"Our Heritage"
Mt. Olive Tribune
By Claude Moore

The Reverend David Thomson of Sampson County was one of the founders and was first minister of the Waynesborough Baptist Church, which was the forerunner of the First Baptist Church of Goldsboro. Services were held for some years in the old Free Meeting House in Waynesborough. The first Sunday School was organized in 1840 by Charles J. Nelson, a carriage marker, and he became the first superintendent. In 1843, there was a formal organization of the Waynesborough Baptist Church. In 1851, services at Waynesborough were abandoned, and for a time services were held in the old Academy Building in Goldsboro.

The Reverend David Thomson was born near Turkey, in Sampson County, in 1791, and was the son of Captain James Thomson (an officer in the North Carolina Militia during the Revolution) and Lucy Ivey. He attended Grove Academy in Kenansville. His father was Presbyterian and his mother an Episcopalian, but at an early age he was converted to the Baptist faith and was baptized by the Reverend Fleet Cooper.

In 1814, young David Thomson was ordained into the ministry, and in the same year he was founder of Beulah Church on Ten Mile Swamp near Turkey. Around 1817-1819, he went as a missionary to Georgia and Alabama.

In the early 1820’s, the Reverend David Thomson moved to Smithfield, where he bought a plantation in the country and built a home in the town. Even though he went into the mercantile business and was postmaster of Smithfield, he continued to serve as pastor of various churches in Johnston County. He first married Sarah McCullers (1801-1836), and by her he had two daughters, Sarah (died young), and Ann (1831-1850), who married Dr. John Beckwith. He later married Mrs. Pheriby Saunders Helme, and by her he had one daughter, Lucy (1838-1844).

The Reverend David Thomson served for several years in the State Senate from Johnston County, and he was one of the promoters of the move to establish Wake Forest College. He was a member of the first Board of Trustees of Wake Forest and served until 1842.

Besides preaching for several years prior to 1843 at Waynesborough, the Reverend David Thomson held services at other churches in Wayne. The records show that he preached the introductory sermon when the Eastern Baptist Association met at Bear Marsh Baptist Church in 1841.

The Reverend David Thomson and two daughters, Sarah and Lucy, all died on September 1, 1844, and are buried in the Old Town Cemetery in Smithfield. A local paper said of him after his death, "as a man, a citizen, a Christian, he stood pre-eminent with all who had pleasure of his acquaintance. He held the individual confidence of all who knew him as well as the community in which he lived, whose State Senator he had often been, with marked credit to each, the constituent and the representative."