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The story below was published in the Aug 12, 2007 Guilford County Section of the Greensboro News & Record, and concerns the origins of the town of Kernersville, NC.
Kernersville history facts a bit drier than legend
By Bob Burchette
Contributing Writer
KERNERSVILLE -- Kernersville's history, especially some significant dates and the oft-repeated tale of how the town's first major landowner bought the land for four gallons or four barrels of rum, needs to be revised, say Mike Marshall and Jerry Taylor.
"The land was really bought with cold, hard cash," Marshall said.
And the real "founding father" of Kernersville wasn't Caleb Story, Joseph Kerner or William Dobson Sr., said Marshall and Taylor, natives of the town. Both are board members of the Kernersville Historic Preservation Society but emphasized they were not speaking for the society.
David Morrow was a major landowner in what is today downtown Kernersville, before any of the more lionized men of the community.
The town's Web site claims Story received a land grant in 1756 from the English Royal Colony of Carolina, and sold that land in 1760 to Morrow for four barrels of rum. Other reports say it was four gallons of rum.
Courthouse records don't support the dates and the tale of the rum, according to research by Marshall and Taylor in Surry and Stokes counties, forerunners of the present Forsyth County where the town is, they said.
Four barrels, supposedly representing the part rum played in the town's history, are drawn on the town's official seal. The researchers say the rum barrels make the seal inaccurate.
Mayor Curtis Swisher, 36, isn't upset over the information being offered by the researchers and is interested in knowing more about their findings. "Any research will bring new light on things -- you can always find something new," he said.
Morrow owned more land -- 600 acres -- than any one person in the crossroads area that later would be known as Dobson's Crossroads -- and owned it before the more famous men acquired their land, say Marshall and Taylor. The center of the settlement was at the present Main and Mountain streets.
Their research shows that Morrow acquired the two earliest land grants from the state of North Carolina in 1784.
Marshall said no effort is being made to disparage the efforts of Kerner and Dobson in helping develop the town. "We only want to get the records correct," he said. "Caleb Story was only a bit player in the history of the town," Marshall said.
"The stories have been passed down through the years but there is no documentation," Marshall said.
"It's hard to tell (about verbal history); it was so long ago," Swisher said. "I'm sure there were a few people who really knew but none of them are around."
The town Web site story also notes that Dobson bought 400 acres from Morrow in 1771, but that didn't happen until 1788, Marshall said.
"The town even celebrated its bicentennial based on 1771," Marshall said. The town was incorporated in 1871. The state began awarding land grants in 1777, but the first of the six state land grants that became the crossroads wasn't granted until 1784.
Research by Marshall and Taylor also contradicts the town's account of its history in other ways. They tell it this way:
* David Morrow received the two earliest land grants in the area of the crossroads where the town would spring up. Records show that Morrow entered a claim for a 400-acre land grant in August 1778 and received that tract from the state of North Carolina on Nov. 3, 1784. On the same day, Morrow received another state land grant for 200 acres, Marshall said.
* Caleb Story received a state land grant of 250 acres on Nov. 29, 1797, and he sold 125 of those acres to Dobson on Feb. 28, 1801.
* Dobson received three state land grants -- the first one for 50 acres on July 9, 1794, and others for 200 acres and 57 acres, both on Dec. 19, 1803.
* Morrow sold his two tracts, 400 acres and 200 acres, to Dobson on Feb. 16, 1788 (not in 1771).
* The six land grants, totaling 1,032 acres, were brought under the Dobson family's ownership. Gottlieb Shober bought the land that would many years later be known as Kernersville from William Dobson and his son William Polk Dobson on Oct, 25, 1806.
Shober's son Nathaniel sold the land in 1817 to Joseph Kerner, a German from the nearby Moravian village of Friedland, according to the Web site. Marshall and Taylor don't dispute that date.
From Marshall's land research, Taylor developed an overlay on a modern map, showing the six land grant areas that formed the 1,032 original acres that became the core of the settlement.
The town seal and the historical dates need changing, Taylor said. The four barrels, supposedly representing the role rum played in the town's history, should be removed from the seal, they said. The tale of the rum, which is repeated by many who have written the history of Kernersville, makes for a good story but not for good history, Marshall said.
"Preservation, we believe, involves saving history as well as buildings," Marshall said.
Both spent their professional careers in other states but came back home when they retired. Taylor, 69, spent 30 years as an engineer with IBM in Washington, and Marshall, 62, worked for the Department of the Navy in research and development for 33 years. He also spent five years in Washington working for Penn State University as an adviser and staff specialist in the Office of Naval Research. He moved back to Kernersville in 2005.
Taylor moved back to Kernersville in 1993 and became involved with the Kernersville Historic Preservation Society, which was a good connection for his hobby of studying genealogy.
For about 18 months, Marshall and Taylor have been meeting and working on research, visiting libraries, courthouses and any place they could find a morsel of Kernersville history.
Enthusiasm for their project increased as they became excited about "telling the correct story," Taylor said. Even newspapers published different versions of what happened in many of the unusual or interesting events in Kernersville, he said.
The more they studied, the broader their project became. It has become a history of the town, the businesses, the schools, the many families who have been in the area for many generations, various trades and occupations, community sports, religion and society.
The researchers also have dug up Kernersville connections to the American Revolutionary War and the Civil War.
Marshall and Taylor are studying ways to incorporate these subjects into a history of their hometown. When will it be published? "We don't know; we believe we have enough information to write a credible book," Marshall said.
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