Albemarle Sound: Voyage Through Centuries IX

Posted on June 21, 2021 by aheronsgarden

The Mighty Herring Fisheries

When the shadbush bloomed in spring, the hard work and celebrations began. Schools of shad and river herring teemed in from the ocean through inlets and into the Sound and up rivers, bound for their birth places to spawn a new generation.

Alewives, one species of river herring. Jerry Prezioso NOAA

At a time when people lived off the land, these silver fish brought great joy and the promise of full cupboards, a fine reason for exuberant annual celebrations.

Buckets, baskets, nets, poles. Families scooped up fish that would feed them throughout a long winter.  Shad had to be kept on ice to stay fresh, so it was eaten immediately, but the oily flesh of herring lent itself to salting, pickling and drying that would preserve it for a year or more.

(Well into the twentieth century you could find community celebrations of herring runs — and barrels of corned herring in country kitchens.)

Fishermen cast their net baskets off a bridge in Martin County late 19th century

Around the end of the 19th century, herring could be purchased on river banks in spring for as little as one dollar a thousand, though the average price was $2.50. A dollar a month, wrote one Chowan County native, would procure for a person the most usual diet of much of the population — herring, cornbread (corn was 40 cents a bushel) and tea brewed from native yaupon holly.

From the 1760s on, commercial fisheries were operating on Albemarle rivers, catching fish in cunning, labyrinthine weirs of poles and reeds. Pickled herring were shipped up the coast to Baltimore, New York and Boston; west to the Great Plains; and south to the West Indies. By sail. By steamer. By rail.

Salted herring packed in wooden bins for shipping. Smithsonian Institution Archives

A century later, about the same time shad boats were first skimming waters, the pound net was introduced, while huge seine nets were catching vast numbers of fish  with breathtaking efficiency.

The Seahawk herring boat piled high with fish, on Albemarle Sound

Every plantation had a shoreline of smooth sand where fish were landed and processed. Capstans, or windlasses for hauling seines in, salting houses, processing sheds, and offices created a mini fishing town.

Fishing flats Avoca

During fish hauls, two ten-oared boats would carry a seine more than two miles long and several feet deep off shore. Boatmen would row in opposite directions extending the seine, which had a line of corks on top to keep it afloat and a line of lead weights on the bottom to sink it. The seine would be strung out in a direction to block the herring as they swam upstream to spawn.

In 1861 Harper’s Weekly published a moment-by-moment rapid-fire account of hauling in a catch. Here is an excerpt. It begins after the fish have been caught in the seine and the seine is attached to capstans.

Capstans could be turned by men, mules, or eventually, by steam in order to tighten the seine

In this instance, mules are used to turn the capstans to tighten the seine until the fish are crowded and surrounded by net on shore.

Fifty stalwart men rush into the water, waist-deep. The captains shout and swear, the gulls and eagles scream, and dashing into the melee, audaciously snatch their share of the spoil.

A few minutes of heavy dragging and the flashing, wriggling mass is rolled upon the beach; a line of wide planks is hastily staked up behind, the net withdrawn, and the boatmen again put off cheerily to repeat the haul.

Hauling the catch, engraving from Harper’s Weekly i879

The women and boys now rush knee-deep into the gasping heap. The shad are first counted into baskets and carried to the packing-house; while the herring are headed, cleaned, and thrown into tubs, ready for the salters—all of which is transacted with merciless coolness and the most wonderful celerity.

It requires from five to seven hours to complete a haul ; and as there is no respite by day or night, three and four hauls are made within the twenty-four hours. The only time allowed for eating and sleeping is during the odd hours snatched by the different classes of workers when their especial branch of service is suspended. When the hauls are not heavy the cleaners and salters have an easy time between landings. The boatmen sleep while the mules wind in the net; the mules browse and bray while the boats are out.

Black women waiting to sort, gut. head, salt and pack fish. By the time they finish one haul, another will come in. A seine is piled on a fishing flat in the background. Smithsonian Institution archives

A first-class fishery employs from eighty to a hundred bipeds, and a dozen or twenty quadrupeds, and the labor during an active season of six weeks or two months is equal to that of a brisk military campaign in face of an enemy.

Of all the striking views of this exciting and picturesque business the night-haul is pre-eminent in interest. Here the lively scenes of the day are reenacted amidst the glare of pine torches, which exhibits the wild figures of the fishermen and the death-struggles of the finny captives in the most dramatic light possible.

Fishing at night was common during herring runs. Torches kept boats from losing their way. Fishermen’s night songs, hymns. chanteys, or old slave songs could be heard from across the water, “nothing more stirring than those crews singing on a moonlit night” recalled Col Capehart, owner of the fishery. Engraving from Harper’s Weekly

Besides needing captains and crews, cleaners and packers, skilled seine menders were valued for keeping the seines, which had to be tarred, in top shape. Holes in a net meant lost profits. Coopers made barrels for storage. A manager attended to details on shore and sold to customers on the beach.

Even children who were hanging around would be put to work where needed; their pay would be a bucket of fish for supper. Regular workers were paid a share of the profits.

Salting the herring for dinner at the fishery. Much larger troughs are used when salting for shipping. Smithsonian Institution Archives

It was not uncommon to take a hundred thousand river herring in a haul, though most hauls were smaller, five thousand up to thirty thousand. Since it cost between five and ten thousand dollars to establish a fishery, only wealthy planters could afford the upfront costs. The vast majority of farmers gathered their fish for personal consumption in dip nets or bow nets.

Every river had its haul of fish, though uniqueness of terrain and flow created differences in the personalities of rivers.

By the end of the 19th century the herring and herring roe of Albemarle Sound had won widespread fame. In a world where herring fisheries ruled, Albemarle fisheries were king.

Extracting shad roe 1877 at the Capehart fishery on Albemarle Sound. Smithsonian Institution archives

In a curious twist, settlers here  — laboring mightily in an inhospitable but richly endowed land, living on the edge, isolated,  self-reliant, insular — grew to have standing on the world map. Markets in New England, Europe, the Caribbean, even Russia eagerly sought their fish, their naval stores, their cotton and produce, their lumber.

We are fortunate today to have a rich photographic record of this era. During the 1870s the U.S Fish Commission sent scientists into the field to document fisheries nationwide. They produced a multi-volume report; the photographic collection is housed in Smithsonian Institution archives.

The North Carolina History Museum in Raleigh also houses archival photographs. Historian David Cecelski has reproduced many of these photographs in his blog posts about the herring fisheries. He tells an insider’s tale of coastal North Carolina life and fishing traditions.

At least thirty men heave thousands of fish onto the beach at Avoca in Bertie County 1877. Smithsonian Institution Archives

And Then the Fish Stopped Coming

As far back as the 1840s, a few prescient people sensed that the fishery could not last under such colossal landings. But it did not occur to most people that there could ever be an end to this bonanza. They simply assumed they could count on these fish to arrive on time each year, in the millions, as expected, forever.

Even the eminent scientist, Thomas Huxley, president of the Royal Society in England, saw no reason for concern. I believe, then, that the cod fishery, the herring fishery…and probably all the great sea fisheries are inexhaustible…(1883)

By 1896 0ver 1100 pound nets in Sound and rivers had replaced the labor-intensive haul seines, and fishermen were landing over 20 million pounds annually.

So many pound nets blocked passage of river herring that the state enacted the Vann Law in 1905 that required fishermen to leave a channel in the Sound to allow fish to migrate to their natal waters for spawning.

Still, the fishery continued to decline in the twentieth century. During the 1950s total catches were about 11 to 12 million annually. By the 1970s they had dropped to about 8 million, and in 1993 came the crash, down to one million.

Northeast North Carolina was not the only area that suffered losses. In 1965 the entire range of Atlantic states harvested over 64 million pounds. Forty years later total harvest for the combined area was under 100,000 pounds, almost a 99 percent decrease.

The fishery had died. In 2006 a moratorium on commercial fishing was declared in North Carolina. Three New England states, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island, joined the moratorium, but other coastal states did not. The fish did not come back.

Fishermen once unloaded boat loads of herring at fish houses like Perry Wynn’s on the Chowan River. North Carolina Wildlife Resources Oct 2007

The demise of the river herring fishery has vast implications for life in the sea. It is, for instance, probably responsible for the weakening of the cod fisheries in New England and Canada.

The river herring, after all, is low man on the food chain. It is born to be eaten. Half of a herring’s year is spent out in the Atlantic Ocean, anywhere from Canada to South Carolina or Florida, being eaten by the big fish that count on the silvery slivers swimming in massive schools.

For eons the silver slivers have been dinner and dessert for big creatures of the ocean like cod. Without them and their cousins the food chain collapses and nobody gets dessert.

In the Albemarle river herring are the preferred food for the rockfish, or striped bass, another great Albemarle fishery whose story most appropriately belongs to the Roanoke River. Can you imagine the turmoil, the frenzy, the catching and losing, as river herring and striped bass jostle in that race of millions to find their particular spawning grounds?

Striped bass, or rockfish, are the tigers of the Sound. In the days of big herring catches, landings of rockfish could weigh thousands of pounds. It was not unusual for a single rockfish to weigh a hundred pounds. Wikipedia

Let us return for a moment to the first American settlements when tools were few and simple, and survival depended on the wit, skill, and hardiness of those early men and women.

The environment provided everything they needed if they learned its ways. And if the rains failed one season, or a drought or a flood came along, well, they would have to work harder, and they might lose anyway.

They were conservationists by default because they could tame the environment with only their sinew, and maybe a mule to help them along. They could not claim control over the land.

Giant tupelo and cypress trees in Merchants Millpond State Park in the flood plain of the Chowan River are suggestive of the swamps the settlers encountered. aheronsgarden.com

Then we developed bigger, more efficient tools, and the search for ease of living and profits replaced survival with two hands. (Can you blame us?)

We pursued technology that would control the environment and meet our needs and expectations. (Can you blame us?)

We thought our rational approach would solve problems, so we substituted that for an intimate understanding of wild ways, a knowledge that is only gradually acquired, with patience, a knowledge that doesn’t lend itself to committee meetings and graphing.

We set no boundaries. There was great good, but there was greed…

We lost touch with the ways of the land, and we did not know what we were losing. Not just here in the Albemarle but all over the country.

Progressive loss of touch and delight in progress undergird the loss of the river herring fishery–and many more losses.

When losses became too great, we woke up. We studied. Lots of studies. One is of particular interest because its scale had local and national focus.

Urged by a generation of activists who came along after the first Earth Day in 1970, farsighted congressmen took note of declines in fisheries across the country. In the 1980s they sponsored legislation that would fund major studies of estuaries.

The Albemarle-Pamlico Estuarine Study (APES) was born. Scientists, government officials and private citizens cooperated to explore reasons — and seek solutions — for declining catches.

The study area, the Albemarle-Pamlico Estuarine System. EPA and US Geological Service

Turns out these little ten-inch-long fish that weigh half a pound have had the book thrown at them.

Here is how we messed up and how we are trying to reconcile the damage:

Decades of overfishing.

  • In times past there was a balance between juveniles and older fish in schools of river herring.
  • Juveniles need to wait three or four years before they can spawn, and their first year of spawning is usually only a warm-up.
  • Older females become  more and more productive with age and can release up to 100,000 eggs annually. However, they are exhausted after spawning and vulnerable to predators. They return to the ocean to recover and refuel.
  • If you decimate either class, you lose the future. Hence the moratorium on commercial fishing for herring in 2oo6. It is still in place.

Spawning herring. Milt from the male turns water milky, while females lay eggs on the substrate. Alaska Fish & Game

Activity in the Atlantic Ocean.

  • During the late 1960s and early 1970s fleets of foreign trawlers with mammoth nets were intercepting herring out in the Atlantic Ocean on their way to the Sound, 24 million pounds caught in 1969 alone.
  • In 1977 the Magnuson-Stevens Act forbade fishing within the 200-mile band of waters called the Exclusive Economic Zone of the United States.

Bluebacks and alewives, collectively called river herring, are anadromous fish. They spend much of the year in the North Atlantic, then migrate south to the brackish water of the Sound to spawn. Their lives outside the Sound are a mystery, except  that they are eaten by big fish and sea birds. NC Wildlife Resources Oct 2007

Barricades block fish migration

  • Nets once reached across rivers until regulated.
  • Dams alter river flow.
  • Streams are forced into culverts as roads are built across them.
  • Today, where possible, bridges replace culverts and dam-flow is altered to aid spawning (with mixed results in the Roanoke River)

Water exiting a culvert at a road crossing. Fish do not like the turbulence inside this giant tin can, nor do they like brushing against cold steel instead of soft sand

Loss of Habitat

  • Wetlands ditched. Woodlands clear cut. Pavement laid down. Development favored.
  • Streams rerouted. Riverbanks reworked.
  • Rainwater that once seeped lazily into streams pulses unchecked into waterways that become an open fire hose flushing larvae and young fish.
  • Today, permits are necessary for work done near water courses that are protected under the Clean Water Act. Not all of them are protected and permitting can be sketchy.

Wetland that has been ditched on North River Farms. NC Coastal Federation photo

Pollution from Agriculture

  • Sediment that runs off farms and construction sites clogs gills and buries larvae.
  • Nitrogen and phosphorus in fertilizer runoff  cause algae to bloom. When algae die, they break down, robbing water of oxygen, causing fish kills. (A particular problem in the Chowan River).
  • Best Management Practices (BMPs) used on farms and forests reduce runoff, minimize erosion.
  • Integrated Pest Management on crops encourages farmers to use less pesticide (and saves them money, too.Algal blooms on the Chowan River

Pollution from Municipalities and industry

  • Toxic organics, heavy metals, and oil from roads and parking lots.
  • Nutrients, bacteria, heavy metals,  and chemicals from the sewers of industries and cities.
  • Updated treatment plants treat waste water from municipalities and industry. (Fortunately, minimal urban sprawl and industry here has limited pollutants.

 

Street-side swale and pervious concrete sidewalk that allow rain water to seep into the soil are ways to control urban run-off. Wikimedia

The great herring catches are shadows now.  We are trying to mend damages from two hundred years or more. We have removed too much critical habitat for the great fisheries to be reclaimed, but we have shifted toward conservation.

Wildlife refuges, state and county parks, and game lands protect land and provide habitat for wildlife and outdoor experiences for people.

Kayaking in the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge

People must feel that they have a stake in protecting the vitality of land and water, their land, their water. Public education must focus on developing an understanding of natural cycles and how we can live in harmony with them.

The Albemarle-Pamlico National Estuary Partnership (APNEP) is  doing just that as today’s successor to the original estuarine study (APES).

As its name implies, it partners with a variety of groups to support research, restoration and public education. It is a comprehensive approach to protecting our land and water.

Monitoring water quality, Daniel Zapf

This coastal plain where the rivers meet the sea is still compelling, still beautiful, still a respite for many. With care, it can continue to be so.

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Albemarle Sound: Voyage Through Centuries: VIII

Posted on June 16, 2021 by aheronsgarden

A War that Wasn’t Wanted and the Expedition Hurricane

North Carolina did not want a fight.

South Carolina must have been itching for one because she seceded in 1860, before President Lincoln took office. She commandeered federal forts in the state, then dared Lincoln to provision the troops at an unfinished Fort Sumter by firing on it.

North Carolina was enjoying unprecedented prosperity.

Her economy was booming. Wealthy planters did not want to lose their investments or their power. Small farmers were doing well and weren’t interested in fighting to support planters’ interests. Lincoln didn’t seem so threatening, though he hadn’t even been on the ballot in North Carolina. And, generally, people liked living under the protection of the federal government.

Debate over secession could be acrimonious, but as late as February, 1861 the vote by the legislature in Raleigh (the new capital) was overwhelmingly pro-Union.

A month after the firing on Fort Sumter in April 1861 and Lincoln’s immediate proclamation to stop the rebellion, North Carolina became the 11th and last state to vote to secede.

She had no choice. She would have been at war with her neighbors, fighting her Sister States. The vote was unanimous. 

Pro-Union sentiment was strongest in the eastern and western parts of the state. Many pro-union planters, fearful of ruin,  moved family and slaves to the central part of the state; others aligned with the Confederacy.

One of the finest painters of the Civil War was Conrad Wise Chapman, who actually fought as a Confederate soldier, Here is  a rendering of The 59th Brigade, also called Wise’s Brigade, that fought in Virginia and Carolina

North Carolina had nothing to gain and everything to lose by seceding. And lose she did. 

She sent 130,000 of her young men into the war. She lost 40,000, half to disease. More than any other confederate state on both counts.

Confederate soldiers, from The Civil War, by Ken Burns

Albemarle counties raised volunteer units, many of whom saw the full brunt of the war, including the fateful Pickett’s Charge in Gettysburg. Captain Benjamin Skinner wrote of the constant whistle of the musical minnie… above our heads.

There was no standing army but each county had its own militia. It was not unusual for troops to be furnished with firearms purchased from private citizens. Sometimes daily rations amounted to as little as a few crackers and a quarter pound of meat, and men might go for a month without a change of clothes.

Photo of Confederate volunteers

Wrote the same Captain, Sufferings, privations & hardships have been endured such as no modern armies of their countrys have ever been called upon to undergo…but the… greater our sufferings now the more glorious will be our greater triumph…

Within a year, General Ambrose Burnside’s Expedition had captured towns in the east and established a blockade.

The Great Expedition under way, the Union armada to establish a blockade, sketched in October 1861

Control of Albemarle and Pamlico Sounds was firmly in Union hands in a bid to cut off General Lee’s southern supply routes to Virginia.

Hatteras had fallen. Roanoke Island was falling.

Artist’s engraving of Union troops going ashore on Roanoke Island to battle Confederate troops

Union troops and a fledgling Navy easily outmaneuvered seven small Confederate boats they called The Mosquito Fleet to capture the Island. On land volunteers tangled with Burnside’s men but were no match for the larger forces.

They were captured and three weeks later they were paroled. They then set about forming a new company with others and joined another regiment.

Confederate Prisoners by Winslow Homer, who had toured the South and sketched military and civilian life there during the war

Apparently the release of captives was common in the early years of the war. Prisoners of war would be held for a while, then freed, sometimes after taking an oath of allegiance to the Union. Whether they re-enlisted was an individual decision.

Life in Albemarle counties was overturned. Sound and rivers became thoroughfares for gunboats. Towns were shelled in skirmishes to maintain the Union blockade.

Confederate Steamship Eolus patrolled Albemarle Sound and rivers

To counter Union action the state authorized counties to form guerilla bands called Rangers to harass Union forces. Rangers in the Albemarle were most effective, since their members were so familiar with its forbidding terrain. They also prevented slaves from crossing Union lines and terrorized Union sympathizers.

Stating that they were virtually bandits, an angry Union commander threatened serious reprisals. Locals, too, were not happy with the depredations and the secretive nature of these bands.

Meanwhile, Albemarle residents had been smuggling supplies for Lee’s army. Provisions would be shipped from Norfolk Virginia through the Dismal Swamp Canal into northeast North Carolina.

From there they were ferried  west through swamp and river, then back up north to Lee’s army in Petersburg, or further north to Richmond, Virginia. The hand-off of supplies was probably done relay-style, from crew to crew.

To stop the smuggling, federal forays destroyed bridges and roads but the supply stream continued.  The Union then organized Negro troops to intervene, a move that was bound to incite citizens, particularly in light of reputed atrocities. It worked. Citizens were kept in a state of fear and panic.

A truce of sorts was arranged. The Union would remove Negro troops if citizens stopped smuggling and the Rangers were disbanded.  A jittery peace was restored, though it a Union captain acknowledged later that this circuitous supply route through northern North Carolina remained effective during the War.

Exports of cotton, lumber, ships stores and fishery products that were expected to pay the bills were halted by the blockade. Imports of necessary goods were blocked. Basics became luxuries.

From 1862 to 1865 prices soared because of profiteering by smugglers: a barrel of flour went from $18 to $500; corn, a staple, went from $1 a bushel to $30. Parched corn was used to make coffee, and sorghum was grown and processed instead of purchasing sugar.

Wrote one resident, Sure this War is meant to check the profusion in which we have lived & to teach the rising generation economy & the employment of their resources.

Many southerners could not believe that slaves would want to escape bondage. They were quite sure that slaves felt such a strong attachment to their masters they would never leave, that they were being driven or enticed to federal camps. When slaves took advantage of the Emancipation Proclamation, planters felt betrayed.

There were, however, blacks who remained loyal to the Confederacy

Yet as soon as Union troops arrived in an area slaves would follow their camps. Slaves that did not flee often piloted Union ships and revealed the location of Rangers.

If you can cross the creek to Roanoke Island, you will find safe haven.

Roanoke Island became a refuge for escaped and freed slaves. Protected by the Union army, over 3500 refugees would settle there in a camp called the Freedman’s Colony where community life flourished: families could live as families, children could attend schools, gardens could grow and going to church was central to life.

Photograph of housing in the Freedman’s Village

Some freedmen from Roanoke Island and other camps in eastern Carolina offered their skills to Union forces, or became spies, guides and scouts, built forts and bridges and served in four Union regiments.

Blacksmith working in the Freedman’s village. There were at least two other similar villages in the east

After the war the land was returned to the original owners and colony members became refugees again. Reports of depredations by some of these refugees and others caused counties to establish militia to maintain control.

It wasn’t all rosy for Union ships on Burnside’s Expedition. Bad weather plagued them in turbulent seas. In November, 1861, the Expedition Hurricane scattered a Union fleet of 75 ships off Cape Hatteras. Two vessels sank, and others were wrecked by Confederate forces. Storm surge was so high it  inundated Hatteras Island.

Words from one sailor: Wind continued to rise till at 11 pm it blew almost a gale…The scene was fearful but magnificent. The ship was tossing and pitching…The waves were rolling at least 20 feet high.

Words from another: Last night was the worst I ever saw. I could not sleep for I had as much as I could do to hold myself in my bunk. Reynolds got thrown out of his…8 am Window in stern got stove in the night…water was three or four inches deep. Shoes, guns, knapsacks…floating round in fine style.

Rescue of a battalion of 485 Marines from the foundering SS Governor. Seven men were lost trying to jump toward the rescue ship USS Sabine

Then, on a stormy New Years Eve in 1862 the ironclad warship, the Monitor, sank in 300 feet of water almost 200 miles off Cape Hatteras, losing 16 of her crew. She had performed extraordinarily well in service.

The Monitor, foreground, sinking offshore. In addition to a revolving turret, many unique features had been included in her hull

The first ever duel between ironclad warships took place near the mouth of the James River when the smaller Monitor clashed with the formerly wooden frigate Virginia. The Virginia had previously sunk, then was raised and re-outfitted as an ironclad and rechristened the Merrimack.

Battle between the Merrimack and the Monitor. The Merrimack looks like the roof of a barn; the Monitor sits low in the water, only 18 inches exposed

The Confederacy hoped to use the Merrimack to break the Union blockade, and before the Monitor arrived, she had already destroyed two wooden Union ships.

The battle ended inconclusively; the blockade remained. But the clash between two ironclads marked a major turning point in the history of naval warfare, and the two ships are memorialized in the names of Hampton Roads tunnels.

The Union and Confederacy had both developed steam-powered ironclads because ships built from wood could no longer withstand fire power from late-model heavy artillery.  European countries took note of this battle and immediately stopped construction of wooden ships.

The Monitor’s location is a watery historic site, and the Mariners’ Museum in Newport News, VA tells the story of that time through exhibits and artifacts.

The Monitor in its national marine sanctuary. noaa.gov

Only a few months before the Monitor sank, the Merrimack was blown up by her Confederate commanders as Union troops approached Norfolk to tighten the blockade. She was heavily salvaged, so few remnants remain as relics.

There was only one major battle fought on Albemarle Sound, a year before the end of the war. Three confederate warships, including the Albemarle Ram, an ironclad built in a cornfield, and eight Union gunboats faced each other. The battle ended indecisively at sunset.

Battle of the Albemarle May 1864. Three Confederate warships, including an ironclad ram in foreground and sidewheeler in background engaged eight Union gun boats until sunset, when both sides retired. Weapons and Warfare

(During the Civil War, much action in the Albemarle centered on the rivers and towns north of the Sound. These details will be available as we post the profiles of these rivers.)

Aftermath

Left with a shattered economy and a broken society  — devalued land, bearish cotton prices, a crumbled plantation system, destroyed homes and businesses — citizens began to find ways down new paths.

The social fabric of the community had been frayed. Soldiers came back wounded, or they didn’t come back at all. Families were broken by death and disease. Livelihoods were cobbled together by every member of the family.

Going to school would not put food on the table. Money was so tight that the personal surety bond, a sign of trust that was used regularly before the war, was replaced by the mortgage.

The country store and gristmill, many now in disrepair, had offered antebellum farmers more than essential goods and services. Along with churches, they had been the  nucleus of community life. Rural folk, whether landowner or tenant, free black or white, converged to purchase supplies, have their corn ground, or simply visit with neighbors and friends.

A Grand Opening in Plymouth, on the south side of the Sound, 1865

The structure of county government changed. Instead of Justices being appointed to manage affairs, county commissioners were elected to govern, a more democratic process that allowed for participation by blacks, who now voted and began to hold county offices.

Heavily in debt, Albemarle’s county governments struggled to provide aid to the poor, repair bridges, roads and ferries and restore public schools that had been closed early in the war.

Loss of labor, unstable race relations, and an uncertain political future reduced the wealthy to poverty. The Capeharts of Scotch Hall whose plantation had been bringing in $100,000 a year were left with $1200. Still, that was a tidy sum compared to assets of most people.

Freed slaves, now refugees, looking for a new home. Harpers Weekly, 1863

Class and color remained strong points of division throughout the century. Planters had trouble accepting the new equality enjoyed by blacks, and especially the idea of blacks holding public office. Blacks aligned with republicans, putting democrats in the minority.

The Perquimans Record opined in 1892 that the white element in the Republican party is the best class of our people, wealthy, Intelligent and refined. 

Democrats  worked very hard to gain the majority, presupposing that once in power they could reduce the Negro to his former subservience. The rise of Populism that attracted many farmers, slowed them down, but by the 1900’s they were firmly entrenched with a racist agenda.

Cotton and corn crops were good that first year after the war. They fetched high prices. People were optimistic. But rains brought poor cotton crops the next couple of years, and there was barely enough corn for bread.

Spring plowing, the beginning of a new season of hope

The 1870 census revealed devaluation of farm acreage, livestock and crop yields. Cash value of farms dropped by half or more.

Freed slaves and poor whites lacked the money to purchase even devalued farmland and supplies to start them on a new life. Planters  were so deeply in debt that they could not pay workers up front, so they divided up their property and worked out a system of sharecropping or tenancy.

Tenant farmers rented the house and the land they tilled. They had control over what  crops they grew and how they were sold. Out of the cash they received they paid the planter and any merchants the money due for rent and supplies and kept the rest.

Picking cotton on a tenant farm

Sharecroppers seldom owned anything. They rented the land and the house they lived in, along with all supplies needed for farming. They were told what to plant and had no control over sales. After harvest the planter took what was owed to him and paid what was left to the sharecropper.

Most bought supplies from local merchants on credit with the hope that they could pay off their debts after harvest. For many it was an endless cycle of debt and  poverty, reminiscent of the miner in the country-western song, Sixteen Tons, who owed his soul to the company store.

 

Sharecroppers in the 1890s

Sharecropped farms occupied about 35 percent of farmland north of Albemarle Sound, much less in counties along the south shore. Easing the penury were gifts from Sound and rivers, the dependable, annual running of herring and shad that could be freely taken.

The prosperity of antebellum years never returned to the Albemarle. Post-war industrialization elsewhere in the country did not reach here and farmers still planted their crops and watched the weather.

Those swamps, managed to keep the world away. A low population and lack of an industrial base protected the environment from smokestacks and warehouses. This watery oasis was not seen as a destination for building a bustling metropolis.

Even inroads wrought by Union armies could be and were repaired. Future threats  would come along and would-be moguls would try to exploit the environmental wealth, but they did not succeed with any permanence, even in the twentieth century.

This lack of commerce and industry created some of the poorest counties in the state. Yet there was not a vast exodus of African Americans from the Albemarle  during either wave of the Great Migration during the  twentieth century.

They chose to stay

Families with long lineage here, black and white, close-knit and close-by, have given support and comfort to each other through centuries, and a relatively benign climate eases life.

Lack of heavy commerce maintained a relaxed pace of life that allowed for neighborliness, deferential respect, and time-honored values of God, family and country. In fine weather or flood, people count on each other for help.

Shoreline along the Albemarle Sound, one example of the appeal of the region

Whatever hurt remained from the war, every spring communities could look forward to those heady days when the fish swam up rivers. And they knew that life in the Albemarle would be sustained for yet another year.

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My Garden is a Madhouse

Posted on June 13, 2021 by aheronsgarden

And I am the Mad Keeper of the Madness

I think it is safe to say the inmates have escaped and are now at large and in charge.

Weather created this garden asylum. You have to believe me. This was none of my doing, I can assure you. (Except maybe setting plants a tad too close, but that’s because they looked lost in a saner garden. . .who could guess they would take over like an army.)

All these plants had been pruned before spring. I know that because I made a garden resolution to keep the pruners busy this year

During two weeks in May and June we had ten inches of rain. A couple of days later I stepped outside and, aha, I surprised the inmates in their crack-brained insanity.

It was years before we were able to grow much in the soggy soil in this bed, though three hydrangeas grew big enough to fill it — until they wilted so after the crabapple that gave them shade was removed, so they had to go

Oh, the gleeful high fives that never came down. The poking and the pushing and the jockeying for prime positions, then the lolling when they got drunk on all those nutrients in the compost we so lovingly applied.

Rudbeckia laciniata, variety ‘Jack’s Beanstalk’. Usually the basal leaves make a beautiful ground cover and the flowers grow to about six feet. More like 12 feet this year

I freely admit that I am grinning. Many of these plants have taken years to look happy.

No doubt the spring that dripped blossoms (my last garden post), the spring we assumed would drown the garden but instead managed to crown it with blooms was an early perpetrator.

Another major battle in the bed, this between distilium, a rangy evergreen that should stand alone to be appreciated, and dwarf burford holly. excised twice but can’t take a hint. Weigela ‘Wine and Roses’ and clethra ‘Hummingbird complete the picture. All pruned heavily in spring. I should take pictures of the truckloads of prunings we gather up in late winter/spring

But here’s the rub. Late April and most of May we hardly saw a drop of  rain with blasts of hot sun that shriveled tender new growth. A few plants even got sunstroke and died. We had to dicker with sprinklers and coddle the water hogs.

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This hydrangea looks lovely after buckets of water and 10 inches of rain but it is perhaps the neediest plant in the garden. Maybe I should give it some slack. Greedy dwarf burford holly and Leonard Messel magnolia are neighbors. When it becomes a rag doll in August and I can’t stand the way it looks, I prune it hard, which makes it come back bigger which sets up the watering cycle next year

(Sprinkling is my least favorite garden task, way below weeding briar and thistle, because I have to be alert at all times to avoid getting soaked. At least the birds get to preen and play.)

A lovely Japanese iris, the queen trying to manage her unruly subjects. Usually they stay fairly vertical until July when I cut them back for a second surge of growth but no flowers

After a month or so of these dry sunny days, there was talk of drought.

Drought? Drought? That’s what casual friends in Montana have every summer. They tell about watching the sky and seeing rain evaporate before it hits the ground. And still they try. And still they are optimistic when that mail order stuff doesn’t grow properly, or doesn’t grow at all. I would take up beading.

Trumpet creeper ‘Orange UFO’ (If Beatles can do Yellow Submarine…)Doesn’t need rain, will grow to great heights, birds love to nest in its tangle,  and my, how it spreads through a garden

Note the slits in the blossoms. Hummingbirds love the nectar, which is at the base of the bloom and almost inaccessible. I’ve read that birds tear the slits to find the nectar. Not sure. Stay tuned

Drought is what’s going on out west for years now, isn’t it? Drought caused the Dust Bowl, didn’t it?’ Drought finished off civilizations. So quitchyerbellyachin’  over a month or so without rain, I tell myself as I finesse the aim of a sprinkler one more time and a truant breeze splats the spray in my face.

Stokes aster, a perennial that grows in sun or shade, is a reasonably drought tolerant, native. Here, a Palomedes Swallowtail sips nectar, having grown up on the swamp redbay that grows wild in our garden

It took me a while living in east-coast crop country to understand that drought is relative. When farmers look to the sky, what they want to know is if they will have a crop this year to pay the bills and cover the loans. So drought is measured here in inches below normal, not decades dry as hard tack in a mess kit.

A signpost commemorating Hurricane Isabel. Note the small, opportunistic wisteria growing up the post. Susan and I dug some up from a vacant lot years ago (witnessed by a friend driving by, darn) and it was ten years before it climbed a tree. This year it is surprising us as it hops around the garden. The ground cover is a tame rudbeckia laciniata

Drought is not only relative, it’s spotty here. Last I looked, the climate map said our area was dry. Our garden tells us we are not. Are we under unique and repeating bands of rainstorms?

Tuff Stuff hydrangea, fast grower, hardy hardy hardy, this plant from a cutting two years ago. As of this writing, the blooms have turned a rich purple with rosy, sterile-flower petals

It goes the other way, too. A decade or more ago, the rest of the area was well watered, but we were watching the sky and waiting for rain. The squalls came but they stopped less than a mile from us.

That pattern lasted a couple of years.

Clematis jackmanii, such a reliable old friend, has to compete with aggressive cross vine, sweet autumn clematis and trumpet vine and still she comes through and improves with age

Oh, how the ground cracked and the plants struggled. I couldn’t grow a lenten rose or a decent daylily. Established shrubs held on but they were not full and happy. We had forgotten what rainy days and mud puddles looked like.

Proof positive that we pruned this year, this double reeves spirea was taken down by half. For a spring picture see the full blown white flowers in my spring post .

Same plant a month later with Joe Pye Weed native behind it. If you don’t want a tall Joe Pye, you can cut it back a couple of times for a nicely shaped shrubby plant that will bloom well. To the right,  out of range, is New York ironweed, thrilled to be back in the limelight after being sidelined by the spirea, racing with Joe Pye to see who can hit the sky first

So I am not complaining about that month of dry weather. I know what it is like to watch the sky — and I am not growing food needed for the table or crops to pay the rent.

And I know that next year I may be watching the sky. I wish I could share this year’s gifts, but it doesn’t work that way.

An unknown species of local swamp dogwood, here 20 feet tall and wide, barely three feet in the wild. But it doesn’t berry the way it should.It and the hosta below are saving a sasanqua camellia in a wet bed

Not as flashy as some, but oh such a steady grower, Antioch hosta and the dogwood above are drinking up the puddles in the bed. Without their busy roots the camellia would be swamped

The sun is out but the air is dripping on me. This will be a good time to sneak inside and reread that lovely sixty-year-old book, The Plant Sitter, about a little boy who was babysitting plants that got out of hand. Maybe I will get some plant tips (no pun intended).

The happiest canna. I dug a piece of it a couple of years ago from someone’s pile of garden trash (with permission) and it has taken hold, with no bug bites this year — yet

Another five inches fell last night and this morning is threatening. Can I justify leaving the inmates to their madcap frolics and delay the clipping and staking to bring them to order?

Planted ten years ago, this hydrangea is finally exploding this year

You bet I can!

Old hydrangeas by the edge of the woods. Between compost and mulch which tend to be acid, and our naturally neutral soil, their colors are variable. They change as the season progresses and each year is a surprise

And finally, the lovely crepe-papery pomegranate bloom, from a cutting several years ago  recently planted. The old flowering pomegranate is gone now; I can’t remember why it left us, but I’m glad it gave us heirs. It’s a precarious life in this garden, and I must confess I would miss the merry madcaps of the carousers.

Punicum granatum ‘Plena’ does not fruit

Posted in Garden Humor, garden maintenance, Garden Memories, Hydrangeas, summer bloom, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | 5 Comments

Albemarle Sound: Voyage through the Centuries VII

Posted on June 6, 2021 by aheronsgarden

Antebellum Albemarle

America was riding its destiny. She had defeated the most powerful navy in the world, not once but twice. Cotton crops were thriving. Northern cotton mills were humming. Settlers were going west. Fish hauls came in as fast as you could bring ’em on land. Canals were opening. Ports were bustling and commercial ships crowded the waters.  It was called the Era of Good Feelings.

Independence Day celebration in Boston 1817 depicted in a painting by John Lewis Krimmer is infused with the optimism of the country

In the Albemarle and across the South, gifts from land and water, still largely unspent, were full of promise and ready to be plucked by freemen for profit and slaves for masters.

The Albemarle was still a rural backwater. Travel over land was tricky and lack of a deep-water port prevented large vessels from trading directly. But livin’ was easy, as Ella Fitzgerald sang in Summertime.  Of course, how easy depended on your place in society: planter or merchant; yeoman farmer; slave.

Planters and Merchants

Planters were the elite minority. Many could trace their ancestry to aristocratic families in England. They owned the best land. With connections and credit they had acquired large tracts, anywhere from 500 to 1000 acres with discounts if they brought in indentured servants or slaves. Isolated because of  large holdings, plantations were prosperous and as self-sufficient as small towns.

Scotch Hall Plantation in Bertie County was built in 1838 on 8,000 acres of land, worked by almost 300 slaves with an income of over $100,000. This was the Capehart family home. Much of the land is now a waterfront community on Albemarle Sound. Watercolor by Judson Newbern whose wife is a descendant of the Capeharts.

Plantation life was a clubby, closed-circle capitalistic operation. Rich soil and long summers with mild winters were good for growing cash crops that needed special care, like cotton, rice,  and tobacco. When rice and tobacco languished in the Albemarle, cotton became the cash crop, especially after the invention of the cotton gin (cotton engine) that speeded separation of fibers from seeds. Slaves provided the power and the profits.

Planters became powerful members of state government, as much to maintain order in the state as to feather their own beds. Owning land was a requirement for serving in the legislature; at one point 85 percent of its members were planters, more than any other southern state.

No blossom represents the perceived romance of the south more than the evergreen magnolia (Magnolia grandiflora) that graced fine homes and plantations. Painting Shadow Dancer by Lorraine Ulen

This was a gay time for planters and their families, when even the humdrum took on a luster of romance. A tutor for the Capehart family wrote of afternoon visiting, fine dining, fishing and hunting, fetching mail at the post office, holiday festivities, and summer vacations on the beach in Nags Head.

Merchants were the other powerful class of people, and they usually lived in the finest houses in the community. They ran maritime empires that stretched from New England to the West Indies and across the Atlantic Ocean.

Here’s a small sampling of items offered by mercantile businesses: shoes, coffee, sugar, tobacco, horse powder, calico, jeans, soap, medicine, cheese, candles, salt, molasses, and bags of shot. Other profitable enterprises: credit to locals and shipping for commercial farmers.

If you were wealthy, you and your friends had special privileges. You could become part of the summer social scene in Raleigh to escape disease-carrying mosquitos that swarmed on the coastal plain.

Or you could retreat to the barrier beaches, where fresh sea breezes swept the pests away; where chartered packets brought in fresh produce twice a week; and where you could enjoy swimming, fishing, afternoon naps, and in the evenings, dancing to music at the hotel.

Dancing the night away. This romantic image is available in counted cross stitch and other needlework kits

 

The Working Middle Class

Most people had no connections to aristocracy nor the wherewithal to form shipping empires or take vacations by the sea. Nor did they own the sizeable tracts of land that would allow them to have a voice in state government.

In 1837 The Fayetteville Observer wrote: The great mass of our population is composed of people who cultivate their own soil, owe no debt, and live within their means. 

Yeoman farmers and free blacks lived on small farms, around a hundred acres or so.  They did not grow cash crops. They grew corn and raised livestock  and hunted to feed their families.

Deer were native and wild boar had been introduced in the 1500s  by the English as a reliable source of food. Most livestock roamed freely, fattening on abundant mast from native trees, so little care was needed, except for keeping them away from the cornfield.  Planters and yeomen alike dined on free-range beef and pork.

Early ears of corn were small but American Indians and settlers bred plants to produce larger ears. Pictured here is Flint, or Indian corn, which can be ground to produce a coarse corn meal. Picking corn was labor intensive, as was shucking. WikimediaCommons

In spring families caught enough fish to salt for the winter. They sold excess produce or a bale of cotton, picked up odd jobs to meet the tax bill and purchase necessaries or an occasional luxury. 

Some time during the mid-19th century and into the twentieth century, the mule became a fixture on southern farms and in fisheries. They withstood the heat of summer, their small size fitted nicely into cotton fields, and they ate a lot less than a horse. 

African-American young man riding mule turning cotton press, ca. 1890. General Negative Collection, North Carolina State Archives

An ambitious entrepreneur could add income by specializing in light industry: tanning hides; milling (75 to 80 cents to turn a bushel of corn into meal); fulling (cleaning and shrinking wool fibers); weaving cloth; cutting shingles and staves; and building boats.

Illiteracy remained high, because children were needed on farms. Still, a large majority of voters approved legislation to establish a public school system in 1839. Academies, forerunners of today’s high schools were founded at this time as finishing schools or college prep schools. Between 1789 and 1860 more than 300 were chartered in the state. Quality of instruction varied by instructor.

It was a peaceable life, called dull and even monotonous by one writer, punctuated by parties during the Christmas season, weddings, and eagerly awaited travelling circuses or musical revues brought by steamboats. Sale of liquor was overseen by the state, but merchants wholesaled it anyway and yeomen farmers produced liberal quantities in their private stills.

Christmas was a festive time on plantations and in farmers’ homes, and for slaves, too. Artist’s interpretation of a southern Christmas

Still, people who lived on the edge and depended on gifts from land and sea could come into tough times if the environment dealt a bad hand. This was the case in 1828 after Currituck Inlet, the last of several inlets along the northerly barrier beaches, shoaled in.

Without regular exchange of ocean and sound waters, salinity decreased. Oysters and other shellfish that families depended on for food could not adapt to the change and disappeared. Mosquitos multiplied, and Malarial diseases. . . were much more general and more malignant.

The importance of oysters to early diets  cannot be over-emphasized. By filtering water as they feed, like clams, oysters are valuable for keeping water clean.  pewtrusts.org

Petitions to the federal government for relief from shellfish losses and disease made no headway. Dredging to reopen the inlet would have been futile in restless waters. The story of how survivors coped is not recorded.

Yellow fever and malaria were still common in coastal areas. Those who fell ill were treated in their own home by someone they knew, a family member or a neighbor, rarely a doctor. Sometimes patent medicines would be purchased from a storekeeper. Many housewives kept recipe books that included everything from baking an apple pie to making soap to remedies for croup.

The sick child, oil painting ca, 1850 by Johann Georg Meyer von Bremen

 

Slaves: Power Without Destiny

Few people who saw Gone with the Wind ever thought much about how a plantation functioned. The grand entrance and broad staircase, the canopied bed and velvet curtains, the crested silver and globe chandeliers were delicious distractions.

Behind the elegance and the romance  of a plantation were hundreds of slaves, invisible.

Planting and harvesting crops; or clearing land; or digging ditches that drained the land; or digging canals that enabled shipment of produce to market; or preparing naval stores for export — these backbreaking tasks brought in the cash that made the romance possible.

Picking cotton, photo after the Civil War. NC State Archives

But there were also carpenters, blacksmiths, wheelwrights, coopers, cobblers,  plasterers, harness makers, brick masons, butchers, tanners, teamsters, couriers, bodyguards, nurses (midwives, too), seamstresses, cooks, laundresses, cleaners, hunters, fishermen, trail guides, boatmen, river pilots, lockmasters (for canals on rice plantations).

And The Nanny who was the comfortable face of slavery to the world.

Collectively, slaves powered life on the plantation. But they owned none of it.

They were valuable commodities to the planter, each with a price on his or her head, each a number on the planter’s balance sheet when the time came to figure assets and taxes. Yes, each slave had a tax value, and the balance sheet determined whether the planter retained or sold a slave.

Slaves Waiting for Sale, dressed up for buyers who would dicker for them. Oil painting by Eyre Crowe, 1861, from a scene in 1851 witnessed by the artist

Slave women were valued for their ability to beget new slaves. (The Marquis de Lafayette, respected military leader in both French and American Revolutions, on a cross-country tour in 1824 at President Monroe’s invitation, remarked casually on the change in the complexion of slaves from fifty years prior.)

A later painting by Eyre Crowe depicts the transport of slaves from Richmond to Ridgeway, North Carolina and points south. While, geographically, this is not directly related to the Albemarle, we include it because these two paintings strongly influenced anti-slavery attitudes in England and America.

After the Sale, Slaves Going South from Richmond to destinations in the Upper and Lower South. Here they are being loaded onto railroad cars. Oil painting by Eyre Crowe 1854

How was humanity stolen from slaves?

In the early 1700s, the Albemarle was  a patchwork of wilderness settlements. Slaves in the North Carolina colony, still limited to the coastal plain and rolling Piedmont, numbered about 800. It was not unusual for a settler to own one or two slaves for domestic or field work.

A modern photo of the Great Dismal Swamp by Andrew Woods mirrors the thick growth of woods and swamps in the 1700,s, only the trees were larger. wilderness.org

The owner-slave divide may have been firmly etched, but it was focused more on grubbing existence from a strange land than on amassing profits. Often bondsmen (euphemism for slaves) lived in the household, sharing their culture with the family and interweaving lifestyles in a cooperative venture for survival.

For example, it is possible that eastern Carolina’s vinegar-and-pepper barbecue grew out of culinary customs in the West Indies and Africa, where  cooks used lime juice and hot peppers to season meat. It’s a short step to experimenting with vinegar, more readily available than limes, for a new twist that’s become a staple today on the coastal plain of the Carolinas.

Within several decades, the owner-slave divide had deepened: the Revolutionary era became a watershed for slavery in the Albemarle. Lack of a port city precluded slave trade here, except among private individuals, so slave owners purchased slaves in Virginia and transported them to North Carolina.

Examples of newspaper ads in Virginia. EncyclopediaofVirinia.org

This inconvenience did not slow the vast increase in slave numbers in less than a century. Slave population at the time of the Revolution:  100,000. Plantations were rising and fortunes were growing. Owning slaves became a path to wealth and would remain so until the Civil War. The relationship between master and slave was now and would continue to be based on exploitation. All men are created equal did not apply.

A moving but romantic impression of The Cotton Pickers by Winslow Homer. In the absence of clear-eyed photography, artists can dim reality

From a slave’s perspective, this oratory about freedom and the rights of man was simply hollow chatter, though many participated in the war, on either side, hoping for freedom from bondage somehow.

But talk of liberty stirred souls and a restlessness grew among many who were in bondage, stirrings that would lead to constant turmoil during this Era of Good Feelings and beyond.

Most slaves lived on plantations (though Albemarle plantations never reached the size of the vast plantations of the Deep South). But they also worked as domestic servants, skilled artisans, and field laborers on small farms and in towns and cities.

Treatment  of slaves depended on the owner. As one traveler observed, The keep of a negro…does not come to a great figure, since the daily ration is but a quart of maize and rarely a little meat or salted fish.

Most owners realized that the value of their property could not be maintained on a poor diet, and there was always the whip to spur action. Daily allotments were supplemented with produce from slave gardens, which in turn saved money for the planter.

There was once an oft-repeated myth of the happy slave. Records of laziness, theft, arson, desertion, and murder bury that myth along with layers of passive aggression and outright anger. Newspapers frequently ran ads with descriptions of runaways.

 

Slave Hunt in the Dismal Swamp Canal, by Thomas Moran 1862, accurately depicts the jungly growth in this area of Virginia and northeast North Carolina

Some sardonic observers commented that malingering slaves were only mimicking the behavior of their owners.

Planters disciplined minor transgressions; the courts meted out punishment for more severe crimes that might result in the loss of the right ear and fifty lashes. Troublesome slaves were conspicuously branded. Jittery communities felt they could keep slave society under control, but they were ignoring a deeper reality.

Religious fervor would unexpectedly become part of the stirrings. Around the turn of the century, religious revival meetings swept through the country. The movement came to be known as the Second Great Awakening, one of four great awakenings that would boost Protestantism and religious fervor over the course of three centuries.

 

Methodist Camp Meeting, 1819 hand colored engraving

…There had never been anything like it. Here’s a meeting of 3,000 people out in a field, blacks and whites together, listening to a preacher who says, “Here in my message is a new life for you, here’s a new chance for you. Here’s a God who had your interest at heart. Here’s a God who may deliver you.” – David Blight, historian.

Many slaves who had clung to former religions were moved to abandon them and gladly accepted these new messages of spiritual equality before God. Methodists and Baptists especially welcomed converts from the black and white working population.

The Lord is my Shepherd by Eastman Johnson illustrates the deep belief of many slaves in a kinder, gentler God

But numbers of slaves tripled from 1800 to 1860 and embracing a kinder religion would not contain discontent. Slave populations in Albemarle counties were about 35 to 45 percent of total population. Further west, in some counties along the Roanoke River, numbers rose to 60 per cent.

Although North Carolina never experienced a major rebellion, revolts were happening in other states. Wave after wave of reports  and rumors led citizens to increase control over slaves. In 1775, for instance, whites in Wilmington disarmed all blacks, imposed a curfew, and mandated an oath of allegiance.

(Author’s Note: If you recall from my piece on the Revolution, the last British governor of North Carolina, the amiable Josiah Martin, was discovered in a plot to arm slaves against the colonists. There are no records of how many slaves paid a price for his failed coup.)

Panic based on suspicion of slave conspiracies arose in several Albemarle counties around the turn of the century. Nineteen slaves were executed, not counting those killed by militia and vigilantes. Many more were severely punished for alleged plots. Later investigations showed little or no evidence to support accusations. Much testimony had been extracted by torture.

Planters were reimbursed by the county for the loss of a slave by execution. Conversely, if unclaimed runaway slaves came into the hands of a county, proceeds from sales would revert to the county.

The state of North Carolina passed several laws to protect the rights of slave owners and restrict the rights of slaves. Slave patrols were initiated, though it was difficult to round up willing participants. They were, after all, securing planters’ property, not necessarily their own.

A Visit from the Old Mistress by Winslow Homer. Was she counting numbers? trying to catch a thief? or . . .?

The restrictions on slaves spilled over to freed blacks. They lost their right to vote, along with other personal freedoms. However skilled as artisans, they were considered inferior to white craftsmen and were paid and treated accordingly. General harassment and loss of dignity caused many to migrate north or west or sail for Africa and a new life.

From the time of the American Revolution to the beginning of the Civil War white fear of losing domination over slaves invaded thinking and actions at all junctures in society.

Scene on a southern plantation, from an 1862 print

Historians calculate that by 1860, four million slaves in the country were its greatest single economic asset, more valuable than land, railroads or manufacturing, worth more than $1 billion (almost $26 billion in today’s currency).

The Panic of 1819

As euphoria faded, unrest exploded in 1819.  Factories closed.  Unemployment rose. Banks failed. Mortgages foreclosed. Cotton prices plummeted. Investment in land collapsed. Deflation followed soaring inflation. Debt hung over the country from the Louisiana Purchase and the War of 1812.

Some historians  call it the first Great Depression. Like a whirlwind, it seemed to have spun itself out by 1823, but damages to the fabric of society had yet to be repaired. Low crop prices and depressed land values hit eastern North Carolina hard, and many slave owners sold their slaves and farmers abandoned their land and headed west for virgin land and a new start.

Detail from an 1819 painting by John Lewis Krimmer, Village Politics. Some Albemarle residents stood to lose because of plummeting cotton prices

Resentment was building in the middle class against banks and corporations. They saw these institutions as privileged monopolies, and conflict between creditor and debtor was splintering the economy.

The Era of Good Feelings would never return, but there were still profits to be made from the land.

Cashing in on Natural Resources

Gifts from land and water were still largely unspent before the Revolution. The environment was full of promise and ready to be plucked by capitalists for profit and slaves for masters.

Colonial settlers had used natural resources sustainably. This was not by philosophical inclination. Even the wealthy did not yet have the manpower nor the tools to make large-scale inroads on the environment.

A 2600-year-old cypress still standing in a North Carolina swamp gives some idea of the magnitude of  natural resources of the area

Remember the motto of the Lords Proprietors, the first governors of the colony back in the 1660s: The Taming Makes the Land. That idea was ingrained. After the Revolution the southeast would became the purveyor of natural resources to the world for the next two centuries.

Not until an army of slave power came on, could the land be tamed.

Fortunately, technology was not yet so efficient that wholesale destruction of resources took place during the nineteenth century. That would happen in the next century.

Logging the Forests

Shipyards from New England to Philadelphia and across the Atlantic were eager to expand their fleets. Virgin stands of North Carolina cedar, cypress, oak and pine were fed, board by board, into their ships.

Tar, pitch, and turpentine (naval stores) along with masts, staves and shingles: eastern North Carolina led the world in producing and exporting these for over a hundred years, until the great forests gave out and second-growth saplings took their place.

Counties on the south side of Albemarle Sound, where pine trees were thick, produced enormous quantities of naval stores

Pine trees were tapped for oleoresin that exuded from multiple cuts and was processed into turpentine. By 1840 eastern North Carolina produced almost all naval stores used in the United States. By 1861, 4,000,000 barrels of turpentine, worth $40,000,000 when distilled, were being processed annually by almost 5,000 laborers and 150 stills.

Barrels of pine resin being loaded on a German ship at the port of Wilmington in the early 1870s. North Carolina Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Library.

Slave labor was crucial to profits. Collecting and distilling the resin was long and arduous. It was solitary work done in winter. Conditions were particularly harsh and workers would run away or set fire to the forest to avoid the punishing drudgery

(Of interest: Tarheel is a moniker from this period that has stuck to the North Carolina mariner. It may have originated from workers in tar yards who often got tar on the soles of shoes.)

North Carolina turpentine distillery, 1884. North Carolina Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Library

Farming On Grand Scale

Once cleared and drained, this was good land, wrote a colonist in 1654, with a most fertile, gallant rich soil, flourishing in all the abundance of nature…

This land would become the bedrock of fine plantations, but there were limitations to what the soils could give.

Cotton workers on the Avoca Plantation (pictured below), one of the largest in
Bertie County. NC Archives

Cotton was a small-time crop until 1793. It would take one farm hand 100 days to separate seed from crop in a single cotton bale. Said Moses Brown, owner of the first powered spinning mill in Rhode Island, The unripe, short, and dusty part. . . so spoils the whole as to discourage the use of southern cotton in the machines.”

Small jenny mills run by hand, mules or oxen produced crude yarn for homespun cloth, no match for the fine cotton imported from the West Indies.  (Pre-revolutionary colonists wove and wore this rough cloth as a symbol of their patriotism, sacrificing the comfort and looks of the good stuff to avoid paying unfair taxes to England.)

Eli Whitney’s cotton gin (cotton engine) changed the game. It did the work of ten men and it removed the dust that clogged milling machines. By 1840 cotton was a leading cash crop for North Carolina farmers.

A simple but clever machine operated by two men that did the work of ten

Cotton grown in the Albemarle  was hauled overland and on river boats to Columbia on the Sound’s south shore or to Elizabeth City on the Pasquotank River. From there it was shipped north to New England textile mills.

Bales of cotton prpcessed and waiting to be shipped north. SourceofWealth

Steamer Shiloh laden with cotton. NC archives

Eventually, to keep profits on home turf, cotton mills  would open in  the South. Edenton and Elizabeth City operated cotton mills in the Albemarle.

Edenton cotton mill in 1910

Cotton was saving the South. The world couldn’t get enough of it.

But cotton is a heavy feeder. Soil here is rich when first lumbered and replenished by regular flooding of rivers. But the environment was being altered by logging and ditching.

Let’s look beyond the grand entrance to the plantation house and focus on the fields. At any one time, only about a third of a plantation was planted in cotton. The rest was a mosaic of woodlands and disturbed patches, recently cut over, vegetable gardens and facilities for repairing harnesses or building carts or plows.

To a northern farmer who was used to tidy rows, southern farms seemed helter-skelter. This mosaic was a primitive form of crop rotation. Untidy cut-over fields would eventually be cleared for planting cotton, and the spent field would lie fallow, possibly planted with wheat or cover crop.

While the Albemarle held its own, the growth of King Cotton throughout the South came from continually opening new land to cultivation.

Cotton production increased steadily until well into the twentieth century, though the boll weevil took a toll. By then, chemical fertilizers and pesticides were on their way. By 1925, North Carolina was producing 1,102,000 bales of cotton, including farms on the coastal plain and the rolling hills of the Piedmont to the west.

Modern mechanical cotton harvester in the 21st century

Returning to Antebellum decades, records show that in 1850 Avoca Plantation, situated on a peninsula flanked by the Chowan River and Salmon Creek in western Albemarle Sound, owned about 5,000 acres valued at $49,000, and 203 slaves. The farm produced 8,500 bushels of corn and 200 bales of ginned cotton that year, with livestock worth $4,000 and profitable fisheries off Bachelor’s Bay in Albemarle Sound.

East side of the Capehart family’s Avoca plantation house in Bertie County, circa 1877-1881. Courtesy, Smithsonian Institution Archives

Avoca Farms today is a multi-million-dollar company specializing in botanical and medicinal products.

Fields of clary sage used in botanicals, brighten roadsides in Bertie County with their rosy blooms.

*******************************

The Era of Good Feelings ended ominously. As class conflict sharpened, a crisis over slavery erupted like a firebell in the night, wrote Thomas Jefferson. He was referring to Missouri’s application for statehood and its implications for slavery in western territories.

Though the Missouri Compromise dampened angry spirits for the moment, John Quincy Adams predicted that it was only the title page to a great tragic volume.

Next: A War that Wasn’t Wanted and the Expedition Hurricane

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Albemarle Sound: Voyage through the Centuries: Part VI

Posted on May 19, 2021 by aheronsgarden

Navigating the Sound

It was the greatest real estate hoax in history. Come to the New World and you will find a better life, glowing reports implied. If you took the bait, you spent months  on a ship, in a wagon or a cart or on foot, only to land in uncompromising wilderness. And then you discovered you had to build a boat to survive. The Albemarle was not horse-and-buggy country.

Albemarle settlers were isolated by swamps, streams and muck. Overland travel was treacherous. Rivers and creeks became roads, and boats became trucks. Boats carried buckets of fish or oysters for the family dinner, or they took families to church, or they were poled to trade farm produce. If you needed a doctor, he came by boat.

Algonquian tribes were the first sailors of the Sound, skimming its unpredictable waters in sturdy canoes hollowed out from regal old-growth white cedar boles that towered in forests. 

“The manner of making their boates” by Theodor de Bry after a John White watercolor. 1590. John Carter Brown Library at Brown University

Historians tell us these boats were crude, but creating a seaworthy hollowed-out canoe from a tree was a marvel of patient engineering that few of us could figure out today. Fire and scraping with oyster shell brought down a tall, straight hardwood tree weighing several tons. Fire  and scraping with oyster shell sized and shaped the craft so it handled properly in the water. Animal grease waterproofed it.

Colonists learned quickly. They borrowed techniques from Algonquians and from French Huguenot immigrants who constructed split log canoes.

Everybody became a builder of boats, adding flourishes to improve function and handling. No two boats were built alike, and the art of boat-building became part of life in the Albemarle, skills passed down from father to son. Today, the Carolina boat, product of generations of skilled boatbuilders is considered one of the finest for charter fishing and pleasure boating.

Modern Carolina Classic boat, noted for its ability to run in heavy seas and its sharp, deep V-hull at the bow of the boat that transitions to shallower hull aft.

We are jumping ahead. One of the earliest boats on the Sound was the kunner (colloquial for canoe). It was the colonial workboat from the 1600s to the Civil War. Sturdy, small, about 15 feet long,  simple to build with hand tools and patience, the kunner could be poled or paddled or rigged with a sail.

Reproduction of a dugout or kunner used by English explorers on Albemarle Sound before colonization. ncmaritime history.org

The kunner was a split-log canoe hollowed out of white cedar, a wood that is prized for its light weight and ability to resist rot. After the log was shaped, it was split down the length, and a separate wooden keel was inserted between the two shells, binding them together.

Model of a kunner by Mike Alford showing two halves joined by a keel. From David Cecelski’s blog

Of all the tools used in building a boat — the axe, the saw and the adze, the adze was the go-to tool for smoothing or carving rough-cut wood. It was also used for squaring up
logs or hollowing out timber.

An example of a modern adze. Heads of  ancient adzes were bound to hafts by sinew

Some craftsmen could make that adze sing until wood was trim and smooth and right pretty. From the 18th century on, skilled workmen, and their heirs, would become specialists in boat building, as the economy moved from subsistence to specialization based on marketable skills.

Shallow-draft vessels like kunners and skiffs ( small, V-bottomed boats), and flatboats could push far up rivers. Farmers and planters could ship directly from private docks. Wide rivers and bays provided good landings for larger ships, and towns would grow up around them.

Shallow-draft schooners such as this pictured here plied the Sound along with steamboats and small craft

Creating Roads

Trails used by Native Americans became paths for colonists. But even after almost a century of settlement there were few decent roads and no bridges.

Tricky business, this making roads through swamps. The lay of swampy land, the willingness of an owner to give up land, and the needs of the community all figured in. How much cropland would a farmer be willing to lose so his neighbors could travel more conveniently? And how much should he be re-imbursed?

Colonial justices approved or rejected requests for new roads but a jury of citizens would determine routes. In retrospect, this sounds like pretty democratic county planning.

Building and maintaining roads wasn’t easy. Road companies did the best they could, but swampy terrain, and negligent overseers and unhappy property owners could slow progress. It could take a year to lay a road. Still, by the decade of the Revolution rudimentary highways and bridal paths eased travel.

Most people rode horses, though poor people walked. Simple horse carts or ox carts were transportation for most. By the end of the century, specially made pleasure carriages were a badge of social distinction for the gentry.

Ferries and the Railroad

Ferries became links to settlements. In fact free ferries were established in some counties. They were simple flat boats that were poled across waterways, or, less commonly,  pulled by ropes or cables that were faster and more efficient.

Hannah’s Ferry on the Yadkin River in western North Carolina is an example of a cable ferry ca. 1900. North Carolina Office of Archives and History

Ferries were normally large enough to hold a team of horses and a carriage or a wagon. Two cable ferries are still operating in the Albemarle area: Parker’s Ferry across the Meherrin River and Sans Souci Ferry across the Cashie River. Typically, these ferries carry two cars. To summon the ferry from the other side of the river you blow your horn. The shore-to-shore ride takes only a few minutes.

Parker’s ferry in more modern times. Murfreesboro Historical Association

By 1730 ferry service linked the north and south shores of the Sound,  a run of about five miles that must have seemed like a carnival ride on windy days. A passenger paid 15 shillings for a one-way ride; if he had a horse, he paid 30 shillings.

Colonial justices set regulations for ferries, as they did for roads. They dealt with petitions from ferrymen and complaints from passengers. Ferrymen wanted to increase fees. Passengers wanted better service.   In 1758  magistrates ordered ferrymen to keep more boats to give better attendance for carrying over passengers.

Sail, steam, and finally diesel vessels that could haul mighty railroad cars gradually replaced the original flatboat ferries. A sign along NC 32 at NC 308 north of Roper commemorates this piece of history.

Historic marker on the south side of the Sound, one of several in the area commemorating historical events

By 1883 the Norfolk Southern Railroad linked Norfolk, Virginia with towns in North Carolina, through Elizabeth City to Edenton.  In 1910 the Railroad built a wooden trestle across the Sound bridging the five miles south from Edenton to Mackeys Ferry and Plymouth. It operated through the middle of the century.

Norfolk Southern Railroad train crosses Albemarle Sound in 1918. Wikipedia

The trestle was eventually demolished in favor of a bridge across the Sound.

An aerial view of the bridge across Albemarle Sound, one of the prettiest five-mile rides over water. Photo by Frogs View

 

Steamboats and Showboat

Ferries were not the only vessels on the water. During the 1800s the Sound was a busy thoroughfare. Coasters (small sailing vessels) carried cargo up and down rivers and between colonies. Larger craft bound for the West Indies loaded salt herring, lumber, tobacco, and corn in exchange for rum, spices, silk, and sugar on the return trip.

The harbor at Beaufort, in southeastern North Carolina, is an example of what Albemarle waters could have looked like in the sailing days of 1890. Note varieties of sailing ships, drying racks for nets, net storage house to the left, and shad boat in foreground. State Archives of North Carolina from David Cecelski’s blog

For almost a century, from the 1830s on, steamboats linked small towns to the world beyond. Bi-weekly trips from Norfolk to Albemarle towns dispatched mail, passengers, produce and circuses.

With shallow draft, as little as 15 inches, and a 5 mph speed they were a grand replacement for flatboats that were poled — laboriously — far up river where masted ships with deeper draft would founder. Plantations had their own landings, where steamers were flagged from the shore by day with white handkerchiefs and by night with torches, lanterns, or fires on the bank.

This drawing of a steamboat along the Cape Fear River gives a general idea of steamboating in Albemarle waters. North Carolina State Archives

Even so, navigating rivers that wound through swamps could be tricky, and at times the cumbersome vessels had to be poled to avoid foundering. To assure unrestricted passage, state law prohibited felling trees into rivers.

Steamers regularly brought circuses and side shows to small towns for almost a hundred years beginning in the 1830’s. Big-time entertainment came to eastern Carolina and the Chesapeake in 1913 with the arrival of the massive, 128-foot-long, two-story, shallow-draft James Adams Show Boat.

The James Adams Show Boat. NC Historical Site

Residents would eagerly line the docks to watch the floating theater secure its moorings, then race on board to offer help in exchange for tickets to shows. Otherwise, they would pay ten cents to enjoy melodramas, singing, dancing, juggling and vaudeville routines in an elegantly appointed gold and blue 500-seat theatre.

Scene from a melodrama played by a husband wife team, hero and heroine, who also played villains

Showboat entertainment delighted audiences for more than twenty years until attendance began to fall off. Movies, then in their infancy, enthralled patrons and became a regular substitute for the occasional showboat visit. Upkeep and repairs on the floating theater were constant. And the depression squeezed pennies.

The life and times of the floating theater was immortalized in Edna Ferber’s novel, Showboat,  which was made into a Broadway musical and two movies.

Although the novel takes place on the Mississippi River,  her intimate knowledge of showboat life came from living on the James Adams Show Boat and joining its crew for four days in 1925, until it docked in Elizabeth City, on the Pasquotank River in the Albemarle area.

It was, she wrote, the most leisurely and dreamlike of journeys.

The Beloved Shad Boat

And then the shad boat sailed in like cavalry to rescue an economy shattered by the Civil War.

Shad boats were built only for fifty years, from 1880 to 1930. They operated only in eastern North Carolina. Yet no sailing craft speaks of eastern North Carolina more eloquently than the shad boat. In 1987  the shad boat was designated the official state historical boat of North Carolina.

Out for a spin on a Sunday afternoon? ca 1900. Courtesy Earl Willis Jr

Watermen called the shad boat “smart”. It was fast and  easy to handle, a thing of grace  and beauty, with sleek curves and a shallow draft. It could maneuver treacherous shoals with confidence. It was powered by three sails–a main sail, a jib and a topsail.

Shad boats quickly became the choice for fishing and ferrying, and progging, vernacular for doing anything from loafing on the water to hauling fish and fowl and farm produce.

It happened that the shad boat made its debut when fishing was becoming more efficient. Mighty seine nets, pound nets, gill nets were laid down to round up herring and shad that swam into the Sound and up rivers by the millions to spawn each spring.

An example of a gill net that could stretch across a creek and trap large catches

It was a time of the great Albemarle fisheries, when fishermen worked day and night to land catches that would be exported to a nation clamoring for more and more fish, and still there would be plenty left to process for keeping people fed throughout the rest of the year.

And so the shad boat,  sturdy and durable, was named for the fish it hauled. An 8-foot beam gave it stability, especially when handling heavy pound nets. The round bottom and the deep V-shaped bow could take on steep, choppy waves even when heavily loaded.

Smaller boats, like kunners and skiffs could not have handled enough volume to make the fisheries profitable.

Shad boat and crew after a catch 1900. Note the low line of the rear of the boat to ease handling of nets. NC State Archives

Typically, a two-man crew, the captain who steered and manned the sails and his mate who bailed or adjusted ballast, kept the boat square in the water. Ballast consisted of dozens of fifty-pound sandbags stitched by women back home.

As the hold was piled with the day’s catch and sand bags (wet and heavy now) were no longer needed, they would be stacked on narrow side decks. (This was cardio in the days before gyms.)

Now we shall meet the original creator of the shad boat, George Washington Creef, or Uncle Wash, as he was affectionately called, gentle and sociable, tall, with large, graceful hands and a flowing gray beard.

Photo of George Washington Creef Sr, early 1900s. NC Maritime Museum

He was a fisherman and a boat builder, and he was loyal to the Union during the Civil War. In his words, I was employed by the U.S. Navy freighting coal in my own vessel. 

After the Civil War, Creef had an idea for creating a stronger, larger boat, 24 feet long, that could haul large catches and handle well in unpredictable Sound waters.

George Washington Creef and his shad boats, which he usually built in pairs, ca 1900. NC Dept. of Natural and Cultural Resources

His plan was to overlay the split-log construction of the kunner with planking and add interior struts for strength.

Extensive restoration of a 1904 shad boat built by Alvirah Wright, a logger, decoy maker and boat builder. The restoration showing interior struts is now complete and on display at the Museum of the Albemarle. Photo by Michael Halminski from his blog

Monumental effort went into building those first shad boats. And imagination, too, rooted in a deep knowledge of local waters. Creef and crew used basic hand tools, a hand saw, an axe, and an adze, to fell and prepare the cedar and cut and plane the planking, all held together with copper nails.

Then the hunt would begin for just the right cypress knees that would become curved ribs, or braces, for the interior of the boat.  It could take days trekking through swamps to find a cypress stump that would yield a proper curved rib, or maybe two.

The search for cypress knees to determine which ones could be used, would be followed by digging and cutting from stumps.

This diagram gives some idea of how cypress knee (C), along with root (B) and stump (D), cut away from the tree in one piece, could be used as a strut. Treasurecoastnatives

The hunt for cypress knees could mean working knee-deep in water in early spring to beat bugs and snakes, hoping that one tool or another — a six-foot crosscut saw, an axe, an adze, wedges and a maul  — doesn’t fall into the swamp during use. Once extracted, the spurs were taken to a sawmill for finishing.

Bow view of the shad boat Ella View, built by George Washington Creef in 1883, in for maintenance, usually housed at the Roanoke Island Maritime Museum in Manteo. Photo by Tom  Earnhardt

Local builders began to replicate the original shad boat in great numbers, though after the cedar forests were cut down, construction was modified to plank on frame.

Shad boats became an extension of a waterman’s life well into the 1930s and beyond. When engines replaced sails, around 1910, they became even more versatile in shallow waters.

The shad boat was the pick-up truck of its day, but its design elements live on in modern pleasure craft that enjoy smooth and seaworthy travel in Albemarle waters and beyond.

You can find original shad boats on display at the George Washington Creef Boathouse in Manteo and the Roanoke River Maritime Museum in the town of Plymouth.

Shad boat flying its goose wing on Albemarle Sound around 1900.  State Archives of North Carolina. Photo by Ralph Munroe,

 

(Next: Antebellum Albemarle)

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The April that Dripped Blossoms

Posted on May 9, 2021 by aheronsgarden

Big and bold, bawdy and brash, positively bodacious. . .

. . .they lured me in.

I will never complain about a rainy winter again.

How rainy was it? you ask.

I will tell you how rainy it was. One day in January I was racing the sun to plant some shrubs in a front bed. I had dug starter holes to mark locations.

(Who am I kidding? Starter holes! Fancy talk for refusing to admit I couldn’t dig more than a few inches down before I hit clay dumped from road construction, then rain-slicked into a pancake before it dried to faux concrete.)

So there I was, fighting gray clay, when the evening turned gray and my spirit turned even grayer. Enough, I said. I walked off the job, leaving pails of sand and compost (feeble bribes for asking plants to grow in clay prisons) tossed pots, tools (well, just a couple of shovels; I hadn’t gotten to the pickaxe stage), with tottery plants balanced in starter holes.

I’ll be back tomorrow, I said. Tomorrow rained, as did tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, cold, dreary rains. Water inched up the rain guage. I plumb forgot the tipsy plants. I plumb forgot the entire garden. A few weeks later I finally ventured out, expecting an unhappy quagmire.

Not so. (Though I wondered what was with those tipsy plants and empty pots.) Then I remembered. Oh. Yes. . .all that rain. . .and another unfinished project.

By now, mid-April, I have straightened the wobbly plants and the daffodils that hide the unwanteds have already bloomed and the ditch is dry-ish!

To have a lovely spring garden, we are told to water in the fall. Fat chance of that. My watering can is limited strictly to reviving already flattened plants in summer. Never mind dragging a leaky hose around to plants that are finally looking perky on the chance they’ll shine next spring.

Hmmm. I looked around. Maybe, just maybe, those plant gurus are on to something. The garden was so rich with blossoms that fragrances suspended on light breezes were sweeping along paths and around corners to tease me.  So I followed them. . .

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Some plants surprised me with their exuberance this year. Some had moped for years, others had teased me with on-again off-again blooms, still others rebelled in gray clay under loblolly pines that always seemed to be raining needles.

Spirea ‘Mt Fuji’ was one of these, quite the show on a gray day in early spring. Its leaves streaked with white, a crowning feature, are less fascinating to me today than when I first spied them in a nursery. In fact, its sister, spirea ‘ogon’ is much flashier, with bright yellow leaves. But this year, those tiny five-petaled flowers brought sunshine into the garden.

Spirea thunbergii ‘Mt Fuji’

Leonard Messel Magnolia, developed from a chance seedling found in a garden in England, was about two feet high when it came to us  in a quart pot many years ago. Here it spreads its branches wide to the sky, sweet, pink, strappy blooms with muted fragrance, that too soon blow off with the wind.

So dependable, but so early they surprise me each spring when they explode. Like all magnolias here, once established, they dominate the canopy with heavy growth that limits plantings to shade lovers.

Magnolia x loebneri ‘Leonard Messel’

Armand Clematis is the earliest-blooming clematis in my garden, a parade of stars romping along the fence where we keep our potted cuttings. Once I gave it a place of honor near a special tree. Then I realized it was upstaging the special tree. So I moved it to the backyard and the special tree died.

Clematis’armandii

Lenten rose, Hellebore orientalis sparkled as it has never sparkled before, though I must confess to sprinkling some fertilizer on the plants at one time or another. It’s been a long time since I planted the original pioneers, and, sadly, they went into hiding after Hurricane Isabel in 2003. These are seedlings that the original plants bequeathed to the garden.

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Loropetalum bloomed the entire month of April, the blossoms eclipsing its deep purple leaves. Thirty years ago, it was only questionably hardy here. Since then it has settled in nicely.

It’s planted too close to the driveway (Who thought it would get so bushy it would cramp the car?), so it got regular haircuts that removed most blooms. Finally, we limbed it up to a small tree just out of reach of our pruners. It laughed at us and reached for the sun and gave us a lovely surprise bouquet.

Loropetalum chinense’var. rubrum ‘Ruby’

Double Reeves Spirea, this one with classy pedigree, grown from a pinch-off in a University of Virginia garden, smuggled out in my sister’s capacious purse. A fantastic bloomer in sun, later than airy Bridal Wreath spirea, with a take-no-prisoners approach to blooming. Do you think this ten-year-old cutting, a descendant of the original cutting needs a haircut?

Spiraea cantoniensis ‘Lanceolata’

Close-up of the Double Reeves spirea remind me of snow balls tumbling from the sky.

Double Reeves Spirea, a closer look

Japanese snowball bush, a grand fountain of flowers in a friend’s garden, shrank to almost nothing in our garden. The deer helped with the shrinkage. It’s been rescued, repotted, rescussitated, replanted twice in fifteen years and I’d just about given up. This year the gawky, top heavy shrub bloomed like a champion for almost a month, and now it is big enough to prune to shape.

Viburnum plicatum

Here’s an earlier view of blooms still greenish but just as pretty. The white “snow cones” behind them is another Double Reeves spirea, and behind that is a loropetalum kept trimmed.

Viburnum plicatum

Azaleas, even those in full shade, outdid themselves this year with profuse and large blooms in a joyous spectacle across the garden.

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Demure deutzia nikko – I’ve given this plant to just about everyone I know. Here, in very little sun, its blooms are scattered, so are not as spectacular as sun-grown plants. Still, I must include it, as I love its airy blooms, and it is a sturdy edger that travels in a polite way.

Deutzia gracilis ‘Nikko’

Columbines, at last they have come back to my garden. This from a chance seedling, but the delicate red and yellow blooms of the native are scattered about, too. I hope they stay.

Aquilegia sps.

Deutzia ‘Chardonnay Pearls,’ a froth of white billowing over chartreuse leaves, was a charmer many years ago when it came on the market. It’s still a charmer for me, but I don’t notice it in much in nurseries any more. It brightens a semi-shady spot in our garden and never seems to complain.

Deutzia gracilis ‘Chardonnay Pearls’

Lady Banks rose – Many years ago I saw one draped over a fence along a country road. I had to have it. It’s a fixture in southern gardens, and in those days you could find shrubs for a few pence in family nurseries whose owners grew plants because they loved gardening and loved propagating. It’s always been a carefree standout, but this year the blooms crowd the branches with color.

Rosa banksia

Close-up of Lady Banks Rose

Pfizer viburnum we call this shrub, as does everyone else who has it from us (though it’s probably either European or American Cranberry Bush), since it came from Pfizer Pharmaceuticals parking lot in New England.

Months after we took cuttings from the plants, we learned that the fence they were fronting was part of video security triggered by movement. Oh well, five minutes of notoriety for a couple of skulking senior citizens. Despite our heat zone and shade from pine trees and ubiquitous clay soil, it puts on a respectable show, especially lovely this year.

Viburnum opulis or trilobum

Native honeysuckle is winding through unruly but quintessentially lovely quince ‘Jet Trail’, preferring the shrub to the arbor we so kindly provided.  I think the two are partners, each thriving on the other, but oh my, the housekeeping is most untidy. Both are old plants now, the honeysuckle has a thick trunk, and the hummingbird often drops by for an evening sip from a ripe blossom.

Lonicera sempervirens ‘Major Wheeler’

Fothergilla is the prettiest bottle brush I have ever met. It’s a native that has struggled pretty much everywhere I have tried it, even with generous bribes of compost. This particular planting has additions of sand, compost and wood shavings/sawdust.

Fothergilla gardenii ‘Blue Mist’ and Formosa azalea

Sometimes a combination of plants blows you over. These two, Viburnum rufidulum, or Rusty Blackhaw, and azalea ‘Pink Ruffles’, a Rutherford hybrid, were not intended to be companions. The viburnum was planted to hide the telephone pole, which it does not because its growth is so open, and the azaleas were planted because I had some extra rooted cuttings and there was an empty space.

This year, the duo stunned me. The viburnum seems to be floating off on its own, with no intention of covering the pole, and the azalea is on for the joy ride, though flagging a bit in the recent heat.

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And now it’s May and blossoms are truly dripping. Their petals scatter the lawn, drift across paths, float on the pond,  brighten the mulch, until they dry and brown and blend into the past. And we who look to the future, wind springtime into memory and watch for peonies and iris, roses, daylilies, phlox and hydrangeas. And so the garden turns.

There is a certain satisfaction in seeing petals from the Japanese Snowball bush drip onto the ground, an achievement of sorts for a shrub that is finally showing such promise it needs to be shaped and trimmed.

 

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Albemarle Sound: Voyage through the Centuries Part V

Posted on April 30, 2021 by aheronsgarden

The Fight for Independence and the Independence Hurricane

It took a lot for colonists in eastern North Carolina to consider revolt. All they wanted was fair treatment.  Don’t exploit us. Give us some say. We’ll be loyal subjects.

But royal governors, born to silver-spoon aristocracy were tone-deafened by uncompromising loyalty to a patronising English system. Parliament expected the colonists to pay off England’s debts from past wars with Indians, plus some extra in appreciation.

In the end it came down to money.

Taxes Taxes Taxes

If nothing else, England was resourceful in thinking up ways to get the colonists to pony up. The Navigation Acts. The Sugar Act. The Stamp Act, The Townshend Acts. The Tea Act. And finally, The Intolerable Acts (retribution for dumping tea in Boston Harbor).

Charles Townshend (author of an Acts) stated the English position neatly, with a liberal dollop of cloying benevolence.

Now, will these Americans, children planted by our care, nourished by our indulgence until grown to a degree of strength and opulence, protected by our arms, will they grudge to contribute a mite to relieve us from the heavy weight of that burden which we lie under for their defense?

And here Americans thought they were the ones bearing the burden.

The Stamp Act in 1765 lit the fuse. It pitted angry colonists against England and its governors.

Depending on the document, stamps were applied according to a schedule of values

A stamp or British seal had to be purchased for every newspaper, pamphlet, contract, or other legal document. Effectively, no goods could be transported without using these stamps.

Governor William Tryon, who had just settled in at New Bern, the state capital, signaled unswerving support of The Stamp Act . . .

. . .when rebellion flared in North Carolina and every other colony.Tax collectors were bullied into resigning. Crowds — mobs — gathered in cities (five hundred in Wilmington, North Carolina) to mourn the death of Liberty in solemn processions.

Cartoon example of a procession mourning the death of Liberty. Wikipedia

Governors and tax collectors, were hung or burned or decapitated or a mix-and-match in effigy. In Wilmington, the victim is never precisely named, instead called that Honourable Gentleman).

The colonists organized a Stamp Act Congress to petition for repeal  (though North Carolina did not attend because the  Governor refused to convene the colonial Assembly so it could elect delegates.)

Sons and Daughters of Liberty formed among working classes.  Sons enforced boycotts on imported goods. Daughters made the boycotts work, spinning homespun and brewing herbs to replace tea.

The skull and crossbones became the common symbol of the death of the free press as a result of The Stamp Act (left)

After a year of futile attempts at enforcement and complaints from English merchants about boycotts and losses, Parliament repealed The Stamp Act. But a face-saving retaliation was needed. That’s when the Townshend Acts were passed, taxing certain exports instead.

How did the colonies become so united in their opposition? Never under-estimate the power of a Free Press. Printers of independent newspapers published slogans, reported ideas and events,  established networks. News and views traveled as fast as a horse could fly from town to town, colony to colony.

The Royal Governors and North Carolina’s Defiance

In the midst of the frenzy, Governor Tryon decided to build a Georgian-style brick palace that mirrored the suggested majesty of his position. One architectural writer called it a monument of opulence and elegance extraordinary in the American colonies. More taxes were levied.

Tryon Palace, a complex of buildings, shown here in a 1950 etching in paper by Louis Orr, is open to the public for tours and programs. NC Museum of Art

(At least colonists got quality for their shillings; the unfinished palace withstood the Hurricane of 1769 that leveled two-thirds of New Bern.)

Margaret Wake Tryon, wealthy, learned, accomplished, in regal attire befitting a colonial Governor’s wife. Wake County is named in her honor. Unknown artist. Wikipedia

Then, still mired in conflict and controversy, Tryon left the mayhem here to become Governor of New York. The next governor would have to deal with hostility in the colonial Assembly and with  sharp anger over a failed rebellion by back country dissidents, the Regulators, some of whom had been hanged after tangling with standing militia over taxes.

Amiable, hardworking, but equally tone-deaf Josiah Martin (who owned  several plantations) became the new governor and began to fill the palace with collectibles and live the high life.

He brought his family to Hillsborough to avoid mosquito-season along the coast.  There were dinner parties and tea parties, horseback rides and drives. The town was filled with the rich and the beautiful.

But Martin skirmished continually with the colonial Assembly. When they proved intransigent, he finally dissolved the group. Not-so-amiably, he began building a loyalist force.

Amiable Josiah Martin used his tact to pacify the Regulators but he had no idea of the turbulence to come in his colony. carolana.com

In 1773, the judicial system collapsed. Cases would be decided by military tribunal instead of civil magistrate. North Carolina colonists were incensed. Radicals began to call for separation.

On top of this, came the Tea Act in 1773. Why in the world should the colonists complain about this Act? This was not a tax. Colonists were already paying taxes on tea. Instead, colonial merchants, middlemen in the tea-trade, would lose their profits to a monopoly given to the East India Company because it was failing financially.

England, still blinkered, assumed that nobody would notice and those unruly colonists would hush their irritating cacophany of complaints.

Colonial merchants and their profits were not so easily parted. The ruffians dumped East India tea in Boston Harbor! Now upper class merchants and planters were united with middle-class Sons and Daughters of Liberty.

Tempers might have cooled and saner minds prevailed, but England replied with the Coercive Acts, called the Intolerable Acts by the colonies, that closed the port of Boston and rescinded the Massachusetts charter until the tea was paid for. This was the final insult that united patriots up and down the coast.

In North Carolina a group of patriots formed the first provincial congress in Summer 1774 and called for a formal boycott of all British goods to be enforced by counties in the colony.

This action in North Carolina is widely accepted as the first formal declaration of defiance of British rule in the colonies. (Later, in October 1774 the First Continental Congress would call for a boycott of British goods by all colonies.)

Women from the town of Edenton (located near the Chowan River) formed their own Tea Party and signed a pledge to boycott British goods. North Carolina and other colonies sent food and supplies to their beleaguered northern neighbor.

The town of Hertford (located on the Perquimans River) shipped 2097 bushels of corn, 22 barrels of flour, and 17 barrels of pork.

Boston’s Committee of Donations, thankful for the food, wrote that the losses, sufferings, and distresses…are really great…not easy to be conceived. Particularly after Parliament enacted the Restraining Act directly against New England: no fishing on traditional grounds and no trading with any other country except England.

Informed by a patriotic free press that reinforced a single theme, colonies and communities were hardening their opposition against England and — significantly, opening their hearts in spontaneous generosity to their comrades.

Prayer during the First Continental Congress in Sept-Oct 1774 that voted to retaliate against the Intolerable Acts by boycotting British products.  Bostonteapartyship.com

The fuse was sizzling. By 1775 the Second Continental Congress had ordered counties to set up Committees of Safety that gradually intimidated and weakened the power of royal governors.

In 1775, fearing for his life, Governor Martin abdicated,  fleeing the palace in a coach one night to take refuge in the safety of Fort Johnston near Wilmington, which he described as a wretched little place.

He would eventually be fingered as the instigator of a plot to arm slaves against the colonists.

From secure exile on the HMS Cruizer, he denounced the Safety Commitees and worked to restore royal authority throughout the colony. He began to organize Loyalists, enlisting  Scottish Highlanders,  whose ancestors were known for their fierceness in battle, and who were loyal to the Crown.

The Lexington and Concord of the South

The Battle of Moore’s Creek Bridge in February, 1776 near Wilmington in eastern Carolina was brief, maybe only three minutes long. Yet it was pivotal. It has been called the Lexington and Concord of the South.

It galvanized patriots. It defused loyalist activity. It marked the permanent end of royal authority in North Carolina. It would help to hold the south for the colonists during the early days of the war.

And it produced the historic Halifax Resolves in April, 1776, a full three months before the Declaration of Independence was signed in Philadelphia. This bold North Carolina document lists the colony’s grievances and England’s failure to redress them, with this key resolve:

Resolved that the delegates for this Colony in the Continental Congress be impowered to concur with the other delegates of the other Colonies in declaring Independency, and forming foreign Alliances, resolving to this Colony the Sole, and Exclusive right of forming a Constitution and Laws for this Colony. . .

It might have been an easy victory for the British if the regiments that were promised to Governor Josiah Martin had shown up for battle. They were delayed by bureaucracy and storms and arrived three months too late.

By mid-February 1776 Martin had assembled about 1600 Highland Scots and other Loyalists. Meanwhile Patriots began to assemble Minute Men and militia near a narrow bridge situated at the highest point along Moore’s Creek, an excellent defensive position. The bridge crossed the dark swampy creek where the waterway was 50 feet wide and three feet deep.

A bleak winter shot of Moore’s Creek Bridge. National Park Service

The Loyalists were camped about six miles away. At 1 am on the 27th they began their march through bone-chilling, icy waters. After several hours they found the Patriot camp with campfires left burning. There was no answer when the Loyalists called for surrender. Assuming the rebels were in retreat, they regrouped to pursue them at daybreak.

A Patriot sentry fired a warning round and the attackers forged toward the bridge,  shouting King George and broadswords while Scots played bagpipes.

The patriots, numbering about a thousand, had left their campfires burning, not because they were in retreat, but to trick Loyalists while they moved their forces into position across the bridge. Once across, they removed the planks from the bridge, greased its girders and went into hiding.

Only a few Highlanders made their way over the slippery remnants of the bridge, and they fell rapidly under heavy Patriot fire. Within three minutes the battle was over, with about 70 Highlanders killed or wounded and one Patriot who died four days later.

The patriots took about 850 captives who reported being treated with respect. All except ringleaders were released on parole. Spoils of battle included 500 muskets and 300 rifles, many probably used on farms, and $15,000 (value at the time) worth of Spanish gold.

Reconstructed Patriot earthworks at the Moore’s Creek Bridge site. National Park Service

The site of the battle, including the reconstructed bridge, is preserved in Moore’s Creek National Military Park, 86 acres managed by the National Park Service.

Josiah Martin continued planning and assisting British campaigns until he and his family left for England after the war. His property in North Carolina was apparently sold. Later he said he missed North Carolina and the people he had grown to like. (Absence makes the heart grow fonder?)

The Role of Albemarle Counties

The Albemarle area is the oldest settled land in the state. Older, too, than settlements in many coastal colonies. Many early leaders of the colony claimed the Albemarle as home.

While the voices of Virginia and Massachusetts statesmen are recorded eloquently in history books, less has been written about North Carolina’s early statesmen who raised clear voices for independence. John Harvey from Perquimans County, for instance, was every bit as vocal as Patrick Henry on independence, leading North Carolina to call for a boycott of British goods ahead of the rest of the nation. He was a wise and respected leader of men.

If you look at a map of military campaigns during the Revolution, it would appear that nothing happened in eastern North Carolina. There were no major campaigns here. Nevertheless patriots were active on the homefront, particularly as privateers.

Major campaigns took place in the central part of the state and were fiercely fought. The east and west were spared the ravages of battle. ncpedia.org

The colonial navy was a fledgling operation compared to the mighty British Royal Navy that had protected American shipping during peacetime. Now, with their cannons reversed, the high seas became the arena for David and Goliath.

But David wasn’t standing still. In March, 1776, the Continental Congress enacted regulations for privateers (merchant ships turned pirates with a permit) to prevent the British from provisioning their armies.

A Yankee brig vs a British frigate off Cape Ann, June 1776. Privateers could go out in any size or type of ship, but they all had to be skilled at outwitting their maritime opponents. Many a prize was won on a bluff. allthingsliberty.com

Bonds had to be posted to insure rules were followed, but all spoils belonged to Captain and crew. The purpose was not to enrich the colonial war chest but to break the back of English shipping.

Privateering became lucrative. It was so popular, about 1700 “permits” were issued. Incomplete records show that 800 privateers captured 600 British ships with a loss of about $18 million (value at the time). The English economy suffered and the war became unpopular with English citizens.

Individual colonies also had fleets of privateers who operated under rules designed by each colony, so privateering in North Carolina was different from the national model.

For patriotic merchants in Edenton and New Bern privateering became a way to donate funds to a struggling nation. In North Carolina, prize money from privateers was not split between captain and crew but rather given to the state and its people, with merchants underwriting the ventures. 

The Albemarle area also contributed companies of soldiers and volunteers to the Patriot cause, including a number of freed black men and slaves who served as soldiers and sailors.

Portrait of a Black sailor serving in the Revolution, Unknown Artist, ca. 1780

North Carolina soldiers saw some of the most intense fighting up and down the coast from Valley Forge to Charleston. After Valley Forge, where 204 North Carolina soldiers died, regiments that should have totaled almost 5,000 soldiers were only able to muster about 1,000. In the battle of Camden (near Charleston) South Carolina, 3,000 North Carolina men were lost.

They must have fought fierce on the battlefield, though. About six months before the end of the war, after the battle of Guilford Courthouse near Greensboro, British General Cornwallis concluded that North Carolina is of all the provinces in America the most difficult to attack. He left North Carolina to  skirmish in Virginia and surrendered at Yorktown in October, 1781.

The Independence Hurricane

Ironically, it was not the war but a hurricane that devastated northeastern North Carolina. In an odd turnabout, it bolstered the colonists’ cause.

The hurricane came after four days of heavy rain in early September 1775, several months after the first battles of the Revolution had been fought in Massachusetts. No one could predict its ferocity.

It’s called the Hurricane of Independence, or Independence Hurricane, and it’s considered the eighth deadliest hurricane in North Carolina’s history, probably a Category 4, with winds of about 140 mph. It tore across the barrier beach, sweeping towns away, tossing ships and their crews, destroying crops. Five schooners coming from England were lost.

Artist’s recreation of high seas during the Independence Hurricane

With equal fury it barreled through the Albemarle area, flooding towns, laying waste to an entire corn crop and killing over 100 people here. Tales are handed down, still told today, of dead animals and flotsam from broken up houses and barns floating down rivers into Albemarle Sound.

Was the tragic and violent storm that hit the English colony of Newfoundland a week later the same hurricane re-energized or an entirely different storm?  The American colonists were sure it was the same hurricane. In Newfoundland over 4,000 settlers and fishermen were said to have lost their lives. The fisheries industry was wiped out, a serious economic blow to England.

A storm surge of twenty feet drowned the coast. In The History of Newfoundland, the Reverend Anspach wrote in 1819:

“On the 12th of September, in the year 1775, this coast was visited by a most terrible gale. In Harbour Grace and Carbonier all the vessels in the harbours were driven from their anchors; but the inhabitants of the north shore suffered with still greater severity. They even now with signs of dread and horror, show a cove where upwards of two hundred fishing boats perished with all their crews.”

As stunning as the losses had been to homesteaders in eastern North Carolina , the far greater losses to England’s economy were perceived as an omen of good fortune, a sign that the rebel cause was just. It boosted flagging morale, even persuaded the doubtful to enlist.

In a gesture that acknowledged the grave losses from the hurricane in North Carolina, the Second Continental Congress that governed the fledgling nation for the next six years gave farmers 40 shillings each to start over. A precedent that would be repeated many times in the history of hurricanes.

(Next, Navigating the Sound and the Beloved Shad Boat)

 

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Albemarle Sound: Voyage Through the Centuries Part IV

Posted on April 23, 2021 by aheronsgarden

Second Chances, the Albemarle Connection, a Revolt and Noxious Disease

Less than a century after the first English families stepped ashore on Roanoke Island,  steady streams of pioneers were betting on hope.

They were settling along the north shore of Albemarle Sound in earnest. They had little inkling of the adventure ahead (reports from explorers were always glowing) nor how self-reliant they would become, nor how hard it would be.

Hunters, fur trappers, Indian traders, the solos of civilization, had boldly explored before, reaping marginal rewards. They understood the reality of life in the New World.

England, heady with anticipation for its rewards, awaited big returns from  her wilderness colonies founded on land she did not own.

Why Did People Come?

Some immigrants were leaving an intolerable life. Some wanted to get rich. Some wanted to worship freely. Some came to avoid being hanged.

If you couldn’t afford passage, or if you were offered the  choice of hanging or banishment, you came as an indentured servant, bound to a master for a certain number of years.

You might hope to learn  a trade and you might hope to receive freedom dues at the end of your tenure: money, clothes, seeds, a gun, or maybe even a piece of land.  Servitude could be a path to new beginnings, or it could be a dead end with overwork, early death, poverty, or continual re-indenturing to stay alive. 

Some had no choice. They came as slaves, chattel bound forever to planters, many from Barbados sugar cane plantations. 

Few came with the desire to enrich England’s coffers. 

But First They Had to Get Here

Albemarle Sound has no safe harbor. A barrier beach spells the lash of the Atlantic Ocean, but inlets are notoriously dangerous. So ships routinely sailed  into Chesapeake Bay to disembark along the James River.

The James River is the largest and most southerly river shown in Virginia. The Elizabeth and Nansemond Rivers flow south from the James River.

From there, settlers who wanted to go south had their choice of travel on two rivers, the Elizabeth and the Nansemond, which, according to propaganda-of-the-day will convey you into Carolana, so that this (James) River is a Haven to both Colonies.

Well, maybe. To get to North Carolina from the James River would require another 80 miles or so of hard traveling. First an upstream row on one of the two rivers on a flatboat or other small craft.

Then miles of slogging on Indian trails, many along rises through the Great Dismal Swamp (greatly whittled down today). Alternatively, a traveller could head west over land toward the Blackwater River, then navigate the Chowan River downstream.

Quaker missionaries William Edmundson and George Fox were overwhelmed by the trip in 1670. Edmundson, whose guide got lost, was sorely foiled in swamps and rivers.  And Fox wrote that he was overwearied  by the time he got to Carolina, having travelled hard through the Woods and over many Bogs and Swamps.

The Great Dismal Swamp, land that had to be gotten around or through to get to North Carolina from Virginia. From the Encyclopedia of Forlorn Places

Half a century later the land was still impassible. Surveyor William Byrd described it as a miserable morass where nothing can inhabit. (Except runaway slaves who forged clandestine communities in the tangle.) By 1796 there would be a canal through it,  initially proposed by George Washington, dug by slaves.

Survival

Surely the seeds of familiar grains, wheat, rye, oats and barley, would prosper here, since the climate and soil were so felicitous. They did not. Fortunately, there was corn.

Algonquians had adopted Three Sisters farming,  complementary planting of maize, beans and squash that sprang from the Iroquois creation myth. An Algonquian named Squanto shared the technique with Jamestown settlers.

Inspiration for the practice may have come from myth, but it was efficient, practical, nutritious and sustainable. GardenCityHarvest website

Plantings were mounded for drainage and minimally tilled. Corn stalks supported bean vines. Squash hugged the ground, kept it moist, cool and weed-free. Herring or menhaden and maybe some ashes were buried for fertilizer. Bacteria in root nodules of beans fixed nitrogen in soil. A truly remarkable way of farming.

We don’t hear much about beans and squash, but corn saved the colonists. They used every part of the plant. Kernels, dried, roasted, ground or green, kept people and livestock alive. Husks were woven into baskets or used to pad mattresses and collars for draft animals. Cobs became kindling and, of course, pipes. And corn liquor saved people from drinking bad water.

John Lawson was an explorer in the 1700s, a kind of self-appointed reporter who gave a pretty accurate, if optimistic, picture of the land. . . .Mild winters and a fertile Soil beyond Expectation produced everything that was planted to a prodigious increase. . .

He was less impressed with the homesteaders: he never saw one Acre of Land managed as it ought to be…and were the planters as negligent in their Husbandry in Europe as they are in Carolina their Land would produce nothing but Weeds and Straw. . .

We can make a couple of inferences from that quote. First, Lawson had a different perspective from the  farmer: he was briefly observing, not continually laboring under the grindstone of the wilderness.  Second, virgin soil, gift of the great forests had been building over centuries. It gave freely to the farmer, no prodding needed (though eventually it would give out from overwork).

Their methods might have been less-than-casual by Lawson’s standards, but eventually the colonists produced so much corn that New England sent vessels here to pick up cargoes of it, and wheat, too, that finally succeeded as a cash crop. (Stony soil and short growing seasons limited production up north.)

Those early days were often rough, especially if crops fell short and the winter was long. Then colonists traded with Native Americans, or waited for supply ships, or went on half rations until spring.

“The Manner of their fishing,” composite drawing by John White c.1585 showing brush weirs, spears and nets and a variety of fish including a horseshoe crab, whose eggs were eaten by Native Americans

Springtime brought the great fish migrations, and great joy, for with fresh fish came giddy salvation. Colonists learned from the Native Americans how to fish the rivers and salt the herring, small fish, to preserve them through the winter in buckets and barrels. Meals would consist of fried salt herring and cornbread washed down with yaupon tea. Three times a day.

Leaves and twigs of yaupon holly contain caffeine. Those cups of tea must have kept the colonists going all day long. Photo by Will Cook

(Yaupon holly is a robust, pest-free holly native to the coastal plain. The botanical name, Ilex vomitoria, comes from Native American rituals of drinking huge quantities, then purging before battle. In gardens today, its dwarf form is an excellent substitute for boxwood hedges.)

Scattered homesteads, isolated by swamp, produced self-sufficiency. Clearing, planting and harvesting were done with primitive tools: hoes, scythes, shovels and axes for the first hundred years until plows eased manual labor.

The great forests gave them skins and furs, especially deerskins, but birds and animals threatened crops. Bounties  on wolves and wildcats gave incentive for extermination.

Households produced their own food, drink, clothing (homespun of flax and cotton). They builttheir own homes and furniture — and boats, planted gardens and orchards with apples and peaches for good eating and prodigious quantities of liquor.

Dunghill fowl (chickens) provided food and feathers for beds, and stocks of bees provided wax for candles and sweet treats. Corn was pounded by hand, until grist mills in the 1700s produced a smoother product for a small fee. (One early traveler commented that there wasn’t much difference between corn meal for the family and fodder for the horses.)

Yates Mill, constructed in the 1750’s, is an example of grist mills of the time. Grist mills soon became centers of community life. Photo ca 1942. NC Museum of History

Farm animals fattened quickly. Cattle, horses, sheep and swine bred easily and spent the mild winters outdoors on their own. Before the Revolution, Carolinians grudgingly exported farm animals to stingy Virginians. Once the Revolution freed up trade, produce was sold up north instead, to New Jersey and Pennsylvania, at fairer prices.

As homesteads prospered, families  purchased ready-made clothing, shoes, sugar, salt, molasses, and rum from ships that came in from England and the West Indies.

Colonists had little money, so they bartered with each other for goods and services. Debts and fines were paid with country commodities: Indian corn, tobacco, wheat, port, or deerskins.

In time, a sort of division of labor for profit worked its way through society and particular skills were marketed: boat building,  corn grinding,  produce, shingles and barrel staves.

As society became increasingly complex, gold and silver coin and paper money supplanted barter and country goods.

Early Relations with Native Americans

Initially, most contact between the two civilizations was amicable.  One village, for instance, introduced explorers to roasting eares and Sturgeon.

Indian method of roasting fish. John White drawing, Theodore deBry engraving, 1586

There are recorded instances of trust and personal favors.

In the 1650s the King of the Roanoke Indians brought his son to the home of Virginia legislator Francis Yeardley to learn to speak out of the book and to make a writing. Yeardley provided a carpenter and workmen to build an English house furnished with English utensils and chattels for his chieftain friend.

Yeardley soon purchased land along three great rivers from the Roanokes for 200 pounds sterling. The deal was sealed with delivery of a turf of the earth with an arrow shot into it. 

The Duke of Albemarle and the Lords Proprietors

Governing this sprawling southern territory was a headache for the Virginia colony, especially with threat from the Spanish, who were nipping from the south.

Enter George Monk, 2nd Duke of Albemarle, brilliant leader of armies, adroit political strategist, and loyal friend of exiled King Charles II. After a decade of Commonwealth rule under dour Oliver Cromwell, England was ready for a change. Monarchy? Or anarchy? The Duke of Albemarle lobbied hard for monarchy until parliament finally agreed. 

George Monck, 1st Duke of Albemarle

In 1660 King Charles II, the Merry Monarch to his subjects, came out of exile to take the throne. He owed big favors to the Duke and supporters. He had an eye for empire that would bring guineas to satisfy debts and allow for kingly frivolities like theatre and lavish parties.

Three years later, he signed the Charter for the Province of Carolina, his land (Carolus is Latin for Charles), naming eight supporters as Lords Proprietors. They would rule the tract that would become North and South Carolina by committee from the comforts of England. The Duke of Albemarle, the oldest, was named first palatine, titular CEO in today’s parlance.

Lords Proprietors seal, with coat of arms on one side and inverted cornucopia with Indians on the other side. Translated, the motto reads The Taming Makes the Land

The motto on the seal, The Taming Makes the Land, embodies the English approach to land, used or abused, as an avenue to wealth.

Nobody truly understood what was going on here. The King and cronies remained in England with their wilderness fantasies stirred by glowing reports from explorers who never seemed to mention the muck, the snakes, the bramble and the bugs.

The Proprietors envisioned elaborate courts, feudal manors, and silk. One detail was missing. They needed people to work to turn their visions into reality. Never mind that survival alone was a full-time calling in over-drive.

They  gave settlers religious freedom, not because of a holy conversion to tolerance, but because Methodists, Presbyterians and Quakers were stable bodies that could populate the new land and that meant fewer infidels to contend with at home.

To further swell the ranks of laborers, English judges routinely meted out death sentences for trifles, then benevolently commuted sentences to indeterminate indenture in the colonies.

To attract investors, the Mother Country — temporarily — waived the Navigation Acts that would tax  goods and bind colonial shipping to England exclusively — a rasp of a burr that would lead to Revolution.

It was grand-scale venture capitalism. Tobacco was Aztec gold to investors. They would be sure to assemble the manpower to produce enough to satisfy a Mother Country that craved this novel opiate.

Planters with capital could purchase large tracts of land at bargain rates. Acreage granted was based on numbers of servants and slaves in tow, a tidy incentive that exploded into another two hundred years of bondage.

It all sounded so promising. But nobody was happy. Not the Proprietors who were getting complaints instead of tax money. Not the settlers who were paying higher quitrents than their neighbors in other colonies. And for what? Widespread corruption, broken promises, haphazard governance and lack of protection from Native Americans. (A gritty attitude toward justice and fairness was seeding in.)

Culpeper’s Rebellion

And then England decided to enforce the Navigation Acts. The goal of trading in the 17th century was to import as little as possible, export as much as possible, make as much money as possible and hoard the profits. It’s a practice known as mercantilism.

Example of British sailing ship of the 1600s, the Mayflower by Paul Strayer

Colonists were limited to shipping only raw materials only to England and only in English ships. England would send finished products back to the colonists for purchase at high prices. Taxes were levied on every transaction, at every turn, even on goods shipped between colonies.

Albemarle residents were irate. Tobacco was their cash crop, but it had to be sold to New England first because their small ships navigated Albemarle  inlets easily. Cargo was then loaded onto larger English ships.

Layers of new taxes took the profits out of tobacco, at a time when hurricanes, drought and hard rains caused years of bad crops. (The Albemarle would never realize the tobacco bonanzas of southern Virginia and central North Carolina.)

They decided to send an envoy to England to plead their cause in person.

They chose a sympathetic former governor, Peter Carteret,  to articulate their concerns: they were isolated by swamps with poor roads, cut off from sea trade by the barrier beach, they needed more help.

The Proprietors knew that governance had been lax and laws enforced without rigor. But they also feared their charter might be revoked if the Navigation Acts were ignored, for these were the embodiment of English law on the high seas.

Artist’s imaginings of the Culpeper Rebellion. Pretty civilized, as rebellions go. WilliamDentonblog

 

What else could angry settlers do? In 1677 they rebelled. It was a small rebellion. The idea of cutting ties with England was never entertained. But the rebellion lasted for two years and it epitomized the spirit that would propel the colonists toward independence a century later.

In historical accounts, Thomas Miller comes off as a rigid bureaucrat with a midget mind and a classic talent for ruffling feathers. As customs collector in an agitated colony, he was zealous about seizing illegally imported goods and imposing fines.

When the chance came, he appointed himself interim governor and proceeded to interfere with elections and imprison opponents, including George Durant, a prominent and highly regarded settler. This was not a good move.

Miller traveled with armed guards who apparently lost their nerve when forty armed colonists confronted them and jailed their leader. They did not fire  shot. The revolt was bloodless.

It was called Culpeper’s Rebellion. John Culpeper, a renegade who had been thrown out of Charles Town and who had the reputation of a troublemaker who enjoyed a good fight was the leader and took over as governor, presumably ruling to the satisfaction of his peers for a time.

Meanwhile, Miller escaped and fled to England to tell all. Culpeper followed to make his case and was tried for treason. One of the proprietors pointed out that colonists had a right to riot over poor governance and Miller’s abuses. And nobody was particularly keen for bad publicity about the colonies. Culpeper was acquitted and sailed back to a hero’s welcome.

Self-Government

In the long run, England did us a favor. You might call it benign neglect, the Proprietors’ lack of interest in the particulars of running a colony.

About a decade after the Proprietors laid down a general code of laws envisioning themselves as lords of the manor, they put together a more pragmatic set of rules that would authorize colonial justices to administer county functions.

Since most people could not read, justices came from community leaders. These were the tiny but visible elite who held the best land and ran the best farms.

Here is what the justices were responsible for:  adjudicating minor civil and criminal cases, probating wills, registering  cattlemarks, supervising orphans, opening roads, contracting for bridges, establishing ferries, overseeing public buildings, such as courthouse and jail, paying jurors, acquiring weights and measures, stocking the powder magazine,  levying taxes, and maintaining control over expenditures.

Detail from 1790 map based on 1733 Moseley map showing ferry crossings on the Pasquotank River that would have been managed by the justices. NC Maps Blog

As population  increased, counties needed decent roads. At the beginning of the 18th century, roads were impassable. By the eve of the Revolution an intricate highway system with bridal paths and bridges had been created.

Who was responsible for such progress? Justices who entertained petitions for roads, appointed juries of twelve to determine routes, designated a company and a surveyor to build roads and an overseer to maintain them. Justices then had to deal with swampy terrain, negligent overseers, and curmudgeonly landowners.

Good practical experience that would lay groundwork for managing a young country?

Noxious Disease

In 1729, the Lords Proprietors sold their rights to King George II and North Carolina became a royal colony. By this time, Native American populations had shrunk. 

Tribes who traded regularly with the English were devastated by smallpox. Only about 500 natives were left in the Albemarle; deaths were as high as 90 per cent in some tribes.

Unknown European artist’s imaginative rendering of trading that spread smallpox and other diseases. (Note: Women handled business affairs in Algonquin tribes, so the woman should be central, not subservient, in this trading tableau)

The immigrants had brought with them a cauldron of diseases. The English brought smallpox, measles, tuberculosis, diphtheria, whooping cough and influenza. The Africans brought malaria and yellow fever. Parasites of shipboard rats contributed typhus, and contaminated water spread typhoid fever.

By 1755 the brew of wretched diseases must have gotten out of hand, because the colony had restricted tainted imports and passed the Distempered Act to bar immigrants who suffered from malignant infectious distempers.

Within a few years, investors and merchants began complaining that these restrictions interfered with profits and recruitment of fresh labor.The Act was repealed in 1760.

*************************

Despite diseases and taxes, the next century would be a prosperous one for eastern North Carolina, with rapid growth plucked from land rich in resources. By the decade of the Revolution, the entire colony had grown from 21,000 in the 1600s to about 250,000 in 1780, 80,000 of whom were slaves.

Though plantation life was expanding, most of the land was worked by independent yeomen who were able to cobble together a reasonably comfortable life by farming, fishing, and hunting, with maybe some logging for extra income. They were a sturdy, self-sufficient lot, able to improvise, wise in the wild ways of the land, unflinching in a fight, but with a neighborliness and generosity that continues to this day.

Idyllic afternoon on the water, unknown artist

As crossroads grew into towns and cities, or remained rural, place names once derived from names of Native American tribes blended with names given by the English to their settlements. Reading them is to reflect on the heritage and history of the Albemarle.

(Next: The Fight for Independence and the Independence Hurricane)

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Albemarle Sound: Voyage through the Centuries Part III

Posted on April 17, 2021 by aheronsgarden

The History and the Mystery of the Lost Colony

In July, 1587, 115 English settlers and one Native American stepped ashore on Roanoke Island. Roanoke Island lies just inside the barrier beach, near the mouth of Albemarle Sound.

Queen Elizabeth had given Sir Walter Raleigh exclusive rights to a huge, vaguely defined tract of remote, heathen and barbarous lands in the new world with a proviso that he establish a permanent English presence by 1591.

(Archaeological digs show that these heathen and barbarous people had been occupying Roanoke Island for 1500 years before the colonists arrived, since the time of Christ. This was a technicality of no immediate concern as long as everybody played nice.)

Enlarged portion of White/DeBry artwork showing the barrier beach (The Outer Banks), settlement at Roanoke Island, fishing weir, Indians canoeing, shoals of fish entering inlets, and foundering ships

The newcomers had no way of knowing that their destinies would become tangled in the rivalry of two great world powers: England and Spain.

And they were not the first to settle Roanoke Island. They were coming onto an island where explorers led by Ralph Lane had already trespassed.

Three years prior, Raleigh had sent a group to reconnoiter the Albemarle and Chesapeake area to find a base of operations for privateering.

Queen Elizabeth was opposed to outright war with Spain, but she coveted the gold that Spanish ships ferried across the ocean from their colonies in Central and South America. She strongly encouraged her seamen to become privateers. (Pirates with permission and percentages.)

How much more convenient it would be if privateers could intercept Spanish ships from a colony in the New World!

Algonquian Indians offered the seafarers food and friendship and taught them how to survive in the wilderness. Short-sightedly, Lane and his adventurers repaid the kindness with arrogance. The colony was soon foundering from famine, storm, and disputes with Native Americans now hostile to the fractiously needy white man, once thought to be godlike, who spread smallpox.

Deteriorating relations with the Secota tribe caused Ralph Lane and his men to erect an earthwork fort in 1585. Archaeologists have located its exact dimensions and replicated it on the Fort Raleigh site in Manteo. National Park Service diagram

Supplying colonies with necessities from abroad was always a logistical nightmare.  Lane’s men might not have been so desperate if a long-awaited provisioning ship had not mired in an inlet. Unable to enter quiet waters, the ship lay at anchor in the ocean, battered until it finally sank.

The break point, however, was a terrible storm that lasted four days, flattening the island and wrecking ships. The troops had had enough. When Sir Francis Drake, the English explorer stopped by in 1586 after raiding Spanish ships, they wasted no time accepting his invitation of a sail home.

Despite the hard circumstances, the trip turned out to be a huge propaganda success.  The soil is the most plentiful, sweet, fruitful and wholesome of all the world … The earth bringeth forth all things in abundance, as in the first creation, without toil or labor, gushed a returning captain.

Investors swooned over visions of an idyllic land and Spanish gold. They clamored for shares in the enterprise. ( Lack of a safe harbor and incipient war with Spain would eventually lead to unfulfilled expectations.)

There were two men in Lane’s party who took a more thoughtful approach. Each of them appreciated the wisdom of the natives and saw the potential for colonizing the land and developing its natural resources for England.

Thomas Hariot was a scientist, and John White was a painter, a map maker and a keen observer. White’s artwork and maps give us the first historical glimpse into native life in a new world.

Hariot’s book, A Brief and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia was the first book about the land and its people written by someone who had actually spent time here.  White’s artwork and Hariot’s book stimulated continued interest.

Sir Walter Raleigh helped John White put together a community of men, women and children, families mostly middle class hoping to jump a rung, who would brave this new world. Their original destination was Chesapeake,  hospitable and safe, but during what may have been a mutiny, the Navigator ordered sailors to leave the group on Roanoke Island.

The nominal reason? It was too late in the season to go on to Chesapeake and return to England before winter. The more likely reason?  Privateering.

Sailors would happily follow these orders; often their only pay was a share in the proceeds from high seas adventures, more financially rewarding than ferrying colonists.

As Governor of the colony, John White objected. He was overruled.

Almost immediately after the settlers landed there was a birth and a death.

A colonist collecting shellfish along the Sound was killed by Native Americans . . .

Dramatic rendering of the Death of George Howe, unknown artist

. . .And a baby girl was born to Eleanor Dare, John White’s daughter. She would be the first English child born in the New World.

The baby was named Virginia Dare in honor of the Virgin Queen, and the land was named Virginia.

Baptism of Virginia Dare, illustration by William A. Crafts, 1876. The  comfortable quarters depicted was typical of renderings by English artists who could not imagine the raw circumstances the settlers faced in a new world

The colony was low on supplies. They had arrived at the end of the growing season so there was no time to plant crops — if they had any inkling of what they should be planting.

John White reluctantly left his family and the new settlement to collect provisions from England. He expected to return the following year.

In the days of sailing ships, it took more than two months to cross the ocean, that is, if your ship was lucky and was not blown off course or smashed by storms or boarded by pirates or detoured by a Captain who hankered for privateering —  or caught in a war.

Imminent war with Spain took precedence over carrying anxiously-looked-for supplies to a beleaguered colony. Queen Elizabeth issued a stay of shipping in preparation for invasion by the invincible fleetes made by the King of Spain: the infamous Spanish Armada. All ships were commandeered for an ad hoc English flotilla.

Still,  John White managed to locate a pair of dinky pinnaces that had been rejected for military service. Barely seaworthy, they were attacked by French pirates who playd extreemely upon us with their shot, hitting White in the side of the buttoke and robbing us of all our victuals, powder, weapons and provision… They aborted the expedition and limped back to England.

Dutch Pinnace in Rough Seas by Cornelis Verbeek, 1625

Finally, in March 1590, threat of Spanish invasion had passed and White was able to set sail again with two ships equipped by Raleigh. The voyage took almost six months;  privateering and sea battles doubled cruising time.

It was too dark to navigate the shoaled inlets when they arrived, so White and his party shouted and sang folk songs and sounded trumpets to reassure the colonists. Nobody answered, but a column of smoke gave hope.

Bad weather and capricious currents made threading the inlet from the Atlantic Ocean into Albemarle Sound hazardous. During the short sail, seven of the chiefest (mariners) were drowned. 

Governor John White had finally reached Roanoke Island, on August 18th, 1590, his granddaughter’s third birthday.

Unknown to White, crops had probably failed during his three year absence.  Tree rings show extreme drought in the southeast from 1587 through 1589.  Colonists were likely dependent on largesse from Indians that could be unreliable if their crops were failing, too.

He found no one. The smoke had apparently come from dead grass and trees. Chests that White had buried were unearthed, his belongings scattered, my books torne from the covers, … my pictures and mappes rotten and spoyled with rayne, and my armour almost eaten through with rust.  Scattered dwellings were in ruins, but White found no signs of strife.

CROATOAN

They had all recognized what a slender thread connected them, one to the other, and to their  survival in the wilderness. Before John White left, some of the settlers agreed to make their way to Chesapeake; others would stay and await White’s return.  If they had to vacate the island, they promised to leave a sign for him.

CROATOAN, carved into a wooden post, was that sign. I greatly joyed that I had found a certain token of their being at Croatoan where Manteo was born and the Savages of the Iland [are] our friends.., White wrote.

John White watercolor of an Algonquian village, possibly Croatoan, c. 1586

Manteo, you may now have gathered, was the Native American travelling with the English. He is memorialized in the name of the town where Fort Raleigh is located.

(The name of one other Native American, Wanchese, is memorialized on Roanoke Island. Like Manteo, Wanchese, had spent time in England. Though he was initially on friendly terms with the English, he grew increasingly mistrustful and ultimately hostile. In fact, he was one of the group who attacked George Howe while he was collecting shellfish.)

Manteo was special. He learned how to speak English. He was impressed by English technology. He worked with Hariot to record Native American language and customs. He was presented to investors at Raleigh’s home in full (English) costume. He befriended Ralph Lane during his explorations. He assisted John White in establishing the colony. He was an interpreter and peacemaker on Roanoke Island.

He was both an oddity and a tool for the English, but genuinely respected, especially by John White and the colonists. A month after the colonists landed, Manteo was christened in Roanoak, and called Lord thereof. . . in reward of his faithful service.

Water color by John White of an Algonquian chief, not necessarily Manteo

Manteo was royalty. He was chief of the Croatoans, a small tribe who lived on Hatteras Island. His mother was royalty, too. She was, for lack of a less awkward term, chieftainess of a tribe. (In Algonquian communities it was not unusual for women to hold high office.)

Like the Lost Colonists, Manteo fades into history in 1587.

The word on the post gave hope. It would appear that the colonists had left Roanoke Island to join the Croatoans.

John White would have liked to sail the fifty miles south to Hatteras Island to re-unite with the colonists. But the deaths of those critical crew members, coupled with the loss of one of the ship’s anchors (the fourth on this particular voyage), and bad weather, precluded the trip. Sailors were impatient to head back to England.

John White would never find the colony nor see his family again.The loss of the colony was a personal tragedy for White from which he did not fully recover. He never returned to the New World. Resigned, he wrote to a friend that he must give over the fate of the colonists and his family to the merciful help of the Almighty, whom I most humbly beseech to helpe and comfort them.

Searches for survivors were futile, though one Jamestown colonist wrote that he had seen an Indian boy whose hair was a perfect yellow with reasonable white skin. . .a Miracle amongst all Savages.

Meanwhile, the mystique of the Lost Colony cast a spell that exists today. All sorts of theories short of alien abduction have been advanced to explain the disappearance of the colonists.

They were murdered by hostile Indians. They were prisoners of the Spaniards.  They died of famine or disease. They left the area to settle elsewhere.

Under the auspices of the Croatoan Archeological Society in Buxton, an archaeologist from England and volunteers have uncovered thousands of artifacts on Hatteras Island.

Lost Colony archaeological site on Hatteras Island. Croatoan Archaeological Society

They show a clear mix of Native American and English pieces, copper rings, sword handles, earrings, a Nuremberg token, writing slates, glass, that appear to date back to the time of the Roanoke colony. Many are displayed in the Hatteras Public Library.

Co-founder of the Society and author of The Lost Colony and Hatteras Island, Scott Dawson,  stresses that it is a story of  brotherhood and friendship rather than violence and hatred. . . a story that leads to assimilation and family.

Hilt from a sword probably owned by an upper class individual unearthed at the Hatteras Island site.  Croatoan Archaeologist Society

Two sites, called X and Y, have also been worked in Bertie County near the mouth of the Chowan River. Motivating this archaeological dig is the belief that colonists may have sailed west in Albemarle Sound toward the Roanoke River. This was Tuscarora territory, and these tribes were known to be hostile to the white invaders. However, there seems to be evidence that English settlers had successfully set up housekeeping.

Sixteenth century English pottery found in Bertie County sites, dig sponsored by Lost Colony Foundation

Had John White not been caught between war and weather, his quest might have ended happily. We can only speculate and wonder. 

The history and the mystery of the Lost Colony is kept alive by nightly performances in summer overlooking the water and by exhibits at the Fort Raleigh National Historic Site.

Lost Colony Outdoor Drama on Roanoke Island has been performed since 1937. Carol Highsmith photo, 1946, Library of Congress

 

(Next: New Beginnings, the Albemarle Connection, a Pandemic and a Revolt)

 

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Albemarle Sound: Voyage through the Centuries: Part II

Posted on April 7, 2021 by aheronsgarden

Estuaries: Cradle of Life

What is an estuary? In simplest terms, it is a place where fresh water from rivers mixes with salt water from the sea. Under quiet conditions, “lighter” fresh water will float atop “heavier” salt water. But tides, currents and winds cause mixing, and that is the secret to the vitality of an estuary.

An astonishing miracle plays out in estuaries each spring with a cast of millions, no billions or trillions, or more.

Shorelines of estuaries are often fringed by wetlands like these in game lands along the Roanoke River near Albemarle Sound. NCWetlands.org

It begins with phytoplankton. These tiny plants, such feeble swimmers they can only drift at the mercy of tide and current, are the wellspring of life in the waters of the world.

Spring sunshine penetrates shallow water. Water temperatures rise, maybe to 50 degrees.

Currents of fresh and salt water mix and layer and mix again. It’s never quite the same each year. During rainy seasons more fresh water flows from the land; during dry seasons, salt water moves further west in the Sound and up into rivers. But the miracle plays out.

Decayed remnants of past lives dissolve into nutrients that create a soup in churning waters. Phytoplankon begin to stir. They make food from these nutrients with the help of sunlight.

They divide and multiply. Or they reproduce and multiply. Or they break apart and multiply. They multiply. They multiply. They feed zooplankton and small shrimp that become food for the fish who will come.

Artistic montage showing the great variety of phytoplankton. Zooplankton and other aquatic animals feed on phytoplankton. The entire aquatic food web depends on these tiny plants that drift with tides and digest the past and move to sunlight. Internet, unattributed

And the fish did come,  hustling in from the ocean through inlets along the barrier beach. When water temperatures rise to about 60 degrees,  and plankton are on the move, fish would teem by the millions from their ocean homes through inlets into Sounds and up rivers.

In 1612, William Strachey noted “great Shoells of Herrings” (and relatives) in North Carolina. Swimming upstream in a frenzy against river currents, adult fish would seek the quiet inlets or coves where they had been born, and there they would spawn.

Unless they were eaten first. These small fish, at the bottom of the food chain, feed the world. Every imaginable fish or shellfish with a big enough mouth eats herring or shad, including man. Herring and shad are nutritious, oily, bony fish with white flesh, traditionally eaten bone-in.

American shad, relative of the herring, about two feet long, begin migrating when they are about three years old but are not sexually mature until their fourth or fifth year. Their life span is about eight or nine  years. Images above and below are from the Raleigh Ecological Service Field Office

Hickory shad came first, in mid- to late-February, then alewives in March. Blueback herring and American shad followed in three or four weeks, one group pacing another, each taking its turn, streaming in for the great spawning adventure.

Two species of herring, alewife and blueback, small fish, under a foot, were once caught by the millions, as were shad. Like shad and striped bass, they live in the ocean most of the year but migrate to fresh water to spawn. They are called anadromous, from the Greek meaning up running.

Striped bass (or rockfish) spawn along with shad and herring (if they are not eating them or any other creature they can find) from April to mid-June. When their eggs hatch, the young depend on river currents to keep them afloat while they drift downstream to feast on a ready-made food supply of plankton and fry.

Striped Bass, top dog, will eat all the fish shown above. Spawning is a tumultuous affair involving several males and one female. Fishermen call the wild spawning “rockfish fights.”  Some romance! Adults will be back in the ocean by summer, males first, followed by females. Photo by Steven Johnson

At the same time, Atlantic croaker and spot are spawning in the ocean. Their youngsters drift into the Sound through those tumultuous inlets and settle in shallow bays and coves to feed.

For centuries, this upwelling of new life, powered by plankton, this multitude of fish hurrying to spawn, was one of the grandest celebrations of springtime witnessed and welcomed by multitudes who hurried to dip their nets into the water.

Fishermen cast their net baskets off a bridge in Martin County late 19th century

The Sound is also host to resident fish who lead less tumultuous lives. They are bottom-feeders and stay here year-round. As traditional catches of herring and striped bass declined, catfish and perch became valuable resources.

Blue crabs make their homes in the Sound, too. The female can release eggs several times a season, up to three million in her short life, making the blue crab fishery one of North Carolina’s most valuable.

Male crabs, called jimmies, have the most meat, though she-crab soup is a delicacy. A commercial crabber lays down  hundreds of wire pots on lines that can stretch for miles, marked with ID buoys. Pots are checked at least every 5 days. Internet photo, unattributed

Crabs spawn in spring and summer. Depending on sex, molting and stages of growth they range the Sound seeking waters of varying salinity. If you are out on the Sound in summer, you can follow long lines of traps that commercial and recreational fishermen bait with shrimp heads or menhaden. Catches will go to local markets or be shipped as far away as New York City.

Blue crab in underwater meadow of grasses. These grasses play vital roles in protecting fish and buffering shorelines against storms. Photo by Jay Fleming/Getty Images

Crabs and fish find food and hiding places in meadows of grasses  growing in soft sediments and shallow waters where sunlight can penetrate. Few of us notice these plants (unless they foul the propeller of a pleasure boat). Even fewer of us realize how much they contribute to life in the Sound.

As submerged grasses take in nutrients and produce food for themselves, they absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen. Oxygen levels remain high for young, actively growing fish, water stays clear, and tied-up nutrients slow growth of unwanted algae.

If fish take center stage in spring, wildfowl take center stage during fall migrations. Wildlife refuges, wetlands and harvested croplands are winter destinations for thousands of migrating waterfowl: Canada and snow geese, tundra swan and ducks.

Tundra swans over the Albemarle-Pamlico peninsula. Photo by Tom Earnhardt, called the  Steward of North Carolina Outdoors for his work as an environmental lawyer, writer, and co-producer of the PBS television series Exploring North Carolina

The south shore of the Sound is one of their last outposts. They once frequented wetlands along the eastern seaboard but ancestral winter homes disappeared into airfields and cities. Leigh, a friend-now-gone spoke of throngs of wildfowl darkening the skies for hours as they passed over his house each fall when he was a youngster.

As a changed landscape pushed their congregations farther south, their numbers shrank. Today, the spectacle of thousands of birds feeding, loafing, and flying at will renews faith in the survival of wildlife and the environment.

They don’t visit for long. They arrive in December for the winter party, as they have for eons, leaving a wintry tundra, commuting thousands of miles from summer homes on lakes in Alaska and Canada. They’ve begun the return trip to the Arctic by March, the great migratory flocks,  ready to mate and raise young who will accompany them on their flight south next winter.

Thousands of northern pintail ducks winter in Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge waters. US Fish and Wildlife Service photo

During spring and summer, the more diminutive “Kermit” frog takes over creeks and ditches throughout the coastal plain. The nasal queenk queenk queenk of mating green tree frogs rises through the night. They are acrobats, leaping with grace to catch their meals, depending on large toepads for reliable holdfasts when they land. During the day you can find these light-weights snoozing on green leaves, perfectly camouflaged.

Green tree frog, Photo by Todd Pierson


Heron and osprey, alligators and snakes, brown bear and white-tailed deer, neotropical song birds and water fowl are all creatures that call the swamps, forests and fields that surround Albemarle Sound their homes.

Great  Blue Heron soars over water on a cloudy day. Internet photo, unattributed

Into this latter day Eden, English settlers would plant a civilization.

(Next: The History and the Mystery of the Lost Colony)

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