There are two natural freshwater lakes in the county. Lake Phelps is
a clear, sand-bottom lake 16,000 acres in size and the second
largest natural lake in North Carolina. Pungo Lake covers 2560 acres
and is a blackwater lake. Lake Phelps is entirely within Pettigrew
State Park and Pungo Lake is part of the Pocosin Lakes National
Wildlife Refuge.
Pung Lake Observation Deck
Lake Phelps forms the headwaters of the Scuppernong River and
occupies the highest elevation of the general area. It is sustained
almost exclusively by direct rainfall. The elevation of the Lake rim
is about 14-15 feet above sea level, but somewhat lower on the north
shore. Before development in the 1790s, water flowed over the north
rim and through a cypress forest before reaching the Scuppernong
River. Some old maps show a drainage way connected to the Lake, but
this was probably a "slough" through the organic surface that
disappeared as the area was cleared and the organic surface
subsided. Edmund Ruffin (1860) estimated that the area north of the
Lake had lost 3 feet of organic surface by the 1830s. The Lake is as
much as 7 feet deep in places, but averages much less. The age of
Lake Phelps is not known, but indirect evidence indicates that it
has been relatively stable for many years. Indian dugout canoes
found in the Lake have been dated to about 4000 years B. P. There is
evidence that the Lake extended further to the west at some time in
the past.
Lake Phelps was the focus for one of the earliest large-scale land
development schemes in eastern North Carolina. After the
Revolutionary War, investment interest turned to land development
for agriculture (Pomeroy and Yoho, 1964). One of the easiest ways to
obtain farmland was to drain a natural lake. A group of investors
from Edenton realized that Lake Phelps (sometimes referred to as
Lake Scuppernong) was higher than the Scuppernong River, and
obtained permission from the state to drain and farm the lake
bottom. Fortunately, before that was accomplished, they decided to
use the lake as an irrigation source for rice to be grown north of
the lake. In 1784 the North Carolina General Assembly authorized
them to proceed and gave them seven years in which to complete the
project (Tarlton, 1954). The investors, led by Josiah Collins,
formed "The Lake Company" and acquired a total of nearly 110,000
acres of land. Collins also privately owned and additional 60,000
acres of land lying to the east of the Lake. These land holdings,
covering about 170,000 acres, must have included much of what is now
Washington and Tyrrell Counties south of the higher land along
Albemarle Sound.
The enterprise was considered a great success. A ship was sent to
Africa for slaves, a canal was dug from Lake Phelps to the
Scuppernong River, land was cleared, and rice was planted. The story
of these slaves and their descendants is told in Dorothy Redfern's
book, "Somerset Homecoming". (Redfern, 1988). The canal was
utilized for drainage, irrigation, waterpower, and navigation.
Horizontal turbine water wheels (tub mills) provided water power for
a sawmill and for grain handling and corn shelling. The production
of cypress lumber was a lucrative accompaniment for the farming
operation (Ruffin, 1839). Initially rice was grown, but within a few
years attention turned to corn and wheat.
By the 1830s Collins had gained full control of the plantation and
named it Somerset Place in honor of the family holdings in England.
The success of Somerset Place attracted other investors to the
swampland north of the Lake, most notably the Pettigrew family on
their plantation called Bonarva. By this time, Washington County had
been formed from Tyrrell County, and the original canal was used as
the new county line. Thus the Collins family lived at Somerset Place
in Washington County and the Pettigrews lived immediately next door
at Bonarva in Tyrrell County. A wealth of information concerning the
life of the plantations is contained in "The Pettigrew Papers" (Lemmon, 1771, 1988). When Edmund Ruffin visited the area in 1839,
he found a total of about 5,000 acres in cultivation by five or six
proprietors
The lake plantations continued in operation until the Civil War. The
occupation of the area by Union Troops and the resulting disruption
of plantation life have been well described in "War of another Kind"
(Durrill, 1990). Most of the assets of a slave-operated plantation
were tied up in the value of the slaves themselves, and the end of
the war caused large losses of capital. For example, in 1860
Somerset Place had 328 slaves valued for tax purposes at $325,000.
In 1869, a remnant of the plantation, some 4,428 acres, was sold to
pay a debt of only $10,000 (Sharpe, 1961).
The property associated with Somerset Place has been divided and
subdivided many times over the years. Immediately after the Civil
War, much of the land was farmed by tenants. In 1937, the Federal
Farm Security Administration acquired a portion of the land and
incorporated it into the Scuppernong Farms Settlement project
(Tarlton, 1954). This project was in response to the great
depression of the 1920s and 30s. It was an attempt by the federal
government to settle self-sustaining small farmers on small tracts
of land. The Prosperity of the Second World War and changing social
conditions, resulted in the failure of the Scuppernong Farms
project, and the land was sold at auction in 1945. Today, the land
is occupied by a prosperous community of family farmers.