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ONSLOW COUNTY, NORTH CAROLINA

o one knows exactly the earliest history of the region now known as
Onslow County, North Carolina. There are no existing records
Nregarding the earliest explorers who might have first visited that part of
the New World.

There is speculation that an Italian navigator, GIOVANNI da VERRAZZANO,
dispatched a small party from his ship to meet with the local Indians near the
New River Inlet in the year 1524 but the description of the area where this
meeting took place is vague and could have been somewhere else besides what
is now known as Onslow County.

It is also thought that some English explorers, with the support of a Portuguese
navigator named SIMON FERNANDO, fished in Onslow County waters in June
of 1585. A SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE then visited the area. He was
accompanied by RALPH LANE, who wrote about their travels, and JOHN
WHITE, who drew a map of the region. From those writings and drawings
historians have determined Onslow County must have been the area visited by

this group.

You will remember from the chapter on Craven County, North Carolina we
mentioned a colony of people was started on Roanoke Island in the 1500s and
later the colony disappeared. Historians have discovered writings indicating that
the same JOHN WHITE, mentioned above, returned to what is now called
Onslow County in July 1587 looking for that Lost Colony. He did not find it and
left, but returned to the region again in August of 1590.

There are no records of anyone else visiting the area between 1590 and 1711. So
far as we know, only the Indians lived there during those years. In 1711 some
settlers came to a place near the White River and in 1713 the first permanent
settlement was established. Land grants were issued in Onslow County in 1712
and in 1741 the first town, named Johnston, was incorporated.

A hurricane hit the region in 1752 which destroyed most of the then existing

records. Years later researchers through painstaking searches of the records of

Ch. 8 Pg. 1