Smithfield High School Information

Here in the 21st Century, Smithfield and Selma are towns looking much younger than their actual ages. Smithfield was founded in 1777 - more than two centuries ago. Selma was established in 1867, officially chartered in 1873. Yet neither town has buildings and houses showing its vintage. Both are really towns of the 20th Century - products of the Victorian Era of the 1890s and early 1900s. That's when emerging railroads created corridors of trade for all sorts of mercantile enterprises and cotton mills introduced our region to industrialization. Smithfield - the county seat since its establishment - was naturally Johnston County's largest town in 1890, but had just 550 residents. By 1900, Selma - at the junction of two railroads - had grown to become Johnston's largest town, with 816 residents. What a change the next couple of decades produced. By 1920, Smithfield had 1,895 residents; Selma had 1,601. And both towns had seen their business districts flourish with construction of numerous milti-story brick buildings fronting newly-paved streets. Both towns got electric lights and water systems around 1913 that accompanied a building boom for many handsome houses that still line residential streets almost a hundred years later. Many of the towns' enduring church houses were also built between 1910 and 1920. And while agriculture has been the region's economic backbone for more than two centuries, commercialization of farming didn't arrive until the dawn of the 20th Century - another reason for the slow development of our towns. The Smithfield Tobacco Market wasn't established until 1898. Actually, Johnston County's No. 1 cash crop a hundred years ago wasn't even tobacco. Instead, it was "King Cotton. No surprise, then, that Selma saw establishment of three cotton mills, and Smithfield two, during the first decade of the 20th Century. By 1924, Johnston County had more than 85,000 acres planted in cotton, and just 10,012 in tobacco. The Great Depression of the 1930s brought cotton's demise here, as elsewhere. And ...