Pleasant Daniel Gold

Gold was born on March 25, 1833, in a part of Rutherford County that was later incorporated into Cleveland County.[1] He was the son of Milton Gold, a farmer, and Martha Fortune Gold.[1] His grandfather, Daniel Gold, had moved to North Carolina from Virginia in 1798.[1] He worked on his family's farm until he was twenty, when he borrowed money to attend college.[1] Gold studied law and received his law license in 1856.[1] Gold worked as an attorney at a law firm in Shelby and was a partner with future North Carolina Governor John W. Ellis.[2]

Gold left the law practice and enrolled at Furman University to study theology, transferring to Southern Baptist Theological Seminary with hopes of becoming a Missionary Baptist minister.[1] While he was at seminary, the American Civil War began.[1] He left school to enlist in the Confederate States Army, serving as a chaplain and nurse until a fever ended his military service.[3][1]

In the 1860s Gold left the Missionary Baptist Church and became a Primitive Baptist, joining the Kehukee Primitive Baptist Church in Halifax.[1] He was baptized and ordained as an elder and a pastor at Kehukee Baptist Church.[2] He served as a Baptist minister in Wilson, Rocky Mount, Tarboro, and in Durham.[1] He was a leading figure in the Primitive Baptist community of North Carolina for over half a century.[1]

In 1863, while serving as a Baptist pastor in Goldsboro, Gold met and married Julia Pipkin, a daughter of Willis Pipkin of Lenoir County.[1] They had eleven children before Pipkin's death in 1913.[1] He later married Eugenia Alice Roberts of Winston-Salem, with whom he had no children.[2]

In 1867, with L.I. Bodenheimer, he co-founded Zion's Landmark, a Baptist newspaper.[1] He became the associate editor in 1871 and was made editor the following year.[1] He served as editor of Zion's Landmark until 1920.[3] The paper became the leading publication of the Primitive Baptist Church.[2] In 1902 Gold founded the P.D. Gold Publishing Company, which issued The Daily Times and The Semi-Weekly Times.[2] The company was later incorporated as The Wilson Daily Times Publishing Company.[2] He handed over the publishing company to his son, John Daniel Gold, who was married to author Daisy Hendley Gold and founded the Wilson Times, in 1896.[4][5] Two more of Gold's sons, Pleasant Daniel Gold, Jr. and Charles Willis Gold, co-founded the Jefferson Standard Life Insurance Company in 1907.[4][6][7][8] In 1912 the company completed merges with two other companies, Security Life and Annuity Company and Greensboro Life Insurance Company, moving the headquarters to Greensboro.[6][7] The Gold brothers later stepped down and handed the company over to Julian Price.[6][7]

Gold died in Mebane in 1920 and is buried at Maplewood Cemetery in Wilson.[1]