Wes Hall’s boat, Black River, is still docked at his home on the Northeast Cape Fear River.
in 1781. It is thought that Elizabeth
Heron McKenzie, and her husband
John, were responsible for reconstruct-ing
the drawbridge, a “Big Bridge”
having appeared on an 1808 map.
Confederate General Braxton Bragg
and his troops possibly destroyed the
Big Bridge as they fled the region
via the Northeast Cape Fear River
in 1865. By 1866, Jackson Wood’s
deed included “the Ferry known as
Big Bridge Ferry,” which Wood and
his son John E. Wood operated and
maintained until they sold it in 1882
to Margaret Sophia Blossom, wife of
Samuel Blossom, a Portuguese immi-grant
of the Madeira Islands.
In 1887, The Morning Star reported
Blossom’s plans to “build a small hotel
at Castle Haynes to accommodate
the travel over the northeast ferry,”
but that never came to fruition. On
February 12,1898, The Morning Star
stated that Blossom leased operation
of the ferry to Pender county com-missioners.
In 1902, an account from
The Evening Dispatch, on May 31,
reported a dispute over fee payment
for cows that “jumped in to the river
and swam across to the others” instead
of waiting their turn. The Morning
Star reported that ferry fees had been
set by Pender county commission-ers
at a nickel for a person on foot, a
dime for a person on a horse, 13 cents
for a two-wheel cart and 18 cents for
a four-wheel buggy. Goats, sheep and
hogs were five cents each, but heif-ers
were six and a half. In the 1902
newspaper story Blossom insisted the
owner of the cattle pay for each of
the head that swam across the river,
threatening the farmer’s arrest. The
same year, Blossom’s Ferry was sabo-taged
when ferry cables were cut in
the middle of the night.
Accounts of ferry mishaps, includ-ing
robbery, arson, theft, vandalism
and even accidental death by drown-ing
are stacked in a thick file in the
North Carolina Room at the New
Hanover County Library in down-town
Wilmington.
On March 31, 1905, The Semi-
Weekly Messenger reported that
Blossom owned property all over
New Hanover and Pender counties
equaling nearly 3,500 acres, and had
grand plans to make a name for Castle
Hayne. He hired local farmer Robert
W. Corbett to run the ferry. Corbett’s
granddaughter, Belle Anton, cited
52
WBM february 2013
memories of helping Corbett pull
the ferry hand-over-hand from bank
to bank in a July 1984 article in the
Wilmington Star.
Approaching his 70s around 1905,
Blossom, then known as “old man
Blossom,” decided to turn over ferry
operations and settle into running a
grocery store on the Castle Haynes
(now Castle Hayne) side of the river,
“a big general store, a county store,”
said granddaughter Edelweiss Mishoe
to a Morning Star reporter in 1984.
By the time of Blossom’s death in
1926, a state-maintained bridge one
mile west of the ferry landing elimi-nated
the need for the riverine trans-port
that had spanned nearly 200 years.
With the discovery of Blossom’s
Ferry, Hall’s research remains histori-cally
relevant. Not long after he com-pleted
his work at the Blossom’s Ferry
site in 1983, he decided to make the
area his home. He purchased property
at the other end of Blossom Ferry
Road less than a half mile downriver
from the ferry site in the mid 80s,
which would remain his home base
until his death in August 2012.
Hall’s boat, Black River, still rises
and falls with the tide at his dock.
PHOTOGRAPHY BY ALLISON POTTER