In this photograph (above), we see the blackfish boat Margaret at an unidentified port probably in southern New Jersey in 1934. Standing in the bow is Capt. Einar Neilsen, a Norwegian immigrant. Capt. Neilsen was part of a largely forgotten enclave of Norwegian, Swedish and Dutch blackfish fishermen and their families that left New Jersey and made their homes in Beaufort, N.C., beginning in the 1910s.
Maritime Photographs, 1870-1941
Working in the Logwoods: Photographs from Coastal North Carolina
I must have heard that phrase a million times when I was younger: “we were working in the logwoods.” Old men would say it again and again when they remembered their younger days on the North Carolina coast. They talked plenty about farming and fishing and raising families, but they talked just as much about “working in the logwoods.”
From Harkers Island to Rockyhock– More Photographs from the National Fisherman
The Penobscot Marine Museum in Searsport, Maine, has recently made available more than 20,000 photographs of America's commercial fishing industry that originally appeared in the pages of National Fisherman. Last week I highlighted several of the magazine's photos from Beaufort, N.C., in the 1930s and '40s. Today I want to share photographs that take us to Hatteras, Buxton, Harkers Island, Wanchese, Belhaven, Rockyhock and several other parts of the North Carolina coast.
Photographs from the National Fisherman
The Penobscot Marine Museum in Searsport, Maine, has recently made available for the first time more than 20,000 historical photographs from America's fishing communities, including those here on the North Carolina coast. It is an extraordinary collection: the photographs from every issue of the National Fisherman, the leading trade journal of the commercial fishing industry.
On the Kennebec and Penobscot
A second connection between Maine’s shipyards and the North Carolina coast is grimmer: quite a few ships built in Maine came to their end in the waters off the North Carolina coast-- "The Graveyard of the Atlantic."
Down-Easters
This week I’m in Down East Maine. It’s a beautiful part of the world and I’m not really here to do historical research. All the same, I am visiting some local maritime museums and historical societies and I am curious to learn if this far corner of the New England coastline has historic ties to the coastal world where I grew up in North Carolina.
Admiral Ross’s Lighthouses
Linda Garey, a teacher I met some years ago, recently sent me copies of some remarkable historical images of North Carolina lighthouses and lightships that were taken in and around 1899. They are from her great-grandfather Rear Admiral Albert Ross’s extraordinary collection of magic lantern glass slides that he made while serving in the U.S. Navy.
A Portrait from Down East
This is a portrait of an African American fisherman and saltwater farmer named Proctor Davis. He was born a slave on Davis Island, in the Down East part of Carteret County, N.C., ca. 1839. He escaped from slavery during the Civil War, but he and his family returned after the war and made a new home at Davis Ridge, a marshy hammock just north of Davis Island.
Admiral Ross’s Journey, part 7– The Big Ditch
This is the last of the 7-part series I’m doing this week based on an extraordinary collection of glass lantern slides that a teacher named Linda Garey shared with me. Her great-grandfather, Rear Admiral Albert Ross, took the images on a trip down the Albemarle and Chesapeake Canal in 1901.
Admiral Ross’s Journey, part 6: Steamers & Fish Barrels
In Rear Admiral Albert Ross’s next magic lantern glass slide, we find his vessel, the lighthouse tender Violet, approaching a rear paddlewheel steamer on one of the rivers that make up the Albemarle & Chesapeake (A&C) Canal-- either the Elizabeth River, North Landing River or the North River. We might just barely be able make out the captain and mate in the boat's pilothouse.
Admiral Ross’s Journey, part 5: The Land of the Blueberry Bogs
In Rear Admiral Ross’s next glass lantern slide, we see a steam tug towing a raft of logs by the village of Coinjock, N.C. This was a very common scene on the Albemarle and Chesapeake (A&C) Canal at the turn of the 20th century. Held together by spikes and chains, the logs in this raft are headed south toward the North River, a tributary of the Albemarle Sound.
Admiral Ross’s Journey, part 4: The Lighthouse Tender Violet
In our next glass lantern slide, we can see Commander Albert Ross’s lighthouse tender Violet at the Albemarle and Chesapeake (A&C) Canal’s lock in Great Bridge, Virginia. This was the only lock on the canal and served to compensate for the different water levels in the canal and the Elizabeth River caused by the canal's wind tides and the river's lunar tides.
Admiral Ross’s Journey, part 3: The Monster Ditcher
This is part 3 of a series I’m doing this week based on an extraordinary collection of glass lantern slides that a teacher named Linda Garey shared with me. Her great-grandfather, Rear Admiral Albert Ross, took the images on a trip down the Albemarle and Chesapeake Canal in 1901.
Admiral Ross’s Journey, part 2: A Bargeman’s Life
In our first lantern slide, we see the steam tug Dauntless pulling a lumber barge through the Albemarle & Chesapeake (A&C) Canal’s “Virginia Cut.” Commander Ross—he was not yet a Rear Admiral in 1901— took the image from the bow of the lighthouse tender Violet as it steamed east toward the North Landing River.
Admiral Ross’s Journey: The Albemarle & Chesapeake Canal in 1901
Several years ago I gave a lecture at an NEH-funded teachers workshop in New Bedford, Mass. The teachers came from all over the U.S. and one of them, Linda Garey, who teaches in California, later shared with me a group of remarkable Magic Glass lantern slides of a part of the North Carolina coast that is little known to most people: the Albemarle and Chesapeake Canal.
On Cotton Mill Hill
I found these photographs of child mill workers in eastern North Carolina at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. I think they mostly speak for themselves. A photographer named Lewis Hine took them on at least 3 visits to the state between 1908 and 1914. He was employed by the National Child Labor Committee to document the exploitation of children in factories and other workplaces across the U.S.
The Wreck of the Nomis
This is a photograph of villagers on Ocracoke Island, N.C., salvaging lumber from the shattered hull of the schooner Nomis in the summer of 1935. At the time of her grounding, the Nomis was carrying 338,000 feet of lumber from Georgetown, S.C. to New York City. She came ashore just north of the current location of the island’s pony pens.
Portraits of Roanoke River Fisheries, 1870-1910 —Bow Nets, Slat Weirs, Fish Wheels, Slides & Seines
Today I’m looking at several historical photographs of fishermen, fishing boats and fishing gear on the Roanoke River. The photographs mostly date to the period from 1870 to 1910, though one that I'm especially fond of was taken in the late 1930s. That was an exciting period in the history of the river's fisheries. If you had launched a boat in Weldon, at the falls of the river, and drifted down those swift waters all the way to the river's mouth on the Albemarle Sound, you would have seen many fishermen and many different kinds of fishing gear, including weirs, bow nets, stake nets, drift nets, wheels, seines and slides.
Cotton & Steamboats: Photographs from the Tar River, 1890-1900
The stern paddle wheel steamer Tarboro on the Tar River, probably during her maiden voyage in 1898. She is coming into the town of Tarboro, in Edgecombe County, N.C., and a crowd waits at the town’s public dock to celebrate her launching. After calling at Tarboro, she will proceed on to Old Sparta, Greenville and, finally, Washington, N.C., a seaport 45 miles downriver. She is heavy with freight, almost certainly cotton or cottonseed.
Of Oysters and Chicken Grit
One other historic use of oyster shells was especially important to farm women on the North Carolina coast and beyond in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Building roads, fertilizing fields and making cement, mortar, plaster and whitewash out of oyster shells were all big parts of coastal life. But so was using crushed oyster shells in poultry yards.
The Oyster Shell Road
Children, a bicyclist and a toll keeper visiting at a toll station on the Shell Road between Wilmington and Wrightsville Beach, N.C., circa 1900. Oyster shells had been used for building and improving roads and cart paths since earliest colonial times, but the oyster boom that began on the North Carolina coast in the 1880s drastically increased the tonnage of shells available for road construction.
Marines– The Last Days of a New River Fishing Village
On at least two trips to the North Carolina coast, a Greensboro photographer named Charles A. Farrell took photographs of the fishing villages near the mouth of the New River, in Onslow County. His first trip was in the fall of 1938, and he visited again sometime in the first half of 1941. On the first trip, he may only have visited Sneads Ferry, a fishing village on the west side of the river.
Carrying Cornmeal Home—Photographs from the New River in the 1930s #1
In this photograph, we see a trio of fishermen carrying bags of cornmeal to the landing at Marines, a village in Onslow County, N.C., circa 1937. Behind them we can see the New River and gill nets drying on spreads. To the left, we can see a dory and the old oak that marked the landing. At least two of the men are part of the Midgett family. They came across the river from Sneads Ferry, a village on the west side of the river, and they are headed home.
New Bern, N.C.– The Last Ram Schooner
The ram schooner Edwin and Maud in New Bern, ca. 1935. She is resting at Union Point, where the Neuse and Trent Rivers come together, probably at the wharf for the J.A. Meadows Company. In the background, we can see the Trent River Bridge.
Trent River, New Bern, ca. 1905— “One of the Finest Fish Markets in the World”
A fish market crowded with fishermen, fish buyers and fishmongers at the bottom of Middle Street, on the Trent River waterfront, New Bern, N.C., circa 1905. A pair of fishermen in a sail skiff are culling their catch, while a boy, obscured by an older man, probably his father or an uncle, poles what is probably a log-built skiff around them.
