A HISTORIAN'S 



COAST 



Goshen's Land 



You shall live in the region of Goshen 

 and be near me — you, your children 

 and grandchildren, your flocks and 

 herds, and all you have. 

 — Genesis 45:10 



A] 



; I drive east on Highway 

 58, the last landmark before the 

 community of Goshen is the E. E. Bell 

 farm. A long avenue of oaks and cedars 

 veils an antebellum manor house with 

 classical revival columns. Now on the 

 National Register of Historic Places, the 

 2,000-acre cotton plantation once 

 belonged to James C. Bryan, Jones 

 County's largest planter. The main house 

 is best known for having a crystal 

 chandelier that once hung in the 

 Confederate White House in Richmond, 

 Virginia. The farm's cotton fields crowd 

 Goshen against the Trent River and a 

 little stream called Goshen Branch. 



People in Goshen invited me there 

 as a historian because the town of 

 Pollocksville, a mile east, intended to 

 build its sewage-treatment plant in this 

 African American farming community. 

 The sewage plant would spray its sludge 

 only a few feet away from the Goshen 

 cemetery and would take some of the last 

 black-owned farmland in Jones County. 

 Goshen was also one of the black 

 communities settled immediately after 

 the Civil War. The more famous town of 

 Princeville, 70 miles north of Goshen, 

 was the first incorporated African 

 American town in the United States, but 

 Goshen and a number of other, mostly 



Continued 



By David Cecelski 



Hattie Brown learned Goshen history from her grandmother and is determined to keep the stoiy alive. 



COASTWATCH 27 



