2021 03 Davie Dossier, July 2021 page 1
DAVIE DOSSIER
Issued by
Davie County Historical and Genealogical Society
Mocksville, North Carolina
July 2021, Issue 3
The 1840’s in davie
Davie Dossier, July 2021 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: https://sites.google.com/view/dchgs .
Description of books and maps for sale: https://sites.google.com/view/dchgsbooksmaps
Historical Data to research: 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
Davie County GenWeb: http://ncgenweb.us/davie/
Davie County Public Library: http://www.daviecountync.gov/440/Genealogy-Local-History .
Genealogy data in newspapers, Bibles, Daniel Boone Family info, church history, and Flossie Martin records.
Back issues (1987-2016) and index 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 supposed to be on the fourth Thursdays at 7 pm at Davie County Library History Room.
NATIONAL CONFERENCES
National Genealogical Society: May 19-22, 2021, online. See https://conference.ngsgenealogy.org/
(NGS has merged with Federation of Genealogical Societies.) 2022 has not been announced yet.
RootsTech was February 26-29, 2021, online. See https://www.rootstech.org. Archived online.
North Carolina Genealogical Society has webinars on Wednesdays. https://www.ncgenealogy.org/webinars/
Davie Dossier, July 2021 page 3
The Episcopalians Have Arrived!
By David Joyner, president of DCHGS in 1998
Davie County was a mere nine years old when the Episcopalians arrived in Mocksville!
St. Phillips Episcopal Church was organized circa 1845. The Church was located on Salisbury Street,
near the current intersection of Maple Avenue. The land was deeded from Mrs. Catherine Pearson, widow of
Congressman Joseph Pearson of the District of Columbia , for the sum of $10.00. Trustees named on the deed
were: R.M. Pearson, Lemuel Bingham, J.A. Lillington, G.A. Miller, George Pearson and W. Beatty dated
March 7, 1845. The brick Church was dedicated in 1845 and was torn down in the late 1880's. A frame church
was erected on the same site around 1899 and it was torn down about 1933. Churches of Davie County,
Photographic Study by Thomas L. Martin, 1957, page 67).
The Church was named for Saint Phillip, one of the twelve Apostles of Jesus Christ. He was a Gal ilean
from Bethsaida and was martyred in Greece for his Christian beliefs.
Among the early ministers that served St. Phillips were Rev. Thomas Davis, Rev. John Haywood Parker,
Rev. Oliver S. Prescott, Rev. James G. Jacob and Rev. George Wetmore. The frame Church (built about 1899)
was served by Rev. Royall G. Shannon -house, Rev. Mr. Osborne, Rev. T.S. Boost, Rev. T.L. Trott and a Rev.
Mr. Brown (Enterprise, 1933)
A review of the Journals of the Episcopal Diocese of North Carolina note s various insights to the life of
the first Episcopalians in Davie County:
The 1842 Journal of Convention notes “At Mocksville, we have preached regularly on one Sunday of
each month, and occasionally at intervals. 3 infant Baptisms were reported am 2 communicants.” Also
in 1842, Bishop Levi Silliman Ives visited Mocksville and preached twice and confirmed 4 persons;
“The Rev. Mr. Davis presented an application from the congregation of St. Phillips Church, Mocksville,
to be admitted into union with the Convention of the Church in this Diocese … Lay delegates to the
Convention were Dr. William H. Beatty & Lemuel Bingham (1845);
“10th Sunday after Trinity.{1845}.. in the evening of the same day, officiated at Mocksville. In this place
the friends of the Church, with a commendable zeal, have taken steps for the erection of a Church
edifice, which, I am informed to be ready for consecration some time in the ensuing Summer.”
Statistics reveal 1 adult baptism and confirmation and 19 communicants (members) in 1846;
It is worth noting that when the Bishop visited Mocksville (usually annually), he also visited other
Episcopal Churches in the general area including St. Luke's, St. Andrews, St. Georges and Christ Churches in
Rowan County and Redemption (now Grace) Church in Lexington. Record s also note the visitation of the
Bishop to an Episcopal congregation in Yadkin County located at Huntsville.
In 1863 and 1864 Bishop Atkinson preached at the Church of the Redemption in Lexington (now Grace
Episcopal Church) and visited Mrs. P.W. {Peter Wilson} Hairston of Davie County.
A local newspaper posts a stern warning in 1903 stating “Someone has been shooting through the
windows of the Episcopal Church, and we have been requested to publish a note warning the guilty parties that
if caught they will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.”
The Davie Record noted on November 20, 1935, “The old Episcopal Church which was located on
Salisbury Street collapsed Wednesday morning about 7 o'clock. The building was in a dilapidated state for
many years and had not been used for the past 15 or 20 years. It is with regret that we see this little Church fall
into ruins for it presented a very attractive appearance in its shelter of cedar trees.”
The altar Bible from St. Phillips is housed in the Sacristy of the Episcopal Church of the Ascension at
Fork. The location of other relics from St. Phillips is unknown..
Today there are two Episcopal congregations in Davie County. The Church of the Good Shepherd in
Cooleemee was established in 1901, and the Episcopal Church of the Ascension at Fork was established in
1906. (History of Davie County, Jim Wall, 1969, Page 254)
If you have a memory of St. Phillips Episcopal Church or a photograph, please contact Monte Taylor at
336-998-2867.
...
Davie Dossier, July 2021 page 4
Davie in the 1840’s
I just finished my ninth history book about
Davie County, Davie County Households in the
1840 Census. The county was only four years old at
that time. Very little information remains about that
long ago time. Like the five previous census
schedules, only the heads of households were listed.
[1850 was the first census that listed all non-slaves
by name.] This microfilm is still available to read
at the Martin-Wall History Room at Davie County
Public Library, but it’s a pain to do. These are wide
pages with handwritten numbers as to inventory of
persons in a home.
There are two pages for each family, and the
name is not repeated on page 2. So, if the head of
household on page 1 is the 16th, you must count
down 16 lines to find the correct data for that family
on page 2. If you were only researching a few
families, it would be doable, but I can’t imagine
tackling the job of extracting all households. The
images of the census are on FamilySearch and
Ancestry, and they are indexed.
Some of you might remember that the very
first Davie Dossier in 1987 featured three pages of
transcriptions from the 1840 US Census. Travel
back in thought to 1987, probably when our
DCHGS began. No computers were used unless
you were ‘way ahead of the masses. Nobody seems
to know who worked on this project unless it was
Nancy Murphy. She did so many wonderful
projects for our society and the history room. I’m
sure she had an assistant who sat at the microfilm
reader calling out numbers for her to type on a
typewriter. It would have been an overwhelmingly
difficult job.
The Dossier listed a few pages of this
extraction each issue through the first quarterly
issue of 1991. I had assumed that the compilers had
extracted the entire census but after I quickly agreed
to copy all these pages and format them for a book,
I realized that there are two gaps in the middle.
Also, the last 150 households were never com-
pleted. What started out easy – turned out to be
difficult. The 200 missing households were added
to my book by referring to page numbers where
they appear on FamilySearch. The images seem a
little easier to read on this site, and FamilySearch is
free to all. I put directions for finding the family.
Junius Lynch Clemmons did a great job
interviewing and compiling all this information for
the 1,060 households in Davie. Interestingly, he
does not appear on the census because he was just
27 and was living with his parents. His dad is listed
as head of the household. Junius was a novel
person.
I found this article on FindAGrave: “Junius
Lynch Clemmons was the son of Benton Clemmons
and Martha Dillon, and the grandson of Comfort
Coston and of Peter Clemmons, for whom
Clemmons, NC, formerly Clemmonsville, was
named. Junius L. Clemmons, a native of
Clemmonsville, developed a system of dots and
dashes that could be sent through copper wire.
Clemmons developed his communications device in
1833 and sent the design to a Mr. Page, who was a
professional electrician in Washington, D. C.
Clemmons never heard back from Mr. Page. In
1837, Clemmons read a newspaper article that told
of Samuel Morse and Mr. Page creating a telegraph
system. Clemmons then discovered that Mr. Page
worked in the U. S. Patent Office and could not
issue a patent to himself. Page, therefore, used his
friend, Samuel Morse, and earned a patent to the
telegraph. Clemmons wrote an article in the
Washington Globe claiming that he was the true
inventor of the telegraph. Page admitted receiving
Clemmons design, but he denied copying it.
Clemmons forgave Page for his betrayal and
enjoyed a successful law firm in Kentucky,
becoming the oldest practicing lawyer in the nation
before his death.”
In the second issue of Davie Dossier in
2013, I described the other census information that
was gathered in 1850, 1860, 1870, and 1880. These
were population, mortality, slave (1850 and 1860),
industrial, and agriculture. I had assumed that
population was the only census schedule of 1840,
but in researching that year on the Internet, I found
this Website that featured a book written about the
many questions asked in 1840. I can’t find any
reference on the Internet as to agriculture and
industrial census for that year. I painstakingly
derived these facts below. If you are researching
another location, you might want to find similar
data for another county. SEE NEXT PAGE.
Davie Dossier, July 2021 page 5
Industrial, Agriculture, and Mining Report for Davie County in 1840
From https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/1840/1840v3/1840c -13.pdf
Zero amount of Iron, lead, gold, other metals
2364 horses and mules
5441 neat cattle
5615 sheep
18,783 swine
3155 poultry
44,481 bushels of wheat
87 bushels of barley
54,145 bushels of corn
8232 bushels of rye
313,538 bushes of Indian corn
5300 pounds of wool
754 pounds of wax
4256 bushels of potatoes
1476 tons of hay
2-1/3 tons of hemp/flax
66,771 pounds of tobacco
307,040 pounds of cotton
83 pounds of silk cocoons
1217 cord of wood sold
$25,114 value of dairy products
$27,394 value of orchard products
1770 gallons of wine
$38,433 value of homemade goods
$950 nursery value
4 nursery employees
$110 value of nursery invested
17 stores
$54,000 value of capital of stores
25 men employed at stores
Zero fisheries, forest products, manufactories
1 cotton mill
550 cotton spindles
$16,500 value of cotton products
20 employees
$30,000 invested in cotton mill
$20,000 value tobacco products
14 employees tobacco company
$500 value of hats in hat factory
2 employees
$500 invested in hat factory
5 tanneries
745 sides of shoe soles
975 upper leather pieces
5 employees
$3300 invested in shoe factory
2 other companies with leather
$2865 value of leather goods
$500 invested in leather company
75 distilleries
109,290 gallons
76 employees
$20,200 invested in distilleries
$1420 Value of carriages and wagons
6 employees
$700 invested in carriage factory
3 flour mills
403 barrels of flour
23 grist mills
19 saw mills
1 oil mill
$2015 value of oil
$38,800 capital invested in oil mill
$1560 value of furniture
4 employees
$1000 other manufacturing value
$94,000 total capital invested for county
QUESTIONS: Where was the cotton mill? Cooleemee Mill started about 1890. How could a lightweight silk
cocoon collection weigh 83 pounds? 75 distilleries? Where was the hat factory? What is Indian corn? What
are neat cattle? (I guess they clean up after themselves.) Where were the 23 grist mills?
Davie Dossier, July 2021 page 6
Above: Example of 1840 census page
Above: Example of method used in 1987 -1991 Davie Dossiers
Left: microfilm reader in history room with 1840 US Census film ready for viewing.
Your involvement: Look through your family history and list the ancestors who
would have been present in new Davie County in 1840. Use the lines below to add
your own information. How many generations is this? Have you found the heads of
households of your family who are on the 1840 census?
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
Davie Dossier, July 2021 page 7
Description of books and maps for Davie: https://sites.google.com/view/dchgsbooksmaps
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.
Composite Index of Davie County History Books. The indexes of 16 Davie County history books are combined. 17,000
entries. Order from: Lulu.com. Search for book title.
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 by Marcia Phillips, the stories of Daniel Boone, Hinton Helper,
Thomas Ferebee, and Peter Ney in Davie County. $25. Mail orders to Marcia Phillips, 315 McClamrock Road, Mocksville
NC 27028.
Eatons Baptist Church Cemetery in Davie County, North Carolina by Pat Mason. A new book which lists all burials
through June 2020. Dates, obituaries and articles are included. $30. Pat Mason, 295 Griffith Rd., Advance NC 27006.
DCHGS, 371 North Main Street, Mocksville NC 27028
Davie Dossier, July 2021 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 1 9 by your
name, you have paid dues through 2019. DUES CAN BE PAID FOR 2021 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