Jamesville—a good healthy town—is located on the south bank of the Roanoke River, abut 12 miles southeast of Williamston. It is one of the older towns of the county and is noted for its large seine fisheries, which are run for several months in the spring season, catching large quantities of herring, shad, rock, and in former days, many sturgeon. These fisheries are visited by thousands of people from many counties in this section of the State.
The Roanoke River not only brings the fish in the spring to support the fishing industry, but it brings steamboats from Norfolk, Baltimore and intermediate points, loaded with merchandise, and in turn carrying away lumber, cotton, peanuts, and other crops produced in the fertile soils surrounding the town. The Atlantic Coast Line Railroad also passes thru the town, with six daily trains, affording good traveling advantages and freight service.
Jamesville does not enjoy full-time good road service, since no paved road touches it. Although Route No. 90 from Columbia in Tyrrell County to Raleigh passes through the town, it is still unpaved from the Washington County line to Williamston, and there is a well-grounded hope that the Jamesville link in the highway will be paved before the mud of another winter has to be endured in and around this good town.
The local conditions as well as the transportation advantages offer inducements for manufacturing plants. The local citizens would offer free sites to legitimate manufacturers.
The town officers are: Mayor, A. Corey; mayor pro tempore, C.a. Askew; Town clerk, O.G. Carson; chief of police, J.R. Manning. The town commissioners are A. Corey, O.G. Carson, W.B. Gaylord, and James Rooks.
There are two fine schools in Jamesville that are the price of the community.
The white school is an accredited high school. Prof. C.O. Small is principal, C.C.Smith, assistant principal; Prof. M.L. Tatum instructor of vocational agriculture and biology; Miss Ora B. Pace, eighth grad; M.J. Batchellor, seventh grade; Miss Hilda Summerill, sixth grade; Miss Lucy P Carrington, fifth grade; Miss Vera Hairr, fourth and fifth grade; and Miss Essie Jordan, first and second grades. Miss Annie Glasgow is the music teacher.
The school has one of the very best basketball teams in the county. Mr. C.C. Smith is the coach. They have played three games this season and won two of them.
The school building is of brick and is large and beautiful. It is fully equipped with 10 rooms. The school has a nice lot of maps. Especially good and instructive are the products maps by the Misses Summerill and Carrington. The auditorium is the largest and best equipped in the county. The chapel exercises are well attended and very interesting.
The school has a very large playground. The boy’s basketball team won the championship of the county last year and the year before, not having been defeated during the seasons of 1924 and 1925 and only once this year.
The school library has 600 volumes for all grades. There is a well-equipped laboratory for general science, biology, and vocational agriculture.
The parents-teachers association is an active organization and helps out greatly. The dramatic club of the high school gave a good entertainment just before Christmas and expects to give another in March. Miss Vera Hairr is leader of the dramatic club and voice teacher. She is doing a fine work.
The agricultural course with Prof. M.L. Tatum is the outstanding feature of this great school. This is the only school in the county that teaches this course, and only about 100 schools in the State teach the course. This work prepares boys for the business of farming and for a happier and more useful life on the farm.
The “moonlight” or night school for the older farmers is well attended by representative farmers young and old. An unusually eager interest is taken in all the studies of arithmetic, writing, besides the lectures on timely and valuable subjects to farmers. In one of the lessons the teacher, in teaching seed selection, said, “Hold on to something good if you have it; if not, get it!” Among the things covered in this course are good seed selection, fertilization, green field cover crops, dairy products, care of swine and poultry and how they pay more than some of the other products; how to write and get the free folders and bulletins from the North Carolina Department of Agriculture. The farmers’ interest in this school is plainly seen.
Jamesville has two fisheries where as many as from 4,000 to 20,000 fish are caught in the great power seines in a single haul. Many barrels of perch, herring, shad, and rock are also caught there each season. Sturgeon are sometimes caught, one of them caught there weighing more than 300 pounds and measuring over 9 feet in length.
The timber is very good for many miles around Jamesville. There is a saw mill and a good gin system located in the town, besides a grist mill, a large wholesale oil and gasoline storage tank station on the river front.
There are four white churches here, having services every Sunday besides the Sunday school and mid-week prayer meetings.
The colored folks have three churches, a shoe shop, and a graded school. M.L. Armistead is principal of the school, which has a very nice wooden building, well lighted and painted. They teach, besides the regular scholastic course, cooking, sewing, garment making and fancy work. There seems to be very good interest in the colored school throughout the community.
From the front page of The Enterprise, Williamston, Martin County, N.C., Tuesday, Feb. 2, 1926
newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn92073995/1926-02-02/ed-1/seq-1/
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