Paul and James Camp started P.D. Camp and Company, a lumber business, in 1877. The brothers bought R.J. Neely's sawmill in 1886 and established Camp Manufacturing Company in 1887. The original Franklin mill was steam powered and lay on a . . . — — Map (db m51001) HM
The war seemed far from Franklin when Union forces captured Roanoke Island and the North Carolina Sounds in February 1862. In May, however, when they occupied Norfolk and Suffolk to control both coastal Virginia and North Carolina, suddenly the . . . — — Map (db m18135) HM
George Camp, Jr. (1793-1879) acquired this land in 1826. Several of his children incorporated the Camp
Manufacturing Company in 1887 to operate sawmills. The company expanded into a wood product
manufacturing company and later a paper mill. . . . — — Map (db m69463) HM
Before the Civil War erupted, Franklin became a regional transportation and commercial center for the Blackwater-Chowan River basin because the seaboard and Roanoke Railroad connected with steamship lines here. When the war began, the town . . . — — Map (db m18133) HM
Della I. Hayden, educator, was born into slavery in North Carolina and moved to Virginia with her mother after the Civil War. She attended a Freedmen's Bureau school and graduated from the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute (later Hampton . . . — — Map (db m224321) HM
Incorporated as a town in 1876, Franklin began as a Southampton County village in the 1830s. In October, 1862, during the Civil War, Union gunboats on the Blackwater River shelled the town and the railroad station. Several skirmishes occurred nearby . . . — — Map (db m18144) HM
Dedicated to those who gave their lives
in defense of our state and our nation
Originally a part of the James L. Camp homeplace,
the park was given to the town of Franklin in 1946
by the children of Mr. and Mrs. James L. Camp.
Rena . . . — — Map (db m125377) WM
This property has been
placed on the
National Register
of Historic Places
by the United States
Department of the Interior
circa 1937 — — Map (db m166008) HM
Pauline C. Morton, civic leader, graduated from what is now Virginia State University in 1933. She began working for the Virginia Department of Education in 1947, during the segregation era. Before retiring in 1974, she supervised home economics . . . — — Map (db m118319) HM
Franklin's location at the junction of a railroad and important water route offered opportunities that attracted new people, so the town rapidly recovered from the War. In 1866 the Albemarle steam Navigation Company was reorganized and the . . . — — Map (db m52133) HM
Between 1907 and 1930 Franklin witnessed a
revolution in transportation as gasoline-powered
vehicles replaced the horse and buggy and steam-
powered transportation. Even as Franklin
benefited from a boom in buggy making during
the first . . . — — Map (db m51062) HM
The conjunction of the Portsmouth &
Roanoke Railroad and the Blackwater River
in 1835 made this site, then a swampy
wilderness, a natural link between the
towns of the Chowan and Albemarle Sound
and points to the northeast. The . . . — — Map (db m51216) HM
In 1847 one of Franklin's most influential
couples, Richard and Mary Rebecca Murfee
Barrett, married and received a 260 acre farm
from Mary's father, Simon. The couple built a
house near the center of the new settlement
and began . . . — — Map (db m50456) HM
To protect Richmond from a Union attack from Suffolk, Confederate authorities fortified the Blackwater River in 1862. You are standing on the Blackwater Line. The intermittent earthworks stretched fifty miles from north of Zuni to the North . . . — — Map (db m18134) HM
What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
In honor of the many individuals and organizations giving freely of their time, talents, and resources to assist in the response and recovery from . . . — — Map (db m166007) HM
During the first three years of the War Between the States, the Franklin railhead was the terminus of the Blackwater - Chowan corridor. The Confederate commissary used this route to deliver the millions of pounds of goods from eastern North Carolina . . . — — Map (db m18146) HM
A major Blackwater River crossing was
located here at Franklin during the Civil
War. Confederate forces guarded the crossing
from 1862 to the end of the war as part
of the Blackwater defensive line. Several
skirmishes were fought around the . . . — — Map (db m69784) HM
This industrial complex evolved from a sawmill
that operated here prior to the Civil War. In
1887, three brothers, Paul D. Camp, James L.
Camp, and Robert J. Camp, founded Camp
Manufacturing Company, later Union Camp Corporation
The lumbering . . . — — Map (db m69786) HM
Confederate forces guarded this Blackwater River crossing from 1862 to the end of the Civil War. On 12 Dec. 1862, Capt. J. H. Sikes and soldiers of Company D, 7th Confederate Cavalry, were captured during a dismounted skirmish with elements of the . . . — — Map (db m18159) HM
Birthplace of Colgate
Whitehead Darden, Jr. 1897-1981
Soldier-Educator-Statesman Veteran
World War I Member of the General
Assembly of Virginia Member of the
United States Congress Governor of
Virginia President of the . . . — — Map (db m48529) HM
Nearby along the eastern bank of the Blackwater River once existed the community of South Quay, also sometimes called South Key, Old Quay, or Old South Quay. Founded by 1657, South Quay by 1701 had become the site of a landing and trading post. A . . . — — Map (db m18181) HM
East of here near the Nottoway River stood a Late Woodland Indian settlement occupied intermittently circa A.D. 700 to 1650, and long claimed by the Cheroenhaka (Nottoway). Excavated in the 1960s, occupation phases included features such as a . . . — — Map (db m60635) HM
Three and a half miles southwest, at Monroe, Major-General William Mahone was born, December 1, 1826. He served brilliantly in the Confederate army throughout the war, and won the title, "Hero of the Crater," at Petersburg, July 30, 1864. He was . . . — — Map (db m18153) HM