upriver were not accessible. Throughout the early 19th century, the plantation at Chinquapin grew from a homestead with a handful of slaves to a community of several dozen people. In 1865, towards the end of the Civil War, Union troops captured a small steamer named the A. P. Hurt at Fayetteville. They appointed a former slave named Dan Buxton its pilot and sent it to operate at Chinquapin. After the war, Buxton tracked down the businessmen who had originally owned the vessel and informed them that he considered the A.P. Hurt to still be their property. Buxton promised to return her if they kept him as pilot for life. When she sank in 1923, he was still on the job after sixty years. Together with P.D. Robbins, who operated a steamer in the nearby community of Hallsville (just above Chinquapin), the duo represent a rich, often overlooked, history of African American river boating in Duplin County. In 1884, a post office was built in Chinquapin; the first postmaster was local farmer and storekeeper William Herring Sloan. Beginning in 1890, a project was funded by the state for the clearing of the river for small steamers to Hallsville, 88 miles above the mouth of the Northeast Cape Fear River, and for pole boats to Kornegay's Bridge, 103 miles above the mouth. The project lasted until roughly 1913, by which time $33,738.86 had been spent on improvements to and maintenance of the channel. River commerce remained steady until lumber companies began laying rail throughout the county. A railroad depot was constructed in Chinquapin around 1916. The Atlantic & Carolina Railroad ran from the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad (just north of the station at Warsaw) through Kenansville to Chinquapin. North of Chinquapin, across Muddy Creek, the A & C, the Kinston Carolina RR (Rowland Lumber Company), and Ropper Lumber Company laid secondary tracks near Chinquapin to facilitate the harvesting of longleaf pine forests around that section of the county. Local photographs from this period are notable in that there are no significant groupings of trees visible in them. Despite the initial economic boom resulting from the presence of the railroad, which was dismantled during the Great Depression, and the widespread clear-cut logging that it allowed for, Chinquapin has grown very little since the early 20th century. The majority of the area's population growth has actually taken place in the countryside surrounding the community