2009 2.pdfDavie Dossier
Issued by
Davie County Historical and Genealogical Society
Mocksville, North Carolina
April 2009, Issue 2
Davie County Historical and Genealogical Society
Web site: http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~ncdavhgs
MEETINGS ARE HELD THE FOURTH TUESDAY (January through November)
President Linda Leonard
Vice-President
Secretary/Treasurer Frances Beck
Board of Directors Dale McCullough, Diane Webb, Bill Urdanick
Dossier Editors Marie Roth, Doris Frye
DUES: We’re hoping you will pay your 2009 dues – only $5 per member per year unless you
want to become a Life Member (tax deductible !) and then you won’t have to worry about paying
each year. See page 7 for paying dues. Look at the mailing label on page 8 to see if you need to
pay dues. Lots of members have already paid. Thanks !!
CALENDAR
JANUARY 27 MEETING – Davie County Schools -- A special exhibit was a model of the
Noah’s Ark School made by Zollie Neil Anderson. Dr. Carolyn Beaver described her project of
compiling information about retired school personnel from Davie County. Marie Roth, a volunteer in
the Martin-Wall History Room, talked about her goal of compiling information about the early
schools in Davie County. A 1907 newspaper article by the school superintendent mentions that
there were 61 schools in the county at that time. If you have information about any of these old
schools, photos, names, or location information, please communicate with Marie at
MarieBCR@gmail.com .
FEBRUARY 24 MEETING – Mark Hager,
professor of history and archaeology at Lenoir-
Rhyne College, spoke on the research that he and
his students did last summer at Joppa Cemetery in
Mocksville. They will return this summer. Each
student was assigned a family in the cemetery and
did research to locate graves and learn more about
them through public records. They also mapped
locations of graves in an effort to determine where
the old church would have been situated. The
graves of approximately 300 families dating from
the 1700s have been identified, including another
Daniel Boone relative, Israel Boone. (See May
paragraph)
MARCH 24 MEETING – Scrapbooking for
Documenting History – Betty West, previous teacher
and school principal, brought four of her beautifully
created scrapbooks which describe her many travels to
visit almost all of the homes of the U.S. Presidents.
She had used long-lasting quality materials and inserted
pamphlets, photos, and short histories. In her
presentation, she mentioned some of the most
interesting features of the President and his home. It
was very interesting. OK, get that shoe box of
materials out and put them into a format that your
children and grandchildren will enjoy seeing and
preserving !! She recommended the book Cabins, Cottages, and Mansions, Homes of the
Presidents of the United States by Benbow. This describes each home and the hours it’s open.
APRIL 18 Fort Dobbs – The semi-annual trade fair at Ft. Dobbs Historic Site north of
Statesville will be held April 18-19 from 10 am - 4 pm.
APRIL 28 MEETING: Civil War Book about Davie County: We are pleased to announce that
Mary Alice Miller Hasty and Hazel Miller Winfree, two Davie County natives, have released their
book after five years of research, The Civil War Roster of Davie County, North Carolina. The
book, published by McFarland, incorporates biographical and military service sketches of 1,147
Davie County Civil War veterans, with accompanying photographs where possible. The book
represents a significant Civil War research tool and addition to your library collection. The book
sells for $55.00 plus $3.71 tax and $5 postage, a total of $63.71. Checks should be made out to
M & M Books and sent to Mary Alice Hasty, 105 East Brick Walk Court, Mocksville NC 27028.
There will be a book signing and description of writing the book at this April 28 meeting.
MAY 2:
To the members of the Davie County Historical and Genealogical Society:
You are cordially invited to the dedication of a marker for Israel Boone, son of Squire and Sarah Boone, at Joppa
Cemetery on Saturday, May 2 at 10:00 a.m. The memorial is being presented by the descendants of Israel Boone
and his wife as well as members of the Boone Society, represented by Mr. Denny Custer, Israel Boone's fifth great-
grandson, who lives in Okemas, Michigan.
For many years the location of Israel's grave was unknown, but because of recent research, the grave has been located at
Joppa in the Boone family row.
We look forward to seeing you on May 2 for this historic event.
The Joppa Directors
MAY 2 DANIEL BOONE FAMILY FESTIVAL – Historic Downtown Mocksville will
celebrate its fourth annual Daniel Boone Family Festival on Saturday, May 2, 2009. The festival
will include food and craft vendors, games, tours of historic sites (Joppa, Farmington, the Clement
House and other sites) , and Native American Indian dancers. Our Society will have a booth.
Music at Junker’s Mill will start at 11:30.
MAY 26 MEETING: Hodges Business College – John Fuller, owner and restorer of this historic
100 year old brick school will describe the school and its restoration at our meeting at the library.
JUNE 23 MEETING: Marie Roth and Debra Dotson will attend the National Genealogical
Society Family History Conference in mid-May in Raleigh. This month’s program will be a report
from them about the huge genealogical conference. If you’re reading this in April, there’s still
time for you to attend. For description, list of classes and registration forms, see
http://www.ngsgenealogy.org/cs/conference_venue .
REVOLUTIONARY WAR MARKER DEDICATED MARCH 22
On Sunday, March 22 at 2 pm there was a grave marking ceremony at Pearson’s graveyard east of
Cooleemee.The Sons of the American Revolution and their Color
Guard unveiled a new marker at the grave of local patriot
Richmond Pearson.He was born in Virginia in 1751 and moved
to Forks of the Yadkin River in old Rowan County in the early
1770s.He was a Colonel in the Revolution. He died in 1819 and
is buried in the family graveyard. This ceremony was sponsored
by the Cooleemee Historical Association and the Sons of the
American Revolution.
OTHER OPPORTUNITIES:
Making Archives: An Inside Look at the Work to Preserve Southern Memory, Feb. 9-April 30,
at Wilson Library (4th floor), UNC-Chapel Hill
http://www.lib.unc.edu/spotlight/2009/archives.html
Cooleemee Historical Association has two museums for you to tour. The Mill Village Museum
(Zachary House) at Old #14 Church Street Cooleemee, NC has hours: Wednesday-Saturday 10
am-4 pm and large tours by appointment. They also have a Mill Family Life Museum which is a
company house decorated with period pieces of the 1940s era when the mill was running and
people were changing life styles from agricultural to industrial. To tour this museum, you need to
go by the museum described above and ask for a tour. These are both very interesting museums
to learn more about this time period, 1892 when the first mill was chartered at Cooleemee to 1969
when the mill closed for good. Suggestions for further study: Cooleemee History Loom, a
newsletter from the Historical Association, and Cooleemee, The Life and Times of a Mill Town
by Jim Rumley, a 400 page book which received an award from the North Carolina Society of
Historians.
QUERIES
Emma Mabe Winters (wfefwint@knology.net) is looking for the parents of Backman H. Harris
who married Milly Wagner on February 4, 1857 in Davie County. Milly’s parents were Aarron
Wagner and Susannah Whitley.
APPALACHIAN CULTURE
Appalachian English: An Archaic Variety
by Amy Moore, excerpt from
“The North Carolina Genealogical Society JOURNAL”, May 2008, pages 143-144
With the publishing of dictionaries and the rise of Standard English, many other varieties of
English have been stigmatized as uneducated and unlearned. Among these is the Appalachian dialect,
which is viewed as substandard and “incorrect” in its pronunciation and its grammar. The truth is that
Appalachian English is an archaic form of English. Because those who settled in Appalachia were cut
off from others by the mountains around them, their language was not impacted by other settlers, and
so their language remains a seventeenth century, Scotch-Irish English. Much of their pronunciation,
vocabulary, grammar, and semantics were once used by the high class and were acceptable forms and
meanings. Understanding the evolution of the English language and where in that evolution
Appalachian English stayed allows this dialect to be seen as archaic, not ignorant.
HISTORY OF THE APPALACHIAN PEOPLE
It is important to know where the people of Appalachia originated, because their language has
changed little since its settlement. This is mainly due to the fact that Appalachian culture is orally
based. Few of the people could read and write. By the time grammarians began to standardize the
language, few mountain people cared to change the way they spoke, especially since they had little
contact with other groups of people. Perhaps this is why their variety is stigmatized as being illiterate.
The Appalachian people descend from the Scotch-Irish who immigrated to America in the early
1700s. It is their language and usage that has still survived up to today. In 1610, King James I began
the “Great Settlement,” or the “King’s Plantation,” in order to control the Irish. He confiscated the
land of the earls of Ulster and gave them to Scottish and English lords on the condition that they would
settle them with protestant tenants from Scotland and England. The Scots that moved into Ulster were
from the lowlands and spoke the Scots variety of the Northumbrian dialect. Because the Scots had
little to do with the Irish, their dialect remained intact.
After about one hundred years of the Scots settling and multiplying in Ulster, they became
dissatisfied with the restrictions England imposed, and many of them moved to the English colonies in
America. These are the Scotch-Irish that settled in the Appalachian Mountains. Many came into
Pennsylvania first, but new arrivals soon were forced to move south and west, settling in the
Shenandoah Valley and other parts of the Appalachian Mountains. Along with the Scots who came
from Ireland, many came directly from Scotland to America. There were also Germans who settled in
the area; however, the Germans had little impact on the language of the Appalachian people. To this
day, many of the structures and vocabulary of the dialect can be traced back to the Scotch-Irish and
Northumbrian dialect of Elizabethan times.
For a list of North Carolina museums of Appalachian Culture
see http://www.blueridgeheritage.com/historicblueridge/museums/index.html
The Great Pennsylvania Wagon Road By Kevin Cherry Rowan County Library Historian, Part 1 of 2
The following are parts of a speech given to the Fisher/Brown reunion in Salisbury/Rowan County NC by Kevin Cherry,
Rowan County Library Historian in 1998 and posted to the Quakers-Roots mailing list on Rootsweb by Janet Hunter.
His remarks deal with the conditions of those who immigrated to the new lands in North Carolina from such places of
origin as Pennsylvania.
This is the first great interior migration in our nation’s
history. It’s the story of a road, the Great Pennsylvania
Wagon Road.
When the crops were in, they started. Early in the
morning-even early farm people, they’d set out. During the
first years, they walked, leading five or six pack animals
laden with supplies: tools, seed, and fabric.
In places, the famous path they trod was only three
or four feet wide. The wilderness literally crept right up to
their feet and brushed their faces as they walked. In later
years they marched alongside oxen as these oversized beasts
pulled two-wheeled carts heaped to overflowing, crossing
rivers that licked high about their animals’ flanks and often
soaked every single, individual piece of their worldly
possessions. Finally, when the path had been worn clear by
thousands and thousands of previous travelers, they rode in
wagons that, themselves, grew as the path widened into an
honest to goodness road. These Pennsylvania - German-
built wagons (Conestoga’s) at their largest would be twenty-
six feet long, eleven feet high and some could bear loads up
to ten tons. It took five or six pairs of horses to pull them.
These big vehicles, the eighteen-wheelers of their day, were
called “Liners” and “Tramps.” Ships would later gain their
nicknames.
No matter if they walked or rode, in the mid
afternoon, they stopped to take care of the animals, prepare
food, and put up the defense for the night. The cries of
wolves in the distance and the pop of twigs just outside of
the firelight sounded danger. Bands of Indians in the early
days, bands of thieves later, chased away deep sleep no
matter how tiring the day, how bone-weary the traveler. The
fastest loaded wagon could go about five miles a day. The
trip took a minimum of two months. Wagons broke down,
rivers flooded, supplies gave out, and there was sickness but
no doctors. Wagons were repaired, floods ceded, the
wilderness supplied, and the sick were buried or stumbled on
The Road.
Only a few trails cut through the vast forests, which
covered the continent between the northern-most colonies
and Georgia, the southern tip. The settlers, as they moved
inland, usually followed the paths over which the Indians
had hunted and traded. The Indians, in turn, had followed
the pre-historical traces of animals. Who knows why the
animals wandered where they did, but some of those early
travelers on that road, the Scots-Irish Presbyterians, would
have assured us it was certainly pre-determined. Even so,
few paths crossed the Appalachians, which formed a barrier
between the Atlantic plateau and the unknown interior. In
his 1755 map of the British Colonies, Lewis Evans labeled
the Appalachians,“Endless Mountains.” And so they must
have seemed to the daring few who pierced the heart of the
wooded unknown. But through this unknown, even then,
there was a road.
The Iroquois tribesmen of the North had long used
the great warriors’ path to come south and trade or make
war in Virginia and the Carolinas. This vital link between
the native peoples led from the Iroquois
Confederacy around the Great Lakes through what later
became Lancaster and Bethlehem, Pa through York to
Gettysburg and into Western Maryland around what is now
Hagerstown. It crossed the Potomac River at Evan
Watkins’ Ferry, followed the narrow path across the
backcountry to Winchester, through the Shenandoah Valley
of Virginia to Harrisonburg, Staunton, Lexington, and
Roanoke. On it went into Salem, NC, and on to Salisbury,
where it was joined by the east-west Catawba and Cherokee
Indian Trading Path at the Trading Ford across the Yadkin
River. On to Charlotte and Rock Hill, SC where it
branched to take two routes, one to Augusta and another to
Savannah, Georgia. It was some road, but it was just a
narrow line through the continuous forest.
Virginia’s Gov. Col. Alexander Spotswood first
discovered this Great Road in 1716 when his “Knights of
the Golden Horseshoe,” finally crossed the mountains,
drank a toast to King George’s health and buried a bottle
claiming the vast valley for the King of England. His
Knights’ motto became “Sic Juvat Transcendere Montes, or
“Behold, we cross the mountains.” In 1744, a treaty
between the English colonists and the Indians gave the
white men control of the road for the first time. By 1765
the Great Wagon Road was cleared all along its way
enough to hold horse drawn vehicles and by 1775, the road
stretched 700 miles. Boys and dogs, smelling like
barnyards, drove tens of thousands of pigs to market along
this road, which grew gradually worse the farther South
you went.
Inns and ordinaries, which spotted the road
undoubtedly, taught more than a few of them the ways of
the world. But that was all later. The majority of the folks
who by the thousands would walk over Spotswood’s buried
bottle would have probably thought his whole 1716
ceremony a little preposterous and quite a bit pretentious.
You see, they were plain folk trying to get away from Latin,
from mottoes, and from knights with horse shoes no matter
their element of manufacture, lead to gold. They were as
different from Spotswood’s cavaliers as a golden horseshoe
is from an ox’s hoof.
(Part 2 will be in the July 2009 Dossier)
DETACH THIS PAGE AND USE FOR ORDERING ITEMS AND/OR PAYING DUES.
BOOKS:Author Price No.Price
Davie County...A Brief History, paperback James W. Wall $ 7.50
The Daniel, Squire, and John Boone
Families in Davie County
James W. Wall, Howell
Boone, and Flossie Martin
$ 5.00
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
1860 Federal Census-Davie County Nancy K. Murphy and
Everette G. Sain
$17.00
1870 Federal Census-Davie County Nancy K. Murphy and
Everette G. Sain
$17.00
1880 Federal Census-Davie County Nancy K. Murphy and
Everette G. Sain
$22.50
Davie County Heritage Book $45.00
The Historic Architecture of Davie Co.Kirk Franklin Mohney $26.75
MAPS OF DAVIE COUNTY:
Lagle Land Grant $ 6.50
Hughes Historical $ 6.50
1887 Alderman $ 2.50
POSTCARDS OF DAVIE CO. SCENES (set of 8)$ 2.50
CD of 72 issues Davie Dossier, 1987-2008 $ 5.00
TOTAL COST
Postage and handling are included in price.N. C. residents need to add
7% sales tax to the total.
MEMBERSHIP for a calendar year is still just $5.00/year. Life Membership is $100 per person.
The number following your name on the address label on the back page indicates the year through
which your dues are paid. Below is a registration form for your use; checks, payable to the Society.
DAVIE COUNTY HISTORICAL AND GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY
Frances Atkinson Beck
1131 Wagner Road
Mocksville, North Carolina 27028
NAME _____________________________________________________________
ADDRESS _____________________________________________________________
E-MAIL ADDRESS _____________________________________________________________
Davie County Historical and Genealogical Society
371 North Main Street
Mocksville, North Carolina 27028
APRIL 28 MEETING: There will be a book signing and description of writing The Civil War
Roster of Davie County, North Carolina at this April 28 meeting. Authors are Mary Alice Miller
Hasty and Hazel Miller Winfree.
MAY 2 Dedication of Israel Boone grave at 10 am in Joppa Cemetery and fourth annual Daniel
Boone Family Festival in downtown Mocksville.
MAY 26 MEETING: Hodges Business College – John and Anike Fuller,owners and restorers of
this historic 100 year old brick school will describe the school and its restoration.
JUNE 23 MEETING: Marie Roth and Debra Dotson will attend the National Genealogical Society
Family History Conference in mid-May in Raleigh and will give a report.