Built in 1829, Beaver Dam was home to Major William Lee Davidson II and his wife, Betsy Lee Davidson. The plantation lands eventually encompassed 785 acres and had 25 to 30 hands. The plantation included the house, a large garden, a smokehouse, a chicken house, and slave quarters. After Betsy Davidson's death in 1845, the house went out of the Davidson family for almost one hundred years. It was purchased in 1937 by Chalmers Gaston Davidson, a collateral descendent of William Lee and Library Director and history professor at Davidson College. It was listed as a Charlotte-Mecklenburg Historic Site in 1977 and placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. In 1998, Davidson College purchased the house and eight acres of adjoining lands and leased it to the Town of Davidson as a public park.
The Phi Alpha chapter of Beta Theta Pi Fraternity was founded in 1858. It was the first fraternity at Davidson College, and it enjoyed several years of great success.
Bob McKillop first arrived at Davidson in 1978. In his 19+ seasons at the Wildcat helm, all of but one of his players have graduated, and they’ve become active student-athletes on campus and role models in the community’s elementary and middle schools.
Created in 1990, the Bonner Foundation offered scholarships to service-minded individuals and encouraged colleges to support civically engaged students (Hackett). Ruth Pittard, the first director of the Davidson Bonners explained, “Essentially, the Bonner scholars began the conversation about service learning.” The importance of community involvement permeated the student body through a group of individuals who dedicated their college experience to service and scholarship.
Students lined up “single file, three feet apart by classes” and created a line that stretched moving the library books from the Carnegie Library to the Grey Library in 1941.
Davidson College Presbyterian Church minister Carl Pritchett talks with Mr. and Mrs. Lowery in front of their recently burned home with a crowd watching them.
