Part of the down-town business section of the village of Aurora.
Down Around Aurora
Wliore (hey produce Irish potatoes, corn,
soybeans and several other crops. This
year, the potato situation has taken a
rather strange turn.
THE town of Aurora is located in
Beaufort County. It is in the
lower part of the county, not far
from South Creek, Campbell’s
Creek, Idalia, and Royal — if that
information means anything to
you.
Aurora has changed as little as
any town in North Carolina. To
prove it. look at these census fig¬
ures:
1910 census gave Aurora . 449
1920 census . 524
1930 census . 429
1940 census 492
When you think of High Point,
Sdu should think of furniture:
urlington, hosiery; Wallace,
strawberries, and Wilson, tobacco
market.
When you think of Aurora, you
should immediately think of Irish
potatoes. You'll find more Irish
potatoes grown within a ra¬
dius of two miles of Aurora than
you can find in any radius of simi¬
lar size in the eastern part of the
United States.
For years it has been the princi¬
pal cash crop for the farmers of
that section. Some years, they’ve
to . • : •,
By CARL GOERCII
made a killing; like back in 1917
and 1918, when potatoes were
selling for $14.50 a barrel. In other
years, when the price has been
around SI. 50 a barrel, they’ve tak¬
en a beating.
They raise some corn, soy beans,
cotton, cabbage, and other crops,
but when it comes to ready money,
they depend upon Irish potatoes
to take care of them.
And that’s exactly what Irish po¬
tatoes have been doing for a long,
long time.
About thirty or thirty-five years
ago, Aurora was quite a bustling
little business center. That was
before the coming of good roads.
People living within a radius of
ten miles of the town did their
shopping there. At the same time,
merchants of New Bern and Wash¬
ington vied with each other in the
effort to get this trade. With the
building of concrete highways
they were finally successful in do¬
ing it. Today, the retail business of
Aurora is much less than it used
to be.
“My father used to run a store
near Idalia," Mr. Bonner Thomp¬
son told me the other day, "and I
believe he did more business in
his store forty years ago than all
of the merchants in Aurora com¬
bined do today.”
It's been the same story with
countless other small towns in all
sections of the state. Aurora is no
exception.
There are four outstanding family
names in Aurora — Bonner, Litch¬
field, Thompson, and Hooker. Folks
down there trace kinship only as
far as first cousin. After that, fam¬
ily ties become so involved that
practically everybody in Aurora
can claim kin to somebody else, so
they just forget about second cous¬
ins and third cousins: they don't
count.
They're a part of Beaufort
County, and yet they’re not a part
of Beaufort County: they’re really
a small empire to themselves.
They’re self-sustaining and they
make a right good living, year in
THE STATE. June 21. 1947
