Collecting turpentine from a notched tree 



you can practically see the Rich Lands 

 as it was 150 years ago: the fine manor 

 house, the slave quarters, the distilleries, 

 the picnics at Alum Spring and the great 

 piney woods itself. No aspect of Rich 

 Lands life or turpentining seems to 

 escape him. 



Yet Avirett does not tell all. I 

 discovered that behind The Old Planta- 

 tion is an untold saga, a mystery far 

 more intriguing than the book itself. In 

 reality, Avirett' s flattering portrait of the 

 Rich Lands conceals a stunning tale of 

 ecological ruin and personal tragedy. It 

 is a story of nostalgia and deceit that 

 goes to the heart of how we remember 

 the Old South today. 



The longleaf pine, Palus palustris, 

 once defined the American South as 

 distinctively as the tall-grass prairie set 

 apart the Great Plains. The longleaf 

 forest covered 130 million acres in a 

 100-mile swath from Tidewater Virginia 



to East Texas. Carolina colonists 

 distilled the longleaf s crude sap 

 (turpentine) into "spirits of turpentine" 

 and rosin, and they produced tar and 

 pitch by smoldering longleaf wood in 

 earthen kilns. These products were 

 known as naval stores because they 

 played a critical role in caulking ships 

 and preserving hemp lines. 



By 1840, North Carolina produced 

 96 percent of the turpentine, tar and 

 rosin in the United States. The vast 

 majority came from 12 coastal counties, 

 including Onslow. Wilmington exported 

 more naval stores than any other port in 

 the world. After prices rose steeply with 

 the removal of British duties on U.S. 

 turpentine in 1846, Wilmington doubled 

 in population and became the state's 

 largest city. 



New uses for turpentine as a 

 solvent, paint ingredient and illuminant 

 raised the naval stores industry to 

 even greater heights. The number of 



Wilmington distilleries skyrocketed 

 from two in 1841 to more than 20 in 

 1852, from one in Fayetteville to 32. 

 Naval stores became the third most 

 important agricultural commodity 

 produced in the South, exceeded by 

 only cotton and tobacco. 



The Aviretts stood at the pinnacle 

 of naval stores society. An Avirett of 

 German Huguenot descent had settled 

 in Onslow County by 1747, and the 

 family grew prosperous enough by 

 1791 to host President George Wash- 

 ington during his Southern tour. John 

 Alfred Avirett, born in or about 1797, 

 gradually built a turpentine empire that 

 included a 20,000-acre longleaf 

 orchard, 125 slaves and a magnificent 

 three-story manor house. He was also 

 Onslow County sheriff for two 

 decades. 



His son James, the author of The 

 Old Plantation, was born at the Rich 

 Lands in 1835. He became an Episco- 

 palian priest and served as a Confeder- 

 ate chaplain during the Civil War. 

 After Appomattox, he directed a 

 Virginia seminary and was later rector 

 for several churches in New York. 

 When he returned to North Carolina in 

 1 894, he often spoke at Confederate 

 veterans days and soldiers reunions, 

 where he extolled the virtues of 

 antebellum life at the Rich Lands. 

 Before he died in 1912, he gained a 

 measure of fame for reputedly being 

 the oldest living Confederate chaplain. 



In The Old Plantation, Avirett 

 vividly recalls the making of naval 

 stores at the Rich Lands. It occurred 

 almost in a world unto itself. The piney 

 woods — or turpentine orchard — ran 

 all the way from the New River to the 

 White Oak pocosin. The distilling 

 center was located at Catherine's Lake, 

 about three miles from the main house. 

 It included two distilleries, cooperage 

 shops and a glue house for making 

 barrels, as well as mule stables, 

 barracks, storage sheds and a windmill. 



A slave named Philip oversaw the 

 production of about 30,000 barrels of 

 turpentine a year. He was second in 

 command to John Avirett himself in 



22 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1997 



