Chowan Discovery Group

Chowan Discovery’s Achievement Report for 2016

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So much has happened since Marvin’s first presentations in 2007 and the Winton Triangle stage production in 2009.  Over fifty presentations, seven articles, seven broadcast appearances, six highway historical markers, three films, three murals and one award are among Chowan Discovery’s achievements prior to 2017.  Here is our record for 2016:

Public Presentations

February: “A Chowanoke History” at Mt Pleasant Baptist Church in Harrellsville NC 
February: “Haiti’s Forts of Freedom” at the U.S. Park Service in Reston VA – closed event.
March: Showing the film The Campaigns of Molly Hundley at the Historical Society of Washington, Washington DC
April: Hosted the annual Chowan Discovery Fundraiser, Rockville MD
May: The new lecture, “Loyal Southerners” at Rock Creek Nature Center in Washington DC
September: “The Winton Triangle’s Civil War” at the Greenbelt Library in Greenbelt MD, hosted by C.R. Gibbs.
October: showing of the film The Campaigns of Molly Hundley and panel presentation on highway historical markers, at ASALH annual conference (Association for the Study of African American Life and History), Richmond VA
November: The new lecture, “Haiti and the Civil War” at Rock Creek Nature Center in Washington DC
November: “The Winton Triangle” for the Middle Peninsula Afro American Genealogical and Historical Society in Tappahannock VA
December: “Pleasant Plains School’s 150 Years” at Pleasant Plains Baptist Church, Winton, NC
December: The new lecture, “Memories of Mrs. Katie A. Hart”, Cultivator Bookstore, Murfreesboro NC

Publications:

– An essay, “Rebirth on the Chowan”, We Will Always Be Here, edited by Dr. Denise A. Bates, published by the University of Florida Press, May 2016
– “Foreword”, From Hilltown to Strieby by Margo Lee Williams, Backintyme Publishing, July 2016.

Recognition:

Placing Pleasant Plains Schoolhouse (a Rosenwald school) on the National Register for Historic Places, July, 2016

Final Note: It is important to recognize the efforts that were not ultimately successful: Chowan Discovery applied for a grant for a Winton Triangle photography project, and two marker nominations.  Despite this, the number of presentations for 2017 are set to exceed those of 2016.  More to come!

(For activities of previous years, visit the archives of the News and Events pages.)

Winton Triangle History in Tuscon!

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Marvin T. Jones presents photographs, maps and narrative of his community’s 275 year-old history of landowning mixed-race people in North Carolina’s Hertford County area.  The written history of the Winton Triangle begin in 1584 when the English first learn about the area.  The three main towns of the Triangle are Winton, Cofield and Ahoskie. The Winton Triangle’s story is that of a new people who cobbled success and identity despite colonization, wars, slavery and discrimination.  Jones uses maps, documents and photographs to tell this 400+ year old story.  This presentation has been given many times in North Carolina – of course –  in Virginia, Maryland, Chicago, Tennesee, New York, West Virginia, and is now going across the Rockies.

 

Barbea Williams Performing Company and Family
Dunbar Pavilion – BWPC Dance and Art Academy
325 West 2nd Street, Tucson, AZ

Pleasant Plains School’s 150th Anniversary

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This is the 1920 Pleasant Plains School House, funded in part by Julius Rosenwald. His portrait is in the three-room schoolhouse.
This is the 1920 Pleasant Plains School House, funded in part by Julius Rosenwald. His portrait is in the three-room schoolhouse.

Pleasant Plains Baptist Church leaders founded its Pleasant Plains School the year after the end of the Civil War.  Before then, there were no schools for people of color, enslaved or free.  The school, its church, leaders and students went on to establish other school in the area and in Virginia.  The most notable daughter school is C.S. Brown School (originally Chowan Academy and Waters Training School), the first normal or high school for people of color in the Roanoke-Chowan area.  Also many of its alumni became teachers and business people.

The first schoolhouse was replaced by the current Rosenwald building. After the school’s closing in 1950, Pleasant Plains Schoolhouse became a community center.

Chowan Discovery and Pleasant Plains Baptist Church will host a program on the school’s history, its importance and its new status on the National Registry of Historic Places.  The program begins after the 11am Sunday service.

Winton Triangle Presentation in Tappahannock, VA

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Marvin T. Jones presents photographs, maps and narrative of his community’s 275 year-old history of landowning mixed-race people in North Carolina’s Hertford County area.  The written history of the Winton Triangle begin in 1584 when the English first learn about the area.  The three main towns of the Triangle are Winton, Cofield and Ahoskie. The Winton Triangle’s story is that of a new people who cobbled success and identity despite colonization, wars, slavery and discrimination.

Hosted by the Middle Peninsula African-American Genealogical and Historical Society of Virginia.

Pleasant Plains School on the National Register!

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(L-r) Scott Powers, intern and Reid Thomas of the NC Office of Historic Preservation hear Pleasant Plains Church Trustee McCoy Pierce tell of his experiences of Pleasant Plains Schoolhouse when it was a community center.

June 2016: A nomination put forth by Chowan Discovery, historic preservation consultant Joanna Braswell and Pleasant Plains Baptist Church has resulted in the placing of Pleasant Plains School on the National Register of Historic Places.  This was just in time for the 150th anniversary of the school’s founding!

The school was founded in 1866 by Pleasant Plains Baptist Church.  Among the builders of the first school house were Marmaduke Hall, James Reynolds and church founders Jesse Keene, Willis Weaver and William Jones Sr.  William David Newsom, who later served in the N.C. House of Representatives, was the first teacher.  Within 30 years, Pleasant Plains School and its leaders were the parents of four other schools: Union School, Cotton School, Walden School and the everlasting C.S. Brown School. Within a few years of the school’s founding, it began part of the Hertford County public school system although the church continued to own the land up to now.

Historic preservation consultant Joanna Braswell researching land records at the Hertford County Courthouse in 2015.

Before the nomination process began, N.C. State Office of Historic Preservation agents, Scott Powers and Reid Thomas, visited the current Pleasant Plains School house and community.  This school house, which succeeded the 1866 one, is a Rosenwald building funded in 1920.  The school closed in 1950 and the church bought the 3-room schoolhouse from the Hertford County public school system for one dollar in 1951.

After making repairs to the schoolhouse, Pleasant Plains Church added in-house plumbing, gas heating electricity, a kitchen and a bathroom.  Playground equipment was purchased for the grounds.  Pleasant Plains Schoolhouse then became a community center and fellowship hall, hosting Vacation Bible School programs, the Pleasant Plains Boy Scouts, family reunions, teas, parties, picnics, activities for the Hertford County Office of Aging, and a summer camp for a Washington, D.C. school.

The is the Pleasant Plains Schoolhouse funded in part by the Rosenwald Foundation in 1920. The first schoolhouse was built in 1866.

Joanna Braswell, a consultant from Smithfield, Virginia, provided guidance, historical research, architectural assessments and the final writing for the nomination.  Using interviews with former students and document research, most of the nomination’s history section was produced by Marvin T. Jones of Chowan Discovery.  Part of the research included support for the documentary film ROSENWALD.   Jones met several times with the film’s director Aviva Kempner, contributed a blog post about Pleasant Plains School, and spoke to theater audiences at the first public showings of the film.  Jones also presented the school’s history at the second National Rosenwald Schools Conference in Durham.

Support for this milestone was made possible by support  from the Pleasant Plains Baptist Church deacon and trustees boards, led by Reverend W. Robert Ashe, Deacon Dr. Terry Hall and Trustee McCoy Pierce, and the Chowan Discovery donors, volunteers and advisors.

Winton Triangle’s Civil War presentation

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Learn about role a rural community of color played during the Civil War. As part of Dr. C.R. Gibbs’ annual African American history lectures series at the Greenbelt MD Public Library, Marvin T. Jones presents with words and images the Winton Triangle’s successful efforts to keep American whole and to defeat slavery.  Serving from Virginia to Texas, many were from families of soldiers.  You will hear about their cause, challenges, escapes, victories and their lives – and what they created with their new freedoms after the war.