By Hannah Miller, Photos by James J. Shaffer, February 2008

• 1: Introduction
• 2: The Davidson Farm
• 3: Today's Working Farm
• Download the full article as a

The Davidson Farm

Mecklenburg County would have been hard-pressed to find another farm so drenched in history. This was the 1760 homestead of Maj. John Davidson, a Scots-descended transplant from Pennsylvania who was a leader in the area’s pre-Revolution ferment. He is thought to be one of the signers of the controversial Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence of June 20, 1775 (many historians doubt its existence) and the generally-accepted Mecklenburg Resolves. Coming 11 days after the Declaration was supposedly proclaimed, the Resolves laid down ground rules for local government that excluded the British.
Davidson, who became a major in the Revolutionary War, lent his horse to his cousin, Gen. William Lee Davidson, only to see it come home riderless after the Battle of Cowans Ford four miles north. The general, for whom Davidson College is named, had been killed in the battle. John Davidson survived the war, and he and his wife Violet prospered at Rural Hill, which eventually was the home of five more generations. In the 1800s, it reached 5,000 acres and was a self-contained community with grist mill, brick-making facility, sawmill, blacksmith shop and schools for white and African American children.

In 1992, the last three direct descendants to live there sold it to Mecklenburg County to be preserved as a historic site. Two years later, the county leased it long-term to the Catawba Valley Scottish Society, with instructions to carry out that mission. With the help of hundreds of volunteers, the society restores and re-creates historic buildings on the site, invites the public in for tours, and sponsors special events highlighting U.S. and Scottish history.

“It’s a very major site,” says Ed McLean, Rural Hill executive director. “It can be used for interpreting three centuries in this county: the 1700s (homestead), 1800s (plantation) and the 1900s (farm).”

Remnants from all three eras remain: a planting of boxwoods thought to date to the 1700s, columns of the late-1700s plantation house, which burned in 1886, a mid-19th century well house and ash (soap-making) house of plantation-made brick, and the 20th century farmhouse built around the plantation kitchen.