Beaufort & Shackleford Banks in 1907 - H.M. Smith

Camp of Mullet Fisherman on Shackelford Banks - 1907

Hugh McCormick Smith (1865-1941) was an American ichthyologist and administrator in the Bureau of Fisheries. At the time he compiled his 1907 book, he was Deputy U.S. Commissioner of Fisheries.

Excerpts below from Smith's book, The Fishes of North Carolina, Raleigh, 1907. Excerpts mention fishes and fisheries in Beaufort and on Shackleford Banks. All images, except Smith's portrait, are part of the original book:

______________________________________

...Dr. Robert E. Coker [1876-1967 ] contributes the following account, which applies particularly to the Beaufort region:

The common mullet, or “jumping mullet,” is the most important food-fish of the Beaufort waters. The mass of the fish consumers of North Carolina and neighboring States demand a cheap fish, and for them the mullet, being of good quality and very abundant, is the chief food fish. The mullet fishery is the largest industry in the State derived from salt-water fishes. The importance of the mullet to the fishermen is increased by the fact that it is taken during the summer when most other fish are scarce. On the whole, the loss of no other fish could so embarrass the fisherman as a failure of mullets, and it seems a very unwise policy to use the small-mesh seines, taking the very small, almost finger-sized mullets, which are next to valueless on the market.

Mullets are taken chiefly with "drag nets", or "hauling nets", worked from sail skiffs, singly or in groups of two to four or more in cooperation. The fish are commonly landed on an exposed shoal or beach, or are "pounded". The method known as "footing" is not economical in the case of mullets, as a considerable number escape by jumping over the cork line, and this plan is followed only when other methods are impracticable. A "drag net", or "hauling net", is a seine 150 to 200 or more yards in length and 40 to 80 or more meshes in depth, with mesh of 1-inch to 1 1/2-inch bar. In mullet fishing in early summer a long shallow net with small mesh is desired, later in the season the deeper nets with larger mesh are used. The size of mesh and length and depth of seine to be used are determined according to the size of fish to be taken, and according to whether they are expected to be found scattered over the shoals or in schools and in deeper water.

In "pounding" mullets on the shoals, if the catch is light, it is customary to break the necks as they are meshed to prevent their escape, but if a heavy catch is made it is not economical to do this. The Portsmouth (North Carolina) mullets have quite a reputation in some of the State markets as a result of the method of taking them and preparing them for market, and this method has grown out of the peculiar conditions prevailing about Portsmouth (on Pamlico Sound), near which place there are a great many shoals where the water is a foot or more in depth. The fishermen, working in groups of 2 to 10 skiffs, surround the mullets ("pound" them) on such a shoal with their seines used in combination, then frighten the fish into the nets, and in order that as few as possible may escape, go about breaking the necks as fast as the mullets are meshed. The fish are left in the nets or in the enclosed area until all have been killed. Then they are collected and taken into the boats. The appearance of their fish has become a matter of pride to Portsmouth fishermen, and great care is taken in preparing them for market; the backbone is removed, the intestinal cavity thoroughly washed and the dark lining of the cavity rubbed off with bagging. When carried to market Portsmouth mullets offer, therefore, a clean and attractive appearance, and are said to be of better flavor; they are eagerly sought in the markets of Washington, N. C, New Bern, and Greenville. While mullets are not fished with purse seines, occasionally when a large school of mullets is seen while looking for menhaden, a good haul is made in such a seine.

At the stationary fisheries, such as the Mullet Pond fishery on Shackleford Banks, a seine similar to the drag net is used. When the lookout reports a school of fish within their grounds, the boat bearing the seine is put off, the staff on one end of the net is left near the beach, and the boat is rowed around the school with the net paying off over the stern (operation called "shooting the net") - The fish are then hauled on the beach. They may be cleaned and salted at the fishery before being sold. While there used to be a number of these fisheries on the banks and islands north of Beaufort, the Mullet Pond fishery is the only one that does now so well as ten or fifteen years ago. This is due, not, perhaps, to diminution in the number of the fish, but to the scattering of them by the more extensive fishing of recent years. A smaller number is now taken from any given area. South of Beaufort there is still a considerable number of these fisheries.

The limit of the length of hauling nets imposed by law (225 yards) is evaded by working in groups. A large area is in fact more readily surrounded by several short seines than by a single long one. Four seines may be used to enclose a diamond-shaped pound, as follows:

Two skiff's take positions together on one side of the area to be enclosed, and the other two at the ends respectively. From each boat one man gets overboard, keeping one end of the seine belonging to his boat. The two skiffs that were together are then rowed apart and toward the initial positions of the other two skiffs, each traversing thus one side of the diamond and "shooting the net" as it goes. Meantime the two skiffs at the ends have been rowed to meet each other at an angle. When these latter skiffs have met (at the fourth angle of the diamond) and the former skiffs have reached the initial positions of the latter, the diamond is complete and each seine occupies one side of it. The fish within the enclosed area may now be frightened into the nets, or, if there is a good current, the staffs, two at each angle, are advanced toward the center and the seines drift with the tide to form gradually flattening loops swinging away from the eight staffs grouped together. Where possible, mullets are landed instead of pounded, and the seines would then be used to form two sides of a larger half-diamond or the circumference of a semi-circle, with the shore as diagonal or diameter. Mullets are shipped chiefly to the markets of North Carolina, Virginia, and the eastern shore of Maryland. Norfolk is a distributing point for neighboring regions of these three states.

While large quantities of mullets are shipped fresh, doubtless more are salted. The leading salt mullet shipper estimates that 20,000 barrels are shipped annually from Beaufort and Morehead City. The process of preparing the salt mullets is simple. The fish are split along the back, cleaned, salted, and placed in a large barrel for 24 hours or more. They are then taken out, allowed to drain, and repacked in a fish barrel; brine is poured over them and a quart of Turks Island salt placed on top. When closed the barrel is ready for shipment. Mullet roe, obtained in the fall (October) is much valued locally, and is shipped to some extent. Charleston, S.C., offers a good market. Some years ago an attempt was made at Beaufort to can the very small mullets. The fish did not sell, probably partly because it was an innovation, partly because of the method of canning. While it may be that with proper method a good canned product could be made, it does not seem expedient to can the young of such an important fish, unless a very good selling product is made.

Along with the jumping mullet occurs the "silverside mullet", but it is not relatively abundant. The local "fork-tail mullet", or "maiden mullet", is probably not a distinct species but a name applied to the medium-sized mullets taken later in the season. The little mullets appearing in October in large schools are supposed to come from Virginia and are sometimes called the "Virginia fleet"…

The mullet is valued next to shrimp as bait in hook-and-line fishing, and its indirect value as a food and bait in nature for other fish must be counted; it is preyed upon by trout, blue-fish, and mackerel, and therefore attracts these less abundant and higher-priced fish.

…Mr. Charles P. Dey, a Beaufort menhaden manufacturer of intelligence and large experience, asserts positively that this species deposits its eggs in November in the ocean a few miles distant from the inlet. Mr. Bell, of Beaufort, also a fish-scrap manufacturer of intelligence and wide experience, maintains that a portion of the spawning is done in Newport and other inside rivers, as some of the large fish are annually taken in those waters in November and December. On November 7, 1903, Mr. Worth secured a menhaden in full roe, and on November 18 he found two males from which the milt was running freely. On December 2 schools of menhaden from 1.5 inches long upward commenced running southward along the coast and were observable from Shackleford Bank; the run increased for 4 days and continued for a week, most of the schools remaining outside but some entering the harbor. Mr. Joseph Lewis, proprietor of the Mullet Pond fishery on Shackleford Bank, states that schools of young menhaden winter in that vicinity and that when the drum comes in February and March the menhaden are present in great quantities and constitute the principal food of the drum…… Half-Beaks inhabit both coasts of North and South America, and is common on our Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It appears to visit the North Carolina coast in spring and remains throughout the summer. In Beaufort Harbor it is abundant about shoals and sandy islands. Yarrow, who gives it the name of red-billed gar, has the following note regarding it in that region:

Abundant during the latter part of August and entire month of September. This species appears to feed along the beach in shallow water, and may be readily taken at night with a torch and scoop net. It is also found in the channel and along the edges of shoals where blue- fish congregate, this fish devouring enormous numbers.

On April 23, 1904, the writer caught about 50 specimens, 7 to 10 inches long, in two seine-hauls on Bird Shoal, Beaufort Harbor, in company with gars, silversides, anchovies, mullets, pin-fish, spots, etc. In August, 1899, many examples 3 to 4 inches long were cast up on Shackleford Beach near Beaufort Inlet. The fish reaches a length of a foot or a little more, and is quite palatable, but is only sparingly eaten in the United States.

…The bonito is one of the best known species of the mackerel family in our waters, being abundant in summer on the Atlantic coast from Massachusetts southward… At Beaufort this fish is known to most of the fishermen as "bonito", but it is not caught in noteworthy numbers. Yarrow noted that it was "tolerably abundant near Shackleford banks”…

…The range heretofore ascribed to the razor-fish has been from the West Indies to Pensacola and Charleston. It is now recorded for the first time from the North Carolina coast. Three specimens 4.25 inches long were collected by the steamer Fish-Hawk off Beaufort in August, 1902, and another specimen is reported to have been taken at the Mullet Pond on Shackleford Bank during the same summer. An example 7 inches long now in the State Museum was obtained in the Wilmington market in the summer of 1884. The species reaches a length of 15 inches…

…The blue-fish is taken in largest quantities in Dare and Carteret counties… Blue-fish are taken by "drifting" for them in the inlet, by "set nets" on the outside, and, in less degree, by "footing them up" with drag nets and in purse seines. The "drifting" is employed chiefly in fishing for blue-fish and, less often, gray trout. The hauling net is put over and boat and net drift with the tide until the fish strike and are meshed. The shoals in Beaufort Inlet offer a favorable place for this plan of fishing. A variation of this is the "drop-net" method; the net is dropped overboard when fish are detected and the fish are then frightened into it. Seines of different mesh may be in readiness to be used according to the size of the fish expected. Two nets may be used in "setting," one running out perpendicularly to the beach, the other making a loop or sort of pound at the other end. The fish swimming parallel to the beach strike the "leader", where some are meshed, while others turn out, going into the "pound", where most of them are meshed. "Footing them up" is the method commonly used inside with all fish except mullet, where it is not practicable to land them. The school or scattered fish are first surrounded with the seine (drag net), one man overboard holding the staff at one end of the seine while the other rows the skiff, "shooting the net" around the region to be dragged; when the circle is complete one staff is stuck into the ground, and the other placed in the skiff; the seine is then gradually pulled in and, if the haul seems to be light, arranged on the stern; but if there is a good catch, the seine is put in over the side of the boat and is afterwards cleared and placed on the stern ready for a new haul. In pulling in the seine one man handles the cork line, the other, standing opposite, the lead line, pulling it under the ball of his foot, which he uses to hold the line to the bottom and, if it comes hard, to paw, or "foot", the line to him.

A purse seine may be 700 or 800 meshes deep and 100 or more fathoms long, with mesh of .75 to 1 inch bar. A purse line passes through rings at the bottom. Such a seine is usually worked by two "purse boats", each with a crew of 6 to 10 men, the whole pertaining to a two-mast schooner or schooner-rigged sharpie. The purse boats are heavy double-ended row boats 25 feet long or longer, and 7 or more feet in width…

…Besides the fishes, the only water animals of noteworthy importance are oysters and quahogs, or round clams. The value of the oysters exceeds that of any fish except the shad, and within a comparatively few years oysters may become the leading fishery product as a result of cultivation and conservative methods. Oystering is conducted in 12 counties, but is of greatest extent in Beaufort, Carteret, Dare, Hyde and Onslow counties. The output in 1902 was 1,022,813 bushels, which sold for $268,363. Quahogs are taken for market in 7 counties, the largest quantities being obtained in Brunswick and Carteret. In 1902 the total yield was nearly 147,000 bushels, which brought $86,662. The increase in the output of this species in the past 15 years has been marked. The only other mollusks now taken for sale are scallops; small quantities are gathered in Carteret County, the product in 1902 being valued at $980.

Among crustaceans the common blue crab is the only species of importance. It is taken chiefly in Carteret County, and almost the entire catch is sold in the soft-shell stage. The value of this fishery in 1902 was $14,653, a sum that could be largely increased if the fishery were more actively prosecuted…

RED DRUM

…The red drum is one of the largest and most valuable fishes of the South Atlantic and Gulf coasts…average weight is about 10 pounds…In North Carolina, where this fish is called “drum,” “red drum,” and “spotted bass,” it is abundant and is a food fish of moderate importance, being caught with nets and lines in the spring, fall and winter. The fishery is most extensive in Carteret County…at Beaufort four grades are recognized by fisherman and dealers: “Puppy drums,” yearling drums,” “two-foot drums,” and “old drums.” The most valued is the yearling, but the two-foot is of nearly the same value; these are shipped to northern markets. 

Read entire scanned original book online.

Correspondence with Historian Charles L. Paul

     In January 2011, I first emailed historian Charles L. Paul. I wanted to thank him for his important research on Beaufort, and let him know I had quoted his work extensively in compiling Porchscapes. At the time, I had access to two online articles (NC History Project, North Carolina Historical Review) and one article published in the 1970 North Carolina Historical Review. I also wanted him to be aware of Beaufort NC History, which I'd been compiling since 2006. Below is Mr. Paul's informative reply to my initial email. Images and links have been inserted.

Charles L. Paul  
The Chowanoka 1997

     "I am the Charles L. Paul whose articles you have referenced, and I am extremely delighted to hear from you. It is so nice to hear from someone who has read seriously some of my work, even though that work took place nearly a half century ago. 
     First of all, allow me to congratulate you on the outstanding work, both artistic and historical, you have been doing on Beaufort. Your painting of Judge Duncan's front porch is absolutely inviting. I wish you could have known him personally. His character would have enhanced your appreciation of your work. If my information is correct, [one of] the Leecraft House is the home in which my paternal great grandfather and great grandmother were married just as the Civil War was coming to a close. [Raymond Luther Paul (1842-1929) married Fannie D. Styron (1841-1921) 20 Oct 1864.]

Great Grandparents Fannie D.
Styron and Raymond L. Paul
Posted on Ancestry.com

     I grew up 18 miles northeast of Beaufort in the village of Davis, but Beaufort was our nearest town and some of my father relatives lived and owned businesses there. In fact, they owned the Front Street property where the Mariners Museum is now located. The fishermen named Davis all moved to Beaufort from Davis Ridge, separated from my original home by a narrow strip of marsh land, following a September 15, 1933 storm which had destroyed their homes. They had been menhaden fishermen before moving to Beaufort and most of them became captains of Harvey Smith's menhaden boats after moving to Beaufort. 

     I still remember the morning after the Parkins [December 1942] sank loaded with menhaden in a winter storm off Atlantic Beach with a number of the Davis family lost and how shocked my parents were to hear the news. Though Blacks and descendants of former slaves, they were considered as members of our community and highly respected. The white midwife that brought me into this world had always made a practice of going to Davis Ridge several days before an expected delivery and live with the expectant mothers to assist them in their delivery. The respect did not end with their removal to Beaufort in 1933.

     Having taught American History at what is now Chowan University for 39 years, (1963-2002) I was well aware of Nicholas Biddle and had read that he had relatives that had lived in Beaufort, but I had no idea that it was his mother and father and that his mother was a native of Beaufort and a member of the Shepherd family. 
     I am also glad to learn more about Farnifold Green and his family. I knew he had been killed in an Indian raid, but I did not realize that Richard Graves, the man who had laid out the town of Beaufort had married Green's widow. I see that some of their descendants eventually resided in Monroe, NC. I also see where you were from Monroe.
 
     You have access to three of my articles, all of which appeared in the North Carolina Historical Review between 1965 and 1970. Allow me to tell you a little about myself and explain how those articles came about. I am a native of the downeast community of Davis, NC, and I have just turned 80 years of age and am somewhat disabled.

G-Grandfather Raymond L. Paul's home in Davis Shore
Posted on Ancestry.com

     Following graduation from Smyrna High School, I fished my father's boat for three years, before being drafted into the Marine Corps for two years during the Korean War. 
     Beginning in the fall of 1953 and using my G.I. Bill benefits, I earned an Associate of Arts Degree at Chowan College and a Bachelor of Arts degree at Carson-Newman College. Wanting to teach history at a church-related college but also wanting to search out the faith the propelled me in that direction, I earned a Master of Divinity Degree at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary on the old Wake Forest College campus at Wake Forest, NC. Then, in 1961, I began my graduate work in history at UNC Chapel Hill, but was then awarded a graduate assistantship at East Carolina University, beginning there in the fall of 1962.  
 

Grandfather Ammie Loren Paul
married Julia Frances Willis in 1896
Posted on Ancestry.com

     With Beaufort being something like a home-town for me and with my awareness that no systematic study of its history had been attempted, I selected Colonial Beaufort as a thesis topic and began researching its records. In the spring of that school year, while still researching my topic and enrolled in graduate classes, my thesis director informed me that he was hosting a regional historical meeting at ECU and needed a speaker for the meeting. He asked me to write a paper based on my research up to that point and read it at the meeting. After securing his promise to read my draft and make suggestions, I consented. Some of the editorial staff of The North Carolina Historical Review were in attendance at the meeting, and several weeks later I received a letter from the editor of the review, Dr. Memory F. Mitchell, saying that if I could document all of the information in my paper to primary sources, the review would like to publish it. I assured her that I could provide the necessary documentation, but that I would have to wait until my degree was completed to get the paper with it documentation in proper format for publication. She agreed without a time limit.
 
     I finished my class work at the end of summer session in 1963, and by that time I had secured a teaching job at Chowan College on the condition that I would complete a Master of Arts degree. Because of my teaching load, I did not finish my research and writing until the spring of 1965; and, after receiving my degree, I prepared the paper for publication that had been written in the spring of 1963 while my research was in its early stages. That paper, with its 1963 name and format, is the 1965 article entitled "Colonial Beaufort." That is why that article has the appearance of a summary of Beaufort colonial history, but nearly all of it was incorporated into Chapter 2 of my thesis, which was entitled "Initial Settlement and the Birth of The Town."
 

Autumn 1970 issue

     The other two articles were simple single chapters from my thesis with a brief introduction to each that would allow them to stand alone as a meaningful unit. The 1967 article, covering Beaufort economy in the colonial era, was Chapter 5, the last chapter and the heart of the thesis explaining Beaufort's very slow growth during its colonial existence, that is, its lack of a convenient access to a large productive hinterland. The 1970 article was Chapter 3 covering Beaufort's development as a colonial town. In the 1970s I prepared for publication another article from part of Chapter 4, a chapter covering society and culture. That article was entitled "The Church in Colonial Carteret," covering both the Anglican establishment throughout the county and the Quakers, the only major dissenter group in the county during the colonial era whose two meeting houses were located along what is now Highway 101 between Beaufort and Harlowe Creek.
 
     I hope you can someday secure access to my thesis and read it, and if that should happen, I hope you will read the footnotes, which are conveniently located at the bottom of each page. They contain a lot on important information." 

_______________________________________________

In 2011, Charles L. Paul (at the age of 81) retyped his entire 1965 thesis, including important footnotes, in order to donate it to the Town of Beaufort, with the agreement that it be available on the Town of Beaufort website: 
Colonial Beaufort: The History of a North Carolina Town

Born in 1930 in Davis, Carteret County, Charles Livingston Paul was the son of John Wesley Paul and Ruby Davis. He taught American History at Chowan College/University in Murfreesboro, NC, for from 1963 until 2002. Mr. Paul currently lives in Warrenton, Virginia.

After corresponding by email for four years, Mr. Paul graciously agreed to write a recommendation for the back cover of my 2nd Beaufort book Beaufort, North Carolina - A Unique Coastal Village Preserved, released June 2015: 

"In the on-line edition of Colonial Beaufort, I expressed the hope that 'some future student of Beaufort's history will strengthen its weaknesses and build on its foundations.'  Mary Warshaw's new book has made a significant contribution toward the fulfillment of that hope. The chief emphasis of her research for this book is on "Beaufort's historic homes and families," two areas that will greatly enhance our knowledge of the town's heretofore untold history." – Charles L. Paul, Professor Emeritus, Chowan University 

Phillips Island

Menhaden plant chimney, Phillips Island
July 2004 – Bland Simpson

An excerpt and photographs from Bland Simpson’s book The Inner Islands: A Carolinian’s Sound Country Chronicle (University of North Carolina Press, Sept. 1, 2007)

Phillips Island
Fifty years ago, many thousands of egret and herons called Lenoxville Point their home—this was the site of the town of Lenoxville, chartered and laid out in 1816 on the west bank of North River’s mouth, just east of Beaufort, but never built. 

Since the mid-1950s this Lenoxville Rookery split, many of the Audubon protectorate moving south from there and setting up on Middle Marsh Island, behind Shackelford Banks, the rest heading several miles west and finding solace in the myrtle and liveoak and yaupon thicket on the north end of little Phillips Island, in Newport River near the Haystacks, the marshes that border Morehead City.

Old gear, Phillips Island
July 2004 – Bland Simpson

In the 1990s much of the Phillips colony moved to one of the Bogue Sound islands—Wood Island, a quarter mile long, nearly fifteen miles west in Bogue Sound, about halfway between Rock Point at Salter Path and Archer Point at Emerald Isle—but the egrets have been returning to Phillips, one of the most visible and viewed of all Carolina’s inner isles, with its red brick chimney standing out against the green thicket nearby. 

People in cars driving across the high span of the Newport River bridge cannot help but have their eyes drawn to this spot of color to the north, and to the bright white egrets circling it or enfolding themselves with their young in the scrub. Those who view Phillips from Town Creek on the Beaufort side may see it of a morning across the emerald-green marsh and, as the sun cuts through a slow-moving scud silvergray as smoke and suddenly lights up the old chimney like an obelisk of red clay, gasp.

Inside the chimney, Phillips Island
July 2004 - Bland Simpson

Long ago the lone chimney served a fish plant, Melt Lee’s Newport Fisheries, one of  Carteret County’s menhaden cookers, and now near the brick tower’s base has sprouted an old gear, its long shaft sprung and bent over like some enormous Picassoan daisy. In the salt grass beyond the chimney thicket stood a clutch of metal plates, rusty brown boxes wherein the menhaden were once boiled down, reduced to fishmeal for feed or fertilizer before the business soured and failed after WWI. 

Local folks approaching seventy cannot recall the factory as a working place, and believed it went out of business in the 1930s or ‘40s. Yet Corinne Webb Geer remembered all too well that her grandfather, Irving Davis, had fallen from a scaffold while working at the Phillips Island plant and died from his injuries. In its time a man named Ed Corham ran the plant, and then Llewellyn Phillips—whose family owns the island yet and whence it takes its name—took over, buying firm, factory and gear for $2,701 in 1932. When the old fish plant finally burned one late September night in 1953, hundreds of people drove out and parked on the Beaufort-to-Morehead causeway to watch the great blaze…"

Humphrey Family, Holly Grove Dairy and Phillips Island

J.W. Humphrey

Humphrey Children

John William Humphrey (1884‒1942) was born in Craven County, NC to John W. Humphrey and Julia Eleanor Arnold. On December 22, 1910, John William Humphrey married Eva Lane Pittman (1886‒1973). They were parents of John "Jack" Pittman Humphrey (1913‒2002), Harriette "Hattie" Lee Humphrey (1914‒2004), Marjorie Faye Humphrey (1918‒2015), and Robert William Pittman Humphrey (1922‒1977), all born in Clarks, Craven County.
 
About 1925, John William and Eva Humphrey moved the family to Beaufort, where they owned and operated Holly Grove Dairy "in the outskirts of Beaufort near the Beaufort Atlantic Highway" (The Beaufort News 1939).

Holly Grove Dairy

In 1941, the Humphrey family purchased 217 Front Street. Members of the Humphrey family owned and lived here until 2007.
The home, the Thomas-Humphrey House circa 1909, was built by Thomas Thomas (1883‒1937), on the site of "the old Manney house," which Thomas purchased for $1950. ( Thomas Thomas, son of William Alonzo Thomas and Rosetta Howland Manney, was the grandson of Capt. Thomas Thomas and Martha Dudley Murray.)

On December 26, 1938, John William and Eva Humphrey’s daughter "Hattie" married Llewellyn Phillips (1903‒1998), born in Morehead City to Herbert Orlanda Phillips and Mattie H. Hancock. 

"Hattie" Lee Humphrey

Llewellyn Phillips

"Hattie" graduated from East Carolina Teachers College; the 1934 year book noted her as President of Student Government Association, among other superlatives. 

Llewellyn Phillips graduated from the University of North Carolina with a law degree. By 1930, he was recorded at 1006 Evans Street in Morehead City and noted as a lawyer in private practice. 

By 1940, Llewellyn and "Hattie" were living on Evans Street with his mother Mattie Phillips. Llewellyn and his brother H. Orlanda Phillips were recorded as partners in "fish scrap manufacturing."

In 1932, the Phillips brothers purchased Newport Fisheries menhaden plant, including the factory and gear for $2,701. 

The old fish plant burned in September 1953.
(Menhaden plant chimney, Phillips Island, courtesy Bland Simpson, July 2004)

Phillips Island

Harvey Ward Smith and "The Fish Meal Company"

 The Fish Meal Company on Town Creek

Harvey Ward Smith (1908‒1976) was born in Columbia City, Whitney County, Indiana, the son of Jonah Howard Smith and Blanche Opal Grimes. On June 29, 1940, Harvey married Evelyn Marie Chadwick, in Heathsville, Virginia.

Harvey’s father, Jonah Howard Smith (1879‒1951) was born in East Patchogue, Suffolk County, New York. In 1907, he married Blanche Opal Smith in Valparaiso, Indiana. Their children included Harvey, Otis H., Gladys, Gilbert, and Janice. Both J. Howard Smith and wife Blanche died in Red Bank, Monmouth County, New Jersey.

On June 29, 1940, Harvey married Evelyn Marie Chadwick, in Heathsville, Virginia. Evelyn Marie Chadwick (1911–1986) was born in Beaufort to Richard Whitehurst Chadwick and Maude Hunter Quick. Evelyn Marie Chadwick’s 5th great grandfather, Samuel Chadwick (1695‒1749), received the first whaling permit in Carteret County on December 29, 1725, “for three fishing boats to whale.”

By the 1940s, J. Howard Smith owned nine menhaden plants—the largest and parent plant was located in Port Monmouth, New Jersey. The plants were managed by Smith and his three sons.

The Beaufort plant, The Fish Meal Company, known locally as Smith’s, was managed by Harvey Smith, and was the largest in North Carolina. Purchase in 1927, the plant had been operated by Levering Brothers of Baltimore. Located on Town Creek, the plant covered 2 ½ acres. Among the buildings was a 100x250 foot warehouse which included tracks of the Smith spur of the Beaufort & Morehead Railroad. The dining hall was often open to dancing to visiting members of the Masonic Order, and other celebrations; Mrs. Smith often entertained friends at luncheons. The Smith home was on the property. The plant also had its own boatyard, where boats were built each year.
The Fish Meal Company operated from 10 to 18 boats during the season, employing 600 to 700 men in the plant and on boats that cruised between Hatteras and Southport.

Harvey Smith’s widow Evelyn once owned the home at 209 Front Street. 

 

In the 1980s, Mrs. Smith donated land on Front Street for a new maritime museum; opened in 1985, the museum displays many artifacts collected by Mr. Smith. 

 

In 1982, Mrs. Smith donated the old Paul Motor Company across from the museum; this was converted for boat building and later named the Harvey W. Smith Watercraft Center.

Harvey Ward Smith has an inscription "Grand Master of Masons of North Carolina 1960" on his gravestone in St. Paul's Episcopal Church Cemetery.

Photographs courtesy "Raising the Story of Menhaden Fishing."

Beaufort, North Carolina by Tony P. Wrenn

Included in PORCHSCAPES: THE COLORS OF BEAUFORT by Mary Warshaw

BEAUFORT, NORTH CAROLINA
An Introduction by Tony P. Wrenn

Who knows when a love affair begins or what will stoke it as it develops. Mine with Beaufort has been around since 1942 when I began collecting post cards and became aware of the North Carolina coast. History was, even then, my main interest and I sought not just cards but whatever any chamber of commerce or visitor agency could provide. Carteret County, Beaufort, Fort Macon and Cape Lookout became implanted in my mind and have not since been forgotten.
 
It was a long distance love affair until 1954 when I completed my junior year at Wake Forest and sought employment away from the tobacco farm on which I had, to that time, spent my summers. I accepted employment with the North Carolina State Park System at Fort Macon State Park that summer, and Beaufort sun, sand and sea became a reality.

The fort was built to protect Beaufort harbor and the shipping lanes from the Atlantic into it. A brick pentagonal fort of unusual size and exceptional workmanship and beauty, Fort Macon more than lived up to my childhood visions of it, as it became a place I haunted and was haunted by. Used in every war through World War II, it still displayed graffiti lampooning the Nazis and their allies. History literally leapt off the walls to you.

On off hours from my park duties, I walked the sandy beach between the state park beach, where we lived and worked, and Fort Macon. Early on I stumbled onto the one afternoon each week when a Marine from Cherry Point came to the fort with his trumpet. As he practiced in one of the casemates—he frequently changed location—I and others gathered to wander through the fort, amazed by its incredible capability to capture and echo sound. As sunset approached it became sound and light fused into son et lumière at its very best.

Another day, when rain drove me inside during a thunder storm, I discovered that Nature was an equally memorable musician. Thunder, reverberating through the casemates, water rushing through the drains and waves smashing against jetties, provided water music of unequaled intensity. During such times one could easily imagine being in the midst of battle—for the fort came alive with sound.

Years later, in 1970, at an Easter sunrise service within the fort, the combination of horns, percussion and human choirs, performing from the steps that led into the casemate surrounded parade, produced music that few cathedrals—designed to contain and control sound—could match. A storm could have added the deep notes of a mighty pipe organ to the tamer sound of choir and lesser instruments, but no storm was needed. The architectural beauty of the fort, and its ability as a sounding board, made that sunrise service one I shall never forget.

In 1954, I also discovered Cape Lookout, at the southern end of the Outer Banks, the entrance from the Atlantic Ocean to the Beaufort Channel. Its jeweled marking, substantial Lighthouse Keeper’s House, surround of dunes and their grasses, and sound of the Atlantic, made Cape Lookout another place to spend as much time as possible. I often sat on the dunes and read or dreamed.

Between the fort and the lighthouse, facing south toward the Atlantic, I found Beaufort to be more than I had thought it to be. I hitched a ride over whenever I could and wandered the streets, often sitting by the water or on a bench within the Old Burying Ground, sometimes on someone’s front steps with a sandwich and soda, absorbing Beaufort. What was so amazing to me was that it was all there. The aluminum and vinyl siding salesmen had made no local inroads. Ticky-tacky had not been substituted for the solidity of the past, and almost nowhere could one find a mobile home in front of an old house being torn down, something that elsewhere had become the norm for American small towns.

Beaufort’s buildings were almost exclusively of wood, and painted white. There were no Painted Ladies, but then there were few Queen Anne houses. Most houses were vernacular, satisfying the needs of the climate and the builders. Though Beauforters were aware of the tastes and capabilities of other areas—after all, their livelihood was mainly the sea and they traveled it—they were unselfconscious in the application of that taste in Beaufort.

Their outlook was outward, to the sea both northward and southward. The train had not connected Beaufort to inland North Carolina and the rest of America until 1906, and highway access, Route 70, was not connected to inland North Carolina until 1926. The Old Burying Ground showed marked stones and iron from Boston, Charleston, Baltimore, Brooklyn and Purdy’s Station, New York, but from within North Carolina, only Wilmington makers appeared, and Wilmington was a port just to the south.

There were no mansions in Beaufort, and little resemblance, until the twentieth century, to inland North Carolina. Gable-roofed houses might show five or more planes as the roof shifted pitch to cover the house below. Raking cornices were flush and simple. Porches often had no ceilings but openings at second-story or attic-floor levels to pull sea breezes into and cool upper levels. Clearly the influence was from the islands southward and not from inland North Carolina or Virginia to the north. The Beaufort porch and roofline is almost completely unknown in other area towns and cities.

I went back to Wake Forest in 1954, graduated in 1955 and spent the next four years in the Army, discovering small towns of great charm throughout Europe. Back home, out of the Army, I moved to Washington, DC, studied and found employment at the National Archives, and then the National Trust for Historic Preservation. In November 1969 Dr. H. G. Jones, of the then North Carolina Department of Archives and History, asked me to undertake a study to locate and copy documentary material relating to Fort Macon, constructed between 1826 and 1834, and then undertake an architectural survey of Beaufort.

Saying “yes” was easy, and I cleared up other duties almost immediately and sped to Beaufort. Eventually I located more than 100 sheets of pre-1900 drawings, plans and elevations of the fort and its supporting buildings in repositories in North Carolina, Washington and New York. Surveys, maps, and several thousand sheets of unpublished material relating to the construction appearance or use of the fort, were copied many more carded. We were able to place Robert E. Lee among the Corps of Engineers associated with annual inspections of the fort, and identify him as designer of jetties to protect the fort from washing into the sea as had two previous forts.

For the first time I could live in Beaufort, and found a garage apartment to the rear of a house that overlooked the water. It was private, and my landlords were always solicitous of my safety, my need to get work done—and my appetite.

Driving into town in 1970 I noticed teams of young people wading in the shoals around town, evidently listening to team leaders, taking notes and collecting samples. Marine biology, which had come to Beaufort in the nineteenth century with Johns Hopkins and established permanent residence with the Center for Estuarine and Menhaden Research early on, had moved from international research facilities on Piver’s Island, into the local school system.

Marine research and study at all levels was a natural. Beaufort was oriented southward, toward the Atlantic Ocean, and its most noticeable occupation was fishing and fish related industries. Later I learned just what this research meant to the area. Dr. John Costlow, who headed Duke University’s research facility, invited me to an afternoon cocktail party, the first I had been invited to in Beaufort. Dr. Costlow and his wife held these affairs for researchers, students and visitors to the Duke facility and others who might be interested in marine biology. In their simple frame house on Ann Street I discovered an international group using at least five languages in addition to English. It would have been difficult to find more depth in any other educational or cultural center.

I sometimes eavesdropped, or was invited into conversations on menhaden, and the aroma from the smoke they spread over town when the fleet was in and the fish were being cooked. Some turned up their noses, but most were pleased at the continuation of an industry a couple of centuries old. Some were pleased for another reason as well, for those with financial interests smelled not just fish being cooked, but “Money!”

I walked every block and looked at every building, recording and photographing 194 buildings—I listed 135 as historically or architecturally important, others important as part of the Beaufort scene. Forty years later I would probably include more in both categories. I often talked with residents. The town may have been insular, but there was nothing insular about those conversations. They ranged from the art of Turner and Reynolds to the need to preserve stands of first growth bald cypress.

After the Beaufort survey was completed I returned to Beaufort twice to “house sit” Jean and Copeland Kell’s second-level home at The Cedars. There was very little difference looking out over the Atlantic from views owners had in earlier years. Sitting on the second-level porch, reading, dreaming, having a meal, listening to the pianist who lived downstairs, made almost every day dream time. One could look almost directly south, across Town Marsh and Bird Island Shoals to Fort Macon and the open beach beyond. The fort itself was hidden behind sand barriers, but the Coast Guard Station was within ones line of vision and the fort easy to spot in relation to the station.

The channel into the state port at Morehead City crossed directly across Beaufort’s waterfront and ships entering and leaving the port presented broadside views to Beaufort. Fishing boats came and went, and at any given time there may have been twenty or more in the harbor—the cut between Town Marsh and Front Street. During the menhaden season one could almost walk across the water to Town Marsh by stepping from boat to boat. Sail was frequently seen, as was the occasional grand yacht that had strayed from the Inland Waterway.

Wild marsh ponies grazed on Town Marsh. Porpoise occasionally broke water at play in the cut, within a hundred feet of Front Street. There was never a time when there was nothing to see or feel, for sea breezes always kept the porch comfortable and peaceful. I can never again think of Beaufort without thinking of the serenity, comfort and peace of that porch. And, as hard as I try, I can never think of a moment in Beaufort when I was bored.

In the report that I did after the Beaufort architectural survey was completed in 1970, I quoted descriptions of Beaufort from the eighteenth, nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Little had changed in descriptions of the town or the pleasures of being there. My own memories are also from a past century, the last half of the twentieth, and again—little has changed.

In the twenty-first century Beaufort survives—simple, pure, friendly and aware. For romantics such as I, it is the sort of place one falls in love with. I will spend future hours with this book, learning much that is new to me—and dreaming. Memories will come back, and they will be good ones, for Beaufort is that rare American survival that not only endures, but has kept its soul.

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Tony P. Wrenn’s 1970 72-page report "Beaufort, North Carolina," provided basic historical and architectural information on which long range preservation plans could be based. 

It also delineated a historic district, established restoration principles, objectives and recommendations. 

This report was used in the application for the Beaufort historic district to be placed on the National Register of Historic Places. Wrenn also wrote the nomination for Fort Macon's entry onto the National Register of Historic Places.

Downtown Business Fire - December 1958

Carteret County News-Times - Tuesday, December 16, 1958

 

 Blaze Cleans Out Nine Businesses

Large Part of Business Section Hit 

The front of the Potter Building falls on Front Street as the supporting beam is pulled out by a cable being reeled in by a Carolina Power Light Co. truck. The walls, while standing, were declared a hazard to traffic. The street light in front of the building, only 6 feet from the fires, did not break from the heat. A plate glass window in Bell’s Drug Store, across the street, was cracked.

 

 

 

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    Nine Beaufort businesses were burned out in a devastating fire in freezing weather Thursday night and Friday morning [Dec 12-13]. Although several businesses had not completed totaling their damages by yesterday, the overall loss is estimated at $175,000.

    The fire destroyed House’s Drug Store at Craven and Front Street, Herring’s Jewelry Store, Potter’s Grocery Store, and above those stores, Dr. L.W. Moore’s office, Dr. M.T. Lewis’s office, and the Durham Life Insurance office; across Craven Street from House’s, the Service Shoe Shop, the Bargain Center and Western Union.

    The fire broke out in the furnace room located at the rear of the Joe House Drug Store. J.P. George, chief engineer of the menhaden boat Elizabeth M. Froehlich, spotted the fire at 11:50 Thursday night and ran to box 17 at Front and Queen Streets to turn in the alarm.

    Engineer Allen Conway was on duty at the fire station and left as soon as the alarm sounded. With the help of fishermen, Conway began pumping water through the rear window of the drug store. He used the 500-gallon reserve in his truck and pumped from the hydrant at Ann and Craven Streets until the water supply ran out. 
    In the meantime, engineer Elmond Rhue went to the fire station and got another pump truck, which was manned by volunteer firemen, as was the aerial ladder truck.
    Fire chief Charles Harrell sent word to Morehead City, Fort Macon Coast Guard station, and Cherry Point, asking for help. 
    The alarm sounded in Morehead City at 1:30 a.m. and Chief Joe Fulcher and 10 firemen took a pump truck to Beaufort. Two Morehead City firemen heard the Beaufort alarm and were already in Beaufort when the Morehead City truck arrived.
    The water supply gave out just before the Morehead City truck arrived, so the Morehead firemen drove to the Moore dock in front of the post office and started pumping salt water.

    Beaufort firemen, who said they had the fire under control when the water gave out, also put hoses overboard and began pumping. By the time the trucks could get water back on the fire, it was blazing completely out of control. Coast Guardsmen from Fort Macon arrived about 3 a.m. with a 1,000-gallon-per-minute pump, which they put overboard from the Sinclair dock across the street from the burning building.

    With the Beaufort, Morehead City, and Coast Guard firemen working, and the Cherry Point fire department standing by, the blaze was brought under control about 5 a.m.
    By this time, the intense heat had set fire to the roof of the wooden building housing the Western Union office and the Bargain Center, a new and used clothing store.
    Also damaged by the fire was the Service Shoe Shop on Craven Street. Firemen battled the flames on the wooden structure until 6:30 a.m. before getting that fire out. The building must be considered a loss, however, since the town zoning ordinance prohibits the rebuilding of wooden structures in the downtown fire zone.
    Firemen who fought the fire during the early hours of the morning had plenty of help from nearby residents and businesses.

    As soon as the fire alarm went in, Mason Insurance Agency opened its doors to firemen to come in and get warm. Later in the morning, coffee was available in the office. Mr. and Mrs. Holden Ballou made coffee in the Dora Dinette until the power went off; then they moved to Holden’s on Turner Street.
    The Froehlich spotlight was turned on the blaze, and was of great help to the firemen when the electricity went off. The cook on the pogy boat also served coffee to the firemen.
Snowden Thompson was given credit for serving coffee to the firemen on Craven Street. He was using an eight-cup percolator. Others also sent coffee to the firemen.
    C.W. Williams, manager of Carolina Water Company, explained that a mechanical failure, caused by freezing or corrosion, in the new water aerator system was responsible for failure of the water supply.

    A series of valves and switches is designed to keep the town water tank full at all times. The tank holds 10,800 gallons but at the time of the fire it was probably less than half full.
    Mr. Williams said the water company knew nothing about the fire until 2 a.m., when the water gave out. Water company workmen went to the pump house and had the pumps operating within a few minutes, but all the lines were drained and the tank was empty, so it took considerable time before any pressure built up.
    The pumps deliver 600 gallons per minute into the tank when they are operating at full speed. The two Beaufort fire trucks that were pumping water at the fire are capable of drawing 1,500 gallons per minute from the water lines.

    Chief Harrell was the only fireman injured during the night. He slipped and sprained his wrist when he fell on the icy street.
    It was the last fire for Julius F. Duncan Jr. 44, who was found dead on his front porch about 5 a.m. Mr. Duncan had helped supervise the laying of hose to the fire and was busy through the night. He left the fire about 15 minutes before he was found. The cause of death was said to be a heart attack.
    The entire Beaufort Fire Department turned out to serve as honorary pallbearers at Mr. Duncan’s funeral Saturday afternoon.

    Coast Guardsmen who helped fight the fire in Beaufort Friday morning were ENC Earl Sells, EN/3 Norvie Gillikiln, EN/3 Samuel Wiersteiner, YN/3 Frank Johnson, SN Aucie Farmer, SN Lewis McLain, and SA Albert Gillikin. They manned a 1,000-gallon-per-minute pump drawing water from Taylor’s Creek.

Most Burned-Out Businesses Are Now Back in Operation

 

This section of the east wall of the Potter Building collapsed when a Carolina Power and Light truck began to reel in a cable attached to the wall.

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Of the nine businesses damaged in the Beaufort fire, most are now reopened.
    Open now is Herring’s Jewelry store in the former Stamper jewelry store location on the south side of Front Street; Potter’s Grocery at 120 Turner in the grocery store formerly operated by F.L. Simmons; Dr. L.W. Moore and Durham Life Insurance Co. on the second floor of the Merrill building; Western Union in a temporary office on Craven Street, and Service Shoe Shop, next to Abbott Morris’s on S. 8th Street, Morehead City.

    Dr. M.T. Lewis, whose office was in the Potter building, said that he will reopen an office in Beaufort somewhere, but by noon yesterday he didn’t know where. He estimated his loss in the fire at $8,000 to $10,000. He was partially covered by insurance.
    It is not expected that the Bargain Center, operated by Mrs. Roger Williams, Gloucester, will reopen. The place was robbed several weeks ago, and now the fire, has taken its toll. The Joe House drug store, which Mr. House had been interested in selling, will not reopen.

    Most of the damage done to Western Union, the Bargain Center, and the Service Shoe Shop, all located on the northeast corner of Craven and Front, was by water. The top part of the building burned and water poured through to the first floor. The Service Shoe Shop was operated by John H. Eaton II, Morehead City.
    B.C. Vickery, manager of the Western Union office, said he hopes to be in his temporary office today. Since the fire, he has been accepting telegrams from persons wherever they may see him, and phoning them or taking them to the Morehead City office for sending.
    The shoe shop, Bargain Center and Western Union were located in a building owned by Mrs. M. Leslie Davis, Beaufort, and Robert Lee Humber, Greenville.

    All of the office equipment, desks, typewriters, adding machines, and file of Durham Life Insurance Co. were destroyed. That office is now located across from Dr. David Farrior’s office in the Merrill building.
    Salesmen operating from the office are Stanley Potter Jr., Jack Gonsoulin, Frank Fulford, all of Beaufort; J.C. Davis, Davis, and James Pitchford, Morehead City.    James and Gilbert Potter, and Jarvis Herring express their appreciation to all the persons who helped them get merchandise out of their stores.
    The Potters said that they have saved all their bookkeeping accounts and about $150 worth of canned goods. They were able to meet all their menhaden boat orders Saturday night as usual and expected to have the store fully restocked by last night.
    “We’d like to thank the fishermen, Coast Guard, fire department, and all our friends who helped,” the Potters said yesterday.
    Mr. Herring said, “I’d like to thank each one who helped, individually and personally, but I don’t know everybody who helped to get things out of my store.”
    Herrings were open for business at their new location Saturday morning. It was the second move for Herrings in less than five weeks. The store moved from the northeast corner of Front and Craven to the former B.A. Bell location in November.
    Mr. Herring said that he opened his safe yesterday morning and all of the rings, watches and other items that were being repaired for customers are intact. “Lots of people who had brought things to me for repair wanted to know about their items. They’re safe and they can pick them up,” Mr. Herring said.

Bread and produce counters and some canned goods were saved from Potter’s Store and put on the sidewalk in front of Jim Wheatley’s men’s store. Jarvis Herring managed to save most of his inventory from the jewelry store, but nothing was saved from House Drug Store, where the fire started. Ice coats the sidewalks and streets.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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     Although fire started to spread to the roof of the building where Stampers jewelry store is now located, it was checked. Stampers started moving things out of their store, but flames didn’t get that far. The only damage reported there was to a part of the awning when a beam from the burning building fell.

    The loss in Dr. Moore’s office was estimated at $35,000. This included x-ray equipment, office and medical equipment. All bookkeeping records were lost as well as patient’s records, some of them going back as far as 27 years. Patients were already flocking to Dr. Moore’s relocated office yesterday morning.

    The Potter building was built in 1927 by J.H. Potter. It is now owned by his heirs, with Miss Nannie Potter holding a lifetime interest in it. No decision had been made yesterday as to whether the building would be replaced.
    At one time it housed the Potter Emergency Hospital, the Beaufort post office, and the following doctors’ offices: Dr. C.S. Maxwell, Dr. Hendrix, Dr. O.H. Johnson, Dr. F.E. Hyde, and Dr. Theodore Salter.
    Most of the businesses in the Potter building were partially insured.

Joe House Will Not Reopen, Collects Bills at Bell’s Drug

    Joe House, whose drug store burned Thursday night, said yesterday that he has gone out of business, but he urges that everyone who owes him money to please make payment.
    Mr. House’s books, account, files, and prescriptions were completely wiped out. Although he carried some insurance, it will not meet the total loss, which he estimates at $25,000, including accounts receivable. 
    Those who owe him will be of utmost help if they will pay him so that he can, in turn, pay his creditors, Mr. House explains. Persons may pay their House Drug store bills by seeing Mr. House between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. daily at Bell’s Drug store or sending him checks or money orders.
    “I thank people for their kindness during and since the fire,” Mr. House remarked, “and for their business in past years, but I’m too old to start in again.”
    The druggist says he will help out other drug stores in the pharmacy departments as they may need him.
    He retrieved his safe from the debris Saturday and everything in it as safe. Unfortunately, Mr. House said, he had not put his account books in the safe when he closed the store Thursday night. Narcotics, which were kept in the safe, were not damaged.

    Death Claims Julius Duncan Jr.

    Julius Fletcher Duncan Jr., 44, died suddenly Friday morning at his home. Funeral services were conducted in St. Paul’s Episcopal Church Saturday at 3:30 by the Rev. C. Edward Sharp, rector. Interment was in the church cemetery.
    Surviving are his wife, Mrs. Sara Rumley Duncan; his father Julius F. Duncan; one sister, Mrs. Emily D. Wells of Rocky Mount; and one brother, David D. Duncan of Newark, N.J.
    Mr. Duncan was a past chief of the Beaufort fire department and an active fireman. He was also active in the Episcopal church, having served as vestryman. Prior to an illness, brought on by heart disease, he was employed at Paul Motor Co., Beaufort.
    Death was attributed to a heart attack suffered at about 5 o’clock Friday morning after he returned from fighting the fire in the Beaufort business section. He was found, by his wife, on the front porch of his home.