Unmarked memorial for Percy Simolton Scales

Item

Legacies Classification
Memorial Artwork
Memorial Type
Sculptural Memorial
Memorial Context
Reparative
Memorialized Subject
Text title announcing the retirement of Percy Scales.Scales, Percy Simolton
Title
Unmarked memorial for Percy Simolton Scales
Background and Context
After being an employee of a Davidson College president and the college library for many decades, Percy Simolton Scales, the first and perhaps only female janitor at the time, died on February 15, 1955. She was survived by her siblings and two nieces, Percy Abernathy and Eugenia Donalson. She was eulogized in the Davidsonian, a student newspaper. Students wrote of how she was “respected by both her white and her colored friends” and that “the college never had a more faithful and loyal employee.”

Whether her headstone has been lost over the years or was never erected, we do not know. We do know that she was buried right next to her family under a large tree in the Christian Aid Cemetery on campus. Henry Simonton, her father, and Blanche Byers, her mother, both rest alongside her. The absence of a marked grave leaves questions about how her legacy was physically honored. The student newspaper’s eulogy, however, reveals how college community mourned Percy and their relationship with her. She also married twice, but little information is available about her relationships. Without the context of how her family, friends, and community remembered Percy, her memory in the Davidson Archives perpetuates a narrative of “faithful service” shaped primarily by the institution and its students and not how her family and community might have remembered her.
Physical Description
Unmarked mound covered with grass by a tree.
Memorial Inscription
N/A
Creator/Participating Person(s)
Text title announcing the retirement of Percy Scales.Scales, Percy Simolton
Friends and Family of Percy Simolton Scales
Christian Aid Society
Date created, installed or dedicated
1955
Historical Period
1945-1976: Era of Civil Rights Movement and resistance to Civil Rights Movement
Funded by
Friends and Family of Percy Simolton Scales
Campus Location
Wooden outdoor sign with black letter of the name of the cemetery on a white background.Christian Aid Society Cemetery
Location: Institution, City, State
Davidson College; Davidson, North Carolina
Learn More About this Subject
“Faithful Janitress Retires After Many Years of Service,” The Davidsonian, October 27, 1950, 3.
“Library Janitress, Percy Scales, Dies,” The Davidsonian, February 25, 1955, 1.
“Death Certificate of Percy Scales”, North Carolina State Archives; North Carolina Death Certificates, Ancestry.com
Nancy Griffith, “For Women’s History Month: Early Female Employees at Davidson College,” News of Davidson

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