Millions will be awarded to broadband providers across rural North Carolina to connect homes, businesses, and community anchor institutions to high-speed internet access.

The governor’s office announced last week that $26 million will go to bring 5,161 rural homes, businesses and community anchor institutions in 66 counties access to high-speed internet infrastructure by the end of the year through the Stop-Gap Solutions program.

A part of the North Carolina Department of Information Technology’s Division of Broadband and Digital Opportunity, the program administers funding from the federal American Rescue Plan Act to coverage gaps in internet access. This is done by targeting broadband line extensions to reach individuals and small pockets of homes and businesses in hard-to-reach areas.

“These broadband projects will ensure more families can soon access telehealth, students can complete their homework, businesses can compete in larger markets, and communities can thrive,” Gov. Josh Stein said in the release. “I am committed to improving broadband access across the state and making sure no community is left behind.”

On the coast, FOCUS Broadband, also known as Atlantic Telephone Membership Cooperative, has been selected to receive $1.65 million to connect 145 locations in Duplin and Pender counties.

Connect Holding II, LLC, doing business as Brightspeed, will be awarded $1.68 million to connect 2,439 locations in Beaufort, Camden, Carteret, Craven, Currituck, Hertford, Hyde, Onslow, Pamlico, Pasquotank, Tyrrell and Washington counties on the coast. Other counties to benefit from this award are Alamance, Bladen, Caldwell, Caswell, Chatham, Columbus, Cumberland, Edgecombe, Franklin, Greene, Halifax, Harnett, Hoke, Johnston, Jones, Martin, Montgomery, Moore, Nash, Northampton, Orange, Person, Pitt, Randolph, Rockingham, Sampson, Stokes, Surry, Vance, Wake, Warren, Wayne and Wilson counties.

HarvestBeam Inc., a broadband provider for rural North Carolina, will receive $413,260 for 95 locations in Craven and Pitt counties.

Roanoke Connect Holdings, operating as Fybe internet provider, will be awarded $2.4 million to connect 826 locations in Bertie, Chowan, Gates, Granville, Halifax, Hertford, Martin, and Northampton counties. 

Wilkes & RiverStreet Networks has been selected to receive $959,828 to connect 306 locations in Camden, Currituck, Stokes and Wilkes counties.

Other providers to be awarded serve customers in Alexander, Bladen, Buncombe, Durham, Henderson, Hoke, Iredell, Forsyth, Jackson, Macon, Orange, Robeson, Rowan, Sampson, Scotland, Swain, Transylvania and Yadkin counites.

“High-speed internet access is the foundation for health care delivery, public safety operations, workforce development, and economic growth in our state,” Teena Piccione, NCDIT secretary and state chief information officer, said. “This program allows us to move with urgency and precision to connect more North Carolinians.”

Millions of dollars have been marked for coastal freight rail upgrades and improvements to include tracks, trestles, culverts and port infrastructure.

The projects are part of a total $16.3 million to go toward freight rail infrastructure improvements to a dozen short-line railroads and at the state Port of Morehead City, North Carolina Department of Transportation Rail Division officials announced Thursday.

The Morehead City port will see $177,500 for a rail scale installation and $844,860 for rail replacement and upgrades on the property.

The Wilmington Terminal Railroad will receive $627,000 for rail and switch improvements along its mainline corridor.

“These projects deliver significant benefits to North Carolina’s freight rail network,” said Rail Division Director Jason Orthner. “By working closely with our railroad partners, we are strengthening reliability and resiliency, supporting businesses across the state, and reinforcing the rail infrastructure that drives North Carolina’s economy.”

Other funded coastal projects include $1.23 million to the Carolina Coastal Railway for rail and bridge improvements along its Belhaven and Norfolk Southern Railway lines in Beaufort, Greene, Washington, and Wilson counties, and $712,801 for the Chesapeake & Albemarle Railroad’s bridge and track improvements along its mainline corridor and Edenton sidetracks in Camden, Pasquotank, Perquimans and Chowan counties.

NCDOT officials said the division’s $16.3 million contribution is funded through the Freight Rail and Rail Crossing Safety Improvement program, which the state legislature established in 2014 to support “the health, safety and performance of the state’s rail infrastructure while establishing partnerships to meet the growing demand for rail service.”

In total, the projects will upgrade more than 95 miles of track and eight railroad bridges and culverts in North Carolina to support an anticipated increase in freight rail traffic statewide.

The Rail Division said its grants are matched by investments from participating railroad companies and the North Carolina Ports Authority. The partnerships are putting $41.5 million into projects that improve North Carolina’s freight rail network.

Other awarded projects and NCDOT’s contribution to each include the following:

• Aberdeen Carolina and Western Railway — $4,845,392 in funding for rail replacement and improvements along its Piedmont Division in Cabarrus and Mecklenburg counties.
• Aberdeen and Rockfish Railroad — $771,397 for track upgrades and continuity of service on its mainline in Hoke County.
• Alexander Railroad Co. — $381,797 for track and corridor upgrades near the Alexander Industrial Park in Alexander County.
• Alexander Railroad Co. — $495,026 for track and grade-crossing upgrades on the mainline rail corridor in Iredell County.
• Atlantic & Western Railway — $690,440 for corridor improvements and rail track upgrades on the Jonesboro branch in Lee County.
• Great Smoky Mountains Railroad — $1.68 million for track improvements and bridge repairs along its mainline corridor in Jackson, Swain, Macon and Cherokee counties.
• North Carolina and Virginia Railroad — $979,813 for rail replacement and improvements along its mainline corridor in Northampton County.
• Raleigh & Fayetteville Railroad — $999,586 for rail corridor improvements to the Norfolk Southern and VF lines in Wake and Harnett counties.
• Winston-Salem Southbound Railroad — $1.11 million for rail improvements along its W line in Davidson County.
• Yadkin Valley Railroad — $754,700 for track upgrades and rail corridor improvements along its K and CF lines in Yadkin, Surry and Stokes counties.

TYNER – As neighborhood businesses go, Timbermill Wind is quiet, clean and visually striking. And barely a year from the start of its wind energy production in this rural northeastern North Carolina community, it is already pumping money into local coffers.

At a ceremony held Tuesday at the site of the project’s local operations, Ken Young, CEO of Apex Clean Energy, the operation’s owner, presented a large, ceremonial check representing about $750,000 in net tax payments to Chowan County.

“There’ll be many more like it,” Bob Kirby, a Chowan County commissioner, told a small gathering of local officials and community members.

According to a Timbermill Wind press release, annual payments to the county over the project’s 30-year lifespan are expected to total about $50 million, which will support community needs such as education and emergency services. The infusion of revenue, so far, makes Timbermill the county’s single largest taxpayer, officials said, equaling more in property taxes this year than last year’s top nine taxpayers combined.

With the silver blades of a turbine turning slowly in the background over his shoulder, Kirby couldn’t help boasting that the land-based wind facility was the first of its kind to be permitted in North Carolina.

“There’s a $400 million investment that’s sitting behind me,” he said.

Beyond the benefits to the county and state, Kirby added, Timbermill is also a huge help to local farmers who receive annual payments — the amount is deemed proprietary information — to lease their land to the business.

“The people who own these farms are under unbelievable stress to their way of life,” he said. “For the leaseholders, this sort of thing, that’s a predictable source of income for them.”

While farmers lose access to a small amount of their land, they can continue as usual to farm the land under the turbines.

During a tour of part of the production site, Richard Bunch, a local representative for Timbermill, while standing in front of a turbine, told the group that farmers are able to get relatively close to the side of the tower when they’re working the land, although they can get closer after the corn or other crops is harvested. 

“He’s going to lose a half an acre here, that’s all,” Bunch said.  “And he’ll have income for 30 years.”   

A 6,000-acre tract, bordered by tall trees and owned by timber company Weyerhaeuser, was the first site to be cleared for the project, said Win Dale, a project representative for Timbermill.

“Once they cut every tree down, every stump was removed,” he said, waving toward a large circle of open land surrounding a turbine.

Each “crane pad” at the 45 sites, he said, is an eighth of an acre.

Hunters now have new access roads to the area, where they hunt mostly for deer, as well as some bear and wild turkey, Bunch said.

“They rented this whole tract from Weyerhaeuser to hunt,” he said, adding that he’d heard that they’re quite happy with the change. “Between a company and a hunting group, to be able to say that — that never happens.”

Farmers are also enjoying the easier access to their land, Dale added.

“The roads are like interstates compared to what they were before,” he said.

The towers themselves are 345 feet tall. Counting to the tip of the blades — the project has a total of 135 — each “windmill” is 591 feet tall. Providing a short lesson for visitors, Tyler Finley, facility manager for Timbermill Wind, explained that each tower is divided into five sections. Inside, there’s a ladder running up the middle with a platform at each level. The three blades are attached before they’re elevated to the top. 

“It’s kind of like building a very big Lego,” he said about the assembly process.

When they’re moving, the 242-foot-long blades create a 4-acre sweep area. Shadow flickers that would otherwise pass over homes are mitigated by siting towers away from residential structures.

Finley and other Timbermill representatives said that the blades, which are a composite of fiberglass with an interior metal structure, don’t kick on until the wind reaches at least 7 mph, and they’re capable of pitching from zero to 90 degrees. When winds reach about 50 mph, they’ll flatten to reduce surface area. Feathering of blade pitch provides “aerodynamic braking,” and trailing-edge serrations on the blades help reduce noise.

From the onsite substation, a 6-mile line is connected directly to the Dominion Energy “point of intersection,” Finley explained.

Apex has a power purchase agreement with Google, meaning it provides Google with a portion of the power produced at Timbermill. But the power is obtained from the grid, which collects energy from numerous sources.

“It’s an integrated power market,” Finley said.

Simply put, the energy produced by the wind turbines is eventually sent to a large distribution network, where it is purchased by different customers. The concept is similar to global oil and gas markets, where the location of the energy source is rarely the direct recipient of that energy.

 According to Timbermill, the 189-megawatt wind energy project developed and operated by Charlottesville, Virginia-based Apex Clean Energy generates enough clean energy to power the equivalent of 47,000 U.S. homes.

Timbermill, which came online in Dec. 2024, became the second industrial scale land-based wind farm in the state.

Although it was permitted earlier, numerous delays led to it being behind the 104-turbine Amazon Wind U.S. East wind farm that straddles Perquimans and Pasquotank counties and that started its 208-megawatt operation in early 2017.

The Apex Community Grant Program has awarded more than $120,000 for local nonprofits and support for regional reforestation and other community conservation projects.

Speaking after the event, John Mitchener, 84, a native of Chowan County who had served as commissioner from 2010 to 2018, said he was on the board when “the significant decisions” were made about permitting the wind farm.

He noted that opinions initially seemed to be divided between the folks in the Yeopim area, who reside south of Edenton toward the Outer Banks, and the other side of the county.

“The people who objected the most lived down there, and the people who lived up there objected the least,” he said.

While Mitchener said he couldn’t pinpoint the reason for the differences, he said that he knew it was important to maintain a polite and civil approach.

“Part of my outlook as a public official,” he said, “is to try to have the conversation where you could come back to it.”

And as it turns out, he said, people in the community all seem pretty happy now with Timbermill.

State health and water quality officials urge the public to avoid contact with green or blue water on the Chowan River between Arrowhead Beach in Chowan County and the Occano community in Bertie County.

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality Division of Water Resources notified the public Thursday about the algal blooms that have lingered in the area since Oct. 6.

The bloom has been observed in the Chowan River at its confluence with Salmon Creek near Occano, near Whites Beach, and at the Arrowhead Beach boat launch.

Cyanobacterial blooms usually appear bright green, but when a bloom starts to decay, the color can change to a milky blue. Decaying algae may produce a strong, foul odor that can impact a large area. Algal blooms tend to move due to wind and wave action.

The division determined the blooms are dominated by species of Dolichospermum, or as Anabaena, and Microcystis, which belong to the algal group cyanobacteria, also known as blue-green algae.

“Dolichospermum and Microcystis can produce microcystin, an algal toxin that may cause adverse health effects in humans and pets,” division states.

Testing shows that the three sites exceed public health advisory levels. Results are on the division’s Algal Bloom Dashboard.

The N.C. Department of Health and Human Services Division of Public Health recommends avoiding contact with large accumulations of algae and to prevent children and pets from swimming or ingesting water in an algal bloom.

The state health department suggests the following steps:

• Keep children and pets away from water that appears bright green, blue, discolored, or scummy.
• Do not handle or touch large mats of algae.
• Avoid handling, cooking, or eating dead fish that may be present.
• If you come into contact with an algal bloom, wash thoroughly.
• Use clean water to rinse off pets that may have come into contact with an algal bloom.
• If your child appears ill after being in waters containing an algal bloom, seek medical care immediately.
• If your pet appears to stumble, stagger or collapse after being in a pond, lake or river, seek veterinary care immediately.

To report an algal bloom, contact the nearest DEQ regional office or submit a report online. To view reported algal bloom events, visit the state Fish Kill & Algal Bloom Dashboard.

Officials also remind the public to take precautions as other microorganisms or pollution may be present in waterbodies that can lead to recreational water illness, see https://epi.dph.ncdhhs.gov/cd/water/prevent.html.

Note from the author: This is the first photo-essay in a series I’m calling “Working Lives: Photographs from Eastern North Carolina, 1937 to 1947.” You can find my introduction to the series here.

I want to begin this series by looking at a group of 21 photographs that chronicle threshing time on a peanut farm near Edenton in the years just before the Second World War.

The oldest of the photographs was taken in 1937. Others were taken in 1938 and in the autumn of 1941, just a few weeks before Pearl Harbor. One other was taken in 1942.

The first group of photographs focuses on the harvest workers, mostly the threshers, but also the diggers. A second group looks at the work of cleaning, grading and bagging the peanuts at a plant and warehouse in Edenton.

An ancient crop native to South America, peanuts spread across much of the world through the Transatlantic Slave Trade in the 16th and 17th centuries. Farmers in West Africa were among those who came to grow them.

Most historians and ethnobotanists believe that peanuts came to North America, especially to Virginia and North Carolina, via West Africa and the slave trade in the 18th century. By most accounts, they were long considered a crop mainly for feeding hogs and for feeding the enslaved Africans that were forced to raise crops on the region’s plantations.

According to a 2019 article in the journal Peanut Science, southeastern Virginia and northeastern North Carolina were especially important in the crop’s early development in North America in large part because of the slave trade.

In the southeastern part of the North Carolina coast, the Wilmington area was also an important center of peanut farming in the the 18th century. Again, wholly reliant on slave labor.

By 1860, the majority of the peanuts in the U.S. were grown on North Carolina’s coastal plain, though they were rarely grown as a commercial crop.

Little is known about how enslaved people utilized peanuts as a food, though it is assumed that some of the traditional peanut dishes of the Gullah Geechee peoples date to the slavery era. A good description of peanut farming’s early history in the Wilmington vicinity can be found at the website for Poplar Grove Plantation, a historic site built around what used to be a slave labor camp in Pender County.

A number of factors contributed to making peanuts into a successful commercial crop in the late 19th and early 20th century.

Those factors included the adoption of peanuts as an easy-to-carry, nonperishable, high protein food by Civil War soldiers; the groundbreaking research that George Washington Carver did on new food uses for peanuts at Tuskegee Institute; and the collapse of cotton prices and the rise of the boll weevil in the 1920s, which led many southern farmers to search for alternative crops.

Another important factor in the growth of peanuts and peanut farming was the development of popular new peanut products.

Modern peanut butter was invented sometime in the late 19th or early 20th century, though there is some disagreement over where it was first made and who first invented it.

Another important development in the growing popularity of peanuts occurred in 1906, when two Italian immigrants, Amadeo Obici and Mario Peruzzi, both innovators in the roast peanut trade, established a partnership that led to the creation of the Planters Nut and Chocolate Co., which is still famous for its “Mr. Peanut” logo and mascot today.

When Obici and Peruzzi located their first plant in Suffolk, Virginia, 50 miles north of Edenton, in 1913, they guaranteed an almost endless demand for peanuts in the northeast corner of North Carolina, and other peanut processing companies followed.

Peanut candies were also growing popular in those first decades of the 20th century. The peanut-laden Baby Ruth candy bar first appeared in 1923, the no less peanutty Mr. Goodbar in 1925, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups in 1928, Snickers in 1930, and Payday in 1932.

Cracker Jacks were a bit older — they were first developed in 1898 — but the popularity of Cracker Jacks and roasted peanuts soared with the popularity of baseball in the early 20th century.

All of which is to say, the demand for peanuts skyrocketed in the United States in the first half of the 20th century. Throughout that time, the center of the peanut farming and peanut processing industry continued to be southeast Virginia and northeast North Carolina.

When these photographs were taken in the late 1930s and early 1940s, the peanut belt in North Carolina ran from the counties on the north side of Albemarle Sound, including Chowan County, where Edenton is, west through Bertie, Martin, Northampton, and Halifax counties.

In those years, Enfield, a small town in Halifax County, was considered the state’s busiest peanut market.

In the photographs below, you will find something of a guide to this part of life and work in Eastern North Carolina’s history.

The photographs give us a glimpse at the people who worked in the peanut fields, and a look into a peanut mill in Edenton.

They introduce us to the kind of work that thousands upon thousands of mainly African American field workers did for much of the 20th century.

But as you will see, the stories behind the photographs also introduce us to people whom I never would have expected to meet in the peanut fields of Eastern North Carolina, including even Bahamian migrant laborers and Italian POWs from North Africa.

Note: I have arranged the photo-essays in my “Working Lives” series in chronological order to the extent possible. I’m beginning with these scenes from the peanut fields in Edenton because the earliest photograph among them is dated 1937. The last in the series will feature pickle factory workers in Faison and Mt. Olive in 1947.

So let’s get started with our first photograph, taken in the midst of threshing season on a peanut farm near Edenton.

-1-

In our first photograph, a broad view of threshing time on a peanut farm near Edenton is spread out before us. We can see a field that seems to go on forever, threshers at work, several mules, piles of peanut hay, the dust rising up off a mechanical peanut picker, and a pile of burlap bags heavy with peanuts.

Threshing was hard work, but the hardest work had already been done some weeks earlier, when scores of field workers had dug the peanut vines and pods out of the ground and set them out on stakes to cure.

Like beans and peas, peanuts are a legume, technically not a nut, but they are exceptional among the legumes because their pods develop beneath the ground.

To harvest the peanuts in this field, laborers, probably all of them African American, dug up the the whole plant: vine, pods and all. It was a grueling job accomplished with mules, plows, and a great deal of sweat.

After digging the vines out of the ground, the field workers shook the dirt loose from the plants before setting them out to cure. A task that, in my experience, is harder than it sounds and which nobody remembers fondly.

In a field this size, hundreds of field laborers would likely have done the digging, shaking and staking.

Firsthand accounts of peanut field workers’ labors are rare, but on July 5, 1983, the Wilmington Star-News ran an interview with an African American woman who dug peanuts on a large farm around the time that these photographs were taken.

The interview featured Ms. Carrie Simmons Ballard, who was born at Poplar Grove in Pender County in 1905.

The reporter wrote:

“As a child, she ‘put in many hours picking peanuts on The Big Lot’ where her great-grandmother was the main house servant for the Foy family. Her grandmother and mother also worked for the family. ‘They grew some cotton too, but the main farm product was peanuts,’ she said.

“‘I never did much cotton picking, but I sure did my share in the peanut fields…..’”

Ms. Ballard went on to say, “The thing that stands out most in my mind was how hard we worked for so little. It seemed like we had to work so hard for just some food and barely something to wear.”

-2-

In this photograph, we see what is apparently the same Edenton peanut farm, but three years earlier. In the foreground, we get an especially good look at the “shocks” that were typical of peanut farming in that day.

As field workers dug the peanut vines and pods out of the ground, they would place stakes in the ground and build up stacks of vines and pods around the stakes so that the pods could cure before threshing. Those mounds of peanut vines were called “shocks.”

Farmers typically left the shocks in the field and let the peanuts cure for five or six weeks before threshing began. To this day, some old-timers brook no doubt that peanuts cured in shocks are more flavorful than those cured in windrows, the more modern way.

-3-

This is another photograph of threshing time at the farm near Edenton.

In this case, we can see workers operating a mechanical thresher, usually called a picker, in the center of the photograph. However, I was really drawn to this photograph because it highlights the peanut shocks stretched out in the field behind the threshers.

A field full of peanut shocks was a sight to see, reflecting endless hours of toil. In the largest fields, such as this one, they always remind me of the scenes in “Anna Karenina” of threshing time in the Russian countryside.

-4-

After the peanuts had cured, farm workers pulled up the stakes and raked up the hay, as it was called, being careful to stay clear of the snakes and rats that were notoriously fond of them.

Horses or mules would then cart the hay to a stationary mechanical picker that operated in the field.

The 1940s was a moment in history when tractors and mules often worked side by side in Eastern North Carolina’s fields.

Even as late as 1940, only about 4% of the state’s farmers owned tractors. Even a large, comparatively prosperous farmer, as the owner of his field must have been, was unlikely to have more than the one tractor, which, as we will see, this farmer was using to power his mechanical picker.

The end of the Age of Mules was nigh, but it had not yet arrived on the eve of the Second World War.

-5-

Here we see workers unloading hay next to the mechanical picker in our peanut field outside Edenton.

On the right, we can see a pile of stakes that have already been stripped of their vines. On the left, a man is stitching up a burlap bag of peanuts that have just come out of the picker.

-6-

By the time this photograph was taken, at least larger peanut farmers were using pickers such as this one that were powered by long belts attached to the back axel of a farm truck or, in this case, a tractor.

Even a few years earlier, horses or mules would have done the job.

-7-

This photograph provides a closer look at the farm’s mechanical peanut picker, a machine that was designed to break up the hay, remove the peanuts from the vines, and shake out debris and dust. It was a technology that had just come into widespread use in the previous two decades.

An unschooled African American farmer and inventor named Benjamin Hicks, in Southampton County, Virginia, filed what is believed to be the first patent for a mechanical peanut picker in 1901.

By all accounts, Hicks cobbled his ingenious machine together with a blacksmith’s anvil, tool box, and carpenter’s tools.

At least two makers of farm equipment modeled their peanut pickers on Hicks’ design, one of them without his consent.

To learn more about that patent dispute and about Benjamin Hicks, see Anna Zeide’s recent article in the journal Agricultural History, “The Dignity of Invention: Race, Intellectual Property, and Peanut Agriculture, 1900-1920.”

-8-

In this photograph, we see one of the many young field workers that labored in this farm’s fields during the peanut harvest.

The mechanical thresher separated out the peanuts, emptying them into galvanized tin tubs. This worker is carrying the nuts to other field hands who will bag them, stitch the bag shut, and load the bags onto a truck.

At that time, the average wage for agricultural workers on the East Coast of the U.S. was $1.20 a day.

As part of the New Deal, President Franklin Roosevelt and the U.S. Congress had enacted important child labor reforms during the Great Depression. Those laws specifically exempted children who worked on farms.

By one estimate, half a million children were working in America’s fields in 1938.

-9-

In this photograph, we see another young field worker emptying a pail of peanuts into a burlap bag, while another, older man stitches a bag shut and makes it ready for shipment.

-10-

The farm workers next loaded the bags of peanuts onto a truck that would carry them into one of the two peanut processing plants in Edenton.

Note the sea of peanut shocks in the distance. They seem to go on forever.

On the upper left, we can see the dust rising up from the mechanical picker as it separates the vines and peanuts.

-11-

Once the peanuts had been separated, laborers carted away the peanut hay usually for use as livestock feed.

Farmers valued peanut hay as an especially good feed for hogs.

-12-

I am not exactly sure what is happening in this scene, but I suspect that we are looking at a small hay baler or a presser that flattened and compacted the vines after they passed through the picker. Farmers sometimes used such machines to  make it easier to store the hay for use as livestock fodder.

-13-

A large part of the peanuts harvested on that north side of the Albemarle Sound ended up here, at the Albemarle Peanut Co.’s plant in Edenton. Located on a bay that is on the north side of Albemarle Sound, Edenton is the county seat of Chowan County, and at that time had a population of just under 4,000 citizens.

At the time these photographs were taken, Edenton was home to two peanut processing plants, the Albemarle Peanut Co. and the Edenton Peanut Co.

By 1935, according to the Greensboro News & Record on Aug. 16, 1935, the two companies were handling a total of some 25,000,000 pounds of peanuts a year.

The plant’s workers shelled, cleaned and bagged peanuts for farmers near Edenton and the rest of Chowan County, as well as peanuts harvested from farms in surrounding counties.

According to a number of accounts, you could tell when the plant was operating from some distance because a haze of smoke blanketed North Edenton when the plant was fueling its boilers with discarded peanut shells.

-14-

Here we see a great pile of peanuts waiting to be cleaned and graded at the Albemarle Peanut Co.

These workers are stacking freshly arrived, 100-pound bags of peanuts, still in the shell, in the company’s warehouse.

-15-

In this photograph, we see one of the Albemarle Peanut Co.’s hands lifting a bag of unshelled peanuts at the company’s warehouse.

He may be adding the bag to the stockpile or he may be taking the bag off the pile and loading it onto the handcart on the right so that he can carry it into the mill’s shelling and cleaning rooms.

-16-

This gentleman is emptying bags of peanuts so that they can be placed on conveyor belts for cleaning and grading.

Like many of the other photographs of peanut farming and peanut processing in the state-managed collection, this photograph was taken in 1941, quite likely just a few weeks or even days before Pearl Harbor.

Long before that time though, U.S. war planners had begun planning how to adjust the nation’s crop production to compensate for expected wartime disruptions in the agricultural supply chain.

They did so with an eye both toward meeting the country’s domestic food needs and toward fulfilling the country’s Lend-Lease Act agreements with Great Britain and other allied countries.

According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, the war cut off 68% of the nation’s supply of imported vegetable oils within a year of this photograph.

That was an issue of concern to American consumers, but in some cases it was also a concern for the U.S. military.

Just to cite one example, the bulk of the palm oil used in the United States to produce nitroglycerine for military uses had come from the Philippines prior to the beginning of World War II.

However, that supply of palm oil was completely cut off when Japan occupied the the Philippines in May 1942.

Looking for substitutes for imported oils, the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta’s Monthly Review July 31, 1942, noted, “a widespread program was launched, calling for increases in production of lard, tallow, cottonseed oil, peanut oil, soy beans, and other fats and oils.”

The article goes on to say, “Farmers in the South. . .  are taking an important part in this program by expanding the production of peanuts.”

At the time this photograph was taken, military planners had just announced a federal program to expand the country’s peanut acreage by 83 percent, roughly half of which would be set aside for use as oil.

Later in the war, the government would push to raise the country’s peanuts acreage by another 50%, all of which left peanut farmers and the workers at the Albemarle Peanut Co. with little time to rest.

As part of the wartime effort to increase peanut production, the USDA even arranged to rent mechanical pickers and threshers to farmers at a low fee in order help them increase peanut acreage.

-17-

Here we see young women removing flawed or shriveled peanuts from a conveyor belt at the Albemarle Peanut Co.

-18-

This is a view of some of the chain belts that powered the conveyors at the Albemarle Peanut Co.

-19-

During the Great Depression, times were hard in Edenton, as they were throughout most of the North Carolina coast.

Somewhere between a quarter and a half of the town’s citizens were on some kind of public relief. Unemployment rose above 25%. Few could afford doctors or medicines. In many homes, mothers and fathers struggled to keep food on the table. Many cut back, trying to get by on one meal a day.

Far too many grew far too acquainted with hunger and malnutrition.

Against that background, the success of the two local peanut plants — no matter how hard the work, no matter how poorly it paid — was one of the few bright spots in Edenton’s business scene.

In the words of the Raleigh News & Observer Jan. 19, 1933,  the two plants were “a great help to the destitute condition of many Edenton families.”

Between them, the Albemarle Peanut Co. and the Edenton Peanut Co. employed some 150 to 200 workers in season and the peanut industry overall was one of the town’s largest employers.

In this photograph, one of the Albemarle Peanut Co.’s workers is sewing up burlap bags of peanuts to prepare them for shipment.

-20-

In this photograph, we see one of the Albemarle Peanut Co.’s workers carting bags of peanuts out to the plant’s loading dock.

Looking back now, the transformation of Eastern North Carolina’s economy that occurred in the scant few years between the earliest photograph in this group– during the Great Depression in 1937– and the last, on the eve of World War II, was almost breathtaking.

As the nation prepared for war, massive federal investments in the construction of military installations, defense industries, and shipyards especially on the North Carolina coast– and a tremendous infusion of federal dollars into supporting agriculture– proved to be a life-changing moment for countless families and for the future of the region.

During the Great Depression, incredibly high unemployment and the collapse of crop prices had been devastating for Eastern North Carolina.

That all changed during the war. By 1943, the War Department had actually declared the whole region to be a “labor shortage zone,” a designation that meant that the federal government should not target the area for other military projects out of concern that there might not be an adequate supply of civilian labor to build or support them.

Even as early as 1941, when many of these photographs were taken, a general shortage of rural labor was being felt throughout Eastern North Carolina, and the federal government’s push for increasing peanut acreage was one of many special challenges.

To address that wartime labor shortage– and regrettably, also to resist demands from African American workers to raise wages and improve working conditions– peanut farmers in northeastern North Carolina often turned to migrant farm workers and to German and Italian POWs.

In 1943, for example, the War Manpower Commission recommended that 1,500 POWs be sent to northeastern North Carolina for the peanut harvest. Five hundred Italian POWs were assigned just to the peanut harvest in Bertie, Hertford, and Martin counties.

That same year, a temporary camp for Italian POWS was erected at a baseball field in Tarboro, in Edgecombe County, just to supply labor for the local peanut harvest.

An article in the Durham Herald-Sun indicated that the Italian POWs at the Tarboro camp were mainly from Sicily and from Italy’s colonies in North Africa – so they may have included men from what are now Libya, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and/or Somalia.

The next year, 1944, state records indicated that POWs alone harvested a total of 9,141 acres of peanuts in Eastern North Carolina. Asheville Citizen Times, Feb. 22, 1945.

For most of the war, the Farm Security Administration, or FSA, also directed migrant laborers to the region’s peanut fields.

In the fall of 1943, the FSA even opened a special government-run migrant labor camp in Enfield, in Halifax County, to house 400-500 peanut harvest workers.

Even as late as the fall of 1945, after the war was over, state and federal manpower agencies diverted hundreds of Bahamian laborers to northeastern North Carolina’s peanut fields.

That year the short-lived Naval Air Station in Edenton also temporarily housed POWs. They were only there during the peanut harvest, then returned to a POW camp in Ahoskie. Salisbury Post, Sept. 4, 1945.

-21-

These may be bags of unshelled peanuts waiting to be carried into the Albemarle Peanut Co.’s plant or they may be bags of processed peanuts waiting to be trucked out or shipped out by railroad.

In that day, a large percentage of the South’s peanut crop as a whole was bound for oil mills and peanut butter factories. Some of the peanuts that came through the Albemarle Peanut Co. no doubt had the same destination.

That said, compared to peanut varieties grown elsewhere, there was an especially high demand for the “Virginia style” peanut variety that was most commonly grown in Tidewater Virginia and in northeastern North Carolina for use as “cocktail peanuts” and for roasting.

In those last days before the war, there was really no telling where these peanuts were bound. Some of them may even have ended up on foreign battlefields, either in the packs of American soldiers or those of soldiers from Great Britain, the Soviet Union, or one of our other allies.

Acknowledgements

I want to extend a special thanks to the USDA’s James Davis III for helping me to interpret the scenes in these photographs. A third-generation peanut farmer in Palmyra, N.C., Mr. Davis was North Carolina’s “Small Farmer of the Year” in 2002 and is now a chief program officer at the USDA’s office in Raleigh.

Mr. Davis told me that some of his knowledge of peanut farming came from his farming days, some from his studies at N.C. A&T, and some from his long years as a county farm agent and director of the USDA’s office in Halifax County, N.C.

Above all, he told me, his most important teachers were his father and grandfather, the latter of whom grew up sharecropping in Edgecombe County, N.C., and ended up buying and operating his own farm in Palmyra just after the Second World War.

I am very grateful for his assistance, and I hope very much that I did justice to his lessons.

Thank you too to Professor Katherine Charron at N.C. State University and the Grant family in Tillery for introducing me to Mr. Davis.

Editor’s note: Coastal Review regularly features the work of North Carolina historian David Cecelski, who writes about the history, culture and politics of the state’s coast. More of his work can be found on his personal website.

MOREHEAD CITY – Keep telling your story.

That was the message to those who attended the first meeting of the North Carolina Coastal Counties Fisheries Coalition held Tuesday afternoon in the Crystal Coast Civic Center.

Dare County Board of Commissioners Chairman Bob Woodard, who initiated the coalition to be a voice for the commercial fishing industry, welcomed elected officials and staff from Beaufort, Camden, Carteret, Chowan, Craven, Currituck, Dare, Hertford, Hyde, Onslow, Pamlico, Pasquotank, Perquimans, Tyrrell and Washington counties, and 10 coastal legislators or their representative.

“We’ve got a lot of folks here today concerned about this coalition, and this effort,” Woodard said, adding that many of the more than 100 in the audience were in Raleigh to protest House Bill 442.

But the head of the state’s recreational fishing association called the group’s goals “disappointing.”

‘No due process’

First introduced in March to open up the recreational season for flounder and red snapper, the Senate amended the bill in mid-June to include a trawling ban in the state’s inland waters and within a half-mile of the shoreline.

The proposed ban was met with both outcry and support, but when the Senate kicked the amended bill back to the House, representatives chose not to advance the bill. Since June 25, the bill has been parked in a House committee.

Woodard set the coalition in motion July 3 with a letter to the 18 other coastal counties that border bodies of water from which licensed commercial fishermen are required to report their catch, representing 20% of the state’s counties, he explained.

“That should send a clear voice to our legislators, that we got 20% of the entire counties in the state of North Carolina, and hopefully we will grow up more for people that believe in eating the fresh local seafood from clean, clear waters in our state, rather than foreign food that comes into our country. I don’t know about you, but I want to eat fresh, seafood,” he said.

When Woodard began the meeting Tuesday, he told the crowd that he was “appalled to see that (proposed trawling ban) went to the House,” and wrote a letter June 30 to Senate Leader Phil Berger.

Woodard read the second paragraph of that letter aloud: “Our democratic system, established by our forefathers, was designed to ensure that every voice in leadership could be heard-whether in support or opposition. At its core, our Constitution is built on mutual respect and, most importantly, due process.”

Woodard said, “everyone in this room sitting here today certainly knows there was no due process,” and then explained how he pitched the idea to form the coalition to a fellow commissioner.

“I said, ‘Enough is enough.’ I’ve been a chairman in Dare County for the last 10 years. I’ve been on the board the last 12 years,” Woodard said. “Every single year, we have to fight the regulatory agencies. We have to fight the leadership.”

It was time “to come together, not just counties, not just fishermen, but stakeholders all over the south and this entire state. We need to educate those legislators that aren’t living on the coast.”

Once given the board’s blessing, Woodard sent the letter proposing the North Carolina Coastal Counties Fisheries Coalition.

“The goal of this coalition is to bring together county leaders from coastal regions to address these critical issues with a unified voice. By coordinating our efforts, we can better advocate for the long-term health and sustainability of our fisheries, our local economies and our fishermen’s way of life,” Woodard said.

About the coalition

Members agreed that the coalition would be a public body and have its next meeting at 1 p.m. Sept. 16 in the civic center, ahead of when the legislature is expected to convene.

After that, the coalition will meet quarterly in Carteret County because of its central location.

Woodard emphasized he wanted the coalition to be “as transparent as humanly possible,” adding he wanted the “public to be here.”

The coalition adopted a mission statement to support commercial fishermen and fishing communities, protect their livelihoods, preserve coastal heritage, “and safeguard the economic vitality of our working waterfronts. Together, we work to ensure the continued harvest of high-quality North Carolina seafood—feeding families, strengthening communities, and ensuring North Carolina Catch remains a priority for consumers to enjoy throughout our state and beyond.”

During the discussion, Pamlico County Commissioner Candy Bohmert said that the coalition should focus on promoting — rather than stating it’s out to save — the commercial fishing industry.

“We don’t need to save these people. They save themselves. We need to empower them,” Bohmert said. “We really need to kind of change that language. We’re promoting them. We’re promoting our commercial history. We’re promoting all of that because they’re important.”

Bobby Outten, Dare County’s manager and attorney, is to serve as staff to the board.

Outten explained that the intention with the coalition is to act as a governmental body.

“The fisheries groups have for years been working hard to deal with fisheries issues, and what we found is the legislators aren’t listening, and it’s a hard road, and it’s a tough time,” Outten said.

The idea is to get the governmental entities of the affected counties together and “then be the voice for the political side of this,” Outten said.

Fisheries groups will still be the resource to disseminate the information, but the coalition will be “the voice of the political counties.”

From the legislators

There were nearly a dozen coastal legislators at the meeting, including Sen. Bobby Hanig, R-Currituck. Hanig has been a vocal opponent of the trawling ban since it was first proposed at a Senate committee meeting June 17.

“We’ve never had the opportunity to tell our story. Well, guess what God brought us? He brought us H442, and you know what that did? That wasn’t the shot heard around the world. That was the backfire heard around the world. Let me tell you why. Now we have the ability to be on the offense, and we have to keep that ability to be on the offense,” Hanig said.

That bill “is allowing us to tell our story,” he said, adding that it led to the coalition and got 700 people to Raleigh in about three days.

The turnout in Raleigh brought together various aspects of the industry, such as commercial fishermen, packing houses, “everybody. You know why? Because what’s the first thing they went after? The shrimp, right? They’re going after everything,” Hanig said. “Because that’s what they’re after, folks, they make no qualms about it. They’re after our industry.”

In response to an audience member asking who “they” are, Hanig said “Pick someone. The CCA, the Wildlife Federation, certain legislators, you know, their efforts. They’re after this industry. They make no bones about it. They’ve been telling the wrong story, the false story, for too long, and we haven’t stopped that.” The CCA is the Coastal Conservation Association North Carolina.

“I implore you, tell your story. Do not be afraid to tell your story,” Hanig said. “Let them know where you’re coming from, because those stories matter.”

Rep. Carson Smith, R-Pender, told the crowd that people in Raleigh think there’s no fish, no crabs, no shrimp, that “our fishery is completely depleted, because that’s what the Marine Fisheries Commission is telling them.”

He added that this message is what he feels pitted recreational against commercial fishing, and “they think that the shrimp trawl has killed all the fish.”

Smith suggested two resolutions: Ask the “General Assembly to completely redo the Marine Fisheries Commission,” and “tell the Wildlife Resources Commission, ‘hey, stay in your lane.’ You count the trout in the mountains, but don’t use state resources” to try to close the commercial fishing industry down.

Sen. Bob Brinson, R-Beaufort, said the best way to educate folks in Raleigh is by “getting them on your boats, getting them in your oyster beds, getting them in your fish houses, and showing them what it is you do and how you do it.”

Sen. Norm Sanderson, R-Carteret, explained that when the Senate voted on House Bill 442 June 19, four voted against, but 40-plus voted in favor, which he didn’t expect.

He later found out that the votes for the amendment were for the “environmental side because they claim that shrimp trawling was destroying the environment in our sound. That it was going to destroy all kinds of fishing. Well, that’s one of the talking points that the CCA has used for the last 20 years,” he said.

Sanderson said that he was also upset about how the bill was amended in the Senate, “because the process stunk to high heaven.”

He explained that he was co-chair in the Agriculture Committee when the amendment “first came about, and that is the last thing that you ever do to a committee chairman,” he said. “If you’ve got something that’s going to be contentious, if you’ve got something that’s going to cause a lot of outcry or pushback,” you should go to them before the meeting. But Sanderson said that’s not what happened in this case.

“Let’s stay strong. Keep helping us. Keep telling your story, spreading this message across and around this state, so that the next time this happens, there’ll be an outcry from all over this state,” he said.

Response from CCA-NC

Coastal Conservation Association-North Carolina Executive Director David Sneed told Coastal Review in an email that “it is disappointing to read the goal of this new coalition is apparently to create a vehicle only for ‘battling issues that affect the state’s commercial fishing industry’ (fewer than 2,000 people who profit from a public trust resource) rather than acting in the public interest for the 11 million citizens of North Carolina who own our public trust resources and would benefit enormously from a healthy, sustainable coastal fishery.”

The coalition would be better served by recognizing the foundational, bedrock principles established by the public trust doctrine and the state’s constitution. “That North Carolina’s coastal fisheries resources belong to all 11 million citizens of this State and must be managed, preserved, and protected for the overall benefit of those citizens and future generations.  In addition, the coalition’s approach only divides and disenfranchises the not-for-profit fishing public that lives in and visits our coastal counties,” Sneed continued.

“There are more than 91,000 Coastal Recreational Fishing Licenses sold across the state’s 19 coastal counties each year, and it is reliably estimated that more than 300,000 people spend nearly $1.5 billion annually across the three Congressional Districts that encompass these 19 coastal counties—people who not only live in our coastal counties but also people from inland counties who visit our coast and spend money supporting our coastal fishing communities,” he said. “Our hope would be that any efforts by this coalition will be focused on building a true coalition in the public interest—one that will support the sound management of our coastal fisheries resources to achieve the long-term sustainability that all North Carolinians deserve and are entitled to under the law.”

Several coastal counties are expected to experience unhealthy heat levels over the weekend.

Chowan, Perquimans and Washington counties are expected to have a maximum heat index of 96 degrees or higher on Saturday.

Craven, New Hanover, Onslow, Pamlico and Pender counties should plan for the same on both Saturday and Sunday.

The National Weather Service explained that the heat index, also called the apparent temperature, is what the temperature feels like to the human body when relative humidity is combined with the air temperature.

The North Carolina Health and Human Services Climate and Health Program sends out the heat-health alerts when the forecast is projected to reach or exceed the heat index threshold for the region.

Duke Heat Policy Innovation Hub established the region-specific thresholds by using historical heat index data and state records to determine when emergency room visits increased for heat-related illnesses.

“Heat of this magnitude can be dangerous to your health, particularly for people who are more exposed to extreme heat or more sensitive to extreme heat,” which includes those who are pregnant, living with disabilities or underlying health conditions, are without access to air conditioning, who work or exercise outdoors or are older adults, the department stated in a release.

To prevent heat-related illness, the health department recommends drinking plenty of fluids, avoiding caffeinated, sugary or alcoholic drinks, staying in air conditioning as much as possible, watch for symptoms and stay informed, the department continued.

Visit the health department’s website to sign up for the heat alerts, or for more information on heat-related illnesses and tools to prevent it.

The renewable energy company building the 45-turbine Timbermill Wind facility in Chowan County has secured construction financing.

Apex Clean Energy, based in Charlottesville, Virginia, announced last week that institutions leading the construction financing are German-based Helaba, Japanese-based SMBC, and BNP Paribas and Societe Generale, both based in France. A tax equity investment from Goldman Sachs was secured as well.

Apex Clean Energy expects the utility-scale wind energy project to produce enough energy to power up to 47,000 homes a year. The turbines are being being erected across timber and agricultural lands.

The project represents a more than $500 million investment, a spokesperson of the company said Monday.

Timbermill Wind is the first wind project approved in North Carolina by the Department of Environmental Quality since state lawmakers passed siting legislation in 2013, and will be the second wind farm built in the state.

In August, Apex and Google announced a power-purchase agreement for the full 189 megawatt capacity of the wind turbine facility.

Timbermill Wind is expected to be Chowan County’s largest taxpayer, according to Apex Clean Energy, creating around $33 million in tax revenue and more than 250 jobs during construction, and support regional reforestation and improvements.

On Oct. 25, 1774, 51 women in Edenton wrote a resolution to boycott British imports, including tea and cloth, and sent it to England.

America 250 NC commemoration and the Friends of the Archives are recognizing that move believed to be organized by Penelope Barker, wife of the treasurer of the Province of North Carolina, along with the rise of women’s participation in North Carolina politics over the last 250 years.

“From Edenton to Congress” is scheduled for 1 to 5 p.m. Friday, Nov. 1, and being offered at no charge in the Department of Natural and Cultural Resources Building on Jones Street in Raleigh, and online. Registration is required to participate online.

The program is to include new research on the 1774 Edenton women’s petition, a discussion of “Jane Pratt: North Carolina’s First Congresswoman,” by author Marion Deerhake, records from former Gov. Bev Perdue’s administration, and remarks by League of Women Voters President Dianna Wynn.

America 250 NC is the state’s commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution, which is in 2026. The nonprofit Friends of the Archives privately funds some of the services, activities, and programs of the State Archives of North Carolina.

For more information or to RSVP, contact Danielle Shirilla, dani.shirilla@dncr.nc.gov or 919-814-6881.

Featured Image

The sun sets over Albemarle Sound in Edenton earlier this month near the N.C. Highway 32 bridge in this photo submitted by Tom Brennan of Edenton. “For the past couple of years I’ve been flying my drone over the Albemarle Sound capturing the dramatic cloud formations, sunsets and sunrises,” Brennan told Coastal Review. “This time of year the sound becomes impossibly calm with remarkable sunsets.”

Submit your photo.

Of the nearly $18 million in grants being awarded through the Parks and Recreation Trust Fund, about $1.5 million will go to projects in Chowan, Hyde and Brunswick counties.

The Parks and Recreation Authority, during its meeting Aug. 23, approved the $17.9 million in grants from two different funding sources for 46 parks and recreation projects across the state, the governor’s office announced Thursday.

The selections were made from 40 applications from local governments requesting more than $15.1 million from the Parks and Recreation Trust Fund. Of those, 23 were chosen to receive a total of more than $9.5 million.

A separate source of funding administered through the Parks and Recreation Trust Fund called the Accessible Parks Grant program was appropriated $12.5 million in the 2023 budget to provide matching grants for projects to benefit people living with disabilities. All 23 applicants were selected for the first round of funding, which totals more than $8.3 million.

Two projects on the coast were selected to receive from Parks and Recreation Trust Fund $500,000 each, the maximum that can be awarded for a single project. Awardees must match funds at least dollar-for-dollar for the grant amount.

In Sunset Beach, the funds will go to develop a new public open space, the Majestic Oaks Park, and in Hyde County, the grant is to go to build a sports field, the Brandon Marshall Ball Field Complex.

Two projects in Chowan County were chosen for the Accessible Parks grants. Bennett’s Mill Pond Park phase 1 was selected to receive $134,619, and Edenton was awarded $391,437 for accessibility updates to the town’s Morgan Park.

“These awards through the Parks and Recreation Trust Fund and the Accessible Parks Grant will bring tremendous impact to communities across North Carolina by providing more parks, more trails and more accessible recreation,” Gov. Roy Cooper said in the announcement.

A second round of funding with more than $4 million available through the Accessible Parks Grant will open in September.

EDENTON — No ribbon-cutting or silver shovels wielded by a few politicians would represent the scale of North Carolina’s second land-based wind energy operation. Instead, Apex Clean Energy invited hundreds of community members, landowners and government officials to join them Wednesday morning on Chowan County farmland to a sign a prone, 242-foot-long silver turbine blade to kick off Timbermill Wind, a project to generate 189 megawatts of electricity with 45 three-bladed turbines.

After being shuttled in buses to the 6,300-acre site from Edenton United Methodist Church, where a breakfast event was held, folks lined up, chatting amiably while waiting to scribble their names on the blade.

First up, a man in a slate-blue suit and green tie strode up to the blade with a fat blue marking pen in his right hand. Reaching up while contractors watched, he wrote his name in large, looping cursive letters: Roy Cooper. Then, under his name he added “governor” and turned to the crowd, grinning widely. Everyone cheered and the signing commenced. Before long, about 250 different signatures covered the length of the blade.

One name, Sadie B. Eure, stood out just to the right of Cooper’s signature. That’s his mother-in-law’s name, said Donald “Randy” Park, pointing at the blade.

Eure and her late husband, Garland, who had three daughters, operated Eure Seed Farms in Perquimans County, Park said. Sadie Eure owns 300 hundred acres at the Timbermill site and has a lease agreement with the company for the turbines on her land.

Park, a retired farmer who lives in Belhaven, said that most of the farmers who grow crops such as soybeans, corn, cotton or wheat at the site are pleased with the project because they can still farm around the turbines, while also collecting regular payments.

“The majority are,” he said. “There are a few that are unhappy.”

Some don’t like the way the turbines look, he said.

“I don’t think they’re an eyesore,” Park said. And the payments enable farmers to be profitable, especially when the weather is not cooperating.

Eure, who is 93, started leasing her land to Apex about 8 to 10 years ago, Park said, collecting $1,587 a month. He doesn’t know what the monthly rent will be once the facility is operational, “But it’ll be a whole lot more than that.”

“It helps to have an extra income,” he said. “She’ll be passing this on to her heirs, too.”

Chowan County has also benefited from the project and will continue to for its operational life, which is expected to be about 30 years.

“We are in effect greatly expanding our tax base in one fell swoop,” Gene Jordan, chair of the Chowan County Board of Education, told the audience at the earlier event at the Edenton church.

Jordan, who is a farmer, said that the wind energy helps diversify their resources while supporting the community and the landowners.

“My family will be able to host seven turbines,” he said. “I’m optimistic we will be able to farm for years to come.”

In addition to creating 200 jobs and generating about $25 million spent with North Carolina businesses during its construction, the project is expected to provide up to $33 million in tax revenue over its lifetime.

The project, delayed by numerous glitches including the COVID-19 pandemic, took 11 years to complete, which Apex CEO Ken Young said is about twice the time it typically takes to build a large wind farm.

“It’s coming back to life,” he said, comparing it to a cat’s nine lives.

Sprinkling his description of the project during his speech at the church with words like “fortitude” and “blood, sweat and tears,” Young credited his team and its partners. “That spirit and dedication is why we’re here today with a $500 million facility, fully developed, financed and well under construction,” he told the audience.

Apex will own and operate the facility when it is completed later this year, the company said in a press release. Last year, Timbermill announced a power-purchase agreement with Google, which will contribute to the clean energy needs to offset energy usage at its data centers.

“Google is buying the output from this project,” Young clarified in a later interview.

Most of the project’s difficulties, besides the pandemic, were to be expected, said Richard Bunch, Apex project representative and retired director of the Edenton-Chowan Chamber of Commerce. “It was all permitting issues,” he said, adding that there were lots of discussions with the Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. military that were worked through.

But whatever the bumps in the road, Bunch said Timbermill Wind is an asset for the county.

“It’s tremendous,” he said in an interview after the signing. “The occupancy tax this year is probably going to its highest ever,” he said, citing revenue related to construction. “Fuel sales, rooms, food — it just goes on and on.”

Even after the project is completed, Bunch said there will six or seven full-time staff employed locally by Timbermill.

Dr. Ellis Lawrence, who has served on the Chowan County Board of Commissioners for 14 years, said after the signing that the revenue created by the project is already being reflected in the county’s plan to build a new high school. And the county’s tax base will continue to have an annual infusion of $1.3 million from the project.

“We have watched it go full circle,” he said. “We have dealt with the ups and downs.”

In the beginning, a lot of people were calling in opposition, he said. But now most residents seem to have come around to be in favor of it.

“I was there when it started. I’ve heard it all,” he said. “In the beginning, they were talking about the bird killings, the noise that it would make. This is nothing like that. And the science is behind it. It’s more efficient. This is an alternate source of energy and we need to take advantage of it.”

Cooper applauded local, state and federal efforts working together for the success of the project.

 “When you talk about clean energy, a lot of times people think about climate change,” he said at the church event. “But what it’s really about is great-paying jobs and a cleaner environment.”

Featured Image

Gov. Roy Cooper speaks to reporters about renewable energy, sidestepping questions about his possible selection as a vice presidential candidate, Wednesday at a turbine blade-signing event celebrating construction of the Timbermill Wind project by Apex Clean Energy in Chowan County. The 189-megawatt wind energy project is the state’s second and the first to be built since 2017. It is expected to generate up to $33 million in tax revenue over its lifetime and become the county’s largest taxpayer during its first year of operation. Photo: Dylan Ray

Pilots and other aircraft enthusiasts are encouraged to flock to Chowan County this fall for “Wings Over Edenton.”

The town is hosting the airshow to commemorate “80-ish” years of the Northeastern Regional Airport in Chowan County. The event is scheduled for 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 19.

Offered to the public at no charge, an array of activities to entertain and engage attendees of all ages is planned, organizers said. Rain date is Oct. 20.

The skies will come alive at 1 p.m. with an aerobatic display by aircrafts, a Pitts Special and a T-6 Texan. Other demonstrations include parachutists, and possibly area aviators and first responders. There will be free plane rides for all ages throughout the day, as well as face painting, car and tractor shows, a small vendor fair with artisans and businesses, food trucks, Italian ice, plane displays and educational outreach.

The Northeastern Regional Airport was originally known as Marine Corps Air Station Edenton during World War II. The air station was handed over to the town in the decades that followed, and became a public-use airport. The first Wings Over Edenton was in 1993 as a 50th anniversary celebration. This year’s event will be the first since the COVID-19 pandemic began. 

“We are truly ecstatic for the return of Wings,” Public Information Officer Tyler Newman said. “This revival of a once classic area festivity will be a regional community event, a celebration of local aviation, and an open invitation for pilots from up and down the Eastern Seaboard to come taste what Northeastern Regional, and Edenton, have to offer. We cannot wait for October and hope to deliver something special to folks here in Northeast North Carolina and beyond.” 

All pilots who wish to display their aircraft must land by 9:15 a.m., no exceptions, and need to stay parked until 4 p.m. for the duration of the show. Those pilots who fly in and do not want to be on display may arrive anytime before the show or during, except from 12:40 to 2 p.m. when demonstrations are ongoing.

For information, contact tyler.newman@edenton.nc.gov or call 252-482-2155 ext. 535. For more information about Wings Over Edenton in general, visit www.townofedenton.com/wings.

Those white blades the length of a city block that have been at the North Carolina Port at Morehead City the last few weeks are destined for great heights.

Vestas, a wind turbine company based in Portland, Oregon, manufactured the onshore wind turbine components, which arrived in mid-March from India on cargo ships, including the 528-foot-long BBC Norway and 529-foot-long Basilisk, at the state’s deep-water port in Carteret County.

The 242-foot-long blades are for the roughly 6,300-acre Timbermill Wind, a 45-turbine energy facility currently under construction in rural Chowan County near Edenton. Timbermill Wind is a project of Apex Clean Energy in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Apex Senior Community Relations Manager Natasha Montague explained Wednesday that turbine components for the project are being delivered from Morehead City to the Riverbulk barge terminal outside of Edenton on the Chowan River. From there, they will then be transported to the wind energy facility site off Bear Swamp Road, north of Edenton.

The turbine installation is to start this summer, and the project is on track to start commercial operations in early 2025, Montague said. “Construction is well underway, with over 150 workers on site.”

The Chowan County location was chosen because it’s a verified wind resource, has existing onsite transmission lines and roads, expansive rural timber and agricultural lands, and it avoids sensitive military and environmental areas, according to Apex.

“The 45 wind turbines at Timbermill Wind will be capable of producing up to 189 (megawatts) of clean, homegrown energy, enough energy to power up to 47,000 homes every year,” Montague said.

There are monthly construction updates on the Timbermill website, she added. Recently, workers have been readying for the turbines to be delivered.

Timbermill Wind is expected to produce more than $80 million in direct economic benefits over the project’s 30-year lifetime,​ plus dependable long-term revenue for local farmers and landowners, Montague added. “Approximately $33 million will be paid in taxes to Chowan County taxing districts, making the project Chowan County’s largest taxpayer.”

Southern Alliance for Clean Energy Climate Advocacy Director Chris Carnevale explained to Coastal Review that wind energy is an important resource to use so “we all can have a reliable, low-cost, and environmentally responsible electricity system.”

Carnevale added that wind energy has a key role to play in a diverse portfolio of clean energy resources for providing reliable power 24/7.

“While we in the Southeast have mostly focused offshore for wind energy potential in our region, modern technology has made land-based wind energy, like the Timbermill project, a valuable opportunity that we should be taking advantage of,” Carnevale said. “Land-based wind farms, like Timbermill, not only provide reliable, low-cost power, but also serve as major sources of economic development and funding for rural communities and local residents.”

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Energy, Mineral, and Land Resources issued the permit for the onshore wind energy facility to Apex in March 2023. State officials said this permit is the first for a facility under a state law passed in 2013 that establishes a permitting program for wind energy facilities.

“Timbermill Wind has been a project of many ‘firsts’, and that’s a big deal. This project was the first in the state to receive approval from state regulators, which has helped to pave the way for future projects,” Southeastern Wind Coalition Program and Outreach Manager Karly Lohan said.

“Timbermill Wind is also the first project in North Carolina that achieved 40% domestic content for its manufactured components, allowing it to qualify for the 10% domestic content adder through the Inflation Reduction Act,” Lohan added. “This is just another example of how land-based wind development can invigorate North Carolina’s manufacturing supply chain and support economic growth across the entire state.”

In August, Apex and Google announced a power purchase agreement for the full 189-megawatt capacity of Timbermill Wind. This commitment, according to the announcement, is to support “Google’s 2030 commitment to powering its operations with carbon-free energy around the clock.”

Currently, North Carolina only has one commercial-grade onshore wind farm in operation: the 104-turbine Amazon Wind Farm U.S. East, powered by Avangrid Renewables, near Elizabeth City. The 208 MW facility, which has more than 500 workers, began delivering power in December 2016, and generates enough energy to power the equivalent of about 61,000 U.S. homes per year.

The Department of Energy has recognized the advantages and disadvantages of wind power.

Benefits are that the industry creates good-paying jobs, wind is a domestic resource that enables economic growth, benefits local communities, and is affordable, clean and renewable.

The challenges include competing with other low-cost energy sources, connecting the energy from the wind facility sites to where it’s needed, turbine noise and appearance, and impacts on wildlife.

According to a Global Wind Energy Council study released Tuesday, the United States is one of the top five markets for new wind installations, along with China, Brazil, Germany and India.

Worldwide, the wind industry has installed what the council said is a “record 117 GW of new capacity in 2023.” The council is a member-based organization made up of companies, organizations and institutions across 80 counties.

 “New installations in the onshore wind market passed the milestone of 100 GW while new offshore wind capacity commissioned last year reached nearly 11 GW, making 2023 the highest and the second-highest year in history for new wind installations for onshore and offshore, respectively,” states the Global Wind Report 2024. “116.6 GW of new wind power capacity was added to the power grid worldwide in 2023, 50% more than in 2022, bringing total installed wind capacity to 1,021 GW, a growth of 13% compared with last year.”

Currently, there are 16 active primary wind manufacturing plants in 12 states, and 450 wind-related manufacturing facilities in the United States supporting more than 20,000 manufacturing jobs.

Since the Inflation Reduction Act became law in August 2022, 123 new manufacturing facilities or facility expansions have been announced, the report states. This includes 12 onshore wind power manufacturing facilities, nine offshore wind facilities, 78 solar facilities, 20 grid-scale battery storage facilities or facility expansions and four grid connection facilities.

“From this total, 44 facilities have either completed or are currently under construction. Once all in operation, these 120+ facilities will support nearly 42,000 new manufacturing jobs.”

A documentary about Edenton’s costliest recorded natural disaster is returning next month to the big screen.

Edenton’s Taylor Theater is hosting two free showings of “Isabel 20,” a 71-minute documentary that covers the lead up to Hurricane Isabel’s landfall in 2003, devastation caused during the storm and post-hurricane recovery.

The documentary, which was first screened earlier this month, features the stories of Edenton and Chowan County residents who lived through what turned out to be the most intense and deadly hurricane of the 2003 season.

Isabel pummeled Hatteras and Ocracoke islands up through the Inner Banks of North Carolina and north through the Tidewater of Virginia and Maryland.

The storm flooded homes and businesses in Edenton’s downtown historic core, wiped out nearly 60% of Chowan County’s tree cover, and left behind $200 million in property damage in the community.

“Everyone has an Isabel story — so we encourage the public, particularly Chowan County and northeast North Carolina residents to make an effort to come out and watch the film, which has become a wonderful oral history project,” Tyler Newman, Edenton’s public information officer, said in a release.

The documentary will be shown on one screen at 2 p.m. Jan. 6 and again at 5:15 p.m. Jan. 18 on both of the theater’s screens.

Ticket stubs will be handed to viewers on a first-come, first-serve basis prior to the showings. Seating is limited and interested viewers are encouraged to arrive early.

Closed captioning or hard-of-hearing access is not currently available. Cameras are not permitted in the theater.

Edenton is an unusual center of historical tourism in the state. It is much larger than the preserved museum pieces that make up historic sites such as Bath and Halifax. But it is also far from the beach and lacks any large companies like the ones home to New Bern, Wilmington and Beaufort.

Instead, Edenton is a town of 5,000 that is Chowan’s county seat and has one of the largest groups of historic buildings in the state. After years of neglect that were remarkable for a town once billed as a colonial capital, Edenton’s historic legacy has propelled it over the past five decades and continues to define it into the 21st century.

Locals here have long recognized the importance of history to life in Edenton. Charles Boyette is a historical interpreter in downtown Edenton whose family has lived in the Albemarle Sound region for hundreds of years. He has been going downtown for decades for various reasons. Boyette said that for Edenton residents, “history is an everyday part of your life.”

Boyette would drive downtown to go to eat at nice restaurants or buy appliances. He recalls seeing historic names on every house and spending much of his childhood wondering who exactly lived in those stately mansions. This interest ended up leading to a career in historical interpretation, a field he has been in for over a decade.

Edenton came out of the early settlement of northeastern North Carolina. In the 17th century, farmers began to move south from Virginia to the area north of Albemarle Sound looking for better tobacco lands. They settled along the sound and its most navigable rivers, such as the Pasquotank and Chowan. As the English population grew in the area, the ruling Lords Proprietor were compelled to establish forms of government and other entities to aid with trade and tax collecting.

Along with the first North Carolina counties, the Proprietors allowed for the establishment of early towns. Edenton, founded on the confluence of the sound and Queen Anne’s creek, was the third town founded in the colony after Bath and New Bern. It was named after Charles Eden, an early governor of the colony who later became well known for his alleged friendship with the notorious pirate, Blackbeard.

Edenton continued to grow in size and significance throughout the 18th century. It became the first capital of North Carolina in 1722. The town was a port for the entire Albemarle region. Northeastern planters could load their batteaux full of tobacco and other supplies and send them down the Roanoke or Chowan rivers, free of impediments, to Edenton.

Consequently, the town became a center for sophisticated governmental buildings and political leaders. It is the home of North Carolina’s oldest courthouse, the Chowan County Courthouse, built in 1767 on the town green. It was also the residence for numerous governors and later senators.

Famous North Carolinians like Supreme Court Justice James Iredell, signer of the Declaration of Independence Joseph Hewes, and Gov. Samuel Johnston, who all called the town home during the 18th century.

Both men and women played important roles in the town’s history at this time. The women of Edenton launched a famous boycott of British tea in 1774, one of the most notable protests by women during the colonial period.

As the 18th century continued, the focus of settlement in North Carolina shifted to the south and west. The colony became less dependent on overland and river travel from Virginia. North Carolina began to cultivate other early ports and utilize the Neuse and Cape Fear rivers. An assortment of Scots-Irish, German and Scottish settlers began to use overland routes to populate the backcountry, further reducing the significance of the Albemarle region. Finally, Edenton was further isolated by a 1795 hurricane that deposited silt into the Albemarle Sound’s ocean inlet.

But Edenton remained an important town in the early history of the state. It was surpassed in population by other towns, dropping to the eighth largest town in the state by the 1860 census. But its coastal position and proximity to Norfolk meant that the city still retained a level of importance in the coastal region. It remained a center of shipping and water transportation, both along the coast and internationally. This location contributed to Edenton’s role in the slave trade. International and coastal slave ships plied the waters of the Albemarle and docked at Edenton.

Numerous enslaved people would work as pilots and seamen. One of these ships helped bring Edenton-born Harriet Jacobs to freedom. As a girl, Jacobs was abused by her enslaver and resolved to escape. She spent seven years hidden in a small crawl space before reaching a ship and finding her way to freedom in New York City. Her memoir, “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl,” ended up becoming a bestselling book and an important piece of Southern literature.

Unlike other early Albemarle towns, Edenton retained enough statewide importance to become a strategic target during the Civil War. One of Edenton’s Confederate units, named the Bell Battery because it fired a cannon melted down from the town’s brass bells, fought at the battles of Fredericksburg and Kinston. The town was vulnerable once Gen. Ambrose Burnside successfully captured nearby Roanoke Island. It was invaded by the Union shortly after and held until the end of the war.

Following the war, Edenton embraced the agriculture industry and the new crops that became dominant in the region. It was a center for peanut growing and processing. Edenton gained a cotton mill in the 1890s, one of the first in the Albemarle region, according to the mill’s National Register of Historic Places nomination form.

Much of the mill complex and its village is still standing and now contains a museum. Edenton’s position on the coast and embrace of industry allowed it to retain a considerable amount of wealth for a coastal North Carolina town. This wealth is evident by the dozens of stately Victorian homes that dot the historic district, including the circa 1851 Wessington House at 120 W. King St. and a notable brick mansion at 205 E. King St.

The 20th century saw Edenton embrace its rich historic legacy in a way that few other towns of its size in the southeast had before. In many ways, the historic preservation movement in North Carolina began with a project in the town. The 1758 Cupola House, one of Edenton’s oldest houses and a site of state history, was slated to be torn down in 1918.

A local group, the Cupola House Association, purchased the property at 408 S. Broad St. and turned it into a local museum. Authors Mary Ann Coffey and Murphy Moss described the purchase as “the earliest community preservation effort in NC to save a historic structure.” The precedent of the Cupola House would be repeated numerous times throughout the state and helped pave the way for the creation of the historic preservation movement.

Historic tourism has emerged to become a significant part of Edenton’s economy. The downtown area is dominated by the Edenton Historic District and the numerous historic buildings that are open for tours by public and private groups. Edenton also has several downtown gift shops, restaurants and three historic bed and breakfasts, including the award-winning Inner Banks Inn.

The town was part of writer Joseph Cosco’s 1993 scenic tour of the Albemarle, of which he wrote, “Scattered here and there, almost always near the water, are the history-soaked mansions, merchant-class homes and county courthouses that served as a stage for the birth of both the colony and the nation.” Interest has only grown since then, with its historic district being featured numerous times on HGTV and in the New York Times.

There is uncertainty on the horizon for Edenton’s future. Like the rest of the Albemarle region, it has the potential to be a suburb of Norfolk. Interstate 87 has the potential to substantially reduce driving times between the Albemarle and the Hampton Roads area. Edenton is only 50 miles south of Suffolk, Virginia, a town that has grown by nearly 10 times since 1970. It has the potential to become a bedroom community, defined by large apartment complexes, chain stores, and subdivisions.

Despite this growth, there is hope here that state laws and the local love of history will preserve downtown Edenton as a center for the state’s historic heritage for generations to come.

The Army Corps of Engineers is seeking public comment on Timbermill Wind’s plans to fill in ditches and wetlands for a proposed 45-turbine 1,933-acre wind energy facility near Edenton.

Much of the project area is in what was formerly known as Bear Swamp, which has been historically ditched and drained to convert forested wetlands to agricultural use.

The Corps’ Wilmington District announced Monday that the company seeks authorization to temporarily impact 187.68 acres of wetlands, 0.15 acres of streams and 5.16 acres of jurisdictional tributaries or ditches for the construction.

The project would permanently impact 27.03 acres of wetlands, 0.03 acres of stream and 0.54 acres of ditches. The project area is part of a roughly 6,300-acre site about 2 miles north of Edenton in Chowan County.

The project would also include 6.1 miles of transmission line to interconnect the facility to Virginia-based Dominion Energy’s existing Winfall to Mackeys transmission line in North Carolina.

The Corps said its general practice is not to make a final permit decision until the North Carolina Department of Division of Water Resources issues, denies or waives state certification as required by Section 401 of the Clean Water Act.

Also, the Corps said it was aware of the presence of species listed as threatened or endangered or designated critical habitat under the Endangered Species Act and would make a final determination on the effects of the proposed project after additional review and completion of any necessary biological assessment or consultation with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service or National Marine Fisheries Service.

Written comments pertinent to the proposed work are being accepted until 5 p.m. May 28. Comments should be submitted to Mr. Anthony D. Scarbraugh, Washington Regulatory Field Office, 2407 West Fifth St., Washington, NC 27889 or email to anthony.d.scarbraugh@usace.army.mil.

This is the first in a history series examining each of North Carolina’s 20 coastal counties.

Every elementary school student in North Carolina is taught the story of the Lost Colony. That 16th century settlement on Roanoke Island was indeed the first sustained English settlement in North America, but it has earned its moniker for a reason.

The colony was lost within five years of its settlement. Today’s state of North Carolina instead emerged from a much less famous area. The Albemarle Settlements, of which Chowan County comprised the western section, were the true beginning of this state. Chowan County reflects this long historical heritage and is today as closely connected to the past as any county in the state.

One could argue that John Pory, not John White, is the true founder of the North Carolina Colony. Pory, a professor, explorer and politician living in Virginia, traveled down the Chowan River in 1622 and, according to a Virginia chronicle from 1622, wrote of “a very fruitfull and pleasant Countrey, full of rivers, wherein are two harvests in one yeere.”

After his report, some Virginians moved south in search of fresh tobacco lands. Pory’s journey predated the 1629 grant from King Charles I that gave Carolina or “Carolana” as it was called at first) its name. Many Virginians settled along the river that Pory traveled. In 1664, enough settlers had moved into the area that Albemarle County was formed to provide some semblance of government. The western edge of that county, Shaftesbury Precinct, became Chowan Precinct in 1685 and Chowan County in 1739.

The center of Chowan County was Edenton, one of the earliest towns in North Carolina. It was named after Charles Eden, a governor more famous today for his friendship with pirates than his governance. Bill Hand noted in the New Bern Sun Journal that “some historians suggest that Eden was getting a percentage from the pirate; at any rate, after Blackbeard’s death a lot of his loot turned up in a barn owned by colony secretary Tobias Knight.”

One of Eden’s rivals, Edward Moseley, was arrested for publicly insinuating the governor was receiving Blackbeard’s stolen treasures. When Blackbeard was finally killed in North Carolina waters, it was not by Eden’s militia but by troops from Virginia.

In its early years, Edenton barely earned the designation of town. William Byrd II, a leading Virginia planter and the founder of Richmond, stayed near Edenton when he helped survey the Virginia-North Carolina Colonial boundary in 1728. Byrd wrote in his “History of the Dividing Line” that the town had between 40 and 50 houses and that he knew of no other place of European settlement where “there is neither church, chapel, mosque, synagogue, or any other place of public worship of any sect or religion whatsoever.” To Byrd, the people of Edenton had no ambition and regarded having a brick chimney on one’s home as a sign of extravagance.

This state of affairs did not last. Over time, Edenton became a center for some of the colony’s most respected citizens. These included early Supreme Court Justice James Iredell and governors James Iredell Jr. and Samuel Johnson. North Carolina’s governor resided in Edenton while it was the Colonial capital from 1722 to 1743. The town contained some of the most elegant buildings in the colony. Several of them, such as the Chowan County Courthouse built in 1767, and St. Paul’s Episcopal Church built 1736-1766, are still standing and can be visited today. Edenton’s 300-year-old courthouse green still survives in the middle of town.

A pivotal moment in women’s and Colonial history happened in Edenton in 1774. Spurred on by the hated tax on tea and similar events across the Colonies, the so-called Edenton Tea Party was held in that year. A group of women, led by Penelope Barker, signed a document pledging to boycott the purchase of English tea and cloth until England stopped its practice of taxation without representation.

According to Sandra Lancaster of the Daughters of the American Revolution, the letter was “one of the earliest organized women’s political actions in United States history.” It also prompted ridicule in London. Phillip Dawe drew and had printed a cartoon portraying the women as masculine, lecherous and decidedly unladylike. A statue of a teapot commemorating the event can be found atop a cannon near the county courthouse.

Throughout the Revolutionary and early Republic periods, Chowan County’s considerable wealth was built on shipping and local plantations, with much of its territory outside of the town limits comprising sprawling tobacco plantations. The town of Edenton also centered around slavery.

The 1860 slavery distribution map, created by Edwin Hergesheimer, showed that the county had the state’s seventh-highest proportion of slaves to free persons. One of the most famous of these enslaved persons was Harriet Jacobs. After years of torment from her owner, Jacobs escaped and spent several more years in Edenton hiding in an attic before making her way north. Harriet Jacobs’s 1861book, “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl,” became one of the most famous antebellum slave narratives, and she spent the remainder of her life in the North fighting for abolition and later for social reform. Free African Americans also called the town home. They could secure jobs as ship pilots or working on the docks. Harriet Jacobs noted that some of these free men and women helped her, her brother John Jacobs, and others escape to freedom by ship.

Chowan County’s fortunes declined in the 19th century. As David Leroy Corbitt noted in his authoritative history of North Carolina counties, Chowan lost its prosperous top half with the formation of Gates County in 1779. Edenton’s harbor was greatly affected by the closing of Roanoke Inlet after a 1795 hurricane.

The town was then occupied by federal troops early in the Civil War. Following the end of slavery, Edenton survived by turning to industry, most notably at the cotton mill that still stands at the end of King Street and the peanut mill on Church Street.

Following the Civil War, with the decline of plantation agriculture, the entire Albemarle region suffered economic hardship that continued throughout much of the 20th century. Edenton only reversed this decline by embracing its history. One of the earliest historic preservation efforts in North Carolina occurred in 1918, 40 years before the rebuilding of Tryon Palace. Women in Edenton formed an association to rehabilitate the Cupola House built 1756-58, one of North Carolina’s oldest homes.

For the next century, affiliated groups such as the Edenton State Historic Site and the Edenton Woman’s Club restored dozens of structures and helped found numerous inns and bed-and-breakfast inns. State funding and tourism revenues have resulted in a vibrant downtown with museums, house tours and a trolley tour.

This history caught the imagination of one of North Carolina’s most notable novelists. Inglis Fletcher, who owned a historic plantation in Chowan County, wrote a dozen books set in historical North Carolina and Edenton. These included “Men of Albemarle” in 1942, and “Roanoke Hundred” in1948. There was also “Lusty Wind of Carolina” in1944, the tale of a bondsman and the daughter of a Huguenot weaver who fall in love, help establish the Colony, and fight pirates. The books are all fictional but filled with historical facts as well as cameos from historical figures. 

Today, Chowan County retains the North-South dynamic that has defined it since the early 18th century. Its northern areas are rural and have changed little in the past hundred years. The exception is the growing seaside community of Arrowhead Beach. Other northern communities, such as Rockyhock and the amusingly named Sign Pine, remain little more than crossroads.

The southern section of the county, comprising Edenton, has become a vibrant, bustling community dedicated to tourism and history. Edenton now has a bookstore and approximately two dozen restaurants. Its former mill buildings have new tenants, including a fitness center and a museum. Chowan County has found a way forward by embracing both its natural wealth and the appeal of the past. It has become one of the Inner Banks’ most notable success stories.

The North Carolina Department of Transportation has awarded a nearly $4 million contract to improve roads in Chowan, Gates and Perquimans counties.

The $3.9 million contract, awarded to Rose Brothers Paving of Raleigh, includes milling and resurfacing U.S. 17 Business, or Queen Street, in Chowan County, milling and resurfacing U.S. 13 in Gates County, and milling, resurfacing and shoulder reconstruction on several secondary roads in Chowan, Gates and Perquimans counties, according to officials.

Work on the projects can begin as soon as March 22 and is expected to be complete by the end of June 2022.

State Division of Water Resources officials have received reports of discolored water in Chowan County and urge the public to avoid contact with green or blue water, specifically in the Albemarle Sound and adjoining waterbodies.

Division staff announced the recommendation Wednesday to avoid contact with the discolored water in Edenton, Rocky Hock and Elizabeth City and are monitoring the blooms and have sent samples to the division’s Water Sciences Section for analysis.

Cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae, blooms have been occurring in the area over the past few years, and some forms of can produce toxins that are harmful to humans and animals.

State health officials encourage the public to avoid areas showing signs of an algae bloom, which can fluctuate depending on weather conditions and may move around collecting in coves and along shorelines.

State water quality and health officials recommend the following precautions to avoid the harmful effects of certain algae:

• Do not allow children or pets in or near water that appears bright green, blue, discolored or has visible surface film or scum. Anyone exposed should be washed with soap and clean water, including pets.
• If your child becomes ill after being in water where an algal bloom is occurring, seek medical care immediately. If your pet begins to stumble, stagger or collapse after being in a pond, lake or river, seek veterinary care immediately.
• Do not handle or touch large mats of algae and avoid handling, cooking or eating fish from waters with blooms.

Learn More

• To report a potential algal bloom contact the local DWR regional offices.
• For more information on potential health effects from algal blooms, visit the N.C. Division of Public Health’s website.
• To learn more about algal blooms in North Carolina, visit Division of Water Resources.

State officials are urging people to avoid contact with potentially harmful algal blooms in Edenton Bay in Chowan County, the Outer Banks Voice reports.

The filamentous blue-green algae, identified as Dolichospermum planctonicum, may produce cyantoxins, which can cause illness in humans and animals. According to the state’s Department of Health and Human Services, the toxin can affect kidneys, gastrointestinal tracts, livers and nervous systems.

North Carolina has not reported any cases of illnesses associated with this bloom, but officials encourage residents to follow certain measures to stay safe:

• Keep children and pets away from water that appears bright green, discolored or scummy. Do not handle or touch large mats of algae.
• Avoid handling, cooking or eating dead fish that may be present.
• If you come into contact with an algal bloom, wash thoroughly. Also, use clean water to rinse off pets that may have come into contact with an algal bloom.
• If your child appears ill after being in water containing an algal bloom, seek medical care immediately.
• If your pet appears to stumble, stagger or collapse after being in a pond, lake or river, seek veterinary care immediately.

The Division of Water Resources’ Washington Regional Office staff has been monitoring the blooms, which are present due to hot weather, since June.

Learn More

• North Carolina Health and Human Services’s website