Amy Littlejohn Roberts

Photograph: Amy Littlejohn Roberts (1878-1935)-was able to attend, complete her course of study and graduate from Elizabeth City Colored Normal School in 1895.

The college is now Elizabeth City State University. One of North Carolina's Public HBCU's, Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

Her father, Alpheus Littlejohn was enslaved on Somerset Plantation and was not allowed by law to gain an education.

Elizabeth City Colored State Normal School would later become, Elizabeth City State University. ESCU Is on of North Carolina's 12 HBCU's.

Somerset Place is a former plantation near Creswell in Washington County, North Carolina, along the northern shore of Lake Phelps. It is now a State Historic Site that belongs to the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources. Somerset Place operated as a plantation from 1785 until 1865.

Before the end of the American Civil War, Somerset Place had become one of the Upper South's largest plantations.

In 1969, Somerset Place was designated as a State Historic Site. In 1986, descendants of African American slaves from Somerset Place planned a gathering known as Somerset Homecoming. The event inspired a book titled "Somerset Homecoming" written by the property's former manager Dorothy Spruill Redford, who retired in 2008.

Somerset Plantation Labor needs dictated the number, age, gender, and skills of the first workers brought to Somerset. This enslaved work force included 167 men, women, and children. Mostly, they were young, strong men in their late teens and early twenties.

Some young women worked beside them in planting and harvesting crops but tasks such as uprooting tree stumps and hauling mud away from the farm's ditches were seen as "men's work."

This initial enslaved labor came from three basic sources. Almost half—including a man named Guinea Jack; his wife, Fanny; a man named Quaminy; and 77 others—were brought to the plantation directly from their homeland in West Africa.

Others included 49 people from neighboring counties and states, women like Sucky and Rose, who cooked and washed. The remaining men and women were artisans already in Edenton: a carpenter named Lewis, a brick mason named Joe Welcome, and others who were joiners, cobblers, millers, and weavers.

Only 113 of those 167 survived to be counted in the census of 1790; but within those few years, the swampland at Somerset was transformed into a prosperous plantation.

Elizabeth City State University- HISTORICAL TIMELINE
1891 January 26: Legislation to establish institution introduced by the Honorable Hugh Cale (1835 - 1910), a black Pasquotank County Representative in the North Carolina General Assembly.

March 3: Cale's Bill enacted into law; State Board of Education directed to establish school

1892 January 4 "Elizabeth City Colored Normal School" began operations on Roanoke Avenue with 2 teachers and 23 students, $900. appropriation, and Peter Weddick Moore as Principal.. Hattie A. Newby is the first person to graduate, completing her post graduate program.

1896 May 29: Graduating class of six students First Graduates After moving to Herrington Road in 1894, six students graduate from the State Normal School.

The five men and one woman graduating are: Emic Coleman Cooper, James Edward Felton, Richard Copeland Jacocks, Charles Edward Physic, Joanna Outlaw Rayner, and Charles Smythn Yeates. (no graduates, 1893 - 1895).

1912 September 9: Institution began operations at present location with two brick buildings; Lane and Symera Halls

Photograph Source: https://www.facebook.com/.../a.15840.../1927844827335847/...

ECSU Historical Timeline Source:http://www.ecsu.edu/.../archives/historical-timeline.html