--a photo documentary of a classic Eastern North Carolina farm
The Kornegay family of Duplin County can trace their roots to George Kornegay, the family’s sole survivor of the Tuscarora attack on the then new settlement of New Bern in 1711.
The journey began in the Palatine region of Germany and was marred by a series of mishaps that included politics and pirates. The family of John George Kornegay endured being shuffled around England in an effort to keep their voting power in England. When they finally were given permission to sail, French privateers attacked and stole their belongings during the ocean voyage, a voyage that would cost the lives of half their group of 600. They finally arrived in North Carolina just as the friction between the colonists and the Indians came to a head. Less than a year after their arrival, the Kornegay family was wiped out, save for one ten-year-old survivor, George Kornegay.
George and another orphaned little boy, George Koonce, would be raised by a prominent family, the Millers, who lived along the Trent River. Both were to be cared for and educated until they reached the age of twenty-one. George moved to Duplin County in the 1740’s, where he met and married, Mary Fisher. The Kornegay family as it exists now in America began with this union.
For three hundred years the Kornegay family prospered and became an important part of North Carolina’s history. The farm buildings here were built by Zollie Kornegay in the early 1920’s. In 1926, his son, Rodney Zollie Kornegay Sr. was born in the front room of the home his father had built here in the Glisson area of Duplin County. Rodney Zollie Kornegay Sr. lived, worked, and raised his family in this home. In 2010, he passed away in the very same room.
This is a look at the legacy of Rodney Kornegay Sr. through the items and buildings that were a part of his life for 83 years. Rodney Kornegay played here, worked here, loved here, and raised a family here. His children played here, worked here, loved here---and now, so do his grandchildren and great-grandchildren. The tradition continues.
A storm had taken away a work shed a couple of years before. Mr. Rodney’s tool chest, an anvil, and other assorted instruments associated with manual labor and skill lay rusting on the concrete slab left behind. Mr. Rodney was an avid beekeeper at one time. Beehives and boxes filled with jars of honey are still stored in the old pack house. In the big barn, on a dusty work bench, stands an unfinished corn cracker. Other assorted items from traps to old drive belts hang on the wall as sunlight parts the spaces between the wood slats of the barn. His Farmall tractor and bass boats sit under nearby shelters, their hulls waiting to once more touch the waters of a Duplin creek. While his son still works the farm, the old home place was pretty much as Mr. Rodney had left it.
The face of this part of the state is rapidly changing as we lose the old farms and country stores that were once so vital to rural life. While the Western part of North Carolina tries to preserve its culture and ways of life, in the Eastern part of the state there seems to be a rush to demolish and forget….or maybe it is forget and demolish?
The Kornegay Farm in Duplin County is a jewel among these cherished family farms. The aroma of flue-cured tobacco from decades ago still lingers around the old tobacco barns. The Kornegay family history reads like an adventure story dating to the very beginning of the United States. It was a thrill photographing these buildings and preserving them digitally and on film for the future generations of the Kornegay family.
The result of several weeks of photography and research into the family's history was this book. If your or your family would like information on such a project, please contact me at dandjphoto@gmail.com
