"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)