Gibson Storehouse

Gibson Storehouse

ca. 1792, ca. 1950

Joseph Bitting probably built what is known as the Gibson Storehouse as a tavern around 1792. The name, Gibson Storehouse, was documented during Stokes County’s countywide architectural survey in 1981 and that name reflects the Gibson family’s long association with the building. A better name might be the Bitting Tavern or the Bitting-Gibson Storehouse.

Assuming the back wing of the Bitting-Pepper-Blackburn-Petree House does not predate 1792, this is the oldest building standing in Germanton.

In 1792, Joseph Bitting purchased Germanton Town Lots 2, 3, and 4 from the town commissioners.[1] At that time, Bitting was married to Rachel Nelson, and in 1795, the couple had a son, also named Joseph.[2] Joseph Bitting’s life is not well-documented, but in the 1790s, he asked the Court of Pleas and Quarter Sessions for permission to operate a tavern.[3]  

In 1798, Joseph Bitting died. Estate records reveal that his wife, Rachael, inherited the “Mansion House” on lot 3 in 1799. It is likely that they operated their business on Lot 2, which was the more commercially prominent location, facing the courthouse. Furthering that notion is the fact that later deeds refer to Lot 2 as the Storehouse Lot.[4] The remainder of Joseph’s estate, including the store lot, passed to his three-year-old son, Joseph W. Bitting, with Anthony Bitting assigned as young Joseph’s guardian. Jeremiah Gibson, a local merchant, received payment from Bitting’s estate for board and tuition for the child.[5]

Within just a year or two, Jeremiah Gibson married Bitting’s widow, Rachel Nelson Bitting.[6] In 1810, Jeremiah bought Lot 1 on the courthouse square, which was described as Benjamin Forsyth’s house where he was currently living.[7] This suggests that the Gibson Storehouse was not Benjamin Forsyth’s and that Forsyth’s house would have been located farther back from the main road, just to the left, or southwest, of the extant log outbuilding associated with the Gibson Storehouse today.

Thus, Jeremiah Gibson owned or controlled four prime lots in Germanton: Lot 1 he owned; Lots 2 and 4 he legally controlled from 1799 until Joseph W. Bitting reached his majority in 1816; and Lot 3, he controlled via his marriage to Rachel Nelson Bitting. It is not known who ran the tavern between 1799 and 1816, but it may have been Jeremiah or his son, Isaac. A 1915 newspaper article mentions a leger book of Jeremiah Gibson’s that covers the span from 1806 to 1816, and while the end date coincides with Joseph W.’s inheritance, it is not known if these accounts were related to this store or not.[8]

In 1819, Joseph W. Bitting married Polly Armstrong, a daughter of Thomas Temple Armstrong, a local attorney.[9] From at least 1819 to 1823, Joseph W. ran the tavern. Those dates are based on an extant tavern ledger that records the sale of liquor by the barrel as well as the payments of lodgers and Joseph’s purchases of goods related to running a tavern.[10] Joseph and Polly had one child before Joseph’s untimely death in 1825.[11]  

Following Joseph W.’s death in 1825, it seems plausible that Jeremiah or Isaac Gibson (Jeremiah’s son, Joseph W.’s stepbrother) might have continued doing business in the store.

In 1828, Rachel Nelson Bitting Gibson died, and her grave is the oldest marked burial in what is today the Methodist Church Cemetery.[12]

Upon Rachel’s death, Jeremiah became the outright owner of Lot 3, which Rachel had inherited. It is not known who controlled Lot 2 (the storehouse lot) and Lot 4, both of which had belonged to Joseph W. Jeremiah and/or Isaac probably ran a business here, but that is unclear.

Jeremiah Gibson bought and sold many acres of land in and near Germanton and held more than twenty people in bondage between the 1810s and his death in 1849.[13] Crudely using humans as currency suggests Gibson was one of the wealthier people in Stokes County and was certainly the wealthiest resident of Germanton. In 1810, he enslaved two people, but by 1820, he held 26 humans in bondage, 17 of whom were children under the age of 14.

In 1833, five years after Rachel’s death, Jeremiah married an affluent widow named Sarah Follis Moody. The Moodys lived farther south, at the present-day location of theStyers House, and Sarah Moody possessed five enslaved people and significant land holdings. The marriage of Jeremiah and Sarah united two wealthy people, and they protected their wealth with what amounts to a prenuptial agreement wherein they promised not to include each other’s property in their wills, meaning that Sarah could not leave Jeremiah’s property to her children and Jeremiah could not will her property to his children.[14]

In 1836, Isaac Gibson, Jeremiah’s son and Joseph W.’s step brother, purchased the storehouse lot from Joseph W.’s estate. This officially moved Lot 2 into the possession of the Gibson family, although it is likely that Jeremiah and Isaac had long been controlling this property along with the three other lots (Lots 1, 3, and 4) that Jeremiah already owned.

In 1849, Jeremiah died and left land, buildings, and personal property to his son, Isaac, with a life-estate for Sarah. The bulk of his farmland and his enslaved people went to his granddaughter, Olivia Gibson Stedman. His will names fifteen enslaved people: Catherine and her children Caroline and Anderson; a married couple, Jefferson and Venus, and their children, Milton, Harriet, Wiley, Nancy Elizabeth, Smith, and Willy; Henderson; Lavina, and her children James Rufus and Marie.

Around 1850, Isaac Gibson and several other trustees established the Germanton Masonic Institute, and oral history relates that this school operated here. It is fitting that the Gibson’s were strong supporters of education: Jeremiah had been entrusted with the education of Joseph W. Bitting, and he and both of Jeremiah’s sons, Isaac and William, graduated from the University of North Carolina, as did at least one of Jeremiah’s grandson, Leonidas Gibson.

Greensboro Patriot, February 20, 1857, page 4

Rumor of a railroad coming through Germanton in the early and mid-1850s prompted continued investment in the town, including the construction of a school for girls supported by Isaac and his niece, Olivia Stedman. Isaac, nevertheless, decamped to Salem, and in 1857, he began advertising his Germanton property, which included “a good Store House two stories high with four fireplaces.”

It is unclear how the store or tavern ended up in the ownership of his great-niece, Fannie Hall, but it appears that Isaac did not sell the store in 1857, and ultimately, the building passed from Isaac to Fannie Hall, who was a daughter of Olivia Gibson Stedman. In August of 1876, Fannie Hall sold the tavern to William Campbell, a local businessman.[15]

Campbell owned the building for fifteen years before selling it to N.O. Petree in 1891. The Petrees sold it to their daughter and son-in-law, Flora and John Kurfrees, who lived in the building for twenty-eight years.[16] As an aside, the Kurfrees son, Marshall, served as the Mayor of Winston-Salem from 1949 to 1961, during which time he secured approval of I-40’s route through downtown and opened city jobs and seats on city boards to African Americans.

After another sale, the Holland and Wagoner families (related by marriage) bought the building in 1936 and for most of the twentieth century, the Wagoners lived in the house.[17]

Throughout the nineteenth century, the building was primarily commercial, housing Bitting’s tavern followed by other stores and tavern uses. The local Masons convened upstairs, and, as previously noted, the Masons ran a well-regarded school for boys here during the 1850s. From time to time, the post office was also stationed here. Since the 1930s, however, it has been used as a home.

Changes to the house include a one-story addition on the north end and a Colonial Revival make-over of the house during the 1940s and 1950s. The mid-twentieth-century renovation included replacing the rectangular, four-light transoms with fanlights and the installation of a full-height portico. The interior has been entirely modernized, but a sturdy log outbuilding, possibly used as a smokehouse, remains on the property.

Gibson Storehouse is on the right, with a man standing in the doorway; the old courthouse is in the center of the road

Gibson Storehouse is to the left of the courthouse

original transom configuration is barely visible

image from the Winston-Salem Journal, January 26, 1941

1948 photograph, courtesy of the Forsyth County Public Library Photograph Collection, accessible via http://www.digitalforsyth.org/photos/11680

Sarah Woodard David, 2017

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[1] Germanton Town Commissioners to Joseph Bitting, Stokes County Deed Book 1, page 216, June 5, 1792.

[2] Joseph Bitting and Joseph W. Bitting, estate papers, North Carolina State Archives, Raleigh, N.C.

[3] The author has lost this exact reference to the Pleas and Quarters Session records.

[4] Joseph Bitting’s estate at auction to Isaac Gibson, Stokes County deed Book 12, page 174, October 22, 1836.

[5] Joseph Bitting’s estate papers, North Carolina State Archives, Raleigh, N.C.

[6] Rachel [Nelson Bitting] Gibson is buried in the Germanton Methodist Church Cemetery along with several other Gibson family members. Guardianship papers in the elder Joseph Bitting’s estate papers but related to the 1825 death of Joseph W. Bitting describe Jeremiah Gibson as Joseph W.’s stepfather.  

[7] Benjamin Forsyth to Jeremiah Gibson, Stokes County Deed Book 5, page 423, June 2, 1810.

[8] Twin City Daily Sentinel (Winston-Salem), November 13, 1915, page 9.

[9] North Carolina Marriage Records, 1741-2011, accessed via ancestry.com.

[10] Joseph W. Bitting, ledger, North Carolina State Archives, Raleigh, N.C.

[11] Joseph W. Bitting’s estate papers, North Carolina State Archives, Raleigh, N.C.

[12] Rachel Gibson grave marker, Germanton Methodist Church Cemetery.

[13] U.S. Census Records, Population Schedules, 1810, 1820, 1830, and 1840, accessed via ancestry.com.

[14] Agreement between Jeremiah Gibson and Sarah Moody, Stokes County Deed Book 9, page 571, August 16, 1832.

[15] Fannie O. and B.R. Hall to William Campbell, Stokes County Deed Book 30, page 432, August 8, 1876.

[16] William Campbell to N.O. Petree, Stokes County Deed Book 33, page 339, October 3, 1891; and N.O. and M.J. Petree to John W. Kurfrees, Stokes County Deed Book 48, page 330, March 10, 1906.

[17] Carrie and M.F. James to J.E. Wagoner and S.L. Holland, Stokes County Deed Book 89, page 548.