Royall Cotton Mill, owned by members of the Wake Forest Royall family and their friends, was built in 1900 and 1901 and by September 1901 Robert Royall was able to give a rosy treasurer’s report: “We have since our last meeting completed our 30 Operatives’ Houses, our Cotton Warehouse, Store, and Mill Buildings and have installed in the last named all the items that go to constitute our Power Plant, Fire Protection, and General Equipment, and also all the Textile Machinery that we originally contemplated.”
The person responsible for building those 30 houses was Benjamin Thomas Hicks, known as Tom and known as a master carpenter. Born before the Civil War, Hicks learned his trade from his father, who made fine furniture, was a blacksmith and also made wheels for carts and wagons for the Confederate Army.
Those 30 four-room houses with four interior fireplaces housed two families each. Hicks also probably built the school for the mill children in 1907 and helped build several of the homes along Faculty Avenue, now North Main Street. He is the acknowledged builder of the Wall-Holden House, built around 1908. With fellow carpenter Patrick Alford as well as well as help from George Davis, the owner, Hicks built the two Davis houses on North Main Street.
When the builders for the Wake Forest Baptist Church ran into some major problems in the construction of the large distinctive dome that tops the building, they turned to Hicks, who made a few drawings on a piece of wood to show them how it could be done. The church was completed in 1914 and remains one of the premier buildings in Wake Forest and the state.
In the 1930s, remembered as a very old man, he was the lead carpenter for the several barns and buildings, including the massive dairy barn which still stands, at John Sprunt Hill’s 1,750-acre showplace farm on Falls of the Neuse Road. When it was built it was called Forest Hill Farm; later, in 1939 or 1940, the name was changed for Wakefield Farm.
Ed Osborne said his grandfather, S.O. Rich, the farm manager, designed the huge barn. In the mornings during its construction, Rich would sit with Hicks, the two would consult, draw something on a piece of wood and Hicks would build it.
Several of his children and grandchildren lived in the mill village and say that Hicks married five times and fathered nine children. At least three of his wives died in childbirth.
As Hicks grew older his hearing worsened, but he still worked at Forest Hill Farm. The week that ended July 9, 1938, he earned $4 according to Rich’s record book. On July 15, 1938, he was walking on the railroad tracks near the cemetery crossing (probably the extension of Walnut Avenue that was open then) and, so the story goes, watching three or four low-flying airplanes, the most modern means of transportation then, and did not hear a train approaching. He was struck and killed by Seaboard Train #19.
###
November 2, 2024
Menu
