Found – Lost Carolina Village

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 79, Issue 306, 31 December 1935, Page 10

Found - Lost Carolina Village

CARTHAGE—Forty years ago u thriving community. To-day a mysterious forgotten village, deserted by its inhabitants for reasons unknown.

That, in brief, describes “Parawood,” North Carolina’s “ghost town,” which for four decades has been the rendezvous of birds and animals of varied species. Though situated only five miles from here, residents of this community profess not to know why the citizenry left the place whose principal industry was tne manufacture of millstones.

So near, and yet so far away from the busy haunts of men, this longabandoned village has fallen into disrepair. Its streets are almost obsc ?d by thick growths of bushes, brush ano tangled vines of every description, as are the premises surrounding the business houses and frame dwellings. And yet, but for the ravages of time, the place probably retains almost its original aspect. Even the post office, with its record of registered mail and letters in the cobwebbed pigeonholes, remains undisturbed except for the play of the elements through t«e fallen roof. On the time-stained register of the Grand Hotel is inscribed the name of the last entry —on April 2, 1831—that of Moses Faber, of Baltimore, Md., who with his horse and driver, cost his firm 75 cents for the night. Colourful posters in the hotel attic attest the importance of the millstone industry—“ Moore County Grit, a bluecolored cement stone, filled with white flint, which when dressed has a much sharper and better cutting edge than any other*stone yet found.” Ruins mark the former mill ouildlng. Only the walls remain standing—the three stories, stairway, roof and machinery lying heaped in the stream that turned the stones to grind the corn, lu close proximity to the mill, in an almost perfect state of preservation, is the big plant which manufactured the woodwork for the mills. In the bacKground hundreds of discarded millstones lie by the perch-filled pool from which they were blasted. Perhaps a depression overtook the business in the hey-day of its success. Or outside opportunities may have incited a wholesale migration of tae population. Whatever the cause, they are gone. Whatever the reason, they left in a hurry. And without troubling to explain why.