James P. "Jim" Isenhower

James P. Isenhower, so much a fixture of Conover, North Carolina that residents wonder what life would be like without Jim's presence. Most folks in Conover know Jim on a personal basis. A realtor for 53 years, nearly all Conover natives have heard of him and are familiar with his knowledge of the history of Conover. He is either related to the founders of this city or knew them on an intimate basis.

 He was married to Mary Lillian Warlick who died in 2007, after over 60 years of wedded bliss. She was a descendant of Capt. Johann Nicholas Warlick, an early pioneer settler of Lincoln County. Captain John was a Tory hero of the Battle of Ramsour's Mill and died on the battlefield, June 20, 1780.

Jim descends from Johannes [John] Valentine Eisenhaur (Isenhower) who was born in Berks County, PA in 1759. He traveled down the Shenandoah trail by wagon and settled near Lyles Creek where he purchased 100 acres.  After raising nine children, he died about 1820.

Jim's great-grandfather, Abel S. Isenhower, fought in the War Between the States out of conviction rather than necessity. He enlisting in Company F, 38th Regiment, NC Troops at the age of 40 on March 16, 1863. Less than three months later, he was hospitalized with disease. He managed to make his way back home to Catawba County where he died June 8, 1863.

A life-long member of Concordia Lutheran Church, Jim has a proud legacy in North Carolina and has iconic status in his home town of Conover. He lives on County Home Road in a modest home where he continues to make himself available to friends, neighbors and strangers.

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Jim's experiences during the Great Depression was published as an article in the Hickory Daily Record [Nov. 8, 2008]

James P. Isenhower's Great Depression story

 James P. Isenhower of Conover was born Sept. 6, 1920, the day his father left the office as Catawba County sheriff. It was hardly the end of his career. When the Depression hit, Isenhower's father, John A. Isenhower, had five different jobs.

He and his father had a store in Conover, P.E. Isenhower & Son. He was a partner in five different cotton gins. He ran the Newton Bonded Warehouse, a cotton warehouse, and owned Catawba Ice & Fuel.

"He never had to ask anybody for a penny," said Isenhower, the pride still in his voice enduring through the decades since.

Among the jobs Isenhower had was collecting rent on the mill hill near the old Yount Cotton Mill, which his father turned into the warehouse. Rent was 50 cents a week, but sometimes his dad told him not to worry if someone didn't have it. That was one way the young Isenhower heard about hard times.

Another way he could see from his house, which sat where Peoples Bank in Conover is now. When trains rumbled through on the nearby track, he could see the men standing on the tops of the cars like birds on a wire. Those were hobos, he learned, men with no place to go, going wherever they could.

When the train stopped outside the warehouse, people would jump onto the rail cars and knock blocks of coal to the ground so they could take them home, he said.

At the store his father helped run, they kept a loft full of peanuts and peach seeds they would ship to places that needed them. People traded those things, along with fresh eggs, butter, sweet potatoes, even live chickens, for their groceries.

When the store closed, sometime in the late '30s or early '40s, Isenhower said some people still owed their Depression debts.

Ragan Robinson, Hickory Daily Record, November 29, 2008

Photo courtesy of Don Barker

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