Clarkton: History in need of a new home

CLARKTON — History is in need of preservation, and two residents along with the town’s board and staff are trying to make that happen.

Putting a small outbuilding next to the Clarkton Public Library has been evaluated by town commissioners during the planning stages.

“The one that would fit the trophies and the historical stuff that that is in there will run $6,800 to $7,000,” Chris Hall said. He’s town maintenance director.

There are two desks that will need to be put into the historical room area, one of which was from the old post office, and the other from the train station.

“Most of this stuff was donated,” Keith Croom said. “The depot building used to sit on the other side of the railroad tracks.”

He said that the town received a Community Development Block Grant in approximately 1976 or 1977. That grant was used to move the building, which still has some of its previous light fixtures and charm.

Even now the importance of the past is seen in the old Clarkton Depot, where the Town Hall and nutrition site are located. Nestled inside the depot is a room with piles of papers, pictures and memorabilia that has been in desperate need of being displayed.

Right now a wall cabinet houses many trophies from the 1900s, achievements by students and faculty from long-ago closed schools.

Hopes are to have the documents and artifacts displayed.

“The fire department, the current fire department, was founded in 1950,” Croom said, holding up a picture of the station. “It’s still a volunteer organization.”

There is also a print of the famous “Whistler’s Mother” oil painting. James Whistler painted his mother, Anne McNeil Whistler in 1871, and she used to summer in Clarkton.

“He still has family in this area,” Croom said. “Madeline Clark was the local historian.”

She died over a decade ago.

“And nobody came along to pick up what she was doing,” he added. “People just don’t have an interest in their heritage anymore.”

The town was founded in 1861; it turns 160 years old next year. It was founded as Dalton Station, then went to Brown Marsh Station before finally getting its present name Clarkton.

“This entire room is full of pictures,” Linda Croom said.

The building the library is in was once a bank in Clarkton.

“But the first bank in Bladen County was in an old hotel that sat right across the street here,” Keith Croom said, waving across from the now Town Hall building.

That building is still standing as well, next to the Town Hall.

“Clarkton used to be a very active, small town,” Keith Croom said. “When the railroad left Elizabethtown, Clarkton and Bladenboro were the only access to the railroad. And that’s probably why the tobacco market opened up here in Clarkton.”

That market is what sparked the Tobacco Festival, which ran from 1947 to 1997, Keith Croom said, adding that Bladenboro, Clarkton and Elizabethtown alternated hosting it.

“It was the third weekend in October when the border closed,” he said, referring to the Border Belt tobacco market. “It was always in a warehouse. And for the parade on Saturday morning there would be 10 or 11 thousand people in Clarkton.”

The Crooms both said that there’s not the civic groups like there used to be, and they would love to see a revitalization of the downtown as well as the community.

Their hope is perhaps with the small seed of this historical building where people can see their roots, that can happen.