Friends of the CSS Neuse Museum

09/06/2026

🕰️ Sunday History Flashback: Tower Hill

Just a few miles northeast of Kinston sits a quiet spot with a name that hints at a much bigger story — Tower Hill.

In the 1750s, colonial Governor Arthur Dobbs owned an 850-acre plantation there, and in 1758 the North Carolina Assembly passed an act to purchase it from him as the site for a brand-new colonial capital, to be named George City in honor of King George II. Dobbs even offered to sell the land for what he'd originally paid, plus interest — a nice gesture, though it did raise a few eyebrows about conflicts of interest!

The plan never got off the ground. British authorities in London never approved the legislation, and the capital idea quietly died. New Bern ended up winning that honor instead, with Tryon Palace built there a decade later.

As for the name "Tower Hill" itself — it's believed to come from an old redoubt tower left standing from a fort built during the Tuscarora War (1711–1713).

So next time you're out on NC-55 near Tower Hill Road, you're passing by the almost-capital of North Carolina! 🏛️

09/04/2026

📜 : Before It Was Kinston

You probably know our town once dropped a letter from its name. But colonial Kinston has a few secrets even longtime locals miss. 👇

🌾 It started as a riverbank, not a town. Before "Kingston" existed, the bluff above the Neuse was known as Atkins Bank, after landowner Robert Atkins — already home to farms, a to***co warehouse, and a Church of England mission.

👑 It was named to flatter a brand-new king. Chartered in 1762 as "Kingston" for King George III. Our two main streets — King and Queen — were named for George and Queen Charlotte, and they're still on the map today.

✂️ The town edited out the king. In 1784, just after the Revolution, residents petitioned to drop the "g" — turning Kingston into Kinston to cut ties with the crown. A whole town renaming itself as a political statement.

🏛️ It was the seat of a county that no longer exists. Kinston was the county seat of old Dobbs County, named for a royal governor — a county later dissolved and split apart.

🗺️ For a time, "the capital of NC" was wherever one Kinston-area man lived. Richard Caswell — who introduced the bill that chartered the town — became the state's first elected governor in 1777. With no permanent capital yet, the government ran out of the governor's home, state records and all.

🔄 And once, the town nearly erased its own name. In 1833 it briefly renamed itself "Caswell" in the governor's honor… then switched back the very next year.

Same river, same bluff — but a very different town than the one we know today.

Did any of these surprise you? Share this with a fellow history lover. 👇

Head on over to the Neuseway Nature Center and Planetarium to see Atkins Banks for yourself.

08/26/2026

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Imagine watching the sea for months, knowing that hunger, medicine, and the fate of your cause all rode on a single ship slipping past the enemy in the dark. That was life under the Union blockade, the vast naval noose the U.S. Navy tightened around Southern ports beginning in 1861, known as the Anaconda Plan devised by Union General Winfield Scott. Along the North Carolina coast, daring blockade runners — sleek, low, painted the color of fog — raced from ports like Wilmington to Nassau and Bermuda, trading cotton for guns, coffee, and shoes while Union gunboats prowled the horizon. This strangling of Confederate supply lines is exactly why the South gambled on ironclad warships like the CSS Neuse, built upriver in Kinston to help break the Union grip on the sounds and rivers of eastern North Carolina.

The Condor is where the puzzle starts to come together. Not long ago, we had Emilly Lapisardi at the museum to give her presentation on Confederate Spy, Rose Greenhow. Many of you might remember she died in Wilmington, NC. She was a passenger on the Condor when she went down. Rose was in a lifeboat, but that capsized in rough water.

The blockade rarely made headlines, but it slowly bled the Confederacy of the ships, iron, and food it needed to keep fighting — and it shaped every decision made in shipyards like the one that gave us the Neuse. You can explore this story of desperate voyages and hard-won cargo at the CSS Neuse Museum in Kinston, NC, where the only recovered Confederate ironclad still tells its tale.

Plan your visit, tag a history lover who'd appreciate this, and follow our page for more stories from the war years! ⚓



Painting of Condor by Martin Peebles

08/20/2026

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In March 1865, with the Civil War in its final weeks, one of the largest battles ever fought on North Carolina soil erupted right in our backyard — the Battle of Wyse Fork. Over three days (March 7–10), Confederate General Braxton Bragg threw roughly 10,000 men against Union forces under General Jacob D. Cox in a desperate bid to stop the Federal march toward Goldsboro and Sherman's advancing army. On the first day the Confederates sprang a stunning surprise, capturing hundreds of Union soldiers — but Cox's superior numbers eventually turned the tide, and by March 10 the outnumbered Confederates were forced to withdraw through Kinston. When the smoke cleared, more than 2,500 men had fallen on both sides.

This battle hits especially close to home for us: it was as Confederate troops retreated through Kinston after Wyse Fork that they scuttled and burned the CSS Neuse to keep our ironclad gunboat from falling into Union hands. The very ship you can visit today was lost in the shadow of this fight.

You can explore this dramatic final chapter of the war — and stand beside the surviving hull of the CSS Neuse — at the CSS Neuse Museum in Kinston, NC. Tag a history lover, share this post, and follow our page for more stories every week! ⚓

08/13/2026

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When the Civil War began, the Confederacy had no navy to speak of — just a handful of ships against the mightiest fleet in the hemisphere. So Confederate Navy Secretary Stephen Mallory made a daring bet: if the South couldn't out-build the Union ship for ship, it would out-innovate it. He threw the young nation's scarce iron and skilled hands into a new kind of warship — the ironclad — armored floating fortresses meant to shatter wooden blockaders and hold the rivers. It was a gamble born of desperation and genius, and it changed naval warfare forever. One product of that vision still rests in Kinston today: the CSS Neuse, one of the few surviving Confederate ironclads, built far up a North Carolina river by farmers and craftsmen who had never laid a keel before.

Come stand beside a piece of that audacious experiment. Visit the CSS Neuse Museum in Kinston, NC, and share this with a history lover who appreciates a good underdog story!

08/05/2026

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In March 1865, the war came roaring to Kinston's doorstep. Over three days at the Battle of Wyse Fork — one of the largest Civil War engagements fought on North Carolina soil — more than 20,000 soldiers clashed in the swampy pine woods just east of town, as Confederate forces made a desperate bid to stop Union troops marching inland from the coast. Farmers who had spent four years hearing distant rumors of war suddenly found cannon smoke drifting over their own fields, and Kinston's quiet streets filled with the wounded of both armies. It was against this very backdrop of a collapsing Confederacy that the ironclad CSS Neuse was built and briefly fought on the river nearby — a last, defiant effort to hold the line. You can walk this history and stand before the salvaged hull of that ship at the CSS Neuse Museum right here in Kinston, NC.

Have a friend who loves Civil War history? Tag them and plan a visit — the story is even better in person. 👇

Youtube Video in Comments:

#1865

08/02/2026

What an awesome event from Emily Lapisardi!! Thank you to our generous sponsors and for the CSS Neuse Civil War Museum for hosting the event. We love to see history in real life.

07/29/2026

North Carolina's rivers and sounds became one of the Confederacy's busiest naval frontiers — a shallow, winding world where homegrown gunboats fought to hold back the Union tide. When Roanoke Island fell in 1862, the little "Mosquito Fleet" of converted steamers made a desperate stand at Elizabeth City, outmatched but unwilling to surrender their waters without a fight. Along the Cape Fear, the CSS North Carolina and CSS Raleigh guarded the blockade-running lifeline into Wilmington, while up the Neuse and Roanoke rivers, Confederate shipwrights raced to build ironclads like the CSS Albemarle and the CSS Neuse from green pine and precious iron plate. These were ships built in cornfields and riverbanks by farmers-turned-carpenters, defending their own backyards against the most powerful navy in the world.

The CSS Neuse is the last of that story you can still stand beside — her recovered hull is preserved at the CSS Neuse Museum in Kinston, NC, a monument to North Carolina's scrappy river navy.

Share this with a fellow history lover, and follow our page for a new story every week!

On February 10, 1862, during the American Civil War, the Union flee...