Pine products from the “Turpentine Woods” were in high demand for everything from sealing leaks in sailing ships, preserving wood, making leather and cloth water repellant, for tar to grease axels, lamp oil to making medicines for almost any ailment. Turpentine was even used to sterilize wounds and amputations. It is still used today in products to treat a variety of skin ailments and is used in many pain relief products such as Vick’s Vapor Rub and Pinee. Tar is used to treat lumber and other building products such as tarpaper and turpentine is in most cleaning products. Hot tar was even used to stop bleeding. The tall pine trees produce so many products it would be impossible to name them all.
Joseph John (Jack) Pender owned hundreds of acres of this valuable timber at Pender’s Crossroads in Wilson County, N. C. He and his father before him had worked and harvested the turpentine, tar and by-products from land he had purchased and from woodland that had come into his possession through a Land Grant from the Crown.
The King of England (King Charles 11) granted land to only eight men in North Carolina. These eight men were rewarded for their loyalty and for their help in insuring that he be reinstated as King.
They set up offices and hired agents who then took applications and granted plots of land to hundreds or perhaps thousands of individuals who paid fees. The Pender land grant was not directly from the King but was through an agent of one of the eight loyalists to King Charles II. The Pender Land Grant was for more than a thousand acres of woodland.
Most of the trees on the Pender land grant plot were tall pines and the woodland was to be used for turpentine production. I do not have information on the date of the Land Grant but am told it may be available at the North Carolina Archives. Many of these documents have been lost.
Jack Pender and his father produced and sold turpentine for years. That changed around 1840 when the Wilmington and Weldon Railroad was completed and timber was in high demand. The Railroad Depot nearest Pender’s Crossroads was originally located several miles from Elm City at a location called Joyner’s Depot. The landowners near Joyner’s Depot refused to sell the land needed for growth so the depot was relocated to Toisnot. The name was later changed to Elm City.
The Wilmington and Weldon Railroad was the longest track in the world at that time (Google). It had 161.5 miles of track and it came right through the small town of Elm City. The Wilmington and Weldon Line connected with the Goldsboro to Wilmington line and with the Norfolk Line as well as connecting with railroad lines throughout the North, South and Southwest. Prior to the completion of this railroad it had not been possible to ship large amounts of timber from Pender’s Crossroads. The Penders took advantage of the new shipping by rail and all but abandoned the turpentine production. They started cutting and shipping the much sought after heart pine timber. Construction was happening all over the country and heart pine timber was in high demand. Jack Pender insisted on being paid for the timber mostly in gold. This is how he came to acquire large amounts of gold. He was selling timber off the land grant property and off property he had purchased.
The Civil War caused a slowdown with the timber business for several years. During the Civil War Jack Pender did ship grain and swine for use by the army. After the Civil War was over the timber business ramped up for several years. Pender was also raising livestock and he planted corn, wheat, rye, oats, barley, beans and some cotton. Most of the cotton was used on the farm. About 1884 the demand for cotton was falling as was the price but the demand for tobacco was growing and the price was rising. Keron Pender (Jack Pender’s widow), Tom Wiggins and Thad Pender made a decision to cut production of cotton by 50 per cent and start planting tobacco. The problem was that the Penders had no experience in growing tobacco. They employed the expertise of Joe or James Petway.
Jack Pender died in1882 and his widow, Keron Wilkins Pender owned the property until she gave it to Tom Wiggins. Tom Wiggins concentrated on farming and the timber business was all but abandoned. He mostly sold timber that was cut to clear land for farming. Both of Jack Pender’s sons had died. Cadmus was killed in battle early in the Civil War. His older son, Thaddeus, was injured in the War and was disabled until his death in 1886.
I am not certain of the date the land was transferred to Tom Wiggins but Keron Pender (Jack’s widow) was still living when the County filed a lawsuit against Tom Wiggin’s inheritance in the early 1890s reclaiming the portion of the farm that had been given to the Penders by Land Grant. Keron died in 1897. This indicates that the land was transferred to Wiggins on or before the early 1890s when the lawsuits were filed against Wiggins’s inheritance. They were not filed against the Penders but against Wiggins so it stands to reason that the land had to have been transferred. These lawsuits were expensive and every year for several years the legal fees and other costs took a large portion of Tom Wiggins’s profits from the farming operation.
Tom Wiggins told the story of Keron Wilkins Pender, Jack’s widow, being friends with Eleanor Kearny Carr, the wife of N. C. Governor Elias Carr. Keron contacted her friend and asked for help or advice from the Governor in dealing with these lawsuits. Governor Carr sent Wiggins a message that the lawsuits were a County matter and the only thing he may be able to do was to have the trial moved to Edgecombe County. He said they would wear him down and the expenses of the lawsuits would be devastating both physically and financially. His best advice was to settle. My great grandfather did settle and he lost most of the Land Grant portion of the property but was able to hold on to approximately a thousand acres of land that Jack Pender had purchased. It is my understanding that Tom Wiggins was not singled out but that these lawsuits were filed all over the country during that period. Some lands had been deserted and were reclaimed. Some of the lawsuits have been highly contested and some are still controversial especially lands occupied by municipalities and Native Americans. For example, there was lawsuit filed by a small group of Native Americans just outside the Town of Elm City a few years ago.
The piney woods around Pender's Crossroads are still thriving and producing timber. Turpentine products are in every home and the railroad through Elm City guides approximately 50 trains through the small town every day.
Montress Greene
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