History of the Names Moody and
Whitehall in the Steele Creek Community of Mecklenburg
County, NC
The following information was
provided by local historians with some confirmation from
internet sources:
Moody Lake
most likely was built by George D. Moody who acquired a 325
acre parcel, known as the old Frank Simiril place, in
1929. George held the property until his death in 1952. His
sons, George Junior and Francis S. Moody, sold it to David
R. Johnston in 1959. David R. Johnston was owner of the
nearby Whitehall horse farm.
The Moodys didn't live
there.They lived in the Myers Park neighborhood in
Charlotte. George D. Moody owned the Charles Moody Company
(named for his brother), a wholesale grocery business. Moody
had a big farm on the property where the lake was and had
others farm the land. There seems to be no doubt from local
residents that George D. Moody is the person who built the
lake.
Local residents remember the
lake being there in the 1940’s. A local resident remembers
helping cut hay near the lake and helping with an oats crop
back in the 1950s. Supposedly there was a small cabin Moody
built on the lake that he and his sons enjoyed as a get
away. Local residents remember that one of his sons would
come out to the little cabin on the lake and get dead drunk,
and the family would come out and take him back to
Charlotte.
Whitehall
was the name of a horse farm that was owned by David R.
Johnston whose family owned textile mills in Charlotte. The
farm included a stable, at least two barns, and a horse
track. David Johnston told a local historian that he named
it Whitehall because that was the name of his horse farm in
Kentucky. They raised colts for harness racing, and when
they got older they transported them to Kentucky.
David Johnston's father, R.
Horace Johnston, purchased 312.5 acres of the property in
1927 and purchased an additional 48.6 acres in 1945. R.
Horace Johnston died in 1949, and David R. Johnston
inherited the property.
The house on the Whitehall farm
was the Reid home before the Johnstons purchased it. It
dated back to the 1800 to 1830 period. The house sat on a
slight knoll in the middle of what is now intersection I-485
and S. Tryon Street.
David R. Johnston died in 1982.
His widow Alice Grier Johnston sold the Whitehall farm,
including the former Moody property, which her husband had
purchased in 1959, for the Whitehall development in
1994.According to the Environment Site Assessment prepared
in 1993, the farm had been abandoned by that time, and the
track was overgrown and extremely difficult to distinguish
from the surrounding topography.
Additional information about
the Whitehall property and Moody Lake is available on the
Environmental Site Assessment for the Whitehall Site, which
is available here:
http://www.merrifieldpartners.com/properties/docs/whitehall/Phase_I.PDF |