Bath, North Carolina

October 31, 2015, 0930, no wind, partly cloudy.

Motored over to River Forest Marina to buy fuel and pick up a package. Eddie, the dock master, and Henry, the owner, met us. They were helpful and got us on our way pronto.

We motored out into the Pungo River and south to the Pamlico River entrance where we turned in and ran past Wades Point and up the river to Bath Creek to the town of Bath, the oldest incorporated town in North Carolina, which happened in 1709.   

We tied up at a free dock, in sight of the Palmer March House, the oldest house in North Carolina, dating back to 1751.

The Palmer March House

The first settlers in this area were Huguenots (French Protestants) who were fleeing religious persecution in Virginia. They were being persecuted by people in Virginia who themselves had fled religious persecution from persecutors in Massachusetts, who themselves had fled England to avoid religious persecution. I’m not sure from where the English had fled to escape religious persecution.

Today historic Bath is not much more that some beautiful, very old houses, a Family Dollar store, ‘Ye Old ABC Store’ (a perennial favorite of mine), the Bath General Store and Market (where one can get a very favorable IPA (Hoppyum from Forest Hills Brewing in Winston Salem) and, ironically, five churches in a three block area, all different denominations.

The potential for religious persecution in this community is still clearly high. Once the different denominations persecute their way to ‘cleanliness’ there will always be gay people to attack I suppose.

So it goes.

Bath’s early days included wars to subjugate the powerful Tuscarora Indians (I guess not powerful enough), who were apparently determined to drive the whites from their ancestral lands. The nerve of those pesky Indians! Bath was also one of the many denizens of Edward Teach (Blackbeard), killed by the British near Ocracoke in 1718.

Any who, here we are in a beautiful place. Tonight we are having dinner with Emily’s high school buddy, Suzanne Bledsole and her very fine chef husband Ray, in their home in Washington, NC where they live in a house two houses away from where Suzanne grew up.

Life is pretty good at the moment.

I hope you are doing well.