Berry Davidson had a remarkable career as a 19th-century millwright and mill owner, and we know all about it because he had the rare impulse to write it all down. Davidson’s house in Gibsonville is for sale for $400,000. It’s an impressive structure with a wrap-around porch and widow’s walk, built in 1881 or 1887 (accounts differ). The house stayed in the Davison family until 1975, when the current owner bought it from Berry’s descendants.
An old picture (second photo above) on the Walking Gibsonville tour site suggests the porch and widow’s walk may have been a later addition, possibly when one of his sons owned the house.
The house has 5 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms in 3,151 square feet. The price comes out to just $127 per square foot. The lot is 1.22 acres. The house is in excellent condition, although it might be a bit more yellow than some people might want. The property includes a garden shed, workshop and one-car garage.
The original owners were Berry Davidson (1831-1915) and Emily Holt Newlin Davidson (1847-1911). Berry built the house himself when he moved the family to Gibsonville. By then he had fathered nine children between 1856 and 1886 (his first wife, Mary Fletcher Davidson died in 1873). He founded two mills in the town and served as mayor from 1907-11.
“When he installed electricity from the Hiawatha Mill to his home, people would come from miles around to see the light bulb on the front porch,” the Walking Gibsonville tour site says.
Berry had made his name as a millwright and owner long before he came to the City of Roses. “Berry Davidson, a millwright in the central Piedmont of North Carolina, left an unusually complete narrative of a career that extended from the 1840s until after 1900, a key period in the industrial development of the region,” says North Carolina Architects and Builders.
“Depicting a rural millwright’s mobility, versatility, and adaptability, his account illuminates the career of an important type of artisan for whom such detailed histories are seldom found. He built and equipped saw mills, grist mills, and cotton mills mainly in Alamance County and Guilford County, centers of Quaker settlement and early industrial development, but his work also extended into Chatham, Cumberland, Harnett, Moore, and Randolph counties. He began with water-powered operations, chiefly on the Haw River and its tributaries, but from the 1850s onward he also built and operated steam-powered plants as that technology came into wider use.”
As a 14-year-old apprentice, he helped install a power plant for a mill owned by E.M. Holt, beginning a long association with one of the area’s foremost textile pioneers. After completing his two-year apprenticeship, he began building mills at age 16. In the 1850s, Berry became a very active investor in mills as well as a builder. He also spent 10 years as part-owner and superintendent of the Snow Camp Foundry and Machine Shop, producing mill equipment. He continued to build mills as well. After the Civil War, he worked mostly in Alamance County, building several mills for members of the Holt family and others.
“Shifting his attention to Gibsonville, a village on the North Carolina Railroad in Guilford County, in 1886 he built the steam-powered Minneola Cotton Mill there for himself and his nephew, Joseph A. Davidson. … Davidson became a leading citizen as well as a major industrialist. He sold his interest in Minneola to the Cone Export and Commission Company in 1892 and built another mill, called Hiawatha Cotton Mill, in the same community in 1893.” (North Carolina Architects and Builders)
The walking tour recalls him as having “transformed this agricultural shipping station into a small industrial town.” It also notes that his tenure as mayor ended when he was defeated at the polls by the youngest of his three sons, Dwight Merrimon Davidson (1886-1973).
305 Church Street, Gibsonville, Guilford County
The Berry and Emily Davidson House
- $400,000 (originally $425,000)
- 5 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, 3,151 square feet, 1.22 acres
- Price/square foot: $127
- Built in 1881 (per county, or possibly 1887)
- Listed December 9, 2023
- Last sale: $36,000, June 1975
- Note: The Walking Gibsonville site identifies him as Littleberry Davidson, but his gravestone and every other reference I’ve seen have Berry as his first name.
Piedmont Historic Homes 