As a fading Pender community fights for survival, a Hampstead leader lends her voice

During a chilly afternoon, Trianna Kirkland walked around the sacred ground of the Manhollow Missionary Baptist Church.

She's joined by two people she considers family, although the same blood is not running through their veins.

Rebbia Grant and her nephew Dr. Johnny Batts are just a few of the many she admires in the Edgecomb's Black community of eastern Pender County because of their perseverance through adversity.

"These people are my family," Kirkland said after warming up inside the church in Hampstead. "I've known these people longer than the ones I know from home."

Kirkland came to Pender County 42 years ago and didn't have a lot of family beyond her husband, Robert.

More: 'As vibrant as our heritage': Trail project highlights history of Black people in Pender

Life in rural Hampstead was a lot different than her native Fayetteville. They lived in a single-wide mobile home in his mother's backyard for 10 years, before he built a home. There were no street lights and the road unpaved.

"He tricked me into coming down to his ranch," she said with a chuckle.

As Edgecomb's older population declines and younger generations move away, Kirkland is fighting to keep the community alive by tapping into its past. She is the liaison for the Eastern Pender County Progressive Center, which is also known as the Edgecomb Community Center.

"She lets things be known about us," Batts said about Kirkland's work.

One of the modern success stories of the 20th and 21st centuries include famous figures such Ambassador Mattie R. Sharpless, who attended the Sloop Point School before continuing her education and becoming an ambassador for the Foreign Agricultural Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. A portion of U.S. 17, which runs through northeastern Pender County, is named in her honor.

Through the oral tradition of passing down history, others going back centuries earlier includes someone who discovered treasure. They believed it came from Edward Teach, the notorious pirate known as Blackbeard. While plowing a field, Kirkland said an enslaved man came across a chest and told his master about it. Batts, Grant and Kirkland were all in agreement that it was kept a secret.

Batts said another one of the oral stories from a relative involves a family member escaping from the plantation with Harriet Tubman and starting a new life in Philadelphia. During the route, original plan was to reach Canada, but Batts said many made a decision to stay in Pennsylvania.

"There was a woman in the wooded area whistling and I didn't know that Harriet Tubman came down here," Batts said about his great-great aunt from his bloodline. "Little children would sit around the older people and they would tell these stories. Our history is oral because they weren't able to write. Some of us heard those stories and we can tell you."

For Kirkland, the challenge is preserving the stories. The answer is the place where the history started.

Stories of perseverance

A board was formed about a year ago for the Edgecomb community building located down the road from the church, next to the Sloop Point School — a school built to educate Black students made possible by the work of philanthropist Julius Rosenwald and educator Booker T. Washington. Thousands of Rosenwald schools were built in the South. North Carolina had the most with more than 800.

During the days of segregation, Black people in Pender had to raise funds and make donations to build places like the Rosenwald school, which required matching funds from the organization. But they still had to pay taxes, which went towards schools Black students weren't allowed to attend.

"It was almost like double taxation," Kirkland said.

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Many students like Batts continued their education beyond the one-room building. After graduating from the Pender County Training School, a Rosenwald School in Rocky Point, Batts went to North Carolina Central University and embarked on a career in physics and worked on NASA research projects. Looking back, Batts spoke about how the Rosenwald school and associated teachers gave him a foundation.

"When I went to school there, I didn't know anything else," he said. "I thought this was it. As I grew older I began to appreciate what we did learn there. When I left there, I found that I was able to compete with people who went to big high schools (in Charlotte and Winston-Salem)."

Rebbia Grant attended the Sloop Point School and took mile long trips to get there. She also graduated from Pender County Training School in 1954.

"Back then we weren't thinking about stuff like that, all we wanted to do was just go," Grant said.

She later married Woodrow Grant, who played a major role in building the church. Grant still enjoys being a part of the Edgecomb community. She spent many years working as an instructional assistant.

"It was just home for me," Grant said.

A fear of losing history

The old wooden Rosenwald building is still around as a reminder of the past.

"A lot of our young people need to know their history," Kirkland said. "Right now, they're not concerned about knowing theirs, but there's going to come a time in their lives when they want to know this history. We'll be gone, and then they'll be looking for answers."

During her four decades, Kirkland learned a lot about the community through oral history lessons taught by older people. She remembers reading church records books from Martha Batts dating back to the early 1900s with congregation members paying 2 to 10 cents for offerings.

According to records, Manhollow Missionary Baptist Church started in 1861 by a white missionary, Alvin D. Love, when members of the congregation were still enslaved. After the church was burned down and rebuilt, Black ministers led the congregation after slavery ended.

"It kept them in servitude. Obey your master. Do this and do that," Kirkland said about the Bible being interpreted to Black people in bondage. "As people went on and were able to read for themselves and learn more about Christianity for themselves, they got divine information."

Kirkland reveres the determination and the roots of Edgecomb residents in the past who built a community of houses despite only having a middle school education.

"It came from hard working people," she said. "These people were gifted. They had the gift of carpentry and the gift of plumbing. They did not go up to Raleigh and take a board test to be certified in those fields. A lot of hurricanes came through, but a lot of these houses and buildings are still standing."

Kirkland said the elderly population of the Edgecomb community is declining, while younger people are moving away to larger cities such as Raleigh for job opportunities. It's something that frightens her, especially when she hears stories about people selling land that belonged to their ancestors.

"They're selling it for a little bit of nothing," she said. "Do they know the value of what they have? That's what bothers me. It's scary to think about it."

A center for the future

When it comes to history and legacy, it's one of the reasons she got involved with the community center and pushed for improvements, instead of seeing it go into disrepair. She saw older women selling dinners out the back of their cars to raise money for the center established in 1968.

Grant's husband helped get the community center going as a major builder and served as the first president. The community sits on land cleared by Batts' father.

"I saw how hard they worked," she said. "That community center was going down. Nobody was interested and everybody was doing their own thing. Now we have a board, with younger people, and they're coming in with new ideas."

One of the recent events was a Christmas Gala and fundraiser featuring live jazz music and a comedy show. It has always been a gathering place for meetings, events for children, and special occasions such as a tailgate in May with local families. It has been delayed for a couple of years because of the pandemic, but officials are looking forward to it coming back.

The Kirklands' wedding reception was held in the building. She was 22 when she got married and said she picked up a lot of the ways of people in the Edgecomb community while learning about the rich history. Her husband became a deacon at the church, so she became a mother of the church at a young age to be more holy.

"It astonished me to see what they were doing in the church together," she said. "There was a rotating list where the preacher would come over to certain people's house to eat. It was just a cohesiveness."

The community center received donations in the past, but it comes with a challenge since some potential granters assume the community is part of Surf City, which is one of the most prosperous areas of the county.

Fundraiser efforts continue today by sending letters and requests to people who used to call Edgecomb home. Kirkland said local writer and educator Claudia Stack is helping with the effort.

In the 1990s, Kirkland and board members applied for the center to be a nonprofit through 501c3 regulations to help foster community improvements for people of all backgrounds.

"We got to do more," she said. "I like the dances and the things like that, but we got to get more involved with young people coming in and doing tutoring and a place for people to use computers. A lot of times when we write those grants, that's what they're looking for and we don't have that in place yet."

Batts is proud of the resiliency of the Edgecomb community, with the community center serving as an example. He added that the church has always been a pillar of strength in the community.

"Things in our community may die down, but someone is going to come along and restart it," he said. "I don't know where it comes from, but we have a stick-to-itiveness to get things done. In the whole county, we are one of the few areas with a nice community center, church, and all this stuff going. This is our center, we are anchored."

Reporter Chase Jordan can be reached at [email protected].

This article originally appeared on Wilmington StarNews: How a Pender woman is fighting for a fading historic Black community