When we arrived and registered at this campground the owners told us there would be a free Gospel and Bluegrass band playing at the club house on Friday evening. We decided to go and were quite surprised.
They told us we should plan to go early which usually means they will have a big crowd. Since there were less than 10 RV’s in the park we wondered where the people would come from. The people started pulling into the park about 45 minutes before the band was to start playing. We walked to the club house and saw several elderly ladies carrying in food. We picked a place to sit and watched the people coming in. It was quite a sight to behold. Over 100 people came and very few were younger than us. There was a small stage and 15 people came to play in the band!! Several guitars, a banjo, a sax, a steel guitar, a fiddle and drums made up the band and several of them sang. The only young person was the drummer who looked to be a teenager. Some of the singing was quite good and some not so good. There were couples dancing nearly every song and even some who danced by themselves. During the break they all passed through the food line and ate what appeared to be a full meal. We were invited to join but had just eaten dinner at home. In was quite an evening and we enjoyed the music and watching the goings on. Several people stopped to talk to us and we found that they were from small town all around this area. There was very little gospel or Bluegrass music…mostly country music…down home country music!! We wished we had brought our camera.
On Saturday we took an historic tour of the city of Edenton is “small town America”. Edenton was discovered in 1580’s and incorporated in 1722. It was once the state capitol and is the second oldest city in North Carolina. When we were at the visitor’s center they told us Edenton has more old historical homes and buildings than some of the larger cities in North Carolina so we decided that might be a fun thing to do. The tour was very interesting and the guide was quite knowledgeable. The Cupolo Home pictured below was built in 1758 and gets its name from the cupola on top which was built there to create a draft through the house when the windows were opened in the summer, sort of like a whole house fan. The wood work in the house is an exact replica of the original. At one point in time a granddaughter who had inherited the home needed to rent out some of the rooms for living expenses. An antique dealer came to live there for about a year. He became friends with this lady and eventually talked her into selling him the windows, doors, woodwork, then called the house furnishings. When the towns people saw him dismantling the home they were outraged and talked him into selling what remained to the city. He had already resold most of the downstairs furnishings to The Brooklyn Museum of Fine Arts. The museum owner allowed them t take accurate measurements so that they could faithfully recreate the beautiful paneling and woodwork that you see in the picture below. The color of the paneling is original and is made by soaking copper in a pickling brine. The sediment soaks to the bottom and is then cooked and made into a paint. The St Paul’s Episcopal Church was finished in 1736 and the church “boxes” are original. The doors on the pews are there to keep away a draft of cold air on the feet and legs as there is no heat in the church. The “boxes” were often rented out to families and the closer to front the more they paid. The balcony on the right was for the poor who could not afford to pay and the balcony on the left was for the black congregation as this was the only church at that time. There is a cemetery that surround the church on all sides. One thing we found interesting but not on the tour was the Cotton Mill Project. The cotton mill was built in 1898 from one million brick made on site. It is no longer in operation and the property, purchased by a local doctor, is being renovated into condominiums priced from $450,000 to $750,000 each. Also on this property are 57 houses that were built for the workers and a church built especially for the mill employees. More information on Edenton and the walking tour can be found at http://www.edenton.com/history/walktour.htm