They touch a few highlights that the family wants to publicize but rarely tell the real story.

So it was with the obituary for A.D. Watts, which appeared in the July 18, 1927, edition of the Statesville Landmark.

Someone was kind enough to give me a copy of the obituary recently, when I visited the handsome Iredell County Public Library during my book tour.

The obituary includes the basic facts. Watts was state revenue commissioner, a state legislator who helped outlaw booze in the state, a newspaperman, a federal tax collector and an accountant.

The obituary does at least suggest that Watts was not your run-of-the-mill politician.

"As is well known," it says, "Mr. Watts was one of the leading, if not the leading, politician in this state. He was a master in handling figures and possessed a most retentive memory for such figures and could recall the vote of the smallest precinct in North Carolina for most any election."

That's not the half of it.

Watts was U.S. Sen. Furnifold Simmons' chief lieutenant. Simmons was the state's political boss during the first three decades of the 20th century -- as powerful as any Tammany Hall politician.

Simmons named nearly every governor during the first three decades, set the legislative agenda and controlled patronage. But Simmons spent most of his time in Washington, and he depended on Watts to keep the machine oiled back home.

Among his specialities was stealing elections, through the use of absentee ballots in the mountain counties. (It was said that control of the state machinery was worth 20 percent of the vote.)

Watts played an important role in electing one of our most important governors, Cameron Morrison of Charlotte. Simmons had tapped Morrison to be governor in 1920. But Morrison was in danger of being upset by Lt. Gov. O. Max Gardner.

Simmons roused Watts from a monumental drunk and put him to work to elect Morrison. Watts used his old standby, race. Noting that Gardner favored giving women the vote, Watts put out pamphlets suggesting that if you gave women the vote, the next thing you know, blacks would be voting in great numbers.

Watts distributed pamphlets across Eastern North Carolina showing Gardner advancing arm in arm with a black woman.

The vote count took an extraordinary 11 days, as the suspect mountain votes trickled in, each day eroding Gardner's numbers. Morrison won by 87 votes.

"Watts always said that he did me a good service in stealing 10,000 votes from me, and I was too young to be governor at that time and that eight years of maturing judgment made me a much better governor than I would have been in the first instance," said Gardner, who was elected governor in 1928.

As a reward for stealing the 1920 election, Morrison named Watts the first state revenue commissioner.

It was probably a tip from his political enemies that brought the Raleigh vice squad to Watts' apartment door in 1923.

The cops found a hooker -- a black woman, by the way -- hiding under his bed. Efforts by the Democratic machine to keep the story out of the paper failed.

"I've been caught," Watts told reporters the next day. "I'm ruined. I'll not lie. I'll take my medicine." He resigned, returned home and died a few years later.