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2021 01 churches Davie Dossier, January 2021 page 1 DAVIE DOSSIER Issued by Davie County Historical and Genealogical Society Mocksville, North Carolina January 2021, Issue 1 Churches Davie Dossier, January 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 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 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. FUTURE CONFERENCES National Genealogical Society: May 19-22, 2021, in Richmond VA. See https://conference.ngsgenealogy.org/ Hopefully in Richmond. (NGS has merged with Federation of Genealogical Societies.) RootsTech: February 26-29, 2021 in Salt Lake City. See https://www.rootstech.org. Online only. Free to all. You can sign up now. Previous talks are archived. North Carolina Genealogical Society has webinars on Wednesdays. https://www.ncgenealogy.org/webinars/ Davie Dossier, January 2021 page 3 CHURCHES IN DAVIE COUNTY From early times until the present time, churches have been very important to residents of our area. In many cases, they also housed schools for children and adults. The Sabbath was a day of rest and a time to worship and learn with other people. The Davie County Public Library Website has an abundance of information about churches and their history. The URL is https://docs.daviecountync.gov/WebLink/Browse.aspx?id=73113&dbid=1&repo=DavieCounty&cr=1 . Click on “Davie Churches.” Volunteers in the history room researched, copied, and arranged this information for you to use in your stud y of our churches. In addition to information on the Internet, there are printouts in the History Room file cabinets arranged in booklets about individual churches. Several churches have published histories. The Martin-Wall History Room contains many of these, for example, the history of the First Presbyterian Church by James Wall. The history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is at https://sites.google.com/view/ldsdavieforsyth/home. Marriage records of the Second Presbyterian Church are at https://sites.google.com/view/2ndpresbyterian/home. Fulton United Methodist Church is on the National Register of Historic Places. See photo at right. North Main Street area is also listed, and this includes First United Methodist Church in Mocksville. Descriptions of older churches can be researched in The Historic Architecture of Davie County by Kirk Franklin Mohney. To order, see page 7. Previous Dossiers contained articles about the churches in our county. See the table at the right. This table was extracted from the listing of articles of previous editions of the newsletter. For example, Beat Creek Baptist Church has an article in the first quarter edition of 1992, pages 3-5. Dossiers are online at the library website from 1987- 2016 using the URL above Thanks to Linda Barnette for writing and sharing the next two articles. The editor welcomes articles for publication. Churches Bear Creek Baptist 1992 1 3-5 Eatons Baptist 1987 3 4-6 Eatons Baptist 1987 4 4-6 Eatons Baptist 1988 1 4-6 Eatons Baptist 1988 2 3-5 Eatons Baptist 1988 3 2-4 Eatons Baptist 1989 1 2-5 Eatons Baptist 1989 2 5-8 Eatons Baptist 1989 3 4-5 Eatons Baptist 1989 4 2-4 Eatons Baptist 1997 2 2 Episcopal 1991 1 3-4 Episcopal - Fork 1998 2 1 First Presbyterian 1992 1 6 Fulton Methodist 1990 4 3 Fulton Methodist 1991 1 4 Fulton Methodist 1993 1 3 Davie Dossier, January 2021 page 4 Early Lutheran Churches in Rowan and Davidson Counties in North Carolina By Linda H. Barnette These are the results of the topic that I volunteered to do for Piedmont Trails a few weeks ago. I hope it will prove helpful for some of you in your family research!! In the years following the Reformation in Europe, several new Protestant groups were formed that followed the doctrines of Martin Luther. Their main belief was that salvation is the gift of God to mankind through His grace, and that alone. So these groups were generally referred to as Reformed, and others were known as Lutherans, but their beliefs were similar. The ones that I will speak of here were mainly Germans, living in that part of Europe that is Germany now. During the mid-1700’s, conditions in the Palatinate (now part of Germany) were deplorable. After a series of dynastic wars, the people there faced famine and starvation. So that is the backdrop of the migration to the colonies. People fled to the Netherlands, then to England, and finally to America. Although some came earlier, between the years of 1749 and 1754, more than 30,000 Palatinates came here and settled in Pennsylvania. As land became scarce there, many of these people traveled to North Carolina, coming down the Great Wagon Road to purchase some of the cheap Granville land. Fairly soon after their arrival, these settlers established churches, often with Reformed and Lutherans worshiping together. Although there could have been a very early Lutheran congregation in New Bern in 1708, the Swiss settlement there did not last even a year before being destroyed by Indians. So because of where I live and the families that I have researched, I am writing about only those early churches in Rowan and Davidson Counties even though there are others in other counties. Most likely, the earliest church in Rowan County was St. John’s in Salisbury. Although it is pretty certain that those early people met in individual homes for worship as early as 1747, there was not a church building in that area until after the death of John Lewis Beard’s young daughter. She was buried on Beard’s property, and after that, Beard donated his property on what is now North Lee Street, to the German Lutheran Church. (On a personal note here, the deed was signed by several men in the area, including Michael Braun, the builder of the Old Stone House and the brother of my husband’s direct ancestor, Abraham Brown). This deed and an old German Bible are ex tant. The first St. John’s was a log structure. The present church, built in 1927, seats 900 people. All of the very early churches had to send to Germany for an ordained minister, and the first one was Rev. Albert Nussman, who preached at more than one church in the area. Another early church in Rowan County was Zion, organized in 1745. The name was changed to Organ Lutheran because it was the first church in the area to have an organ. It was organized by people from Pennsylvania who settled along Second Creek, several miles below Salisbury. For years both Reformed and Lutherans met together for worship; however, in 1794 the Lutherans built a new church called Grace, or Lower Stone Church because it was made of stone and is still in use. The property was purchased from a plantation owner in that area named Jacob Fullenwider, a name that showed up several times in my research and was also a name in my early family tree. Another very early church in Rowan is Union, originally named Pine Church. Located near High Rock Lake in the eastern part of the county, it was founded in 1774. According to the church history, the ch urch, originally a log building, was deeded in trust to Frederic Fisher and Michael Braun in 1778. As I study the churches, I also go to FindAGrave to search the cemeteries. My husband, John, has several ancestors buried at Union and also at the graveyard across from the Old Stone House. The earliest cemetery I could find was St. Peter’s, which began in 1744 as Hickory Church and was also attended by both Reformed and Lutheran members until 1773. In 1830 a group of Lutherans purchased three acres from Jacob Fullenwider and built a church called Krauth’s, which changed to. St. Peter’s in 1855. The present building was completed in 1958. I located John’s older Misenheimer ancestors in that cemetery!! That was his mother’s name. Remember also that some of the early churches in Davidson County really began in Rowan before 1822. According to several books about Davidson County, the first Lutheran and Reformed church was Pilgrim, which started meeting as early as 1757 according to their extant church records. Both groups met together first in a brush arbor close to Abbott’s Creek. Names of the early members were Berrier, Sauer, Leonard, Hedrick, Conrad, and Myers, many of whom are still prominent in the Lexington area. Because the brush arbor was on the property of Valentine Leonard, the people called it Leonard’s Church or Abbott’s Creek because of its location. Philip Sauer’s daughter was the first child baptized there in 1757. The first church book is in Raleigh at the Department of Archives and History and was written in German. The church eventually split into two congregations, Pilgrim Reformed and Pilgrim Lutheran. In checking the cemetery I found that the earliest birth on any of the tombstones was Johann Michael, born 1696, and there are many of the original settlers of the area buried there. I also located my Davie Dossier, January 2021 page 5 grandfather’s aunt, Ellen Hartley Leonard in that particular graveyard! I knew that she had married a preacher but did not know of her burial there. Another old congregation was Beck’s, about 6 miles southeast of Lexington. On November 5, 1787, Dr. John Billings and others deeded to the trustees of the congregation of the Church of England and the congregation of the Lutheran church in the settlement on Abbott’s Creek some 53 acres of land to be used by both congregations. After trying to locate an early Anglican church, I have concluded that the property owners perhaps meant that all could worship there. Their first pastor was Rev. Arnold Roscher from Germany, who, in his correspondence, indicated that he at the same time preached at four churches in the area, probably Pilgrim, Beck’s and Sandy Creek, and perhaps Bethany, an early church that did not survive. Two congregations existed at Beck’s until 1875 when George Hedrick gave land to the Lutheran Beck’s congregation for a church in Tyro, which still has over 100 members. Finally, we get to Sandy Creek Lutheran, now St. Luke’s in Tyro, where six generations of my Hartley ancestors are buried. In 1790, Adam Swicegood (Schweisguth) and his wife Cathron deeded property for a church to Henry Clemments and John Gobel, trustees. The original deed remains among the records in the Rowan County Courthouse.) History indicates that people had already been worshiping there, but owning the property made it legitimate. There were at least three wooden buildings, which either burned or were abandoned. The steps and the gate to the older section of the original church still remain, but now St. Luke’s is housed in a large sanctuary in the little town of Tyro. I am fortunate to have a copy of the original church records that was put together by the Davidson County Genealogy Society in 1980, which mentions many of my early ancestors. The book contains lists of members, officers, marriages, baptisms, deaths, and expulsions. I go to Sandy Creek Lutheran Church yearly to honor the people who are buried there and to reflect on what their lives might have been like. I would like to share with you how I became interested in genealogy, but that is a story for another day! ! Sources: Centennial History of Davidson County, North Carolina by Rev. Jacob Calvin Leonard Pathfinders Past and Present, A History of Davidson County by Jewel Sink and Mary Green Matthews Documenting the American South: Colonial and State Records of North Carolina, Volume 8, History of the Lutheran Church in North Carolina by G. D. Bernheim Carolina: The Lutherans, by J. D. Lewis Records of the Lutheran Synod in Salisbury, North Carolina *** Lutheran Churches in Davie County, NC By Linda H. Barnette Heidelberg Evangelical Lutheran Church was begun by a group of German settlers who migrated from Pennsylvania to North Carolina after fleeing the Palatinate of what is now Germany because of starvation and religious persecution. The church they formed was known locally as the Dutch Meeting House although the proper name was the one mentioned above. It is not known exactly when this church was established, but according to James Wall in his History of Davie County, using early records located in the library here, noted that a child was baptized there in 1766, at which time there were about 200 names of members in the record book. Names associated with this meeting house are names that still remain here today: Buhe (Booe), Marz (March), Mack (Mock), Nagle (Nail), Hinkle, Frey, Beck, and Bailey, among others. The church stopped holding services around the time of the Civil War, and nothing of the building remains. However, the rock wall around the cemetery remains, and several gravestones are there, but it is all totally overgrown. I remember going there years ago when Mr. Wall took my students on a tour of the county’s historical places. The location is on Cornatzer Road. Twenty-eight people are supposedly buried there. The weathervane from the church was lost for years, then found and taken to the Rowan County Museum, where it remains. It was shaped like a rooster and supposedly represented Peter’s denial of Christ in order to warn others not to do the same. The Lutherans formed other churches in Davie County also, St. Matthews in 1839, and Cherry Hill Lutheran in 1873, but those churches are no longer active. Holy Cross, founded in 1959, remains an active congregation. Davie Dossier, January 2021 page 6 Map of Churches Mentioned in Previous Two Articles No. County Church Latitude/Longitude 1 Current Rowan St. John’s 35.669, -80.471 2 Zion -> Organ Lutheran 35.529, -80.450 3 Lower Stone -> Grace 35.521, -80.421 4 Union 35.644, -80.394 5 St. Peters 35.569, -80.367 6 Current Davidson Pilgrim 35.854, -80.216 7 Becks 35.757, -80.225 8 Sandy Creek -> St. Luke’s 35.809, -80.373 9 Current Davie Heidelburg 35.899, -80.496 10 St. Matthews 35.881, -80.663 11 Cherry Hill 35.799, -80.501 The map was created using Google Maps. Click on 3 parallel horizontal lines, then on “Your Places” and then on “Maps” to create your own map for marking significant places. The L/L will show when you choose locations. Davie Dossier, January 2021 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., Mocksvill e 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 t heir 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, 162 Mollie Rd., Harmony NC 28634. DCHGS, 371 North Main Street, Mocksville NC 27028 Davie Dossier, January 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