Mocksville: Andrew Mock's Field Becomes a County Seat

Before it was a town, this place in the North Carolina Piedmont was known simply as Mock's Old Field, two hundred fifty acres owned by a man named Andrew Mock, with a post office that had been operating since eighteen ten.

When the North Carolina Legislature carved Davie County from neighboring Rowan County in eighteen thirty-six, it needed a seat. Mock's field was the logical choice. Court was ordered to be held at Mocksville in eighteen thirty-seven, the town incorporated in eighteen thirty-nine, and the original courthouse went up in the center of town square the same year.

Davie County and its seat were both named in honor of William R. Davie, a governor of North Carolina from seventeen ninety-eight to seventeen ninety-nine and the founder of the University of North Carolina. Today Mocksville is a town of about seven thousand in the rolling Piedmont, still the seat of Davie County, its courthouse replaced in nineteen oh nine with a neo-classical revival building that still stands on the same downtown square.