Preserving Davie County’s Rich History
When I step into the Martin-Wall History Room, the air is cold. Marcia Phillips, however, greets me warmly with the first piece of knowledge out of the many she will offer me during our visit. The History Room is kept at a chilly 65°F to properly preserve the centuries of Davie County history that lives on within its walls. “Because there’s no museum yet in Davie County,” Phillips says, “[the History Room] is the sole repository for history.”
The Origins of the Martin-Wall History Room
Sixty years ago, Flossie Martin and James Wall founded what is now the History Room as an archive, accumulating documents, letters, photos, and other historical records. Over time, it has grown into “the everything history room,” as Phillips calls it.” And by everything, she means everything. The room is lined from wall to wall with display cases, genealogy research stations, bookshelves, and filing cabinet after filing cabinet stuffed to the brim with historical documents teeming with information about anything and everything that ever happened in Davie County.
Marcia Phillips: A Keeper of the Past
Marcia Phillips is the History Room Assistant. With a master’s degree in historic preservation from Eastern Michigan University, Phillips returned to her hometown in Davie County twelve years ago. She brought with her an education and years of experience in historical education and preservation. During her time away from Mocksville, Phillips served as a teacher workshop administrator at the Henry Ford Museum in Michigan. She later fulfilled a similar role at Old Salem in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. She curated engaging experiences for school-aged museum visitors to enjoy educational field trips on a deeper level. Her passion for engaging with history led her to the History Room even before she began working there. The plentiful resources were her guides in conducting research for her first book.
Exploring the Treasures of the History Room
The wall-to-wall, chest-high filing system was, admittedly, intimidating at first glance. When you stop by, don’t let it scare you off! Phillips lovingly describes these cabinets as “the real treasure chests of the room with probably about a million documents if anyone had time to count them.” For within those meticulously labeled and alphabetically organized drawers lies decades of history as familiar as an old family recipe. Phillips opens one of the files and finds an old newspaper from the Great Depression era that tells the story of a lady who used to sell pieces of pinto bean pie out of a small store in Davie County. The newspaper includes the recipe! Phillips, the history lover that she is, was able to recreate the recipe and share it with her friends and family. This is precisely why these documents are so valuable–they allow us to bring history back to life.
If whatever you’re searching for isn’t in the files, it might be hiding in one of the plethora of reference volumes on the bookshelves that proudly take up the large right-hand portion of the room. I follow Phillips up and down these aisles, eyes only a little wider than my mouth, in awe of books dating back to before the county was even founded. I spy volumes of marriage certificates, records keeping track of everyone who ever served as sheriff in Davie County, and old reference books from when Davie County was still a part of Rowan County before it was founded on its own in 1836. With all of these books and files, including 38,000 obituaries dating back as far as 1676, family history is just a page away for anyone who can trace their ancestors back to Davie County!
The Map Corner: A Journey Through Time
A mechanical whine draws us from the files. The printer near the computers serves the room valiantly, producing copies and scans of whatever may pass through its inky jaws, such as all the maps in the Map Corner. From professional drawings denoting 18th-century property lines to the passionate scribblings of a Revolutionary War enthusiast in the early 20th century, the Map Corner is an excellent resource for anyone interested in discovering the physical transformation of the area throughout history. People from out of state have been known to visit the Map Corner to track down the land their ancestors owned in Davie County. Name a better road trip destination than your ancestors’ home!
Connecting with Ancestors
Phillips values the preservation of history so much because she is passionate about helping people, like those road-trippers, understand where they came from. She leads me over to a large display case at the entrance of the room. Behind the glass lies an impressive collection of Native American tools and weapons, some dating back as far as 8000 BCE, all of which have been found in Davie County and donated for the exhibit. This collection draws the attention of school visitors, particularly the impressive atlatl, a spear-like weapon that resembles a giant arrow. The collection also boasts plentiful arrowheads, hammers made of sticks and stones, and even a nutcracker! Young people interested in carpentry or archery can discover that ancient people shared their hobbies and how they would’ve engaged in their interests if they’d lived 10,000 years ago!
It is vital to connect with the past, whether it be through visiting your great-great-grandfather’s land or examining a Native American nutcracker. That is precisely why the History Room exists. “If nobody ever benefits from it, what’s the point of saving it?” Phillips wonders.
The People Not Property Project
This sentiment leads her to introduce me to the People Not Property (PNP) Project. First undertaken by research students at the University of North Carolina Greensboro (UNCG) in 2018, the PNP Project seeks to uncover the names of individuals thought to have been lost for centuries. Since the abolition of slavery in the United States in the mid-19th century, historians and researchers like Phillips have come across thousands upon thousands of historical property records from the 18th and early 19th centuries. This project allows them to take these records and cross-reference them with post-abolition records like marriage certificates, employment records, or records of church membership to uncover the previously unknown names of people who were enslaved in the United States. For the longest time, many citizens of Davie County have had little to no knowledge about their ancestors due to issues such as inaccurate census reports on the part of slave owners and the subsequent erasure of many names of enslaved people. Because of this project, people have been able to learn what their great-grandmother’s name was, where she lived, and what she did after she got her freedom.
This is a massive project! Volunteers at the History Room have been working the files alphabetically for over a year and are only up to last names beginning with B! Volunteers are always welcome whenever the library is open. Phillips has provided great instructions on how to go through the files and find information that will help with this project. “We can’t rewrite history,” she laments. “What we can do is use what the past has left behind to uncover long-hidden family trees and give people back their names.”
Unlocking Stories from the Past
Names are personal things. They shape our sense of self. They affect how people in our lives perceive us and remember us. It has always been this way. The History Room, with all of its files of names upon names, is a testament to that. But the names of people aren’t the only ones history has preserved for us, Phillips explains as she unlocks a glass display cabinet to retrieve an old photo. Since the artifacts she keeps behind glass are very delicate and sensitive to light, allow me to paint you a picture with my words rather than flash photography. A group of men and boys in their Sunday best stand in front of the courthouse, which is about to be taken down and relocated so Highway 158 can be built. Among their legs is a familiar yet indistinct blur. For the longest time, Phillips assumed everyone in the image was accounted for, thanks to the well-kept list of names written on the back of the photograph. But if I took anything from her history lessons, it would be that everything is worth being written down. One of the boys in the picture grew up to write a memoir called Growing Up in Davie County. In the memoir, he recounts his memory of the day this photo was taken, down to the detail that the man beside him brought his dog, Bob! With this piece of history, we have a name to ascribe to what was previously only a blur. Now, Bob lives on alongside his master in a photograph in the Martin-Wall History Room.
The Need for More Space
Unfortunately, a space as small as the History Room has become inadequate to hold all the rich history of Davie County. Phillips directs my attention to the top of her display cases where she has two historical farm implements balanced–a scythe and a grain cradle! The blades of the tools are held down out of view, preventing visitors from the full experience of learning about the agricultural history of the region. But there is simply not enough space to accommodate such large tools! Other large donations have been awkwardly tucked away in empty corners, too–a handmade secretary desk and a historical rope bed, to name a few. “That’s where the saying ‘sleep tight’ comes from!” Phillips tells me. People would draw heavy ropes through holes in the bed frame to support their mattress to form a stable place to sleep, akin to a modern box spring. Those ropes would become loose over time and need to be tightened, hence the expression.
Tucked away in the vault are even more large artifacts, such as weapons from the Civil War. A bayonet from that era is pictured below. About the artifacts, Phillips says, “They don’t really belong in [the History Room]; they belong in a museum.” So do the photographs and paintings that line the walls, the work chest of historical tools, and the case of old maps! The History Room was founded as an archive, so there is just simply no room to store all the amazing donations they receive!
Phillips tells me this may become a larger issue. Smaller artifacts, such as books and documents, have a far easier time fitting into a space like the History Room due to the fact that it was founded as an archive. However, the space is not a proper place to store larger artifacts, like the spinning wheel or the tombstones. Insufficient storage can discourage donations and lead to the loss of artifacts. “Large things don’t survive as easily,” she says. The goal of the History Room is to ensure the survival of history, so more storage is desperately needed so nothing gets left behind.
A Dream for the Future
Marcia Phillips is striving to keep Davie County’s history alive and accessible to everyone, from curious students to family researchers and everyone in between. She dreams of transforming the History Room into a research hub to conduct work like the People Not Property Project and of creating a new space to display artifacts. Imagine walking through a museum and seeing tools people in Davie County used a hundred years ago. Pictured below are two uniforms. The first belonged to Peggy Haneline Branham; she wore it in the Mocksville High School band in 1940 when she played the clarinet. The second belonged to Avery Foster, the first Black deputy sheriff in North Carolina! Phillips shared a memory of Mr. Avery with me–even when he was in his 80s, he raised the flag outside of Town Hall every morning. The town loved him! A place to properly display the uniform he wore would be an incredible way to honor his legacy.
A lifelong lover, teacher, and keeper of history, Phillips is an incredible blessing to Davie County. She gave me some insight into her philosophy from her days as a high school history teacher. She always tried to integrate local history into her lessons so that her students “realized history doesn’t just happen in the big places. It also happens down the road from where they’re growing up.” And that is the exact atmosphere she has cultivated in the History Room. From family records to Civil War artifacts, such as those pictured below, the History Room perfectly encapsulates the unique history of a small Southern county while seamlessly weaving it into the larger fabric of the history of the nation as a whole.
Preserving the History of a Small Southern County
Thanks to historians like Flossie Martin and James Wall sixty years ago and Marcia Phillips today, our history is preserved for countless more years of study and appreciation. “Without historians, history [just] gets sold on eBay or hung on a Cracker Barrell wall!” Phillips exclaims.
If you have any items of local historical significance, consider donating them to the History Room to be kept in a safe environment and made available for the enjoyment and education of others. Donations like local artwork and small artifacts tell stories that bring history to life. Photographs and family Bible records can be copied from your original, and the information can be kept in the Room. Even oral histories for future generations to learn from the past are valuable. If you or someone you know has old family stories or memories to share, contact the History Room to make an appointment to discuss your donations or to receive preservation advice from a trained preservationist.
Those interested in Davie County history may enjoy checking out the Davie County Historical and Genealogical Society. They host monthly events. This fall, they have a focus on Peter Ney, a beloved Mocksville French teacher who may or may not have served under Napoleon and cleverly escaped execution. Explore this mysterious token of Davie County history on September 19th at 6:30 PM. The DCHGS will meet at 537 S. Salisbury Street (or carpool from the library) to be given a tour of the oldest schoolhouse in Davie County by the owners/hosts. Ney first taught in this building, which is now lovingly restored. On October 24th, also at 6:30 pm, a French documentary on Peter Ney will be viewed in the Library’s Multi-Purpose Room.
The History Room is open for research and exploration whenever the library is open. Help yourself with reference books, files, computers, and map collection, or schedule an appointment with Phillips if you would like a guide to help you traverse backward along the wheel of time. As the library touts of the History Room, “You never know what you might discover!”
Photos Courtesy of Mikayla Hamilton
