Page:Annual report of the superintendent of Negro Affairs in North Carolina, 1864.djvu/27

Rh but only a homestead, and a garden spot for each family. There were sufficient reasons for this, in that the island is not large enough to divide into farms for any considerable number of people. The land is not rich enough for profitable farming, though it will produce vegetables, grapes, and other fruit, in abundance and variety. And again, invalids, aged people, and soldiers' wives and children, could not be expected to improve more than a single acre. This was the plan of the settlement. Broad, straight avenues were laid out, 1,200 feet apart, up and down the island, nearly parallel with its shores and parallel with one another, which were named "Roanoke Avenue," "Lincoln Avenue," "Burnside Avenue," &c. At right angles with these were streets, somewhat narrower than the avenues, and 400 feet apart, numbered "First Street," "Second Street," &c, &c, in one direction from a certain point, and "A Street," "B Street," &c, in the other direction. This arrangement divided the land into parallelograms, or sections, containing each twelve one acre lots, square in form, every one having a street frontage. Along these the houses were disposed, being placed in line, and all at the same distance from the street. The lots were neatly enclosed, and speedily improved by the freedmen, soon making "the wilderness and the solitary place glad" at their coming. Wives and children with alacrity united with the men in performing the work of the carpenter, the mason, and the gardener. So zealous were they in this work, as to spend, in many cases, much of the night in prosecuting it, giving no sleep to their eyes until they could close them sweetly, under their own dear roof-tree. A good supply of lumber being indispensable when one would build a town, I purchased at the North a valuable steam-engine and saw-mill, thus using the larger portion of the funds which had been secured in aid of the freedmen. But as the mill could not be made immediately available, logs and boards split by hand were used at first, and chimneys of the Southern style were constructed of sticks and clay. A few sawed boards for floor, door, and window, were sometimes obtained in a boat expedition across the Sound, to Nagg's Head, Oregon Inlet, or Croatan, and thus their mansions were completed. A proud day was it for Mingo, or Luck, or Cudjoe, when he could