Wayne County NcArchives History .....Dudley – Everettsville 
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Guy Potts http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00017.html#0004214 May 28, 2009, 2:35 pm

Mount Olive Tribune
September 7, 1979
Volume 76 – Number 44 – Section B
By John Baxton Flowers III
Reprinted with permission from the Mount Olive Tribune

[Note: this is an extract from the main article "Early History of Mount Olive" 
posted in the "History" section of this site]

Early History of Mount Olive

During the Civil War, Mount Olive was but a small railway station on the 
historic Wilmington and Weldon Railroad (now Seaboard Coast Line). The 
railroad movement in North Carolina was first stressed in 1827 when President 
Joseph Caldwell of the University of North Carolina wrote a series of 
newspaper articles, which were published in 1828 as a book, “The Numbers of 
Carlton,” in which he discussed the superiority of railroads over canals and 
turnpikes, and advocated the state government take the lead in building 
railroads.

The Experimental Railroad in Raleigh was built by private capital in 1832-1833 
to move stone from the quarry to Union Square where the present capital 
building was then being erected. The railroad, only one and a quarter miles in 
length, convinced many influential people that rail travel would help get 
North Carolina out of her economic depression.

The Wilmington and Raleigh Railroad Company was chartered in 1834 with a 
million and a half dollars in capital, and was largely a Wilmington 
enterprise. The destination at Raleigh was soon changed to Weldon, and the 
name changed to the Wilmington and Weldon Railroad Company. Governor Edward B. 
Dudley of Wilmington was president of the company, and the small but 
progressive station depot that was established on February 3, 1860 five miles 
north of present-day Mount Olive was named in his honor.

The U.S. Post Office Department established a post office at Dudley on January 
13, 1840, with John W.S. West as postmaster. This first Dudley was located on 
the east side of the railroad just south of where Everettsville was located, 
and is said to have taken its name from Dudley Lewis, a prominent local 
figure. Soon after it was established this post office was renamed 
Everettsville, which continued until December 6, 1866 when it was closed. 
Later the second and present Dudley was established, and named for Gov. Dudley.

Dudley – Everettsville

The Dudley station served the little village of Everettsville, which was six 
miles south of Goldsboro, and four miles north of present-day Dudley, as well 
as the rich plantations southwest of Goldsboro. Everettsville boasted two 
churches, a good school, a Masonic lodge, and more than a dozen homes 
belonging to some of the wealthiest citizens of Wayne County. It was said to 
be the most aristocratic community in the county until it broke up after the 
Civil War. The town was established by wealthy planters to escape the low 
marshy ground that bordered the river and many creeks and swamps around it. 
There were great losses to floods, malaria and typhoid fever, and doctors had 
urged residents to seek higher ground. The Everett lands were higher, more 
arid and the soil was sandy, and so the Everetts established a small town on 
their land and it took the name of Everettsville.

The names of the village of Everettsville’s families read like an early 
history of the county, with the Everett, McKinne, Becton, Collier, Carraway, 
Slocumb, West, Hollowell and Hooks families among the most prominent. Most of 
the other prominent county families were related to these, and there has 
remained a great respect for the village though it disappeared over a century 
ago.

In 1863, David McKinne, a descendant of the famous old Colonel William 
McKinne, of Wayne County, was station agent at Dudley, with a salary of 
$180.00 annually. When this salary is contrasted to the $120.00 earned by the 
agent at Mount Olive Station you get the idea that Dudley was economically 
more important in 1863.



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