W. B. Newell House
(ca. 1888)
The W. B. Newell House is the sole remaining home of one of the founders of the rural Newell community.
8409 University E Dr, Charlotte, NC 28213
In about 1882, William Burns Newell (1856-1927) was one of the three founders of Mecklenburg County’s Newell community, along with his brother John Allison Newell (1854-1937) and his brother-in-law Nehemiah Wilson Wallace (1856-1925). His home, the W. B. Newell House, is the oldest house in that community and the only surviving house of one of the community’s founders. Prior to the brothers’ move from Hickory Grove, their namesake community was a rural area with scattered farms bisected by a railroad track and a dirt road to Concord. Following their move to the area, the brothers and Wallace became prosperous farmers and businessmen, as well as a powerful political trio in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.
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In 1878, W. B. married Sarah (“Sallie”) Pharr Ervin (1856-1947), a Cabarrus County native. Within ten years, he had purchased a 108-acre farm between the North Carolina Railroad and Back Creek in the rural area that would later bear his family name. W. B. built a two-story brick house, an unusual building material at that time for a rural residence, on the west side of his property using handmade bricks that he and a laborer crafted at a nearby creek. In 1892, W. B. and his brother-in-law became partners in a general store that they opened just across the railroad tracks and the Concord road, some 100 yards from his house. For many decades, that general store and the two homes of the Newell brothers were the hub of the Newell community. In addition to the store, W. B. also raised cotton and livestock.
Wallace, whose tenure from 1898 to 1919 as Sheriff of Mecklenburg County remains one of the longest on record, was once reputed to own the most farmland in the county, most of which was cultivated by tenant farmers. He also held the post of Commissioner of Public Safety. John Newell, who raised mules, served on the Board of County Commissioners.
W. B. and Sallie raised seven children in the W. B. Newell House. Following W. B.’s 1927 death, the couple’s son Willis Warren Newell assumed ownership and management responsibility for the general store. Daughter Leila Newell Thompson and her husband Charles A. Thompson moved into the W. B. Newell House with Sallie. Charles worked for the Chevrolet Motor Division in Charlotte, and Leila taught piano in the home. The couple raised two sons in the Newell farmhouse. Following Leila’s death in 1973, Charles sold the Newell homestead, ending the family’s relationship with the century-old homeplace.