North Carolina has a pair of ‘places’ named ‘Columbus’

Here’s a good Columbus Day story about the two Columbuses of North Carolina.

First, Columbus County. It was created in 1808 in southeastern North Carolina and borders South Carolina. In the Tar Heel State, it bumps up against Brunswick, Bladen, Pender and Robeson counties. 

As one might expect, Columbus County was named after the Italian explorer Christopher Columbus who sailed toward America in 1492.

 

Interesting environmental features of Columbus County are Lake Waccamaw and Green Swamp, as well as the Waccamaw, Cape Fear and Lumber rivers.

 

“Discover one of the most beautiful parts of North Carolina,” said historian Jerry Dale “J.D.” Lewis Jr. of Little River, S.C. “Columbus County is blessed with uncommon natural beauty. Wild scenic rivers teem with wildlife as they wind through old cypress, pines and the beautiful flora and fauna of the coastal plain.” 

Lewis said that the first written record about Columbus County is attributed to William Bartram of Kingsessing, Pa. (now part of Philadelphia). 

Beginning in 1734, brothers William and John Bartram traveled about the territory that is now Columbus County collecting plants for their farm. They established the first botanic garden in colonial America, according to Lewis. 

In 1765, British King George III named John Bartram as the “King’s Botanist for North America.” Bartram sent seeds by the boxful back to London, introducing many North American trees and flowers into cultivation in Europe.

King George III

Whiteville is the Columbus County seat. The town was laid out in 1810 on James B. White’s land after he served as the first state senator from Columbus County. Originally known as White’s Crossing, the community’s name was later changed to Whiteville. 

On the Columbus County events calendar, we missed out on the Fair Bluff Watermelon Festival; it’s held annually on the fourth Saturday in July.

 

Coming up soon, though, on Oct. 28 is the North Carolina Yam Festival in Tabor City. This year’s theme is: “I Yam What I Yam.”

 

In the springtime, Chadbourn hosts the North Carolina Strawberry Festival. The dates for the 2024 events are April 30-May 4.

 

The town’s strawberry culture began in 1895, when Joseph Addison Brown, a merchant-farmer and state senator, launched an ambitious “agricultural development recruitment project.” 

Although much of the vast forest around Chadbourn had been harvested, Brown saw “opportunity in clearing and draining cut-over timber land for farming.” He experimented with strawberries and found the crop grew exceptionally well. 

Brown developed the idea of marketing Chadbourn as the “Sunny South Colony,” offering inexpensive land to economically distressed farmers in the Midwest. 

Advertisements were placed with the Farm, Field and Fireside publication, based in Chicago, for a “Chadbourn Excursion” in 1896 to bring train cars of Midwestern farmers down to experience the Sunny South Colony with its “desirable climate and fertile soil.” 

An estimated 160 families hopped aboard to make the trip. Many chose to relocate to Chadbourn and began to cultivate strawberries. Chadbourn became the “strawberry capital of the world.”

 

In 1907, 180 railroad carloads of strawberries, all of which had been harvested between sunrise and sunset, requiring 15,000 workers, were moved by rail from Chadbourn to points all over the country, the largest one-day shipment of strawberries ever.

 

There’s only one Chadbourn in the United States. (In 1962, the eighth grade class at Westside High School in Chadbourn did the research.) The town takes its name from James Harmon Chadbourn of Wilmington, whose family was in the lumber and railroad businesses.

 

Next, we’ll look in on the Town of Columbus in Polk County, N.C.