The Call family of Mocksville included three generations of house carpenters who were active in their community for several years in the nineteenth century, especially after the Civil War. Typical of many local builders, they constructed local versions of nationally popular architectural styles, giving the small town accents of the picturesque modes of the day. Kirk Franklin Mohney traces the family’s lives and work in The Historic Architecture of Davie County, North Carolina.

A member of a family long numerous in Davie County, Henry R. Call (1814-1902) followed a sequence of trades including that of house carpenter during his long life in Davie County, but no buildings have been attributed to his hand. Henry married Martha Frances Frost in 1841, and in 1850, according to the United States Census, at age 36 he was working as a carriage maker and heading a household that included Martha, 26, and children William, Sarah, Samuel, and Francis, aged 7 to 2 years old; their family would continue to grow. In 1860 Henry was identified as a carpenter and in 1870 as a house carpenter, and in 1880 he identified himself as a cabinetmaker. He died in 1902 and was buried in Rose Cemetery in Mocksville.

More is known about the work of Henry and Martha’s sons and grandsons. In 1871, Mohney reports, Samuel Call bought a log dwelling in Mocksville (the Hall-Call House) and remodeled it in a decorative Italianate fashion. In the 1890s, Samuel’s sons, James A. and Samuel Milton (S. Milton) Call, built the large, L-shaped Charles Meroney House in picturesque Queen Anne style, and James A. Call is credited with building the First Methodist Church, a brick edifice in Gothic Revival style. There are other houses in town that resemble the Meroney house and might have been built by the Calls.

James A. Call, who married M. Lou Clark in Mocksville in 1889, moved to Corsicana, Texas, between 1895 and 1899, where he worked for many years as a house carpenter and died in 1953. Samuel Milton Call remained in Mocksville and was buried in the Rose Cemetery with his gravestone dated September 22, 1847-August 17, 1924.

Kirk Franklin Mohney, The Historic Architecture of Davie County, North Carolina (1986).