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2020 02 Davie Dossier, April 2020 page 1 DAVIE DOSSIER Issued by Davie County Historical and Genealogical Society Mocksville, North Carolina April 2020, Issue 2 Cooleemee Davie Dossier, April 2020 page 2 DAVIE COUNTY HISTORICAL AND GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY President, Linda Leonard Vice President, Marcia Phillips Secretary, Pat Mason Treasurer, Marie Craig Board of Directors, Claude Horn Dossier Editor, Marie Craig Webmaster, Marie Craig Websites for Davie County Research: Our Website is https://sites.google.com/view/dchgs . Historical Data to research is http://www.daviecountync.gov/440/Genealogy-Local-History . FamilySearch Wiki for Davie: http://wiki.familysearch.org/en/Davie_County%2C_North_Carolina FamilySearch records for Davie: https://www.familysearch.org/search/catalog/results?count=20&placeId=191015&query=%2Bplace%3A%22United%2 0States%2C%20North%20Carolina%2C%20Davie%22 REVISED URL for Davie County GenWeb: http://ncgenweb.us/davie/ Davie County Public Library: http://www.daviecountync.gov/440/Genealogy-Local-History . Genealogy data in Bibles, Daniel Boone Family info, church history, and Flossie Martin records. Back issues of the Davie Dossier are online at http://www.daviecountync.gov/440/Genealogy-Local-History . FindAGrave for Davie County: https://www.findagrave.com/cemetery/search?name=&locationId=county_1680&page=1#cem-2640813 Digital Davie: https://www.digitalnc.org/exhibits/digital-davie/ Cemeteries in Davie: http://cemeterycensus.com/nc/davie/ Meetings are on the fourth Thursdays at 7 pm at Davie County Library History Room. January 23: old movie night, H. Lee Waters movies of Davie County in the 40’s February 27: Larry Campbell, rank and file member of the Jamestowne Society Central Carolina Company, presented the events of four centuries ago in 1619 that shaped Colonial America. March 26: canceled Daniel Boone Festival, canceled FUTURE CONFERENCES National Genealogical Society: May 20-23, 2020 in Salt Lake City. This has been changed to a Virtual Conference on May 20, 2020, 11:00 – 7:00 Eastern time. See https://conference.ngsgenealogy.org/covid-19/ for details. Federation of Genealogical Society: September 2-5, Kansas City MO. See https://fgs.org/annual-conference/ Note: at the end of 2020, these two societies will merge. RootsTech: February 26-29, 2020 in Salt Lake City. See https://www.rootstech.org/salt-lake/ Talks are archived. Davie Dossier, April 2020 page 3 Cooleemee In the southern part of Davie County is the town of Cooleemee. It was formed about 1890 when the cotton mill was built there. The adjacent South Yadkin River was the reason that Richmond Pearson built his grist mill much earlier alongside the river because of the water power. In the early days, the cotton mill also used water power. The town was thriving and full of employees, churches, and businesses. It was the time of change as farmers decided to move to Cooleemee and work in the mill. To learn more about the history of Cooleemee, you need to read Jim Rumley’s excellent history book Cooleemee, The Life and Times of a Mill Town. It is available for purchase at the Textile Heritage Center at 131 Church Street, Cooleemee, NC 27014. You can read more information about this museum on their FaceBook page. The main museum is the home of the former plant manager. A mill village home, down the hill from the museum, is open to the public and is representative of what a typical mill worker’s home would have been. You can watch a video describing the museums at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CK2_KeAGyU. The black and white film footage is from H. Lee Water’s filming of Davie County. The reason that there are museums to tour in Cooleemee, is because of Jim and Lynn Rumley who have been founders and directors, along with many volunteers, of the Cooleemee Historical Association. Lynn served as mayor of Cooleemee for several years, and Jim continued his research and documentation of former cotton mill employees and literature of the area. Jim Rumley presiding at a ceremony in Pearson Cemetery to place a SAR marker at the grave of Richmond Pearson on March 22, 2009 Jim and Lynn are both retired now, but living in Cooleemee. Jim’s health is failing, unfortunately. The officers of the Davie County Historical and Genealogical Society and its members would like to thank Jim and Lynn Rumley for their outstanding work in promoting and documenting the history of Davie County. Jim & Lynn at 1993 Second Textile Heritage Festival Davie Dossier, April 2020 page 4 The Mill Town That Never Closed, June 2012, copied from article: written by Carla Burgess. https://www.carolinacountry.com/carolina-stories/the-mill-town-that-never-closed “The Textile Heritage Center in the town of Cooleemee has humble roots. It began as just a bulletin board behind plexiglass at the post office. Today it fills a historic two-story house that was built for a general manager of the local cotton mill in 1923. The mill was erected on the banks of the South Yadkin River in Davie County at the turn of the 20th century and operated until 1969. In its heyday, in the 1940s, some 1,800 workers heeded its whistle. Many of those workers and their descendants still live in Cooleemee, a town of 960 people, and their memories have lent authenticity to a sweeping, homegrown history project. “Shortly after word got out in 1989 that the Cooleemee Historical Association wanted to record old- timers’ stories about mill life, the tape was rolling. Men and women, mostly from the World War II generation, shared not only their stories of life on the work floor, but also what it was like living within the confines of a town built for one purpose: to turn cotton into cloth. Some of what they said surprised the interviewers. Rather than lengthy tales of deprivation, Cooleemee’s former doffers, carders, spinners and weavers described working in a tough environment while having a measure of autonomy that made them feel valued. They also recalled a tight-knit community where neighbors were more than co-workers — they were like family. “The town, owned by the mill, was provincial and cosmopolitan at the same time. On the one hand, mill families could maintain many of the traditions of self- sufficiency they’d had as farmers. Their homes sat on lots big enough for a garden, a few chickens and a smokehouse. On the other hand, they had some city-style amenities, like a department store, drug store, I, library and even a movie theater in the town square. Millworkers had their own traveling concert band, and the Cooleemee Cools had their own lighted baseball field and grandstand. “The duality in old Cooleemee created what Lynn Rumley calls “an industrial folk culture.” Rumley is the director of the Textile Heritage Center and the town’s mayor. She is a passionate curator of Cooleemee history and the southern cotton mill culture at large. Rumley was usually the interviewer with whom Cooleemee’s elders shared their recollections. To date, the center has amassed 120 hours of video from 30 subjects. The center has also archived thousands of pages of written histories from 151 mill families. “Some of the personal stories have illuminated the somewhat unique story of labor relations in Cooleemee. Given the comparatively small foothold of organized labor in the South, it may surprise a lot of people to learn that the Cooleemee mill was unionized, though it came about atypically. When 65,000 North Carolina textile workers walked off their jobs during the industry-wide General Textile Strike of 1934, the Cooleemee mill hands were not among them. They believed that company officials promised they would not thrust upon them the new, increasingly common practice of “scientific management,” in which workloads were doubled and tripled and mill workers toiled to the tick of the stopwatch. The so-called “industry engineers” even timed bathroom visits. The general strike of 1934 was an abject failure in the South, with organizers unable to enlist enough members to successfully bargain on the workers’ behalf. “In Cooleemee, company higher-ups eventually brought in “time study managers,” prodding workers to operate more machines in less time. “In place of them sticking with us, they really stuck it to us,” said John Henry Nail, who was in his 80s when historians interviewed him. “(They) brought the checkers in here and put more work on us.” For decades, mill hands had worked hard in exchange for not only a paycheck, but some unofficial fringe benefits — such as time off to kill hogs, go hunting, tend to a sick family member or even take an extended break from the work floor when they were caught up. “My father was the overseer in the spinning room,” said former mill hand Fred Pierce. “When they doffed all the frames they’d just go up the river and take a swim, you know, until the bobbins got full again, and then he’d go out and whistle or holler and they’d all come back in and start doffing again.” Cooleemee workers wouldn’t stand for the loss of independence. In 1937, they unionized, with 90 percent of the workers paying dues. “Cooleemee’s former mill workers and their families have contributed way more than words to the story of their past. As news of the history project spread, people shook out their attics, dug into cedar chests, and pilfered scrapbooks and photo albums. More than 3,000 old photographs have been donated to the center and digitized for its archives. The Mill Village Museum, housed on the center’s first floor, is filled with artifacts that document the routines of work and play, school, worship and home life. There’s also an auxiliary building, the Mill House Museum, an original mill house furnished with donated items —  including a wood stove, beds, quilts, tables, armchairs and rockers, enameled bowls, cast iron pots and pans, butter churns and canning jars — everything a typical mill family would have used in the early 1930s. Almost all the artifacts were collected locally. “Cooleemee’s cotton mill closed in 1967, putting its last 750 workers on the street. A closing often spells the death of a mill town, but most people stayed here, even if they had to drive out of town to work, says Rumley. The Cooleemee Historical Association did a survey in 1996 and found that 75 percent of people living in the original mill houses were either native Cooleemeans or had Cooleemee roots, she says. “I think Cooleemee is one of the few mill towns in the South that have gone through a closing and remained intact in terms of a community.” The mill building and some 330 original houses still stand, and now there are enough memories to fill them.” Davie Dossier, April 2020 page 5 Archived Records of Cooleemee For more in-depth research about Cooleemee, the University of North Carolina, has about two thousand items in the Southern Historical Collection at the Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library. This is their description of the materials: “The records of the Cooleemee Historical Association (CHA), founded in 1989, document the work of Jim Rumley, Lynn Rumley, and the CHA board to establish and operate the Textile Heritage Center and Mill House Museum in Cooleemee, N.C.; to promote the study of North Carolina's cotton mill culture; and to preserve and disseminate the history of Erwin Cotton Mill No. 3 and its company town in Davie County, N.C., that were operated by Cooleemee Water Power & Manufacturing Company and later Burlington Industries from 1892 to 1969. Records include cotton mill family life surveys completed by former mill town residents; correspondence; financial reports; materials related to the annual Textile Heritage Festival; educational materials for the CHA program "Discovering Our Heritage" for elementary school children and for the Kids' History Club; materials pertaining to the Southwide Textile Heritage Initiative including its publication Bobbin and Shuttle; museum records including visitor logs of the Textile Heritage Center; CHA publications including the newsletter Cooleemee History Loom; and CHA promotional materials.” *********** Moving to Cooleemee, 1940 Fiction by Marie Craig based on Research My teacher wants me to write about my life for the past year. So I’ll try to remember all the changes and the things I’ve been doing. A year ago, my parents, my three sisters and I lived on a farm in Sheffield. My daddy said all these girls weren’t as much help on a farm as four boys would be. But we tried to help by handing leaves of tobacco to be strung up and put in the tobacco barn for curing. We’d take him supper down to the barn where he had to stay and keep the fire burning at the right amount of heat. We helped mama in the kitchen and in the rest of the house by sweeping and making beds. I really didn’t like to hoe in the garden because it was so hot. I’d get sunburned and then be so miserable. But we all worked hard to provide a nice home and a garden. Daddy would load up crops and tobacco every fall and drive to Winston to sell them. He’d always bring us something back from the store. It wasn’t much but it seemed wonderful to us. My daddy knew somebody who worked in the cotton mill in Cooleemee and asked him all about that. The man had a nice car, and we had just a real old truck. All us girls had to ride in the back of the truck, but it was fun unless it was cold weather. Daddy asked him about the kinds of jobs, where to live, and how hard it was. I remember it was in March last year, 1940, when we all loaded up most of our furniture and clothes and canned food and moved into a house in Cooleemee near the mill. The people we rented from in Sheffield found somebody else to live in the house we left. We took our dog, a cow, and a few pigs to put into our backyard. Mama took her gardening tools so she could raise food for us. I was excited but sad to leave our neighbors who had children our age. It took several trips to get every- thing there. After we got moved in, we had more room for the six of us. My daddy left early in the morning to go to work at the mill. We would all hear the whistle when it was time to start. He took his lunch each day, and we girls would walk toward the mill in the late afternoon to meet him and walk home with him. We found more children to play with and learned that the mill had things like picnics, music, a band, and churches nearby. The nice brick school was real close to our house. I still missed the farm and all the animals and big fields, but I soon learned to enjoy having things closer to us. My daddy was able to make some money, and we bought a used car since we didn’t need a truck anymore. It is a scary time with the war going on. My mama puts up blackout curtains each night so the light won’t shine out. She is real careful with our rationing coupons so that we can get food and gasoline. We don’t drive the car very much because it’s real hard to find tires for it. The tires are all going overseas. My daddy hasn’t had to go fight, but we are so worried that he will. A lot of the men at the mill were drafted. He seems more tired at night than when he’d been a farmer, but he says he is doing this to help all of us have a better life and get some money to spend. When my youngest sister starts school next year, my mama says she’s going to get a job at the mill also. I think that’ll be too hard for her, but I know we’ll help her with the housework and the younger girls. I’m glad I moved to Cooleemee. We’ve been able to buy nicer clothes to wear to school and I’m learning more than I did in the one room schoolhouse in Sheffield. I like my teacher, and I’m glad she asked me to write this paper. Davie Dossier, April 2020 page 6 The Daguerrotype By Linda H. Barnette It all began many years ago when my grandmother, Blanche Dwiggins Smith, gave me a daguerreotype of one of her ancestors who was killed in the Civil War. I wish I had asked her more about it, but being young and busy earning a living, I did not have time to pursue it and just let it stay in a dresser drawer. Now that I have retired, I devote much of my time to genealogy and writing. So I have not only discovered who was in the picture, but that information also led me to find out how many others from her family fought in the same war. The family information shared here is my own, but the specifics about the dates and regiments came from the following book: North Carolina Troops, published by the North Carolina State Department of Archives and History. As it turned out, the daguerreotype is a photo of her grandmother’s brother, John Leach. He was born in Davie County in 1831, the son of James Leach and Mary Kurfees of the area known as Calahaln. A farmer as were most people in that era, he married Mary Warren in 1856. He enlisted in the Confederate Army as a private on August 6, 1861 in Company F, 13th Regiment of North Carolina soldiers. He rose quickly in the ranks, became a sergeant, and served until wounded in the Battle of Chancellorsville, Virginia. Death followed in the army hospital in Richmond on August 23, 1863. Apparently, he was buried in Virginia because there is not a cemetery location here in his home county. John’s brother David, also my grandmother’s uncle, was a farmer here in Davie County who married Mellina Warren in 1842, enlisted in the Confederate army at age 25 in 1861. As fate would have it, David was wounded on the same day and in the same battle as his brother John. He, however, even after being wounded again in October of 1864, lived to return home. When he did, he resumed farming, and he and Mellina had five children. David died in 1892 and is buried along with most of my Dwiggins relatives in the Center United Methodist Church Cemetery in Mocksville, NC. One other Leach brother also served in the war after enlisting as a teenager. James Leach, born here in 1844, was listed as a farm laborer on his father’s farm, and joined the Confederates. He was killed at Cold Harbor, Virginia, on June 1, 1864. Place of his burial is also not known. I can only imagine the grief and suffering of his parents and other family members upon losing not one, but two, young men in a war in which they likely had no stake. They were not, to my knowledge, slave owners themselves. My grandmother’s grandfather, James Patterson Dwiggins, also fought in the Civil War. Born in Davie County in 1805, James was the son of Ashley Dwiggins and Mary Holman Dwiggins. He married Sarah Penry Leach in 1860, and their first child, John, was born in 1861. James joined the army at age 22 and was a private in Captain William E. Booe’s Partisan Rangers of the 63rd Regiment of North Carolina troops. He made it through the war unscathed, returned home, farmed, and he and Sarah became the parents of four more children, one of whom was my great-grandfather, William Joel Franklin Dwiggins, who lived across the street from us and died in 1952 when I was 11 years old. What a treasure it was to know him!! Daniel Holman Dwiggins, also went to battle, survived, came home, farmed, and with his wife had 7 children. I don’t know the details, but have read enough to surmise that he was never stable after the war. Finally, my 3rd great-grandfather, Joel Penry, who married Ursula Dwiggins, the daughter of Daniel Dwiggins, my first ancestor who came to Davie County, and Ursula Crews Dwiggins, also fought for the Confederate cause. He was born in 1821 and was 42 years old when he joined the army in 1863. He was paroled in Salisbury, North Carolina, in 1865 and lived until 1872. He is buried in the old family cemetery here. There were many other relatives of my grandmother who went off to war. My point here is to share with you how families at that time eagerly sacrificed to fight for their beliefs. Most of those that I mentioned were simple farmers who had nothing to really gain by fighting other than the pride of knowing they were willing to risk it all for a cause. In those days also, war affected almost every family in the area. I am so glad that I decided to do this research as I did it to honor those soldiers in my family and all families during that time. I shall always remember the face in the daguerreotype, so young and innocent and doomed. Davie Dossier, April 2020 page 7 BOOKS AND MAPS FOR SALE, prices include postage and tax; check to DCHGS (no cash or credit card) Title Author Total Cost # Cost Davie County. A Brief History, paperback James W. Wall, 128 pages $6.50 The Boone Families in Davie County Wall, Howell Boone, Flossie Martin $8.00 Davie County Marriages 1836-1900 Nancy K. Murphy $25.00 Davie County Marriages 1901-1959 Nancy K. Murphy $25.00 Davie County Cemeteries, a 2-volume set D.C. Historical/Gen. Soc. $55.00 1850 Federal Census-Davie County Forsyth Genealogical Society $15.00 1860 Federal Census-Davie County Nancy K. Murphy and Everette Sain $20.00 1870 Federal Census-Davie County Nancy K. Murphy and Everette Sain $20.00 POSTCARDS OF DAVIE CO. SCENES, (set of 8) $2.50 Maps: Prices below, postage is $5, mailing tube is $2; example: all 4 maps cost $12 Lagle Land Grant Map, $2 Hughes Historical Map, 1700's, drawn in 1977, $1 J.T. Alderman Map, 1887 , $1 Wilson F. Merrell Map, 1928, $1 Davie County Heritage Book, cost is $45; Make check to Davie Co. Heritage Book. Use DCHGS address below. The Historic Architecture of Davie Co., $13; History of Davie County, hardback, by James W. Wall, $13 . Make check to Davie County Public Library. Use DCHGS address below. Davie County History Books by Marie Craig. Check to Marie Craig, 139 Sterling Dr., Mocksville NC 27028: History of Davie County Schools, 318 pages, has photos, locations, longitude/latitude, names of students, and teachers. There is an 18 page index of 3,222 names. 318 pages. $43 Davie County in World War One, 670 biographies of Davie men and women who served, photographs, old letters, description of military bases, and extensive index. 400 pages. $45 Davie County Veterans’ Memorial, has lists of all war deaths, biographies and photos of WW2, Korean, Vietnam, and Beirut Bombing deaths. Tom Ferebee’s talk at the dedication in 1987. 190 pages. $33. Remembering Davie County Protection and Service Personnel, contains biographies of the five law enforcement personnel who died on duty and also photos and descriptions of the monument erected in their memory. The monument also honors all first responders in Davie Co. Paperback, 14 pages. $17. Davie County in the Spanish-American War, contains biographies of the 15 men who served in this war and the resulting war in the Philippines. 65 pages. $20 Mary Ellen’s Diary, 1924, the fictitious diary of a twelve year old girl in 1924 in Mocksville. Included are clippings and illustrations to verify the events. Paperback. 49 pages. $15. Looking Back at Davie County II by Charles Crenshaw and Ron Smith. $45. Mail orders to Charles Crenshaw, 421 Park Avenue, Mocksville NC 27028 Davie County Mavericks, Four Men Who Changed History, the stories of Daniel Boone, Hinton Helper, Thomas Ferebee, and Peter Ney in Davie County, by Marcia Phillips. $25. Mail orders to Marcia Phillips, 315 McClamrock Road, Mocksville NC 27028. DCHGS, 371 North Main Street, Mocksville NC 27028 Davie Dossier, April 2020 page 8 Davie County Historical and Genealogical Society 371 North Main Street Mocksville NC 27028 If you would like to receive your Dossier as a PDF attachment in an E-mail instead of a paper copy, please send an E-mail message to the editor at dchgslist@gmail.com. Please state “E-mail my Dossier instead of mailing a paper copy” and include your E-mail address. This saves money, time, postage, effort, and paper. The number beside your name, above, shows the year for which you last paid $5 dues. Example: if you have a 19 by your name, you have paid dues through 2019. DUES CAN BE PAID FOR 2020 NOW. MEMBERSHIP for a calendar year is still just $5.00/year. Life Membership is $100 per person. We are 501(c)(3) and dues are tax deductible. Below is a registration form for your use; checks, payable to the Society. DAVIE COUNTY HISTORICAL AND GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY (DCHGS) Davie County Public Library, 371 Main Street Mocksville, North Carolina 27028 NAME ________________________________________________________________________ ADDRESS _____________________________________________________________________ E-MAIL ADDRESS ______________________________________________________________ Send my copy by E-mail instead of paper; yes, no