Hyde County Garden of Eden
MY HOST DILATES ON PROHIBITION It was my pleasure to eat Thanksgiving dinner with my friend, Mr. W.B. SWINDELL, for many years the leading merchant of this county. He is a close observer of men and events. No one is better posted on the conditions of this county than this man whose every heart throb is in kindness for his fellow creature. Our conversation drifted on the temperance question. He says that it is a mistaken idea for men to believe that the sale of whiskey helps a town. Hyde is a dry county and Elizabeth City will not lose one dollar's worth of trade by abolishing its bar rooms. "The captains of our sailing vessels are disgusted with the idea of transporting jugs and they prefer to trade with a dry town", said my host. He said that the people of Hyde County preferred to trade with Elizabeth City and as a trading point it was superior to either Washington of Newberne. "Your merchants need not entertain fear that the Hyde County trade will be diminished after the first of January. Instead of bringing refilled whiskey jugs, our captains will bring more provisions from your town", thus continued my friend. ANXIOUS TO TRADE I find that the people of this county are anxious to trade with Elizabeth City. It has only been in very recent years that Elizabeth City has been getting any trade from Hyde. The bulk of trade went to Washington and Newberne. Our merchants have been slowly but surely making a conquest of this territory by a marked superiority of goods and prices as compared with the merchants of Newberne and Washington. The people of Hyde have been quick to recognize the superior advantages our town offers the trading public and it may reasonably be expected that with the proper transportation facilities,
Elizabeth City will get practically all of this Hyde County trade. HYDE COUNTY WANTS TRANSPORTATION I find the people practically unanimous in a desire for proper transportation with Elizabeth City. In this connection I was talking with Mr. E.L. GIBBS, a prominent merchant and planter of Middleton. He says that the people here would meet the businessmen of Elizabeth City more than half way in any movement looking to steamboat communication. "Some years ago," said Mr. GIBBS, "our people raised $5000 with which to build suitable wharves for a steamboat line. This was done at the instigation of Mr. M.K. KING of Norfolk & Southern Railroad. He promised to give us steamboat transportation and afterwards attributed his failure to do so to an unsettled state of political sentiment. This was when BRYAN and free silver seemed so popular. But we must have transportation. The same fertile lands which brings cotton and corn in such abundance will produce peas, potatoes and other truck. We are 10 days in advance of Elizabeth City. We can grow truck cheaper and in greater abundance than the farmers on the north of the Sound, but these advantages are of no value to us if we haven't the transportation facilities to get our produce to marker. We have despaired of any aid or encouragement from Mr. KING and his railroad. We are entertaining hopes that the Suffolk & Carolina railroad will help us, together with the businessmen of your city. If your businessmen are the wide-awake men I believe them to be, they will spare no time in helping us to establish a steamboat line between Elizabeth City and Swan Quarter, making stops at intermediate points." - The Tar Heel, an Elizabeth City newspaper - Friday, December 4, 1903; pg. 1.