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T

ake a boat down the South River and off to the left, on that eastern shore, you’ll see what was once the thriving town of Lukens. A century later, all that remains of the logging town is its cemetery.

Yet across the Neuse River, in Oriental, the memories and families live on. A yearly celebration of those families takes place this Sunday.

On the shore of the South River, the sign for the Lukens Cemetery. Some of the graves date to the 1800’s. The community that stood on that shore scattered in the 1940’s.

In the 1940’s the town of Lukens virtually disappeared as its families dispersed. Some went to other parts of Carteret County, while others crossed the Neuse to Pamlico County and Oriental. That Lukens diaspora has made many of those names — Mason, Pittman, Norman, Edwards, Hardy, and Tosto — familiar here.

Pittman, a Lukens family name that is seen often in the Lukens Cemetery and that lives on in Oriental.

Keeping that link alive is this Sunday’s Lukens Picnic. Now in its 24th year it has been organized by a group of people living in the town of South River — just across from Lukens. There’ll be a bring-your-own-picnic at South River’s Edwards Chapel FWB Church at 1p and then at 2p, a one-mile barge ride across the South River to the Lukens cemetery.

The boat dock at Lukens, just south of the cemetery. Across the river is the community of South River where the actual Lukens Picnic will take place on Sunday, before a barge will bring participants across the river to Lukens.

The first Lukens Picnic was held in 1987 as a way for folks to trace their ancestral roots to the isolated spot — no public roads go there — on the eastern shore of the South River. There, the Lukens Cemetery shows, people have lived — and died — since the 1800s.

Wooden markers, bearing the evidence of time, still mark some graves at the Lukens Cemetery.

Tom Tosto has been instrumental in organizing the annual picnic. It’s his barge that transports folks across the South River to visit the cemetery. Tosto says that the town took its name from the Philadelphia businessman, Lukens, who came to the area around 1912 and set up a logging operation that involved both sides of the South River — what became known as Lukens to the east and the present-day community of South River on the western shore.

Mason, one of the family names with strong ties to both Lukens and Oriental.

More on Lukens history and photos of the Lukens Cemetery, next page.

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Posted Friday May 14, 2010 by Melinda Penkava