"Our Heritage"
Mt. Olive Tribune
By Claude Moore
September 14, 1984

When the Wilmington & Weldon Railroad was built through Wayne County in 1836-1840, it was intended that it should go through the village of Waynesborough, the county seat. The engineers examined the topography of the land in & around the village & decided since it had been flooded several times by the Neuse & Little River that it would be best to bypass such a wet location.

The railroad was built around the village on higher ground & it was here that the city of Goldsboro was named for Matthew W. Goldsborough, one of the engineers who laid out the railroad.

The first depot in Goldsboro was located at the corner of Walnut & Center streets since the railroad ran down the center of town. The county seat was moved to Goldsboro in 1847 & in the early 1850s the Atlantic & North Carolina Railroad was built from Charlotte to Greensboro to Raleigh through Goldsboro to Morehead City.

Arnold Borden built a hotel on the northwest corner of Center Street & Walnut Street in 1838 even before the railroad was compleded. It was a three-story frame building with twenty-four fireplaces.

In 1840 J. B. Griswold built a hotel on the southeast corner of Center & Walnut. This is the site of the old Goldsboro Hotel. The Griswold Hotel operated until 1855. Griswold's son-in-law, Richard Gregory, took over the hotel & renamed it the Gregory House. It burned in 1884.

In 1885 the Hotel Humphrey was built & the name was changed to the Kenon Hotel operated by B. H. Griffin. I well remember when the Kenon Hotel was demolished in 1925 & the Hotel Goldsboro was built. At that time, Goldsboro had electric street cars.

In 1863, J. H. W. Bonitz, about whom I recently wrote, built a brick hotel at the southeast corner of Center & Chestnuts streets. It was burned in 1879. Bonitz rebuilt the hotel & operated it until he moved to Wilmington in 1884.

Another interesting hotel was the Bridgers House Hotel, owned & operated by Captain D. H. Bridgers on Center Street next to the H. W. Weil Store. The name of this hotel changed to Commercial Hotel in 1901 & it was burned in 1910.

In 1910 the railroad was re-routed around the west end of the city. The old Terminal Hotel was built about this time on the corner of Walnut & Carolina streets.

I am indebted to Charles Norwood for this data on the early hotels in Goldsboro. He said that there have been 12 hotels in Goldsboro during the 85 years in which the railroad ran down Center Street.