"The Last Daughter of Davis Ridge: Slavery and Freedom in the Maritime South"

In this remarkable talk, David Cecelski, Whichard Distinguished History Professor, 2000-2001, Eastern Carolina University, investigates some unexpected history of African Americans who lived in the Down East community of Davis Ridge from 1865 until 1993. Davis Ridge was founded by Sutton Davis, who was a slave to Nathan Davis, a Davis Island shipbuilder. In 1862, Sutton apparently led the Davis Island slaves to freedom across Jarrett Bay, through Smyrna and to Union-occupied territory outside of New Bern. After the war, Nathan sold Sutton the firs four acres of what eventually grew to a 220 acre holding by Sutton and his children, on David Ridge.

Davis Ridge was a remote wooded knoll on the eastern shore of Jarrett Bay, according to professor Cecelski. It was separated from Davis Shore, to the north, by a salt marsh. At one time, it is reported, one could walk from Davis Ridge to Davis Island, though a hurricane has since cut a channel between them.

The Davis Ridge families, like their white counterparts, "saltwater farmers" who fished and farmed and traded for coffee and sugar, but mostly produced everthing they used. Sutton Davis and his children operated one of the first successful menhaden factories in the state and apparently got along well with their neighbors. Even as late as the 1920s, uncharacterisically, the black families at Davis Ridge and their white neighbors "often worked, socialized and worshipped together," Cecelski reports, quoting Nannie Ward. Ward lived on Davis Ridge from her birth in 1911 until 1925.

An island in more ways than one, Davis Ridge was not immune to the growing racial intimidation at end of the 1800s and the beginning to the new century, which discouraged new settlement in the community. While the residents of Davis Ridge had two advantages over the counterparts in the rest of the south -- land and a chance to make a fair living -- they had no advantage over the 1933 hurricane that destroyed their homes and fields.

Read the talk in its entirety or look for Dr. Cecelski's book, The Waterman's Song: Slavery and Freedom in Maritime North Carolina.

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