Tiny Town's Famous Figure

 

The amazing achievements of a free black craftsman in the area have been known for a long time. But in coming years, many more people may learn about Thomas Day, who became the largest furniture manufacturer in North Carolina before the Civil War.

 

Little noticed in the most recent North Carolina state budget was $800,000 allocated to restore the Thomas Day House and the bank across the street in Milton, N.C., a few miles from the Virginia border. The house is scheduled to become a museum and a state historic site and restored to its original state as in 1850. It will include the family quarters, a showroom, an office and a workshop.

 

 If the governor gets his way, money will be found in future budgets to hire docents to staff the museum five or six days a week. Currently, the house is semi-finished and only open by appointment. “Then we won’t have to call somebody up and get him off his tractor or something to let people in,” says Joe Graves, a member of the Thomas Day House/Union Tavern Restoration Inc.

 

The restoration group will donate the house to the state, and the owners of the NC State Bank site are willing to sell their building to the state. To get the state more involved, several members of the group met with Republican State Sen. Phil Berger, the powerful Senate president pro tem, in his Raleigh office, and got bipartisan support from Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper. The beefed-up project should help the little town, full of historic buildings, many of them also being restored.

 

Graves, who has Thomas Day woodwork in his Alton home, says many Southside Virginia homes have furniture or architectural elements designed by Day, including the restaurant at Virginia International Raceway. We have a number of them at Oak Grove, as well. Day’s work is very distinctive with mantel pieces, stair brackets, newel posts and door frames using curves and elongated scroll shapes.

 

Occasionally a tobacco leaf shape can be seen, reflecting the region’s agriculture. Day didn’t just create these works himself.   His shop had both white and black workers and he even owned slaves. North Carolina’s governor back then packed some Thomas Day furniture into his mansion.

 

How did an African-American accomplish so much at a time when slavery was rampant? The prosperous clientele that liked his work bent the rules somewhat to let him create his masterpieces. They waived a rule barring new free blacks into the state when he wanted to bring his wife from Halifax County, VA, to live with him.

 

Day grew quite prosperous, but the Panic of 1857 forced him into bankruptcy, even before the Civil War. His achievements were appreciated more in the past 25 years, and many of his works are on display at the North Carolina Museum of History in Raleigh.

 

People can still get a tour by calling a phone number on the sign in front of the house.  But in a few years, expect the site to be open regularly just like other historic museums.