Judge David Schenck & Mrs.Sallie Wilfong Ramseur Schenck
Judge David Schenck was born on March 25, 1835, in a house located to the west of his grandfather’s residence in the southwest square of Lincolnton.  His father, David Warlick Schenck (1809-1861) was a medical doctor and also operated an apothecary shop in a house on East Main Street in Lincolnton where he was born.  David Schenck’s grandfather, Michael Schenck, was a merchant and cotton manufacturer in Lincolnton who built the first cotton mill south of the Potomac River.  The Schenck-Warlick Mill site is marked with a State Highway Marker (0-7) on Highway 27/150 in Lincolnton.

As a teenager, David Schenck acquired his early education and work ethic while working at his father’s apothecary shop and attending Pleasant Retreat Academy in Lincolnton.  While a student at Lincolnton’s male academy, he became lifelong friends with Robert F. Hoke and Stephen Dodson Ramseur, both Confederate major generals from Lincoln County.  Upon completion of his coursework at Pleasant Retreat Academy, Schenck read law under Haywood W. Guion.  He attended Chief Justice Richard Pearson’s famous “Richmond Hill” Law School where he received his law license in 1856.  The following year, Schecnk received his license to practice law in Superior Court.  Upon graduation from “Richmond Hill”, Schenck returned to Lincolnton and joined the Lincoln County bar. 

Over the next two years, various events took place that made indelible marks on his life.  In 1859 Schenck was elected Solicitor for Gaston County and set up his practice in Dallas.  On August 25, 1859, Schenck married Sallie Wilfong Ramseur, the sister of S.D. Ramseur, and the following year returned to Lincolnton and became the law partner of William Lander.  As the sounds of war rang throughout the nation, Schenck was elected the youngest delegate to the Seccession/Constitutional Convention in Goldsboro, North Carolina in 1861.  When the war started, Schenck briefly held a position in the Army Commissary Department of Raleigh.  He returned to Lincolnton and was appointed to the post of receiver under the Sequestration Act, in which position he remained until the end of the war. 
David Schenck purchased “Evergreen,” which was built in 1852 for Elisha Barrett, on March 24, 1870, and occupied the residence with his family until he sold it to his daughter Lucy and son-in-law J.L. Cobb in 1882.  Schenck purchased his new home at age 35 and believed the home to be “the best dwelling house in town and the conveniences surrounding are substantiated and well arranged.”  In addition, Schenck felt that he had “attained one great object of life” by providing “a home for myself and my family comfortable if not elegant.”  On August 25, 1873, he wrote of “Evergreen” that there were “few lovelier houses in the world than our own sweet Evergreen.”  Upon selling his home on May 6, 1882, Schenck recorded in his diary that he was disappointed and sorrowful that he would leave “a place where I have spent so many happy hours and where four of my children were born.”  His sixth son, Michael Schenck, was born at “Evergreen” in Lincolnton, and served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of North Carolina from 1934 to 1948.

David Schenck was active in public and civic affairs throughout his adult life in Lincolnton.  He served as an elder in the First Presbyterian Church of Lincolnton, and was an enthusiastic supporter of educational reform in North Carolina.  In August 1874, he was elected judge of the Superior Court for the ninth judicial district (Cabarrus, Mecklenburg, Gaston, Lincoln, Cleveland, Rutherford, and Polk Counties), and traveled on the court circuits in both eastern and western North Carolina.  In 1882, he resigned the judgeship to accept the position of general counsel for the Richmond and Danville Railroad and moved to Greensboro, North Carolina. 

As a citizen of Greensboro, Schenck continued his work as a southern progressive, advocating better schools, good roads, and other areas of modernization.  His most notable accomplishment while in Greensboro was the procurement and preservation of the Guilford Battleground.  His interest in history, undoubtedly nurtured during his youth in Lincolnton, took form with his writing of an historical sketch of his family in 1884, and a revisionist history of the Revolutionary War in North Carolina in 1889.  David Schenck died in Greensboro on August 26, 1902.

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