Once the Manse of a Feudal Overlord
This historic old house, built of enduring cypress a century and a quarter ago, was the home of Josiah Collins, one of the “high livers” of his era. He owned nearly 10,000 acres and a thousand black slaves did his bidding. To-day Somerset on Lake Phelps, Washington County, is a lodge for sportsmen who go to Lake Phelps for the finest fresh water hook and line fishing in Northeastern North Carolina.
Josiah Collins, a wealthy and aristocratic Englishman, came to America in the latter part of the eighteenth century. He explored the coastal region of North Carolina seeking an ideal location for a gentleman’s estate. Earlier settlers told him of Lake Phelps, a magnificent body of inland water in Washington and Tyrrell Counties.
Josiah Collins’ ships found their way up Scuppernong River to within seven miles of Lake Phelps. He hewed a path thru the wilderness to Lake Phelps and founded his estate on the black lands adjacent thereto. At the highest point on Lake Phelps he built his homestead.
His domain embraced near 10,000 acre, and he is reputed to have worked 800 to 1,000 slaves. With slaves he constructed canals 7 miles long, from Lake Phelps to the Scuppernong River, to take care of the overflow from the lake and to drain his lands. Those canals, dug more than a century ago, are there today. Only a vast army of slaves working with spades and shovels and carrying the dirt away in baskets could have dug those canals. They had none of our modern dredging machinery in those days.
In 1804 Josiah Collins built of enduring cypress the then pretentious home that is pictured elsewhere in this newspaper today. There he lived the life of a Lord. To the rear of his mansion he built a whole street of houses for his various home enterprises. There was a big kitchen and bakery sufficiently remove from the house to take care of the odors of cookery. There was a big two-story frame house for his children. Josiah Collins was a fastidious and fussy overlord who didn’t want his homelife spoiled by odors from the kitchen or by noise from his children. He kept his kids and his cooking at a distance. The big kitchen and the house that was the children’s are standing today, in a fine state of preservation.
The slaves of Josiah Collins and his descendants who came after him tilled thousands of acres. They grew corn and wheat and rye; cotton, tobacco and flax. They ground his corn and wheat into grist; spun his cotton, his flax and his wool into cloth; made cloth into clothing. The Collins estate was a self-supporting little world within itself, producing almost everything it required. Slaves made bricks, made lumber and made much iron work. Every nail used in the construction of the buildings at Somerset and every lock used on its doors was made on the premises. Some of those massive locks are there yet.
Josiah Collins lived like a lord. He had a race track surrounding a grove of magnificent oaks in front of his mansion. He had race horses, his saddle horses, his hounds. And he fished.
Lake Phelps is a peculiar body of water. It is eight miles wide and 12 miles long. Its water is of almost crystal clearness and so different from any other water found in this region that it is believed to be feed from springs that draw their water from the melted snows of the far, far North.
This lake is on a plateau that is 11 feet, 8 inches higher than the waters of Scuppernong River just seven miles away.
In the waters of Lake Phelps white and speckled perch, bass and varieties of smaller perch abound. Herrings find their way into Lake Phelps in the spawning season and thousands of them never find their way out again. They stay until they starve to death in its fresh waters, and they are the most woebegone looking herrings ne ever saw. Their heads are normal size; their bodies thin and sickly appendages to their massive heads.
Somerset has passed thru many hands since the last of the Collins’ died. To-day, it has dwindled to an estate of less than 1,000 acres owned by the Rocky Mount Insurance & Realty Co. of Rocky Mount, N.C., who came to it by reason of a loan made to its prior owner who died before he had satisfied the loan.
J. Walter Starr, an enterprising young merchant of Creswell, has leased Somerset. Recognizing the unsurpassed fishing in Lake Phelps as one of its assets, he has opened Somerset to sportsmen and hook and line enthusiasts from all sections of North Carolina are finding their way to Somerset this summer.
From page 6 of The Independent, Elizabeth City, N.C., Friday, July 9, 1926
newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn83025812/1926-07-09/ed-1/seq-6/
To see a photo of the lodge, go to:
newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn83025812/1926-07-09/ed-1/seq-1/
