THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, April 21, 1996 TAG: 9604190069
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: TRAVEL
SOURCE: BY STEPHEN HARRIMAN, TRAVEL EDITOR
DATELINE: EDENTON, N.C. LENGTH: Long : 198 lines
THE SCORCH MARKS remain, deep and dark, in the wide-planked floor of Beverly Hall, although they have taken on a rich patina from wax and wear since that day in 1837 when this room and much of the Edenton populace became inflamed.
That was the day it was discovered that the money was missing.
The scorch marks, now highlighted by the sun streaking through the large wavy glass windows, are both a scar of human tragedy and a badge of Edenton history.
Sambo Dixon, the young master of Beverly Hall, lawyer by profession, gardener by avocation, knows the story well and tells it in the manner of a true Southern raconteur.
He - Samuel Bobbitt Dixon, to put a fine point on it, as few do in Edenton - is the sixth generation of Dixons to live in the 1810 Federal-style mansion with Greek Revival details whose front two rooms, now portrait-packed with the like-nesses of these ancestors, once housed the Edenton branch of the State Bank of North Carolina.
The scorch marks are beside the great steel door of a walk-in vault. Here were kept the bank's books, which, it was discovered, had been manipulated by a clerk.
One day the embezzler, barely a step ahead of his accusers and nearly at the end of his rope, so to speak, set fire to the books on the floor. Then he rushed outside into the yard and shot himself dead.
Infuriated Edentonians refused to let the matter end there. They hauled the miscreant off to the Chowan County Courthouse down the street and tried him for his crime. Not having a word to say in his defense, the dead man was convicted. And then properly hanged.
Edentonians are nothing if not thorough.
Their love of their heritage, too, is seen throughout the little town on the upper reaches of North Carolina's Albemarle Sound, just an hour and a half drive from South Hampton Roads but a couple of centuries distant in spirit and charm.
Edenton has been called ``the South's prettiest town'' and anyone contemplating a challenge had better, as the say in the South, pack a lunch.
Edenton is today what it almost always was: a small Southern farming community, commercial center and county seat with one eye to the land and its timber and the other toward the water and boat building and shipping.
There's still a soda fountain in the downtown drugstore, and the restaurant of choice for most locals doubles as the pool hall.
It is a tranquil and hospitable place in this state that prides itself as being a vale of humility between two mountains of conceit.
The waterfront alone, unspoiled by commercial development, is enough to set the town apart.
It's hard to say which is the most scenic view - from the land looking out toward the quiet waters with cypress trees rising up from the shallows, or from the water as the reflected late afternoon sun illuminates the green lawns and sparkling white houses and the splendid Georgian-period courthouse.
Ducks on the water, gulls on the seawall, cane-bottom rockers on the porches. Makes me want to kick back and contemplate just how rich I could be if I just had the white paint concession in this town.
Back from the waterfront, the tree-shaded streets of the Edenton Historic District, on the National Register of Historic Places, are lined with 18th and 19th century homes, both modest and magnificent, that are imposing monuments to gracious living. A block from the waterfront on South Broad Street, the town's main street, stands a row of decorative storefronts, which this year are celebrating a century of commerce.
Edenton was explored as early as 1622 by Virginians, who came down from Jamestown and vicinity by 1658 to settle. First called the Town on Queen Anne's Creek - unimaginative, but that's what and where it was - it was incorporated in 1722 and renamed, not without controversy, for the royal governor, Charles Eden, who had just died.
Some thought Eden's alleged connections with one Edward Teach, a dubious businessman also known as Blackbeard the Pirate, were a little too chummy to warrant such an honor, but the name stuck.
Lovely as it is today, it could as well take its name from the Biblical garden.
But beauty followed prosperity and political activity. The town served as the first unofficial capital of the colony until 1740, when the political power of the Albemarle region was diluted by westward expansion.
And early on it was the principal ``port of Roanoke,'' the region embracing the Roanoke and Albemarle Sounds, estuaries that wind inland from the Outer Banks. It its heyday it was active enough to have two customhouses.
Edenton also produced a signer of the Declaration of Independence, one of the nation's first Supreme Court justices and a Tea Party - a women-only protest, less than a year after the more famous one in Boston Harbor - that was the talk of London.
Edenton lore is easy to explore - on your own or with a leisurely guided walking tour that begins at the Visitor Center on Broad Street, open daily, that includes St. Paul's Church (1736-67), the classic Chowan County Court House, the Cupola House (1758) and the James Iredell House (1780-1810).
The Cupola House, looking out over a formal garden restored from a 1769 map of the town toward the waterfront, is an architectural treasure. It was built by Francis Corbin, land agent for the last of the English Lords Proprietors, Robert Carteret, earl of Granville. It has been called ``the best existing example of a wooden house in the Jacobean tradition in all of America'' as well as ``North Carolina's most significant early dwelling.'' It boasts the only surviving example in the South of a second-story overhang.
A better way to tour still, if your timing is right, is to spend a weekend at the Lords Proprietors Inn and participate in one of Arch and Jane Edwards' Historic Preservation Tours. They are held on most weekends during February and March. Early reservations are advised. The 20-room hostelry in three historic buildings, Edenton's first and most acclaimed, fills up quickly.
The weekend begins Friday evening with a reception and tour of Mount Auburn, the restored waterfront plantation home of the Edwards outside of town. Its beautiful three-story open center stairway is the largest in the Albemarle.
Saturday morning is spent on the guided walking tour of Edenton's public historic sites. After lunch the guests tour four of Edenton's most splendid private historic homes. In addition to Sambo and Gray Dixon's Beverly Hall, we visited the Julian Wood House (1883-95) overlooking the waterfront, the Hatch House (1734), the oldest standing in Edenton, and Elmwood (1790-1810), a country place lovingly restored by Bill and Ginny Culpeper.
After Saturday dinner, guests are entertained by the Edenton Male Chorus from the balcony stairs of the inn's Pack House. This historic, three-bay building, once used for sorting and storing tobacco, was moved from outside town and renovated to provide additional luxury accommodations.
Touring Edenton can be an interesting and enlightening experience for a chauvinistic Virginian. Old-line Virginians are sometimes inclined to think that Virginia was pretty much in charge of that big independence thing back in the 1770s.
North Carolina had a hand in it, too. In fact, it was an Edenton man, Joseph Hewes, who made the very first utterance for independence in the Continental Congress when he presented the Halifax Resolves to that body on May 27, 1776.
The resolves were an outgrowth of an April 12, 1776, political meeting in Halifax, N.C., west of Edenton, that authorized North Carolina delegates ``to concur with the delegates of the other Colonies in declaring Independency.''
Hewes, New Jersey born and Princeton-educated, came to Edenton at the age of 30 as a shipping merchant. With his maritime experience, Congress made him chairman of the Committee of Marine. In this position he was, in effect, the first secretary of the Navy, and in that capacity he secured a commission for John Paul Jones in the infant sea service.
Another favorite son is James Iredell, the first replacement justice named by President George Washington to his original Supreme Court after the death of James Wilson.
About that Tea Party. It's grown more and more difficult over the years to separate fiction from fact as to exactly what happened.
It is a matter of record that 51 Edenton ladies signed and mailed to England a resolution supporting the actions and resolutions of the First Provisional Congress, one part of which had to do with banning the import and consumption of British tea.
And guess what. They weren't taken seriously.
Instead, a London cartoonist satirized the event by depicting provincial matrons gathered at a tea party to sign the document. Women protesting anything - imagine.
Historian Mark M. Boatner III, author of ``Landmarks of the American Revolution,'' thinks what followed was the fabrication of a legend.
American patriots, Boatner says, then pretended that such a tea party actually HAD occurred, and they went on to invent a date (Oct. 25, 1774), a ``tea mother'' or pourer (Mrs. Penelope Barker), and a site (Mrs. Elizabeth King's house), which is today marked by a bronze teapot on a post.
Responsible historical authorities, according to Boatner, have long rejected the story of an Edenton Tea Party in the literal sense, but they have stressed that the resolution signed by the ladies was the earliest known instance of organized political activity by American women.
Fiction or fact? It probably doesn't even matter. We believe what we want to believe.
It's a wonderful tale, fiction or fact. But I still like Sambo Dixon's story of the doubly unfortunate embezzler the best. ILLUSTRATION: STEPHEN HARRIMAN
Edenton's historic charm is embodied in the Chowan County Courthouse
of 1767.
STEPHEN HARRIMAN
Beverly Hall, then a bank, was the scene of a memorable drama in
1837: After the discovery of an embezzlement, there followed a fire
and a suicide.
TRAVELER'S ADVISORY
Before you go: Contact the Historic Edenton Visitor Center (919)
482-2637 for information on historic sites, tours, accommodations,
dining and special events. For info on the Lords Proprietors Inn's
Historic Preservation weekends or other special occasions, call
(800) 348-8933 or (919) 482-3641 in North Carolina.
Getting there: From South Hampton Roads, take I-64 to U.S. 17
south; from the Suffolk area, Va. 32-N.C. 32 south is a more direct
route.
Getting around: If you're staying at one of the numerous inns or
B&Bs in town, you won't really need your car. Edenton is an easy
walking town. Guided walking tours are $5 for adults, $2.50 for
grade-school children; there also is a family rate, which is a
better deal for adults with two or more children.
Special events: Edenton Antique Show (May 11-12), Crape Myrtle
Festival (July), Chowan County Fair (Oct. 1-5), Peanut Festival and
Sailboat Regatta (Oct. 7), Christmas Candlelight Tour of historic
homes (Dec. 13-14).
VP Map
by CNB