Jamestown Historic District (Additional Documentation)

Jamestown grew up along the old stage road linking Virginia with Salisbury and Charlotte, and the historic district preserves about a mile of its nineteenth-century buildings beside what is now U.S. 29A-70A. At its core are three early brick buildings laid in Flemish bond: the Richard Mendenhall house, his 1824 store, and the small Friends' Meeting House with its cemetery. Around them are frame houses, including a Greek Revival house and medical school built by Dr. Shubal Coffin and the Lindsay house and medical school. The district is tied to the Mendenhall family, who founded the town and led its Quaker community. Residents ran night teaching, a girls' school, a law school and private medical schools, and took part in the North Carolina Manumission Society. The railroad arrived in 1856, but later growth went to High Point and Greensboro, which left the old buildings largely intact.