and mentioned that he wanted to sell 

 his house. 



Uncle Lou went on to New Bern, 

 where the market for salt mullet was 

 good. Back home, he couldn't stop 

 thinking of Smith Creek, which was 

 close to New Bern and had a good 

 harbor, lots of farmland and a river 

 jumping with mullet. 



Uncle Lou didn't have any 

 money. Instead, he convinced a 



nameplate from The Oriental, a federal 

 transport ship that had sunk off Bodie 

 Island during a storm in 1882. 



Interestingly, Oriental means "far 

 east." Although it's not clear if Aunt 

 Becky liked the name for this reason, 

 she liked it enough that she wrote it 

 down and suggested it when the town 

 needed a name. 



In those early days, Oriental's 

 lifeblood was the water, but it wasn't 



Overlooking the Neuse 



relative to move to Smith Creek with 

 him and buy the house. Later, Uncle 

 Lou convinced many of his friends to 

 move there too. 



By 1886, the town had grown and 

 it needed an official name for the post 

 office. Smithville was rejected 

 because the state already had one. 

 Uncle Lou's wife, called Aunt Becky, 

 had just been to a friend's house on 

 Roanoke Island. There she saw the 



sailboats that filled the horizon. People 

 plyed the water to catch and haul fish, 

 ship potatoes and cabbage from 

 Pamlico County farms, and mill and 

 ship the area's abundant lumber. 

 Norfolk and Southern steamships 

 carried freight and people to and from 

 New Bern and Norfolk. 



The John L. Roper Lumber Co. 

 was one of the biggest businesses in 

 town. In 1907, the company persuaded 



Norfolk and Southern to replace its 

 steamships with a railroad. People 

 came from the nearby communities of 

 Pamlico, Florence, Whortonsville, 

 Adams Creek and South River to trade. 



At one point, there were almost 

 twice as many people living in Oriental 

 as there are now. There were cotton 

 gins, boardinghouses, an ice plant, an 

 oyster cannery, a tile plant, a music 

 store, a drugstore, doctors' offices, 



barber shops, livery 

 stables and milli- 

 neries. 



Oriental had 

 the first electric 

 light company in 

 the county and the 

 first motorized 

 school bus in the 

 state. 



However, the 

 Roper mill burned 

 in 1913, the Depres- 

 sion hit, a series of 

 hurricanes struck 

 and refrigerated 

 trucks replaced 

 steamships and 

 railroad cars. By the 

 time the railroad 

 ceased operation in 

 the 1950s, most of 

 the people had left. 



For many 

 years, few new- 

 comers moved to 

 Oriental. "In the 

 '20s and '30s," 

 says Mason, "all 

 the young people 

 left to find jobs." 

 "In this 



county," agrees Gwaltney, "there 

 have been no jobs and no future for 

 the children." 



Today, there are the seafood 

 processing plants that opened in the 

 1950s, a few farms, some crabbers and 

 fishermen, the Hardee's that opened up 

 in nearby Bayboro and a Food Lion 

 coming to the county soon. 



But most jobs in Oriental stem 

 from its newest industry: sailing. 



6 JULY/AUGUST 1995 



