Once upon a time, the tiny town of Stovall in northern Granville County wasn’t so tiny. In fact, it once claimed the honor of having one of the largest private residences in the state, second only to the famed Biltmore Estate in Asheville.
“Waterloo,” as it was known, was built by James Daniel in 1840 and ultimately had a whopping 48 rooms.
After the Civil War was over, a Mr. Dickerson frequented the area, where he spent time hunting quail. “He liked the place so much, he bought it,” said Mark Pace, local historian and North Carolina Room specialist for the Richard Thornton Library in Oxford.
Pace said it is Dickerson who is credited with a couple of other “firsts” for the town – he was the first person to bring a car there, he had the first graded road constructed and he also had the first telephone, according to Mark Pace,
Pace and WIZS’s Bill Harris chatted about a few examples of such historical lore during Thursday’s tri-weekly TownTalk history segment.
Dickerson lived up North and turned the sprawling home into a hunting lodge. He would travel down on the train, which stopped in Stovall, unload his car, and stay for weeks at the time, Pace said.
“When he came, it was quite a big deal,” Pace said. His office in New York was across the street from the Federal Reserve.
“Not only did he have money, but he had brand-new money,” Pace explained. That new money also prompted rumors that circulated at the time that Dickerson was actually printing money at his Stovall digs.
He did infuse the local economy, however, running a store next to the railroad depot with its own bar and drugstore.
When he got older, Dickerson returned to New York, leaving area residents bummed. It seems that Dickerson paid all his neighbors’ property taxes – in exchange for hunting rights.
The Vance County connection is this: Henderson native Charlie Rose owned the property for a number of years, although the main house burned in 1962, leaving several outbuildings and an overseer’s house.
It’s sometimes difficult to ascertain fact from lore when dealing with stories like these, but that just adds to the interest.
One story from right here in Henderson when, in December 1932, a real estate agent and stock broker driving to Richmond on business vanished, never to be heard from again.
Or was he?
Rufus Sidney McCoin was a well-respected member of the community, Pace said. He served in the state legislature and on the state advisory budget commission, which Pace said afforded him access to some of the state’s influential leaders.
It was the height of the Depression, Pace said, and “there was no indication that anything was going on in his life” that would raise questions or concerns for his welfare.
He was last seen at a gas station just outside Richmond, and that’s where the tracks went cold.
“He bough gas using a Gulf courtesy card…used the phone and took off down the road,” Pace recounted. “And that was the last anybody heard of him.”
Fast-forward a couple of weeks and the chief justice of the state supreme court received a letter postmarked December 25 from Chicago, IL. The letter, of which Pace read a lengthy excerpt, detailed what had transpired two weeks prior outside Richmond.
“It was signed ‘a boy in distress,’” Pace said, adding that the letter still exists. He’s seen it and he’s read it, and he has his own theories as to what may have happened.
The contents of the letter accurately disclosed where to find McCoin’s car – in a garage in Ohio. Also recovered were his wallet, a bloody glove and his eyeglasses.
Although there were alleged sightings of McCoin in the years that followed, the mystery has never been solved.
Which is where educated guesses and speculation come into play, Pace said.
“I think whoever wrote this was an educated person trying to sound like an uneducated person,” he said, questioning why some common words like “hotel” and “gas”would be misspelled while other less common names of towns would be spelled correctly.
The letter itself has stains on it that appear to be blood, but how those stains got on the letter will probably never be known.
To hear more stories of interest, listen to the entire interview at wizs.com.