C.G. Gaskill - "Orville G," Gaskill's Hardware

     Mail-boat vessel Orville G was built by C.G. Gaskill and named for his son, Orville G. Gaskill, born in 1910. The vessel carried freight and passengers from down east Carteret County to Beaufort until sold and put into service as a mail carrier.
     One of the murals in the Beaufort Post Office, by Russian-born artist Simka Simkhovitch, depicts Orville G, the supply and mail boat on its way to nearby Cape Lookout Lighthouse.
     Born in Straits to Stephen A. Gaskill and Lydia Ann "Lillie" Whitehurst, Carl Graham Gaskill (1885-1968) began C.G. Gaskill Company on Front Street about 1905. On June 24, 1908, he married Annie Warren Chadwick. 

     In 1936, R.B. Wheatly sold the circa 1920 house at 709 Ann Street to C.G. Gaskill. The 1940 census noted Carl as a "feed and fertilizer dealer." In the home at the time were Carl 54, wife "Annie" 55, son Orville G. 30, book keeper at "feed and fertilizer house" and daughter-in-law Cleo 27.  In 1948, Carl was a North Carolina delegate to the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia. The Gaskill family  lived in the Ann Street house from 1936 until Carl's death in 1968.
     Gaskill's Hardware was located at 900 Live Oak Street for decades; it closed in February 2013.