132 South Market Street Washington NC 27889

Museum Winter Hours Open EVERY Saturday 9:30am- 1:30pm & Special Events TBA

C O N T E N T S

1 WELCOME FROM HPOW’s CHAIRMAN

1 NEW 2016 LECTURE SERIES

2 HPOW WASHINGTON RAILROADS A& TRAIN DISPLAY

2 EARLY NC STEAMBOATS & STEAMBOATS BUILTIN WASHINGTON

2 BECOME A FRIEND OF HPOW MUSEUM -

3 HISTORY OF THE HAVENS GARDEN FLYWHEEL

4 TIMELINE OF PORT OF WASHINGTON

URL www.hpow.orghttps://www.facebook.com/historicportofwashington/

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FROM HPOW 2015 CHAIRMAN RAY MIDGETTE

The mission of the Historic Port

MESSAGE FROM HPOW CHAIRMAN…RICK ZABLOCKI

.This spring your Historic Port of Washington Project (HPOW) is looking forward to continued growth in exhibits and programs that celebrate Washington’s history and our region of North Carolina.

I am pleased and honored to be your new Chairman and continue the work done during the past two years by Chairman Ray Midgett and the other tireless workers on the HPOW Committee, all of whom will be continuing with our current and new projects.

Please consider a membership in the HPOW Project, and more importantly, consider sharing your time, talents, and treasures: we need more volunteers for our living history projects, and budding museum. Our mission is to share our maritime commerce heritage with people of all ages from eastern North Carolina and beyond. Collectively we have a wealth of historic knowledge and artifacts that can significantly enrich the lives of everyone from 8 to 80. I hope to meet you all soon at the museum and at our special events.

We look forward to your thoughts, ideas, and actions to support and grow future HPOW programs. Please don’t be shy! Volunteers contact@hpow.org. Thank you,

Rick

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HISTORIC PORT OF WASHINGTON PROJECT FEB/MAR Quarterly Newsletter 2016 Vol. II.

NEW 2016 LECTURE SERIES by HPOW –

March 17th TH 6pm NC Estuarium Auditorium $4Port of Bath’s 300th and the British Colonial Customs Service 1716-1790

April 3rd SU 1-3 pm New Exhibit!! Washington History Lifestyles 1900-1915 at HPOW 132 S. Market St. “The Advent of the 20th c”

April 30 SA10a-4p Gene Oakley and Steam Engines Display at Marine Mart, Stewart Parkway. HPOW Tee Shirt Sale and signed Mural prints

April 30 SA 11 am NC Estuarium Auditorium, Donation, The Pamlico’s Age of Sail and the Age of Steam

Upcoming 2016 TalksThe History of the Havens Gardens Flywheel, Oyster Schooners of Washington & the Pamlico, Sawmills and Maritime Trade in the Age of Sail on the Pamlico, more about Steamboats and the Age of Steam on the Tar-Pamlico

HPOW WASHINGTON RAILROAD&TRAIN DISPLAYS

Many thanks to Mr. Bob Burroughs and the Pamlico Model Railroaders for loaning us an HO gauge model railroad layout that was displayed in our Market Street Museum over the Christmas holidays. Although originally targeted toward our children, we met many adult “closet” model railroaders who enjoyed the display, shared their model railroad interests and histories, and found out about our local model railroad group.

Washington fishing boat, Pamlico bridge in the background.

We hope to follow up the Christmas display with a permanent model layout of the Jamesville and Washington Railroad that was the first to serve Washington. Locally known as the “Jolt and Wiggle” because of its very uneven rail

bed and frequent derailments, this little narrow gauge line,

carried timber, farm and finished products and shingles, and a few passengers between the Roanoke and Pamlico Rivers with stops at Dymond City and Amherst.

We have very little information on this line, and only one or two pictures. Its Washington Terminus was the lovely white home at the corner of Main and Washington Streets. Model railroaders and rail buffs do you want to help us research and put the Jolt and Wiggle display together? contact@hpow.org.

EARLY N. CAROLINA STEAMBOATS The Norfolk was the first steamboat that plied North Carolina waters as early as 1819, just twelve years after Robert Fulton’s steamboat the Clermont, the first commercially successful steamer in the United States. The side-wheeler Norfolk, built in Norfolk VA steamed between New Bern and Elizabeth City. See early NC coastal steamboat routes city by city on a framed 19th c map at HPOW.

Working in consort with stage lines she made the passage between Baltimore, Maryland and Fayetteville, North Carolina in five days, one day less than stage coaches alone. Norfolk was 132’ long, 25’ wide, and 8’ deep, with a draft of 4’. She burned a cord of wood an hour. Her two boilers provided 60 horsepower to move her 220 gross tons.

Norfolk was elegantly furnished and carried passengers, horses and carriages, and freight. The second steamer in North Carolina waters was the first built in our state. The Henrietta, also a side-wheeler was launched at Fayetteville, North Carolina in 1818. Although a bit smaller at 152 gross tons, she had a very long life, serving for 40 years. Other early steamboats in North Carolina included the Sea Horse, Prometheus, and Albemarle in the late 1820s. Our steamboat history continues in our coming newsletters, and Historic Port of Washington Museum exhibits. (Excerpted from Steamboats On The Tar by Captain Henry Clark Bridgers, Jr. and edited by Ronald E. Kemp).

STEAMBOATS BUILT IN WASHINGTON

1835 Edmund D.McNair (P) 71 tons1860 Cotton Plant II (P)1871 Vesper 331 tons 1874 Pitt1879 RL Myers 1879 Greenville1880 Tarboro1883 Beaufort1883 Margie1885 RL Myers II P(sidewheel;

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-------------------------------------------HPOW NEEDSY O U - GET INVOLVED !!Hosts and Hostesses and organizers are needed to greet visitors and help in planning lectures and special events throughout the year. You can sign up for either two or four hour segments or you may join us tocontribute behind the scenes with gifts of time or a contribution. Help us promote knowledge about our maritime heritage by volunteering and being a Friend of the project. We are also seeking experienced grant writers.HAVENS GARDENFLYWHEEL HISTORY

Washington’s Havens Garden Flywheel was part of a sawmill Corliss steam engine donated by the Mason Lumber Company in the 1970’s. It was manufactured sometime 1900-1908 by Hardie-Tynes Co. of Birmingham, Alabama which is still in business today. Many of the Washington riverfront lumber companies who used steam engines to power their sawmills are shown in HPOW’s historic mural of Washington 1850-1900 (painted 2015 by Doug Alvord).

Washington’s lumber companies and sawmills provided more than a century of commerce processing lumber along its waterfront. This industry was a major industry that sustained and grew Washington from colonial days through modern times..

Sawmills such as Kugler and Son Lumber, Pamlico Cooperage, Havens Mill, Moss Planing Mill, Fowle Mill, E. M. Short Lumber Co., Eureka Lumber Co., Saunders Lumber Co., and the Mason Lumber Co. all located along the waterfront because the Pamlico river offered the only way for long-distance transport of products to market until the railroads came to Washington between 1904 and 1909. It is also noted that most local lumber mills had closed by the 1940’s. Mason Lumber Company being one of the exceptions. According to Mr. Clarence Beacham, a former Mason Lumber Company foreman and millwright, the flywheel came from a saw mill steam engine used through the 1960’s the Moss business in Columbia in Hyde County. The saw mill was run at 300 rpm but with the flywheel to saw belt drives, the saw blade turned at 600 rpm. It was at the saw mill

close to the school right by the highway. It was moved here to Washington from about75 miles over there. The city didn’t want the whole thing but kept the fly wheel. It was stored somewhere until it was installed at the Havens Garden riverfront park. For a YouTube video of a similar Hardy-Tynes Co. sawmill flywheel in operation go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8I1sgWKvIms

1913 Pamlico FerryCourtesy of Brown Library.

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Our HPOW Goals Sharing the story

of the Port of Washington and the Pamlico as a center of commerce and transportation.

Engaging the community with exhibits and living history projects.

Promoting Washington as a destination for heritage tourism.

Helping our city move forward through its knowledge of its past.

PORT OF WASHINGTON TIMELINE

The 1700’s:

1769 The 70 ton brig Acorn is built in Washington 1770’s Washington is one of few colonial Atlantic ports not blockaded by the British, Washington mercantile fleet supplies ships and provisions to Continental army and ports blockaded by the British. Forks of the Tar is renamed Town of Washington1782 General Assembly incorporates Washington. 30 houses in 1783. 1785. Port of Bath Customs Service operations, customs collectors and naval officers move from town of Bath upstream to Washington, the new county seat1787 a new Federal Courthouse is built on Market Street, the second oldest surviving in North Carolina1776-1790 Port of Bath Customs Collectors and Port officials move upstream to Washington,Nathan Keias Port Collector builds house on Water Street next door to John Gray Blount Port of Bath District Commissioner. They are both buried with their wives at St. Peter’s Episcopal Cemetery. 1790 Port Bath Customs and Impost District renamed Continental Port of Washington1791 Revenue Cutter Diligence built in Washington

The 1800’s

1810 The Young Eagle a 100 ton schooner built in Washington1811 Two brigs the George Washington and the Edwin built in Washington1812 War of 1812 Hawk built here

1815-1830 Shipbuilding declines1830 Shipbuilding rebounds, Builders included Cap Hezekiah Farrow and his son Joseph Burton Shipp, William Tannehill and Hull Anderson. 1825 John Myer’s shipyard & marine railway1838 Corps of Engineers installed locks and dams, 3.5 feet channel up to Tarboro. Steamboats appear on the Tar.1845 Washington recognized as a major shipbuilding center in the Southeast1847 The first locally operated steamship the Oregon arrived in from ship yards in Baltimore1849 John Meyers and Sons operated two stern paddlewheel steamships Amidas and Governor Morehead towing cargo flats and delivering mail service. Departs 6am arriving Greenville 12noon1850 Washington ranked as No 1 shipbuilding center of NC, 23 shipbuilders in Beaufort Co, large tonnage ships built: the GR Dixon a 209 ton schooner, Queen of the South a 305 ton schooner and Pathfinder a 428 ton schooner. 1855-56 A productive period, much port activity, many runaway slaves find their way to Washington to escape by water on Union ships, Castle Island sawmill

1862 Union forces occupy Washington, Confederate Navy ordered 3 gunboats From Washington shipbuilders 1865 -84 following the Civil War fire which burned half the town, only one shipyard Joseph Farrow remains 1885 shipbuilding rebounds due to Railroads system making Washington a regional hub and Washington harbor dredged 9 ft channel to Pamlico Sound1890 Twenty seven known vessels (7 of them steamers) moored in Washington1876-1891 annual revenue for the Port of Washington increases from $500,000 to $4, 800,000.1880’s to 1900 Port of Washington known for shipping and commerce and boatbuilding. Along the docks were lumber, grain and cotton mills, freight and passenger terminals, oyster canneries and fish houses.

The 1900’s:

1900-1920 Zenith of Port of Washington maritime commerce. The Atlantic Coastline railroad had a station on Gladden Street; flat bottom steamboats carried goods inland up the Tar as far as Rocky Mount. By 1918 there were 50 wharves. Many schooners traded to the Outer Banks north to Boston and south to the West Indies.

1950 Federal Port closed.1960 Coast Guard Station Closed

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