"Black Jack native Marty Mills remembers exploring the Grimes Plantation long after its days as a working farm but before it was restored to its intended splendor.

She admits to trespassing — her daughter kindly calls it “snooping” — around the graveyard and 1,000-acre lot before leaving the area for 26 years.

“It’s amazing how much of it is gone,” Mills said, recalling many more small outbuildings but never a state of complete disrepair.

“To me, it was majestic back then,” she said. “I mean, it was the Grimes Plantation, kind of a mystery house. It’s wonderful to come back and be able to go inside.”

Sunday was the first day Mills and other members of the public could view the plantation since Grady-White Boats owners Eddie and Jo Allison Smith finished a renovation of the main house and adjacent structures.

Nonprofit group Preservation North Carolina held a fundraising event that drew more than 400 people to the property for self-guided tours.

The Grimes Plantation belonged to Bryan Grimes Jr., the last man to be appointed a major general in the Confederate Army during the Civil War. He led one of the last military attacks before Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox Court House.

Grimes returned to Pitt County but was murdered in August 1880, apparently to prevent him from testifying in a court case.

“It’s been majestically restored,” organization President Myrick Howard said. “It’s done very well. That’s why people are here. It’s just been done, and people have been waiting for two years (to see it).”

The Grimes Plantation is unique for numerous reasons, ranging from its visibility from the road, to the Grimes biography, to the restored slave quarters. The quarters are the only rural ones in that condition in the state, Howard said."

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The Daily Reflector (11/14/2011)

" In the Carolina Theatre lobby, you can see a poster for Katharine Hepburn in "The Philadelphia Story" on its early-'40s post-Broadway tour. You can see 1960s demonstrators at the box office, and the 1920s neighborhood when the theater was new. Look close, and you can pick out the horse-drawn buggy in a street that no longer exists.

"It's a little bit of time travel," said Tim Alwran chairman of the Carolina's board.

That time travel is result of an exhibit on the theater's history, just installed on the main-lobby walls. It will grow over the next two years, to the second-floor ballroom and third-floor lobby, said Carolina CEO Bob Nocek. Those phases display and describe, respectively, the building's history, the volunteer drives of the 1970s and '80s to preserve and restore it, and the civil-rights era in which the theater was an early focal point."

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News Observer (11/6/2011)

"Rosenwald schools used to dot the landscape across eastern North Carolina, built to improve the education of African-American children.

A historical account lists 12 schools in Pitt County, many in areas I recognize, such as Ayden, Bethel, Farmville, Greenville, Pactolus and Simpson. But others were in areas or had names I’m not familiar with, such as Cherry Lane, Harris and Post Oak.

There also were Rosenwald schools in neighboring counties, such as Martin.

On Nov. 17, the Martin County Historical Society will present an overview on preserving the Hamilton Rosenwald School at 7 p.m. in Martin Memorial Library.

Carol Jones Shields of Scotland Neck, a native of Pitt County, will share findings, artifacts and plans for the site. She is a member of the Roanoke River Partners board that is coordinating the preservation project and is author of “Hamilton Rosenwald School Preservation Story: Preserving the Memories, the Faces and the Place.” Shields also will participate in the first National Rosenwald Conference to be held in June at Tuskegee University in Alabama."

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The Daily Reflector (11/7/2011) 

"When Barry Siegal and Willard Tucker were lobbying for approval to bring the historic Southeastern building back to its original 1920s character, they had the unwavering support of Preservation Greensboro.

“In a situation like that, we just felt like the owners should be able to present their vision of the restoration and let them do as they wanted,” said Benjamin Briggs, executive director of Preservation Greensboro.

The two men, who bought the former American Exchange National Bank building in 2005, wanted to bring the structure back to the 1920s time period while officials from the U.S. National Park Service argued for the time period of 1939/1940."

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The Business Journal (10/28/2011)