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11 <br /> ORANGE COUNTY LOCAL LANDMARK APPLICATION DAVIS FARM COTTON GIN AND PRESS <br /> Family tradition asserts that Henry Davis built the family's log house that stands today, along <br /> with the free-standing log kitchen and the log outbuildings, including the barn associated with <br /> the cotton gin.` <br /> The first recorded deed for the property dates from 1882, when on March 2, Oliver M. Williams <br /> sold James H. Davis eighty-seven and a half acres for $300.5 By 1887, James Henry Davis had <br /> died, as attested to by a deed of August 6, 1887, in which four of the Davis heirs and their <br /> spouses conveyed fifty acres to their fifth sibling, Robert A. Davis. (At the same time, in separate <br /> deeds, the siblings conveyed sixty acres to Wilson H. Davis and fifty acres to flora Davis and <br /> her husband George W. Riley.)6 <br /> Robert Davis (1867-1938) and Caroline Ray married on December 29, 1887, and thereafter built <br /> a log house (no longer standing) for themselves about one-half mile west of the Davis <br /> homeplace. After the three oldest of their eight children, including Charles Walker Davis, had <br /> been born, they moved their family to the Davis homeplace in 1895. They enlarged the house, <br /> dug a well adjacent to the original kitchen and, having moved the kitchen facilities to within the <br /> house, moved the original log kitchen northwest of the house. Robert Davis was the blacksmith <br /> for the community, and the farm's location along the road between Chapel Hill and Hillsborough <br /> placed his shop at a particularly good spot for providing blacksmithing services. The blacksmith <br /> shop no longer survives. Robert Davis also ginned cotton and ground both corn and wheat, as his <br /> father before him is believed to have done.' The building in which the cotton gin and corn mill <br /> were located (Photo 1) does survive and is the subject of this Local Historic Landmark <br /> designation. <br /> Robert Davis died intestate in 1938. In 1941 the Davis children conveyed the home property in <br /> two tracts totaling 125.25 acres to their mother, Cornelia Caroline Davis (1869-1952) until her <br /> death, after which the property would go to their sibling, Charles Walker Davis Sr. (1893-1980) <br /> and his wife, Mattie Garrett Davis (1898-1985). The Charles Davises continued farming on the <br /> homestead but did not continue the industrial activities of blacksmithing, cotton ginning, and <br /> corn and wheat grinding.9 <br /> In 1969, Charles and Mattie Davis transferred 111.55 acres of the home property in two tracts to <br /> their son Charles Walker Davis Jr. (1923-2008) while retaining a life estate. C. W. Davis Jr. was <br /> an architect in Raleigh, but he raised beef cattle on the farm and had great concern for its <br /> preservation.9 <br /> After Mattie Davis died in 1985, Charles Davis Jr. rented out the farm house for several years <br /> until one of his daughters and her family remodeled the house and moved into it in 1989.10 <br /> 'Charles W. Davis Jr. information. <br /> 'Orange County Deed Book 49, p.479. <br /> f Deed Book 107,pp. 58, 59,and 60. <br /> 'Ancest►y.com;Charles Davis Jr. information. <br />` s Deed Book 114,p.295; Charles Davis Jr. information. <br /> 9 Deed Book 223,p. 1062;Charles Davis Obituary,Charleston(S.C.)Post& Courier,November 7,2008. <br /> io Charles Davis Jr. information. <br />( 8 <br /> l' <br />