Culture & History

  • History Rediscovered: NC’s First Lighthouse

    What did the first lighthouse on the Cape Fear River look like and what really happened to it? Documents that maritime historian Kevin Duffus found in the National Archives shed some light.

  • The Story of Shad Boats

    Historian David Cecelski introduces his 12-part series, “The Story of Shad Boats,” that explores the origins, construction and history of the workboats found on the North Carolina coast in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

  • Historic Outbreak: Spanish Flu on NC Coast

    The call to end the practice of shaking hands was urged by the publisher of the Elizabeth City newspaper way back in 1919, as the Spanish flu was on track to claim nearly 14,000 lives in North Carolina.

  • Piney Grove: Touring Brunswick County’s Past

    Historian David Cecelski visits with Brunswick County’s Marion Evans, who leads him on a tour of the Piney Grove community, sharing rich, old stories and showing him the little-known sites where they took place.

  • Museum to Celebrate Women’s Suffrage

    The History Museum of Carteret County and the League of Women Voters are set to host a reception and celebration of the 100th anniversary of women getting the right to vote and the opening of an exhibit recognizing notable females.

  • Amid Jim Crow, Blacks Here Forged Legacy

    The Wright brothers’ visits to the Outer Banks came as white supremacy was wrenching away racial progress in the state, but blacks on the banks persisted in their achievements.

  • Singing At The March on Washington

    Historian David Cecelski writes about a photo of Jacquelyn Bond and Golden Frinks, both central to the Williamston Freedom Movement, at the March on Washington in 1963.

  • Time Span: Recalling First New Inlet Bridge

    Nearly forgotten, the remains of the first bridge over the dynamic inlet just north of Rodanthe that reopened for the first time in decades during Hurricane Irene in 2011 are still visible from N.C. 12.

  • Our Coast’s History: Working in the Logwoods

    North Carolina historian David Cecelski searched the Forest History Society’s archives for photographs of coastal North Carolina and came across images of logging and lumber mills taken between 1900 to 1950 along the coast.

  • Heritage Center Would Boost Pride: Mayor

    Navassa Mayor Eulis Willis says the state’s first Gullah Geechee cultural heritage center planned for the former Kerr-McGee site in town would be a welcome source of community pride.

  • Beaufort’s Scandinavian, Dutch Fishermen

    David Cecelski writes about the “largely forgotten enclave of Norwegian, Swedish and Dutch fishermen” who, along with their families, left New Jersey to make their home in Beaufort beginning in the 1910s.