Three new highway signs mark James City community's boundaries

Jul 28, 2010 — Sun Journal (New Bern, N.C.)

Sue Book

Jul. 28, 2010 (McClatchy-Tribune Regional News delivered by Newstex) -- View more photos from the community gathering.

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JAMES CITY -- This 147-year-old community just over the Trent River from New Bern now has signs to mark parameters that originally made it the largest settlement of free black people in North Carolina.

Community residents, members of the James City Historical Organization led by Daisy English, and representatives from Mount Shiloh First Baptist Church, Jones AME Zion Chapel, True Vine Ministry, and Pilgrims Chapel Missionary Baptist Church sang and prayed as the first sign was set Tuesday afternoon.

Among those attending whose ancestors date back to the establishment of the Old James City were English, Michelle Forbes, Frances Foy, Alletha Daniels, Mabel Perez and Myrtle Downing.

Three green highway markers read "WELCOME TO JAMES CITY COMMUNITY FOUNDED 1863." The historical organization purchased the markers for $180 each.

The check for the markers was passed to N.C. Department of Transportation workers Jim Evans, Wesley Brazelton and Timmy Elam, part of the group that posts road signs on the 2,200 road miles from Cedar Island to James City.

As residents watched, the workers assembled signs manufactured in Greenville, dug the holes, and set the posts deep on the U.S. 70 East service road right of way by Fellowship Hall, on Scott Street just past its intersection with Williams Road, and on Old Cherry Point Road just before Vail Street.

"We're a group of very proud people," English said. "Our ancestors once lived in Old James City but never owned the property. We own the property and we're trying to keep James City history alive."

A 1981 North Carolina Division of Archives and History book of James City by Joe A. Mobley said the community of freedmen was named for the Rev. Horace James, an army chaplain from Massachusetts who dealt with the growing number of blacks coming into the city --a total of 10,782 in 1865 -- and who subsequently became assistant commissioner of the Freedman's Bureau in North Carolina.

James established James Plantation School, which held classes in the day and evening for children and adults. The book, published with funding from the May Gordon Latham Kellenberger Historical Foundation of New Bern, said James City "remained a stronghold of black self-determination."

James argued for individual property ownership at the Trent River settlement in an 1865 letter in which he said "there seems to be no prospect of this village being abandoned and its people scattered out into the country unless it is done by force."

Sue Book can be reached at 252-635-5665 or sbook@freedomenc.com.

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