Soybeans have been one of Eastern North Carolina's most important crops for more than a century, but these photographs are the only historical images I have ever seen of how workers turned them into the oil and meal that was, and still is, so much a part of daily life in the U.S.
Month: August 2025
At the Hackney Wagon Factory– Wilson, 1941
In this 7th photo-essay in my "Working Lives" series, I am visiting the master wheelwrights and blacksmiths at the Hackney Wagon Company's factory in Wilson, N.C., in 1941.
On the Diamond Shoals Lightship, 1939
In the sixth photo-essay in my "Working Lives" series, I am looking at historical photographs of the captain and crew of the Diamond Shoals Lightship, on duty 20 miles out at sea off Cape Hatteras.
On the James Adams Floating Theatre, 1940
In the fifth photo-essay in my "Working Lives" series, I am looking at the actors and actresses, the clowns and musicians, and the ventriloquists and magicians who were traveling the North Carolina coast on the James Adams Floating Theatre in 1940.
Mending Net at Hatteras, 1939
In this fourth photo-essay in my "Working Lives" series, we can see a quartet of Hatteras fishermen getting their gill net ready for fall fishing: patching holes, mending tears. The date is August 1939.
At a Cotton Gin in Dunn, 1938
In this third photo-essay in my "Working Lives" series, I am looking at the Tart brothers' cotton gin in Dunn and the cotton fields of Harnett County in 1938.
The Sawmill Workers of the Roanoke River, 1938-1939
In this second photo-essay in my "Working Lives" series, we go inside a sawmill, a handle mill, and a veneer plant that were located on the banks of the Roanoke River in 1938 and 1939.
In the Peanut Fields of Edenton, 1937-1942
This is the first photo-essay in my series "Working Lives: Photographs of Eastern North Carolina, 1937-1947." In this photo-essay I am looking at a group of 21 photographs that chronicle threshing time on a peanut farm near Edenton, N.C. in the years just before the Second World War.
Working Lives: Photographs of Eastern North Carolina, 1937-1947
Today I would like to introduce a series of photo-essays that I will be publishing here over the next few weeks. Each of the photo-essays-- some very brief, some longer-- will focus on the working lives of people in Eastern North Carolina just before, during, and after the Second World War.
David Cecelski 