By Taylor Boyd
Tom Perry, said he discovered information that Andy Griffith, actor, comedian, and television producer, has roots to Patrick County.
Perry, a local author, and historian, said Patrick county “can claim Andy just as much as Mount Airy (N.C.) does.”
According to Perry’s research, Griffith’s connection to Patrick County is through his mother, Geneva Griffith (nee Nunn).
“About 10 years ago, I found Andy Griffith’s mom and dad’s wedding license in the Patrick County Courthouse. I started researching that and Andy’s mother, who was Geneva Nunn, was from over near Kibler Valley,” Perry said, adding that Nunn and her father grew up in the Ararat area where “a bridge and the dinky railroad crossed the Dan River. It was a little narrow-gauge railroad that went all the way to Kibler Valley from Mount Airy. It hauled timber out from Kibler and took it to Mount Airy.”
Perry said about 100 years ago, the area was “quite a little industrial area” due to the railroad.
He suspects that Nunn named her son after her uncle, Andy Nunn, who lived in Claudville.
“Andy’s great-uncle fought in the Civil War and he lost a leg. He’s buried really close to the Claudville Café. His grave is almost within sight of the café,” Perry said, adding he has a picture of him with his cane sitting in front of the old Claudville post office.
Perry said Jerry Bledsoe, a true crime author and journalist, also mentioned Andy Griffith in his book about his bicycling trip through the Blue Ridge Mountains.
“In that book, he stops at the Mayberry Trading Post” in Meadows of Dan, Perry said. “Addie Wood was in there that day and they got to talking, and she told him the story that Andy Griffith used to come in there when he was a young man with his grandfather.”
He also found Bledsoe’s book within Griffith’s papers at the University of North Carolina (UNC) in Chapel Hill.
“Andy or somebody has highlighted the section where Addie Woods says his grandfather brought him in there and that she’s determined that was where he got the name Mayberry from,” Perry said.
“The fact that he put that in his papers at Chapel Hill tells me that he did, because if that wasn’t true, I have a feeling he would have written beside Bledsoe’s book ‘not true,’” Perry said, adding the fact that Griffith had it in his papers highlighted told him that “he (Griffith) thought they got it right.
“So, it’s in Andy papers, Bledsoe’s book, and I came to believe that’s where he got the name Mayberry from” for The Andy Griffith Show, he added.
“I have very fond memories of doing stuff with my grandparents, and I think Griffith did too,” Perry said, adding that he thought that when they were developing the show and needed a name for the town, one of the things Griffith thought about was Mayberry” Trading Post.
“I think he used it as a fond memory,” Perry said, and added that Griffith was “apparently keenly aware of his connections to Patrick County.”
Perry became close friends with Jim Love, a former ROTC teacher at Patrick County High School, who would take him around the county and tell him stories about the county’s history.
“One of the things he told me was that he had taken Andy Griffith around and showed him where all his relatives were buried and where they lived. He told me in vivid terms about taking Andy around the family cemetery,” Perry said, adding from what he was able to gleam, that Griffith visited his Nunn family quite a bit.
Given everything he has learned in his research, Perry said, “we’re kind of the real Mayberry I guess.”
