Stokes in Pitt County, North Carolina, can be explored through several strands of history: the railroad and commerce, schools, churches and rural heritage. The town’s name recalls William Green Stokes (1864–1953), who opened a store there along the railroad line in 1892. Stokes was once the principal center and post office of Carolina Township. This historical role provides a framework for getting to know the town through its institutions and the traces they left over time.
Local History and School Records
Stokes Elementary School was a segregated public school with a predominantly African American student body. Matthew T. Lewis led the school from 1952 to 1977. The first issue of the student newspaper The Stokes Pilot was published in April 1965. Together, these milestones offer different insights into the school’s history: its institutional development, the tenure of a principal and the distinctive voice of a student newspaper.
The Matthew T. Lewis Papers also document a longer period. The collection includes photographic prints of Stokes Elementary School students, teachers, staff and parents from 1944 to 1977. Its time span therefore extends beyond Lewis’s tenure. Those interested in local history will find a different perspective here than in the development of the town’s name or its railroad connection: the everyday life of a school and the people associated with it.
Church Chronicles in Several Phases
Completed in 1904, the Missionary Church was later first called Piney Grove Baptist Church and then St. John Missionary Baptist Church. Its relocation in 2005 marked another milestone. At the time, a 1.7-mile walk led from the old church on Highway 903N to the new sanctuary on Briery Swamp Road. This was a one-time historical event, not an indication of a route that exists today or is used repeatedly.
The St. John Missionary Baptist Church Soul-Saving Center is now located at 2921 Briery Swamp Road in Stokes. If you plan to include the location in your trip, check in advance whether a visit is possible. The records of Briery Swamp Baptist Church, which span 1827 to 1902, offer another period of church history. Local history and church chronicles complement one another without telling the same story.
The Region’s Rural Heritage
The Eastern Carolina Village and Farm Museum includes Stokes on a list of communities in its regional rural history program. The museum presents hands-on history from the pre-Civil War period to just before World War II. Artifacts are preserved in authentic buildings, and costumed interpreters bring history to life. The complex includes an original one-room schoolhouse, a country store, a chapel, a log cabin and the original County Home barn. The museum’s broad time span offers a different focus from Stokes’s specific school and church chronicles.
The Thomas Sheppard Farm, about four and a half miles east of the crossroads village of Stokes, offers another historical perspective. It comprises a largely intact group of residential and agricultural buildings constructed at different times from the late 18th century through the 1930s. Several timescales therefore sit side by side in the region’s heritage: the building history of a farm, the museum’s longer historical span and the more narrowly defined developments of the school and church. This distinction can help you choose the focus of your trip: you can concentrate on the local history of Stokes or broaden your view to the region’s rural history.
Discover more destinations: Greenville, Winterville.
For the overview of the wider region: Pitt.
