Cartledge Creek: 258 years of history

By John Myers, Internet Photojournalist

Miss Lib sits on her front porch with her cat, Purry Mason.

If you want to know the history of the Cartledge Creek community, just ask Elizabeth Covington. She not only wrote the book about it, she's lived 90 years of its history.
"Miss Lib," as she is known, wrote "A Brief History of Cartledge Creek Baptist Church, 1774-1974," and the story of the church and the community are entwined from the start.
Miss Lib reflected about her 90th birthday celebration at the church, "I always thought about what I was going to do when I get old. It occurred to me at the party, now I'm old."
She has lived in the Cartledge Creek community since she was 3 and is descended from two of the founding families of the church, the Dockerys and Covingtons. She became the unofficial historian of the area by collecting information over the nine decades of her life.
And though her steps have slowed, Miss Lib's mind is still nimble, as she reels off names and dates and events from her community's history of more than two and half centuries.

Earliest settlers

The area's first settler was Edmund Cartledge, from whom the creek got its name.
"No Ordinary Lives, A History of Richmond County, North Carolina 1750-1900," by John Hutchinson, says Cartledge had arrived by 1745.
The only other known earlier settler in what would later become Richmond County was Solomon Hews, who lived on Solomon's Creek in 1741, according to Hutchinson.
Two other early settlers had creeks named for them which are mentioned in land grants in 1747, Hitchcock and Marks, but Hutchinson says no first names are known about them.
Joe McLaurin, a Rockingham historian, cites record of a land grant in 1741 for 300 acres west of Rockingham to John Hitchcock, who may have been the name's sake for the creek.
A party from Maryland led by Col. Thomas Dockery Sr. came to Cartledge Creek in 1769, including the Covington, Blewitt (also spelled Blewett), Thomas, Mason, Hull, Cope, Webb and McDowell families, according to old wills, letters and deeds collected by Miss Lib.
Dockery built his home atop a hill above Cartledge Creek about six miles northwest of Rockingham. Since there were no churches in the area, he urged all friends, neighbors and settlers to come to his home for worship and Bible study on Sunday mornings.

Cartledge Creek Baptist Church sits high atop a hill.

Church organized

In 1774, the group organized as a church known as Dockery's Meeting House and Dockery donated three acres for the first church building, a school and "burying ground."
The church later was renamed Cartledge Creek Baptist and the sanctuary of the present church was built from timbers salvaged from Dockery's Meeting House which was nearby.
The church was recently renovated, but the original sanctuary was preserved intact. Old lumber found underneath the sanctuary when it was moved stirred Miss Lib's memories.
"They brought them to me to see if I could tell them what they were and it was the old altar rails and the pillars. I dusted them a many of a time when I was just a little girl."
Unmarked grave stones from the original "burying ground" remain in a hollow below the present church, with stone steps leading down the hill from the church to the cemetery.

General Dockery

Thomas Dockery (1717-1797) was Miss Lib's great-great-great-grandfather. His grandson, Alfred Dockery (1797-1873), was a general in the N.C. Militia and served as a state senator and U.S. Congressman and capped his political career as a candidate for governor in 1854.
(A state historical marker at the Richmond County Courthouse has his death date as 1875, but both his gravestone marker at his home and Hutchinson say the date was 1873.)
Alfred Dockery narrowly lost the 1854 governor's race as a candidate for the Whig Party. He later was founder of the Republican Party in North Carolina in 1867 after the Civil War.

Historic marker notes location of church were Wake Forest University was founded.

Wake Forest's start

Alfred Dockery was also a church leader in 1833 when the Baptist State Convention met at Cartledge Creek and voted to found Wake Forest Institute, which later became Wake Forest University.
And the handsome home he built on Cartledge Creek remains a monument to his stature. Hutchinson says, "According to tradition, General Alfred Dockery hired a plaster artist from Paris to finish the interior of his home in the 1830s."
The home was constructed of bricks made on the plantation, which had thousands of acres and hundreds of slaves. The home still stands at the corner of Dockery Road and Cartledge Creek Road and is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Len and Mollie Butler, retirees from Virginia, have owned and lived in the home since 1993 and frequently open it for tours to local groups and individuals who inquire.
Miss Lib said Alfred Dockery was a benevolent slave owner who practiced emancipation long before President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed it in the southern states in 1863.

Slaves educated

Dockery educated his slaves -- which was illegal for slave owners at the time -- teaching them to read the Bible and write. And he set education standards leading to their freedom.
"He told them if they would learn to read a certain number of chapters in the Bible and to write, he would free them," Miss Lib said.

Holly Grove Missionary Baptist Church was founded after the Civil War by former slaves who were members of Cartledge Creek Baptist Church

But after the Civil War, many of his slaves chose to continue living on the plantation.
"Finally General Dockery called them all together and said they had to leave. So he gave them all a mule and an acre of land" in a nearby area that came to be called "Tom Hills."
Dockery also assisted in the founding of Holly Grove Missionary Baptist Church in 1869, which was formed nearby from the black members of Cartledge Creek Baptist Church after the Civil War.

Churches branch off

Located on Holly Grove Church Road near Cartledge Creek Baptist, the original Holly Grove church was rebuilt in 1954 in brick, but the graveyard still speaks of its history.
One of the ancient gravestones is for Ella McDonald, wife of Sam McDonald, 1824-1924. The marker notes she was "A Mother of the Church" as one of its founding members.
In the years since the Civil War, the Dockery name has died out among the white residents of Cartledge Creek community, but many black Dockerys still live in the area.
Three other churches have also been formed out of Cartledge Creek Baptist, the most recent Crestview Baptist in 1968.
Piney Grove Baptist was the first church formed from Cartledge Creek, but it did not survive the Civil War. And 16 members from Cartledge Creek were founding members of First Baptist Church of Rockingham in 1879.

1865 love story

Graves of the founders of Cartledge Creek Baptist remain in a quiet grove just below the church.

Miss Lib lives in a house next to Cartledge Creek Baptist which was built in 1866 by her grandfather, Ben Franklin Covington. He came home from the Civil War and married his "kissing cousin," Mary Anne Elizabeth Covington. She was the teacher at the school next to the church.
"When I was a little girl I stayed with my grandmother and I had to listen to her stories. I used to wish she would just hush. Now I wish I had listened more," Miss Lib said.
One of those stories was about her grandmother's wedding dress. As the war neared an end she knew her beau would be returning and she began planning for their wedding.
The postmaster at nearby Dockery Store -- the first post office in Richmond County -- told her about a blockade runner ship that had come into Cheraw, S.C., eluding the Yankee ships to bring in a load of scarce goods that included cloth she could use for a dress.
"She only made $110 a year as a schoolteacher, but she gave the postmaster $100 to send to Cheraw to get her a bolt of cloth to make her wedding dress," Miss Lib said.
But when the cloth arrived, it was calico, a cheap cotton material far from the silk expected for her $100 investment of nearly a year's wages.
Undaunted, her grandmother sewed her own wedding dress from calico and "trimmed it with Irish linen lace from better days" and the wedding went forward as planned in 1865.
Miss Lib's mother was one of nine children from that union. When her father died in 1915 and her mother died in 1916, she came to live with her aunt Lizzie Dockery and her grandmother at the age of 3. "It became my home and I've been here ever since."

www.johnwmyers.com 2003, John W. Myers, Email: writeme@johnwmyers.com