The Four Half & Half Towns
kysoriown is divided every sort of
way; no spring' at Spring Hope; a
Republican ulio founded a town and
dug a well; the story of eight towns.
Edgecombe and Nash geographical¬
ly contend for four towns — Rocky
Mount, Battlcboro. Whitakers and
Sharpsburg. The latter town is also
partially claimed by Wilson County.
And Rocky Mount is divided every
sort of way. It not only lies in two
counties, but also in two state sena¬
torial districts, two congressional dis¬
tricts. two judicial districts and two
highway districts. Having thus to do
business with so many different agen¬
cies, the town itself has developed intra¬
city unity and considerable diplomatic
skill.
Really it should be Rocky Mound
for the slight elevation on the Tar
River where there were some boul¬
ders. Here was the mill, post office
and church. But in 1845, the town
took up its name and moved two miles
cast to the new railway tracks. At that
time, the town was all in Edgecombe.
When the line was resurveyed. be¬
cause the counties disputed responsi¬
bility for a bridge, it split the ACL
right between the tracks. Later the
right of way was double-tracked on
the Edgecombe side, and for once
the town’s equal division was thrown
out of kilter. Nash was a half-railway,
and Edgecombe a railway and a half.
The precise division of Rocky
Mount has led to some Jckyll-Hydc sit¬
uations for the townspeople. For
instance, until the latest General As¬
sembly, bingo was illegal on the Nash
side of town, legal on the Edgecombe
side (site of the fair). The town is
patrolled by two sets of deputies, each
on their side of the tracks.
The city, with attractive suburbs, is
somewhat sprawling. Rocky Mount's
main street occupies the railway right
of way. This valuable property was
acquired by lease when Mayor R. R.
Gay signed a 100-year contract with
the railway at SI per year. It gives the
town a tremendous thoroughfare, if you
measure from store front to store front,
but much of the intervening space, of
course, is in trackage. The imposing
street contains few imposing buildings.
10
By lll/BERT BUNN
A dish ranking next to barbecue in
Nash Is hrunsuick stew. Here it Is be¬
ing prepared for a farm party on the
Watson farm. — (Hemmer Photo).
The town's skyscraper is the People’s
Bank, a five-story building, and we
counted only one other with more than
three stories, this making Rocky
Mount the squattiest town for its size
that we know of.
The town was small during the Civil
War, but was such an important ship¬
ping and manufacturing center that
a force of Union Cavalry was sent
from Washington, N. C. to destroy it in
July 1863. The raid was eminently
successful and the mill, railway yards
and other facilities were burned. Nev¬
ertheless, the little town, with 300
population, ambitiously incorporated
in 1867, with Benjamin H. Bunn as
the first mayor.
It grew with exasperating slowness,
and in 1890 counted only 810 persons.
But that was the year Rocky Mount
was to take on the definite flavor of
the eastern Carolina tobacco market
town. The first tobacco market auction
warehouse market in Nash had started
at Battlcboro by T. P. Braswell and
Sons in 1885. This market lasted one
day. According to one historian, “the
inexperienced force got all tangled up,
and the tickets and books were never
straightened out." In 1887, an attempt
was made to open a market in Rocky
Mount, but it didn’t “do so well."
There were no banks, according to
a story by Slim Kendall of Greensboro,
and the early warehousemen would go
to the stores and bars and ask the pro¬
prietors to hold their cash in town.
These routine visits on behalf of the
market were usually marked by a so¬
ciable drink or two, and before the
delegation got around to all the dozen
bars and other places, warehouse work¬
ers often were so happy that sales
would have to be postponed. A con¬
temporary’ said that the auctioneer oc¬
casionally would get so tuned up on
these visitations that all business would
halt while the customers formed a com¬
mittee to gel him sobered up.
Competition was fierce. Henderson
and Oxford warehousemen hired men
with powerful lungs to stand outside
the Rocky Mount warehouse doors and
yell to customers how much more they
could get for their tobacco elsewhere.
This must have been a highly hazard¬
ous vocation. But in 1890, Capt. J. O.
Gravely and S. S. Berger joined forces
and established a "permanent" mar¬
ket, and from then on out the town
developed. P. G. Vestal and Buck Da¬
vis were other pioneer warehousemen.
A booklet of 1892 (Rocky Mount
Improvement and Manufacturing Co.)
heralded the change. "Rocky Mount
has been in existence for many years,
but until two years ago, it was asleep,
dozing like a lazy old cat. Two years
ago, some of the people awakened,
saw the wealth all around them, and
began gathering it in.” The booklet
advises the reader to “come to Rocky
Mount and grow rich with the town;”
and "come to Rocky Mount, go into
business and get wealthy."
Some did. Some already were there.
Such as R. H. Ricks, a confederate
veteran, went from fanning into many
THE STATE. NOVCMBtH 15. 1952
