DISCOVERING POOR TOWN
ON THE WORLDWIDE WEB

© 2001 James L. Sullins

(In the Roanoke-Chowan News-Herald)

Surfing the net is a new phenomenon, not practiced by all, but those who have the computer and inclination understand electronic surfing can yield surprising results. Like when a web page electronically unfolded itself on my computer to reveal an aged black-and-white photo of a signpost reading "Poor Town."

Scrolling down the page, another black-and-white shows a depression-era rural family, dressed for the picture-taking, posed in a tobacco field. The subjects are the Pearce family of Poor Town, North Carolina, one of whom, being held by his mother, is James David Pearce, today surely one of the most mature proprietors of a 21st century Internet website.

Poor Town has little identity today. It's at the spot where Early Station Road meets Route 42 on the highway from Ahoskie to Aulander. When Pearce was born there in the 1920s, Poor Town was a settlement of a few farm families scratching out a living. Today, there are several businesses, a small subdivision, a trash collection point and the radio station.

Poor Town has likely reached the pinnacle of its development, but if you look and imagine carefully, you still can sense the place Jim Pearce remembers and writes about with humor and warmth.

When he was seven, Pearce's family moved to a house near the cemetery on the St. John's road, a place he recalls as Donoway Heights, a name given to the area by Merle Vaughan and Alton Holloman. Staying there until just before his 18th birthday, he later moved to Murfreesboro where he lived until 1950. That year, he moved to Raleigh where he has stayed since, having been gone from the Roanoke-Chowan area for over 50 years. However, the website Pearce has created is rich with memories and history of the land of his birth, signaling a nostalgia of the most wonderful texture.

Pearce spent a career in the newspaper business. He worked production and editing at the old afternoon daily The Raleigh Times, so you won't be surprised to learn he's a pretty fair writer, with a fine memory for things commonplace a long time ago, but wonderful to remember today.

His website is an electronic book rich with stories and recollections of Hertford and Bertie counties.

Consider this excerpt from an article called "I'm not from 'round here, I'm from Millennium."

"The Prohibition Era was that time in U.S. history when a law was passed that said Americans would no longer buy, sell or drink alcohol. Since the law only prohibited and did nothing to alleviate, the thirst prevailed and gave rise to a thriving cottage industry in rural neighborhoods. This in turn gave rise to busier days and more income for deputy sheriffs.

"At small newspapers ...... hand typesetting wasn't the easiest task and 'standing heads' were headlines that were set into type and never distributed back into the cases because they almost certainly were expected to be needed again for the next edition.

"The most-used 'standing head' at The Hertford County Herald was 'Liquor Stills Captured This Week,' under which was dutifully recorded the location, proprietor, and the materials that were the objects of the deputies' ax-work that week."

When prohibition ended, he writes, "Hertford County, dominated by big Ahoskie with its Baptists and Methodists, voted 'dry.' Bertie, with smaller towns more widely separated, voted 'wet.'

"Bertie put its first liquor store right up against its northern border, in a field just outside the 'dry' town of Ahoskie, and it did a booming business."

Reading another of Pearce's stories revealed an error from a previous column featuring Carl Castello of Powellsville. Castello told me about the narrow-gauge train that ran from Ahoskie to Windsor. Quoting Carl, I referred to that train as the Walker Push, but Pearce's story about it corrects my misunderstanding. It was jokingly called the Walk-and-Push, a nickname for the Wellington and Powellsville railroad. Pearce's writing provides the history of that little train, from its founding in the early 1900s to its demise during mid-century.

Pearce writes to me: "I loved the Chowan River country and was sorry I had to leave 50 years ago, because I couldn't feed my family there. Since I left, I have returned often to canoe just about every inch of the Chowan and its tributaries above Holiday Island. I love to write, and I have been determined all my life that when I had time (I retired 12 years ago) I was going to write every word I could about the swamp towns as I remembered them......"

Jim Pearce kept his promise to himself, and we're the secondary beneficiaries of his touching tales about our home region.