In November 1908, the Shiloh Brick and Lumber Company offered customers a useful direction: its new pier stood between the Shiloh and Old Trap wharfs. A buyer approaching by water could place the business along a familiar stretch of the Pasquotank. The advertisement promised “Superior Brick,” made with new machinery by experienced men and expertly burned. The company had a product to sell, but it also had to tell customers where to collect it.[1]
The new pier placed the enterprise on the Camden side of the river, among landings that already served as recognizable addresses. Old Trap, a little farther downriver, belonged to a much older story of trade.
Jesse Forbes Pugh, writing in Three Hundred Years Along the Pasquotank, described a cluster of warehouses at Raymond’s Neck, on what became Old Trap Bay. Before the Revolution, Thomas Wright sold lots there to traders. Joseph Jones, Thomas Gordon and John Milby were among the merchants Pugh named, with Peleg Green from Massachusetts. In Journeys Through Camden County, he described the bay as a port of inspection for goods arriving from foreign ports. Long before Shiloh brick was advertised, this lower reach of the river had drawn merchants looking beyond the county.[11]
Its unusual name preserves a less formal account of commerce. Pugh recorded the tradition that men traveling to and from the windmill stopped at a grogshop and stayed too long. Their wives called the place a trap. In his 1957 history he treated this as a story of how the name arose, while reporting that “Trap” appeared in county records after the Revolution and “Old Trap” after 1800. His earlier travel guide connected the grogshops with rum and other imports from the West Indies. The familiar explanation survives as a local tradition.[12]
The men who organized the brick business were entering a landscape with a long history of ownership. On May 13, 1907, W. J. Cowell and his wife, Bettie, sold two tracts to J. M. Rutledge and S. S. Stover for $1,000. One contained thirty acres; the other was described as seventy. The Pasquotank formed part of their boundaries. A year later, the company’s deed of trust expressly identified that purchase and repeated the two descriptions, connecting the Cowell land to the brick enterprise.[2]
The papers preserve the smaller names by which neighbors knew the ground. Goose Nest bounded the thirty-acre tract on the north. Swamp, ditch and slough helped describe the other parcel, with Sawyer, Barco, Dean and Loyd land alongside it. Among those adjoining owners was Thomas Barco, identified in the 1907 deed by the period abbreviation “col.” His appearance places a Black landholder in the neighborhood, though the deed supplies no basis for making him an employee of the works.[2]
Older deeds carry part of this property history back through the nineteenth century. In 1885, a trustee sold seventy-eight acres described as the consolidated Phoebe Davis and Heath tracts to Joseph H. Morrisett for $80. The papers refer to an earlier trust made in 1882. They establish that the land had a history before Cowell’s sale, but they do not carry the brickworks back with it. The deeds describe land, without mentioning an operating kiln.[3]
The Coast Survey chart published in 1850 from an 1847 survey offers an earlier view of the neighborhood. Around Shiloh and Millers Point, the chart records fields, wooded drainage corridors, landings and scattered building marks. Something plainly occupied this riverside neighborhood long before the twentieth-century company appeared. Yet no kiln is labeled, and no mark has been identified securely as one. The chart’s mud and clay descriptions lie in the river, where they describe the bottom for navigation; they cannot be used as evidence of a clay pit ashore.[4]
The business itself comes into sharper view in March 1908. A Greensboro newspaper reported the chartering of the Shiloh Brick and Lumber Company, at Shiloh in Camden County, with authorized capital of $4,000. Its proposed business extended beyond ordinary brick: the charter notice included tile, hollow blocks, other clay and cement products, and lumber. W. D. Southworth and J. L. Southworth appeared among the incorporators, along with men whose names the notice printed as J. N. Ratledge and S. S. Stover. The surviving papers vary in their spelling of the men’s names.[5]
By summer, the company had put its property behind a bank loan. A deed of trust executed July 31, 1908, secured $500 owed to the Citizens Bank of Elizabeth City, payable in a year. The security included the land and the company’s machinery, engines, boilers, buildings, fixtures and manufactured product. W. D. Southworth signed as president and S. S. Storer as secretary. The property pledged to the bank included both the equipment of the works and its finished goods.[6]
In its November advertisement, the company brought those assets before potential buyers in a different language. “New machinery,” “experienced men” and “expert burning” were selling points. These were the company’s claims for its product. The men who performed that work remain unnamed in the sources examined. Their skill was nonetheless part of the company’s own explanation of its product, alongside the machinery and the new pier.[1]
Within another year, a very different notice appeared. M. R. Griffin, trustee under the bank’s deed of trust, advertised a sale of the property at the Camden courthouse for November 1, 1909, at ten in the morning. The notice was dated September 30 and printed in the Tar Heel on October 8. The advertised sale leaves an unfinished episode: no completed sale record has yet established whether it went forward or who might have bought the works.[7]
Brick advertisements nevertheless continued to attach the Shiloh name to the riverfront. In October 1913, the Shiloh Brick & Tile Company advertised 200,000 bricks on its yards and another 225,000 to be burned. For rush orders, it offered 10,000 at Shiloh pier. Wm. Boettcher, secretary, could be reached in Elizabeth City. These were advertised quantities rather than audited production figures, but the distinction between yard stock and bricks already at the pier shows how the company presented its ability to fill an order.[8]
The connection between these later concerns and the original company remains uncertain, but the advertisements repeatedly directed buyers to Shiloh. In December 1920, a notice announced that Shiloh Brick Works had resumed operation and was offering brick and rough lumber, with M. M. Hinton at Shiloh as the contact. The announcement leaves the length and cause of the preceding interruption unstated.[9]
By June 1921, another advertisement named E. R. Wainwright as proprietor of Shiloh Brick Works and offered immediate delivery. Barges and schooners appeared in its delivery wording, and once again there was a Shiloh wharf.[10] Thirteen years after the promise of a new pier between two familiar landings, the river still belonged in the sales pitch. The names on the advertisements had changed. A customer seeking Shiloh brick was still being directed toward the water.
Relationship Confidence
Our confidence scale: Established — supported as settled; High confidence — very likely; Moderate confidence — probable; Possible — plausible, with limited support. Unknown means there is not enough evidence to select a connection; Unsupported means a reported claim lacks adequate support; Contradicted means decisive evidence conflicts with it. These are qualitative judgments, not percentages.
Each assessment concerns the stated relationship or identity. Direct evidence explicitly states it; inferred evidence connects records; mixed uses both. Source reliability, age, locality, known namesakes, associates and contrary evidence determine confidence. Reviewed 12 November 2026.
| Relationship or identity | Confidence | Evidence and reason |
|---|---|---|
| Bettie and W. J. Cowell as spouses | Established | Direct. The 1907 deed expressly calls Bettie W. J. Cowell’s wife. [2] |
| J. M. Rutledge matched to J. N. Ratledge | Possible | Inferred. The company context suggests a spelling/initial variant, but the two names are not silently merged. [2] [5] |
| S. S. Stover matched to S. S. Storer | Moderate confidence | Inferred. The initials, company and linked property strongly favor a spelling variant, while the different spelling is retained. [2] [6] |
Sources
1. Tar Heel (Elizabeth City), November 6, 1908, p. 2, col. 3, “Superior Brick,” original advertisement image, DigitalNC.
2. Camden County Deed Book 5, pp. 80–81, Cowell and wife to Rutledge and Stover, executed May 13, registered May 25, 1907, FamilySearch image 79; Book 5, pp. 392–394, 1908 trust, images 258–259.
3. Camden County Deed Book KK, pp. 341–343, trustee conveyance, November 17, 1885, opening image and continuation. The older and later bounds contain unresolved conflicts; this is not a completed title chain.
4. U.S. Coast Survey, Pasquotank River chart, published 1850 from an 1847 survey. Compared with J. C. Neilson’s 1847 Coast Survey manuscript sheet T-00207, NOAA official archive package. Neither the unidentified buildings nor the offshore bottom annotations establish a kiln site.
5. Daily Industrial News (Greensboro), March 13, 1908, p. 5, cols. 4–5, “Four Charters by Secretary of State,” reporting March 12, DigitalNC.
6. Camden County Deed Book 5, pp. 392–394, trust executed July 31, registered September 5, 1908, opening and continuation.
7. Tar Heel (Elizabeth City), October 8, 1909, p. 2, col. 5, M. R. Griffin trustee notice dated September 30, DigitalNC.
8. Independent (Elizabeth City), October 9, 1913, p. 3, “Bricks!”, DigitalNC.
9. Independent (Elizabeth City), December 10, 1920, p. 3, col. 1, “Notice!”, DigitalNC.
10. Independent (Elizabeth City), June 3, 1921, p. 6, col. 5, “Brick,” DigitalNC.
11. Jesse Forbes Pugh, Three Hundred Years Along the Pasquotank: A Biographical History of Camden County (1957), printed p. 66, ECU Digital Collections; Pugh, Journeys Through Camden County (1953), printed p. 7. These are Pugh’s later historical accounts; the underlying colonial deeds have not been independently inspected for this article.
12. Pugh, Three Hundred Years Along the Pasquotank, printed p. 172, ECU Digital Collections; Journeys Through Camden County, printed p. 7.