Platting of Darlington
The town of Darlington was platted by Enoch Cox on February 3, 1836. The original plat contained twelve lots on each side of Main Street. The eastern boundary was Washington Street. The western extent was right before where Fountain Trust Bank is now.
The land on which Darlington stands was bought from the government in 1822 by John Abernathy and sold to Reuben Nicholson in 1825. In 1833 Nicholson sold it to Catherine Cox and her sons, Robert, William, Benjamin and Enoch, who had emigrated from Randolph County in 1829 and located near Darlington on land previously bought by her husband, Jeremiah Cox. Mr. Cox had made a trip to this vicinity at the time of the purchase but had died earlier in the year 1829.
The next year after buying the land from Nicholson, Mrs. Cox died and Robert and Benjamin sold their shares to Enoch, who laid off the town six years later.
NAMING OF DARLINGTON
A search for the origin of the name "Darlington" reveals three different stories. The one most often told is that it was named for Darlington, England, at the suggestion of Job Moffitt, a Quaker preacher; another is that it was named for an old Doctor Darling who lived here in the early day; the third is that it came from a word used by the friendly Indians as they sat around a camp fire with the first white settlers.
The information above came from the book "140 Years of Darlington Community History Bicentennial Edition"
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