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The Charlotte Observer, N.C., Joe Marusak column: `This is a passing in history'
Thu. March 20, 2008; Posted: 12:08 PM
MOORESVILLE, Mar 20, 2008 (The Charlotte Observer - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- NO MATCHES FOUND. | news | PowerRating | PR Charts --
'This is a passing in history' Old home has to make way for road's widening
MOORESVILLE -- The last home remaining from the long-ago community of Mayhewtown is about to be leveled for the widening of Brawley School Road.
Built in the late 1800s, the two-story home sits at the intersection of Brawley School and McKendree roads near Lake Norman. Thousands of commuters zip along that stretch of road with probably no inkling of the 19th-century farming community that thrived there.
Descendants of the Mayhew family, which settled the area in the late 1700s, lived in the home and ran a general store that stood across the road.
People in the community raised cotton, soybeans, oats and corn and bartered them at the store, descendant Alan Mayhew, 57, said. Mayhewtown had about 40 families each farming about 100 acres, and, at one point, had more people than Mooresville, he said. Much of Mayhewtown's farmland is now under Lake Norman.
I walked the grounds of the old home this week with Mayhew and his daughter, Marci Mayhew Morton, 31.
Alan Mayhew, president of Capital Mortgage Group at Brawley School and Oak Tree roads, pointed to the old root cellar below the home and where the outdoor privy and a cookhouse stood.
"This is a passing in history," he said. "It's kind of like a person today would not be able to survive how they did back then," given our conveniences of refrigeration and stores. "Would they know how to cure a ham?"
His great-grandfather, William "Absey" Abslam Mayhew, opened the store in the late 1800s. His grandfather, Thomas Holtshouser Mayhew, closed the store about the time of the Depression as much of unincorporated Mayhewtown's population shifted east to Mooresville, which grew because of its railroad lines.
Alan Mayhew's grandfather ended up farming for five or 10 years before working at the former Burlington Industries Mooresville Mills plant until he retired about 1963.
Mayhews haven't lived in the old Brawley School Road home in decades, but it has always remained close to who they are, Marci Morton said.
Local grading contractor Richard Abernathy bought the home from the Mayhew family and said he lived in it for 34 years, until the state condemned it in August for the widening.
The state must soon raze the home so Duke Energy can begin utility work before the widening, said Al Steib, a state right-of-way agent.
The official "let date," or the date the project is awarded to a contractor, for the widening from Chuckwood Road to before Interstate 77 is Aug. 19. The next phase, which includes the Interstate 77 exit, will be let on Feb. 19, 2009.Alan Mayhew smiled as he recalled how he got in trouble trying to climb the inventory racks of the two-story general store. He was 5 or 6 the last time he was there, he said.
Though the store is gone, Mayhew has its thick store ledgers from the early 1900s. Transactions such as the sale of 6 1/2 pounds of bacon for 65 cents and a box of unidentified pills for 20 cents were recorded in longhand. A gallon of molasses -- we use corn syrup in everything today -- cost 40 cents.
One customer used a mortgage as credit for goods from the store, Alan Mayhew noted on a page. "Most of the accounts were not paid in cash," he said.
Some folks bartered with muscadine and scuppernong wine that the store would then sell in Charlotte, he said. Hard to imagine now, but present-day Brawley School Road ran to Charlotte back then, he said.
Not far from the old homestead and store, Mayhews still gather for reunions each summer at McKendree Chapel United Methodist Church. Original settler John Love William Mayhew is buried in its cemetery.
The Continental Army veteran from Prince George's County, Md., likely chose to settle that spot because it was near the Catawba River and looked down on bottomland that could be farmed, Alan Mayhew said.
John Love William Mayhew was a preacher and built a brush arbor there, founding Mayhewtown in 1793. Parts of the community lie beneath Lake Norman now.
An old house may be razed in the name of progress, I thought as I walked John Mayhew's burial grounds. But with folks like Alan and Marci and their descendants, the Mayhew legacy will likely always live on.
Around the Lake
Mayhewtown
In 1970, Mayhew family members erected a large stone monument that recounts the family's local legacy dating to Mayhewtown's founding in 1793. The original Mayhew settlers built Mayhew Meeting House in a log building for religious services. The community eventually had a post office, a school and a country physician in Dr. John Moore.
The monument stood for decades on Brawley School Road and is now on the lawn of McKendree Chapel United Methodist Church, 291 McKendree Road, beside the cemetery where settler John Love William Mayhew is buried.
Around the Lake Joe Marusak
Joe Marusak: 704-351-2037; jmarusak@charlotteobserver.com.
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