Drug, Alcohol and DNA Testing Centers, Rocky Mount, VA

Local Area Info: Rocky Mount, Virginia

Rocky Mount is a town in and the county seat of Franklin County, Virginia, United States. The town is part of the Roanoke Metropolitan Statistical Area, and had a population of 4,799 as of the 2010 census. It is located in the Roanoke Region of Virginia.

Although Robert Hill built a block house (fortified residence and trading post) in the 1740s, the first English colonists arrived here in 1760, and they named Rocky Mount for a steep cliff near the town. The area originally consisted of two adjacent villages, Rocky Mount and Mount Pleasant. Washington Iron Furnace was built by James Callaway and Jeremiah Early on what is now Main Street slightly outside what is now the historic district, and operated by Calloway's heirs and Peter Saunders until damaged by a flood in 1850, with rebuilding stopped by the Civil War. The first court session was held at Rocky Mount in 1786 following the Revolutionary War, in Callaway's home until he deeded land to the town on which to build the (log) courthouse. Rocky Mount had a post office in 1795. The town was divided into lots in 1804. Jeremiah's son John Early represented the county (part-time) in the Virginia House of Delegates and served as sheriff as well as operated a plantation nearby. The courthouse was replaced in 1831. By 1836 the iron furnace employed 100 people and the town had about 275 residents, included 30 homes and several businesses including 3 grocery stores and a newspaper/printing office. The oldest dwelling is "Mount Pleasant", built overlooking the courthouse in 1829 for Caleb Tate (the court clerk from 1797-1835); the detached brick kitchen built circa 1820 is the oldest building in town. The Rocky Mount Turnpike Company incorporated in 1846 and a bank shortly afterward, but neither prospered.

During the Civil War, numerous planter families from the Tidewater region sought refuge in Rocky Mount, and many brought substantial numbers of slaves with them. Among these were the immediate past governor, Henry A. Wise, who settled his family here before he became a Confederate general. Jubal Anderson Early, who became a Confederate general during the war, was born on a farm nearby, and served as one term in the Virginia House of Delegates representing the county (succeeded by his mentor Norborne Taliaferro, who later became a judge) and more than a decade as Commonwealth's attorney (prosecutor) before the war, then resumed his legal practice here and in Lynchburg, Virginia after the war's end (although the building which served as his law office was razed in 1937). The only building constructed in that era and surviving today was constructed for Dr. Thomas Greer in 1861. Two other buildings constructed in 1850-1854 and used as law offices still survive. The town's clerk, Robert A. Scott, issued scrip to assist families of Confederate soldiers during the Civil War, and the Confederate government also requisitioned slaves from various county landowners to work on Richmond's defenses. The town experienced no battles, although Union Gen. George Stoneman and troops passed through the county in the war's final days. In 1867, the Freedman's Bureau under William F. DeKnight opened a Sunday school in Rocky Mount, about a third of whose residents at the time were African American, but efforts to establish a day school didn't succeed until much later, which is one of the reasons Booker Taliaferro Washington, born enslaved in Franklin County, moved with his mother to West Virginia for his education, and later studied at the Hampton Institute at the other side of the state.