The Harlowe Canal

The Town of Newport was granted a charter from the State of North Carolina on January 30, 1866, but its history begins almost 150 years before that. The river, called Newport, which rises in the Lake Pocosin and empties into the Beaufort Inlet, was the Highway over which early settlers traveled to the “rich upland country”. But the country was mainly pine forest. Not the cleared land where farmers grow brightleaf tobacco today.

Around a landing at the upper part of the river, the town of Newport sprang up. There, barges unloaded products landed at the port, Beaufort, and took on lumber and naval stores to be shipped from Beaufort to other colonial ports in the West Indies. Near the Newport River landing, where a road from Harlowe connected with a road to Cedar Point, a general store was established by a man named Bell, one of three brothers, Ross, Jasper and George, who held early land grants in what is now western Carteret.

Naturally, this point became known as Bell’s Corner. In the early part of the 18^th century, the settlement was also called Shepardsville, supposedly a connection with a man by the name of Shepard who was a large landowner. The name, Newport, is said to come from two sources. One: that it was called “The New Port” to distinguish it from the “Old Port” of Beaufort: Two: that the place was so called by Quakers who came here from Rhode Island and named it for their native Newport in that New England State.

The Quakers arrived between 1720 and 1733. However, if they did call the settlement Newport, it was not an established name, for the first Post Office in the community was called “Shepardsville” and was so designated on June 27, 1859. That was more than a hundred years after the Quakers had left the county, migrating westward, seeking territory where there was no slavery.

With all the history and natural beauty, Newport real estate is a great investment.

View the demographics of Newport courtesy of CensusViewer.com to find out if Newport Real Estate is for you.