by Edward Ellis, Special Correspondent
In the 1800s, it was common for newspaper articles to appear under pseudonyms. Editors mostly frowned on anonymity but when they knew the correspondent’s identity a pen name was okay. And truth be told, sometimes the mystery writer was the editor himself. We don’t know who authored a late 1854 letter to J. H. Muse, editor and publisher of The Newbern Journal. Under the sobriquet “MERCY,” he or she recounted his or her recent walk about the wide dirt streets downtown and “could not help noticing some very important improvements, which are now being made, as well as those already completed.”
Mercy “called promiscuously” [that is, casually or without planning] “in the new shipyard of the Messrs. Howard, and saw there a new set of ways,” [that is, a ship launching facility] “nearly completed, and of the most improved plan, for the purpose of hauling of vessels, by STEAM POWER. The engine which is now being put up is not equaled, perhaps, in this state for strength and permanency.”
[Howard’s Shipyard on the Trent River would later build and sell steamboats of its own.]
Howard’s was facing competition, we learn, from “our new-adopted fellow citizen, Mr. Stephen Fulford – a young knight of the broad axe, and champion of the chopping block” who had recently taken over “the old established Ship-yard” of the late and lamented Thomas Sparrow.
The wanderer next spied a new steam-mill of “our most enterprising citizen, John Blackwell.” The gizmo featured “the latest improved machinery for the purpose of splitting, cutting, slitting, tonguing, grooving, planing, jointing, edging and cyphering flooring and other boards.”
Next was “that multifarious” [that is, diversified] “factory at Union Point where they make cradles and coffins, bedsteads and blinds – turning mahogany and grinding meal all under the same roof.” All well and good except for the “nuisance” of its “loud piercing whistle” that leaves “locust startled out of their skins.”
A new barrel-making shop was busy at Dr. J. R. Justice’s “still-yard.” A “new Wind-mill” for corn grinding “has lately been erected on South Front Street by Mr. Spencer Rice, an industrious and ingenious mechanic.” The “Woolen Factory has received a large supply of spinning gear,” and Capt. [Joel] Henry’s newly-invented “Shuck Factory” machines would soon be turning out enough corn shuck upholstery to meet a fifty-ton order “from a firm in New York, a heavy dealer in this article.”
A place of busy-ness, indeed. The clandestine sightseer ends thus: “We wish them well, and a pleasant journey, moonlight nights and plenty of … MERCY.”
Craven County native Eddie Ellis is a journalist, writer and historian. He’s the author of New Bern History 101 and other works about the area’s rich heritage.
More at edwardellis.com