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<br /> NPS Form 10 - 900 - a OMB No . 1029 - 0018
<br /> ( 8 - 86 )
<br /> United .States Department of the Interior
<br /> National Park Service
<br /> NATIONAL REGISTER OF HISTORIC PLACES
<br /> CONTINUATION SHEET
<br /> Section 8 Page 16
<br /> Woodville Historic District
<br /> Bertie County, North Carolina
<br /> In April 1840 the village was named Hotel, after the name of the building where the post office was located . In
<br /> 1845 the village received its first church, St . Frances Methodist Church, built with money donated by Mrs .
<br /> Frances Pugh, wife of William Alston Pugh . 3 In 1854 Grace Episcopal Church was built on land donated by Dr.
<br /> H. F . Williams at the corner of the main road and the Windsor road . ' The building is said to have been paid for
<br /> by prominent local planter Lewis Thompson and his wife Margaret . The Bertie Union Academy, the village
<br /> school, had been built by the 1830s on the west side of the road on Noah Hinton ' s land . Converted to a house, it
<br /> stood. until 1990 ,
<br /> About 1840 Lewis Thompson built (or remodeled) a house [ Thompson-Urquhart House] on land that he
<br /> inherited from his father, Thomas Thompson (son of Hezekiah Thompson) or his brother Hezekiah, who died in
<br /> 1836 . Lewis Thompson ( 1808 - 1867) , planter and statesman, frequently represented Bertie County in the North
<br /> Carolina House of Commons and State Senate from 1832 - 1852 , was a member of the General Convention of
<br /> 1865 , and a Trustee of the University of North Carolina from 1848 until his death . ' Like the Pughs, the
<br /> Thompson family belonged to the stratum of North Carolina society which had plantations in the Deep South as
<br /> well as in their home state . Thompson owned thousands of acres of land in Bertie County, and a Louisiana sugar j
<br /> plantation inherited through his fafiher-in-law William M. Clark of Bertie County . In the 1840s and 1850s this
<br /> sugar plantation seems to have been managed on Thompson' s behalf by his brother-in- law Kenneth M. Clark,
<br /> subsequently Lewis ' son, William Thompson, moved to Louisiana and ran the plantation , 6 Lewis ' s son Thomas
<br /> W . settled in Woodville and managed his father ' s Bertie County holdings throughout his lifetime .
<br /> The luxurious lifestyle made possible by the large plantations of antebellum Woodville' s families is illuminated
<br /> iled in 1862 for Woodville District . Known then as "Hotel , " the district, with a population
<br /> by a tax census comp
<br /> of 124 , included 43 white voters and 5 black voters . The Hotel district ' s taxpayers owned 62, 093 acres of
<br /> taxable land worth $ 565 , 376 and 1 , 624 slaves valued at $ 519 , 895 . The Thompson, Pugh, and Smallwood j
<br /> families accounted for most of the gold and silver watches, pianos , furniture and " pleasure vehicles" listed in the
<br /> district . '
<br /> s " Recollections of Woodville . "
<br /> 4 "Recollections of Woodville'. " .
<br /> s Lewis Thompson Papers . These were donated in the 1920s to the University of North Carolina and are now in the Southern
<br /> Historical Collection . This biographical information is included in the papers .
<br /> 6 Sitterson , " Lewis Thompson , A Carolinian and His Louisiana Plantation 1848 - 1888 . A Study in Absentee Ownership . " The
<br /> business papers in the Lewis Thompson Collection , dating from 18404871 , consist chiefly of correspondence , accounts , bills ,
<br /> receipts , slave lists , sharecropping contracts , relating to the production of cotton and corn in Bertie County and sugar in Louisiana ,
<br /> and to the sale of these crops through factors in New York , Norfolk , New Orleans and Baltimore ,
<br /> Confederate Tax Census , 1862 . transcribed 197546 by students at Roanoke- Chowan Academy , 7 .
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