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The convergence of the two rivers at New Bern’s waterfront provided a natural escape route for freedom seekers. From its origin southwest of Kinston, the Trent River flows eastward through the fertile farmlands and plantation properties of the Coastal Plains, joining the Neuse River at New Bern.
As the longest river in North Carolina, the Neuse originates north of Durham in the Piedmont region and meanders southeast for over 275 miles, passing through or alongside nine counties. At New Bern, it expands into a wide estuary before continuing past the Croatan Forest and into the Pamlico Sound.
The two rivers provided invaluable transportation pathways for enslaved people from the inland tobacco and cotton plantations. In The Waterman’s Song, the seminal work on Black maritime workers, author and historian David Cecelski writes: “Relying on their own watercraft skills or on the ubiquitous Black boatmen who plied the waters, fugitive slaves often followed rivers to those ports. The majority could not risk a long canoe or flatboat trip, even traveling only at night. But slaves escaped frequently enough by boat that when a Slocumb Creek man discovered a cypress dugout deserted near his home on Christmas Day 1828, he simply assumed that the craft ‘must have been last in the possession of a runaway negro’ who was heading down the Neuse River toward Pamlico Sound and the Atlantic.”
Advertisements posted in New Bern newspapers reveal frequent searches for freedom seekers believed to be following the Neuse and Trent Rivers.
An 1817 Carolina Federal Republican ad by a Jones County plantation owner seeks his enslaved runaways ABRAM and PEG, thought to be “lurking in Craven County on Neuse, where they have a number of connexions....”
An early 1800s post seeks runaway SIMBO of Onslow County “supposed to be lurking sometimes down Neuse river, and at others going up the same, and so he ranges through Craven, Jones, and Onslow counties.
A review of state-wide advertisements in 1818 alone showed escape attempts from at least five inland counties along the path of the Neuse and Trent Rivers and their tributaries – Wayne, Carteret, Lenoir, Onslow, and Granville.
Remote tributaries of the Neuse and Trent Rivers offered abundant travel paths and hiding places for freedom seekers from inland plantations.
A 1717 North Carolina Gazette ad sought SMART, an enslaved man described as very black, well made, and speaking broken English, but “very artful and insinuating.” SMART was thought to be lurking about Slocomb's Creek (a tributary of the Neuse River south of New Bern), with another freedom seeker and “a Gang of Runaways.”
Freedom seeker AMY must have availed herself of Trent River tributaries to reach shelter along the Neuse. In 1818, Mr. Hatch of Jones County along the Trent River posted in the Carolina Federal Republican that AMY had previously run away via the Neuse River, where she was harbored by enslaved people at two different plantations, before again crossing the Neuse, seeking safety with enslaved people at yet another plantation.
Likewise, an 1830 ad in the Carolina Centinel sought PETER, who was expected to be hiding between the Trent River and Bachelor’s Creek, a nearby tributary of the Neuse River outside of New Bern.
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