Annual wagon tour takes participants on journey through history of Mount Olive

Participants in a wagon tour of Mount Olive discovered that the face of the town has undergone many changes since its incorporation in 1870.

Between that time and the 1930s, the town was home to two hospitals at one time, two skating rinks, a bowling alley, three theaters (including one drive-in), several large stables, several hotels, a mile-long horse racing track along what is now West Main Street, a since demolished downtown building whose second floor was the scene of Saturday night boxing and wrestling matches and two soft drink bottling operations — Coca-Cola (location unknown) and Nehi (1910 to 1930) on the northeast corner of East Pollock and Northeast Center streets.

In the 1840s, William F. Pollock wanted a street car line built, donating a strip of land 12 feet wider than any other street in town in hopes it would be built.

Pollock never got his street car, but he did get a wider street named after him, said historian and tour guide Ken Dilda.

During the Civil War the town was occupied by about 500 Union soldiers whose objective was to destroy the railroad running through town in order to disrupt the Confederate supply line.

Dilda also joked that at one point the town had two saloons, but only one church within the town limits.

Those were just some of the town’s historic highlights Dilda touched on during the Saturday, May 11, packed wagon tour of the town that included stops in front of historic houses, schools, businesses, medical offices, library locations and churches.

The third annual free tour was sponsored by the Mount Olive Area Historical Society and Steele Memorial Library.

For more than two hours Dilda provided a running commentary on the town’s history and historic places without benefit of a prepared script, interspersed with often humorous anecdotes.

One involved a ghost named Murphy for whom the former Murphy’s Place restaurant was named. The restaurant, now closed, was housed in the former Summerlin Hardware building, 211 N. Center St.

The building is now home to Ribeyes Steakhouse, and there have been no reports of Murphy in recent years, said Dilda, director of the Mount Olive Area Historical Society’s David John Aaron Teaching and History Museum.

History wasn’t the only thing that those on the tour got to experience — the people and neighborhoods that make up the town were also on the tour’s agenda.

All along the route, pedestrians waved and shouted hello to the tour. Some motorists sounded their horns and waved, too.At one point a group of children on bicycles stopped, and as the children waved, an adult told them not to cross the street.However, she relented when the tour stopped and Frank Norris of the Nahunta community in northern Wayne County stepped off the tractor-pulled wagon to offer the children some of the snack-size packages of chips he had brought along for the tour.

The tour’s facts

Mount Olive was incorporated in 1870, but traces its roots to 1838 and the coming of the Wilmington and Raleigh Railroad (later renamed the Wilmington and Weldon Railroad in 1855).

There are no olives or mountains in the area to explain how the name Mount Olive was selected. However, tradition has it that the town was named for the Biblical Mount of Olives by Benjamin Oliver, a local businessman, Duplin County planter and devout Baptist.

Adam Winn Sr., a prominent free black landowner sold much of the land occupied by present-day Center Street to the railroad for $19, Dilda said.

It was a “good deal” for the railroad, but Winn was being pressed to sell the land, he added.

“The going rate to sell to the railroad at that time was $1 an acre,” he continued. “Landowners knew they were going to get a return on it, and they did.

“That railroad brought a lot or prosperity; brought about the birth of towns between Wilmington and Weldon including Mount Olive.”

A historical marker paying tribute to the Winn family is located on South Breazeale Avenue in front of the Boys and Girls Club.

The family was involved in a lot of activities in the town, Dilda said.

The Winn family helped raise funds for the marker that is the only private one in town, he added.

Just south of the marker, the tour stopped in front of the former Carver High School — now the Carver Cultural Center.The historic school served the town’s black students until 1970 when it was consolidated with Southern Wayne High School, Dudley. It served as an integrated elementary school from 1970 to 1997.

“The school had a tremendously reputable academic and athletic record,” Dilda said.

In 2009, the facility was renamed the Carver Cultural Center and now houses the offices of several nonprofit organizations and a number of town athletic activities.

In 1947, Carver High School became the first Wayne County school to earn accreditation by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.

Prior to gaining fame as the Pickle Capital thanks to the founding of the Mt. Olive Pickle Co. in 1926, Mount Olive was known as the strawberry capital.

James A Westbrook introduced truck farming to the area after moving to town in 1880. The town boasted a large produce market — the leading one in the state — and Westbrook became the largest strawberry producer in the state.

The tour made stops at the Mt. Olive Pickle Co. and Southern Bank and Trust Co. — two homegrown businesses headquartered in the town.

At Mt. Olive Pickle Co., the tour stopped at the corner of Cucumber and Vine. The company started as a way to utilize the local cucumber crops, Dilda said.

Westbrook sold the company its first acre of land for $1,000 in 1926, Dilda said.

“In 1926, one acre — today over 200 acres; 1,200 employees,” he said. “It is one of the largest employers in Wayne County. Quite a success story.

“Without them and Southern Bank there would be no museum; there would be no historic district; there may not be a historical society. That is how much they have helped us.”

Southern Bank was chartered as the Bank of Mount Olive on Jan. 29, 1901.

When it opened at 102 South Center St., it had $10,000 in capital and one employee, the cashier, Matthew Thompson “Pete” Breazeale, Dilda said.

Breazeale later served as mayor, and Breazeale Avenue is named after him. The street had previously been named Pearl Street.

The bank was moved to 100 N. Center St. in 1964 and renamed Southern Bank & Trust Co. in 1967.

It now has total assets of more than $4 billion, and more than 60 locations throughout eastern North Carolina and Virginia.

Passing by Westbrook Park, Dilda noted that in the 1950s the park was home to a small zoo where his favorite animal was a monkey.

“His name was Houdini because he kept escaping his enclosure and scaring the daylights out of the local residents,” he continued.

The story has a sad ending — following one escape, the police shot and killed the animal.

“There was a bear in the zoo,” he continued. “Two men from Mount Olive drove to New Bern to get a little cub. There was a little cage in the back seat for the bear, but the man in the back seat was highly intoxicated.

“It is said he and that bear tussled all of the way from New Bern to Mount Olive in the back seat of that automobile.”

The park is home to Kids World Playground built by 1,700 volunteers over a five-day period in 2000, Dilda added.

A stable used to occupy the site where Mount Olive Town Hall now sits, he said.“So, I joke that if you detect strange odors coming out of this building, it’s from those horses and mules that were once here and not town officials,” Dilda said. “The front part was completed in 1966. The year end is 1962. The first new Civil Defense building in North Carolina was at the end of this building.

Civil Defense was a big deal in the 1950s when tensions with the Soviet Union were high, Dilda explained. Citizens would form ground observer crews and go out armed with binoculars looking for enemy airplanes.

That’s the 1950s and 1960s, the age of fallout shelters, he added.

Later, as the tour passed the 114 West James St. law office of John Edwards, Dilda noted that the Classical Revival building was constructed as a post office in the 1930s by the Works Progress Administration.

The building is on the National Register of Historic Places, and for years the town’s fallout shelter was housed in the building’s basement.

As the tour approached College Street, Dilda said the name has nothing to do with Mount Olive College (now the University of Mount Olive).

“It is named because Mount Olive High School was located at the end of the street in the 1890s,” he added. “It may be a little stretch to call it College (Street) because of the high school, but educational association is OK.”

Maplewood Cemetery is another out-of-place name, Dilda said.

No cemetery exists by that name in Mount Olive, although Oakview and the older Myrtle Grove section (established around 1870) are often jointly refereed to as Maplewood, he said.

In 1931 Kirby Tyndall moved to Mount Olive and founded Tyndall Funeral Home, Dilda said.

Tyndall previously had worked at a Kinston funeral home and there was a Maplewood Cemetery in the area, Dilda explained.

Tyndall used and popularized the Maplewood name here, Dilda continued.

Dilda said he has tried for years to correct that naming.

However, as the tour passed out of the cemetery one person on the tour pointed to a sign designating the cemetery as Maplewood.