As German submarines torpedoed merchant ships out in the Atlantic, one of the islanders was assigned to search the beaches for corpses. Others, when they heard the explosions offshore, had the duty of taking their boats far out into the Atlantic to search for survivors and the dead. (Photo-essay #18 in my "Working Lives" series.)
Carteret County N.C.
Hauling Cabbage: Beaufort, 1944.
A number of my cousins in Harlowe also "hauled cabbage" back in the 1930s and '40s. One of them was my mother's first cousin Edsel, who often told me tales of his adventures driving all night to deliver truckloads of cabbage to New York City's Washington Square Market by dawn.
In My Great-Uncle’s Sweet Potato Fields, 1942
This group of photographs is more personal for me than most of the other historical photographs that I have featured here: they were taken at my great-uncle George Ball and his brother Raymond Ball's potato farm in Harlowe, N.C. (Part 11 of my "Working Lives" series.)
Reading Shakespeare Down East
I think I just wanted us to remember that, once upon a time, teachers were revered, their knowledge treasured, and schools were not treated like the enemy the way they are now, and that it was once considered a noble and honorable thing to bring light and tenderness and love into the world.
“The Beach is Lined with Crab Camps”
When the mailboat Violet arrived in Marshallberg, News & Observer correspondent C. J. Rivenbark discovered a whole village where life seemed to revolve around soft-shell crabbing.
“It Was Like a Ballet”: Menhaden Fishermen at Work, 1947
In this photograph from the State Archives, we see a crew of menhaden fishermen at work in the waters off Morehead City and Beaufort, N.C., in 1947. They have tied their purse boats up against the mother boat after making a set and are beginning to load their catch onto the mother boat.
Lifting a Purse Seine onto a Net Reel, Beaufort, N.C., 1944
In this photograph, we see fishermen raising a purse seine onto a net reel at a menhaden factory in Beaufort, N.C., December 1944. They are standing in one of their crew's purse boats and another fisherman, or a factory hand, is turning the reel and lifting the seine onto the reel.
The Menhaden Boat C. P. Dey
In this unfortunately rather blemished photograph, we see the menhaden fishing boat C. P. Dey at the docks in Morehead City, N.C., looking well-used but tidy, her purse boats in good view, November 1942.
“My Special Calling”: The Letters of a Union Army Nurse in Morehead City, N.C., 1863-65
I found the letters in an old book called Adventures of an Army Nurse in Two Wars. Published in Boston in 1902, the book chronicles the life of a Civil War nurse named Mary Phinney von Olnhausen and it caught my attention because she spent two years at Union army hospitals here on the North Carolina coast.
The Magic Lantern Man
In 1893 and 1894, a young African American showman named I. P. Hatch criss-crossed the North Carolina coast and beyond. Using a device called a stereopticon, he shared images of the world's wonders with overflowing crowds from New England to Florida.
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.
The Mullet Fishermen of Punta Gorda
The first fisherman from Carteret County, N.C., that I found in Punta Gorda, Florida, was a man named John C. Lewis. He was born in Beaufort in 1847 and he was the son of Anson and Irene Lewis, outfitters of sailing ships.
The Mullet Fishermen: A Journey from Carteret County, N.C. to Cortez, Florida
In the 1880s fishermen began to leave Carteret County, N.C., and go to the mullet fishing grounds of Southwest Florida, where they made new homes in places such as Cortez and Punta Gorda.
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.
The Whitehurst Fishery: A Down East Community on Lake Erie
A little more than a century ago, a group of seagoing people from the “Down East” part of Carteret County, N.C., settled on the shores of Lake Erie and began commercial fishing.
Why I Love Wonder Bread
One look at an old photograph and suddenly I was three years old again and standing on the side of Hwy. 101, near the turn to Mrs. Kay Wright's farm, and I was stepping up into a Wonder Bread delivery truck.
My Grandmother’s Fruitcake
I came to making fruitcakes late in life. One fall morning, maybe 15 or 20 years ago, I woke up craving a slice of my grandmother Vera’s fruitcake. My grandmother, Vera Sabiston Bell, lived in an old farmhouse in a little community called Harlowe in Carteret County, N.C.
David Cecelski 