifties, the Watchman was the leading paper in Western North Carolina, and had subscribers in fifty counties. None now living in Salisbury, and few elsewhere in the State, have had such extensive personal acquaintance and knowledge of men and things in the early years of this century. Names that have almost ceased to be spoken on our streets were familar to him. He knew such men as Hon. Chas. Fisher, Col. Chas. F. Fisher, Rowland Jones, Esq., Dr. Pleasant Henderson, Hamilton C. Jones, Esq., Hon. Burton Craige, the Browns, Longs, Cowans, Beards, Lockes, Hendersons, and hosts of others of a former20generation. He sat under the preaching of every pastor of the Presbyterian Church since its organization Dr. Freeman, Mr. Rankin, Mr. Espy, Dr. Sparrow, Mr. Frontis (by whom he was married’), Mr. Baker, and Rev. Dr. Rumple, who was his pastor and friend for more than thirty years. He was a scholar in the Sunday School when Thos. L. Cowan was superintendent, and was afterwards a teacher and superintendent himself. Col. Philo White his early protector, was a high-toned Christian man, and he so impressed himself upon his youthful ward that he those him for a model, emulated his example, and held his memory in cherished veneration to the end of his life. At the age 19 HISTORY OF ROWAN COUNTY of seventeen, Mr. Bruner was received into the communion of the Presbyterian Church of Salisbury, and in 1846 he was ordained a ruling elder in that Church, and continued to serve in that capacity through the remainder of his life. He was a sincere, earnest, and consistent Christian, and faithful in the discharge of all private and public duties of the Christian profession. The family altar was established in his household, and he brought up his children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Mr. Bruner died, after a lingering illness, March 23, 1890. His end was peace. As he gently passed away-so gently that it was difficult to tell when life ended and immortality began-a brother elder by his bedside repeated the lines: “How blest the righteous when he dies! When sinks a weary soul to rest; How=2 0mildly beam the closing eyes How gently heaves the expiring breast!” In many things Mr. Bruner was an example worthy of imitation. His memory must ever shine as one of the purest, sweetest, best elements of the past. His character was singularly beautiful and upright. His life was an unwritten sermon, inestimably precious to those who will heed the lessons which it teaches, and to whom grace may be given to follow his good example. He was emphatically a self-made man. His learning he acquired by his own unaided efforts; his property he earned by the sweat of his brow; and his reputation he achieved by prudence, wisdom, and faithfulness in all the duties of life. By his paper he helped multitudes of men to honorable and lucrative office, but he never helped himself. Politically, Mr. Bruner never faltered in his allegiance to those principles to which he believed every true Southern man should adhere. Up to the very last he was unflinching and unwavering in his love for the South, and in his adherence to the very best ideals and traditions of the land of his nativity. At no time during his life did he ever “crook the pregnant hinges of the knee, that thrift might follow fawning.” In the very best sense of the word, he was a Southern gentleman of the old school. The old South and the new were all one to him-the same old land, the same old people, the same old traditions, the land of Washington, of Jefferson, of Calhoun and Jackson, of Pettigrew and Fisher, of Graham and Craige, of Stonewall Jackson, of Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis.