Wood was needed to fire 

 the boilers of the steamboats 

 that traveled the Black River. 

 Capitalizing on this need, river 

 residents chopped cords of wood, 

 leaving them stacked at 

 landings along the river. Signs 

 hung above the wood denoting 

 its price. When a steamer began 

 to run low on fuel, the captain 

 would tie up at one of landings 

 and all the deckhands and male 

 passengers would disembark to 

 help load the fuel. The captain 

 would leave behind a note 

 describing the amount of wood 

 taken, and several days later he 

 would receive a bill. If no stacks 

 of wood were to be found when 

 fuel ran low, the deckhands and 

 passengers would chop what was 

 needed from rii >erbank forests. 



nopoly expired after five years. 



Downriver at Point Caswell, 

 Paddison was cooking up another 

 Black River scheme. To bypass upriver 

 entanglements, he figured to build a 

 narrow-gauge railroad from Point 

 Caswell to Clinton, passing through the 

 heart of the forest that supplied vast 

 quantities of timber and turpentine. At 

 Point Caswell, the forestry products 

 would be offloaded from steam train to 

 steamboat for the downriver trip to 

 Wilmington. 



Paddison allowed his idea to lan- 

 guish for four years, then revived it 

 with a vigor in 1881. He spurred lead- 

 ing businessmen in Sampson and 

 Pender counties to solicit money for the 

 project. In February 1883, the N.C. 

 General Assembly issued a charter of 

 incorporation for the Wilmington, Point 

 Caswell and Clinton Railroad and 

 Steamboat Navigation Company. 



Although the railroad seemed a 

 certainty, a competitor, the Wilmington 

 and Weldon Railroad, approached 



Clinton businessmen about building a 

 spur line from its main tracks at War- 

 saw to Clinton. Seizing upon this pro- 

 posal, the people of Clinton reduced 

 their support for the Point Caswell 

 railroad. 



To fight his opponents, Paddison 

 cleared 10 miles of right-of-way at each 

 end of the proposed line. But the action 

 was to no avail as other supporters 

 began to shift their support to the 

 Warsaw-Clinton connection, which 

 was completed in 1886. Had Paddison 

 succeeded in his railroad-steamboat 

 line, undoubtedly Point Caswell would 

 thrive today and the history of the 

 lower Black River would have been 

 changed significantly. 



As Paddison began losing ground 

 on his railroad venture, he turned his 

 attention back to the river itself, once 

 again stamping his fingerprint on the 

 river's history by initiating a push to 

 improve navigation. 



In 1883, he took newly elected 

 U.S. Congressman Wharton J. Green 

 upriver aboard the steamer John 

 Dawson, pointing out the many impedi- 

 ments to travel along the way. After the 

 trip, the citizens of Bladen, Pender and 

 Sampson counties asked the congress- 

 man for an appropriation to clear the 

 river, citing an annual transport of 

 $750,000 in cotton, naval stores, tim- 

 ber, shingles and other commodities 

 and suggesting that improvements 

 could double that amount. 



In response to the citizens' re- 

 quests, Green sought an appropriation, 

 and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers 

 sent Capt. W.H. Bixby to survey the 

 Black River. His report provides in- 

 sight into the river and its commerce. 

 He writes: "The usefully navigable 

 portion of Black River extends 36 

 miles from its mouth ... up to Point 

 Caswell, a settlement of about 100 

 people." 



Bixby noted that steamers regu- 

 larly traveled between Point Caswell 

 and Wilmington but that travel above 

 Point Caswell to Lisbon or the small 

 Sampson County town of Clear Run 



was restricted to periods when river 

 waters ran high. Bixby also observed 

 that despite 15 years of steamer opera- 

 tion, most of the products transported 

 on the Black River were still carried 

 by raft. 



He counted 15 turpentine stills 

 lining the riverbanks and, in his five 

 days of survey, reported passing 

 620,000 feet of timber and 10,000 bar- 

 rels of rosin either in transport or await- 

 ing transport at landings. 



Bixby recommended improve- 

 ments to the river. First, he suggested 

 clearing and channelizing only the 

 lower river to Point Caswell. Then he 

 amended his recommendations to in- 

 clude improvements all the way to 

 Lisbon. In 1885, the federal govern- 

 ment approved the project at an esti- 

 mated cost of $33,500 and work was 

 begun in 1887. 



As companies schemed how to 



In 1891, a large freshet 

 sent the Black River beyond her 

 banks. All the low-lyuig land 

 was covered, and many people 

 had to be rescued by boat. D.J. 

 Black, one of the Black River's 

 famous steamboat captauu, 

 rode the flood from upriver 

 aboard his steamer Lisbon. At 

 places, the rivers width stretched 

 2 to 3 miles, and Black lost the 

 rivers main channel, finding 

 himself paddling over fields of 

 corn. Noticing people on the roof 

 of a flooded house, Black steered 

 the Lisbon to their rescue. Ai 

 he approached, one happy man 

 was heard to say, "For Lord's 

 sake! Yonder comes Noah's 

 A)*k. " From that time on, the 

 Lisbon was fondly nicknamed 

 Noah's Ark. With some help 

 from hL< newly rescued passen- 

 gers, Black navigated his 

 steamer back to the river. 



1 4 MARC HI APRIL 1994 



