Gov. Morehead’s influence continues to resonate

Morehead City’s port is considerably smaller than its “sister port” in Wilmington, but the Morehead City facility was officially dedicated as North Carolina’s “first” state port on Aug. 14, 1952. 

(A dedication ceremony for Wilmington’s port occurred about a month later.)

The event in Morehead City was a big deal and historic occasion. State dignitaries and local officials rolled out the red carpet to welcome 82-year-old John Motley Morehead III to town to deliver keynote remarks at the Port of Morehead City ceremony.

He was the grandson of former North Carolina Gov. John Motley Morehead, who would become the namesake for a town that began to form in 1857. 

Establishment of the port here as well as the extension of the railroad from Goldsboro to the coast were masterminded by the former governor.

Indeed, Gov. Morehead became known as the “Father of Modern North Carolina” for driving industrialization and building infrastructure, especially railroads and improved waterways.

 A large crowd assembled in 1952 for the purpose of showing respect and paying tribute to John Motley Morehead III. He was a fairly famous guy himself, having attained great wealth as a chemical engineer, inventor and industrialist.

 

John Motley Morehead III (at right) is shown here with R. Gregg Cherry, North Carolina’s governor from 1945-49. 

One of his Morehead's early scientific discoveries was the development of a process to economically manufacture calcium carbide…leading to the formation of Union Carbide Corporation in 1917. 

(Union Carbide became a wholly owned subsidiary of Dow Chemical Company in 2001.)

As a philanthropist, John Motley Morehead III gave generously to his alma mater, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 

Graduating in the Class of 1891, he established the Morehead Foundation, which provided funding to launch the renowned Morehead Scholars Program as well as build Morehead Planetarium and the Genevieve B. Morehead Memorial Art Gallery on campus.

 

Additionally, John Motley Morehead III and Rufus Lenoir Patterson Jr. (a cousin, classmate and fraternity brother) presented the Morehead-Patterson Bell Tower to the university.

John Motley Morehead III told everyone who attended the 1952 ceremony at the Morehead City Port that he was proud to come to Morehead City to comment on his grandfather’s “heritage, dreams and fulfillment.”

He said: “As the ship channels are further deepened through the sandbars to the sea, the ports of Morehead City and Wilmington will become increasingly hopeful North Carolina centers of commerce, as a vital part in a more prosperous and peaceful world.”

Those treasured words have been modernized over time. In 2026, the mission of the North Carolina State Ports Authority is “to be the gateway to global markets and to enhance the economy of North Carolina by supporting and improving the state’s logistics network.”

 

In general terms, “a logistics network includes facilities, means of transport and processes that allow products to flow from the supplier to the final consumer.”

One reliable source tells us: “Logistics is of utmost importance in the present day, as it plays a crucial role in the smooth functioning of global trade, commerce and transportation.”

It’s good to know that “commerce” is still an essential word.

In 2023, the John Locke Foundation, based in Raleigh, commissioned the Reason Foundation of Los Angeles, Calif., to conduct an independent evaluation of the North Carolina state ports. 

The report was prepared by Jay Derr, a transportation policy analyst at Reason.

 

Derr said that the Morehead City and Wilmington ports “generate $16.1 billion in economic output for North Carolina.”

It’s important for policymakers to continue investing wisely in the state ports in order to enhance North Carolina’s competitive position, Derr said.

Former Gov. Morehead and John Motley Morehead III would be pleased to hear it.

Gov. W. Kerr Scott ‘found funds’ for N.C. ports in 1949

In 1924, a North Carolina Ports Commission was formed, effectively replacing the State Ship and Water Transportation Commission (SSWTC). The new commission was given the task of establishing port facilities for seagoing vessels.

A statewide bond referendum for $8.7 million to develop the facilities was placed on the ballot in November 1924 but failed to pass. The outcome was 40.8% voting in favor with 59.2% opposed. Lacking funding to accomplish its task, the Ports Commission literally folded up its tent and ceased to exist.

Despite the absence of a state ports program, Wilmington and Morehead City continued efforts to improve their respective facilities.

Historian Herbert W. Stanford III said the Morehead City port struggled to “attract much-needed business.”

“For years, the port’s main supporting commodity was mullet unloaded at its piers by fishing boats that netted the mullet in local waters. The railroad carried from the city two or three carloads of fish several days a week and became known as the ‘Mullet Line.’”

 

“There seemed to be reasonable assurance that commerce would develop…if the port’s facilities were enlarged,” Stanford said.

 “Subsequently, in 1933 a Morehead City Port Commission was formed (by the General Assembly) to investigate this possibility and study traffic potentials,” he said.

The commission was successful in securing a $400,000 loan from the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, a U.S. government-sponsored agency that had been established in 1932 by President Herbert Hoover.

The financing enabled construction of a 1,000-foot pier and a 32,000-square-foot terminal.

Still, “no import-export boom developed,” Stanford noted.

In 1945, the state legislature established the North Carolina State Ports Authority with responsibility for developing and improving harbors at Wilmington and Morehead to “benefit waterborne commerce.”

William Kerr Scott (went by Kerr, pronounced “car”) took the state by storm when he was North Carolina’s governor from 1949-53.

 

The late Philip Gerard, an author and professor of creative writing at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, said Gov. Scott accomplished some “amazing” things in just four years related to transportation, public education and public health.

Gov. Scott proposed the issue of $7.5 million in bonds for construction and improvement of the deepwater ports at Wilmington and Morehead City to handle oceangoing vessels. 

The legislature approved this measure in 1949 without a single dissenting vote.

“Remarkably, he (Gov. Scott) accomplishes all of this, raising only one tax: a penny per gallon of gas to fund roads. He leaves the state treasury with a surplus of $40 million – which gives him special pleasure, having been accused of attempting to bankrupt the state with overambitious plans,” Gerard said.

 Known as “The Squire of Haw River,” Gov. Scott enjoyed tremendous popularity, especially within farming communities. He called his supporters the “Branchhead Boys,” people who lived at the head of the branch or the head of the creek, and therefore, were “the most rural of the rural.”

 

The late Dr. Julian McIver Pleasants of Davidson, N.C., a retired history professor, said Gov. Scott “was the most controversial, polarizing…and successful North Carolina politician of his age – the most influential governor in the state’s history.”

“Two successful, progressive governors who knew Scott’s contributions well praised his work,” Dr. Pleasants said. “Jim Hunt (shown above) called Scott the state’s ‘political savior,’ and Terry Sanford (shown below) lauded Kerr Scott as the ‘Great Agrarian’ who put ‘a new pulse beat into the progressive heart of North Carolina.’”

 

Raleigh newspaper reporter John Simmons Fentress said former Gov. Scott was “stubborn as an Alamance mule and just as unpredictable.”

“Scott was essentially a needler, a provoker, a builder of fires under the foot-draggers and the indolent,” Fentress said.

N.C. coastal region once supported 4 ports of entry

For most of the colonial period, there were essentially four working ports of entry to serve maritime traffic within the territory that became North Carolina.

Operating under the authority of the Lords Proprietors, Gov. Charles Eden decreed Port Bath as the first official port in 1716. 

Located on Bath Creek, a tributary of the Pamlico River, in present-day Beaufort County, Bath is North Carolina’s oldest town, having formed in 1705. 

Initially, Port Bath served as a primary gateway for ships navigating through the Ocracoke Inlet.

Port Roanoke was located at Edenton in Chowan County near the western end of Albemarle Sound, near the confluence of the Roanoke and Chowan rivers. 

Interestingly, the settlement was originally known as “the Towne on Queen Anne’s Creek,” but was renamed as Edenton in 1722 as a tribute to Gov. Eden shortly after his death.

 

Port Beaufort in Carteret County was strategically located near Cape Lookout with ocean access through present-day Beaufort Inlet.

 

The fourth North Carolina port was established in 1726 and located on the lower Cape Fear River in Brunswick Town. In short order, Brunswick Town became the busiest of the four North Carolina ports.

 

When Wilmington was incorporated in 1739, the port facilities and customs collection office were moved there, about 10 miles upriver from Brunswick Town.

 

In the spring of 1776, a British raiding party burned Brunswick Town to the ground during the American Revolutionary War. The town was never rebuilt.

Combined, these four ports “were essential elements in the development of commerce in North Carolina,” wrote historians John Hairr and the late David Stick, coauthors of a 2006 essay titled “Ports and Harbors” published by NCPedia.

Although Beaufort was a vibrant community with maritime significance, former Gov. John Motley Morehead envisioned the establishment of a new port, one built from the ground up for industrial-scale shipping.

 In the 1850s, he selected Shepard’s Point on the Carteret County mainland as the preferred location, because it offered a better, deeper and wider channel to accommodate large ships.

A major factor was the construction of the Atlantic and North Carolina Railroad from Goldsboro to the coast, an extension of the North Carolina Railroad from Charlotte. 

It was here, at the end of the rail line, where a “bustling commerce center specifically designed for shipping” would blossom, Morehead proclaimed.

 Morehead and others purchased 600 acres and formed the Shepard Point Land Company. A town was laid out, and lots were sold in 1857, specifically to coincide with the arrival of the railroad in 1858. The settlement was chartered in 1861 and named Morehead City, in honor of John Motley Morehead.

Author Herbert W. Stanford III said the Civil War years, followed by the hurricane of 1879, “hampered development of the Morehead City port.” 

It was now obvious, Stanford said, that Morehead City was not going to meet the expectations of former Gov. Morehead and grow into the “New York City of the South.”

Stanford said the port facilities at Morehead City “fell into disrepair and disuse by the end of the 19th century. The port was closed to shipping in 1904.”

However, to Morehead City’s benefit, a movement for state-owned ports began to gain momentum in the state legislature during the 1920s, Stanford wrote.

Gov. Cameron A. Morrison established the State Ship and Water Transportation Commission (SSWTC) in 1923. Its purpose was to “study the possibility of establishing docks, wharves, terminals and other facilities to promote waterborne commerce.”

 

The SSWTC affirmed that localities lacked the resources to build the infrastructure, concluding that any initiative had to be state-driven and state-funded.

A look inside the N.C. Railroad board room:

Stockholders of the new North Carolina Railroad Company (NCRR) met in Salisbury in Rowan County on July 11, 1850, for the purpose of electing a board of directors.

Among those chosen to serve as directors were former North Carolina governors John Motley Morehead (shown above) of Greensboro in Guilford County and William Alexander Graham (shown below), who was born at Vesuvius Furnace near Lincolnton in Lincoln County.

 

Two of the newly elected directors were prominent local business leaders in Salisbury – John Isaac Shaver and John Bradley Lord (shown below). 

Also elected was Francis Levin Fries (shown below) of Winston-Salem in Forsyth County, an industrialist and building contractor there.

 

Two of the men who worked most closely with Morehead, touring the state to raise $1 million in private stock subscriptions, also became directors of the company. They were well-known politicians: Congressman John Adams Gilmer (shown above) of Greensboro and Judge Romulus Mitchell Saunders (shown below), who was born near Milton in Caswell County.

 

Eastern North Carolina was represented by directors Alonzo Thomas Jerkins of New Bern in Craven County and Dr. Armand John (A.J.) De Rosset of Wilmington in New Hanover County.

Jerkins, the son of a sea captain, began sailing commercial vessels between New Bern and the West Indies. He later turned his attention to land-based ventures and became a prosperous businessman. He was an incorporator of the Bank of Commerce in New Bern and became its president.

He also represented Craven County in the North Carolina House of Representatives.

Jerkins was instrumental in helping develop water transportation facilities. Besides having an interest in the Trent River Transportation Company, which ran a regular line of freight and passenger boats from the river’s mouth up to Trenton. He also held stock in the Neuse River Navigation Company, which owned and operated a steamship that ran between New Bern and Smithfield.

De Rosset graduated from Princeton University and completed his medical education at the University of Pennsylvania. At age 23, he opened a physician’s office in Wilmington.

 

Dr. De Rosset was a director of the Bank of Cape Fear for 37 years. He was also a major investor in both The Rockfish Manufacturing Company, a successful cotton mill established in Cumberland County, and the Wilmington and Weldon Railroad.

Rounding out the 10-member NCRR board was John Warwick Thomas, founder of Thomasville in Davidson County. (More on him later.)

The directors elected John Motley Morehead as NCRR’s first president.

The company hired Walter Gwynn (shown below) as chief engineer. A native of Jefferson County, W.Va., in the Shenandoah Valley, Gwynn graduated from the U.S. Military Academy and was assigned to help survey the route for the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O).

 

After completing his military service in 1832, Gwynn worked as chief engineer in charge of the construction of the Portsmouth and Roanoke Railroad. 

He specialized in conducting surveys for railroad and canal projects in Florida, North Carolina and Virginia.

Gwynn’s qualifications and accomplishments enabled him to establish “an international reputation” as the premier railroad engineer of his time.

The NCRR’s authorizing legislation specified that the railroad would connect Charlotte to Salisbury in the west and also connect Goldsboro to Raleigh in the east. 

But the location of the track between Salisbury and Raleigh, a distance of some 100 miles, was flexible – giving Gwynn’s survey teams some leeway.

A direct line from Salisbury to Raleigh runs through Randolph and Chatham counties (Asheboro, Siler City and Pittsboro).

 

Transportation historian Michael Sheehan of Chapel Hill reported: “Gwynn’s engineering survey showed that the Uwharrie and Caraway mountains near Asheboro would present a technical challenge that would be expensive to overcome.”

“These remnants of ancient coastal mountains reached a not-insubstantial elevation of 1,800 feet above sea level (compared to 315 feet at Raleigh), and the topography around them undulated dramatically. It was difficult terrain for railroad tracks.”

“From an engineering standpoint, a slightly longer route located farther north was a better choice. In general, the northern route presented less undulation in the terrain, and the river valleys there, closer to their headwaters, tended to be narrower and shallower.”

Historian J. D. Lewis of Little River, S.C., said that Gwynn’s survey teams determined that best alternative was “to go through Alamance and Orange counties to avoid the difficult terrain farther to the south.”

So, the path would have “a bulge” as it swung north passing through Lexington in Davidson County and Greensboro in Guilford County before leveling off and entering Alamance and Orange, Lewis commented.

 

A rail station was established at the highest point along the North Carolina Railroad, with an elevation of 939 feet avbove sea level. 

This was also the intersection of the rail line with the “Great Plank Road” – the Fayetteville and Western Plank Road – that stretched 129 miles from Fayetteville in Cumberland County to Bethania near Salem in Forsyth County.

The community that grew up here in Guilford County took the name High Point. 

Lewis also noted that the original survey called for a station to be built at a small village called Prattsburg, southeast of Hillsborough in Orange County. 

But, William N. Pratt, the local landowner, asked such an exorbitant price for his land that it was prudent to relocate the railroad two miles west” on land owned by Dr. Bartlett Leonidas Snipes Durham (shown below). Dr. Durham agreed to donate 4 acres of his property to NCRR.

 

“Durham’s Station became the nucleus of the later city and county seat,” Lewis said.

Local Durham historians say that Pratt owned a notorious pit stop on the Hillsborough-to-Raleigh Road at Prattsburg. It was a “disorderly house” where “evil-disposed persons” would gather for “drinking, tippling, playing at cards and other unlawful games, cursing, screaming, quarreling and otherwise misbehaving themselves.”

But Pratt was a shrewd businessman. When he had been approached by the railroad company, Pratt was fearful that the trains would frighten his customers’ horses. So, he set a high price. Too high of a price.

Prattsburg soon faded from the maps. The railroad allowed transport of tobacco, sparking Durham’s boom and contributing to the growth of the town. Durham’s Station was incorporated in 1869 as the City of Durham.

As for John Warwick Thomas, he was in the right place at the right time. His primary occupation was prospecting. He mined precious metals near Silver Hill in Davidson County.

Thomas entered local politics in 1831 and was elected to the state senate in 1842. He was instrumental in the passage of a bill in 1849 to build the North Carolina Railroad.

As the final route was determined to pass three miles north of his house, he subsequently bought property directly along the rail line. 

Thomas built a railroad depot as well as a general store and a gristmill. His son Lewis opened a hotel directly across from the depot, and Thomas put up cabins for workmen.

“Thomas’s little community became known as Thomas Depot,” reported the archivist at the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources (DNCR).

“The Town of Thomasville claims 1852 as its founding date. The Thomasville post office opened in 1853, and in 1857 the town was incorporated by the General Assembly.”

“Several new businesses moved into the town, including two shoemaking firms from Bush Hill in Randolph County. Thomas purchased the charter of Glen Anna Female Seminary, renamed it Thomas Female College, and moved the academy from its position near Lexington to a three-story brick building near his home in Thomasville in 1857,” the DNCR spokesperson said.

“Thomas also lured furniture manufacturers into the area, principally the Westmoreland and Whitehall families. The individuals provided the foundation for what later became Thomasville Furniture Industries.”

 

A Thomasville landmark is “the world’s largest Duncan Phyfe chair.” Sometimes called simply the “Big Chair,” it’s a 30-foot replica of an original design by the famous American designer Duncan Phyfe. 

Born near Loch Fannich, Scotland, he immigrated with his family to Albany, N.Y. New York, in 1784 and served as a cabinetmaker’s apprentice. Duncan Phyfe opened his own shop in New York City in 1791.

The old railroad depot in Thomasville is now a visitors center.