Submitted to the Daily Reflector, March 2006
The Great Dismal Swamp: An Intriguing Wilderness
By Elizabeth H. Smith
The Great Dismal Swamp has been a favorite place of naturalists and sportsmen for centuries, but the value of its resources, has also been recognized by some who wished to profit from them. George Washington surveyed the swamp in 1763 as a member of the Dismal Swamp Company, which was organized to make one of several unsuccessful attempts to drain the swamp. By 1805, the 22-mile long Dismal Swamp Canal, which connected Chesapeake Bay with Albemarle Sound, was being used to transport timber cut from the swamp. Around the time of the Civil War, the Dismal Swamp was a hideout for runaway slaves who often blended with those working in the area. The Dismal Swamp Act of 1974, which established the Great Dismal Swamp Wildlife Refuge, saved this unique area from being stripped of its resources and permitted the development of a resource management program to maintain the more than 100,000 acres of forested wetlands.
The following books are just a few of many resources related to the Great Dismal Swamp available in the Verona Joyner Langford North Carolina Collection:
· Wild River Guide to Dismal Swamp Water Trails (2004) by Lillie Gilbert and Vickie Shufer is the second in a series of guidebooks for paddlers, naturalists, and historians. This guide, which has a combination of old and new photos and maps, is equally interesting for paddlers as for those interested in natural and cultural history.
· Jack Temple Kirby’s Poquosin: a Study of Rural Landscape & Society (1995) traces the environmental history of this little known area into the late twentieth century and presents the interconnections of land, typography, and water and their influence on human society.
· Harriette Thorne Kent’s Swampers: Free Blacks and the Great Dismal Swamp (1991) is an interesting account of workers in the Dismal Swamp prior to the Civil War. She mentions David Strother’s Harper’s New Monthly Magazine article (September 1856), which described the Dismal Swamp workers as well-fed, poorly clothed, and satisfied with their work there.
· Bland Simpson’s The Great Dismal Swamp: a Carolinian’s Swamp Memoir (1990) is a blend of natural history, oral history, travel guide, and personal experience. Simpson, who grew up near the swamp, writes an intriguing memoir about the wilderness and its people.
· Myths and Legends of Great Dismal Swamp (1981)by Hubert J. Davis begins with a short chapter on the history of the swamp and ends with “Dismal Swamp Milestones,” a calendar of events relating to the Great Dismal Swamp between 1670 and 1979.
· David S. Cecelski’s The Waterman’s Song: Slavery and Freedom in Maritime North Carolina (2001) touches on the plight of slaves who worked on the Dismal Swamp Canal.
· Harriet Beecher Stowe’s second novel, Dred, a Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp (1856), tells the story of an escaped slave who lives in the Great Dismal Swamp with his family.
· Charles Royster’s The Fabulous History of the Dismal Swamp Company: a Story of George Washington’s Times (1999)tells the fate of the Dismal Swamp Company, which was founded by 12 Virginians who planned to convert the swamp to farmland. This title is in Joyner’s general stacks.
The North Carolina History and Fiction Digital Library http://digital.lib.ecu.edu/historyfiction/ offers online history and fiction materials related to the Dismal Swamp, which have been digitized from print materials in the North Carolina Collection. Additional resources available in the North Carolina Collection include articles from the newspaper clipping file, ephemeral materials from the vertical file, and historical newspapers on microfilm.
Area residents, as well as members of the ECU community, are encouraged to use the North Carolina Collection located on the third floor of Joyner Library. For more information call 328-6601 or visit the Web site at http://www.ecu.edu/cs-lib/ncc/index.cfm.
Elizabeth H. Smith is a librarian in the North Carolina Collection.
