Reprinted from July 2004
For years, Bob Page and his family have searched for a grave, the final resting place of William Marcellus Thompson who once lived near Wake Forest, was killed during the Civil War and gave his name to the house that Kathy and Frank Drake have recently purchased and moved to a 2-acre site on Old N.C. 98.
Page, who lives in Virginia, his daughter Debi Michael and others have searched the Internet, enjoyed the help of local people like James Lee and scratched around in old graveyards in northern Wake County. They thought William Thompson probably had been buried near the corner of Old Creedmoor and Mount Vernon Church roads with other Thompson family members, including Robert Thompson, William’s brother-in-law and third cousin.
One exciting find was a 200-year-old gristmill on Cedar Creek that was very likely owned by Swan Thompson, William Thompson’s great-grandfather and a pioneer in the area. The remnants of the mill can still be seen in a subdivision aptly named Swan’s Mill on Possum Track Road.
Then a month ago Michael idly turned to another search of the Internet and found a Wake Forest Gazette article about moving the William Thompson house. She began calling and sending e-mails to Kathy Drake, and on Sunday, July 18, Bob Page, Debi Michael, her sister, brother, and a host of relatives came to visit their ancestor’s home.
“Oh, we had a marvelous time down there,” Michael said later, touring the house and – perhaps – discovering William Thompson’s grave.
Susan Barham, who lives near Youngsville and was the person who sparked the original interest in saving the house after Bay Leaf Baptist Church bought the 19-acre site and thought of razing the house, called Michael to say she had always heard that William was buried next to his father, George W. Thompson, who died in 1891.
George Thompson was one of the original trustees for Wake Forest College and may have built the house named for his son. George and his wife are buried in the Crenshaw-Fleming-Thompson cemetery that was originally behind Waterfall, the Crenshaw mansion on Thompson Mill Road.
When Page and his family visited the cemetery that has been preserved in Waterfall subdivision, Ronnie Allen, Michael’s brother-in-law, looked at the grave marked with rough stones and said he was sure that was William Thompson’s grave.
William was killed at the Battle of Gaines Mill in Virginia in 1862. His pregnant widow, Mary Adelaide, traveled to the battle site to return his body for burial.
William’s posthumous child was a daughter who was named for him, William Marcellus, but was called Willie Mae. Bob Page and his three children are descended from Willie Mae.
After William’s death, George Thompson made arrangements to care for Adelaide and the four children. In a deed dated Sept. 24, 1864, he gave Mary “in consideration of the natural love and affection which he has for his daughter-in-law,” 300 acres on both sides of Lower Barton’s Creek and the mill on the creek with all its machinery. In return, Mary was to “board, cloth (sic) and educate” children. The land and the mill were to be a loan to Mary and on her death would be owned jointly by the children.
It appears that Mary and her children remained in the house north of Falls of the Neuse, living with George and his wife, Frances Crenshaw. The house certainly remained in the family until 1945 when Hubert Holden purchased it.
Although the house suffered some hard use during more recent years, it remained almost exactly what it had been when it was built in the 1820s or 1830s, a classical Greek Revival building with center halls and four rooms on each floor.
It is being restored by the Drakes with close attention to detail, including using the same foundation stones in the same design as the bases for the chimneys and rebuilding the eight fireplace fire boxes with the soapstones, dug from nearby creeks, that lined them originally.
Kevin Sura has cleaned out all the cracks in the original plaster and made repairs. Although Kathy Drake said some plaster will have to be removed and replaced, “all the perfectly good plaster is going to stay.”
Tony Williams from Warrenton and his crew are rebuilding the four chimneys. “He’s the best mason in the state,” Drake said, and she checks the new brick work against color photographs of the original chimneys.
The house has been listed again on the study list for the National Register of Historic Places, and Drake hopes it will be named to the national register within a year.
Meanwhile, she is asking Michael to search the family photo albums for pictures taken while the Thompson family lived in the Thompson house. Drake wants to see if the house or any part of it can be seen in the photographs. She wants to know what the front porch and the back porch looked like in the 1800s, what landscaping there was around the house and what colors the house was painted.
Once she saw the house, Michael said, she wanted to buy it and move in. That would indeed be going home again.
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