In this group of photographs, we see two young black men unloading a truckload of logs onto a barge at a landing on Lockwood Folly River in March of 1943. (Part 13 of my "Working Lives" series.)
Maritime Photographs, 1870-1941
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.
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.
Canning Sea Turtles, Marshallberg, N.C., 1938
In this photograph, we see workers slaughtering and canning sea turtles at a cannery in Marshallberg, N.C., in September 1938. (This is the 26th photograph in my photo-essay “Working Lives.”)
Working Lives: The Herring Fisheries at Plymouth, N.C., 1939
This is a special group of photographs that were taken on the Roanoke River, just west of Plymouth, N.C., in the spring of 1939. Now preserved at the State Archives in Raleigh, they show the last days of two of the oldest herring seine fisheries on the North Carolina coast.
The Road to Mashoes
Today I am focusing on the history of Mashoes, a fishing village, now almost gone, that sits on a remote and solitary hammock on the mainland of Dare County, North Carolina, in a place of breathtaking beauty.
A Research Note: Keeper Henry Berry and the Cape Fear River Lights (by Debbie Mollycheck)
Today I want to share a research memo on Henry Berry, an African American waterman who was a keeper of the Lower Cape Fear River Lights from 1885 to 1920. The memo's author is Debbie Mollycheck, an attorney with an expertise in-- and a family connection to-- the history of the U.S. Lighthouse Service’s Sixth District.
Range Lights, Buoy Depots, and Gas Works: Photographs from the National Archives at College Park
Today I would like to share a collection of historical photographs from the National Archives at College Park, Maryland. They were taken by inspectors and other personnel of the United States Lighthouse Board (1852-1910) and its successor agency, the United States Lighthouse Service (1910-1939), in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Making a Way: Photographs of the Army Corps of Engineers on the North Carolina Coast, 1930-1932
Dating from 1930 to 1932, an extraordinary photograph album gives us a rare, up-close portrait of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' dredge boats and their crews on the rivers, canals and sounds of the North Carolina coast.
The Last Days of the East Dismal Swamp
I have written this as kind of an on-line history exhibit. The story starts with a short introduction, then features more than 40 annotated photographs and other images illustrating the last decades of an ancient swamp forest that was once located on the North Carolina coast.
At the Boundary between Land and Sea
This is an absolutely iconic photograph of life on the North Carolina coast at the turn of the 20th century. Taken in July 1909, the photograph shows a man standing in a horse-cart on Bogue Sound, east of Swansboro. He is tossing a watermelon to another man who is standing on a scow-built freight boat called the Little Jim.
13 Views of the Sea
When I was visiting my son in Washington, DC recently, I went to a breathtakingly beautiful exhibit of Katsushika Hokusai's paintings that is currently at the National Museum of Asian Art's Freer Gallery.
From Aguascogoc’s Ashes
An anthropologist named Frank Speck took this photograph of an American Indian woman and child on Roanoke Island, N.C., in 1915. He referred to them as "Machapunga Indians" (though I will not), a tribe whose homeland had historically been the area around the Pungo River and Lake Mattamuskeet.
The Lost Photographs: Remembering North Carolina’s Fishing Communities in the 1930s and ’40s
This is my tenth and last photo essay dedicated to Charles Farrell's photographs of fishing communities on the North Carolina coast in the 1930s and '40s. I think it's time to talk about what happened to him, and why he and his photographs were forgotten for so long.
Bogue Banks: An Early History of Salter Path and the Western Villages
When Charles Farrell took these photographs, Salter Path was the only settlement of any kind on the western two-thirds of Bogue Banks. Lights were few and far between and on clear nights you felt as if you could see every star in the heavens.
Lennoxville
This is a photograph of Charles P. Dey and his brother John Wesley Dey’s menhaden oil and scrap mill at Lennoxville, a mile and half east of Beaufort, in Carteret County, N.C., circa 1890.
Varnamtown’s Fishermen at Bald Head Island, 1938
In the autumn of 1938, the photographer Charles Farrell visited a gang of mullet fishermen from Varnamtown while they hauled their nets on Bald Head Island, down in the far southeast corner of the North Carolina coast.
Remembering Sneads Ferry in the 1930s
Through the eyes of Sneads Ferry's oldest residents, I came to see Charles Farrell's photographs as a window into a time when most of the village's people still made their livings from the sea.
Menhaden Fishing Days
When I was in Southport several years ago, I carried Charles Farrell's photographs to an old menhaden fisherman named Charles “Pete” Joyner. At the time, Mr. Joyner was 93 years old.
The Herring Workers
A few years ago, I carried a box of Charles Farrell's old photographs of the state's great herring fisheries back to one of the communities on the Chowan River where he took them. They are poignant and beautiful, and the herring workers in them are unforgettable, but I also find them a little haunting because they remind me of all that can be lost.
The Barney Slough Fish Camp, 1905
I love this photograph of fishermen at the Barney Slough Fish Camp back in the winter of 1905. They were shad fishermen and you can see them standing with their pound net stakes, just off Hatteras Island.
The Beauty of Old Fishing Nets
Far more than I usually do, I am noticing the beauty in even the smallest, most everyday parts of my world.
David Cecelski 