a person · NCWarner Stamey

Charles Warner Stamey (born 1911), the youngest of eleven children, learned pit-cooking as a high-school boarder in Lexington from Jess Swicegood and Sid Weaver at their tents across from the courthouse, sold barbecue in Shelby through the 1930s, came back in 1938 to buy Swicegood's stand and rename it Stamey's, and in 1953 opened the Greensboro drive-in his family runs. His restaurant credits him with putting hushpuppies beside barbecue in North Carolina. Wayne Monk, Red Bridges and his brother-in-law Alston Bridges learned under him; the American Royal made him a legacy inductee of its Barbecue Hall of Fame in 2020.

Stamey was born in 1911 — in Lincoln County, by Cleveland County's local history — and moved to Lexington to live with his older sister while he attended high school. There he hooked up with Jess Swicegood and Sid Weaver, who were selling pork out of tents across from the courthouse, and they taught him pit cooking. With a diploma and $350 he went to Shelby and sold barbecue to growing crowds; he married Mary Linda Bridges in 1933, and the county history has Stamey's Barbecue at 230 South Washington Street in 1937. Her brother Alston Bridges learned smoking from him and managed his Log Cabin Barbecue in Lexington for two and a half years; Red Bridges, no relation, learned from him too and opened at the same Washington Street address about 1949. In 1938 Stamey sold the Shelby operation, went back to Lexington, bought Swicegood's and put his own name on it — for $300, Robert Moss's history says. Wayne Monk worked under him there for several years before opening Lexington Barbecue in 1962. In 1953 Stamey opened a drive-in on High Point Road in Greensboro, his sixth restaurant by the American Royal's count, with call-in service; four years later he handed it to his son Charles, and Charles's brother Keith joined in 1970. The hushpuppy — the fried cornmeal fritter of the fish camps — went onto the barbecue tray under him: Keith said his father picked the idea up from a friend's fish camp, the Friendly Road Inn in Greensboro, and the restaurant's history says he introduced it to North Carolina barbecue diners. Chip Stamey, his grandson, left another career to take the Greensboro house in 1993, and told the Southern Foodways Alliance in 2011 that his rule is to keep everything the same.

Dead; his death year is not confirmed by any source this record cites. The American Royal inducted him as a 2020 legacy member of its Barbecue Hall of Fame, and the fourth generation of Stameys runs the two Greensboro restaurants.