How Smithfield Got its Name

How Smithfield Got its Name

By Benjamin Sanderford

It all started with John Smith. Not John Smith the leader of Jamestown, but John Smith the Virginia resident who moved his family in 1740 to North Carolina.

They settled in the part of Craven County that, just six years later, would become Johnston County. Smith recognized the importance of the Neuse River, flanked by fertile soil and controlling access to the colony’s commercial centers on the coast.

By 1759, the county court at Hinton’s Quarter, near modern-day Clayton, gave him permission to operate a ferry on his plantation along the route to New Bern, the colonial capital.

It was this property, “Smith’s Ferry,” that Smith sold in 1762 to his 26-year-old son, John Smith, Jr. Smith’s Ferry became the site of the county courthouse in 1771, when western Johnston became Wake County.

The new Johnston County Courthouse was inaugurated at a turbulent time. Grumbles against the British government were escalating into serious unrest. On August 12, 1774, protesters gathered at the new courthouse.

They were led by Samuel Smith, Jr., John Smith, Jr.’s cousin. The protesters supported trial by jury in cases involving treason and appointed delegates to coordinate their activities with other dissidents in other counties. Samuel Smith and his allies did not favor independence, but they soon would.

With the start of the Revolutionary War in the spring of 1775, Josiah Martin, the last royal governor, fled New

14 | Town of Smithfield

How Smithfield Got its Name

Bern and his enemies formed a 13-member Provincial Council to replace him. The Council spent the rest of the year at Johnston County Courthouse, possibly because it was too far inland for the Royal Navy to threaten.

It was here that the Provincial Council organized the Patriot army that would defeat the Loyalists at Moore’s Creek on February 27, 1776.

A year later on April 23, 1777, Senator Needham Bryan of Johnston County introduced a bill to the General Assembly establishing a town around the courthouse. The bill passed and the Town of Smithfield was born.

SMITHFIELD TIMELINE

April 23, 1777 - The Town of Smithfield was chartered

1872 - Smith Brooks becomes first African- American member of the Town Board

1898 - Smithfield Tobacco Market is built

1951 - Johnston Memorial Hospital (now known as Johnston Health) opens

1969 - Smithfield- Selma High School is formed and Johnston Technical Institute (now Johnston Community College) was established

1983 - Carolina Pottery (a staple of today’s Carolina Premium Outlet Center) opened in 1983

1990 - Interstate 40 is completed in Johnston County

2014 – New terminal opens at Johnston County Airport

April 11, 1865 - Union forces captured Smithfield

1887 - Wilmington & Weldon railroad shortcut between Wilson and Fayetteville is completed

December 14, 1922 - Ava Gardner is born in Grabtown, nine miles southeast of Smithfield

1960 - Interstate 95 is completed in Johnston County

June 1978 – Johnston County Airport opened

1985 - 1st Ham and Yam festival

2009 – Smithfield Recreation and Aquatics Center opened

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