The Age of Steam

The junction of the Portsmouth & Roanoke Railroad and the Blackwater River in 1835 turned this once swampy wilderness into a transportation link between the towns of the Chowan and Albemarle Sound and points to the northeast. The railroad, later known as the Seaboard & Roanoke and the Seaboard Line, carried people and goods between Norfolk and Blackwater Depot on the river’s east bank, and beginning in 1836 steamboats such as the Bravo, the Fox, the Stag, and the Curlew took them onward between Blackwater Depot and Edenton on the Blackwater and Chowan rivers. This trade fostered the growth of a village on the Southampton side of the Blackwater, known by 1838 as Franklin Depot. By the early 1860s Franklin had a depot, warehouse, steamboat landing, steamboat lines, sawmill, general store, churches, and a popular hotel owned by Richard and Mary Rebecca Murfee Barrett.

Franklin, Virginia · United States