Tag Archive for: #aroundoldgranville

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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TownTalk: Around Old Granville: Granville Street Library Gets Historical Marker

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The Granville Street Library got its own historical marker last week, distinguishing the 40-foot-by-25 foot building as the first library for African Americans. There were about 100 guests in attendance for the unveiling, performed by the library’s second librarian, Helen Amis.

Amis, now 93, took over from Maude Lassiter, who was the first person to hold the librarian’s position when the doors opened in 1942.

“She kind of made Granville Street the center of the African American community – and really Granville County,” said Mark Pace about Lassiter.

Not only is Pace the North Carolina Room specialist at Thornton Library, he also is president of the Granville County Historical Society. He spoke with WIZS’s Bill Harris on Thursday’s regular history segment of TownTalk about the significance of the library and more.

Pace said Granville County was ahead of its time regarding the library system. “It was the first library to get county funding when it was established in 1936,” he said. Shortly thereafter, a group of prominent African American citizens pushed for a library to serve the Black community. And in 1941, Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration approved $2,200 to build the library.

The city of Oxford donated the land on Granville Street and the building went up. Pace said the building has not undergone any alterations since it opened in 1942.

First Baptist Church owns the property, and has plans to restore it, Pace said.

According to Pace, the library is the third oldest building still standing that once was owned by the county.

Once the library opened, Lassiter – from the Oak Hill community in northern Granville County – got to work to get books. By 1950, there were about 23,000 volumes. A few years later, a bookmobile was taking books to patrons out in the county. The little library averaged 3,000 borrowers a year.

Lassiter got Howard University President Mordecai Johnson to visit the library, as well as historian John Hope Franklin and poet Langston Hughes, Pace said.

“Hughes stayed at Ms. Lassiter’s house and gave readings at the library,” he said, “and at Shaw High School out at Stovall.”

By the time the Civil Rights movement was gaining momentum in 1965, the current Thornton Library in Oxford was ready to open and county officials decided to integrate the library system. The Granville Street Library remained open, but saw fewer patrons. It closed in 1975.

Placement of the marker was a joint effort of the county library system and First Baptist Church, with fund paid from donations made to the North Carolina Room.

“I was just really amazed” at the attendance for the unveiling ceremony, Pace said. “I’m pleased that that many people care.”

 

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TownTalk: Around Old Granville: ‘Angel Of Mercy’ Aunt Abby House

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During the Civil War, Clara Barton was a nurse who tended to wounded soldiers in hospitals. But Franklin County lays claim to another “angel of mercy” who, during that same time, tended to soldiers on the battlefield.

Abby House, known around Old Granville as Aunt Abby House, was born around 1796, and local historian Mark Pace shared some interesting stories about her on Thursday’s tri-weekly TownTalk history segment. House died in 1881 and is buried in her native Franklin County.

House may not be as famous as Barton, who is best known for being the founder of the American Red Cross, but Pace said she’s a good example of a local version.

“She never got married and she was poor, but she made a difference,” Pace told WIZS co-host Bill Harris.

She had no formal education, he said, but she provided what she could to those who needed help, whether it was bringing a dipper of water to a thirsty soldier or blankets from family back home to keep troops warm. Her heart for serving soldiers could have come about because of a personal experience.

During the War of 1812, House learned that her beau, who’d been called into service, was ill in Norfolk. House, who was a teenager at the time, set off to go see him.

“As no other transportation was available, she set off on foot,” Pace said. It’s 180 miles from Franklin County to Norfolk.

Upon her arrival, she learned that not only had he died, but he had been buried the day before. “She turned around and came back,” Pace said.

This sad chapter of House’s life helped chart the course for her future.

By the time the Civil War was underway, a much older House took it upon herself to help, sometimes by “bringing food and supplies and gifts from home to individual soldiers from their families,” Pace said.

Her stern, no-nonsense demeanor, a “feisty” attitude and walking cane combined to “convince” train conductors to allow her to travel at no cost; “they let her go and come as she pleased,” Pace noted.

One of the places she traveled to was Petersburg, reportedly to look after her nephews, two of whom died in the war and five of whom survived.

She was basically destitute by the end of the war, but her good deeds during wartime paid off. A group of former Confederate soldiers, along with other high-ranking political figures in the state, took up a collection and arranged to set her up in a small home on the outskirts of Raleigh near the former fairgrounds.

Gov. Zebulon Vance was one of those politicians. He visited her often, and Pace said there’s a story that goes something like this: In 1872, during Gov. Vance’s second term, he stopped by to visit House. According to his carriage driver, Vance went inside and shortly thereafter, was seen around back, hauling buckets of water into the house.

“She pretty much put him to work,” Pace mused – he may have been governor, but House had a job for him to do and, by golly, he did as she instructed.

In 1876, House attended the state Democratic convention in Raleigh. “She was somewhat involved in politics, which was unheard of at the time,” Pace said.

Paul Cameron, the owner of Stagville Plantation – which made him the largest landowner and largest slaveholder in the state – bid her come sit with him in the crowded space. Among the business that took place during that convention was to nominate Vance as the Democrats’ favorite for a third term as governor.

There was nobody from Clay County, located in the western part of the state, in attendance, and it was decided that House be allowed to cast that county’s vote.

“That is the first recorded incident of a woman casting a vote in North Carolina,” Pace said.

 

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TownTalk: Around Old Granville: More On The Hawkins Family

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If the Hawkins family genealogy were a road map, there would be featured destinations at almost every turn. The descendants of Philemon Hawkins played key roles across the state from governors to railroads, not to mention a couple of Texas cattle barons and the wife of none other than Nat King Cole.

The patriarch arrived in Virginia with his wife from their native England in the early 1700’s and he died there in 1725. One of his sons, also named Philemon, had a son – Philemon III.

This Hawkins had three sons who married daughters from a prominent family in Boydton, VA, explained local historian Mark Pace on Thursday’s Around Old Granville segment of TownTalk.

John Davis Hawkins established what would become the Raleigh to Gaston Railroad. Older brother William was elected governor of North Carolina in 1810 and their brother Joseph established the first medical school in the state – right out of his home in Middleburg, Pace said.

“The Hawkins family is wealthy and talented,” Pace said. “Each generation, no matter what they do, they’re successful.”

In 1836, John Davis Hawkins figured $750,000 would be enough to construct the Raleigh to Gaston rail that would ultimately tie in to the main line to Richmond and beyond; he underestimated by half, and the state of North Carolina came to the rescue.

“They ran out of money…they went bankrupt,” Pace recounted. “The only entity that had the money was the state of North Carolina.”

Eventually, the Hawkins family purchased the railroad back from the state and the rest is history.

The railroad “changed the world here,” Pace said. “It brought the outside world here to this part of North Carolina.” The rail allowed local tobacco farmers to send their leaf to the larger markets in Virginia.

Truly, towns popped all along the rails, including Henderson, Norlina and Kittrell.

But John Davis Hawkins also fathered children of enslaved women. One daughter, Rebecca, was raised by her spinster aunt – Hawkins’s sister – who made sure she received a good education and was well equipped in the arena of polite society.

One of Rebecca’s granddaughters, Charlotte, established the Palmer Memorial Institute, a boarding school for Black children near Greensboro in the early 1900s. Charlotte Hawkins Brown had a niece named Maria, Pace said.

And this is where the famous Nat King Cole intersects with the Hawkins family. Maria, grew up to be a jazz singer and caught the ear – and eye – of the famous crooner.

“Maria had a successful musical career,” Pace said. And Maria became Cole’s second wife in what was widely considered “the social event of the year in Harlem” on Easter Sunday in 1948.

John Davis Hawkins also had two sons who moved to Texas and went into the sugar cane business on a little piece of land – 52,000 acres – south of Corpus Christi.

When the Civil War ended and enslaved people were emancipated, the two brothers cut a deal with the state of Texas to basically have a prison farm. Prisoners would get room and board in exchange for their labor.

When the sugar cane business tanked, the brothers switched to cattle, operating the second largest ranch in Texas.

And then, luck struck again in 1901. That’s right, the brothers struck oil. The old Hawkins house still stands there in Hawkinsville, TX, looking for the world that it was plucked right out of Old Granville County and plopped onto a little tract of land in south Texas.

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TownTalk: Around Old Granville: The Legacy Of The Hawkins Family

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If everyone who was born and raised in the Henderson area took a deep dive into their ancestry, how far back would they have to go to find out that they were related to the Hawkins family?

Even if your last name isn’t Hawkins, local historian Mark Pace said he predicts that up to 20 percent of folks whose families are from Vance County can trace their roots to  Philemon Hawkins.

Pace and WIZS co-host Bill Harris discussed some of the notable figures who descended from Hawkins, who was born in England in 1690.

Between 1778 and 1848 there was a member of the Hawkins family in state government, Pace said.

“They were the family that developed the railroad that fundamentally changed the area,” he said on Thursday’s Around Old Granville segment of TownTalk.

What the Kennedys and Fitzgeralds were to Boston and DuPont to Delaware, the Hawkins family was to this area, Pace said.

Hawkins and his wife first settled in Gloucester County, VA, then in 1735 he moved his family and second wife (his first wife died) to what is now Warren County, NC. With him he brought two millstones and not much else and set up a grist mill in what had to be considered the frontier.

Anyone looking into the history of the area should really take a close look at this family, Pace said. “You’ll go far…by studying the Hawkins family,” whose wealth and influence was unsurpassed at the time.

By the time Bute County was founded in 1763, Hawkins had amassed more than 7,000 acres of land and had more than 100 slaves. Bute County was formed from old Granville County, and in 1779 split again into what are now Warren and Franklin counties.

Hawkins had four sons, who were influential in their own right. One was Benjamin Hawkins, who was the first senator from North Carolina. He went to Princeton and later worked on the staff of Gen. George Washington. He spoke French, and was an interpreter when Washington sought the help of Lafayette and Rochambeau in the Revolutionary War.

One of Hawkins’s grandsons, Philemon Hawkins III was born in 1752. He married Lucy Davis and they lived at Pleasant Hill in Middleburg. Today it’s called Rivenoak and it still stands as one of the best examples of antebellum architecture in the area.

In 1829, Hawkins and wife held a big family reunion, to which more than 131 direct descendants attended.

Hawkins died in 1833 and is buried at Rivenoak.

But this Hawkins also had several children who were successful in life. His three sons – John Davis Hawkins, future NC governor William and Dr. Joseph Warren Hawkins – married sisters, daughters of Alexander Boyd, who founded Boydton, VA.

“It was a real power marriage,” Pace said.

Besides the future governor, Joseph reportedly established the first medical school in North Carolina and John Davis (1781 – 1853) “was a mover and shaker of the second railroad in North Carolina,” Pace said.

But it was their sister who got the train out of the station, as it were. She had married into the Polk family of Raleigh and had the idea to build a wooden track from a stone quarry in this area all the way to Raleigh, where workers were busy rebuilding the State Capitol, which had burned in June 1831.

Her brother John Davis took that idea and, with $750,000 of his own money, set about bringing the railroad to the area.

The towns of Littleton, Henderson, Kittrell, Youngsville and Franklinton have this member of the Hawkins family to thank, Pace said, because “none existed before the railroad.”

 

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