Special To The Daily Journal

From the shanty houses of Rockingham before the urban renewal project, to the farm at the historic Leak-Wall House years before, the report Monday night of the Genealogy Committee of the Richmond County Historical Society covered those periods and more.

Genealogy work is being done by the committee to discover and preserve the lives of those in the past for present and future generations, said May MacCallum, committee chairman.

For a year and a half, an effort has been made to create an office and workplace at the Leak-Wall House to collect materials for genealogy research.

On display at the meeting at Rockingham City Hall of the society were several genealogy works accomplished so far, along with parts of collections of maps, photographs and histories.

 

Leak-Wall memories

Today the Leak-Wall house projects the image of a Southern mansion, but when Betty Reid lived there from 1928 to 1944, it was a house on a working farm.

"It was a self-sustaining farm," she said. "You couldn't call it anything but that."

She lived there with her aunt and uncle, Elizabeth and Henry Clay Wall.

On the grounds around the house when she lived there were pheasant, peacock and chicken pens, a three-stall stable, six large pecan trees, a large pasture for livestock and a vegetable garden with corn raised in the front yard and more. Pigs were raised on land in the Wolf Pit community, Reid said. Garden foods were canned.

She paid tribute in remembering Jim Reddick, a farm hand whom she tried as a child to follow in his footsteps as he used a push plow in the garden. "He was so good, so kind," Reid said. "He took care of the farm with other help when needed."

The Walls had no children. "They were generous to me," she said.

During the Great Depression, she said while money was short, they had plenty of food from the farm. "We fed many people who came to the door," Reid said.

While she lived there, the kitchen went from using a wood stove for cooking to electric. Even when an electric refrigerator was installed, for a time they continued to use the old ice box for cooling, she said.

 

Urban renewal

The Rockingham urban renewal project in the early 1960s was the beginning of modern Rockingham government, said Wilson Moore, who was then the project manager.

Covering 62 acres downtown, at the time it was the largest such single renewal project in North Carolina, said Jesse Spencer.

Moore praised Spencer, who was chairman of the Rockingham Urban Renewal Commission, for working "tirelessly" on the project. "Without him, there would not have been any urban renewal," Moore said. Moore was a paid manager, but Spencer's work was all volunteer.

Spencer said that at the time there was "terrific opposition to the project."

The project was prompted partly because the state was relocating U.S. 220 in the area under consideration.

In meeting federal requirements for grants, Rockingham was required to provide public housing for people being displaced from the substandard housing being demolished.

"The odor at times was overwhelming from the area," Spencer said, because there was no running water or sewer there.

Eighty percent of the slum housing was then being managed by a bank for an estate, he said.

One man was so opposed to the project, he started his own newspaper to oppose it, Spencer said.

From the effort, Rockingham developed code enforcement policies, established a planning board, and changed from a mayor-council form of government to a city manager form, Moore said.

"Rockingham is in excellent shape today because city government agreed to the project," he said.

 

Preservation

MacCallum said that effort is now being preserved by the Genealogy Committee after records were transferred to it for safekeeping by the Historical Society.

Involved in that preservation, as well as other efforts, have been Linda Pryce, Norma Garris, Barbara and John Murray, Sandra Elliott and William Butler. Joining them recently are Pat Franklin, Frances DeSha and Larry Rogers. Jack Ingram has been a major contributor of genealogy materials.

Preservation of family memories such as expressed by Reid, and the physical changes in Richmond County as told by Moore and Spencer, are all part of the Genealogy Committee's work for the Historical Society, MacCallum said.

She and Franklin explained the research being done on the Old Scotch Cemetery off Richmond Road Extension to find and record histories of the families of some Richmond County's earliest settlers.

In the large, forgotten cemetery so far 62 graves with markers have been identified, over 60 rocks were found marking gravesites and some 30 depressions marked which are believed to be grave depressions. Graves date back as far as 1811, although one "mystery" marking was found on a stone with the date 1785.

Other efforts by the committee include saving some 1,000 death certificates filling four notebooks and dozens of large, heavy Richmond County tax record books from the 1700s to 1970s. Such records will enable the committee to have another means of verification of families once living in the county.

"We're working to keep the past alive and available through the preservation of such records," MacCallum said.

She encouraged the production and preservation of family histories throughout Richmond County and church histories as well.

For information, contact the committee through the Richmond County Historical Society at P. O. Box 1763, Rockingham, NC 28380.

The society will hold a Saturday picnic in October at the 1700s Touchstone Plantation in northern Richmond County.