December 2017
Dear Woodville friends,
Bill and I have finally organized Woodville's many treasures for our History Center - it awaits your visit!
All pictures are now identified/framed, genealogy charts, books, artifacts and maps labeled , and file drawers filled with letters,family histories, and unframed pictures.
The building is secured, with the main display room heated/cooled when needed. I remain hopeful that you will donate anything relevant to our history.
This completes the last of Historic Woodville's projects over the past 20 years, all designed to establish, honor, and protect our rare historic district's history.
Goals completed:
- The National Register of Historic Places designated Woodville as one of only 5 rural historic districts in NC. Many similar villages like Woodville - with a cluster of schools, churches, stores, farms, and homes - dotted waterways and railways in the 1800s. Most had disappeared by the mid-1900s. Ruth Little, noted architectural historian wrote Woodville's "rural village with its remarkably intact collection of federal and antebellum houses.... seems a miracle of preservation".
- Signs erected delineating boundaries of Historic District
- Extensive website created - with maps, memoirs, photos, histories, genealogies, censuses, church registers, cemetery records.
- Movement of endangered Pugh, Smallwood, Clark, Thompson graves to St. Frances and Grace Episcopal cemeteries
- Movement to its original Woodville site, then restoration of Thomas Bragg's St. Frances Methodist Church. Sold in 2014.
- Sale of the donated old Woodville Supply Company. Owner restored it.
- Partial restoration and sale of the circa 1790 Bazemore House, the oldest remaining home in Woodville, now being restored.
- Hosted 3 tour groups
- The Woodville History Center finally completed. 2017.
HW will remain a dormant 501(c)3 nonprofit until a preservation minded person there steps up to continue its management.
Though there are no further projects requiring your help, there will always be a need for funds to cover the future expenses of adding materials, and for quarterly cleanings. Please consider a small tax deductible donation this and coming years.
Molly Urquhart
murquharmears@gmail.com 919.833.4009
Please send us your comments and questions.