Tag Archive for: #aroundoldgranville

TownTalk: Around Old Granville – Townsville

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It’s a short drive today on Highway 39 to get from Williamsboro to Townsville – about seven miles separate the two Vance County communities. But back in the late 1700’s and early 1800’s, it most likely took a lot longer to get between the two areas to conduct business or to go to church.

Ironically, it was wars and the railroad that heavily influenced both towns – for good and for ill. Today, both are little more than busy crossroads.

In the early 1900’s, Townsville boasted a bank, a hotel, a funeral home, a box factory, a drug store and a post office. Local historian Mark Pace said back then, Townsville was the second largest community in Vance County.

“It had a bright future,” Pace said Thursday on TownTalk’s Around Old Granville segment. He and WIZS’s Bill Harris talked about the heyday of the township and how it came to be.

It was originally called Lyneville, for the Lyne family that came from Caroline County in Virginia in the late 1700’s.

John Penn – yes, THAT John Penn – had married Henry Lyne’s daughter, Susannah, and she wanted to move to North Carolina to be closer to her family. And that’s how John Penn came to live in the area and be one of three North Carolinians to sign the Declaration of Independence, Pace explained.

Fast forward to 1855 or so, and a man named Edmund Townes living in the area donated the land for the railroad right-of-way. And so the name was changed to Townesville in his honor.

(Who knows why the “e” was dropped from the town’s name.) The railroad came through in the general area between where the post office and the historic Holy Trinity Episcopal Church now stand.

Townsville was the halfway point along the railway between Clarksville and Manson, Pace said.

“That’s why they put the box factory there, that’s why they put the bank there,” Pace said – because of the railroad.

In the mid 1800’s, the railroad played a significant role for folks who lived nearby. At that time, most farmers were producing tobacco, and the railroad “brought access to the rest of the world” for tobacco farmers. They could get their crop to markets in Richmond and Petersburg. It was a game-changer.

But the rails were taken up during the Civil War, the metal used for the Confederacy’s war effort in shipbuilding.

The Marrow brothers led the effort to bring the railroad back to Townsville. In the early 1900’s, the town passed a bond referendum. “The citizens of Townsville ponied up $75,000,” Pace said, which meant that the railroad was owned by the citizens.

At that point, the railroad only went to Manson, via Drewry and across Nutbush Creek. And because there was only one track and no place to turn around, the train had to back up to make its return trip from Townsville to Manson.

In 1918, a forest fire got very close to the 90-foot wooden bridge that took the train over Nutbush Creek, Pace said.

Everybody thought the bridge was ok, and the storage, passenger and coal cars were pushed safely across. But when it was the heavy locomotive’s turn – remember, it was going backwards – the bridge collapse under the weight. The engineer and brakeman died in the accident as the locomotive plunged deep into the muddy creek bed.

“The train engine was never brought up or salvaged,” Pace said. And now it’s just part of the underwater landscape of Kerr Lake that was built in the early 1950’s.

The town bought a new engine but it was so hard to maintain it was replaced with a sturdy, locally built Corbitt truck that was fitted with wheels to move along the tracks. It closed for good when the Depression hit in the 1930’s.

Pace attributes metal drives held during World War II for the lack of metal remains today along the railway path.

But unused rails and rail spikes aren’t the only thing that Townsville contributed to the war effort. A couple of hopeful gold prospectors, Joseph and Richard Hamme, discovered tungsten in 1942 just a little ways outside Townsville.

“Within six weeks, they were producing tungsten for the U.S. Army,” Pace said. Tungsten is the hardest naturally occurring metal known and has the highest melting point. The army put a tungsten coating on artillery shells so they could better penetrate brick and other metals.

Townsville has a number of historic churches in its vicinity, including Tabernacle Methodist Church. Most likely, Bishop Francis Asbury was one of the circuit riders that visited this American outpost after it was established.

Nutbush Presbyterian Church, established in 1757, is likely the oldest Presbyterian Church in the Old Granville area. The first building was built in the mid 1700’s; a 1941 wooden addition burned and was rebuilt.

These churches still stand, as well as homes including Machpelah and the David King Glover house, which Pace said may well be the oldest home in Vance County.

Its “brick knobbing” construction – placing pieces of brick as insulation between exterior and interior walls was used in the 1750’s and 60’s.

 

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TownTalk: Around Old Granville – The Ingleside Community

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Most anyone traveling the stretch of N.C. 39 between Henderson and Louisburg probably passes through the unincorporated community of Ingleside with little fanfare, but this general area holds on to some interesting history since it was first established in the decades before the Civil War.

Leave it to local history sleuths Bill Harris and Mark Pace to come up with some tidbits worthy of mention about this northern Franklin County crossroads in the most recent segment of Around Old Granville.

Ingleside was originally known as Macon, Pace said. There was a post office there from 1830-1834, but perhaps to avoid confusion with the other Macon post office in what is now Warren County, the name was changed to Ingleside and remained open until August 1907.

That may have been the reason to change the name, but why was the name Ingleside chosen? Well, there was a home with that name in the vicinity at the time owned by the Littlejohn family from Granville County. It was located about a half mile from the present-day intersection of N.C. 39 and U.S. 401.

It had a similar fate of many other homes of that period – it burned in the 1920’s.

Another home called Monreath is located near Ingleside. This home was built in the late 1770’s and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1975.

There’s also Locust Grove, Harris said, which is a great example of Georgian-style architecture that dates possibly from the 1760’s. Although there’s some speculation that the home has been moved from its original location, not everyone’s on board with that theory. Some point to the discovery of Roman numerals notched on the home’s structural beams as evidence that the house had been disassembled – the numerals would have indicated how the house would be put back together.

“That’s a big house to move, back in the day – and a long ways,” Pace said. Regardless, the home certainly has been around since at least 1790 and was originally owned by Thomas Bell.

“It’s an absolutely gorgeous, gorgeous house,” Harris said.

The property eventually was sold to John Haywood, who served as the state’s treasurer from 1787 until he died in 1827. It was sold to Peter Foster of Gloucester County, VA., one of Harris’s ancestors.

Locust Grove provided room and board to some students of nearby Mt. Welcome Academy in the early 1800’s. According to an 1828 ad, students could stay for $36 a session.

A grandson of Peter Foster was Fenton Garland Foster, an inventor who is credited with a typesetting machine that basically is the forerunner of the typewriter.

Foster had a falling-out with his grandmother, and she kicked him out of the house for not paying rent. He moved to Connecticut and got in on the ground floor with a newish company called Sperry Rand and ended up losing the rights to all his patents.

There are a few more homes in the general area with names that end in Grove – there’s Maple Grove, Elm Grove and Oak Grove, the name of the home where Harris lives.

Oak Grove was built by a son of Peter Foster, Dr. Peter Stapleton Foster. The good doc, born in 1823, built the home in the 1850’s, Harris said. And the house has stayed in the family since its construction.

It is scheduled for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places, fingers crossed, by next week, the proud owner stated.

Just down the road from Oak Grove is Traveler’s Rest, a tiny building that, as the name implied, offered respite from the road for stagecoach passengers.

“It’s one of the most iconic structures” in the area, Pace said.

Right near Ingleside is Rocky Ford, where a structure known simply as the “little stone house” or the “little rock house” stands.

They don’t know much about its history, but there are some theories floating around that it could have been a place where people would have taken refuge if they feared trouble from the Native Americans living close. Another theory has it being a mental institution.

It’s left experts and architectural survey professionals stumped, Pace said. “Nobody really knows what it was used for…it’s just an enigma.”

There’s a lot more to learn about Ingleside and the surrounding area – listen back to the complete conversation on Thursday’s Around Old Granville segment of TownTalk.

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TownTalk: Around Old Granville – 250th Anniversary of the USA in Old Granville County Part 2

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With the nation’s approaching 250th birthday as a backdrop, WIZS’s Bill Harris and local historian Mark Pace continue their conversation about people, places and events from right here in the four-county area, “Old Granville County.”

Franklin County’s Regiment of Militia was officially formed in January 1779, in the middle of the Revolutionary War. This group of men, along with the Granville County militia, fought the British troops in battles across the Carolinas in the early 1780’s, including the Siege of Charleston, Camden and Charlotte before giving the Brits a fit at the Battle of Guilford Courthouse.

Gen. Charles Cornwallis led his troops to major victories, but they met their match at the Battle of Guilford Courthouse.

Local historian Mark Pace said the British technically won the battle, but suffered such heavy casualties at the hands of the Patriots – led by Gen. Nathaniel Greene – that it was a hollow victory.

Just a year earlier, Cornwallis had spent 16 days in Charlotte trying to suppress the Patriots in that area, Pace said. Most likely members of the local militia were there as well and contributed to Cornwallis’s description of the then-small town as a “hornet’s nest.”

(A couple of hundred years later, the NBA team that called Charlotte home took note of the description and now the Charlotte Hornets play in an arena called The Hive.)

The Granville County militia performed well at the Battle of Guilford Courthouse, Pace said on Thursday’s Part 2 of Around Old Granville on TownTalk.

The Continental Line, akin to a national Army, of sorts, Pace explained, got much-needed assistance from states’ militias. North Carolina furnished about 4,000 or so men to the militia, each county calling up recruits or volunteers to join the effort.

Why did the states feel the need to call up militias in the first place?

Well, it’s probably not the only reason, but back in the mid-1750’s, the Colonists were being required to pay all kinds of taxes to the British Crown. But they didn’t have anyone in England to speak on their behalf, which was how the phrase “no taxation without representation” came about.

Two big taxes “that irritated Americans to no end,” Pace said, were the Stamp Act and the Sugar Tax. The Stamp Act taxed printed materials, from wills and deeds to newspapers and playing cards. The Sugar Act is self-explanatory, but it became a thorn in the side of Americans because of what was the most popular drink at the time – rum, which is derived from molasses. And molasses is made from sugarcane juice.

The Granville militia, in the mid-1770’s was under the leadership of Micajah Bullock, who is buried near Bullock’s Church located along U.S. Hwy 15 South near Creedmoor and Col. John Taylor of the Williamsboro vicinity.  Another prominent Granville County resident was Thomas Person, who was a general in the militia. At the time, he was the wealthiest person in the county and he opened up his estate for training purposes during the Revolution.

Pace called Person “the heart and soul of the Revolution in this area.”

During previous “Around Old Granville” segments, Pace and Harris have talked about the significance of Williamsboro, once a prospering center of commerce that today is merely a crossroads that people pass through as they travel N.C. Hwy 39.

The community was named for John Williams, Pace said, whose name can be found among a list of Founding Fathers for this nation.

Williams, along with Robert Burton, John Penn and Benjamin Hawkins, all hailed from the Williamsboro area and were elected to the Continental Congress. Penn signed the Declaration of Independence, but Williams signed the Articles of Confederation. He also became speaker of the N.C. House, and was one of the first N.C. Supreme Court judges.

Sadly, Williams’s home, Montpelier, no longer stands. But it was a hub of activity back then, Pace said.

Montpelier was where N.C. Gov. Burke went when it became  clear he needed to evacuate Hillsborough (then the capital) in advance of Cornwallis’s arrival.

Montpelier is also where Leonard Henderson, for whom Henderson is named, is buried.

In fact, Williamsboro had been considered as the state’s capital, but leaders ultimately chose the more centrally located Raleigh.

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TownTalk: Around Old Granville – 250th Anniversary of the USA in Old Granville County

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Mark Pace was a teenager when the United States celebrated its 200th birthday in 1776. He remembers watching CBS’s ‘Bicentennial Minute’ productions, mini history lessons that aired in 60-second episodes, featuring celebrities and other famous people talking about snippets of history from 200 years ago.

In fact, Pace credits the whole Bicentennial celebration as one of the main reasons that he first became interested in history. Pace, North Carolina Room Specialist at Thornton Library in Oxford, and WIZS’s Bill Harris talked about some key people and events from that time when the 13 Colonies were subjected to taxes they considered unfair and laws they considered unjust.

Massachusetts has Boston and the Tea Party; it has Lexington and Concord, the site of the first military conflict in the American Revolution. The city claims Paul Revere and John Hancock, too.

But North Carolina has the Halifax Resolves, the Battle of Moores Creek and  the area known now as Old Granville County.

No battles were fought in the area that now encompasses present-day Vance, Granville, Warren and Franklin counties, Pace said, but there were many individuals who became quite well known for their roles in the American Revolution.

John Penn, one of the three signers of the Declaration of Independence, made his home in northern Granville County, near what is now Stovall.

But there were other “movers and shakers,” Pace said, who hailed from Granville County.

Take Thomas Person, for example. He was the largest landowner in the county, with about 80,000 acres, Pace said. “But he was a behind-the-scenes guy,” he added. It was Person, he said, who pushed for Penn to be a delegate to the Continental Congress, the group which ultimately produced the Declaration of Independence.

Person was a key player in the creation of the Halifax Resolves, which was drafted in April 1776 calling for independence from Britain – three months before the iconic Declaration of Independence.

That three-month head start is the reason that North Carolina license plates boast “First in Freedom.”

Truth be told, Pace said, in 1775, North Carolina was sitting the proverbial fence about whether to remain loyal to the Crown or to take up the cause for freedom and a new form of government.

The Battle of Moores Creek, which took place near Wilmington, was one example of that divided allegiance.

“It was a significant battle because it was North Carolinians versus North Carolinians,” Pace said. The battle was short, he said, only lasting about 10 minutes. On the Patriot side, there was only one casualty; but on the other side, more than 100 Tory sympathizers were captured.

That short encounter showed the British that they couldn’t count on having support from that part of the American Colonies.

“It was going to be a little bit tougher than they thought to put down this rebellion,” Pace said.

The sentiment around Granville County back then, however, most definitely came down on the side who backed independence from Britain. Pace said residents were an independent-minded group, and support to break from the Crown rule was strong.

One way they pushed back included renaming a part of Granville County that had splintered off in 1764 to form Bute County. By 1779, the area known as Bute County was split again to be known as present-day Franklin and Warren counties.

See, the Lord of Bute was a tutor of the much-maligned King George III, and Pace said the new counties were renamed “specifically for patriotic reasons, in addition to practicality.”

Franklin County is named for Benjamin Franklin; Warren County gets its name from Dr. Joseph Warren, who died in the Battle of Bunker Hill.

Franklin County lays claim to Richard Fenner, who was born in New Bern but who moved to the area after his military service came to an end. Fenner joined the Second Regiment of the Continental Line of the N.C. militia in 1777 and was a lieutenant when taken as a prisoner of war. He was held in Charleston until the war ended.

He came to Franklin County, studied medicine and was elected to be the first president of the N.C. Medical Society in 1799.

As for Warren County, Pace said perhaps its most famous son was Nathaniel Macon.

He became the fifth Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, made him one of the most powerful North Carolinians in the 1810’s and 1820’s.

Before rising to national political prominence, Macon served in the American Revolution as a teenager – probably when he was 16 or 17.

At that time, Warren County was very influential in state and national politics. At one point, the governor, both U.S. senators and a congressman all were from Warren County and in office.

As a private in the American Revolution, Pace said, Macon no doubt developed at an early age a mindset of individualism – and a dislike of the British Empire.

One person from the area – Philemon Hawkins – had been supportive of the British Crown during the Regulator War, which had taken place in North Carolina just a few years prior to the start of the Revolution.

This Philemon Hawkins (there was an original and then many namesakes, Pace and Harris explained), was Philemon Hawkins II, who lived from 1717-1801.

Hawkins was Gov. Tryon’s aide-de-camp during the Regulator War, but then he shifted his allegiance to back the movement for independence.

He is buried in Warren County.

 

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TownTalk: Around Old Granville – Lost and Forgotten Communities

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People find all kinds of items when they clean out parents’ and grandparents’ attics that can provide insight into bygone times – diaries, vintage clothing and photographs all provide glimpses into the past.

But what about whole communities? Once-vibrant places where folks could go for mail, fabric for new clothes and other provisions?

Communities literally got “on the map” because of post offices, general stores and churches.  But road construction and, more importantly in and around the area known as Old Granville County, railroad construction, are what determined a community’s ultimate rise or decline.

WIZS’s Bill Harris and local historian Mark Pace ran through a list of forgotten and almost-forgotten communities, in Thursday’s Around Old Granville segment of TownTalk. Some of those spots in the road are marked with signs – like Huntsville in Granville County – but places like Monroe in the northeast corner of Warren County live on mostly in historical accounts.

This community, named for President James Monroe, got on the proverbial map when a ferry operator named Robinson offered for sale a hundred or so 1/4 -acre lots in that vicinity. He sold a third of them right quick – for the tidy sum of between $35 and $150, Pace said.

The stagecoach stopped there and numerous notables of their day stopped in for visits. There was U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Marshall, for example, and Vice President Aaron Burr, whose name would become forever remembered for killing his political rival Alexander Hamilton in a duel.

There was only one thing missing from Monroe, however, Pace said.

“The railroad didn’t come through,” Pace said. “And that was the end of Monroe.”

As Monroe, went, so went other small communities that started off in relative prosperity but were doomed because the Raleigh & Gaston didn’t come near.

Take Bunn, for instance, in Franklin County. “Old” Bunn is located a little to the east of present-day Bunn. “When the railroad came through, Bunn moved a mile or so to the east, Pace explained.

And then there’s Lynesville, a precursor to Townsville in Vance County. The railroad moved it a little to the west, drying up Lynesville and giving new life to the unincorporated town that remains today.

And before there was Henderson, there was Chalk Level, which boasted a stagecoach stop, a store and more. It was the mid-1830’s when Lewis Reavis gave land for the right-of-way for the railroad that created a dead end for Chalk Level. The train depot was basically in Reavis’s front yard, Pace said. The advent of the railroad created economic prosperity for what would become Henderson and signal a death knell for Chalk Level.

There are still signs for Tally Ho in Granville County, and there’s a Tally-Ho Road, but when the Stem family gave land for the railroad, Tally Ho died off while the town of Stem gained traction.

Before there was an Oxford, there was a community called Harrisburg, Pace said. Harrisburg played a role during the American Revolution as a gathering point for American supplies.

“As early as 1759 Harrisburg was as large and important as Williamsboro,” Pace said, referring to the once-prominent Vance County community that also fell victim to the placement of the railroad.

In Harrisburg, there was a post office, a dozen or so houses, a community center and the obligatory horse racing track, Pace said. But its exact location wasn’t really clear – until recently. He said thanks to some metal detection work and studied of historical records and deeds, Harrisburg was situated in the general area between the Oxford exits 204 and 206 along I-85.

The community of Letha south of Rocky Ford in Franklin County had a post office from 1890 to 1910. There also was Whitaker’s Mill, as well as a store and perhaps a community cemetery.

“The mill no longer stands,” Harris said, “but you can still see evidence of where the mill was. It’s one of the prettiest areas of Franklin County.”

Most likely it was the mill closing that sent Letha into relative obscurity.

Up in northern Granville County, in the Cornwall community, there was Big Rock. It had a post office from 1885 until the mid-1930’s, Pace said.

When he went off in search of any evidence of the place, Pace said he had to travel several miles through the woods on an ATV.

What did he find? Nothing really was left, he said.

Except, you guessed it – the big rock.

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TownTalk: Around Old Granville – Black History in Old Granville County pt. 2

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Historians tend to look at things in chronological order – after all, dates and timelines are an important tool that help put facts and events and people’s actions into context.

Events of long ago can have a ripple effect into the present-day, and WIZS’s Bill Harris and local historian Mark Pace zeroed in on a few of those events and people who are remembered for their accomplishments and for their place in this nation’s history.

In Part 2 of a discussion about African Americans from this area who went on to achieve great things or otherwise make a mark in society, Thursday’s Around Old Granville segment included folks who got their start locally and went on to greater things in the field of music, medicine and the military, among other aspects of society.

During the time of The Great Migration, Blacks left the South for the Midwest and the North in search of life beyond farming and sharecropping.

Pace said between 1900 and 1970, between 5 million and 7 million people left the South. During that seven-decade span was born the Chicago Blues-style of music and the Harlem Renaissance. Blacks were leaving Reconstruction and Jim Crow behind to find fortune and fame elsewhere.

Whatever their reason for leaving may have been, there are numerous notable musicians who call Henderson home.

Shirley Owens, a founding member of the Shirelles, hails from Henderson. So does Johnny Fields, one of the original members of The Blind Boys of Alabama, Pace said. They join other artists mentioned previously in Around Old Granville segments like Ben E. King and Gerald Alston, also from Henderson.

Military service was another avenue for African Americans, Pace said.

Lt. Col. Thomas J. Bullock was a member of the famous 367th Infantry known as the “Buffalo Soldiers” Bullock was killed on Sept. 2, 1918 in France. Of the 22 soldiers from the county who died in WWI, at least eight were African Americans.

Sixty-two service members from Vance County were killed in World War II, and Pace said 16 of them were African American.

He remembered the Christmas brothers – Simon and Walter, Jr. from Williamsboro. Simon, just 19, died of rheumatic fever in 1945; his older brother, Walter, Jr., died of appendicitis in Manila in 1944. He was just 21.

“So many African Americans that served in World War I and World War II didn’t serve in active combat,” Pace said. They were given more menial tasks stateside or keeping supplies moving.

“Nevertheless, they gave their lives for their country,” he said. “And Mr. and Mrs. Christmas sent their two boys off to serve their country and neither of them came back.”

The brothers are buried at Flat Creek Church Cemetery in Williamsboro.

More recently, Lunsford Brown, also of Henderson, was killed in a mortar attack in Abu Gareeb, Iraq on Sept. 20, 2003. He was 27.

His younger brother, Jason, created a park at his Franklin County First Fruits Farm in memory of his brother. The space overlooks a big pond and has a circle of 50 flags around a 30-foot flagpole.

As with the military, the field of medicine was an aspect of society that had to reassess widely-held notions about segregation as the Civil Rights era came into focus.

Granville County had Cheatham Memorial Hospital around 1940 and in Henderson, there was Jubilee Hospital. It was established in 1911 with heavy involvement from the Presbyterian Church, Jubilee was at the time, the only hospital in a 40-mile radius that would treat Black patients.

“It was actually a cutting-edge hospital for its time,” Pace said.

Dr. John Adams Cotton was instrumental in the hospital, as well as Henderson Institute and Cotton Memorial Church.

A new Jubilee Hospital was built in 1959 on Beckford Drive and it operated until 1966 – when LBJ’s Great Society created Medicaid and Medicare and any hospital who wanted to participate in the federally funded programs couldn’t have segregation policies.

“The first places integrated were hospitals,” Pace said. By 1966, Jubilee had merged with Maria Parham.

Well-known African American physicians in the area included Dr. Samuel Beckford, Dr. John Earl Baxter and Dr. James P. Green. Green was instrumental in establishing Toler Nursing Home and he later served three terms in the N.C. Senate.

People of a certain age may remember the name of Jake Gaither, who got his football coaching start at Henderson Institute and had an illustrious career at Florida A&M.

“He was one of the truly great, most famous football coaches ever,” Pace said. He coached from 1945-1969 and ended up with a record of 203 wins, 36 losses, and 4 ties. His FAMU Rattlers won 6 Negro Collegiate Football championships.

Elson Floyd made a name for himself at Washington State University, not as a winning football coach but as a university president who put his money where his mouth was.

Floyd was born in Henderson in 1956 and graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill. “E Flo” as he was known, had a stellar career in education and will be remembered for doing something unheard of – he voluntarily took a pay cut.

“There was a budget crisis at Washington State,” Pace explained, and Floyd said he’d take a pay cut to help out. Turns out, that pay cut was about $100,000.

Floyd died of complications of colon cancer in 2015 at the young age of 59.

Read more about noted African Americans in Ruth Anita Hawkins Hughes’s 1988 book titled Contributions of Vance County People of Color or Andre Vann’s 2000 book in the Black America Series by Arcadia Publishing.

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TownTalk: Around Old Granville – Black History in Old Granville County

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By the end of the American Revolution, the population of what was then known as Granville County was about 8,000 people. Of that number, 40 percent – or 3,200 – were enslaved.

The plantation system created by wealthy landowners was utterly dependent on that labor to get in tobacco and other crops.

But mostly, it was tobacco, said Mark Pace, local historian and North Carolina Room specialist at the Richard Thornton Library in Oxford.

In their tri-weekly discussion Around Old Granville, Pace and WIZS’s Bill Harris reviewed the lives of numerous prominent Black Americans who made a mark in their communities and beyond.

Up until the time of the Civil War, farms were getting bigger and bigger so owners could produce more and more tobacco. That meant the number of enslaved people grew, too. This was a common practice particularly in the northern parts of present-day Vance, Granville and Warren counties, Pace said.

But there also were many free African Americans living in the area before 1865, Pace said. He attributes that to this area’s proximity to the Virginia border. Virginia had passed a law in 1807 that said emancipated persons had one year to leave the state or risk being re-enslaved

“They didn’t want a lot of free blacks,” Pace said of the folks in Virginia, “so a bunch just came across the line.”

Some enslaved people planted crops on land given to them by their owners. They’d work on Sundays – their only day off – to tend their crops. Some planted tobacco, and over time, they saved up enough money to buy their freedom, Pace explained. Until Granville County passed a law in 1800 banning the practice.

One of the most prominent and well-known Blacks in the late 1700’s and early 1800’s was John Chavis. Born in Virginia to parents who were free Blacks, Chavis graduated from Princeton and Washington & Lee University and became a Presbyterian minister and a noted tutor to many children of wealthy White families.

“He was a brilliant guy,” Pace said. “He was very urbane, he was well read, knew the Greek classics. He had a lot in common with prominent wealthy landowners and by all accounts, was an excellent speaker.”

The Presbyterian Church was dedicated to the idea of improving the lives of black people, particularly those who lived in the pre-Civil War South. As a Presbyterian minister, Chavis was a key player in that mission.

Other prominent men included Henry Plummer Cheatham, James Hunter Young and George Clayton Shaw, all born between 1857 and 1863. Cheatham and Young both had white fathers. They became state legislators and their rise to prominence was well known.

Shaw, meanwhile, established Mary Potter Academy in Oxford in 1889 to educate African Americans. He was the principal until 1936. The school later became a private boarding school until the 1950’s when it became a public high school and later a middle school.

At about the same time that Shaw was establishing Mary Potter Academy in Oxford, there were similar efforts in Vance County as Henderson Institute and Kittrell College were being established.

“In the 1880’s, education is starting to become important,” Pace said, and it’s where many local African Americans made their mark.

Founded and operated by the United Presbyterian Church, Henderson Institute was originally established by the Freedmen’s Board. It was a four-year school – the only high school in this part of the state for African Americans, Pace noted.

John Adams Cotton led the school for 30 years. He was a Presbyterian minister and the namesake of Cotton Memorial Presbyterian Church in Henderson.

“The school stayed in business in one form or another until 1971,” Pace said.

The N.C. Conference of the African Methodist Episcopal Church established Kittrell Junior College in 1885-86. The two-year school was housed in the old hotel building in Kittrell for the first few years before James B. Duke dismantled numerous buildings on the Trinity campus and sold the bricks to the Kittrell school as he made space for what would become Duke University.

Warren County native John R. Hawkins was a driving force behind Kittrell College, Pace said. Hawkins joined the faculty and later was elected president of the school.

“People from all over the world came to Kittrell College.”

Now the site of the Kittrell Job Corps, the campus had a series of fires in the early 1970’s that destroyed those structures that had their beginnings in Durham.

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TownTalk: Around Old Granville – Stories Of The American Revolution From Old Granville County

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The phrases “Fourth of July “ and “Independence Day” are used interchangeably to note THE date when the American Colonists declared formal independence from Great Britain.

This year marks the 250th anniversary of that official Declaration of Independence, with ongoing celebrations marking the historic moment.

But it took eight years for the 13 Colonies – including North Carolina – to gain independence from Great Britain. What began in New England in April 1775 made a slow march south. Famous battles that took place in North Carolina include those at Guilford Courthouse near present-day Greensboro and Moores Creek near Wilmington.

And while there weren’t any battles fought in Granville County, local historian Mark Pace and WIZS’s Bill Harris agree that the area contributed mightily to the effort.

Indeed, there were folks who lived in North Carolina in the 1760’s and 1770’s who had grown weary of British rule. In 1771, these “Regulators” took up arms against Gov. Tryon and his troops. They didn’t prevail, but Pace said the effort helped establish a pattern in North Carolina where the people didn’t like an overbearing and authoritative government.

“By the time the unrest from New England came, they were ready,” Pace said.

The colony was fairly evenly divided between Patriots and Loyalists – a third were loyal to the Crown of England, a third supported independence and a third were going to wait to see which side prevailed and then side with the winner. Not surprisingly, wealthy landowners tended to side with Loyalists, with smaller farmers feeling a greater economic pinch from all the taxes imposed on them by the British.

The way Pace and Harris figure it, there were about 600 individuals from the original Granville County that served in the American Revolution. Of that number, about 35 lost their lives in the war.

But “service” isn’t limited to donning a uniform and seeing action on the battlefield.

There were key figures from North Carolina who played integral roles during this eight-year struggle for freedom, among them Thomas Person, Gen. Jethro Sumner, Col. Robert Burton and Col. John Williams, just to name a few.

Person was a general in the militia and Pace called him a “driving force” behind independence.

Although he didn’t see much action on the battlefield, Person was in charge of training troops and, as quartermaster general, provided food, weapons and lodging. He ponied up a lot of his own money to the war effort, Pace said, and had a training facility at Goshen, his plantation near what is now Berea in Granville County.

Like Person, Sumner, who lived in present-day Warren County, trained troops. With his “regular army” background, Gen. Nathanael Greene sought his help and Sumner’s brigades fought in South Carolina at the Battle of Eutaw Springs in 1781. Sumner missed out on the famous Guilford Courthouse battle in March 1781, but his remains were re-interred there in 1891 to commemorate his contributions to the Revolution.

Burton hailed from Williamsboro and lived in a home called Blooming Hope, later changed to Cedar Walk. Pace said he was a significant figure in establishing Patriot troops and getting them organized.

Incidentally, Burton ran a distillery and sold livestock, Pace said. There’s a ledger entry from 1774 that notes the sale of a gray mare to a member of the Transylvania Company that helped to settle Tennessee and Kentucky. Who was it? A fellow named Daniel Boone.

Williams, for whom the Vance County community of Williamsboro is named, was one of the signers of the Articles of Confederation, which was used as a framework for governance between 1775 and 1789, when the U.S. Constitution was finally in place.

The Articles of Confederation focused on keeping a federal style of government weak – there was no president, no executive branch, no national army or national tax as part of these articles, Pace explained.

For the period around the Battle of Guilford Courthouse, the government of North Carolina was moved temporarily from Hillsborough to Williamsboro and legislators stayed at Williams’s house.

Williams’s home, Montpelier, was supposed to be “the nicest old home in Williamsboro,” Pace said.

The home burned in 1885, when it was owned by the Bullock family. The home was rebuilt and that home burned around 2000. Williams, Burton and Leonard Henderson, for whom the city of Henderson is named, are all buried on the property.

If you’d like to research your family tree to find out if your ancestors fought in the American Revolution, check out the North Carolina Room at Thornton Library in Oxford. In addition to online research tools like ancestry.com, the North Carolina Room has a five-volume set of the Daughters of the American Revolution that includes information on every soldier they know of who fought in battles between 1775 and 1783.

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(This story was originally posted on Jan. 29, 2026)

TownTalk: Around Old Granville – National Register of Historic Places In Granville, Vance

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Asking local historian Mark Pace to divulge which old house is his very favorite is akin to asking a parent which of their children they prefer: indeed, there may be one, but you don’t want to admit it.

In their discussion of old homes in the area listed on the National Register of Historic Places, Pace singled out Vance County’s Pleasant Hill, softening his pronouncement a bit by saying it’s one of his favorites.

There certainly are a lot of contenders in the four-county area, and WIZS’s Bill Harris and Pace reviewed a number of homes and other structures listed on the National Register in Vance and Granville counties on Thursday’s TownTalk segment of Around Old Granville.

Now known as Rivenoak, the stately old home near Middleburg underwent a restoration in the late 1970’s and gained its National Register status in 1979.

And as impressive as the home is, with its double-shoulder brick chimneys (special-ordered from Williamsburg), and Greek Revival style with Georgian elements, it’s the family that built it and lived there that adds to its significance, Pace said.

The family gained prominence for developing the railroad in the area, and for a period of more than half a century between 1778 and 1848, there was a member of the Hawkins family serving in state government.

Future N.C. Governor William Hawkins was probably born at Pleasant Hill, built by his grandfather, Philemon Hawkins, Jr. Research confirms that at least part of it was built as early as 1760.

And those chimneys, located on either side of the home? “Those chimneys are really impressive,” Pace said. Each chimney is constructed of about 20,000 bricks – that’s 80,000 bricks. All imported from Virginia.

Homes like Pleasant Hill are nominated and then placed on a study list before getting their official designation.

Not all of the structures are homes, though, Harris noted. There are farms, churches, bank buildings and more that share spots on the National Register.

Local history buffs may be familiar with Henderson’s Historic District, which Pace said contains 91 of the county’s 114 historic structures.

As he explained, Henderson was a pretty big deal from, say, the 1800’s to the 1940s and 50s.

“There was a lot of impressive architecture that you won’t find anywhere else in North Carolina,” he said. There were several architecture firms located in Henderson. Steve Flannagan designed First Methodist Church and the original Henderson High School, for example. And the iconic fire station and clock tower? Yep, local architect Robert A. Bunn designed it.

Another local architect, James Thrower, designed the original courthouse. It wasn’t until Frank Milburn designed a major renovation that the columns were added.

So many of the old architectural gems remain today in Henderson’s historic district, a tribute to the community’s interest in preserving and repurposing buildings with historic significance.

Like Pleasant Hill, there are numerous homes dotting the countryside that once were part of huge plantations. Ashland near Satterwhite Point, Machpelah and Pool Rock close to Townsville, and Ashburn Hall near Kittrell are some examples.

Many have been lovingly restored and meticulously maintained over the years, preserving those architectural details that make them exemplars of the periods when they were built.

But there’s one house on the National Register that was neither showy nor huge, but impressive all the same.

During a restoration project a decade or so ago, workers removed some siding from a structure to reveal a log home that was built in the 1760’s. Tests on the yellow pine in the center part of the home reveal they were felled in the winter of 1763, according to information on the nomination form that was submitted in 2014.

Present-day Granville County has its share of historically significant homes and buildings, too, but like Vance County, the northern portion of the county has more listed on the National Register than the southern portion.

The Allen-Mangum house in the community of Grissom in southern Granville County was built in the mid- to late-1800’s. It was one of more than 30 Granville County structures added to the National Register in 1988.

This coincided with the publication of an architectural survey, Pace said, that is still the “go-to” reference book for historic architecture.

Brassfield Baptist Church near Wilton is the oldest church in the county, built in the 1840’s. It’s on the list, as is the First National Bank Building in Creedmoor.

Pace said the Obediah Winston Farm in Creedmoor is on the list because “it was one of the most intact old-timey tobacco farms in existence,” with outbuildings intact to give a true flavor of what tobacco production involved.

Red Hill, on Townsville Road off Highway 15 near the Virginia line, has a few different styles, thanks to several renovations and additions over the years. The oldest part of the house dates to 1776.

There’s Hill Airy, which has been on the register since 1974, part of the expansive Gregory family holdings.

Another one of the Gregory family plantations, Elmwood, is what Pace calls one of the finest Georgian style homes in Granville County. Built it 1850, it had been abandoned for decades.

Pace said he was sure the home was “as absolute goner.” All the interior features had been removed over the years, leaving just a shell of a building.

But thanks to a renovation project, Pace calls it “one of the most impressive historic structures” in the county.

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(This story was originally posted on January 8, 2026.)

TownTalk: Around Old Granville – National Registry of Historic Places in Old Granville, Franklin & Warren

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Anyone interested in historical architecture and preservation of homes, businesses or other structures that have been around a really long time surely would have a field day in the four-county area. Vance, Granville, Warren and Franklin counties are replete with buildings listed on the National Register of Historic Places, which operates under the auspices of the National Parks Service.

If you’ve ever wondered how these homes, churches and other buildings get on “the list,” WIZS’s Bill Harris can provide a firsthand account: His family home is set to be included on the National Register in 2026.

Harris and local historian Mark Pace ran through a list of properties in Franklin and Warren counties on Wednesday’s Around Old Granville segment of TownTalk.

One of the newest additions to the Warren County list is All Saints Episcopal Church, officially included in August 2025.

The church served the African American community in the Warrenton area beginning in the 1910’s. The famous Delany sisters – known for their longevity – have a connection to the stone veneer church; their father was pastor there in the 1920’s and 1930’s.

Like so many of the historic structures you’ll find on “the list,” All Saints is still standing today. But, as Pace pointed out, “just because a house is on the national register doesn’t mean it will be preserved forever.”

The Little Manor is one such example of a home still listed but is now in ruins.

According to Pace, Warren County has 228 total structures listed on the National Register – 27 individual buildings and 202 included in the Warrenton historic district. Franklin County has 240 structures – 213 of which are situated in Louisburg’s historic district.

A structure must be nominated for inclusion on the National Register, so there needs to be an advocate of some sort to fill out and submit the paperwork that’s involved.

According to information on the National Parks Service website, a property must meet the National Register Criteria for Evaluation that includes the property’s age, significance and integrity.

For all you Baby Boomers out there, don’t be shocked: a structure can be considered historic if it’s at least 50 years old.

But, Pace said, the list includes more than just homes or other structures that have been around for centuries. For instance, the Wheless home in Louisburg was built in the mid 1950’s.

It meets the age criteria – barely – but it’s the style of architecture – reminiscent of the legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright – that put this relatively young home among other homes that have graced the landscape for centuries.

Franklin County has many entries on “the list,” but there are many more located in northern Franklin County than in the southern part of the county, Harris said.

One of the newer additions is the Pearce-Massey-Stallings in southern Franklin County. It was nominated about five years ago and Harris described it as a “handsome” house built in a couple of different sections, the older back part dating back to about 1820.

The front was added about 1910, but the property is also significant because of the large number of outbuildings that are still standing. It’s also remains in the family, Pace said.

Another example of generations of ownership by the same family of a historic property is Cassine, near Louisburg. Descendents of the original members of the Perry family retain ownership of this historic property, which dates back to the 1760’s.

Want to check out some of these examples of historic architecture? Arm yourself with a list available at https://www.hpo.nc.gov/ or bring along the county’s architectural survey and chances are you’ll wend your way by a good number of homes, churches – and if you’re in the Inez area of Warren County – even a fire tower, all considered worthy of inclusion on that NPS’s National Register of Historic Places.

Just remember to drive by – don’t trespass, Pace reminds.

“Most of us are proud of our old houses,” Harris said. So if you happen to see someone out in the yard when you’re driving by, it could be worth a try to stop in and say hello. You might end up getting a tour.

 

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