Joseph Van Buren Knox
By the early 1900s, Davidson was starting to grow beyond its college roots, and Joseph Van Buren Knox was one of the people shaping that growth with his own hands. Born in 1862, Joe wasn't just a landowner, he was a builder, a developer, and someone who clearly believed in where his hometown was headed.
A Farm Family, First
In 1910, The Charlotte Chronicle ran an article titled "The Knoxes Are Some Farmers," spotlighting the family's hold on more than 2,000 acres of farmland around Davidson. Joe's own share of that land ran to roughly 300 acres, stretching out toward Mt. Gilead. Farming was where the family's wealth started, but for Joe, it wasn't where it ended.
The brothers built as a unit as often as they built alone. In 1896, Joe joined two of his own brothers, Thomas Brevard and Robert Chalmers, in purchasing 114 acres together in the Lemley Township, one more example of the Knox sons pooling land and resources rather than going it alone.
View the 1896 Deed (PDF)
Building Davidson's South Side
Working alongside his brother Frank, Joe helped build much of southern Davidson, particularly the area below what's now the Village Store. By 1907, he'd already put up four residences in the south end of town, and that was just the beginning. He brought in a sawmill and set it up on his own land, cutting his own lumber to build homes on his vacant lots rather than buying materials elsewhere. It was a smart, self-contained way to develop real estate, and it meant Joe's fingerprints were on the wood as much as the deeds.
Granddaddy Joe's Building
Joe is credited with constructing the First Union Bank building on Main Street, a building the family still refers to as "Granddaddy Joe's building" to this day. It's one of those small details that says a lot: more than a century later, his work is still identifiable by name within the family, not just by a deed in a courthouse file.
That same building was still under construction when the Great Depression hit. Family history recalls Joe supervising the project on Main Street through those years, a stretch that reportedly strained the family's finances. But by every account, they saw it through, and the building still stands today as proof, now operating as a Wells Fargo bank branch.
Public Trust and Public Works
Joe's construction work wasn't limited to private homes and commercial buildings. In 1920, he was awarded a county contract to build a schoolhouse at Cowan's Ford, the kind of public commission that only goes to someone the community already trusts with a hammer and a budget.
Mr. J.V. Knox has moved a saw mill to his place, and is cutting lumber to build three houses on his vacant lots. Mr. Knox has great faith in Davidson real estate and is willing to prove his judgement by investing largely in this growing town.
Final Years
Joseph Van Buren Knox died in 1932, closing out seventy years that had shaped Davidson from its farmland to its Main Street. What survives of him now is part paper trail and part memory: a death certificate, an obituary, a marker at his grave site, and the one photograph that lets us put a face to the name behind "Granddaddy Joe's building."
