John Andrew Pittman House circa 1880-90

Born in Pitt County, North Carolina, Swansboro merchant John Andrew Pittman (1839-1917) was the son of John Pittman and Mary Gregory.

On December 28, 1861, John Andrew Pittman enlisted in Company B, North Carolina 3rd Cavalry Regiment.

In 1868 John A. Pittman married Olive Elizabeth “Betty” Ward (1846-1928) in Jacksonville, Onslow County, NC. “Betty” was the daughter of George Washington Ward and Olive Sanders. In 1870, John was a farmer in White Oak Township, Onslow County, post office Palo Alto, with wife “Betty” and one-year-old daughter Ida. Eight men were listed under his household as “farm laborers.”

By 1880, John A. Pittman was at home in Swansboro with his wife and five children. Their children were Ida V. (1869-1951) married Robert L. Williams; Augustus Ward (1871-1951) married Susan Green Duffy; Clyde S. (1874-1931) married Clara Bloodgood; Susan (1876-1959) married Percy Bell; Kate (1879-1958) married Wm. Francis Midyette; Laura Venters “Daisy” (1882-1972) married Bryan Hatsell; and Fredrick Blount (1884-1955) married Julia Bloodgood.

In 1896, James T. Bartley sold his store on Front Street to John Pittman; the store became known as “The Pittman Store.” That same year, Pittman was the mayor of Swansboro—population 300.

On February 9, 1917, Mr. Pittman died from a heart condition at the age of 77. The 1920 census noted his son Fred, a butcher, wife Julia and eight-year-old son Fred Wilson Pittman in the house with John A. Pittman’s sixty-year-old widow, who died eight years later.

Fred B., Julia and their twenty-seven-year-old son Fred W. Pittman were living in the house in 1940. On December 5, 1955, seventy-one-year-old Fred Pittman, who suffered from mental depression, committed suicide in the home; “hemorrhage from neck wound.” Julia Bloodgood Pittman died a few months later.

The house was moved to highway 58 in the early 1970s.

The painting, by Mary Warshaw, was inspired by an image in Swansboro – A Pictorial Tribute by Jack Dudley.