City a profitable place for blacks after Civil War

In the middle of the 18th century, New Bern became a trading center for Northeastern North Carolina, and for much of the 19th century was a lively and cosmopolitan city.

The early settlers welcomed Scotch, French, German and other immigrants. It was also home to many Africans – through both enslavement and opportunity.

During the antebellum period, a number of free blacks, from boatmen and peddlers to carpenters to bricklayers, were prosperous. Two of the most prosperous included property owners Donum Mumford and John Caruthers Stanley.

Between 1862, when Union forces captured New Bern, and 1865, New Bern’s African-American population expanded from nearly 3,000 to 10,000. Even before that expansion, African-Americans made up more than 12 percent of the town’s population. This was due primarily to the influx of fugitive slaves seeking protection and work.

After the war, New Bern continued to be a profitable and stable place for African-Americans who were active in the Republican Party. They enjoyed the town’s economic boom from the lumber and seafood industries. It was in this bustling, thriving environment during the period between the end of the Civil War and North Carolina’s passage of the Disenfranchisement Act in 1900, that Isaac H. Smith Sr. began his career.

The son of African-Americans (who may or may not have been slaves), Smith fortunately came under the patronage of a white family in New Bern who educated him and made it possible for him to attend St. Augustine’s College in Raleigh. By the early 1870s, he came back to New Bern, where he started his career as a school teacher. He continued to teach into the 1880s, but he also dabbled in real estate along the way. He eventually was able to devote his attention to real estate and money lending full time, and began doing business at 130 Middle St.

Besides his real estate and banking ventures, Smith briefly became involved in politics at a particularly virulent time. In 1898, he was elected Craven County’s Representative to the General Assembly. During his term, he proposed a number of resolutions and bills. However, the 1900 Disenfranchisement Amendment, which initiated the era of repression known as Jim Crow, effectively ended his political career.

After his time in the legislature, Smith returned to New Bern and continued to build his real estate, insurance and banking business. Smith owned and developed property in New Bern’s African-American neighborhoods. His most ambitious project was “Smithtown,” a block of rental housing immediately south of Greenwood Cemetery. He also sold insurance and collected rent for white businessmen who owned property in those neighborhoods,

Smith kept his office at 130 Middle St. until 1914, and then relocated the business to 84 1/2 Queen St. in the African-American business district. He lived at 47 Queen St., but by 1900, two years after he married his wife Carrie Rhone, he and his family lived at what is now 607 Johnson St. His son, Isaac H. Smith Jr., who married the daughter of North Carolina Central University founder James E. Shepard, would eventually carry on the family real estate business.

Isaac H. Smith Sr. embodied the spirit of entrepreneurism that is a trademark of this country and community. He died in 1915.