The Museum of the Albemarle is to welcome the author of a recently published book on the United States Coast Guard’s 235-year history on the North Carolina coast for its monthly “History for Lunch” program.

Starting at noon Wednesday, April 22, inside the Elizabeth City museum’s Gaither Auditorium, retired U.S. Coast Guard Capt. George E. Krietemeyer is scheduled to discuss his book, “Guardians of the Graveyard of the Atlantic.”

His talk is to begin with the arrival of the U.S. Revenue Cutter Diligence in 1792, which was built in Washington to Alexander Hamilton’s design and specifications, the vessel’s primary mission was to collect tariffs but soon became involved in chasing pirates and aiding vessels in distress. The Coast Guard now has more than 5,000 members working in North Carolina, saving lives and overseeing oil spills all over the world.

Registration is not needed to attend the lecture in person but those wishing to attend virtually must sign up in advance to receive the meeting link. Friends of the Museum of the Albemarle support the virtual program.

The Museum of the Albemarle is a part of the Division of State History Museums, Office of Archives and History, under the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.

The Museum of the Albemarle is at 501 S. Water St., Elizabeth City, and is open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Saturday.

“An Evening of Jazz: Celebrating Max Roach,” set for 6 p.m. Friday, Jan. 17, in Elizabeth City honors the jazz drummer and Pasquotank County native a week after what would have been his 100th birthday.

Being held in the Museum of the Albemarle‘s Gaither Auditorium, Douglas Jackson, professor of music at Elizabeth City State University, is set to speak about the life and accomplishments of Roach.

Also during the celebration, there will be a performance by Elizabeth City native Thomas Taylor and his mentor David Albert, who played a significant role in his music education, and accompanying musicians.

“Roach was a master percussionist whose rhythmic innovations defined bebop jazz,” according to the museum.

Roach was born Jan. 10, 1924, in Newland, a township that borders the Great Dismal Swamp, and died Aug. 16, 2007, in New York, New York. During his career, he performed with music greats Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Stan Getz and others.

The National Endowment for the Arts calls Roach “one of the two leading drummers of the bebop era (along with Kenny Clarke) and was one of the leading musicians, composers, and bandleaders in jazz since the 1940s.”

The program is supported by Friends of the Museum of the Albemarle, North Carolina Museum of History Associates, The Elizabeth City Foundation, and Southern Bank of Elizabeth City.

The Museum of the Albemarle will soon have a new exhibit on what The Beach Boys call, “the greatest sport around.”

The new installation, “Where the Waves Break: Surfing in Northeastern North Carolina” will open at the museum in Elizabeth City July 13, with complementary programming planned for 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. that day.

Surfing, with its roots in Hawaii and Tahiti, has been around for centuries. On the state’s southern coastline, early forms of surfing activity were first documented in 1909, and, in 1920, the sport was introduced to the northern coast, according to the museum.

“What began as a sacred activity for Indigenous islanders has become a mix of cultures all its own. For more than a hundred years, many surfers have ridden these waves. For some, surfing is a profession; for others, it is a hobby, a therapeutic activity, a community to join, or a mechanism to raise awareness for causes,” the release states.

The exhibit features surfboards, trophies, competition jerseys, a wetsuit, lifejacket, surf jacket, and surf wax, as well as images and surfboards on loan from area surf shops.

“The Museum of the Albemarle thanks the surfers, surf shops, photographers, board making companies, and other organizations and individuals who contributed research, artifacts, quotes, and images for the exhibition,” organizers said.

Visitors can meet author, filmmaker and Elizabeth City native Laurel Senick from 12:30 until 3 p.m. July 13. Senick will be available to sign her book “Foam.” Attendees can view the 30-minute film she directed called “Any Given Morning.”

Port Discover, which touts itself as “Northeastern North Carolina’s Center for Hands-On Science,” in Elizabeth City, plans a program on shells and their different characteristics. That’s set for 11 a.m. July 13.

The following week, the museum will host Summer Fun Day: A Day at the Beach, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Tuesday, July 16. During Summer Fun Day, visitors can hear from staff of Outer Banks Center for Wildlife Education in Currituck County, “Save Our Sand Dunes” author Hannah West, YMCA staff are to talk about water safety, and Lighthouse Keeper Madison Phillips of the 1886 Roanoke River Lighthouse is to provide educational programming. 

The museum is collaborating with Elizabeth City Downtown Inc., RCE Theaters and GSN Global Surf Network Tuesday, July 30, to offer live music and a film.

Luck 757 of Portsmouth, Virginia, will begin at 6 p.m. The Portsmouth, Virginia, band performs songs by Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, Roy Orbison, Bobby Darin, Sam Cooke, Dion, The Drifters, Smokey Robinson, The Surfaris and others.

Following the band at 8:30 p.m. will be a showing of “The Endless Summer,” the classic surf documentary directed by Bruce Brown. Now marking its 60th anniversary, highlights the adventures of two young American surfers, Robert August and Mike Hynson. They follow this everlasting summer to Senegal, Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Tahiti, Hawaii, and California.

In the event of inclement weather, the event will be held on the portico of the Museum of the Albemarle.

Learn about the importance of pollinators during the Museum of the Albemarle’s History for Lunch beginning at noon Wednesday, June 21, in the Gaither Auditorium.

Beekeepers of the Albemarle member Paul Wand will share information on the importance of bees and beekeeping. The talk will highlight the exhibit, Pollination Investigation, on display now through March 2024 in the Elizabeth City museum.

The museum will offer History for Lunch in-person and through Zoom. Register in advance through the museum’s Facebook page or its website to receive a link to attend the lecture virtually.

“Pollination Investigation” showcases how pollinators are vital for a strong ecosystem as most plants need their help to fertilize flowers and reproduce, according to the website. Presented by Smithsonian Gardens and the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service, the poster exhibition covers the the who, what, when, where, why, and how of pollination by interpreting the unique relationship between pollinators and flowers. The exhibit went on display in March.

The virtual program is supported by Friends of the Museum of the Albemarle.

The Museum of the Albemarle in Elizabeth City will welcome next month J. Brent Morris, author of “Dismal Freedom: A History of the Maroons of the Great Dismal Swamp,” for a special lecture and booksigning.

The event with Morris, a professor of history at the University of South Carolina at Beaufort, is set for 6 p.m. Friday, Feb. 17.

The special History for Lunch program is being offered both in-person and through Zoom. Register in advance through the museum’s Facebook page or website to receive a link to attend the lecture virtually.

Thousands of maroons, or people who had emancipated themselves from enslavement and settled beyond the reach of enslavers, established new lives of freedom in the Great Dismal Swamp. Morris draws from newly discovered primary sources and archeological evidence that suggests far more extensive maroon settlement than historians have previously imagined in the Great Dismal Swamp, which covers almost 2.000 square miles and is in Virginia and North Carolina.

“This is the story of resilient, proud, and determined people who made the Great Dismal Swamp their free home and sanctuary and who played an outsized role in undermining slavery through the Civil War,” according to UNC Press, which published the book.

The virtual program is supported by Southern Bank of Elizabeth City.

Museum of the Albemarle in Elizabeth City is to open a new exhibit and offer a weekend of programing to celebrate decoys and their carvers in early November.

The wooden decoys to be featured in the exhibit, “Working Birds: Decoys and Their Carvers,” which opens Nov. 3, were are made by carvers from Back Bay in southeastern Virginia to Ocracoke in Dare County.

A special feature is to include a ruddy duck carved in 1902 by Alvery “Alvirah” Wright born 1872 and died 1951. Of Old Trap, a rural community in Camden County, Wright was a fourth-generation boatbuilder and decoy carver.

“Waterfowl has been an important food source for many centuries. The abundant flocks of migratory birds to the Atlantic coast gave rise to an industry called market hunting. In the late 1800s, restrictions that limited the hunting and shooting of these birds were nearly nonexistent,” according to the museum. “By the early 1900s, local craftsmen were carving shorebird, duck, and goose decoys as a method of hunting waterfowl, with hunt clubs and hunting lodges as major clients. ‘Working bird’ decoy usage fell as stricter hunting laws were eventually passed.”

The exhibit kicks off with a program at 5 p.m. Friday, Nov. 3. Guest speaker Kroghie Andresen, author of “Gunnin’Birds,” will discuss decoy collecting for all ages and introduce Sid Daughtridge, the donor of many of the decoys in the exhibit.

Carolina Decoy Collectors Association members will be available 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Friday, Nov. 4, to evaluate decoys at the conclusion of the program, answering questions about the presented decoys. Visitors are welcome to bring in their own decoys for an educational show and tell, especially Alvirah Wright decoys. 

The museum will offer hands-on activities 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 5, about decoys, demonstration of decoy carving and the Outer Banks Center for Wildlife Education will be on hand.

Museum of the Albemarle hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday to Saturday and is located at 501 S. Water St., in Elizabeth City. The website is www.museumofthealbemarle.com.

The museum, which serves Bertie, Camden, Chowan, Currituck, Dare, Gates, Hertford, Hyde, Northampton, Pasquotank, Perquimans, Tyrrell, and Washington counties, is the northeast regional history museum of the North Carolina Division of State History Museums.

The division is within the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources, the state agency with the mission to enrich lives and communities and the vision to harness the state’s cultural resources to build North Carolina’s social, cultural and economic future.

Whether building boats for business or recreation, or used as a means to freedom, boatbuilders, along with their vessels and shipyards, have impacted the maritime history of the Albemarle Sound.

The Museum of the Albemarle in Elizabeth City is recognizing the boatbuilding traditions of the region with a new exhibit, “Rock of the Eye: Boatbuilding Traditions Around the Albemarle Sound.”

The exhibit opening Oct. 10 is to include graphics and artifacts that illustrate the boatbuilding traditions that go back generations. Museum hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Saturday.

Boatbuilders of the Albemarle region have constructed vessels, many by intuition and feeling, the “Rock of the Eye.” Builders pass along knowledge and technique from one generation to the next, with each adding their own unique style.

A few still build their own boats in their backyards to keep traditions alive. Many coming from long-standing fishing traditions, these boatbuilders take pride in their work as they ensure that the art of boatbuilding continues for future generations, according to the museum.

The Museum of the Albemarle is at 501 S. Water St., Elizabeth City. For more information call 252-335-1453 or visit www.museumofthealbemarle.com.

“War of 1812: A Nation Forged by War” is the newest temporary display in the Museum of the Albemarle in Elizabeth City.

The small, banner display in the lobby commemorates the 210-year anniversary of the War of 1812, focusing on the efforts of the U.S. Navy, U.S. Marine Corps, and U.S. Revenue Cutter Service to bring Great Britain to the negotiating table and get recognition as a truly independent United States, according to the museum.

The display is on loan from the National Museum of the United States Navy, which is in the Washington Navy Yard, Washington, D.C. and will run until September.

The war took place from June 18, 1812, to Feb. 17, 1815, and was sparked by conflicting maritime policies and competing western expansion along the United States-Canadian frontier, according to the museum. After two and a half years, the two countries reached a stalemate and ended the war.

“The Navy played an essential role in preserving the strategic status quo that led to an unconditional peace with Britain in December 1814,” Dr. Edward Furgol, former curator of the National Museum of the United States Navy, said in a statement.

Museum hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Saturday. The exhibit is free and open to the public.

The Museum of the Albemarle is at 501 S. Water St., Elizabeth City.

The Museum of the Albemarle is hosting a traveling exhibit highlighting the work and lives of three African American female mathematicians who were critical to NASA.

The exhibit, “When the Computer Wore a Skirt: NASA’s Human Computers,” will open Feb. 14 at the museum Elizabeth City. Admission is free to the museum open 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Saturday.

On loan from the Hampton History Museum, the exhibit, which closes March 12, explores the history and personalities brought to light in the film and novel “Hidden Figures,” Dorothy Vaughan, Katherine Johnson and Hampton native-Mary Jackson.

Five women in 1935 formed a computer pool at NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, to process data from wind tunnel and flight tests. By 1942, the human computers had become essential to operations. A memo that April stated: “The engineers admit themselves that the girl computers do the work more rapidly and accurately than they could,” according to NASA.

Langley began recruiting African American women in the 1940s as human computers, but due to segregation laws these “West Area Computers” were kept separate from their white counterparts.

This changed in the 1950s as NACA, later NASA, integrated and the “human computers” extended into the broader scientific community at NASA. By the 1960s they numbered in the hundreds.

Created by the Hampton History Museum staff, the exhibit is designed to travel to other museums, libraries, schools and other organizations.

For details on “Human Computers,” or other Hampton History Museum traveling exhibits, visit www.hamptonhistorymuseum.org/travelingexhibits or contact curator Allen Hoilman at 757-727-6875 or allen.hoilman@hampton.gov.

Teens 13 to 17 in northeastern North Carolina can spend the summer learning about regional history and culture while sharing their knowledge with diverse audiences as a junior docent with the Museum of the Albemarle.

The museum of the Albemarle at 501 S. Water St., Elizabeth City, serves Bertie, Camden, Chowan, Currituck, Dare, Gates, Hertford, Hyde, Northampton, Pasquotank, Perquimans, Tyrrell and Washington counties.

During their time as junior docents, teens will receive special invitations to monthly meetings that provide opportunities for training in leadership skills, learn time management, public speaking skills hear guest speakers and earn volunteer hours, officials said. Junior docents will be recognized during an annual awards ceremony.

To join the program, teens only need a valid email address and parents or guardians’ permission to join the program.

Contact Hayley A. James at 252-331-3040 and Hayley.James@ncdcr.gov for more information!

Museum hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Saturday, and closed sundays and state holidays.

The museum is the northeast regional history museum of the North Carolina Division of State History Museums within the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.

This is the first in a history series examining each of North Carolina’s 20 coastal counties.

Every elementary school student in North Carolina is taught the story of the Lost Colony. That 16th century settlement on Roanoke Island was indeed the first sustained English settlement in North America, but it has earned its moniker for a reason.

The colony was lost within five years of its settlement. Today’s state of North Carolina instead emerged from a much less famous area. The Albemarle Settlements, of which Chowan County comprised the western section, were the true beginning of this state. Chowan County reflects this long historical heritage and is today as closely connected to the past as any county in the state.

One could argue that John Pory, not John White, is the true founder of the North Carolina Colony. Pory, a professor, explorer and politician living in Virginia, traveled down the Chowan River in 1622 and, according to a Virginia chronicle from 1622, wrote of “a very fruitfull and pleasant Countrey, full of rivers, wherein are two harvests in one yeere.”

After his report, some Virginians moved south in search of fresh tobacco lands. Pory’s journey predated the 1629 grant from King Charles I that gave Carolina or “Carolana” as it was called at first) its name. Many Virginians settled along the river that Pory traveled. In 1664, enough settlers had moved into the area that Albemarle County was formed to provide some semblance of government. The western edge of that county, Shaftesbury Precinct, became Chowan Precinct in 1685 and Chowan County in 1739.

The center of Chowan County was Edenton, one of the earliest towns in North Carolina. It was named after Charles Eden, a governor more famous today for his friendship with pirates than his governance. Bill Hand noted in the New Bern Sun Journal that “some historians suggest that Eden was getting a percentage from the pirate; at any rate, after Blackbeard’s death a lot of his loot turned up in a barn owned by colony secretary Tobias Knight.”

One of Eden’s rivals, Edward Moseley, was arrested for publicly insinuating the governor was receiving Blackbeard’s stolen treasures. When Blackbeard was finally killed in North Carolina waters, it was not by Eden’s militia but by troops from Virginia.

In its early years, Edenton barely earned the designation of town. William Byrd II, a leading Virginia planter and the founder of Richmond, stayed near Edenton when he helped survey the Virginia-North Carolina Colonial boundary in 1728. Byrd wrote in his “History of the Dividing Line” that the town had between 40 and 50 houses and that he knew of no other place of European settlement where “there is neither church, chapel, mosque, synagogue, or any other place of public worship of any sect or religion whatsoever.” To Byrd, the people of Edenton had no ambition and regarded having a brick chimney on one’s home as a sign of extravagance.

This state of affairs did not last. Over time, Edenton became a center for some of the colony’s most respected citizens. These included early Supreme Court Justice James Iredell and governors James Iredell Jr. and Samuel Johnson. North Carolina’s governor resided in Edenton while it was the Colonial capital from 1722 to 1743. The town contained some of the most elegant buildings in the colony. Several of them, such as the Chowan County Courthouse built in 1767, and St. Paul’s Episcopal Church built 1736-1766, are still standing and can be visited today. Edenton’s 300-year-old courthouse green still survives in the middle of town.

A pivotal moment in women’s and Colonial history happened in Edenton in 1774. Spurred on by the hated tax on tea and similar events across the Colonies, the so-called Edenton Tea Party was held in that year. A group of women, led by Penelope Barker, signed a document pledging to boycott the purchase of English tea and cloth until England stopped its practice of taxation without representation.

According to Sandra Lancaster of the Daughters of the American Revolution, the letter was “one of the earliest organized women’s political actions in United States history.” It also prompted ridicule in London. Phillip Dawe drew and had printed a cartoon portraying the women as masculine, lecherous and decidedly unladylike. A statue of a teapot commemorating the event can be found atop a cannon near the county courthouse.

Throughout the Revolutionary and early Republic periods, Chowan County’s considerable wealth was built on shipping and local plantations, with much of its territory outside of the town limits comprising sprawling tobacco plantations. The town of Edenton also centered around slavery.

The 1860 slavery distribution map, created by Edwin Hergesheimer, showed that the county had the state’s seventh-highest proportion of slaves to free persons. One of the most famous of these enslaved persons was Harriet Jacobs. After years of torment from her owner, Jacobs escaped and spent several more years in Edenton hiding in an attic before making her way north. Harriet Jacobs’s 1861book, “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl,” became one of the most famous antebellum slave narratives, and she spent the remainder of her life in the North fighting for abolition and later for social reform. Free African Americans also called the town home. They could secure jobs as ship pilots or working on the docks. Harriet Jacobs noted that some of these free men and women helped her, her brother John Jacobs, and others escape to freedom by ship.

Chowan County’s fortunes declined in the 19th century. As David Leroy Corbitt noted in his authoritative history of North Carolina counties, Chowan lost its prosperous top half with the formation of Gates County in 1779. Edenton’s harbor was greatly affected by the closing of Roanoke Inlet after a 1795 hurricane.

The town was then occupied by federal troops early in the Civil War. Following the end of slavery, Edenton survived by turning to industry, most notably at the cotton mill that still stands at the end of King Street and the peanut mill on Church Street.

Following the Civil War, with the decline of plantation agriculture, the entire Albemarle region suffered economic hardship that continued throughout much of the 20th century. Edenton only reversed this decline by embracing its history. One of the earliest historic preservation efforts in North Carolina occurred in 1918, 40 years before the rebuilding of Tryon Palace. Women in Edenton formed an association to rehabilitate the Cupola House built 1756-58, one of North Carolina’s oldest homes.

For the next century, affiliated groups such as the Edenton State Historic Site and the Edenton Woman’s Club restored dozens of structures and helped found numerous inns and bed-and-breakfast inns. State funding and tourism revenues have resulted in a vibrant downtown with museums, house tours and a trolley tour.

This history caught the imagination of one of North Carolina’s most notable novelists. Inglis Fletcher, who owned a historic plantation in Chowan County, wrote a dozen books set in historical North Carolina and Edenton. These included “Men of Albemarle” in 1942, and “Roanoke Hundred” in1948. There was also “Lusty Wind of Carolina” in1944, the tale of a bondsman and the daughter of a Huguenot weaver who fall in love, help establish the Colony, and fight pirates. The books are all fictional but filled with historical facts as well as cameos from historical figures. 

Today, Chowan County retains the North-South dynamic that has defined it since the early 18th century. Its northern areas are rural and have changed little in the past hundred years. The exception is the growing seaside community of Arrowhead Beach. Other northern communities, such as Rockyhock and the amusingly named Sign Pine, remain little more than crossroads.

The southern section of the county, comprising Edenton, has become a vibrant, bustling community dedicated to tourism and history. Edenton now has a bookstore and approximately two dozen restaurants. Its former mill buildings have new tenants, including a fitness center and a museum. Chowan County has found a way forward by embracing both its natural wealth and the appeal of the past. It has become one of the Inner Banks’ most notable success stories.