Germanton Methodist Church

Germanton Methodist Church, 1856

The Germanton Methodist Church and Cemetery are listed in the National Register of Historic Places, and Laura Phillip’s 1997 nomination contains a thorough history and detailed architectural description. Please click here to read the nomination.

The Germanton Methodist Church earns a lot of superlatives: it is the oldest congregation in Germanton, its building is the oldest religious building in Stokes County, and its cemetery is the oldest collective burying ground[1] in Stokes County.

The earliest known record of a Methodist congregation in Germanton occurs in 1834 when the Book of the Stokes Circuit, North Carolina Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church South recorded a quarterly meeting in Germanton. In 1838, Jeremiah Gibson, a locally prominent merchant and farmer, sold a piece of land on Main Street to John B. Hampton, David Westmoreland, Elijah Fowler, James T. Wright, Solomon Petree, John White, Isaac L. Gibson, Lewis B. Banner, and Elisha Banner, Trustees, for $50.00 where upon the trustees were to build a place of worship for the Methodist Episcopal Church.[2]

It is not known with certainty when or if the congregants built a church here before they constructed the existing building. The congregation operated a Sabbath School as early as 1838 and a January 1852 Conference meeting being held at Mt. Tabor adjourned to Germanton, where the meeting place was warm, suggesting the presence of a building, but those gatherings could have been held in the courthouse or another public building, such as the Masonic Hall. A 1938 article in the Winston-Salem Journal notes that “A long [log?] church was built about the same time as this deed [1838] was made but little is known about it.”[3]

In any case, the congregation flourished and they built their new brick sanctuary in 1856, and officially dedicated it in 1857. By that time, the church’s membership included 49 white members and 27 African American members, who, tradition suggests, were all enslaved. The church remained racially integrated into the 1940s when Germanton’s remaining African American citizens moved to Winston-Salem or elsewhere for work or died.[4]

The church’s earliest members and supporters, including Banners, Petrees, and Gibsons, were also among the wealthiest residents of Germanton. While constructing a new sanctuary, these families also invested heavily in the establishment of a well-respected Masonic Institute that opened in 1852 and a school for girls, which only operated briefly in the mid-1850s.[5] They advocated for a railroad connection, built sizable homes in and around Germanton, maintained strong ties with Salem’s Moravian merchants, and sent their children to college.

Forsyth County Courthouse in Winston

The builder of the church is not known, but it seems likely that John Dietrich Tavis may have had a hand in its design and woodwork. Tavis, a skilled house builder from Salem, who was very active in and around Germanton during the mid-1850s, employed a fine but restrained Greek Revival style in his Germanton-area homes, very similar to that seen at the Methodist Church. Furthermore, the church’s steeple bears a remarkable resemblance to the steeple on the Forsyth County Courthouse built in Winston in 1850. Although any local builder may have been familiar with the Forsyth County Courthouse, Tavis lived in Salem and certainly would have known that building’s designer, Francis Fries.[6]

Germanton Methodist steeple

Additionally, at one point in the steeple’s history, clock faces hung on each side of it, and local tradition holds that those were made by a silversmith from Salem. As it turns out, the 1850 census enumerates Tavis next to Trougott Leinbach, a silversmith, who also carved Andrew Bowman’s 1847 tombstone in the church’s cemetery.[7]  

Furthermore, the house next door to the church, the Pepper-Blackburn-Petree House, appears to be Tavis’ work and the 1938 Journal article notes that next to the church “is an old house that was built as a parsonage for the church. The doors are paneled and the windows are many-paned like the church.” During the 1850s, when the church and the front part of the Pepper-Blackburn-Petree House were both constructed, the Pepper family owned the house and cemetery property. One of the Pepper brothers, Clareridon Martin Pepper, was a Methodist minister who served the Germanton congregation, strengthening the ties between the church and the Pepper-Blackburn-Petree House.

Regardless of the builder, the church is a stylish and imposing landmark, the likes of which was built nowhere else in Stokes County.[8] Germanton had lost its place as the county seat in 1849 when Stokes was split to form Forsyth County to the south, but according to many newspaper accounts in the 1850s, residents actively sought a rail connection for the town, and for a while, it seemed as if they might get their wish. The hope and optimism surrounding the railroad, which did not materialize until the 1880s, combined with the statewide agricultural prosperity experienced by white farmers in the 1850s resulted in a fine collection of Greek Revival work in and around Germanton, of which the Methodist Church is an outstanding and almost unaltered example.

 

Methodist Church with clock faces
photo from Bud Hill's collection

The building features an austere, brick exterior with large six-over-six sash windows and a central, double-leaf door with two-panel leafs typical of Greek Revival architecture. Inside, the Greek Revival woodwork is plain, but expertly finished with ramped handrails on the twin staircases leading to the balcony. The sanctuary features paneled pews, window trim with cornerblocks, and a tin ceiling that was probably a later addition.

The cemetery behind the church predates the congregation by several years. The National Register nomination for the property suggests that it started as a Gibson family cemetery because the earliest noted marked burial was that of Rachel Gibson in 1828 and because her husband, Jeremiah Gibson, had sold the congregation the land on which the church stands. However, at the time the cemetery appears to have started, it was still part of the land associated with the Pepper-Blackburn-Petree House, located immediately southwest of the church. That property was owned by Joshua and Martha Bitting Banner during the 1820s, and Joshua's 1848 estate included a lot with a grave yard. Additionally, the church's 1838 deed describes a lot that is one-half-acre in size, and 4.5 poles wide by 18 poles deep; that is wider than the church's current frontage and would not be deep enough to include the cemetery. 

Joshua and Martha Bitting Banner had acquired the cemetery property though inheritance: Anthony Bitting bought this land in 1798 from Michael Fry. He gave a portion of it to his daughter, Martha Bitting Banner before his death and the remainder passed to her and her husband upon Anthony’s death in 1804. The 1798 deed does not mention a cemetery, and no extant markers predate Anthony’s death; the marked burials started here in the 1820s, during the ownership of Joshua and Martha Bitting Banner. The earliest marked burial actually appears to be Martha’s nephew, Joseph Bitting who died in 1821, thus, rather than a Gibson family cemetery, this cemetery seems to have started as a Bitting-Banner family cemetery.[9]

Joseph Bitting was the son of Joseph Bitting (Martha Bitting Banner’s brother) and Rachel Nelson Bitting. The elder Joseph operated a tavern and storehouse on the courthouse square, but he died in 1798 when his son was just three years old.[10] His widow, Rachel, married prominent merchant, Jeremiah Gibson. In 1821, the younger Joseph died, and was buried in this cemetery. Rachel only outlived her son by seven years, and Rachel is the cemetery’s second earliest marked burial, dating from 1828.[11]

advertisement for Joshua Banner's estate auction, 1848

The Bittings, Banners, and Gibsons were part of Germanton’s circle of wealthy merchants, landowners, and farmers who participated in town and county governance and commerce. Neither Anthony Bitting nor Joseph and Martha Bitting appear to have lived on the lot containing the cemetery. That combined with the families’ civic involvement create the likelihood that the Bittings would have allowed the creation of a town burying ground on their property.

In 1848, the Pepper family purchased the property from Joshua Banner’s estate. The Banner-Pepper deed mentions the cemetery, referring to it generically without mentioning a specific family or church association, and the cemetery appears to be part of the transaction. In 1873, when C. M. Pepper sold the house to the William Blackburn, the lot shape was drawn to exclude the cemetery and the total land area was smaller than the area the Pepper family bought in 1848. A formal deed transferring this section of the cemetery to the church has not been uncovered, but C.M. Pepper, who was a Methodist minister that served Germanton, apparently gave the cemetery land to the congregation before 1873.[12]

Burials in the cemetery reflect a who’s who of Germanton’s wealthiest white families from before the Civil War, and not all of the burials are of church members, even well into the 20th century. This advances the notion that the cemetery operated as a community burial place before it came to be considered the church’s cemetery.

In 1957, Ruth Petree, who owned the old Anthony Bitting lot to the southwest of the church property, transferred about 1.5 acres to the church for the expansion of the cemetery, and in 1965, the McKenzie family, on the northeast side of the church, purchased the lowlands along the creek at the rear of the property.[13]

Today, the church stands as a remarkable testament to the town’s optimism, its willingness to invest in public institutions, and its architectural sophistication. The cemetery encapsulates the town’s social history and helps to document the lives of the town’s nineteenth century white residents.

photo from The State (now Our State Magazine), April 1, 1939
In an effort to right an obvious wrong, the accompanying article in The State was clearly plagiarized from Mildred Small's 1938 newspaper story about the church.

receipt acknowledging payment to Trougott Leinbach for Andrew Bowman's tombstone

Andrew Bowman's gravemarker, carved by Leinbach; several other markers in the cemetery are nearly identical
photo from by B.N. Cheek on findagrave.com

Gibson family markers

Sarah Woodard David, 2016

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[1] Additional research on another Germanton cemetery may reveal that another cemetery is the county’s oldest community burial ground. Stay tuned for a post about this other cemetery in the future.

[2] Laura Phillips, Germanton Methodist Church and Cemetery, National Register Nomination, 1997, section 8, page 8, and Jeremiah Gibson to Trustees, Stokes County Deed Book 12, page 268, December 10, 1838.

[3] Phillips, section 8, page 8, and Mildred Small, “Germanton Church for All Denominations,” Winston-Salem Journal, July 4, 1938, page number not recorded, clipping in the Stokes County WPA Writers Project file at the North Carolina State Archives, Raleigh, N.C.

[4] Phillips, section 8, page 6, and Raleigh Christian Advocate, page 2, July 9, 1857.

[5] Greensboro Patriot, November 26, 1839, page 4, and John Woodard, ed, The Heritage of Stokes County (Winston-Salem: Hunter Publishing Company, 1981), 93.

[6]Click here for a fuller description of John Dietrich Tavis’ known work.

[7] 1850 U. S. Census records accessed via ancestry.com, and Andrew Bowman Estate Papers, North Carolina State Archives, Raleigh, N.C.

[8] Phillips, section 8, pages 11-12.

[9] Michael Fry to Anthony Bitting, Stokes County Deed Book 3, page 200, June 30, 1798, and John Pepper’s purchase of the property at auction from Joshua Banner’s estate and John Pepper’s transfer of title to Dewit Pepper, Stokes County Deed Book 18, page 184, April 11, 1853.

[10] Joseph Bitting’s 1798 burial location is not known to the author. Anthony Bitting, Joseph’s father, bought this land several months before Joseph’s death, so it is possible that one of the many unmarked graves in the cemetery is that of the elder Joseph Bitting.

[11] Stokes County Marriage Records, accessed via ancestry.com, and grave markers.

[12] For the deed references to this property, please see The Germanton Project post regarding thePepper-Blakburn-Petree House.

[13] Ruth Petree to Trustees of Germanton Methodist Church, Stokes County Deed Book 133, page 130, November 15, 1957, and Trustees of Germanton Methodist Church to L.M. and Ola McKenzie, May 4, 1965, as described in Dean Martin McKenzie to Billy and Claudine McKenzie, Stokes County Deed Book 274, page 606, April 27, 1982.

Samuel and Laura Bitting House

Samuel and Laura Bitting House, ca. 1850

Samuel and Laura Bitting, most likely hired John Dietrich Tavis (more information about Tavis is available by clicking here) to build this house sometime between their marriage in 1845 and Samuel's death in 1856. Samuel was a merchant in Germanton, and the son of John L. and Gertrude Bitting. According to the 1850 census, Laura was born in Georgia.[1]  

Samuel Bitting's estate papers indicate he owned three parcels of land at the time of his death: one on the northwest side of Main Street, this lot on the southeast side of Main Street (where his family was living, indicating that there was a house here at that time), and a larger tract on Town Fork Creek.

After Samuel's death, his widow, Laura, married A.C. Myers and they continued to live in this house, but Samuel's purchase of this lot from R.D. Golding had not been recorded with the Register of Deeds. Thus, in the 1870s, Laura Bitting Myers and A.C. Myers and Laura's children from her marriage to Samuel were involved in a lawsuit to prove they owned this lot, which included this house.[2]

rear elevation showing 1920s addition

After Laura and her children established ownership of the lot and house, her children (Susan Bitting McNeeley and Joseph Bitting) sold the house to Sam and Adalia Hill.[3]

Sam and Adalia Hill lived here for a number of years followed by McGees and McKenzies.[4]

In 1946, T.S. And Laura Terry purchased the lot and in 1954, they sold it to Ray and Louise Browder, and Louise Browder continues to own it today.[5]

basement door: two-panel design, typical of Greek
Revival architecture

The Bitting House is a one-story dwelling with a hip roof. Brick, single-shoulder chimneys stand on each side elevation, although the southern chimney has been truncated at the eave. The exterior is covered with vinyl siding, but it was originally sheathed in weatherboards with flush boards flanking the entrance under the shelter of the original single-bay porch. In the 1920s, wings were added to either side of this portico to create a full-width porch. Also in the 1920s, an addition was made to the back. Original windows feature six-over-six sash with those on the front flanked by sidelights. Sidelights and a transom surround the central front entrance. Both the window and door sidelights feature off-center vertical muntins (the narrow piece of wood that divides a window’s panes), and this off-center or asymmetrical sidelight composition is a signature of John Detrick Tavis’ work.

Inside, the house has an unusual floor plan: a center hallway flanked by one large room to the left (northeast) and two smaller rooms to the right (southwest). Each small room has a corner fireplace. The house retains original Greek Revival woodwork that includes tall baseboards, post-and-lintel mantels, and two-panel doors. The basement contains a finished room that may have been used for dining and another room that served as a kitchen. At some point during the twentieth century, the basement also housed a pool room. Originally, a staircase connected the front hall to the basement, but that access has been covered over.

Tavis' asymmetrical sidelights

Sarah Woodard David, 2015

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[1] Marriage records, accessed via ancestry.com, and Samuel Lewis Bitting’s gravemarker at the Riddle-Golding-Bitting Family Cemetery in Germanton.

[2] Stokes County Superior Court Minutes, 1876-1887, volume 6, page 237, Docket #74, July 18, 1882, available at the North Carolina State Archives, Raleigh, NC.

[3] James Rierson to Susan McNeeley and Joseph Bitting, July 10, 1906, Stokes County Deed Book 49, page 597; A.M. Bitting (Joseph Bitting’s widow) to Susan McNeeley, half interest in the property, June 4, 1906, Stokes county Deed Book 49, page 525; and R.F. and Susan McNeeley to Adalia Hill, Feburary 3, 1909, Stokes County Deed Book 54, page 14.

[4] Sam and A. S. Hill to E. L. Kiser and Company (to secure a debt), April 23, 1914, Stokes County Deed Book 60, page 9; N.O. Petree, Commissioner, to Curtis McGee, at auction, April 15, 1921, Stokes County Deed Book 69, page 208; and Curtis and Mattie McGee to Carrie McKenzie, April 22, 1926, Stokes County Deed Book 75, page 70.

[5] L.M. McKenzie, Commissioner, to T.S. Terry (as part of Carrie McKenzie’s estate settlement), April 20, 1946, Stokes County Deed Book 104, page 396; and T. S. and Laura Terry to Ray and Louise Browder, August 31, 1954, Stokes County Deed Book 122, page 547. 

Bitting-Pepper-Blackburn-Petree House

Bitting-Pepper-Blackburn-Petree House

ca. 1810; ca. 1855

This one-story, frame house immediately south of the Germanton Methodist Church was built in two stages. The two rooms at the back of the house, sheltered by a steep gabled roof, comprise the earliest part of the dwelling. These rooms likely date from the early 1800s and may have been built by Anthony Bitting or his daughter and son-in-law. The front block, with a side-gabled roof sheltering a room on either side of a central hallway, probably dates from the 1850s, during the Pepper family’s ownership.

views of the older rear wing

In 1798, Anthony Bitting purchased five acres just beyond what was then the southern edge of Germanton. In 1801, his nineteen-year-old daughter, Martha, married Joshua Banner, and eventually, Joshua Banner became the owner of this property, which was part of Bitting’s five-acre purchase. A deed recording the transfer from Anthony Bitting to Joshua Banner or Martha Bitting Banner has not been uncovered, but the land was in Joshua’s estate in 1848, and Anthony Bitting had already given one-half-acre of that five acres to his daughter before her marriage. It is likely that Martha Bitting Banner inherited this property from her father when he died in 1804.[1]

It is unclear what Joshua and Martha Banner did with this property. Both the Banners and Bittings were wealthy farmers and local merchants. During the 1820s, based on legal notices placed in newspapers of the day, Joshua served as the county jailor and after his death in 1846, his property was auctioned. Among his sizeable real estate holdings were a five-acre tract in Germanton that included two town lots, a house, and a cemetery (probably either the cemetery now associated with the Methodist church or the cemetery now known as the Riddle-Golding-Bitting Cemetery), and another town lot with a house. One of these two town tracts incorporates this property.[2]

ad for Banner estate sale

It was during this era of Bitting-Banner ownership that the back two rooms of this house were constructed. These rooms could have been an office or store for Anthony Bitting, but this was not his house because his will describes where he was living at the time of his death and his previous dwelling location, neither of which are this property. This could have been a small house for Joshua and Martha Banner or a portion of their house, possibly constructed around the time of their 1801 marriage, or it could have been an office or store for Joshua Banner or a rental house. In any case, architectural evidence suggests it was constructed in the early 1800s.

In 1848, John Pepper purchased this property. Pepper was a local physician who had lived at the southern end of town in the present-day vicinity of Germanton Baptist Church, near his Moody in-laws, until he moved a mile or two north in 1832.  Before Dr. Pepper’s purchase was final, he transferred his winning bid to his son, Dewitt Pepper, but that sale and transfer were not finalized until 1853.[3]

In 1852, Clarendon Martin Pepper, Dewitt Pepper’s brother, become ordained as a Methodist minister. A few years later, the Germanton Methodist congregation completed their new brick sanctuary in 1857. Although C.M. Pepper was away at college in 1850 and was living in Danbury in 1860, he may have served the Germanton congregation before 1860. By 1870, Reverend Pepper was living in Germanton and his place in the census suggests he was living in this house.[4]

 

relationship between the house and church

It is most likely that the front portion of this house was constructed during the Pepper family’s ownership, around the same time the Methodists built their sanctuary. That guess is based on house's Greek Revival style references and the local tradition that describes this house as the Methodist parsonage.[5] Although the 1860 census enumerates C. M. Pepper in Danbury, it is likely that he or his family (Dewitt Pepper is buried in the church’s cemetery) had the front rooms constructed for the minister’s use. Additionally, the front rooms of the dwelling are similar, though more modest in scale and ornamentation, to several houses built by John Dedrick Tavis, a German builder who lived and in Salem.

Eventually, the house ended up in the hands of C. M. Pepper. A transfer to C. M. Pepper has not been found and Laura Phillips noted in her architectural survey of the county in the early 1980s that a letter from C. M. Pepper indicated he had purchased the property from his brother, Dewitt, but never recorded the deed.[6] In 1873, C. M. Pepper sold the property to William and Emma Blackburn.[7] Mr. Blackburn was a tobacconist and based on the 1880 census, it appears that he probably was not living at this location, so he may have rented the house out, or he may have been enumerated out of order in the census. The Blackburns owned it until 1919 when they sold it to H. H. Riddle.[8] Riddle likely did not reside here and the house changed hands again before Riley Petree purchased it in 1925. Ruth Petree, Riley Petree’s daughter, eventually became the owner and held the property until the late 1990s. Currently, the Methodist Church owns the house.[9]

Although modest and unassuming, this house encapsulates a cross section of Germanton’s architectural record. The back part of this house is probably the second oldest structure in Germanton and it is certainly the least-altered example of early architecture in Germanton while the front section is probably one of several examples of J. D. Tavis’ work in and around the town.  

Sarah Woodard David, 2015 

To learn more about John Dietrich Tavis, click here. 

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[1] State of North Carolina. An Index to Marriage Bonds Filed in the North Carolina State Archives. Raleigh, NC: North Carolina Division or Archives and History, 1977; and description of sale of Joshua Banner’s land, Stokes County Deed Book 18, page 184, April 11, 1853.

[2] “Sale of Valuable Land,” The Greensboro Patriot, September 9, 1848, page 3; and several advertisements in 1825 and 1826 in The North-Carolina Star (Raleigh, N.C.), including November 10, 1826, page 4.

[3] Stokes County Deed Book 18, page 184 documents the sale of this lot from Joshua Banner’s estate in 1848 to John Pepper who transferred the property to his son, Dewitt Pepper, April 11, 1853.

[4] John R. Woodard, ed. The Heritage of Stokes County. (Winston-Salem, NC: Hunter Publishing Company, 1981), 408.

[5] An undated (probably ca. 1940) newspaper article in the Stokes County Federal Writers Program file at the North Carolina State Archives in Raleigh, NC, repeats this association between the church and this dwelling.

[6] Laura Phillips. Pepper-Blackburn-Petree House architectural survey file, SK 298, 1988, NC State Historic Preservation Office.

[7] C.M. Pepper to William and Emma Blackburn, August 8, 1873, Stokes County Deed Book 21, page 599.

[8] William and Emma Blackburn to H. H. Riddle, June 25, 1919, Stokes County Deed Book 67, page 164.

[9] H. H. Riddle to S.M. James, December 31, 1921, Stokes County Deed Book 68, page 466; S.M. James to R.J. Petree, August 20, 1925, Stokes County Deed Book 73, page 496; Ruth Petree purchase at auction, July 10, 1929, Stokes County Deed Book 80, page 302.

Stedman-Rainey-Savage House

The Stedman-Rainey-Savage House
ca. 1853

The Stedman-Rainey-Savage House was probably commissioned by William and Olivia Stedman around 1853 with John Dietrich Tavis as the builder.

Olivia Gibson was born in Germanton around 1829 to William N. and Eliza Gibson. William Gibson belonged to one of Germanton's wealthiest families and was the son of Jeremiah and Rachel Nelson Gibson. William graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1820 and he was a medical doctor. The 1830 census records William heading a household of four free whites and 13 enslaved persons while his father, Jeremiah, owned 25 slaves, making Jeremiah one of the county’s larger slave owners. William Gibson died in 1831, when his daughter, Olivia, was about two years old. Although Eliza Gibson, Olivia’s mother, was still living, Jeremiah became his granddaughter’s guardian.[1]

Tavis often used broad pediments on his gable ends.

On December 16, 1848, the Raleigh Register recorded the marriage of Olivia Gibson and Dr. William W. Stedman[2] in Clemmonsville (southwest Forsyth County).[3]

Jeremiah Gibson died in 1849, leaving 404 acres in Germanton to his granddaughter, Olivia Stedman. This property included at least two houses (John Pepper’s, probably located about where the Baptist Church is today and purchased by Gibson when Pepper defaulted on debts, and Joshua Banner’s, probably located to the south, closer to Buffalo Creek and purchased by Gibson after Banner’s death).[4]

By 1850, William and Olivia were living in the Richmond District of Forsyth County (northwest Forsyth County). William was a physician, the family included five-month-old William G., and the family’s worth was an impressive $4,000. In 1853, Olivia completed the purchase of the land she had inherited (Jeremiah had not fully paid for the Banner and Pepper properties before his death, so Olivia settled that debt before taking ownership of the land.) That same year and again in 1855 and 1857, the Stedmans made land purchases in Germanton that added about 200 acres to Olivia’s 404 acres.[5]

Tavis' signature asymmetrical sidelights.

While Olivia’s property included at least two other houses, it is likely that the young family constructed this house around 1853, when they appear to have moved to Germanton: stylistically, the house appears to date from the 1850s, other buildings by the same builder date from the mid-1850s, the Stedmans were investors in one other project by the same builder in the mid-1850s, and the subsequent owner referred to the property and house as having been Dr. Stedman’s.[6] No other buildings associated with the Stedmans’ ownership of the property remain, but presumably, their farm included barns, outbuildings, and housing for enslaved persons.

On April 12, 1857, William Stedman died. Dr. Stedman, like Germanton’s other prominent white men, including his Gibson in-laws, were members of the Masonic Lodge and upon Stedman’s death, the Masons issued a proclamation of mourning that described him as affable, efficient, and in the prime of his career. The Masons planned to wear mourning badges for 30 days and drape the lodge in crape. Dr. Stedman is buried with Olivia’s other family members at the Methodist Church cemetery.[7]

In late 1857, Olivia advertised the sale of 14 “likely Negros” at auction on January 11, 1858. The advertisement noted that the enslaved persons were from the estate of Dr. William W. Stedman.[8] The term “likely Negros” does not mean people who are likely to be African American; it means they are likely to be good workers.

By 1860, Olivia was living in Salem with her young children, William G, Eliza, and Fannie and in 1861, she married the prominent newspaper publisher, John W. Alspaugh.[9] Eight years later, Olivia Alspaugh sold 7 tracts of land containing about 600 acres to Thomas Rainey, of the “Kingdom of Brazil.”[10] The acreage still included the old Banner house, and among several interesting notes, one tract included the “Race Grounds.”

Thomas Rainey never lived in Germanton, but he was a successful businessman and one of the primary advocates for construction of the Queesnboro Bridge in New York City. In his memoir, Rainey recalled moving many times in Caswell County and the Danville, Virginia, area, chasing his unlucky father’s fortunes and running from his losses. By the time Rainey purchased the Stedman farm, his father was deeply in debt and elderly. Rainey installed his father and siblings here and described the property as being purchased from Dr. Stedman and called Capitol Hill. Over time, the Rainey family moved the bodies of several deceased family members to Germanton’s Methodist Church cemetery, which probably started as a Gibson family cemetery.[11] 

By 1907, Thomas’ brother, Virgil Rainey, owned the property and he sold 446 acres, including this house, to B. J. Savage. B. J. Savage was a successful and colorful farmer and his son and daughter-in-law, Kemp and Ruby Savage, owned the house into the early twenty-first century. The Savage family replaced the original stair in the central hallway with a classical-revival staircase and columns around 1910. They replaced the original double-tier portico with the current porch and added the one-story kitchen wing on the northeast side in the 1940s.[12]

Sarah Woodard David, 2015 

To learn more about the builder of this house, John Dietrich Tavis, click here. 

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[1] Olivia Gibson’s birth year can be calculated from census records and it is recorded on her gravemarker at Salem Cemetery in Winston-Salem. Several deeds (Stokes County deed book 11, page 520, and deed book 13, page 336) and Jeremiah Gibson’s will (N.C. State Archives, Raleigh, NC) confirm the family relationships. Gravermarkers for Jeremiah Gibson and William Gibson are in the Germanton Methodist Church Cemetery. 

[2] Very little is known about William Stedman. He was a doctor and received his M.D. from the University of the City of New York in 1842. (New York University was chartered as the University of the City of New York in 1831.) His parents and birthplace are unknown. He may be the son of William Winship Stedman, a wealthy Gates County planter with ties to Chatham County who had several sons who remain unknown.

[3] Carrie L. Broughton, ed., Marriages and Death Notices from Raleigh Register and North Carolina State Gazette, 1846-1855 (Raleigh, NC: North Carolina State Library, 1948), 438.

[4] Jeremiah Gibson’s will and estate papers (NC State Archives, Raleigh, NC); John Pepper to Jeremiah Gibson, Stokes County deed book 15, page 446, October 10, 1845; and Jeremiah Gibson to Olivia Gibson Stedman, Forsyth County deed book 1, page 734, October 17, 1853.

[5] U. S. Census, Population Schedule, 1850, and Stedman land purchases, Forsyth County deed book 2, pages 222, 223, and 611.

[6] Thomas Rainey Memoir, written around 1901 and published on the Caswell County Historical Association website, ncccha.blogspot.com/2009/12/Thomas-rainey-1824-1920-memori.html, accessed December 2, 2014.

[7] William W. Stedman grave marker at Germanton Methodist Church, and “Tribute of Respect,” published in the (Raleigh) Weekly Standard, April 22, 1857.

[8] Greensboro Patriot, December 18, 1857.

[9] U.S. Census, Population Schedule, 1860, and Stedman-Alspaugh marriage noted in the Fayetteville Semi-Weekly Observer, March 25, 1861. Olivia died in 1869 and her children disappeared from obvious public records, but they may have ended up in Fayetteville where other Stedman relatives may have been living. The youngest child, Fannie, married a minister from Fayetteville and she eventually resurfaced in Germanton to sell Gibson property in the late 1800s.

[10] John and Olivia Alspaugh to Thomas Rainey, Forsyth County deed book 4, page 577, September 4, 1868.

[11] Thomas Rainey Memoir.

[12] Virgil Rainey to B. J. Savage, Forsyth County deed book 85, page 168, 1907. See also Stokes County deed book 586, page 833.