turpentine industry

The hire of Blunt and Miles for perilous work.

On 12 December 1851, Lewis J. Dortch and John T. Barnes arranged with James F. Jenkins, guardian of the minor heirs of Willie Atkinson, for the hire of two enslaved men, Blunt and Miles. Dortch and Barnes were partners in a turpentine and lumber business in South Carolina; presumably, Dortch and Barnes intended to send the men south to perform this grueling, dangerous work.

Dortch and Barnes promised to pay Jenkins $250 and to provide Blunt and Miles with three shirts, three pairs of pants, one hat, one blanket, one “round” jacket, one pair of woolen socks, and two pair of double-soled shoes. All the clothes were to be made from new cloth, and one “suit” was to made of wool. (A round jacket was a short jacket of heavy cloth with wide lapels and two rows of close-set buttons.)

Finally, in a chillingly frank acknowledgment of risk, Dortch and Barnes promised “to return said negros Blunt & Miles if living” on 1 January 1853. 

Dortch, Barnes, and witness John Wilkinson lived in and around Stantonsburg, in what would become Wilson County in 1855. Atkinson, whose wife Sallie was related to Wilkinson, appears to live northeast, just below Town Creek, in a section that remained in Edgecombe County. More about Atkinson’s enslaved community, including Miles and Blount, soon.

L.J. Dortch Estate Record (1854), Wilson County, North Carolina Estate Files 1663-1979, http://www.familysearch.org

Tapping pines for turpentine.

Harper’s was not the only illustrated periodical. Ballou’s Pictorial had a short run the decade before the Civil War and on 12 May 1855 published a feature on North Carolina. The illustration above and description below depict a scene — other than the ship — that would have been commonplace in Wilson County:

“The yeoman with the axe has been engaged in ‘tapping’ these pines to obtain the crude turpentine, which exudes in great abundance. The negro hands are busy in directing its flow into the bung-holes of the barrels rolled against the trees for the purpose. A negro in the middle distance is making an incision in the hole of a pine tree with an axe. In the distance we behold a loaded ox-team with its driver, and far off a vessel laden with the exports of the State, under full sail. The turpentine in the form of tar and pitch is exported in great quantities and gives employment to between two and three thousand men.”

Leaving for the turpentine districts of Georgia and South Carolina.

By 1890, North Carolina’s long-leaf pine forests had been decimated, and the state’s once-dominant share of the national naval stores production had plummeted. As highlighted in Imagination Station‘s exhibit “Journey to Wilson,” though the county was never a major player in the turpentine game, western Wilson County had a thriving naval stores industry through much of the nineteenth century. When workers began to follow the work, the Advance took notice.

Wilson Advance, 2 January 1890.

Wilson Advance, 25 December 1890.

Harry and Pet Sharp family portrait.

Like thousands of North Carolinians, Harry and Pet Sharp left Wilson County for better opportunities. However, unlike most African-American migrants, they headed south. A clue to their unusual movement is found in the 1900 census of Tatnall County, in which Harry’s occupation was listed as woods rider. A woods rider was a foreman on horseback who oversaw the rough labors of the turpentine workers moving on foot through brutally hot, rattlesnake-infested forests, “dipping” pine gum. With eastern North Carolina’s longleaf pines bled to ruin, its large and lucrative naval stores industry shifted southward to Georgia and Florida, with displaced workers in its wake. The Sharps were among them.

This Sharp family portrait was probably taken about 1900 in Georgia.

harry-pet-sharp-per-lavoniarcarter

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In the 1870 census of Otter Creek, Edgecombe County, North Carolina: Gustin Sharp, 51, wife Bithy, 54, and children Lisha, 16, Harry 12, and Amanda, 10.

In the 1880 census of Auters Creek, Edgecombe County: Gustin Sharp, 63, wife Bythy, 65, and children or grandchildren Sarah, 18, Harry, 23, and Green, 15.

In the 1880 census of Wilson township, Wilson County: Nelson Farmer, 30, wife Rose, 45, children Pett, 10, and Luke, 6, nieces Jimmie Ann, 14, and Lou, 10, and Rose’s children Daniel, 21, Lear, 18, and Jef, 16.

On 30 January 1889, H.H. Sharp, 31, of Wilson, married Pett Farmer, 19, of Wilson, at G.S Sharp’s in Wilson. Missionary Baptist minister J.T.Clark performed the ceremony before B.R. Winstead, William Connor and John Hardy.

In the 1900 census of Lyons, Tattnall County, Georgia: woods rider Harry Sharpe, 38, wife Pet, 30, and children Rena, 10, Lela, 8, Jessie, 5, Menar, 5, Cora, 2, and Mittie, 5 months. Rena was born in North Carolina; the remaining children in Georgia.

In the 1910 census of Toombs County, Georgia: farmer Harry H. Sharpe, 53, wife Pet, 40, and children Rena, 21, Jessie, 17, Mena, 13, Cora, 12, James, 9, David, 8, Harry, 6, Green, 4, and Caesar, 2 months.

Harry Sharp died in 1917, and Pet Farmer Sharp died in 1945, both in Toombs County, Georgia.

Photograph courtesy of Ancestry.com user lavoniarcarter.