Wayne County, NC - Heritage Series Reprinted with permission of the Mount Olive Tribune and cannot be reproduced without permission. Transcribed by Barbara Kawamoto. Johnston - The Grandmother Of Wayne "Our Heritage" By Claude Moore Craven County was established in 1712 and embraced all of southeastern North Carolina and northwestward to the Virginia line. The County was named for William, The Earl of Craven, one of the original Lord's Proprietors who were deceased by this time. New Bern was chartered in 1710, having been named after the city of Bern in Switzerland. The population of Craven began to grow after the defeat of the Tuscarora Indians in 1714. By the 1740's there were settlers as far up the Neuse as the present Wake County. It was a long distance to the County seat so in 1746, Johnston County was established and was named for Gov. Gabriel Johnston, a native of Scotland, who served as Governor of the Colony from 1734 to 1752. The County seat was located eight miles east of Goldsboro on Walnut Creek. The Neuse River was used for transporting goods mostly on flat boats and rafts. The population of Johnston continued to increase with colonists moving in from the older counties, from Virginia, and from the New Bern area. Dobbs County was carved out of Johnston in 1758 and was named for the Hon. Arthur Dobbs, formerly of Ireland, who was Governor of North Carolina at that time. Dobbs embraced which are now Wayne, Greene and Lenoir Counties. The Johnston County Courthouse was moved to Hinton's Quarter, east of what is now the Town of Clayton. The County seat remained there until Wake County was formed out of the Northwestern Johnston. In 1771, the County seat was moved to Smith's Ferry, which later became Smithfield. John Smith, Sr., settled at this site prior to 1759, and in that year he established a ferry across the Neuse River, which was the crossing for the old colonial road, which ran from New Bern to Hillsboro. In 1762, John Smith, Sr., sold to his son, John Smith, Jr., 228 acres lying along the river including the ferry. In 1770, the first receiving station or market for tobacco was built at Smith's Ferry. In 1771, Gov. William Tryon assembled his troops at Smith's Ferry prior to the War of The Regulation in Alamance County. The Town of Smithfield was chartered by an Act of the General Assembly, meeting at New Bern on April 26, 1777. John Smith, Jr., operated the ferry from 1762 to 1785. In 1785, Smith's son-in-law, John Allen, built a toll bridge across the Neuse near where the ferry had run. In 1779, The N.C. General Assembly met in Smithfield. The legend that Smithfield missed being the Capital of North Carolina is pure legend. When the Assembly met in Smithfield in 1779, a committee was appointed to examine potential sites in Johnston, Wake and Chatham Counties for a site for the capital. In 1784, the Legislature referred the issue to a convention and in 1788, they decided on Joel Lane's plantation in Wake County, and Raleigh was laid out there in 1792. General Sherman's Army left Goldsboro on April 10, 1865, and they had arrived in Smithfield on April 12th when they received the news of General Lee's surrender, which had occurred three days before on April 9th. ============================================================== USGENWEB NOTICE: In keeping with our policy of providing free information on the Internet, data may be used by non-commercial entities, as long as this message remains on all copied material. The electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit or for presentation by other persons or organizations. Persons or organizations desiring to use this material for purposes other than stated above must obtain the written consent of the file contributor, and contact the listed USGenWeb archivist with proof of this consent. The submitter has given permission to the USGenWeb Archives to store the file permanently for free access. File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by Barbara Kawamoto ==============================================================