INDUSTRIAL AND AGRICULTURAL
DEVELOPMENT OF
MARTIN COUNTY
Marlin County’s ivy-covcred courthouse. In the rear is a modern annex
which was built recently.
Til
К
history of Marlin County by
that name goes bark to 1774, two
years before the Declaration of
Indc|4-ndcnce. and on.- year before the
Mecklenburg Declaration, when the
county was formed from Halifax and
Tyrrell. It was given its name in
recognition of «losinh Martin, last
of the royal governors of North
Carolina, and history records it so,
but there are some who say it would
have lost the name, so unpopular was
Governor Martin, had not another
Martin, but no kin.
сото
into the
Governor’s office in 17S2. There are
old records, too. which aver that
Martin County won Id have had an¬
other name hut for the popularity of
Alexander Martin.
Then again, in colonial days the
county was called St. Martin’» Parish,
and even that far back the county
scat was a hamlet called Shenarky,
which afterwards had its name
chanced to Williamston, in honor of
William Williams, a prominent
citizen of the section. One may
speculate, if one chooses, as to whether
Shcnarkey was another spelling of
Skewnrkcy. which latter name is pro¬
le
served in the famous old Skewnrkcy
Church near Williamston.
The first courthouse erected in the
county was “on the land of John
Griffin. on Conoho Creek," but John
Griffin owned three farms, all on
Conoho Greek, and Warren Higgs,
Williamston's historian, will tell you
that he has searched in vain for any
trace of that first building. It was
erected in 1775 and fell into such
disrepair that it was abandoned and
a second courthouse was crect.-d some
sixty years later, on “the brink of the
hill.” That building burned in 1SS5
sonic say 1*84 — and for the next
three or four years the second ffoor
of S. It. Higgs’ drugstore building was
used as a courthouse, until the present
structure was erected about 1887.
Fortunately, most of the l>»>ks
ami pa|K*rs were saved from the fire,
and with few exceptions the records
are intact from 1774 to the present;
in fact, the record of deeds i~ com¬
plete from the year 1722.
Marlin County is essentially,
though not entirely, an agricultural
county, and was among the first in
the state to be recognized as a
■'hahinced county.” Diversified farm¬
ing came into its own here many years
before the importance of such a sys¬
tem was generally recognized, and
until now the balance is fairly well
set between tobacco, peanuts, soy¬
beans and the production of lumber.
Cotton has lost, something of its
glamor and perhaps a thousand bales
per year will cover the production of
that staple now.
Tobacco leads the procession. In
common with many other eastern
counties, Martin owes the genesis of
its tobacco e*|>erienco to Granville
‘.'on nty. It was some forty-five years
ago that Roger S. Critcher moved
from Oxford, settled with his family
oil the Kelvin Grove farm near Wil-
liamston, and began the raising of
tobacco. It was more or less an ex¬
periment with him, for he was not
sure that the land was adapted to the
culture of the weed. The te»t proved
successful, the following year a larger
acreage was planted, and from that
time on successive years have seen
increasingly larger crops, until today
Martin County is one of the chief
tobacco counties of the eastern belt.
Martin County farmers take pride
in the production of all their crops,
and have never been satisfied just to
"get by." Not only arc they jealous
of the texture of the leaf, and watchful
of the financial return, but it is re¬
lated that some years ago a Griffin
Town-hip farmer was so anxious that
his tobacco should be unexcelled on
the market that he would iron the
leaves out with a regular hot iron on
an ironing hoard before taking it to
the sales warehouse. Whether he re¬
ceived a premium for the beauty and
smoothness» of it is not recorded.
In the early years of tobacco rais¬
ing in the eastern counties there were
no warehouses nearby for the sale of
the stuff, and the crop was usually
shipped by freight, or hauled by mule
and wagon, to Oxford, Durham, Hen¬
derson, mid Greensboro. Sometimes
ii was sent ns far as Danville, Vn.
Those days are away back in the past,
however, and now there are no more
lively and up-to-the-minute tobacco
