More than 50 years ago, a high school history teacher named Morgan Harris and his students at Mattamuskeet High School created what I believe are the only surviving maps of four lumber mill villages in Hyde County, N.C.
Lake Mattamuskeet
The Italian Workers: The Life and Times of the Immigrants who Built North Carolina’s Railroads
In 1920 an Italian immigrant named James Torsigno-- a railroad construction worker-- was unjustly accused of murder in Belhaven, N.C.. His case opened a rare window into the world of the thousands of Italian immigrant laborers that were building railroads in North Carolina in the early 20th century.
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 Convict Labor Camp
As I look through the historical collections at the National Museum of African American History and Culture, I also found another important artifact from eastern North Carolina: a postcard, dated ca. 1910, of a convict labor camp in Laurinburg, N.C.
Remembering the Hyde County School Boycott– A 50th Anniversary Celebration
This is the 1st part of a series celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Hyde County, N.C., school boycott, a remarkable chapter in the history of America’s civil rights movement and the subject of my first book, Along Freedom Road
The Constant, Haunting Music of the Geese
Twenty-five years ago, I lived for most of a year by the shores of Lake Mattamuskeet. I arrived in the fall and watched the great flocks of Canada geese, snow geese and tundra swans settle onto the lake for the winter, and I was there in the spring when they rose back into the sky and headed home to the Arctic Circle.
Travels with Kingfish
I first met Bland Simpson at an oyster roast at the old hunting lodge at Lake Matttamuskeet. That was in the winter of 1997, and we were in the middle of a remote, swampy and unforgettably beautiful landscape. From the top of the lodge’s wildlife observation tower, the view took my breath away. In every direction, cane brakes, freshwater marshes, and juniper swamps stretched to the horizon, while thousands of Canada geese, snow geese, and tundra swans rested on the lake.
David Cecelski 