Enslaved workers at the Grist property

North Carolina turpentine distillery. North Carolina Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Library.

Slave schedules for the 1860 U.S. Federal Census reveal Dr. John D. Bellamy enslaved 24 teenagers and men on his turpentine operation at "Grist", a small settlement in Columbus County, NC, 60 miles west of Wilmington near the town of Chadbourn. Ranging in age from 17 to 40 and collectively living in nine "cabins," these enslaved workers, together with 82 at his "Grovely" plantation in Brunswick County and nine more at his residence in Wilmington, totaled 115 men, women and children. This meant Bellamy was one North Carolina's largest slaveholders in 1860.

Although Bellamy identified himself as a physician to a census taker in 1850, he listed himself as a merchant in 1860. In 1854, John paid $4,500 for the large tract of pine forest, convenient to railroad lines, at Grist. While the word grist refers to grain for milling into products like flour it was not grain but this turpentine distillery, using the labor of the enslaved workers, that proved lucrative.  

Much of the work involved cutting boxes, or holes approximately six to eight inches, to collect resin in barrels placed at the base of trees.

North Carolinians are nicknamed Tar Heels, originally as a pejorative for perceivedly lowly work with pine resin (the 'tar'). During the  Civil War, however, soldiers took up the name and post-war it became a symbol of state pride [1]. For many people the manufacture of pitch, tar, rosin, and turpentine was critical for a variety of uses and for the revenue produced. Turpentine, for example, was put into everything from makeup to medicine in the mid-19th century.

A lonely, dirty, dangerous business:
Extracting this 'pine tar' is described by historian David Cecelski; "A 'boxed tree' was one that had a section of its bark cut away so that the resin flowed into the hollow in the tree where it could be collected. To make 'spirits of turpentine,' the woodsmen and women (often enslaved laborers) collected and distilled that resin, not terribly unlike making liquor." [2] Given that pine resin featured in so many products, plus preserved wood and waterproofed ships, it was unsurprising that North Carolina, one of the world's leading sources, accumulated so much wealth from its pine trees.

As lucrative as it was for the White land owners, the industry could be solitary and physically taxing for the enslaved workers. The industry used the task system. An overseer assigned enslaved workers a task, or multiple tasks, and they were responsible for completing them. This meant an enslaved naval stores worker could continue with limited or no supervision for several days at a stretch. 

Shoes, hats and blankets were often the only items enslaved workers on these turpentine farms had that were not made on site. Different from plantation life, where families were often housed together, laboring in a turpentine operation could be more solitary with perhaps only a small number of female enslaved cooks with the male laborers. Working conditions were harsh. Summer heat, mosquitoes, poisonous snakes and poison ivy, among much else, were prevalent and led to a variety of maladies. Wet ground and forests made it difficult if not impossible to move carts led by mules.

​Enslaved men working the pine forests were often subjected to cruel punishment at the hands of overseers and agents who managed the operations for men who lived in other counties. Runaways were not uncommon. Housing was another difficulty. Workers in the naval stores industry primarily lived in crude lean‐tos, sometimes no more than four feet high. More than a few suffered illnesses caused by breathing the fumes of the portable copper turpentine stills. [3] There were several methods for distilling, including tar kilns and pits, and using fallen and burnt logs as well as boxed trees. If not by rail or wagon, the North Carolina river system brought the products to the coast for use or sale. [4]

Collecting pitch from pine trees in North Carolina. Image courtesy of UNC Chapel Hill.

​When enslaved people would stir pine tar, pitch and turpentine, it was often in huge cauldrons that required them to stand on the edge and use a long stirrer, almost like an oar. One slip could lead to severe burning. In this case, being a “Tar Heel” was certainly not a good thing. In 1850 there were 1,144 distillers of pine tar products in the state, and most had businesses in Wilmington. By 1860 the value of this trade was over $5 million. [5] To that point, an unproven story, likely an apocryphal boast but certainly indicative, relayed by John Bellamy Jr. in his manuscript, Memoirs of an Octogenarian (readable here), was that one year's profit from one of his father's plantations paid for the Bellamy house in Wilmington. As with cotton and rice plantations on the Cape Fear the hard work of enslaved Black workers was central to this egregiously unequal economy and society.

This piece of 'chevroned' longleaf pine can be viewed at the Bellamy Museum. It was presented to the museum by Old Growth Riverwood, a company that salvages wooden buildings and, as in this case, recovers old growth woods from the Cape Fear River.

Clearly seen are the many marks of years of cutting this tree to drain the resin. Longleaf pines uptake water through their dense, damp interior rather than their bark, so 'boxing' a tree can take place over many years. These trees can live to 300 years old and their range was once 92 million acres from coastal North Carolina to Texas. Now less than 5% of that ecosystem remains. [6]

[1] William S. Powell (March 1982). "What's in a Name? Why We're All Called Tar Heels". Tar Heel magazine
[2] David Cecelski (reviewing 1809 diary excerpts from English traveler Holles Bull Way), Coastal Review article, July 2018, coastalreview.org.https://coastalreview.org/2018/07/pitch-pines-and-tar-burners-a-1792-account/
[3] Dr. Lloyd Johnson. https://northcarolinahistory.org/encyclopedia/naval-stores/
[4] David Cecelski (reviewing 1809 diary excerpts from English traveler Holles Bull Way), Coastal Review article, July 2018, coastalreview.org.https://coastalreview.org/2018/07/pitch-pines-and-tar-burners-a-1792-account/
[5] Dr. Lloyd Johnson. https://northcarolinahistory.org/encyclopedia/naval-stores/
[6] Article, WUFT Public Media, Veronica Nocera. May 9, 2024. www.tuft.org/environment/2024-05-09/the-trees-truth-once-dominant-longleaf-pines-face-the-growing-threat-of-climate-change