William Walter Washington Hines (1878-1953), a native of Lincolnton was the son of George Washington and Mary Susan (Summerow) Hines. Educated at Pleasant Retreat Academy in Lincolnton, he was mustered into Company E, lst North Carolina Volunteer Regiment, on April 27, 1898, for military service during the Spanish American War. He was transferred into Company A, lst Division Hospital, VII Corps, U.S. Army, where he had charge of the hospital horses, on June 1, 1898. Hines was discharged from the army at Camp Columbia, Havana, Cuba, on April 22, 1899. Later that year, as a civilian in Cuba, he obtained employment in the corral of the Pincipe Quartermaster Depot as a wagonmaster in charge of transporting stores from the subsistence depot and served as such until the withdrawal of American troops from Cuba in 1902. While in Cuba Hines purchased U.S. army mules, and after his return to Lincolnton he established a livery business there in 1905. A natural engineer, Hines went into the business of road and street construction and the preparation of excavations for the construction of large buildings. Subsequently he leased a rock quarry and sub-contracted the supply of crushed stone, gravel, and sand for the Lincolnton-Maiden highway, and, until stopped by the economic depression of the 1930s, specialized in the grading and construction of road shoulders in piedmont and eastern North Carolina.