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Incorporated
February 1870, Robersonville - located
directly on the railroad’s route between
Tarboro and Williamston - is the first
town in the county dependent on the
railroad, rather than the Roanoke River,
as its chief commercial and
communication link with the world beyond
Martin County.
Although the
Seaboard and Raleigh Railway Company
would not be incorporated until late
1873, town founders envisioned it as a
prominent trading center and market for
western Martin County. Growing slowly
during its first decade, the town
quickly fulfilled its destined fate
after the railroad’s completion in
October 1882 and boasted having eleven
general stores, two physicians, and a
number of industries by 1884. The
town’s population had increased in 12
years to 400 residents with farm
families and ambitious young men moving
there because of its various
entrepreneurial, educational, and social
opportunities.
As site of
the county’s first tobacco market in
August 1900, Robersonville embarked on a
second, more expansive era of
prosperity, civic progress, and
development with a population that
surged up to 1200 during the early
1900s. The growth of new industries
brought new residential areas which
opened to provide homes for the town’s
increased population - most notably “New
Town,” a residential neighborhood that
would become one of eastern North
Carolina’s most cohesive and
civic-minded early 20th
century African-American communities.
The newly
acquired prosperity, improved
educational opportunities, and modern
municipal services fostered a lively
cultural and social life in town where
entertaining diversions and several
cultural, civic, and social groups
flourished. Even during the Great
Depression economic expansion slowed
drastically in Robersonville, but its
citizens benefited from state and
federal relief programs. Inexpensive
sports and popular social pastimes, such
as baseball and bridge, also eased the
hardships for many during those rough
years.
Though the
railroad has been replaced by the new US
64 Bypass as the town’s main link to the
outside world, Robersonville continues
to thrive providing needed services,
industry and entertainment to local and
out-of-town residents alike. It is the
home of St. James Place Museum, a
restored 1910 Primitive Baptist Church,
and East Carolina Motor Speedway.
Info
from Martin Architectural Heritage:
The Historic Structures of Rural North
Carolina County, edited by Thomas R.
Butchko. |
