The Wake Forest Town Board is inviting local youth and adult community organizations to lead the Pledge of Allegiance at the beginning of each board meeting. The invitation includes sports teams, church groups, civic clubs and scouts.
The commissioners and mayor meet on the third Tuesday of each month at 7 p.m. in the second-floor board chamber in the Wake Forest Town Hall.
Contact Executive Assistant Cathi Pope at 919-435-9467, cpope@wakeforestnc.gov to volunteer.
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Perhaps the second oldest house in the Wake Forest area, the Purefoy Dunn house between Capital Boulevard and the street Sam’s Club is on is for sale and has been for more than a year. It stands next to the nearly complete new ABC store, which will probably open in early March if there is enough good weather to pave the parking lot.
Kima Commercial Real Estate is advertising the house as either a home or a location for a business. It is zoned highway business by Wake County but it has a historic preservation easement that stays with the house. The ad says “Truly artistic character and charm – heart of pine floors, thick detailed molding throughout the home, storm windows, impressive foyer, NUMEROUS fireplaces . . . Even some of the trees on the property have their own plaques.”
The description by Capital Area Preservation says: “Built in the first quarter of the 19th century and later renovated in the mid-19th century, the boldly-detailed Greek Revival-style plantation house sits on a plateau at the top of a small hill on the east side of Capital Boulevard in Wake Forest. Despite the loss of its Greek Revival portico and other alterations, the house remains essentially intact as a representative of the plantation seats built in Wake County and other northern piedmont counties in the mid-19th century. The house was likely built beginning in 1814 by the Rev. John Purefoy, a founder and member of the Wake Forest College Board of Trustees. He served several area churches before moving in the late 1830s to Cumberland County. In 1838, he sold his 429-acre plantation to Samuel and Mary Dunn, both Wake County natives. Dunn added a two-story wing to the house and expanded the entire house into an L-shaped Greek Revival residence. Samuel Dunn’s plantation produced wheat, corn, oats, cotton, wool and swine in the 1840s and 1850s, and by 1860 he cultivated 500 acres and owned 24 slaves. The Dunns owned the property until the early 1880s, and since that time it has passed through several different owners. (Local people will remember it as the Caveness farm.) An easement was donated to CAP in 2005.”
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For February, Black History Month, the Gazette is listing accomplishments, births and death during each week.
Feb. 8 – 1968 Three South Carolina State students were killed during a segregation protest in Orangeburg, S.C.
Feb. 9 – 1995 Bernard Harris becomes the first African-American astronaut to walk in space.
Feb. 10 – 1927 Leontyne Price, an internationally acclaimed opera singer, is born.
Feb. 11 – 1990 Nelson Mandela of South Africa is released from prison after 27 years.
Feb. 12 – Celebrated as Lincoln’s birthday in the United States. In 1909 the NAACP was founded in New York City.
Feb. 13 – 1970 Joseph L. Searles becomes the first African-American member of the New York Stock Exchange.
(Taken from a calendar advertising Chappell Funeral & Cremation Services in Garner.)
