Volusia County FlArchives Biographies.....Gold, Pleasant D. May 15, 1876 - ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/fl/flfiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Nancy Rayburn http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00025.html#0006128 February 26, 2015, 9:47 pm Source: Vol. II pg.30 The Lewis Publishing Co. 1923 Author: History of Florida, Past and Present GOLD, PLEASANT DANIEL. Since 1920 one of the permanent members of the colony of prominent people located at Seabreeze in Volusia County has been PLEASANT DANIEL GOLD, former president of the Jefferson Standard Life Insurance Company, a business man known in the South and North as a theatrical and motion picture producer, associated with THOMAS DIXON, president of the company which produced “The Birth of a Nation.” He is a son of the late Rev. PLEASANT DANIEL GOLD, who as lawyer, preacher, journalist and author was for many years one of the most influential men in the South. He was born in 1833, son of MILTON and MARTHA (FORTUNE) GOLD, and grandson of DANIEL GOLD, a native of Virginia, and great-great grandson of a pioneer who came from England in 1740. The late PLEASANT D. GOLD had the limited opportunities of a farmer’s son, and could acquire no special advantages until he was about twenty years of age. He then attended a school, took up the study of law, was admitted to practice in the North Carolina bar in 1856, and had a very bright professional future as a lawyer. For a time he was a partner of JOHN W. ELLIS, afterwards Gov. of North Carolina. About that time he answered and unhesitating call to the ministry, spent several years in Furman University and then in the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and during a part of the Civil war was pastor of a church at Goldsboro, North Carolina. He also served as chaplain in the Confederate Army, and lost all his property by the war, though he was personally opposed to secession and slavery. He was a minister of the Missionary Baptist Church until about 1870, when he joined the Primitive Baptist Church and became an elder in that denomination. He founded and until his death, for over forty years, was the able editor of Zion’s Landmark, the leading publication of the Primitive Baptist Church in North Carolina. He was also head of the P. D. GOLD Publishing Company at Wilson, North Carolina, publishing a daily paper there. At the close of the war he had bought, largely on credit, a farm on the outskirts of the village of Wilson, and extension of the town over his land gave him the financial means to educate his family. Rev. P. D. GOLD, who died in 1920, married in 1863 Miss JULIA PIPKIN, and she lived with him to celebrate their golden wedding. They reared seven of their eleven children. PLEASANT DANIEL GOLD, Jr., was born at Wilson, North Carolina, May 15, 1876. He attended the Wilson High School, graduated A. B. from the University of North Carolina in 1898, studied law in Richmond College in Virginia, and also had special work in Columbia University. Though trained as a lawyer, he has never practiced. After leaving college he was associated with the Bradstreet Commercial Agency at Richmond and also at Greensboro, North Carolina, and then took up the insurance business, and from 1902 to 1907 was a general agent for life insurance. In 1907 he organized and became the first vice president and general manager of the Jefferson Standard Life Insurance Company of Raleigh, North Carolina. Mr. Gold succeeded in making this one of the largest life companies doing business in the Southeastern States. In 1911 –12 Mr. Gold was president of the American Life Convention. He resigned as president in 1912, and in that year he moved to New York City. It was in 1914 that he became associated with THOMAS DIXON, the author of “The Birth of a Nation,” in producing screenplays. He was interested in the production of several other noted film plays, including, “One Woman,” “The Man of the People,” and “The Robert E. Lee” picture. He has been a writer as well as a producer of plays. Mr. Gold took up his permanent residence at Seabreeze in 1920, and in 1922 was honored with election as mayor of that Florida municipality. He has served as a member of the alumni Council of the University of North Carolina, as director of the North Carolina Children’s Home Society, and on the Executive Committee of the North Carolina Good Roads Association. He was a member of the Woodrow Wilson Inaugural Reception Committee of March 4, 1913, and was active in the mayoralty campaign of EDWARD E. McCALL in New York City in 1913. He is a Knight Templar Mason and Shriner, a life member of the Elks at Greensboro, North Carolina, a member of the New York Southern Society, and of various other clubs. May 15, 1901, Mr. Gold married ELIZABETH FAUST BALSLEY, of Greensboro, North Carolina. He has a son, PLEASANT D. III, who is now attending the Naval Academy of Annapolis, Maryland, class of 1923. In 1920 Mr. Gold married MAUD BOYNTON SMITH, of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, who died July 6, 1922. File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/fl/volusia/bios/gold98bs.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.poppet.org/flfiles/ File size: 5.4 Kb