At the Southern Historical Collection at UNC-Chapel Hill, I found a remarkable collection of oral history interviews from the North Carolina coast during the Great Depression in the 1930s.
Ocracoke N.C.
Ocracoke, 1899—The Floods Last Time
A few years ago Ocracoke natives Philip Howard and his cousin Blanche Howard Jolliff gave me a typewritten manuscript of one woman’s account of the great 1899 hurricane on Ocracoke Island. The woman's name was Irla Bonner Litchfield Ticknor and she was 19 years old when that devastating hurricane swept across the North Carolina coast.
Ocracoke and Philadelphia– An Outer Banks Village, a Great Seaport and the Bond between Them
“This used to be an island where the men went to sea.” That’s what 95-year-old Blanche Howard Jolliff told me a few years ago, when I visited her on Ocracoke Island, one of North Carolina’s Outer Banks. I was the guest of her cousin Philip and his family next door, and Philip took me by to see her.
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.
Remembering Portsmouth Island
Today I am remembering a visit to the Outer Banks History Center on Ice Plant Island, which is part of the little town of Manteo, North Carolina. The OBHC is a relatively small branch of the State Archives of North Carolina, but it is home to a unique collection of books, manuscripts, and photographs that focus on the history of the Outer Banks and the coastal counties along the eastern end of Albemarle Sound.
David Cecelski 