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We drove up to RT 17 and headed south to do some caching seeing as we didn't want to sit around and twiddle our thumbs all day. Our first cache was at a library, second was at a drug store, third was in the parking lot of a surgery center, the next 3 were at local drug stores, seventh was at a boat launch and our last cache of the morning was at Poplar Grove Plantation.
One of the oldest existing peanut plantations in North Carolina , Poplar Grove Plantation was in the same family for over 6 generations. The Foys originally purchased the land in 1795 and kept it until the mid 1970’s. Opened as a museum in 1980; today the mansion is on the National Register of Historic Homes. Let’s step back in history… The year is 1795, James Foy, Jr. has just purchased 628 acres of land from Frances Clayton. The land is located on Topsail Sound, in new Hanover County. It includes the banks of Figure Eight Island and land in Pender County as well. James built his home close to the water so he could use the water to transport his goods to Wilmington. The arduous trip into town took about twelve hours round trip. Transporting goods was easier using boats and barges. James’ son, Joseph Mumford Foy, began building the current Manor House in 1849. This location was selected because of the close proximity to the New Bern to Wilmington plank road. The manor house was designed by Joseph, an amateur architect, in the Greek Revival Style. It has 4,284 square feet, 12 fireplaces, 2 pairs of corbelled interior chimneys and 12 rooms. Along the Cape Fear River rice plantations brought economic prosperity, and everywhere within the region thousands of farmers owe their livelihoods to the 'golden leaf', tobacco, however, Poplar Grove owes it's success to the peanut. The estate known as Poplar Grove was purchased from Francis Clayton in 1795 by James Foy, Jr. (1772-1823). The 628 acre plantation, a self-supporting agricultural community, produced peas, corn and beans, held some 64 slaves, and served as an aid and resource to neighboring small farmers. In 1849 the original manor house at Futch Creek was destroyed by fire and rebuilt in 1850 on its present site by Joseph Mumford Foy (1817 - 1861). Prosperous until the Civil War, Poplar Grove experienced many of the hardships inflicted by the Union armies on the home front populace throughout the Confederacy. Joseph T. Foy (1846-1918), son of Joseph Mumford, using skillful management, perseverance, and the 'lowly' peanut as the primary cash crop, restored the post-war economy of the plantation. A Community leader, he was influential in local government and played an important role in the construction of the Onslow and East Carolina Railroad. Poplar Grove remained a local point in the community under the ownership of the Foy family until its sale in 1971.
Joseph Mumford Foy personally selected the trees from which the lumber was cut to build the present manor house. The octagonal newel post, rails, and spindles found on the stairs are made from black walnut trees found on the plantation. There are 64 spindles, 64 windows, 64 stairs. The cornice moldings and medallions in the hall and front and back parlors are made from plaster and horsehair, much easier to construct than carved wood moldings. The rooms ceiling heights vary from 8 feet in the basement, 12 feet on the main floor and 10 feet upstairs. Carbide acetylene gas lamps provided illumination. The manor house is listed on the National Register for Historic Homes. It is built in a Greek Revival style of architecture which means the style is a revival of forms and ornaments of the architecture of ancient Greece. The house is a 4,284 square foot, two-story frame structure, sided with plain weatherboards set on a full raised brick basement. There is a low, hipped roof with two pairs of corbelled interior chimneys and a total of 12 fireplaces. Wooden gutters and downspouts concealed in columns took rain water to the cistern on the north of the house. This water was used for bathing and laundry. Drinking water was carried in from the pump outside. The porches are slanted enabling rainwater to drain. Heart pine was used in construction as the resin repels termites. The only building materials purchased were tin for the roof and glass for windows.
Summertime and the living is easy, or is it? The farmer worked hard all spring to get the ground prepared and get the crop in the ground. Now if he could just see the crop through summer to harvest without harm, without bugs eating everything, with enough rain but not too much, without devastating wind and hail storms, without locusts and fire and disease and birds and everything else that can spoil a crop. Summertime was the time to go hunting and live off the land, the spring crops had come and gone, the summer crops hadn't come in. PomegranatesWhen a successful crop did come in there was joy all around, and lots of work because food storage was a real concern. Corn could be dried, peas and beans hung in their shells for later, root crops put into the cool root cellar, apples and pears carefully dried in the sun. In the fall, when it turned cool, the pig took his last long walk and was made into sausages and hams to hang and cure in the smokehouse. The farm's cow was very important - milk for drinking and making into butter. And a yard of chickens always provided eggs and meat for the table.
Typical house furnishings included a kerosene lamp, laundry wash pot, washboard, wood for fuel and heat, clothes line, homemade tables, glossy, multi-colored oilcloth, wooden benches with peg legs, and a few dishes of different patterns and sizes, gourds for drinking, spoons and knives. The food safe in the kitchen had little holes punched in the tin front panels, allowing air to get inside but keeping the flies out. Typical kitchens might have a wood range, or open hearth with heavy cast iron pot with legs, slop bucket, flour barrel, bread trays, and coffee grinder. The tenant farmer probably had fewer possessions than all those in the above list, but many of the basics. Clothing might have included overalls, cotton shirts, 'union suits', pair of brogans and two pairs of socks, heavy, rough wool sweater, homemade Indian head, calico or gingham dresses with long sashes, heavy petticoats, bloomers, long black stockings, solid shoes. Other items included a small lard or honey bucket (used as lunch box), book sack made from striped ticking, and galvanized pails. If the tenant houses had ceilings, and if the walls were finished in either wood or plaster, the occupants were extremely lucky. In many cases tenant houses were only weather boarded and the rooms separated by a single wall. Even if the tenant farmer had an iron bedstead, his bedding was likely a 'pallet', a sack stuffed with sweet grass, hay or corn shucks. A corner of the room was sometimes curtained off for closet space where clothes were hung on rows of nails. Pine ladder-back chairs and rockers usually sat on either side of the hearth and maybe there was a linoleum rug. Curtains were homespun with reed pole as rod. On the porch you would find a water bucket and tin dipper, wash basin with 'sweet soap' and lye soap, and towels made from salt or flour sacks, hanging on a nail over which was placed a part of an old mirror.
Peas, peas, peas, peas, eatin' goober peas . . .
. . . goodness how delicious, eatin' goober peas'
Joseph Mumford Foy was the first man in North Carolina to grow peanuts on a large scale. He learned how from his slaves. Peanuts are a strange plant. They’re not really a nut but a bean. They grow on a vine likeThere's a fortune to be made in goobers a green bean, the only difference is that the peanut grows underground. What happens is the flower that grows on the vine buries itself in the dirt and that is where the peanut is formed. Some of the early names for peanuts are ground peas (because they grow underground) or goobers (which is the Swahili name for peanuts). Peanuts originated in South America, then went to Africa, then came to North America. Early planters George Washington Carver led a remarkable life. Born a slave in 1860, he traveled a difficult road to become a great and renowned chemist. Known in the scientific community as the 'Peanut Wizard', he developed over 300 uses and products from the peanut plant. Dr. Carver started his study of peanuts at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. He was the head of the Agricultural Department, then Director and Consulting Chemist. Booker T. Washington once referred to Professor Carver as 'one of the greatest men God ever made.' Some of the discoveries he made from the peanut were peanut butter, paint, salves, bleach, tar remover, wood The most modern of 1900s farm equipment filler, washing powder, metal polish, paper ink, plastics, shaving cream, rubbing oil, linoleum, shampoo, axle grease and others. Because of Professor Carver, more farmers in North Carolina started planting peanuts instead of cotton. Today, peanuts are North Carolina’s fifth largest cash crop.
Plantations were self-contained and self-sustaining. If you didn't make it or grow it or raise it, you probably did without it. Most things you will see during your visit to Poplar Grove were made, grown or raised here or near here. Poplar Grove Plantation had a sawmill, brickyard, grist mill, salt. Rest a while under an old tree works, turpentine still, and forge/blacksmith During the Civil War, a plank road went from the foot of Market Street to the county line. During the war Confederate artillery being pulled over it, damaged it beyond repair. The road was then paved with shells. The toll to use this road was 10¢. After the war, with no slaves, many plantation fields would go unplanted. Joe Foy had salt pans and a grist mill that he kept open. When freed, 63 of the 64 slaves remained on the plantation and worked. Many became tenant farmers. J. T. Foy kept his home together and followed the footsteps of his grandfather, James Foy. He married Nora Dozier who became postmaster. Nora would collect mail from the train depot and hand it out to the families. There were about a dozen or so families and sawmill workers in the Scotts Hill area who came here to pick up their mail.
The wool here was sheared from the sheep at Poplar Grove, usually once a year in April.The wool from a single, living sheep is called a fleece. Wool may be washed now, if it's very dirty, or it can be washed after being spun into yarn. If spun before it's washed you are 'working in the grease', this grease or lanolin helps stick the fibers together. If it has to be washed before spinning try to wash it lightly and not wash out all the grease. To prepare the fibers for spinning it must be carded. Using the cards, the wool fibers are carded (brushed) to straighten, remove knots and mats, and clean the wool. The carded wool is spun into yarn. The cotton here is grown on the plantation in our garden. Cotton is an annual plant that requires a long growing season and warm temperatures. Cotton was a major crop in North Carolina and production continues to increase. The cotton plant flowers in summer and as the flowers fade form a green pod called a cotton boll. Inside the boll cotton fibers grow until they burst open the boll and the fibers can be picked out of the boll. Cotton must have the seeds removed, a job that was done by hand, often by children, until the cotton gin was invented. It was not until after the cotton gin was available (1790s) that cotton became important, before that wool and linen were mostly used. After the seeds are removed the fibers are carded into batts which can then be spun into yarn. Cotton is harder to spin by hand than wool because the fibers are shorter and dryer.Amaranth - bugs love'm The hand-spun cotton yarn was not as strong as wool or linen. Until the 1850s there were no chemical or commercial dyes available, before that time dye colors were made from materials found in nature. Poplar Grove has a dye garden in front of the weaver's studio. Plants in the dye garden are best viewed during the summer months and are labeled. Some of the more common natural dyes are black walnut, onion skins, golden rod, indigo, marigold, madder. Most dye plants are boiled to extract the dye color and the plant material is strained off. Yarn is put into this dye bath and simmered.
Baskets were used for everything. There were baskets for food gathering, food storage, knitting and sewing baskets, baskets for the kitchen, baskets for transportation, little baskets and great big baskets. The tradition of basket making is one of the oldest known to man and one that continues today with ancient methods and materials. Basket making at one time was a common household skill. It required few tools and could be sold or traded to grocery stores. In the early 20th century many women took up the craft. For centuries people in every culture, from the most simple to the most sophisticated, have used baskets. They passed down their methods and styles of basket making from one generation to another. Today in many parts of the world, craftsmen still construct the same style baskets that served their culture for thousands of years. Early basket makers used the materials available and techniques their ancestors had used in the old country. The well known egg, melon and potato basket and other gathering baskets are direct descendants of the Irish, Welsh, Scottish and English. A Scandinavian weaver may use split pine and birch bark. African baskets reflect a rich profusion of growing things—bamboo, cane, raffia, borassus, palm and fine grasses whose flexibility allows for intricate patterns.
Blacksmiths were the most numerous craftsmen in North America. There were many specializations within the blacksmithing trade. There were locksmiths, gunsmiths, whitesmiths, shipsmiths, anvil and heavy-tool makers, spoonsmiths, cutlers, ferriers, nailers, and carriage-smiths, etc. The blacksmith that most people think of is the village smith. He shoed horses, repaired wagons and carriages … in fact he repaired all broken iron and steel items. His shop was the source of hardware that was made to fit specific applications, or what was not available from a local merchant. His shop was a busy place. Men talked and gossiped while waiting for their work to be done. Children hung around the smithy (blacksmith) and watched the smith and his apprentice forge the hot iron into its final shape. The smith and his helper worked steadily, moving from forge to anvil and back again to heat the iron and shape it. The clicking of the bellows and the gentle roar of the forge fire alternating with the ring of hammers and hot iron on the anvil was hypnotizing. Sometimes, there was bench work to be done, and the screech of a file on cold steel would grate on the ears. Horses waiting to be shod would stamp and whinny. The blacksmith here at the plantation spent most of his day repairing worn tools and equipment. At different times of the year plows, corn knives, and harrows needed sharpening. All year the draught animals had to kept trimmed and healthy. Years ago most people took their horses and mules to the smith if they were sick or lame. Most farm smiths were veterinarians, there were few true veterinarians that weren’t smiths in the country. By the middle of the 19th century most metal goods were purchased in hardware stores or through catalogues. By the Civil War, traditional smiths made axes, door latches, hinges, locks, and many blacksmith and wagon-wright tools. This left blacksmiths doing a lot of repair work. Smithies had their own smell too, smoke, dust and hot iron smells mingled with animal smells.
A significant portion of North Carolina’s history has been tied to the agricultural plantation system of growing cash crops where enslaved Africans did the toiling in the fields and household chores. Cotton, rice, tobacco, and indigo brought wealth to plantation owners. Poplar Grove’s history until the end of the American Civil War was no exception. At Poplar Grove, peanuts reigned supreme as a cash crop. Records indicate that the first African slaves may have arrived in present day North Carolina in 1526. Lucan Vasquez de Aylion, a Spanish explorer and slave trader, attempted to establish a colony at the mouth of the Cape Fear River. He came with five hundred colonists plus one hundred African slaves. The colony was a failure and most of the slaves escaped to live with various Indian tribes. This was the last time that Spain will attempt colonizing North Carolina. Instead they concentrated their efforts south of the Little River separating the two Carolinas. In 1662, a group of Puritans came south from Massachusetts with African slaves to the lowlands of the Cape Fear region with an eye on cattle production. Like the Spaniards before them, the colony was a failure and the colonists left, although they left the cattle and a message for future colonists to heed, “Avoid this area as unsuitable for settlement”. Perhaps the next group to visit the Cape Fear region never saw the message that had been posted on a tree. The new colonists from English Barbados arrived in May, 1664. With their slaves they moved further up the Cape Fear River some twenty miles from the ocean to the banks of Town Creeks in present day Brunswick County. Like previous attempts to settle the area, the colony was abandoned in 1667 due to friction with the Native American Indians. A new wave of colonists from the north, this time from Virginia, began crossing the present day border and filtering down into North Carolina. In 1663 the number of settlers had already exceeded five hundred and most of them had slaves. In the same year, King Charles II granted a huge tract of land south of Virginia to eight Lord Proprietors. The proprietors recruited colonists from Barbados who had slaves and a knowledge of the plantation system. Records show that in 1712, there were 800 slaves in the colony of North Carolina and over four thousand in present day South Carolina. As the plantation system expanded in the colonial Carolinas, the slave population began to explode. Enslaved people in North Carolina between 1730 and 1767 grew from 6,000 to 40,000. By the time of the first United States census taken in 1790, North Carolina’s population figures showed 100,572 African slaves in the state and 288,200 white citizens. The Cape Fear region by far had the greatest number of slaves. The Moore brothers came to the Cape Fear region in 1711 from South Carolina originally to fight the local Indian tribes. These tribes, the Tuscarora and Yemasse, were defeated in 1715. The defeat encouraged white settlement in the area. The brothers received land grants of 10,000 acres each along the Cape Fear River. One brother, Roger, established Orton as a rice-growing plantation with hundreds of African slaves working the fields. Over the next several years, other Moores were granted tens of thousands of acres of land in the Rocky Point area of present day Pender County as well as land along the coast near what is now Poplar Grove Plantation. These tracts of land were farmed using slave labor. As in modern day real estate speculation, portions of these coastal lands were sold off to numerous people over the years for profit. In 1795, 628 acres was sold to James Foy, Jr. He acquired adjoining land in 1798. A house and outbuildings including a gristmill, sawmill, blacksmith shop, a brick kiln, and turpentine still began to form what was to be called Poplar Grove Plantation. The 1800 census indicated that twenty-two African slaves either worked the land of Poplar Grove or were employed at skilled trades. These trades included a blacksmith, a miller, sawyer, turpentine still master, a cooper and a brick maker. Adults then passed these skills along to their children. Records indicate that the Foys bought slaves, but it does not appear that they sold slaves. Bills of purchase are on display in Poplar Grove’s Archival Room. James’s son, Joseph Mumford Foy built the present day manor home in 1850, after a fire destroyed the original plantation house. Joseph kept slave families together and allowed them to acquire goods and money. The 1850’s saw the Foys land rich and money poor especially during the bank crashes of that decade. Joseph Mumford Foy was loaned money by his slaves to pay the taxes on the property. The money was repaid to the slaves. On the eve of the American Civil War in 1861, Joseph Mumford Foy died. He had wished to free his slaves upon his death, but laws prevented that from officially happening. After 1835, in order to free a slave, the owner had to take the slave out of North Carolina. The slave was then not permitted to reenter the state. To circumvent the law, Joseph’s family unofficially freed the slaves living at Poplar Grove Plantation. The former slaves, now freemen, remained on the plantation until after the Civil War and farmed the land as tenant farmers. Their cluster of homes, about a mile south of the present day plantation, was called Foy Town, and its residents were known by the last names of Foy, Simmons, and Nixon.
The following names of slaves were listed in Joseph Mumford Foy’s will of 1861
John
Rachel
Leah
Jo
Winslow
Izah
Big Leah
Betsy
Kitty
Ruth
Isaac
Peter
Caroline
Abel
London
John
Alice
Katherine
Stella
Mary
Sarah
Mariah
Cornelia
Abby
Margaret
Alice
Ben
Alfred
Jo
William
Adaline
Jere
Paul
Henrietta
Bob
Sam
Lucy
Matilda
Toby
Fannie
Hannah
Snow
Daniel
Nathan
Ellen
Dave
Patsy
Dinky
Bill
Ida
Frank
Simon
Jim
Josh
Bernard
Jo Hannah
Jane
Sallie
Celia
During North Carolina’s colonial period and as a state following the Revolutionary War, white citizens, especially in the Cape Fear region, feared slave insurrections and invasion or an attack by foreign powers. The military often could not respond to both threats simultaneously. Consequently slave codes and slave patrols were established to act as a supplementary force to regulate the black population. The first slave code, which was enacted in 1715, was an attempt to define the social, economic, and physical place of African Americans by the ruling white society. Some conditions of this early slave code stated that: 1. A slave could not leave “master’s” property without a ticket or was to be “under escort” by a white citizen when off the land. 2. Runaway slaves who had gone missing for more than two months could be killed. 3. Freed slaves were required to leave the colony within a six-month period or were subject to re-enslavement for a period of five years. Other codes dealt with slaves drinking intoxicating beverages, the possession of weapons, and the assembly of slaves in groups of four or more. Monitored church services were exempted from this assembly clause. Wilmington in 1745 was given power by the general assembly of the colony to monitor and regulate the “buying or dealing with Negroes” bringing goods to market without proper certification from their owners or overseers in an attempt to regulate “Irregular Mobbs by Negroes”. As the Revolutionary War approached, even stricter ordinances were established by Wilmington. These included a curfew set for blacks at 10:00 PM. Slave wages were to be paid directly to their owners, and slaves could not hire themselves out without the owner’s permission. If a slave took lodging away from the owner’s property, it could be for no more than one day at a time. Free blacks fared somewhat better than their slave counterparts. In 1785, a code stated that a badge was to be worn on the left shoulder by both slave and free blacks for identity purposes. A free black also had to register with the town commissioners, pay a fee, and have the word FREE clearly lettered on the badge which was to be the size of a man’s hand. The anti-slavery attitudes of Quakers, Wesleyan Methodist, and others saw a liberalizing of slave codes in the early 19th century. But it was short lived due to the widespread fear of slave revolts that had occurred in other areas of the slaveholding South. Thus all humanizing legislation was overturned by 1835. Wilmington had a paid slave patrol as early as 1840. Generally the patrol covered an area of 10-12 square miles and operated between the hours of sundown, when the curfew bell was rung, and 1 AM. Eventually the hours were extended to dawn. Duties included stopping all blacks, whether slave or free, and examining their pass or papers. Violators were sent to jail, and the owners had to present themselves to officials and pay a fine to get them back. Regular inspections of homes took place searching for weapons hidden by slaves. All white citizens were expected to participate in the slave patrols. It was a thorny issue especially among many non-slaveholding whites. Failure to serve on a patrol could result in substantial fines. Over the years, slave patrol duties expanded so patrols also served as a town police force, arresting many drunken sailors, and as a fire watch. So successful were they at rounding up drunks that Wilmington had to build a larger jail in 1845.
Generally speaking, slave patrols were less effective in action than they were on paper. It was virtually impossible to maintain surveillance over the entire black population both day and night. There were just too many places to hide and too many hours of darkness. Daylight hours saw little checking of slaves for passes or papers in urban areas, and this was well known by the slave population. A runaway would therefore travel during the daytime and hide out during the cover of darkness hoping to receive help along the way from the Underground Railroad. The town of Greensboro was the center of the Underground Railroad for western and central North Carolina while Wilmington served the eastern portion of the state. Quaker ship owners, merchants and fishermen assisted as Railroad agents spiriting runaways to the north even as far as Canada.
After doing that cache and looking around the plantation home as much as we could we drove back to the coach and spent the afternoon there watching TV and logging caches. Well time to close so until next time we love and miss you all. Mom & Dad Dori & Dick
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