100 years of history
At first it was just Wake Forest College, with students and professors, professors’ families and slaves, living and studying in the former home of Dr. Calvin Jones and spreading out to the outbuildings and even a tent that served as a dining room.
The town, with stores and substantial homes, was at Forestville, a mile down a dusty road. After 1840, Forestville also had the train station and post office.
The town of Wake Forest only really began in 1839 when the college offered 80 one-acre lots for sale at $100 each except for those on the west side of North Main Street, which were $150. The lots sold slowly, mostly to professors, and by the end of the Civil War there were only 15 homes, one hotel and one store.
The college sorely felt the lack of a railroad station for its students and had been petitioning Raleigh & Gaston Railroad officials for years to move the station nearer the college. Finally, in 1874, after the college paid $3,000, a very large sum in those days, the station was moved. The controversy led to a split in the congregation of Forestville Baptist Church.
In 1879, perhaps spurred by the loss of the station, Forestville was chartered as a town. At that time it had 116 residents.
Not to be outdone, the town of Wake Forest sought and obtained a charter the following year, styling itself the Town of Wake Forest College with a population of 456. It was mapped as a rectangle containing 960 acres. James D. Purefoy, the richest man in town, was named mayor and there were five commissioners.
The minutes for the board of commissioners are in books – the original and copies – at the Wake Forest Historical Museum. (I started deciphering them a while back, struggling with the atrocious handwriting of some, and quit when Covid hit. I must get back to it.) Years ago, the late Dr. I. Beverly Lake Sr., who was born in Wake Forest in 1906, said it seemed the college governed the town with the president and faculty laying down rules.
But in 1908 and 1909, the times were changing. Automobiles, yes; but the more burning question was electricity. Wake Forest College wanted to throw out the coal-oil and kerosene lamps – dangerous and troublesome as they were – and put electric lights in the college buildings.
The problem was that the town needed to have an identity separate from the college in order to issue bonds for an electric light plant. On Feb. 22, the General Assembly authorized the town to issue those bonds at the same time the bill to recharter the town was moving through the legislature.
The town board met on March 1 under its new identity, and three apparently newly elected commissioners were sworn in: Charles E. Brewer, C.E. Gill and F.W. Dickson. Mayor Sol J. Allen and Commissioners Z.V. Peed and O.K. Holding already held office. The board voted to adopt all the old ordinances and re-elected W.W. Bobbitt as the town policeman. His salary was $35 a month and he did not receive any fees.
Bobbitt was asked to take a census, reporting the population was 1,225. Gill was asked to estimate the value of the property taken into the town limits by the recent extension. It was not noted where that extension was. Gill said the new property’s tax value was $34,500.
The old minutes, handwritten by the member of the board elected as secretary, sometimes undecipherable, sometimes missing entirely for a month or more, give in many cases more hints than a full story.
However, we know that an election was held on April 12, 1909, on the question of issuing $15,000 of bonds for an electric plant. On April 16 the registrar, E. Allen, and the two judges, W.P. Perry and I. Fort, reported the results. There were 109 registered voters, white males who paid their poll tax. Eighty-eight voted for the bonds and one against.
It was obvious everyone wanted the lights now! At that same April 16 meeting, the commissioners voted to “investigate” having B. Parker Rucker of Charlotte build the plant and four days later they hired him.
The brick plant he built still stands on Elm Avenue and you can still see WATER AND LIGHT above the front door, but now it is the crematorium for Bright Funeral Home. In 1909, the town installed a Westinghouse generator which was powered by sawdust from Moses Fort’s planning mill just across the Raleigh & Gaston Railroad tracks.
The lights – 17 large tungsten street lights downtown and the lights in some college dormitories – were turned on November 11, 1909. In 2009 the town celebrated the centennial with a number of events.
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