Page 7 - A Narrative of the History of Roanoke Virginia

the lots to investors and made promises to drain the marshes nearby, no
development followed. By 1834, when Captain William Rowland purchased Pate’s
Mill and the surrounding sixty-eight acres, “New Antwerp” continued to exist in deed
books only. Nevertheless, Rowland and Major Kemp Gaines laid out 120 town lots for
“Gainsborough” on the Great Road to the north of the mill. The partners sold about
thirty lots to families and businessmen, and the following year, the tiny community
that moved in successfully petitioned the state for township status. Although officially
recognized as Gainsborough, locals and outsiders alike continued to call the place
“Pate’s,” “Great Lick,” or “Big Lick.”

The Virginia General Assembly carved Roanoke County out of Botetourt County a
few years later, and for at least a moment the centrally located Gainsborough was
in the running for county seat. Local leaders, however, selected Salem, an older
and significantly larger town eight miles to the west on the Great Road.
Gainsborough expanded only slightly in the ensuing decades, and by the early
1850s, it was home to about a hundred residents, three churches, a blacksmith
shop, a tavern, and a couple dry goods stores. Any real chance for additional
development disappeared a couple of years later when the Virginia & Tennessee
Railroad built its tracks through Roanoke County roughly a mile south of the
community.

Concerned more with building the cheapest roadbed possible than with passing
through the various hamlets and villages in its path, the railroad positioned its
tracks along the licks and built “Big Lick Depot” in the midst of corn and wheat
fields next to a dirt road leading west into Franklin County.

The first train arrived in the fall of 1852, and at least a few of the numerous
Gainsborough residents who came over to see the wood-fired engine and three cars
pass by understood the magnitude of the event and relocated their businesses closer
to the depot. Additional hotels joined “Trout House,” a well-known inn on the road to
Franklin County, just to the south of the tracks, and several general merchandise
stores moved over as well.

Other commercial development, mainly the warehousing or production of plug and
smoking tobacco, followed, and by the eve of the Civil War residents were referring to
the area around the depot as “Big Lick.” Gainsborough, also sometimes known as
“Big Lick,” adopted the name of “Old Lick.” Like farmers elsewhere along the line,
those in neighboring counties had moved swiftly into tobacco and other cash crops
soon after the railroad arrived, and many of them used Big Lick Depot, which was
easily accessible via Franklin County Road, as a place to sell their harvests and
stock-up on supplies.

The interruption of train service during the Civil War stagnated the hamlet’s growth,
and in April 1865, after destroying warehouses along with nearby tracks and bridges,
Union General George Stoneman’s troops burned the village’s depot. Economic
recovery did not come quickly, according to one visitor, who reported that in 1868
“Big Lick” was “a simple railroad station,” a few scattered businesses, and “perhaps
four houses.” The town’s population, however, had grown back to around one