I am a native North Carolinian, born in Beaufort. I moved to Burgaw when I was six, and lived there until tenth grade.
Then I moved to Rockingham where I finished high school. As you can see most of my early life was spent in eastern North Carolina, not quite in Onslow County, but surrounding it.
Since high school I've in Chapel Hill, Williamsburg, Virginia, Raleigh, Oxford, Mississippi, and Memphis, Tennessee, before returning back to North Carolina where I found employment here at Coastal Carolina Community College.
Several years ago, someone not in my immediate circle of family members, did a genealogical history of the James Family that included my father's line. What fascinated everyone in our family is that my father (one of thirteen children), who grew up in rural Pitt County, lived in basically the same geographical area as his earliest known decendents, who moved from Virginia to Pitt County in the 1730s (near Grindle Creek - if you know it - and there is no reason you should). Just over this past break, I did a free trial of Ancestry.com to see what else I could find. Ultimately, I was able to discover that my earliest known relative in North Carolina had arrived from Lakenham, England, to Virginia in the 1720s, while his father remained behind in England. I often wonder if they ever had a chance to communicate by letter, or just never saw or spoke to one another again? Why did this relative leave England - for a better opportunity? Access to land?
When I talk with my father and his experience growing up, what astounds me is that his early life was almost like someone living in the 1800s (not quite the 1700s). My father lived on a tobacco farm without indoor plumbing, where electricity was a new novelty, and where most food was grown in your own little patch of land (or butchered from among your own animals). His family did not take "vacations" (who could afford that- or leave the farm operation behind) except for swimming in the local mill pond or rivers nearby. My father mentioned that my grandmother (who died when I was one year old) went "to town" - that would be Greenville - maybe four or five times a year. I think she obviously traveled more in her later years, but as a working farm wife, the chores of everyday life (and all those children) probably kept her tied closely to the house. Sure, there was some new technology, but the farm work was very labor intensive, with extremely long days and tired bodies. The census records I explored stated that my grandfather had a 5th grade education, and my grandmother had an 8th grade education. But, back then, if you had a small farm, education was not the necessity it is now.
As the youngest of thirteen children, my father witnessed the colossal effect of World War II, technological innovation in farming, and the expansion of our national economy as older brothers went off to fight (and all of them returning), siblings left the farm for college, or different jobs. Even his sisters began to find some non-farm employment. One of the more fascinating stories my dad tells is that during World War II there was a German POW camp close to his home. Since my grandfather had several sons in service, he could go to the POW camp and request prisoners to come work on the family farm. My father, just a child at the time, remembers driving to the POW camp, and picking up a truckload of Germans, one whom could speak English. They worked on the farm for the day, sat under trees to eat lunch provided by my grandmother, and then were returned to the camp. My grandfather, a teetotaler, relented on one trip and broke down and bought the Germans a beer (against the camp rules) after they pulled into a B-B-Q joint and the Germans started yelling "Bier" "Bier." Surely war is something most of us can relate to, at least at the margins. What must it have been like for my father's family when several sons were away fighting at the height of World War II? What went through their minds when German POWs came to work on the farm?
Within my family's genealogy I also learned I had relatives who fought in the American Revolution, and in the Civil War (on the Confederate side), all as privates. They all returned safely from war. When searching Ancestry.com, I looked at census records and could not find any listing of slaveowning in my family's record (perhaps they were too poor)? (Also, keep in mind that only about 36% of white southerners owned slaves at the height of slavery). I did find one census listing where the household contained an apprentice, and he was white. Did other relatives own slaves? Did they have indentured servants? I do not know.
Again, after reading some of the family history, I left impressed by the consistency of the everyday mundane facts of life. I think today we would be incredibly bored if we had to go back in time, unless we were someone famous or really important. Most people lived honest lives of hard work, struggle, church on Sundays, and back to work again on Monday. Religion popped out as another theme in my family's history. One of my distant relatives was involved with Oak Grove Christian Church in the 1840s. My father and his family attended this same church. This past fall, my parents visited Oak Grove as it celebrated its 175th anniversary.
I guess for me, I find it both reassuring and also kind of geeky, from a historian's point of view, to realize that the places I visit now, to see relatives or drive through the countryside, were the same places I had relatives living over 200 years ago. Obviously many things have changed, but the land, the geography, much of this probably looks fairly similar to what they saw.
