Wake County Genealogical Society Blog: April 2025

Wednesday, April 30, 2025

Wake Wednesday - Finding Green Alford's Parents

If you have the surnames - Alford, Liles, and High - in your family lines, you will want to check out Eureka: Proving an Ancestor in Wake County, N.C. by Lodwick Houston Alford describing his efforts to discover and prove the parents of Green Alford, b.1787 near Wakefield, Wake County (Wake Treasures, vol.10, nbr. 2, p. 17).

I read his account hoping for a workflow strategy or inspiration to solve my own elusive ancestor. His efforts included:

disambiguating between two similarly named men
proving/disproving the various family stories passed down for generations
working with several local history librarians in the area
using the Bastardy Bond abstracted records* published in the Wake Treasures
calling in another set of eyes when it seemed all possible lines of research had been exhausted

The sum of all these efforts led to his success.

This was a compelling report, one I could not stop reading even though it was NMF (not my family). He has given me some ideas to approach my mystery from other angles in the future. Definitely worth a read whether you are Alford or not.

Bastardy bonds listed by time frame and location in journal subject index on page 1.

Journal access is a great perk* of your Wake County Genealogical Society membership and a handy tool for those researching in Wake County remotely. Members have 24/7 access to the Journal. With 20 plus years of content, you will likely find the surnames and place names you are researching.

*Journal access is currently free for all to view.

Visit the Journal subject index here.

Wednesday, April 23, 2025

Wake Wednesday: Historic Glen Royall Mill Village in Wake Forest

The Glen Royall Mill Village, established in 1899-1900, was a self-contained community built around the Royall Cotton Mill in Wake Forest, North Carolina. This historic district encompasses approximately 45 acres and includes 82 contributing buildings. It is "roughly bounded by N. Main St., E. Cedar Ave., CSX RR, and Royall Cotton Mill, Wake Forest, North Carolina" according to Wikipedia.

Glen Royall Cotton Mill image at Wake Forest Museum

The village is significant today for its status on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP). It was awarded its status in 1999. It is recognized as the only surviving mill village in Wake County outside of Raleigh.

Glen Royall fared much better than the last NRHP location that I wrote about. Unlike the defunct historic Maiden Lane neighborhood across from the NC State University campus that is replaced by apartments and parking lots, you can still walk the streets of Glen Royall Mill Village. This village is a reminder of an important important time in our historical past of early Southern industrialization, labor history, and the social dynamics of mill communities in the early 20th century.

Many of the original building still stand. There are a mix of original houses distinctive in the styles of the era - pyramidal cottages, triple-A cottages, and shotgun houses, new homes built to historical guidelines and original mill buildings converted to apartments. It is a sought after residential community within the town boundaries of Wake Forest. You can see examples of the original houses in the Historic Preservation document that was created for the NRHP nomination process.

The village was built around the Royall Cotton Mill By the mill owners to serve the needs of their "operatives" (employees) in the paternalistic system that characterized mill villages of the era. Wages were low and the self-contained community included a commissary, church and school. The residents maintained vegetable gardens and raised animals to supplement their income.

If your ancestors lived and worked in a mill village in the area, you may want to visit Glen Royall and have a walk through. Listen for the whispers from the past. We are so fortunate that this site has been preserved and protected by its NRHP status.

source

Enjoy browsing through this list of sources:

Glen Royall Mill Historic District

NRHP Nomination Document

Wake Forest Museum's articles about Glen Royall

Glen Royall Mill Village: A Humble Century of Distinction

Wake Forest Gazette: Just a little history: The mill is gone; village thrives

Wikipedia

Tuesday, April 22, 2025

Register soon for upcoming spring events - May and June 2025

Beginning Genealogy series taught by Barbara McGeachy
April 14 - June 9, Six Classes at Laurel Hills Community Center
Class Descriptions and Registration instructions here.

May WCGS in-person Meetup - "Find your Family History"
Saturday, May 31, 10am-Noon at Laurel Hills Community Center
Further details will be posted at this link soon!

NC Archive and Library Tour
Monday, June 23, 10am-Noon
Details and registration at this link.

Wednesday, April 16, 2025

Wake Wednesday - Journal Treasures - Insolvent Debtor Abstracts

Records for Insolvent Debtors in Wake County - individuals unable to pay their debts were abstracted from the box of “Wake County “Insolvent Debtors 1800-1837 (broken series).” The box is located at the N.C. State Archives’ search room, with call number CR 099.914.11.

This series originally appeared in an older version of the WCGS newletter and was republished in the Journal Volume 18 Number 2 (Summer/Fall 2008) to enable access for researchers. This excerpt and additional information is available in our archived Journal content which is currently available to all.

From the folder “Insolvent debtors 1800, 1803,” there is a document showing the following abstracted information:

“… We or either of us promise to pay Thomas Taylor Guardian to James Ridley … Seventy nine Dollars and Twenty Cents with Interest from the date, It being for value of him rec’d …” Dated 18 March 1800.

Witness Nicholas Tompson?

D. Hinton Benj. Haver? (House?)

Rubin N? (his mark) Jackson

The back of this document says “Thomas Taylor vs Nicholas Thompson Guard. Note.” and “Nicholas Thompson To James Ridley Note 79.20 cents.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Another document in that folder shows that Burwell Evans swears he has no land, money, stock or estate, real or personal, in his possession … “of the value of the debt, with which I am charged in Execution…”

He also swears that he has not directly or indirectly sold or disposed of land, money, goods, stocks, debts, securities, contracts or estate (as a method of receiving any profit or of defrauding any creditor or creditors to whom he is indebted).

Burwell (his mark, a “B”) Evans

Sworn in Wake County before Wm. Armstrong? on April 22, 1803.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A debtor in Fleet Street Prison,
London by Thomas Hosmer Shepherd.
First half of the 19th century.
Source

Many more names appear in this transcription. There are four pages of abstracts for this collection and nine pages of debtors transcribed and listed by township for the year 1877.

The Wake Treasures Journal is currently available to all viewers. Check out the index and the back issues at our website. All can be accessed from the WCGS Publications page.

Wednesday, April 9, 2025

Wake Wednesday - Maiden Lane: From Historic District to Concrete Desert

As I prepared to write about this historic "pocket-sized" neighborhood, I looked up Maiden Lane on Google Maps and found something else entirely. What had been a quiet neighborhood comprising less than three acres that had earned status on the National Register of Historic Places, was no more.

Turn away from the NC State belltower on to Maiden Lane today, and you will find the quaintness and quiet is gone. It is replaced with the typical boxy, gray apartment buildings and surrounding parking lots that pass for progress in Raleigh today.

What a shame. What was recorded as a historic treasure in 2006 was mostly destroyed by 2024.

View on Google Map

One cool feature of the street view on Google is that you can see older versions of the scene in front of you. Compare the identical spot on Maiden Lane. The top photo was captured by Google in 2007 and the bottom photo in 2022.

2007 - click to view full size

2022 - click to view full size

The homes that were razed were mostly colonial and Queen Anne style built in the 1890s to 1920s as housing for the teachers and professors at North Carolina Agricultural and Mechanical College (now NC State University). The house at 2 Maiden Lane, the yellow two-story on the right in the top photo, was the home of Isabella Morrison Hill, widow of Daniel H. Hill. D. H. Hill was a professor, and school president of NCA&M from 1908-1916.

In the spirit of not forgetting what was, you can peruse the National Register of Historic Places Registration Form for the Maiden Lane neighborhood. You will find the form, photos, descriptions of all thirteen homes and the architectural and historic report at this link.

Here are six notable points about Maiden Lane as a historic part of Raleigh:

The Maiden Lane Historic District was formerly located west of downtown Raleigh, just north of North Carolina State University's bell tower, and occupied about 2.75 acres on the only block of Maiden Lane.
The district was platted in 1892 by Wake County land surveyor Fendol Bevers, who designed it as a one-block residential street extending north from Hillsborough Street (then the road to Hillsboro).
Maiden Lane's development was directly influenced by two major nearby establishments: R. Stanhope Pullen's 1887 land donation that created both NC State College (now University) and Pullen Park.
The extension of Raleigh's electric street railway to Pullen Park in 1893-1894 significantly increased the practicality of living on Maiden Lane by reducing travel time to downtown.
By 1910, development along Maiden Lane was already well underway, preceding other suburban streetcar developments like Cameron Park and Boylan Heights.

The district was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on May 3, 2006, recognized for its historic significance to Raleigh's early suburban development.

It is good to remember Raleigh as it used to be and I am glad that we can capture glimpses of Maiden Lane from the past now that it is all concrete and asphalt.

Do you remember any other neighborhoods that have disappeared in the name of progress since the early 2000's? Did they have a historical designation?

Wednesday, April 2, 2025

Wake Wednesday - NC Baptist Records

Browse North Carolina Baptist Church Records by Collection | ZSR Library
Links to early Baptist churches that served NC.