A HISTORIAN'S 



COAST 



disappearing rural black communities, were 

 founded in the same time period. Goshen's 

 residents believed their community deserved 

 historic recognition and saw the building of 

 the sewage plant as "an act of desecration," as 

 one lady there told me. They also feared that 

 the waste odors and runoff would pollute their 

 forests and streams. 



When I travel through the small towns 

 and remote byways of tidewater North 

 Carolina I see a growing number of commu- 

 nities like Goshen that seem to be in the way 

 of "progress." As more and more people 

 move to the Carolina coast, and as growing 

 numbers of tourists visit our beaches, many 

 older, usually poor communities are threat- 

 ened by the construction of sewage plants, 

 highways, bridges, and waste-disposal sites. 

 No place seems sacred. And to me, as a 

 historian, many of these developments seem 

 bent on erasing the past. 



Goshen citizens hoped that if I could help 

 them document the historical significance of 

 their community, they might be able to 

 pressure Pollocksville's leaders into not 

 building the sewage plant there. I knew this 

 would not be easy. 



When I drove the dirt road to pick up 

 Hattie Brown at her farmhouse, I already 

 knew that finding historical documents on the 

 African American past was exceedingly 

 difficult. 



On my way to Goshen, I had stopped at 

 the North Carolina State Archives in Raleigh 

 to search for written records on the 

 community's past. I had also paused to 

 ransack the Jones County Courthouse in 

 Trenton. I had found a few relevant deeds, an 

 old list of local slaves, and a few other 

 documents, but not much. I had no idea how 

 much I would learn in Goshen — not just 

 about coastal history, but about the meaning of 

 history and what is worth preserving. 



In a pine grove by the branch, Hattie 

 Brown and I walked among Goshen's dead. 

 A soft-spoken 67-year-old, she recalled all the 

 departed, whether buried in unmarked graves 

 or under marble headstones. She had at least a 

 few words for every soul. I listened while she 

 wove together the threads of Goshen's past 

 for me. 



Hattie Brown learned Goshen's history 

 from her grandmother Luvenia Smith IjDffin. 

 A midwife and lay doctor, Luvenia forbade 

 her descendants to forget Goshen's past. 

 What Hattie Brown told me, Luvenia had 

 taught her. 



Bom a slave in 1 848, Luvenia grew up 

 on Richard Oldfield's plantation on the White 

 Oak River, about 10 miles south of Goshen. 

 Her father, Luke Smith, rebelled against the 

 wealthy cotton planter. He secretly gardened 

 in the nearby woods. He taught Luvenia to 

 read by slipping books from Oldfield's library. 

 He led clandestine prayer meetings. He also 

 ran away many times. Luvenia saw him 

 maimed with a bullwhip yet still disappear 

 back into the woods. 



In 1863, after Union troops drove 

 Confederate forces out of most coastal towns, 

 Luke Smith and his wife, Melissa, led their 

 children to freedom. To reach Union-occupied 

 New Bern, they crossed two rivers and the 

 Lakes Pocosin — now part of Croatan 

 National Forest. It was a wilderness crawling 

 with cottonmouths and alligators. Fourteen- 

 year-old Luvenia barely kept up and nearly 

 drowned fording the Trent River. 



Luvenia later married William Loftin, a 

 former slave from Lenoir County. They 

 sharecropped at first. But in the 1870s, they 

 joined the Jordans, the Bests, and other Loftins 

 in purchasing a remote, swampy woodland 

 called "the Goshen tract." Wild plums, not 

 pines, shaded the graveyard in those days. 



Together, the families cleared the land by 

 hand, grubbing enough earth for cotton, com, 

 and sweet potato fields. They raised hogs. 

 They mortgaged everything to buy seed and a 

 mule. A single crop failure could have left 

 them homeless. 



Few locales posed more dangers to black 

 landowners than Jones County. During 

 Reconstruction, the Ku Klux Klan terrorized 

 the county's black majority. Years later, the 

 county's most famous son, future U.S. Sen. 

 Furnifold Simmons, led the state's white- 

 supremacy movement, which took the right to 

 vote away from black citizens across North 

 Carolina. I had noticed that a portrait of Sen. 

 Simmons still graced the main entrance to the 

 Jones County Courthouse. 



When I travel through the small 

 towns and remote byways of 

 tidewater North Carolina, I see 

 a growing number of communities 

 like Goshen that seem to be in the 

 way of "progress. " As more and more 

 people move to the Carolina coast, 

 and as growing numbers of tourists 

 visit our beaches, many older, 

 usually poor communities are 

 threatened by the construction of 

 sewage plants, highways, bridges, 

 and waste-disposal sites. No place 

 seems sacred. And to me, as a 

 historian, many of these develop- 

 ments seem bent on erasing the past. 



Amid that racial strife, Goshen was a rare 

 sanctuary. Reached only by an old Indian trail, 

 the community was very secluded. Luvenia 

 freely roamed the forest for her herbal cures. 

 The children played without inhibition. And at 

 Christmas, the people wandered by every home 

 to share good food and glad tidings. Everybody 

 knew everybody, and the community looked 

 out for its own. Only when walking past 

 Pollocksville to the Garnett Heights school did 

 Goshen's children suffer racial taunts. 



After Luvenia Loftin' s death in 1941, her 

 descendants struggled to hold on to Goshen. 

 Like all small farmers, they suffered from bad 

 weather, feeble mules, and low prices. But Jim 

 Crow also prohibited them from challenging 

 corrupt merchants and produce buyers. And the 

 county sheriff showed little mercy to black 

 farmers delinquent in their tax payments. Hattie 

 Brown remembered all too well when her 

 cousin Laura's family was dispossessed; the 

 family stayed for years in a drafty tobacco bam, 

 and Laura soon died of pneumonia. 



We walked past small plastic signs 

 marking the evicted family's graves. "They 

 lived with so many heartaches," Hattie Brown 

 sighed. 



28 HOLIDAY 2000 



