Per Mr. James Wrenn, former board member of FCAB on March 14, 2022.
Today I was looking at Tarboro Southerner on microfilm and found this ad from Oct 27, 1866, page 3. This is ad by the Garrett Brothers putting the plantation up for sale, after emancipation of the enslaved.* It is interesting to note:
1. cotton was major crop in this plantation (600 acres), as Edgecombe was the #1 cotton producing county in NC. “white gold.”
2. “good framed cabins to accommodate 80 hand with their families.” So this was the slave cabins. 80 “hands” plus families is a lot of people.
3. stables for 50 mules.
4. barns to hold 2,500 barrels of corn
5. large cotton gin and “screw”, which would be a cotton press like the one on Town Common in Tarboro. Edgecombe County had at least 12 to 20 cotton presses in the county, reflective of the large plantations. Now teh one on Town Common is last one left in the state. But this indicates one was own the Garrett plantation.
6. And a large platform on the railroad, for shipping cotton.
7. Garretts were selling plantation because of financial loss from freeing of the enslaved.
*NOTE: The Thirteenth Amendment (Amendment XIII) to the US Constitution abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. The amendment was passed by Congress on January 31, 1865 and ratified by the required 27 of the then 36 states on December 6, 1865, and proclaimed on December 18. President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, effective on January 1, 1863, declared that the enslaved in Confederate-controlled areas were free.