James Battle Averitt 



barrels in 1847 to more than 120,000 a 

 decade later, every 50,000-barrel 

 increase in output came at the expense 

 of another 250,000 acres of piney 

 woods. Even turpentine orchards as 

 large as the Rich Lands eventually 

 succumbed to ax and roundshave. 



During the turpentining boom, 

 planters such as the Aviretts, with heavy 

 investments in slaves and land, rushed to 

 box new longleaf stands. It was a self- 

 destructive spiral downward. Many 

 reportedly collected only the first 

 season's pine sap, the so-called "virgin 

 dip," because it earned the highest 

 prices. High winds, disease and pine 



beetles ravaged the weakened trees. And 

 controlled burns and free-grazing hogs 

 consumed young seedlings, depriving 

 the forest of a chance to regenerate. 



Confronted by dying forests, many 

 turpentiners abandoned North Carolina. 

 They shifted the naval stores industry's 

 center to the pine barrens of South 

 Carolina and Georgia, then onto the 

 uplands of Alabama, Mississippi and 

 Louisiana, and finally to eastern Texas. 

 Depression hit the piney woods of 

 Onslow County, and the population 

 plummeted 30 percent between 1820 

 and 1860. Many of John Avirett's 

 closest friends survived by diversifying 



into railroads, shipping or banking. 

 Avirett did not. He was a man of the 

 earth, and he clung tenaciously — 

 and fatally — to the Rich Lands. 



Personal tragedy hastened his 

 downfall. In February of 1851, the 

 Rich Lands manor house burned to 

 the ground. Not long after, he lost two 

 daughters during childbirth. The fresh 

 graves and dead longleafs must have 

 made the Rich Lands seem like a cursed 

 place in the 1850s. Yet only nostalgia, 

 and not a word of these tragedies, is 

 found in The Old Plantation. 



The final straw came in 1857. John 

 Avirett, by then a pitiful figure, sold the 

 family's new house and 10,000 acres for 

 $25,000. He abdicated another 10,000 

 acres "together with the turpentine 

 distilleries and fixtures" for $20,000. 

 He must have been deeply in debt. Not 

 only did he sell the family homeplace 

 and ancestral graveyard, but he soon 

 relocated to Goldsboro, where he was 

 virtually penniless by 1860. He seems 

 to have died in or about 1863. Local 

 legend says that he perished in a 

 poorhouse or insane asylum. 



I have returned to the Rich Lands 

 often since Dennis first shared its secrets 

 with me. I like to walk to Alum Spring, 

 such a quiet, restful spot, and when I am 

 there I often wonder why James Avirett 

 blamed the Civil War for his family's 

 ruin. I imagine that he never recovered 

 from the shock of losing the Rich Lands 

 in 1857. He had to blame some greater 

 power than a dwindling forest. But I also 

 suspect that Avirett wanted to glorify his 

 father and all the old Southern planters. 

 He wanted, most of all, to help the world 

 forget what they had done to the South, 

 to the land and all its people. □ 



David Cecelski is a historian at 



North Carolina- 

 Chapel Hill's 

 Southern Oral 

 History Pro- 

 gram and 

 a regular 

 columnist for 

 Coastwatch. 



24 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1997 



