100 years of history by Carol Pelosi
In the 1900’s, the early years of the 20th Century, Benjamin Thomas Hicks was building the houses for the Royall Cotton Mill’s “operatives.” Each four-room house with four interior fireplaces housed two families. He probably also built the school for the mill children in 1907, just as he helped build several of the homes along Faculty Avenue.
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, at John Sprunt Hill’s 1,750-acre showplace farm on Falls of the Neuse Road. At the time it was called Forest Hill Farm and later, in 1939 or 1940, the name was changed to Wakefield Farm.
Ed Osborne said his grandfather, S.O. Rich, the farm manager, designed the huge barn. In the mornings Rich would sit with Hicks, the two would consult, draw something on a piece of wood and then Hicks would build it.
Hicks’ family says the Wake Forest Baptist Church builders ran into some major problems when they were constructing the large dome. They turned to Tom Hicks, who made a few drawings on a piece of wood to show them how to construct it and solved their problems.
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 during the Civil War.
Hicks married five times and fathered nine children; at least three wives died in childbirth.
As Hicks grew older, his hearing diminished, but he still worked at Forest Hill Farm, and the week that ended July 9, 1938, he earned $4. On July 15, 1938, he was walking on the railroad tracks near the cemetery crossing (the extension of Walnut Avenue) and, the story goes, was watching three or four low-flying airplanes, the most modern means of transportation at the time, and did not hear a train approaching. He was struck and killed by Seaboard Train #19.
Several of his children and grandchildren lived in the mill village, and in 2007 those grandchildren and the entire mill community celebrated their life there, where everyone was part of the mill family.
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