Historian David Cecelski illustrates with photos and family lore the story of fishers from Down East Carteret County who found their way to Lake Erie more than a century ago.
Our Coast’s History: Varnamtown’s Fishermen 1938
Photographer Charles Farrell captured how mullet fishermen in the fall of 1938 “made do,” as historian David Cecelski explains, on Bald Head Island during the Great Depression.
Our Coast’s History: Remembering 1930s Sneads Ferry
Through Charles Farrell’s photographs of Sneads Ferry in the 1930s, historian David Cecelski learned the stories and people of the Onslow County fishing village.
Our Coast’s History: Menhaden Fishing Days
David Cecelski looks further into the work of photographer Charles A. Farrell, who documented fishing communities across the North Carolina coast in 1930s, including the menhaden industry in Beaufort and Southport.
Hard times: Voices from the Great Depression on NC coast
Historian David Cecelski found interviews from the Great Depression from a seaman from Ocracoke, a country doctor from Lake Mattamuskeet, a Norwegian dredge boatman in Beaufort, a washerwoman in Elizabeth City and others.
Our Coast’s History: The Herring Workers
Charles Farrell’s photographs of herring workers from 1937-1941 remind us of a different time and perhaps give us a vision of what could be again if the Chowan River is restored to health, writes historian David Cecelski.
The other coup d’etat: Remembering New Bern in 1898
New Bern in 1898 could have easily experienced a coup similar to the massacre that took place in Wilmington the same year, writes North Carolina historian David Cecelski.
Our Coast: Remembering a Church Bombing
David Cecelski shares his conversation with retired Trooper Bob Edwards, sole eyewitness to the 1966 bombing of an African American church in Craven County.
Shark Hunter Russell J. Coles at Cape Lookout
Historian David Cecelski begins the tale of shark hunter Russell J. Coles, a pioneer of the scientific study of sharks and rays who spent much of the early 20th century at Cape Lookout.
The Story of Shad Boats
Historian David Cecelski introduces his 12-part series, “The Story of Shad Boats,” that explores the origins, construction and history of the workboats found on the North Carolina coast in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Piney Grove: Touring Brunswick County’s Past
Historian David Cecelski visits with Brunswick County’s Marion Evans, who leads him on a tour of the Piney Grove community, sharing rich, old stories and showing him the little-known sites where they took place.
Singing At The March on Washington
Historian David Cecelski writes about a photo of Jacquelyn Bond and Golden Frinks, both central to the Williamston Freedom Movement, at the March on Washington in 1963.
Our Coast’s History: Working in the Logwoods
North Carolina historian David Cecelski searched the Forest History Society’s archives for photographs of coastal North Carolina and came across images of logging and lumber mills taken between 1900 to 1950 along the coast.
Beaufort’s Scandinavian, Dutch Fishermen
David Cecelski writes about the “largely forgotten enclave of Norwegian, Swedish and Dutch fishermen” who, along with their families, left New Jersey to make their home in Beaufort beginning in the 1910s.
Our Coast’s History: Chloe’s Story
The only recorded passage about the life of Chloe, a woman enslaved in Currituck County in the first half of the 1800s, reveals a great deal about her and the lives of other enslaved women on the North Carolina coast.
North Carolina and the Turpentine Trail
Historian David Cecelski writes about North Carolina losing its stranglehold on the naval stores industry after the American Civil War, forcing workers to follow the “turpentine trail” in search of untapped longleaf pine forests in other southern states.
