Levi Branson’s survey of Pamlico County, North Carolina, which was discussed in the post for 31 May 2020, was conducted during the depression that followed the Panic of 1893. The state agriculture department did another in 1900, a few years after the national economy revived. [1] Two changes had occurred, beyond the usual ones in small businesses.
In 1896, Arthur Midyett made barrels; in 1900 there were four barrel makers. One consequence of rail and steamer lines was the shipping time between Pamlico Sound and New York had dropped dramatically. Local farmers were able to grow produce for urban markets that required shipping containers.
The more important change was the appearance of Blades Lumber Company in Oriental. James Blades had begun, like the men in Pamlico County, with a general store. In 1877, he, his uncle, and brother bought grist and saw mills. Next, they acquired timber land. [2]
Once involved in the lumber industry, Blades made the transition to the next level of organization. In 1879 he traveled through the South looking for likely locations, and settled on Bath, North Carolina, where he bought timber land and leased a mill site. [3]
After he exhausted that timber, [4] Blades leased a mill south of New Bern at Cherry Point, and bought timber land to the east in 1886. Two years later, he moved his headquarters to Elizabeth City, [5] mentioned in the post for 31 May 2020.
By 1890, Blades had seven saw mills in the New Bern area, [6] and the city had become the center of North Carolina’s lumber trade. [7]
During the panic of 1893, Blades reincorporated, [8] while James Bryan evicted African Americans living on the waterfront in James City, with the aid of the state militia. [9] Bryan forced the others to sign three-year leases that impoverished the farmers. [10] He then rented waterfront lots to Blades and others. [11]
In 1903, Blades moved his headquarters to New Bern, and three years later sold the business to John L. Roper. [12] In the interim, Pamlico County’s economy expanded. In 1904, it had two barrel manufacturers, one box company, one shingles mill, eight small independent saw mills, and a cannery. [13] Blades had been joined by the Bayboro Land and Lumber Company of Wilmington, North Carolina. [14]
Bryan’s father and uncle had been lawyers who specialized in collecting debts. [15] In 1850, his father owned real estate valued at $8,000 [16] and 13 slaves, but declared no agricultural or industrial products to census takers. [17] That suggests he mainly had domestic servants, and perhaps rented slaves out to others.
Bryan spent the Civil War on the staffs of several generals and North Carolina’s Confederate governor. [18] After he returned to civilian life in 1865, he became involved with a sawmill between New Bern and Vanceboro, but during the depression following the Panic of 1873, Eileen Parris said, he decided he could earn more with less risk by leasing the mill to others. [19]
He joined the board of directors of the state-owned Atlantic and North Carolina railroad in 1881. During his tenure as president from1899 to 1904, he fired the African-American employees. [20]
The Norfolk and Southern, mentioned in the post for 31 May 2020, was the main rival for New Bern’s rail traffic through its shipping line. In 1901, Bryan began promoting an alternative line across the Pamlico peninsula to link New Bern with an Atlantic terminal, [21] and thus bypass the Norfolk.
Construction was slow, and financing problematic. When it finally reached Alliance in 1906, the Norfolk bought it and built a branch line down to Oriental. [22] It purchased Roper’s lumber company the same year. [23]
Railroad 135 is the Norfolk Southern north to Elizabeth City and west to Raleigh.
It didn’t take long for industrial logging to clear the timber. Roper’s Oriental mill burned in 1912. No repairs were made after a 1913 hurricane destroyed the town’s wharf and the harbor improvements [24] made by the federal government in 1879. [25]
At least some of the men who worked for Blades, and later Roper, were local. In 1890, Alonza Dixon went from Vanceboro to New Bern to work as a sawyer for Blades. Once he had the skills he worked for other mills in New Bern and Dover, North Carolina. [26]
Local African Americans must also have found jobs in the logging camps and mills. Charles Lorenzo Credle moved from Hyde County to Pamlico County where he was a day laborer in 1900. In 1910, he was "a wood cutter in the woods." In 1920, he was a farmer, and in 1930 a farm laborer. [27]
Family cemeteries began appearing the year Norfolk became active in Pamlico County. Burials were made in Oriental in 1906 [28] and 1908, [29] in Bayboro in 1910, [30] in Stonewall in 1911, [31] in Grantsboro in 1912, [32] and in Vandemere in 1914. [33]
Except for Oriental, these were all in areas with arable land. The land to the east of the pocosin, which lay north and west of Oriental, was below the escarpment mentioned in the post for 19 January 2020. The soil was too thin for farming. At best it supported potatoes, which first were introduced in 1889. [34]
The existence of surviving burials indicates some African-American men were able to amass enough hard currency to acquire clear titles. Others, Black and white, were less fortunate. They could only begin with rented land. In 1916, Anthony Avery signed a contract with Lupton Company to grow potatoes with seed and fertilizer provided by the company, in return for half the proceeds. After the potatoes were packed in barrels provided by Lupton and taken to the rail station, Samuel Ferebee seized the lot to cover the rent Avery owed him for the land. [35]
The local labor pool, even after Bryan’s evictions, probably wasn’t enough to support the demands of Blades in New Bern. Part of the labor force, including its most skilled men, may have been migratory, coming for a few years from some other lumber town, then moving on before they were captured by the census.
In 1904, two mills, Blades and Munger and Bennett, paid the bond for nine African Americans arrested in New Bern, because they "were needed as operatives at the mills." The cost was set at $2,400. [36] In September 2019, that would have been $69,184.18. [37] One has to assume the men were skilled laborers to be worth that much money.
The judge was Bryan’s first cousin, [38] Henry Ravenscroft Bryan. [39] When the case was heard, the state didn’t send a representative for the prosecution. Since representatives from the lumber companies said they would pay the charges, only skeletal information was provided, certainly not enough to explain why twenty men would have attacked a white watchman with an axe and iron pipe, and not been prosecuted.
Information on Pamlico County’s labor force is even scarcer than New Bern. The distribution of churches suggested the commercial center at Oriental attracted AME Zion Methodists, perhaps from James City, while the agricultural area to the north was settled by Missionary Baptists, probably from Hyde County.
Black = AME Zion
Blue = Disciples of Christ
All that’s known for sure is the population increased by 23.9% between 1900 and 1910, when the logging camps and saw mills were busy, and fell by 9.1% before 1920, when they had reduced operations. The population returned to its pre-logging levels when it increased by 13% between 1880 and 1890, 12.6% between 1890 and 1900, and 12.6% between 1900 and 1920. [40]
Roper closed all its operations in 1921. [41] The Oriental mill was sold to M. J. Connolly, who had worked for Oriental Lumber [42] before it closed in 1920. [43] He said he would "continue to handle the output of several small mills." [44] Roper’s timber land eventually was acquired by Weyerhaeuser. [45]
Map
1. Selection from "North Carolina." Hammond’s Illustrated Library World Atlas. New York: C. S. Hammond and Company, 1948. 78.
2. Distribution of churches in Pamlico County. Base map from United States Census. Uploaded to Wikimedia Commons by Ruhrfisch on 4 July 2007.
End Notes
Cemetery information is from Find a Grave website.
1. North Carolina. Commissioner of Agriculture. Report for 1900. Raleigh: Edwards and Broughton, 1901. 430–431.
2. Gertrude S. Carraway. "Blades, James Bishop." NC Pedia website. 1979.
3. Carraway, Blades.
4. Louis G. May. "The Story of Beaufort County’s Lumber Industry." 329–352 in Washington and the Pamlico. Edited by Ursula Fogleman Loy and Pauline Marion Worthy. Raleigh: Edwards and Broughton, 1976. 332.
5. Carraway, Blades.
6. Alan D. Watson. A History of New Bern and Craven County. New Bern: Tyron Palace Commission, 1987. 524.
7. Wikipedia. "New Bern."
8. Vina Hutchinson Farmer. New Bern. Charleston, South Carolina: Arcadia Publishing, 2014. 110.
9. Joe A. Mobley. James City. Raleigh: North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources, Division of Archives and History, 1981. 81. James City and the eviction were mentioned in post for 15 March 2020.
10. Mobley, James City. 84.
11. Mobley, James City. 85.
12. Carraway, Blades.
13. "Miscellaneous Mills." North Carolina State Board of Agriculture. The Bulletin 26:9–35:8 August 1905. 27.
14. Item in "Business Pointers." The New York Lumber Trade Journal 36:27:15 February 1904.
15. L. Eileen Parris. "Bryan Family Papers, 1704-1940." University of North Carolina, Wilson Library website. August 1991.
16. On 13 September 2019, that real estate was worth $263,136.41. [46]
17. United States Census. 1850. Abstracted by R. Allen Humphrey. 2001.
18. Clement Anselm Evans. Confederate Military History. Atlanta: Confederate Publishing Company, 1899. 407–409. 408. He was on the staff of Lawrence Branch from August 1861 until he was killed 17 September 1862, and then on the staff of his successor, James B. Lane. After the surrender, he joined the staff of Zebulon Vance. Vanceboro was named for him years later.
19. Parris.
20. Parris.
21. Parris.
22. Joe A. Mobley. Pamlico County. Raleigh: North Carolina Division of Archives and History, 1991. 79.
23. May. 346.
24. Mobley, Pamlico. 80.
25. Watson. 530. The government worked on the Neuse and Trent rivers.
26. "Alonza S. Dixon." The [Kinston, North Carolina] Free Press, 1906 Industrial issue. Uploaded to US Gen Web website as "Lenoir County, NC - Industrial Issue - 1906" by Allen Barwick.
27. J.D. Larimore. "Charles Lorenzo Credle." Find a Grave website. 8 April 2017.
28. The earliest burial in the Harper Family Cemetery was Laura C. Harper Sanders. Her husband was born in Hyde County. [47]
29. The earliest burial in the Perkins Cemetery was Edward Ocie Hudson.
30. The earliest burial in the McKinley Dudley Family Cemetery was Ellen N. Davis Dudley. She was born in Lenoir County. [48] In 1880, her husband was a farm hand. In 1900 he was a farmer and their son was working in a barrel factory. [49]
31. The earliest burial in the Stonewall Cemetery was Harriett McCallison Dunbar. Her husband was born in Tyrrell County, [50] joined the Union army in New Bern in 1863, and was granted land in Bayboro for his military service. [51]
32. The earliest burial in the Keystown Cemetery was John Keys. His father was from Edenton in Chowan County. [52] W. A. Keys was mentioned in the post for 31 May 2020.
33. The earliest burial in the Mesic Community Memorial Cemetery was Alonzo Harrell Credle, infant son of Charles Lorenzo Credle and Pauline Kenyon. [53]
34. John T. Miller and Arthur E. Taylor. United States Department of Agriculture. Bureau of Chemistry and Soils. Soil Survey of Pamlico County, North Carolina. Washington: Government Printing Office, August 1937. 5. In Michigan, lumber companies also sold off cutover pine land for farms; most could only grow potatoes on the thin soil, and many failed at that. [54]
35. North Carolina. "Upton v. Ferebee" 1 October 1919. Case Text website. The name was given as L. J. Upton Co. I could find no trace of Uptons in Pamlico County, but Oriental Lumber Company acquired its land from E. W. Lupton. [55] This was the same Ferebee who was mentioned in the post for 31 May 2020 as the agent for Pamlico Lumber in Stonewell. Joshua Dean’s foreclosures were mentioned in the post for 24 May 2020.
36. "Nine Negroes Appear Before Judge Bryan on Charge of Riot and Assault." New Berne Weekly Journal. 5 April 1904. 1. Uploaded to the web by bwspruill on 9 April 2015. The headline said nine; twenty names appeared in the arrest warrant. I have no idea if this event was unusual or typical. The person who posted the news story may have been more interested in the identity of one of the men than in the implications of the incident for understanding race relations in the city at the time.
37. Alioth Finance. 13 September 2019.
38. Gertrude S. Carraway. "Bryan, Henry Ravenscroft." NC Pedia website. 1979.
39. The newspaper simply said Judge Bryan. Henry Ravenscroft Bryan was the judge for New Bern in 1904. [56]
40. United States Census. Reprinted by Wikipedia. "Pamlico County, North Carolina."
41. May. 346.
42. "New Carolina Operation." The Southern Lumberman 104:45:31 December 1921. Someone named Michael J. Connelly, not Connolly, was living in New Bern in 1940. He had been born about 1886 in Massachusetts. [57]
43. Item. The Beaufort [North Carolina] News. 15 July 1920. 1.
44. Southern Lumberman.
45. Jack Temple Kirby. Poquosin. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1995. 209.
46. "Inflation Calculator" provided online by Alioth Finance of Dehradun, Uttarakhand in India with data valid for 13 September 2019.
47. David A. French. "William M. Sanders." Find a Grave website. 8 February 2018.
48. J.D. Larimore. "Ellen N. Davis Dudley." Find a Grave website. 31 March 2017.
49. J.D. Larimore. "Daniel Dudley, Sr." Find a Grave website. 31 March 2017.
50. Ray Credle. "Robert Dunbar." Find a Grave website. 18 December 2013.
51. Ray Credle. "From Hyde County To Pamlico County." Ancestry website. "Robert Dunbar" page.
52. Sandi Danielle. "John Keys." Find a Grave website. 4 August 2017.
Find a Grave website. 8 April 2017.
54. "Agriculture: Early Beginnings." Michigan State University. Department of Geography website.
55. North Carolina. General Assembly. "An Act To Incorporate the Town of Oriental in Pamlico County." 1899.
56. New Bern, N. C. Directory 1904-1905. Richmond, Virginia: Hill Directory Company, 1904.
57. "Michael J Connelly in the 1940 Census." Ancestry website.
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