Tag Archive for: #aroundoldgranville

TownTalk: Around Old Granville Churches And Religion

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These days, churches and their congregations are fairly stable entities, occupying structures that have been around for years, decades, and even centuries. But in earlier days, when congregations were first being established, church services outgrew their small buildings and moved to bigger places.

And sometimes, the building moved, too.

That’s what local historian Mark Pace discovered when he went on a field trip to Stovall to check out Grassy Creek Presbyterian Church. Pace, who is the North Carolina Room Specialist at Richard Thornton Library in Oxford, said he had presumed that it was the congregation that pulled up stakes and moved to Stovall. But as he poked around during a renovation project, he saw pegs – not nails – and two-toned timbers that “looked like they’d been moved and replaced.”

He suspects that at least part of the existing church dates back to the 1750’s or 1760’s.

Grassy Creek Presbyterian is the Mother Church of other Presbyterian churches in the area, he said, having been established in 1757.

That’s pretty old – more than a decade older than historic St. John’s, Williamsboro, the oldest frame church in North Carolina, built in 1772.

But it’s not enough that parts, not all, of the church are old, Pace said.

There are plenty of congregations that have been in existence in the area for many years, but the structure in which they worship has either been renovated, torn down and rebuilt or has been lost to fire.

Take Liberty Christian Church in Epsom, for example. Pace’s own relative, Benjamin Franklin Ayscue was one of the church’s founders back in 1859. The church once stood where the Epsom Fire Department is now, and it was called Liberty Hill. The current church was built in 1904.

Emmanuel Episcopal Church in Warrenton was built in 1824 by Thomas Bragg, who also was the chief contractor for the State Capitol in Raleigh.

Brassfield Baptist in Granville County was built in the 1840’s and nearby Banks Methodist started out as an Episcopal Church in 1790; the current building was built in 1911.

Hester Baptist and Mountain Creek Baptist were built by the same contractor; their sanctuaries look the same, but Hester got shortchanged during construction and is 10 feet narrower than Mountain Creek, Pace said.

Tabbs Creek Baptist is celebrating its 250th  anniversary, having been established in 1775. But the current church building is 20th century vintage.

Old Granville County was somewhat of a melting pot, and it’s not surprising that immigrants brought their religions with them. St. Paul’s Evangelical Lutheran Church in Ridgeway was established in the 1870’s to serve the area’s German population.

In 1923, the first Catholic Church was built at the corner of Montgomery and College streets in Henderson, largely to serve people who moved to the area for the textile industry, Pace said.

A larger church was built on Oxford Road to accommodate the growing Catholic population. That site is now a funeral home.

Not to be outdone, Oxford got its own Catholic church in 1955 when St. Catherine’s of Siena was built. It stands empty today, but recently was placed on the National Register of Historic Places. Pace said its unique Mission-style architecture, interior artwork and windows by a liturgical artist Ade Bethune are special features of this building.

Granville County boasts of a most unusual spot to host a church service – a railroad car.

“In 1892, the Catholic Church built two identical chapel cars, St. Peter and St. Paul,” Pace said. “In 1942, with the creation of Camp Butner, there was a need for a Catholic Church,” he continued. So one of those chapel cars was parked on a spur line off Spring Street and from 1942 to 1954, Catholics held mass there.

The Henderson and Oxford congregations merged when St. James Catholic Church was built on U.S. 158.

Listen to the entire interview at wizs.com!

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TownTalk: Around Old Granville: Churches And Religion, Part 2

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Religious scholars and historians have labeled the general time frame between 1760 and 1800 as The Great Awakening, a time of religious revival that basically helped to shape – and reshape – how Christians viewed their relationship with their churches in the era before and after the American Revolution.

Granville County was established in 1746, and by the time the Great Awakening was taking hold in the American Colonies, three main denominations were prevalent here, said Mark Pace, local historian and North Carolina Room specialist at the Richard Thornton Library in Oxford.

They were Baptist, Presbyterian and Anglican – which morphed into the Episcopal Church after the Revolution, Pace said on the tri-weekly Around Old Granville segment of TownTalk.

But Methodism came on the scene in 1784, and with it, a few wrinkles.

“Methodists are interesting,” Pace said, “and it can be a little complicated.”

By the 1870’s, there were Methodist Protestants and Methodist Episcopal churches, he said. One of Henderson’s Methodist Protestant churches was located where the city’s iconic clock tower now stands; another, near McGregor Hall and the police station.

That branch of Methodism became part of the United Methodist Church when it was formed in 1939. The Methodist Protestants preferred to have individual control, much like the Baptists; they didn’t want bishops and dioceses to make decisions for them.

As for the Methodist Episcopal churches, there was a further split between the Northern and Southern churches in 1844 because of slavery, Pace said.

There was even a church of “O’Kelly-ites” in Dexter, he said, that existed until the 1870’s. James O’Kelly was an itinerant Methodist preacher who left the denomination and was an outspoken opponent of slavery as early as the 1780’s.

The Presbyterian Church took root in Old Granville in the 1760’s, again predating the American Revolution. The Mother Church is Grassy Creek Presbyterian, where the Rev. Mr. Stradley preached from 1840 until 1910 or so.

Stradley is but one example of a local pastor “that’s the heart and soul” of a community. Others include Rev. Reginald Marsh and John Chavis. Chavis, a free Black man who fought in the American Revolution and graduated from Princeton, often preached in Presbyterian churches throughout the area.

For more than 60 years – 1850 to the 1910’s – Marsh was a Baptist minister who was instrumental in the formation of Island Creek and First Baptist in Henderson, among others, Pace said.

In those days, church pews were more likely to be filled with black and white people – granted, they often sat in separate sections – but Pace said after Emancipation, there was a movement for freed Blacks to form their own churches and establish their own communities.

Shiloh Baptist Church in Henderson and Big Zion AME Zion Church between Henderson and Oxford are two of the oldest churches that fit that bill.

Many Blacks stayed with the Baptist Church and with the Presbyterian Church after the Civil War ended, but Pace said the Presbyterian Church was probably the denomination most devoted to abolitionism.

And there are a multitude of examples that still exist in the area today – Timothy Darling Presbyterian in Oxford, founded by George Clayton Shaw, and Cotton Memorial in Henderson, founded by Adam Cotton.

Walter Pattillo, a Baptist preacher, founded a lot of churches. He was born into slavery, Pace said, but it is believed he already knew how to read and write before he went to Shaw University to study theology.

Another one of those figures that gets involved in the community, Pace said: “they don’t go anywhere – they just stay here.”

No moss gathered under Pattillo, however. He is associated with establishing a long list of churches throughout the Old Granville area, including Michael’s Creek, Blue Wing near the Virginia line, New Jonathan Creek, Olive Grove, First Baptist in Oxford, Penn Avenue, Flat Creek and Cedar Grove.

Back in those early days, when most people farmed and were, for the most part, self-sufficient, Pace said the church provided the “social fabric” of a community. The church, or meeting house, or wherever the congregations met, were so much more than a place to attend a weekly service.

“People were heavily involved in the church,” Pace said, “and the church was heavily involved in your life.”

Church members could be summoned and tried before a church council for such sinful things as cursing, drinking, gambling, adultery, consistent absence from the church, or – Pace’s personal favorite – “general meanness.”

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TownTalk: Around Old Granville: Restoring Cemetery Monuments

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When it comes to maintaining cemeteries, we’re used to seeing landscape crews out with mower and weed eaters, making sure the grounds are manicured and neat for visitors and other passersby.

But just as important – maybe more so, says Hilary Verville of Verville Preservation in Oxford, is a bucket of water and a soft-bristle brush. You see, she and husband Michael have their eyes on cemeteries’ stone monuments and headstones.

Often, family members are the ones left to tend smaller family plots, Verville said on Thursday’s Around Old Granville segment of TownTalk.

“We love going into the family plots,” she said. And when they get calls from folks about what to do to clean or repair headstones, they’re happy to help.

“Documentation is absolutely the best first step,” she said – take photos of the stone in question, which will help position the stone properly if it has to be removed for repair.

There’s no replacement for proper maintenance when it comes to keeping headstones in good repair. She encourages individuals to become “citizen preservationists” in the fight to keep headstones and monuments in good repair.

“The best thing you can do is to keep it clean with water,” Virville said. “No chemicals, no soap – water and a soft-bristle brush” is the ticket to keep moss, lichens and bird poop from causing damage over time.

“You give it a good scrub. Don’t get super aggressive with it,” she continued. It’s kind of like brushing your teeth.”

And, she said, “never, ever, ever” use bleach or other abrasive cleaner. You WILL damage the stone. It may look nice in the short-term, but you’ll create pitting that will weaken the stone over time.

And if you need assistance, Verville said, “call us – we’re going to help you do it the right way.”

The Vervilles will come out and assess the site and the headstone or monument before coming up with a repair plan and next steps.

Verville Preservation is conducting a workshop at Oakwood Cemetery in Louisburg on Saturday, Apr. 13 from 1:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. for anyone interested in learning from the pros.

Register for the workshop at https://www.louisburghistoricdistrict.com/

 

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TownTalk: Around Old Granville – Drug Stores

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Today’s pharmacies just don’t have the same feel as those “drug stores” from days gone by. Nowadays, it’s all business, filling prescriptions and answering questions at a special window marked “consultation.”

That’s not all bad, by the way. We can thank a fellow originally from New Bern who moved to Oxford back in 1884 for standardizing the drug industry.

Local historian Mark Pace called Franklin Wills Hancock “the father of pharmacies in North Carolina.”

Hancock started at drug store in Oxford and enjoyed a 68-year career. When he died at age 92, he was the oldest licensed pharmacist in the country. His almost seven decades was the longest tenure as a druggist.

In fact, he was the first licensed druggist, Pace said.

Before licensing was required, there was little standardization among drug stores, apothecaries and other establishments.

Henderson is home to two independent pharmacies – Mast Drug and Medical Arts Pharmacy, and both have been around for decades. Bill Mast started Mast Drug in 1962 and Chocky White started Medical Arts in 1971. Their presence in the community has not faded, despite the existence of larger chain stores.

If you’ve lived in the area long enough, you remember Parker’s, Page’s and Woolard’s. Even the Florida-based chain store Eckerd’s had a front-row seat at the Henderson Mall, complete with a lunch counter and grill in its heyday.

In Granville County, there was Puckett’s up in Stovall that was in business from 1934-1984 and Jones Drug in downtown Oxford. Charlie Jones returned to his hometown and ran his drug store from 1955 to 2009. He continued working part-time well into his 90s at one of the chain stores in Oxford.

The best information Pace can find notes that John G. Hall opened the first drug store in Oxford in 1879. When it closed in 2000, it could claim being in operation over three centuries – the 19th, 20th and 21st, Pace said.

It opened just more than a decade after the Civil War ended, when folks used home remedies concocted from roots and bark and other materials found in nature.

“In the early days of drug stores and pharmacies, basically they were winging it,” Pace said. “They had their own cures, their own method of doing things.”

And many of those early pharmacists touted patented medicines, including Owen Davis, a Henderson pharmacist who formulated “Atlas Celery Phosphate Vitalizer” at Atlas Medicine Company in town.

At 50 cents a bottle, it claimed to cure everything from “general debility” to virility problems.

 

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TownTalk: Around Old Granville: Origins Of Religion

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Anyone traveling the area known as Old Granville – that includes present-day Vance, Granville, Warren and Franklin counties – is bound to notice some old churches. Indeed, Vance County is home to St. John’s Episcopal Church in Williamsboro.

The existing building on Stagecoach Road is the oldest frame church in the state, but local historian Mark Pace said it wasn’t given its name until 1825. Before that, it was known as Nut Bush Chapel, and it was not affiliated with any one denomination.

On top of that, it’s not even the original building – that was located about a mile away from the present site.

Those are just a few of the details about one particular church in one particular area of the original Granville County. Pace, North Carolina Room Specialist at Thornton Library in Oxford, no doubt has collected lots of details about lots of churches with deep roots in the area.

Whether it’s Reedy Creek in the far eastern corner of present-day Warren County or Grassy Creek Presbyterian Church along Highway 15 between Oxford and Stovall, religion and the churches built to accommodate the different denominations have been instrumental throughout the history of the area.

The original three denominations, Pace noted, were the Anglicans (which became Episcopal after the Revolution), the Presbyterians and the Baptists.

“All three of them were here by the late 1740’s,” Pace said on Thursday’s segment of Around Old Granville, but added that it’s hard to pin down exact dates.

Circuit riders would come down from Virginia to hold camp meetings and perform mass baptisms. “And then they’d move on,” he said.

Reedy Creek Baptist Church was established in 1743 or 1744, he said, and the Grassy Creek Presbyterian Church in the Gela community was formed by 1750 or 1752.

It wasn’t until 1772 that the current St. John’s Church in Williamsboro was constructed.

“It probably really is Vance county’s most valued relic,” Pace said of the small white church with burgundy shutters.

The Anglicans and the Presbyterians, though smaller in number, were generally more influential in pre-Revolution society, Pace said.

But the Baptists consisted of the working class and they were more of them, he noted.

Arriving a little later on the scene in this area were the Methodists, Pace said. Not only are there plenty of Methodist churches spread out across the area today, but there’s a whole community named for the two men responsible for establishing Methodism in America.

Any guesses?

Thomas Coke and Francis Asbury were sent by John Wesley to spread the word about Methodism to the colonies, North Carolina among them. That’s right – Cokesbury.

Before the Civil War, enslaved people, free Blacks and Whites all worshipped together, he said and enslaved people “could pick what church they wanted to be a member of,” Pace said.

There were numerous Black preachers in the area, among them John Chavis, who was active as a Presbyterian preacher between 1785 and 1835.

Over the years, original church buildings have been replaced for one reason or another, so their congregations are older than the buildings in which they worship, but the role of religion and the distinct denominations that meet on Sunday mornings enjoys a rich history that deserves to be remembered.

 

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TownTalk: Around Old Granville Visits Watkins Township

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At just 10.5 square miles, the Watkins township is the smallest of the 38 townships located in the geographical area once known as Granville County. It was established in 1881 – the same year that Vance County was formed from the larger Granville County, but local historian Mark Pace said while it may lack in size, the Watkins township is rich in history.

Pace and WIZS co-host Bill Harris talked about the origins of the Watkins township, or Watkins “community,” as it often is referred to by locals on Thursday’s segment of TownTalk called Around Old Granville.

Perhaps the most famous person to come from Watkins township was Henry Plummer Cheatham, who was a Congressman during Reconstruction. He served from 1889-1893 and ran the Central Children’s Home in Oxford for 35 years.

“He kept that institution going during some dark times,” Pace said, “through the Depression and the Jim Crow era.”

Another individual who hailed from Watkins township was John Bullock Watkins, a nephew of the two men for whom the township is named.

Born in 1881, Watkins was a lumber contractor in the 1940’s during World War II. Pace said Watkins “disappeared” for a while, and rumor had it he was conducting secret government business.

Turns out, that business was in the state to our west. “He went to Oak Ridge, Tennessee and helped build the facilities where the atomic bomb was developed,” Pace said.

He died in 1949, but Pace said Watkins spent a lot of time writing down stories he’d heard from his grandmother. “A lot of what we know about history here” is because of Watkins’s writings. “He did a great service to history by writing down some of what he heard,” Pace said. Watkins died in 1949.

Today, there are about 500 folks who live in Watkins, which once had a post office, a store and a railroad depot. “The depot may still be standing as an outbuilding on a farm there, believe it or not,” Pace said.

There are two churches that have been around since the 1800’s – Hermon Methodist was built in 1853 and Rehoboth Baptist Church was built in 1883. There are homes still standing that are older than those churches – the Burroughs house, located near the fire department, was built in the 1840’s in the popular Greek Revival style of the period.

Hundreds of Union troops camped there after the Civil War ended in 1865 as they made their way back home as victors.

It was another war, however, that brought the Watkins township some notoriety, however briefly, Pace noted.

It was Dec. 1945 and World War II was raging in Europe. A U.S. plane flying out of the Washington, D.C. area, encountered trouble in the air and crashed in a tobacco field in Watkins, just across from the present-day neighborhood of Huntstone along Highway 158.

“It crashed in Huntstone and bounced over 158 and landed over in the field,” Pace said.

Everyone on board parachuted to safety, and one crew member who went knocking on a door for help “and he was met by a man with a shotgun asking whether he was a German paratrooper,” Pace said.

The incident was kept kind of hush-hush to maintain wartime security, and the military sent in a crew to clean up the debris from the crash. According to Pace, the farmer who tended the field said he “hit a scrap of metal” every once in a while.

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TownTalk: Around Old Granville: Gen. Thomas Person

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Thomas Person of North Carolina has several things in common with George Washington, the first president of the United States of America: Both were generals in the Revolutionary War, both were surveyors, both were involved in politics of the day and both rose from humble beginnings to become wealthy landowners.

We only need look at a $1 bill to see an image of Washington gazing back.

But we don’t have any visuals to inform us as to what Person looked like – heck, historians aren’t even sure where he’s buried.

“Person kind of falls through the cracks, historically speaking,” said Mark Pace,

local historian and NC Room Specialist at Thornton Library in Oxford. But Person, he said, is one of the most significant – if not THE most significant – figures there is in the area known as Old Granville.

By the time he was 21, Person was surveying land for Lord Granville. “He had a reputation for not being a crook,” Pace told WIZS co-host Bill Harris on the Around Old Granville segment of TownTalk Thursday.

He used his job to his advantage, Pace said. By 1792, he owned 85,000 acres in North Carolina and Tennessee – roughly half the size of present-day Vance County.

He may have been the wealthiest man in Old Granville County, and he had 100 or more enslaved persons to work on the four expansive plantations that dotted his holdings.

But he also was a proponent of just government, Pace said. And not just for Granville County, but for the whole state.

This liberal ideology, coupled with the notion that persons of power and influence had an obligation to make their communities better places to live for everyone got Person in trouble from time to time with other wealthy people in positions of power.

One of those people was Richard Henderson, a member of the Colonial Assembly alongside Person.

“Richard Henderson brought some charges up against Thomas Person,” Pace said, formed a 79-person committee of fellow assembly men, and accused Person of “extortion, usury, perjury, purloining of tax money and levying illegal fees.” Henderson had more than 20 witnesses come in from all across the colony to testify, but after several days of testimonies, the claims were deemed baseless.

And that’s when the tables turned on Henderson – the committee made him pay for all the travel costs for those witnesses he’d called to testify against Person.

In 1770, Person found himself in jail in Hillsborough, awaiting trial for making treasonous comments. Gen. Tryon was on his way from New Bern for the trial, and that’s when Person hatched a plan.

Pace said Person desperately needed to get back to Goshen, his plantation located near present-day Berea in western Granville County, apparently to destroy some papers that contained some incriminating evidence.

After promising the jailer that he’d be back just as soon as he’d “taken care of some business,” Person raced to Goshen after supper and was, indeed, back the next morning. To seal the deal, the local preacher vouched for Person’s character.

Pace said Person’s desk – complete with axe marks made by Gov. Tryon’s men looking for the letters – is on display at UNC-CH’s Wilson Library.

“They never could get him on charges,” Pace said.

Although Person married, he and wife Jenna never had children, so there are no descendants. The plantation home at Goshen burned in 1932 and the recently restored Person’s Ordinary in Littleton is one structure that remains from Person’s holdings.

As settlers went westward from Granville County to claim frontier land, Person was honored by having a county named for him. Those names usually are made posthumously, but Person County got its name while the namesake was still alive.

 

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TownTalk: Around Old Granville’s Local Theater History

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Way before McGregor Hall, the Cinema or even Raleigh Rd. Outdoor Theatre in Henderson, patrons of the arts could enjoy a live performance, a silent movie or even a vaudeville show in any number of theaters and performance halls that dotted the community.

Most folks in Henderson remember the Embassy, located just a block off Garnett Street, its interior dripping in burgundy velvet and the stairs leading to the balcony where the “cool” kids hung out.

Local historian Mark Pace said it was billed as “the grandest movie theater in the U.S.” when the Stevenson family opened it in 1940. He joined WIZS’s Bill Harris for the tri-weekly Around Old Granville segment of TownTalk.

The Embassy closed in 1987 and the building was torn down in 1996; its name lives on in The Embassy Square Project, an $8 million privately funded endeavor that gave way to McGregor Hall Performing Arts Center and Perry Memorial Library.

The Stevenson family owned dozens of movie theaters across the state and the former Moon-Glo Outdoor Theatre (renamed Raleigh Road Outdoor Theatre) is one of only a handful of drive-in theaters that are still in operation across the state.

Then there’s The Stevenson, located along Garnett Street near the spot where the former Rose’s store was. The Art Deco style building was designed by Henderson architect Eric Flanagan, who also designed the Henderson High School – now the Center for Innovation for Vance County Schools.

Just down the street from The Stevenson – near Frazco – was The State, another movie house.

Downtowns across the Old Granville area had at least one movie theater, Pace said.

The Orpheum in Oxford on Williamsboro Street was built in 1913. It burned in 1943 and was rebuilt in an Art Deco style that the newly restored location has retained in its new incarnation  as a wedding and event venue.

A group is Lousiburg is trying to do a similar thing and save a theater downtown, which opened in 1935 and was in operation until about 2009.

Oxford also had The Liberty Theater, located near the current location of Hall’s Flooring. The Mills family ran this theater, which was in operation from 1929-1942 for African Americans.

The Carolina Theater occupied a spot near Strong Arm Baking Co. on Main Street in Oxford from the mid 1930’s to the early ‘60’s, Pace said. The building burned down in 1997 when it was being used as a fitness center and now is the site of the Hugh Currin mini-park.

There was a drive-in in Oxford, across from the Food Lion at Hilltop, called the Starlite. Pace said he’s looking for a photograph of this theater, so if anybody has one, he’d love to see it.

 

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TownTalk: Around Old Granville: North Carolina Furniture

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North Carolina is world-renown for many things, including its contributions to tobacco production, textiles manufacturing and the furniture industry. And while much has been written about tobacco and textiles, Granville County native and author Eric Medlin said he was somewhat surprised to learn that nobody had written a book on the history of the North Carolina furniture industry.

So he set about writing one.

“Sawdust In Your Pockets” came out last week and Medlin was a guest on TownTalk’s Around Old Granville segment Thursday to talk about how the beginnings of the furniture industry and its continued presence across the state and what the future may hold in store.

Medlin said the problem with writing the first book about a topic means that there aren’t many secondary sources to delve into when doing research. “I had to dive in and start with company records, newspapers, and things like that,” he said. He said he was fascinated to learn more about the rise of the furniture industry, the increased sophistication of the pieces that were produced and then sent all over the globe.

In the early days, the state had the three key ingredients that fueled the rise in the industry: cheap labor, access to cheap woods and access to railroad connections. Medlin cited small towns that had small furniture operations – Goldsboro and Dunn, for example – but they were overshadowed by the competition of agriculture to become leaders in the industry.

And although the manufacturing operations were called “factories,” the furniture factories weren’t like the giant textile factories with mechanized looms, Medlin said. And assembly lines weren’t the rage yet, either. The workers were equipped with basic tools like electric saws and staple guns to produce the furniture.

North Carolina, Medlin said, remains the leading furniture-producing state in the U.S., but mammoth local furniture manufacturers have scaled back in recent years, thanks to outsourcing to other countries where labor costs are lower.

The future of the state’s furniture industry, Medlin predicted, lies in the production of customized, bulky pieces – things that are not cost-effective to put in shipping containers and load on ships to sell back in the U.S.

Medlin’s book can be found on Amazon, at Barnes & Noble, the University of Georgia Press and Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh.

 

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TownTalk: Around Old Granville: Cemetery Preservation In Warren County

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We’ve probably all seen them dotting the landscape: small cemeteries – fenced or not – that appear to pop up in odd places along the roadside. But there probably many more gravesites that we don’t see in our daily travels – they may be overgrown with weeds, or shrouded in wooded areas well off the road.

Local historian and genealogist Emerson Foster hunts for this type of cemetery. But he doesn’t’ stop when he’s found one – he goes to great lengths to clean it up.

“I see a lot of these graves with headstones falling over and in disrepair,” Foster said on Thursday’s Around Old Granville segment of TownTalk. Along with a handful of his genealogy friends, Foster said they try to right fallen headstones and clean them up.

These are largely family cemeteries, and Foster said he’s located numerous cemeteries in his search for where his own ancestors are buried.

“The last cemetery we went to was the Green family cemetery” in the Snow Hill area of Warren County, Foster told WIZS’s Bill Harris and Mark Pace.

He has relatives that belonged to the Greens that descended from Thomas Edward Green, he said.

As the older members of a family die off, Foster said, the locations of some of these family cemeteries gets lost, so Foster relies on information from relatives or others who may live near a cemetery to help him locate them.

The Green cemetery has 35 graves, five of which were where children are buried. But there was only one marker with the name “Davis,” he said. “Everybody else is marked with field stones.”

Undeterred, Foster used death certificates to confirm which people are buried in that particular cemetery. The death certificates contain names, dates of birth and death – and where the body was buried.

“They all said ‘buried at Green family cemetery,’” he noted.

He located another cemetery after speaking with a woman who lives across the road from where he suspected the cemetery to be. “She pointed us in the right direction. We just kept walking until we found it – it’s deep in the woods,” Foster explained.

He’s been at this for four or five years, and he said he always looks forward to the fall – that’s prime walking-in-the-woods-weather – fewer bugs, too.

These sometimes forgotten cemeteries often are on private property, so Foster recommends trying to locate the owner and request access to the property.

“A lot of these older cemeteries that are way out in the woods, (the landowner) is not even aware that there’s a cemetery there,” he said.

 

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