History of Johnston County

[Taken from Thomas J. Lassiter and Wingate Lassiter, Johnston County: 1746-1996 (Privately printed, 1996); and Durwood Barbour and Todd Johnson, Images of America: Johnston County, NC (Dover, NH: Arcadia Publishing Company, 1997)]

Prehistoric Residents 

The Tuscaroras, a Iroquoian-speaking tribe, flourished here until the second decade of the 18th century. They were defeated in a bloody war with European colonists in 1713, after which most Tuscaroras fled to New York where they became the sixth nation in the Iroquois confederation. Those allowed to remain in the Carolina colony were placed on a reservation in Bertie County, but many of these later followed their fellow tribesmen to New York. Tuscarora descendants still live on a reservation near Niagara Falls where much of their history and culture is kept alive.

Socio-Economic Development 

 Johnston County was created in 1746 from Craven County and named in honor of Gabriel Johnston, NC's royal governor. It originally contained most of what is now Wake, Wayne, Greene, and Lenoir Counties and part of Wilson.

The first European and African settlers came from coastal NC and the tidewater areas of Virginia and Maryland, many travelling along the Green Path, an old Indian trade route named by an early Anglican minister named Roger Green. These early settlers were primarily subsistence farmers who grew little more than was required to feed and clothe their families. Some made profits by raising large herds of swine and cattle which they drove to markets in Virginia. A few grew tobacco which they hauled on wagons to Virginia or shipped down the Neuse River to New Bern, and from there to Norfolk.

Smithfield, the county seat, became important to inland trade in North Carolina because it was the westernmost navigable point on the Neuse for freight-carrying vessels. In 1770 the colonial assembly attempted to boost North Carolina's tobacco trade by erecting a warehouse near Smithfield for receiving and storing tobacco before it was shipped to Virginia. Nonetheless, it would be another century and a quarter before this product would gain the attention of Johnston's commercial farmers.

Following the introduction of Eli Whitney's gin in Johnston County around 1804, cotton gradually became the county's leading money crop. Corn was also produced for market, although profits were small in comparison to the white fleecy staple. Before the 1850s poor roads leading to distant markets were a deterent to commercial farming. The completion of the 223-mile North Carolina Railroad in 1856 placed Johnston County inside the prosperous Piedmont Crescent between Goldsboro and Charlotte and meant an eventual shift from subsistence farming to market-driven agriculture. In addition to boosting cotton and grain productions, the railroad spurred growth in the turpentine and lumber industries and gave rise to towns at Princeton, Pine Level, Selma, and Clayton, as well as a thriving industrial village at Wilson's Mills, in the 1860s and 70s.

During the Civil War, Johnstonians saw some 1,500 of their sons, husbands, fathers, and brothers go off to fight. Almost a third of these men died in service, and many of those returning suffered from physical disabilities. Union forces sacked and plundered their way through Johnston County near the end of the war in March and April 1865, leaving food supplies and livestock dramatically depleted. Emancipation of slaves and political turmoil further exacerbated the social and economic tensions that would not diminish significantly until the turn of the 20th century. In 1868 a new state constitution would bring into being Johnston's first townships: "Bentonsville," Beulah, Boon Hill, Clayton, Elevation, Ingrams, Meadow, O'Neals, Pleasant Grove, Selma, Smithfield, and Wilders. Between 1887 and 1913 parts of these would be taken to form Wilson's Mills, Cleveland, Banner, Pine Level, and Micro.

In 1886 the Wilmington and Weldon Railroad completed a second major line through Johnston County which the Atlantic Coastline Railroad soon acquired. Called the "Short-Cut" from Wilson to Fayetteville, it provided quicker travel from the north into South Carolina than the previous route which passed through Goldsboro and Wilmington.. The towns of Kenly, Micro, Four Oaks, and Benson grew up along this line.

In the 1880s Selma pharmacist Lunsford Richardson reportedly concocted a salve for treating colds and pneumonia. He later moved to Greensboro and began marketing it as Vicks VapoRub, named in honor of his brother-in-law, Dr. Joshua Vick, a Selma physician.

In addition to being the birthplace of the VapoRub, Selma gained importance in the late 1880s as the junction of the North Carolina and Atlantic Coastline rail lines . This left Johnston County poised for unprecedented commercial and industrial growth.

A depression in 1893 and a resulting plummet in cotton prices forced many local farmers to look for another money crop. The success of bright leaf tobacco growers in the piedmont areas of North Carolina and Virginia soon began to catch on in Johnston and other eastern North Carolina counties in the 1890s to the extent that a market for the leaf was established in Smithfield in 1898. The county's first bank, by no coincidence, was also established that year. Within a few years cotton mills had been built and put in operation in Smithfield, Clayton, and Selma, and telephone lines were extended to practically every town. Within a couple of decades Johnston townsfolk would have electric lights and running water. It was a time of great optimism for those who had wealth and those who aspired to it. The array of stately homes in both town and country, brick stores, paved streets, schools, and churches of the 1920s had certainly reached a level higher than those of only a generation earlier.

In 1908 Johnston County gained the distinction of "BannerWhiskey County" when its voters led the state in opposing statewide prohibition. Despite their opposition, the measure passed, keeping law enforcement officials in a constant battle with alcohol producers, sellers, and consumers for the next 25 years.

World War I sent some 1,000 young Johnstonians into military service, about 50 of whom paid the supreme sacrifice. Though it displaced manpower, the war also further boosted the local economy by bringing a surge, albeit short-lived, in cotton and tobacco prices. The resulting prosperity fostered a progressive spirit across the county and state that brought revolutionary changes in education and transportation.

When the postwar boom put extra money in many local pockets, those funds were spent mostly on automobiles. Ford Models A and T were the most affordable, hence the most popular. Merchants and other businessmen throughout the state soon realized that in order to get people to drive into town more often they needed better roads, so their friends in the state legislature of 1921 authorized a $50-million bond issue for statewide road construction. As a result, two paved state highways came through Johnston. An east-west N. C. 10 (later rerouted to become U. S. 70) came through Princeton, Pine Level, Selma, Smithfield, and Clayton, and a north-south N. C. 22 (rerouted in 1935 to become U. S. 301) passed through Kenly, Micro, Selma, Smithfield, Four Oaks, and Benson. Towns soon began paving streets, and businesses boomed as never before.

Despite good fortune in commercial centers, farmers in the 1920s were suffering under a postwar agricultural depression that brought dramatic fluctuations in cotton and tobacco prices. According to the U. S. Census Bureau, the number of mortgaged farms in the county grew from 793 in 1925 to 1,124 in 1930. Farms operated by tenants also jumped from an already high 51 per cent in 1920 to 59 per cent in 1930. Cotton farmers tried to make up for their losses by overproducing, a practice that only served to drive market prices even lower.

The stock market crash of 1929 and Great Depression that followed intensified the hard times farmers were already experiencing. Most banks closed, and wealthy families in practically every town saw their fortunes literally disappear. The boll weevil joined forces with federal crop controls in dethroning King Cotton in Johnston County. While many farmers then turned to tobacco, market prices for the golden leaf remained low through the 1930s. Nevertheless, a combination of federal programs, conservatism, and firmly entrenched interdependence among families and neighborhoods saw people through this difficult era and prepared them for yet another trying time.

In 1941, as the economy gained strength and U. S. involvement in World War II was imminent, a Johnston County girl named Ava Lavinia Gardner was propelled to Hollywood stardom after an errand clerk for Metro Goldwyn Mayer saw her picture hanging in her brother-in-law's photography studio in New York. This internationally known Johnstonian's career would span five decades, ending with her untimely death in 1990. She is buried in Smithfield.

World War II sent an astonishing 7,000 Johnston County men and women into military service, at least 140 of whom died in service. The war also displaced many others who left for war-related jobs in cities. Those left at home faced the challenges of keeping farms, businesses, schools, churches, and other institutions and organizations running, all the while coping with rationing and other exigencies of war.

A March 1942 munitions truck explosion on Highway 301 between Smithfield and Selma brought the war close to home in its early stages. Seven people were killed, more than a hundred were injured, and several nearby businesses were destroyed. The tragedy is referred to as the "Catch-Me-Eye" Explosion, named for a nearby tavern, tourist cabin, and service station complex which was levelled by the explosion.

Smithfield's annual Farmer's Day celebration on August 15, 1945 turned out to be "the most celebrated day in Johnston County history," as county historians Tom and Wingate Lassiter point out. During the previous evening, President Truman had announced the Japanese surrender and the end of war. Those who lived through the Great Depression and the World War would no doubt agree with the Lassiters' statement that it was truly "the most defining moment" in the county's history.

Following the war many soldiers returned home to family farms. Within a few years, however, farming operations were becoming increasingly mechanized, causing a loss of farm jobs. There was a corresponding decline in Johnston's population, which dropped from 65,906 in 1950 to 62,936 in 1960. The county's alarmed business leaders responded by recruiting new industries such as Jerold Corporation, a garment manufacturer which came to Smithfield in 1954, and Shallcross Manufacturing Company, an electronic-assembly operation from Pennsylvania that set up shop in Selma in 1958. Other big-name industries followed in the 1960s and 70s, and there has been steady industrial growth since that time. Two interstate highways completed through Johnston County, I-95 in 1960 and I-40 in 1990, have created a thriving tourist trade.

With the state's largest number of farms and highest total farm income, Johnston County is still a predominantly agricultural and rural county. Agri-business has supplanted the family farms which were once the county's mainstay, but there are still a considerable number of farms which several generations have owned for a century or more.

Politics 

Members of the Democratic Party dominated Johnston's local political landscape for most of the 20th century, although Republicans gained control of county government briefly in the years 1924-1926 and again during 1928-1930. Republicans have enjoyed a resurgence of power in the late 1990s, gaining control of the county Board of Education in 1996 and the Board of County Commissioners in 1998.

From Reconstruction until 1968, all presidential candidates carrying Johnston County were Democrats, except Coolidge (1924) and Hoover (1928). George Wallace, champion foe of desegregation, carried the county in 1968 as the impending forced integration of Johnston County's public schools brought racial tensions to a climax. With the exception of Jimmy Carter in 1976, Republicans have carried the county in every presidential election since 1972.

The first African-American on record to hold elected office in the county was Smith Brooks, Smithfield town commissioner during Reconstruction. The first woman to hold elected office was Luma McLamb, Republican Register of Deeds from 1928 to 1932. In 1969 25-year-old teacher Mack Sowell became the first African-American elected to public office in the 20th century when Selma voters made him a town councilman. Eleanor Creech, a Democrat, became the first woman elected to the Board of County Commissioners in 1992. In 1998 Democrat Dorothy Johnson won a seat on the county Board of Education, making her the first African-American elected to a countywide office.

Religion 

Baptists and Anglicans organized the first churches in the county in the 1750s and 60s. Methodists began establishing churches in the county following the Great Revival at the beginning of the 19th century. When Baptists divided over missions and masonic membership in the 1820s, most Johnstonians sided with the anti-mission, or Primitive, Baptists. Missionary Baptists did not gain a stronghold in Johnston until the late 19th century, when Presbyterians and Free Will Baptists also began to flourish. Catholics, Episcopalians, and Pentecostals organized in the county during the early part of the 20th century. Today there are some 300 churches in Johnston, most of which are racially segregated.

Education 

The first public schools were built in the 1840s after state enabling legislation allowed counties to adopt taxes for "common schools." However, many areas of the county did not have schools until Governor Charles B. Aycock's school-building campaign at the turn of the 20th century. Several private academies prepared students for college and careers in teaching and business before the state established public high schools for whites in 1907. The first high school for African-Americans was founded in 1914, with the first graduating class in 1921.

In 1920 Johnston had 99 schools for whites and 35 for blacks, most of which were housed in ill-equipped wooden buildings with one or two teachers. A local committee controlled each school, and special taxes approved at the district level dictated the size and quality of each school. When County School Superintendent H. B. Marrow took office in 1922, he set out to bridge the gaps between whites and blacks and between town and country in the public educational system. In only a decade he was able to oversee not only the largest school-building campaign in the county's history but also the abandonment of autonomous districts in favor of a county school system that could more equally distribute educational resources.

Federal mandates for racial integration and the need for a technical institute in Johnston County to promote industrial growth led to consolidation of 18 high schools into 5 in the late 1960s. Johnston Technical Institute (now Johnston Community College) was established in 1969, the same year South Johnston and Smithfield-Selma high schools opened.

A crisis in school building needs brought by population growth in western Johnston County led voters to approve a $50 million bond issue, the largest in the county's history.

Page last updated on:  March 15, 2023