Dr. Silas Wright, the mayor ousted by Waddell, showed uncharacteristic bravery in his futile effort to restore calm during the events of Thursday, November 10, 1898. He remained in the city until November 14, then fled. He was rumored to be in Knoxville, Tennessee, leading a quiet life as a general practitioner.

Hugh MacRae realized his lifelong dream of colonizing the Cape Fear region with “utopian” agrarian communities of Germans, Hungarians, Poles, Dutchmen, and Italians. In 1900, he became head of the Wilmington Gas Light Company, consolidating that utility with the Wrightsville Street Railway and Seacoast Railway.

He was largely responsible for developing Wrightsville Beach as a resort destination for tourists from all over the country. Because of his expertise with real estate and agriculture, he was considered for a position in the administration of Herbert Hoover.

Colonel Walker Taylor never achieved his ambition of becoming mayor of Wilmington, but he was appointed collector of customs by President Woodrow Wilson in 1913. He was lauded on several public occasions for his performance during the coup of 1898. His Boys Brigade was reorganized under the auspices of the Kiwanis in 1921 as the Brigade Boys Club and remains active today as a model for training young men to be good citizens.

Widely traveled, Taylor visited Rome in 1928. There, he was granted an interview with Mussolini, whom he characterized with admiration as a combination Caesar and Napoleon.

Sam Jenks worked for various Eastern newspapers and later for newsreel syndicates. Trying his hand again as a war correspondent, he accompanied Blackjack Pershing’s expedition into Mexico in vain pursuit of Pancho Villa. For his coverage of the repression of striking copper miners in Bisbee, Arizona, in 1917—during which he was run out of town in a boxcar and left to die in the New Mexico desert along with the strikers—he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for journalism. He never returned to Wilmington.

Gray Ellen Jenks taught reading and history at Friends School for thirty-one years. Her memoir, Through a Woman’s Eyes, won her international celebrity, including an invitation to the inauguration of Franklin D. Roosevelt. She corresponded with Eleanor Roosevelt and frequently lectured at universities and clubs.

Gray Ellen and Sam’s first daughter, Christine, became an aviatrix and for a time held the women’s solo speed record from San Francisco to New York. Two other daughters, Margaret and Kathleen, became champions of women’s rights.

Their only son, Harry, became an archaeologist and disappeared in the Yucatan in 1955.

George Rountree distinguished himself as a judge on the North Carolina Superior Court. As chairman of the Committee on Constitutional Amendments of the North Carolina General Assembly, he authored the so-called grandfather clause, requiring voters to qualify as literate and to pay a poll tax before voting. For generations, it effectively barred blacks from casting votes.