I’m a Clark. I’m a direct descendent of John Hector Clark. My father was John Daniel Clark. I grew up in this little town. It was a booming town in the 40s-50s and busy little town in the 60s-70s. We were known for beautiful tobacco and markets in town ending each season with a Tobacco Festival. It had three grocery stores, two pharmacies and several general type stores. The one still remaining is McDougalds. There you could find everything you needed from seeds to implements and tools. Eventually the town lost its status and lost its police force and volunteer rescue. Now it’s just a memory for most of us. It was a lovely place to call home.
The town was founded in 1861 as Dalton Station. Thereafter, the town's name was changed to Brown Marsh Station before finally being named Clarkton in honor of John Hector Clark (1821-1898), a prominent tradesman in the area who specialized in the production of turpentine along with the facilitation of other agricultural pursuits. The Clarkton Depot, built as a passenger and freight station by the Seaboard Air Line (SAL) Railroad in 1915, served daily passenger trains from Wilmington, NC to Charlotte, NC via Hamlet and Monroe. The Depot was greatly associated with the development of the railroad, the economic lifeline of inland North Carolina, and the growth of Clarkton, a village along the railroad that grew into a bustling small town as a result of its location on the rail line and its role as a major trading center for lower Bladen County, NC.
It’s so interesting to hear about the history of these towns and how they have connections to the other towns I have visited, like Hamlet, NC. Thank you so much for your history post.
I'm looking for some ideas on where to retire to Tim. What would you say was the top 5 towns you thought would be a good retirement area where I could get a small piece of land acre or so and have some chickens and grow my own vegetables?
There are a lot of variables that will be different for each person. But I can give you a list of places I would like to move to if I were selling my home in Lexington, NC. NC Mountains Hayesville, NC Lansing, NC Saluda, NC Crossnore, NC NC Piedmont Elkin, NC Madison, NC Danbury, NC Warrenton, NC NC Coastal Plains Clayton, NC Broadway, NC Robbins, NC Lumber Bridge, NC There are many towns east of I-95 that I still need to visit, so I cannot give you a list for that area at this time. Thanks for asking, and thanks for watching my videos.
Why do you go to towns and spew negativity about the condition buildings and surroundings that don’t look good on your part and on the same token by you doing so will make people not want to view your videos and makes your character look bad!!!
I show the towns I visit as they are through the eyes of a visitor. If a building is run down, I cannot tell my viewers it is not. They can see it for themselves. Clarton is a beautiful town, and I made mention of that in my Elizabethtown video, saying how beautiful the school and houses were that surrounded Clarton. It is my hope that these videos will encourage people to return to their town centers and support the mom-and-pop stores that open there. For too long, we have helped the big chains and franchises destroy our town centers, turning the outskirts of each into a cabon copy of the other with the same ole chains in each of them. Thanks for watching and commenting. 👍
