THE PERQUIMANS WEEKLY
Volume 36, No. 39
USPS 428-060
Hertford, Perquimans County, N.C., Thursday, Sept. 25, I960
20 CENTS
Cox is nominated to fill
ARPDC vice-chair
Hertford Mayor and Town Manager
Bill Cox was nominated to serie as vice
chairman of the Albemarle Regional
Planning and Development Commission
at their regular monthly meeting last
Thursday.
Also under consideration for com
mission offices are: Raleigh Carver,
chairman of the Pasquotank County
emmissioners, who was selected by the
minating committee to serve as
chairman, replacing Mayor Donald
Bryan of Nags Head; and C.M. Stokes, of
Washington County, nominated to serve
as secretary.
The commission will vote on new of
ficers at the next regular monthly
meeting, slated for Oct. 16. Bryan told
commission members that other
nominees could also be placed on the
Fallot at the October meeting.
Cox was also appointed to serve on the
by-law committee, along with E.V.
Wilkins of Roper, Jaek Tillett of Dare,
Alton Elmore of Chowan, and James
RyanofTyrell.
In other business, commission
members heard that the personnel
committee expected to begin reviewing
applicants for the position of executive
director sometime this week.
The director's position has been empty
(or some three months, due to the
resignation of former ARPDC director
Robert Whitley in June.
The Perquimans and Chowan nutrition
contracts were returned to Joseph Brown
of Elizabeth City, reversing the com
mission's earlier decision to award the
catering service to the Washington
Department of Social Services.
Brown's firm will also serve Camden,
Currituck, Gates, and Pasquotank. The
Washington public agency was awared
service for Washington and Tyrell
counties.
The nutrition service, which caters to
the elderly, encompasses a 10-county
area and will go into effect Oct. 1. The
service provides some 425 meals a day
for 250 days a year at a total cost of
$218,526.
It was also announced that ARPDC had
been requested to administrate a $289,000
apprenticeship program, proposed by
the U.S. Department of Labor.
The program, purported to be the first
of its kind in the state, would involve 35
participants in a four-year curriculum
geared toward industrial training, with
DOL footing SO percent of on-the-jop
training salaries.
Area community colleges would
provide the projected 40 percent
classroom training. The remaining 60
percent instruction would be gained on
the job.
The apprenticeship program, geared
toward the disadvantaged, also proposes
to provide necessary tools, child care,
health care, and some transportation.
Participants' earnings would start at
minimum wage.
ARPDC's administrative support,
which was endorsed by the commission
Thursday night, would require the hiring
of two full-time employees.
The Albemarle Area Apprenticeship
Association, chartered on June 10 of this
year, consists of 24 area businesses who
have agreed to provide job training and
night school instruction.
?Restoration continues
at N ewbold- White
Although restoration work on the
rtfewbold-White house is moving steadily
along, sources are reluctant to project a
completion date for the historic-house
museum, claimed to be the oldest extant
building in North Carolina.
Hopes had initially been set on July of
1M0 m the completion date for restoring
the Harvey-Point Road house to its pre
Georgian state. When July came and
went, autumn became the completion
target. Fall is upon us, and the work
0;ontinues.
"In my opinion, it will be finished at
least by the last of the year," said
William Nixon, president of the
Perquimans County Restoration Society.
W.M. Kemp, the contractor in charge
of restoration efforts said he hated to put
a date on the project's end. "It's like your
own house," he said, "it's never finished
? it is a continuous process." Kemp did
say, however, "that it won't be too long
before we can turn the public into it"
Much of the delay in the project's
completion was due to' the scarcity of the
heart pine needed for the flooring. The
wood was finally found after a year's
search and the flooring has been com
pleted on the first floor. A portion of the
upstairs flooring has to be plastered and
replaced.
Nixon said they had encountered some
difficulty in aging the heart pine. "We're
trying to make it look like the old floor
and that's not easy," he said.
Kemp said the seal used to preserve
the flooring material has a dry base,
rather that an oil base, which will allow
the wood to age.
Also completed is the partition bet
ween the two main floor rooms, and
much of the hardware, crafted by
blacksmiths Rick Guthrie and former
county resident David Brewin.
Nixon said that the heating and air
conditioning pump had been installed, as
well as the underground power line and
the ADT security system.
The furniture report, completed by
Betsy Overton of Ahoskie, has been
issued and is presently being looked over
by staff members at the Department of
Archives and History in Raleigh, as are
recommendations issued from a
Charlottesville. Va. firm, which has
offered a plan of operating prodecures.
Two doors for the ground floor have yet
to be completed.
Restoration of the root cellar behind
the house is also anticipated, as well as
public restroom facilities.
Open house is scheduled
for PCHS addition
The $1.25 million Perquimans
County High School addition is in full
use, and with the recent arrival of
office apd lounge furniture, ready for
inspection.
The county board of education will
host an open house of the high school
addition and renovations on Sunday,
Oct. 5, from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m.
Schools superintendent Pat Harrell
said that students will serve as tour
guides during the open house, and that
teachers would also be on hand in the
newly-renovated library to answer
any questions. He said that no formal
dedication ceremony had been
planned.
Begun in January of 1979, the ad
dition project was some 18 months in
the making before reaching com
pletion just in time for school's
opening in August.
Although slated to be completed last
February, the project suffered
several setbacks, largely due to due to
the ferocity of last winter's weather.
Designed by architects of Ashford
and Associates, out of Raleigh, the
addition consists of 12 new
classrooms, 2 dressing rooms ad
jacent to the gymnasium, an ad
ministrative area, teachers' lounge, a
renovated library, and public
restroom facilities designed to ac
commodate gym activites.
The addition will help ease some of
the pinch of overcrowded conditions
at the high school. Many classes had
been meeting in areas not designed as
classrooms last year, such as the
cafeteria and the auditorium.
Erratic but strong hog market
A rallying hog market is one of the few
bright spots in a somewhat dismal far-,
ming picture.
Area hog markets were paying 50 cents
per pound for top hog on Monday, a price
that is a nickel per pound above what was
considered the break even price for
farmers earlier this summer.
But higher corn prices are pushing
production costs upward, and 50 cents a
pound for pork isn't anything to get rich
on, according to county extension
chairman Bill Jester.
"It's a glimmer (of hope)," said
Jester. "At least they aren't losing
money. But it's really not that strong a
rally."
Between 75 and 80 per cent of the
production costs for hogs is in grain,
Jester said. "With higher feed costs the
hog producer is not making as much as
when corn was at $2.50 a bushel," he
said. Currently, the price is running from
$3.40 to $3.50 a bushel, Jester said.
But slaughter figures substantiate the
prediction that prices will climb
sometime after the new year begins, he
said. The percentage of sows going to
market nation-wide indicates that herd
reduction is well underway, and herd
reduction pushes prices up.
Jester said that sows comprised 7 per
cent of the total hog kill last week, the
second highest percentage since 1974.
The short term outlook calls for an
erratic market that will start upwards
this winter, he said.
'Amateur archeologist high on N ixon s P oint
? "/
Dozier displays findings from Nixon 's Point
m'
W.C. Dozier has good backing for his
belief that sites on Nixon's Point, the
location of the River Croft development,
are of historical interest.
In his walks through fields on the point,
Dozier has found a great many pottery
fragments and metal objects, both In
dian and Colonial that he believes are of
archeological value.
Dozier, 80, might be described as an
amateur archeologist. Following his
retirement he spent 10 or 12 years
walking through the fields of the county
after harvest-time, looking for bits and
pieces from the past
Some of his best finds have been at
Nixon's Point Dozier's metal collection
includes shoe buckles, a metal button, an
English half penny from the 1700s and
other items.
Among them is a pair of cuff-links
Dozier believes to be crafted from silver.
"I found one one year and said to
myself, there's probably another one
here.' I came back a year later and found
the other one in the same area," he said.
Dozier uses books by Williamsburg's
chief archeologist Ivor Noel Hume, to
help him identify his findings.
Two of Hume's staff members once
inspected Dozier's findings, and were
particularly impressed with his display
of metal objects collected at Nixon's
Point.
"They said they hadn't seen that much
picked up at any one time and in any one
area since Williamsburg," Dozier said.
The pottery Dozier has picked up at the
site includes bits of English salt-glaze
dishes, and fragments of Rhenish
stoneware mugs and pitchers of the sort
often used in Colonial taverns.
Dozier has also found large fragments
of tobacco pipes, and the combination of
items he has found at the site indicates
that there may have been a tavern there,
he said.
He has also come across shards of
Indian pottery, and arrowheads, and said
that some of them date back 8,000 years.
County historian Ray Winslow said
that any Indians who might have dwelt
on the property would have been of the
Yeopim tribe.
He said that in the seventeenth and
early eighteenth centuries, there were
two farms on Nixon's Point, and one of
them may have been located where
River Croft will be developed.
Winslow said, however, that he knew of
no "documentary evidence or
authoritative testimony" as to the
historical value of the site.
Although he has done no excavation on
the Nixon's Point site, or any other site
for that matter, Dozier said he has found
what he believes to be an old foundation
on the property.
"I could show whoever's interested,"
said Dozier. He said the point was also
once used for loading ships bound for
foreign ports with Colonial exports.
"There are tons of ballast rock off that
point where ships loaded produce and
whatever they took to England," Dozier
?aid.
He would like to see an archeologist go
over the property to look for items of
value before it is destroyed.
"The only thing this does is prove that
there was something there and that these
things were used," Dozier said in
reference to his collection.
Elaine Nelson, of the Archeology
Division of the state department of ar
chives, said that it would be up to the
Army Corps of Engineers to make
provisions for preserving historic sites if
any are located within the dredge
excavation permit area.
She said the corps is aware of the
historic merit of the property.
"I don't think the site is in any danger
of being destroyed," Ms. Nelson said.
The waterfront development had been
put on hold after state historic preser
vation officer Larry Tice said that two
known archeological sites were thought
to be located on the property.
"Unfortunately, our information only
consists of a Department of Tran
sportation county map," Tice wrote to
state officials.
Developer Robert Hollowell, Sr. said
last Thursday (Sept. 18) that an assistant
permits coordinator with the state
department of natural resources and
community development had told him
that a permit authorizing him to proceed
was in the mail.
Hollowell said he had not received the
permit as of that date.
Schools get money for transportation
The Perquimans County School board
met last Monday at the PCHS library as
the tint destination el their recently
adopted routing meeting place policy.
The board will meet next month at the
County Office Building on Oct I, at ?
p.m.
Schools superintendent Pat HarreU
told the board those students who
had not met the state immunization
requirements as of Monday, Sept >2.
HarreU later said that so students
within the sehoel system had failed to
meet Immunisation requirements, with
the poeaible exceptions of a
(tudents, who were not subject to the
suspension rule.
The board discussed the Hertford
Grammar School chimney and roof
repair project, with no action being
taken.
The chimney was struck by lightning
last month and is being repaired, along
with a portion of the roof, for 110,850.
Chimney repair was expected to be
completed by Wednesday, according to
HnmO, with roof work beginning next
?reek. HarreD also said that lightning
protection rods would be Installed on the
HarreD told board members that the
school system had received $16,816 in
federal monies to be used for the tran
sportation for exceptional children.
The board also:
? Discussed the property insurance for
board-owned facilities and contents, with
no action being taken.
? Heard that as of Sept. 6, on the tenth
school day, that total enrollment within
the county wu 1,767, excluding trainable
students.
? Heard that the hydraulic lift has been,
installed in the high school auto
mechanic shnn and that the building was
ready for occupancy.
? Granted permission for the Band
Boosters Club to locate a flag pole on the
Perquimans County Athletic Field.
? Approved a list of substitute teachers
for the 1M041 school year. (The list is on
file in the Board of Education office.)
? Approved a $6,000 contractual
agreement with Frant L. Van Baart,
Perquimans County Artist in the Schools,
for employment from Aug. 25 to Jan. 12,
lttl.
? Approved a contract with the Nor
theastern Developmental . Evaluation
Clinic in the amountoffMOO for physical
therapy and occupational therapy ser
vices.