Recalling the Old Hickory Club
By Mary A. Browning
Most of us have heard of the Clarence Mackay estate, which was a hunting
preserve of wooded lands that lay along the East Fork of Deep River, off
Guilford College Rd., and north of Jamestown. The Mackay lodge was in what is
now Cedarwood.
Not as many have heard of the Old Hickory Club, located between the Mackay
property and Hickory Grove Church. Finding out exactly where it was and what
happened to it required some detective work. This information came from the
Ragsdale Papers at the Jamestown Alumni Archives.
The club was organized by a group of area businessmen, who formed a corporation
and sold the first shares in February 1921. At that time, a clubhouse and dam
were under construction, and members were invited to visit the site and look it
over, according to a notice sent out to shareholders by E. W. Freeze, president,
and W. A. Ring, treasurer of the corporation.
Financial troubles plagued the project from the start, however, and building
construction went faster than collection of delinquent dues. By June, the club
secretary, W. C. Jones, was calling a meeting and sending out proxy forms so
that the negotiation of a loan could be considered by the membership. The amount
proposed was $200,000, which sounds like a lot of money to yours truly, and must
have sounded like even more in 1922.
The formal club house opening was announced for Wednesday evening, September 29,
1921, to be held from four until twelve, with dinner served at six, and music
for dancing beginning at nine, provided by the “Elks Band and Orchestra.”
Within the year a new secretary, J. S. Pickett, was sending out a new meeting
notice for June 8, 1922, proxies enclosed, with the bad news that the membership
would have to consider their choices which were described as: reorganizing,
finding additional capital, appointing a liquidating committee, or applying for
a Court receiver to liquidate the assets of the club and dissolve the
corporation.
On August 11, members received a letter from the club’s committee composed of O.
A. Kirkman, C. C. Muse, and C. A Barbee, and High Point auctioneer J. Sib
Burton, which notified them of the forthcoming sale of the Old Hickory Club. The
property consisted of a 53-acre farm, one eleven-room house and a 4-acre lake
stocked with black bass, bream, crappy, and other game fish. It was just off the
main road between Guilford College and Jamestown, near Hickory Grove church and
the hunting preserve and clubhouse of Clarence H. Mackay, and between the homes
of Oscar Hassell and Jess Gardner. One paragraph in that letter makes the
property sound like heaven on earth:
“This is one of the best farms in Guilford County, surrounded by good roads with
a number of beautiful springs and branches on it. The lake is one of the nicest
to be found anywhere, and the clubhouse, built of pine logs standing upright and
tongued and grooved together, is beautiful. There are 11 rooms in the house, a
large dance hall, two bathrooms, and plenty of large closets. The furniture,
consisting of beds, mattresses, chairs, tables, couches, cooking utensils,
chinaware, swings, and rustic furniture, one steel range and other articles too
numerous to mention will be sold. There is no prettier place in North Carolina
for a summer home, country home, or club than this place. The house is built in
a beautiful grove, about ¼ mile west of the Guilford College-Jamestown road.”
Sib Burton, a High Point auctioneer, handled the auction of the property on
August 14. W. G. Ragsdale, of Jamestown, purchased it. He had been one of the
stockholders, and probably had taken an active part in the original
organization. In fact, part of the original land had been purchased from other
members of his family.
The described location sounds so much like the old Camp Uwharrie owned and used
until about 1993 by the Boy Scouts that that possibility was checked out at the
courthouse, and, sure enough, that’s just where it was. Although Women’s College
inquired about leasing the property, it was sold in July 1925 to C.L. Amos, H.
B. Hiatt, J. E. Lambeth and J. O. Moffit, trustees, to be used as a Boy Scout
camp.
Now the area is a neighborhood of beautiful and very expensive homes. But as
long as the entrance road is named Akela Trail, that old
hunting-fishing-camp-lodge flavor will be part of its ambience.
News & Record, Sunday, September 25, 2005
Reprinted with permission of the News & Record
and of the author