Pleasant Daniel Gold

Pleasant Daniel Gold (March 25, 1833 – June 7, 1920) was an American publisher, lawyer, and Baptist minister. Ordained as a Primitive Baptist minister in the Kehukee Association, he was a prominent Baptist leader in North Carolina for over half-a-century. He served as a minister in Rocky Mount, Goldsboro, Wilson, Tarboro, and Durham. In 1867 he co-founded the Baptist newspaper Zion's Landmark, serving as editor until 1920. In 1902 he founded the P.D. Gold Publishing Company, which issued two newspapers for Wilson County.

Biography Gold was born on March 25, 1833, in a part of Rutherford County that was later incorporated into Cleveland County. He was the son of Milton Gold, a farmer, and Martha Fortune Gold. 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. Two more of Gold's sons, Pleasant Daniel Gold Jr. and Charles Willis Gold, co-founded the Jefferson Standard Life Insurance Company in 1907. 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. The Gold brothers later stepped down and handed the company over to Julian Price.

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