Daisy Hendley Gold

Gold was born on October 26, 1893, in Iredell County, North Carolina.[1] She was the daughter of Alvis Francis Hendley and his second wife, Celeste Rimmer Norris.[2][1] She was of Scotch-Irish, French, and English descent.[1] Gold attended local schools before studying at the North Carolina State Normal and Industrial College in Greensboro.[1] She was enrolled at the Normal and Industrial College for three years, but did not graduate.[1]

Gold began her journalism career working at the Statesville Record & Landmark and later worked for the Greenville Piedmont.[1] She was invited to work as a foreign correspondent in Europe during World War I, but her parents dissuaded her from taking the post.[1] In 1920 she became the managing editor of the Wilson Times.[1][3] Gold worked at Wilson Times until 1947, writing feature stories about coastal and eastern North Carolina.[1]

Gold authored a book of lyric poems called Tides of Life in 1927.[1][4] In 1940 she published the book It Was Forever, a novel about a young married woman from coastal North Carolina who falls in love with a British sea captain.[1][5][6] Prior to her death she was writing a history book on Wilson County titled A Town Named Wilson.[1] The original typewritten manuscript of the unpublished history book is owned by the Wilson County Public Library.[7][8] A Town Named Wilson has no mention of African-American citizens of the town except for a reference to slavery.[7]

She married John Daniel Gold, editor and publisher of the Wilson Times and son of Pleasant Daniel Gold, on February 7, 1924.[1][3] She was Gold's second wife, and became the stepmother of his three daughters.[1] She and Gold had two children together, Celeste Gold and John Daniel Gold, Jr.[1] Her husband was one of the wealthiest men in Wilson, and they lived in a Georgian Revival mansion on West Nash Street in Wilson.[9][10] Her daughter married Robert Bain Broughton, the son of North Carolina Governor J. Melville Broughton and Alice Willson Broughton, and lived in the Broughton House in Raleigh.[11][12]

Gold and her husband also owned a summer home in Morehead City, which they built in 1935.[1] She was a member of the Presbyterian Church and was a registered Democrat.[1] After her husband's death in 1954, Gold sold their house and built a Neo-Classical two-story home on West Nash Street.[9][10]

She died on April 7, 1975, at a nursing home in Lillington.[1] A prayer service was held by her family at the Mitchell Funeral Home in Raleigh.[3] She was buried in Maplewood Cemetery in Wilson.