Carteret County's place in the state's history is celebrated and documented in the fact that so many of our artists and craftsmen have received the NC Folk Heritage Awards. Their work, and their lives, are recognized and valued as part of North Carolina's rich cultural heritage.
Art Form: Folk/Traditional Crafts and Visual Arts
For many years--centuries, perhaps--large flocks of redheads, canvasbacks, blackheads, pintails,and geese wintered on Core Sound and were a major food source for people living in the region. By the mid19th century, the wildfowl were attracting numerous hunters from the upper Chesapeake area, many of whom brought decoys with them. Local residents--menhaden fishermen, oystermen,and others who made a living on the water--generally carved their own rough wooden decoys from locally available materials. They easily appropriated ideas from the Chesapeake decoys. Eventually the great flocks disappeared, laws curtailed hunting, the hunting lodges closed, and inexpensive plastic decoys came on the market. Many decoy makers put away their tools, but not Homer Fulcher or Julian Hamilton Jr.
Homer Fulcher was born in Stacy, a small community well known for its decoy carvers. "Well, Stacy was the carvingest community in [Carteret] County," explained "Mr. Homer," as he was known around Core Sound. "In any direction I looked from the old home place, there would be a wood carver." Like others in the community, he used decoys to hunt for food. "Any time we killed more ducks or geese than we'd eat, there were right many in the community that could use them," he reported.
Mr. Homer learned how to carve from watching his father, Charlie Wallace Fulcher, and their neighbors. These older fishermen would carve when it was too stormy to go out on the water, often using scraps of juniper from boat builders or debris that had washed up on the shore. They smoothed the decoys' rough edges with broken glass and covered them with boat paint. The birds Mr. Homer later carved were larger and more carefully painted than the working decoys he used to make, but they still had the Core Sound touch--true to form without being overly realistic. "Not too much detail," he explained. "I like to do it so you'll think they got a personality and are Core Sound ducks right on."
His friend and fellow decoy carver, Julian Hamilton Jr., was one of the most knowledgeable waterfowl historians in the state. A breeder with a phenomenal knowledge of different varieties of birds, "Jul" kept hundreds of ducks, geese, turkeys, guineas, peafowl, pheasants, and chickens in his backyard. Decoy making, for him, was an extension of his love of the region's wildlife.
A collector and recognized authority on old decoys, Julian Hamilton Jr., could identify a decoy's maker with a glance. He learned to recognize different styles of carving while growing up in Beaufort, when he helped his father buy used decoys, fix them up, and resell them. "See, I had to keep all the decoys up, all that got busted," he explained. "That's the way I started out." He learned some techniques from Carteret County's celebrated decoy carver, Mitchell Fulcher. Close observation of the birds themselves taught him even more.
Decoys today are more likely to ride out their days on mantels than on the water, but they still have work to do. Those by Homer Fulcher and Julian Hamilton Jr. remind the Core Sound community of its particular artistic and occupational heritage. They are symbols of a way of life that values and understands both waterfowl and the region's history. The carvers knew this. Reflecting on his Folk Heritage Award, Mr. Homer declared, "I'm proud to represent the old way--them fellows that have gone on!"
Art Form: Folk/Traditional Crafts and Visual Arts
Art Form: Folk/Traditional Crafts and Visual Arts
Julian Guthrie built his first wooden deadrise sail skiff in 1930 when he was twelve years old. He built it, he said, just to see if he could do it. Like other boatbuilders on Harkers Island, he hunted the local maritime forest for raw materials such as branches with the correct angles for making natural knees for the skiff. For the frame, he searched for heart pine or oak, and for the sides, juniper.
"A saw, a hammer, and a hatchet" were Guthrie's first boatbuilding tools. The wind-sculpted oaks sheltered his outdoor workshop for those early skiffs. His rare boatbuilding talents became evident when he built his boats without first drawing up plans or half models. He took his measurements by the "rack of the eye." How did he know his lines were true? "I just go off a ways and look at her," he said, "and if she don't look right, I change her."
In Carteret County, and especially among family members there, Guthrie could call on tradition and experience to help him complete his precocious boat projects. His uncle, for whom he built that first skiff, and his grandfather were among the many wooden boatbuilders that Harkers Island has produced. His mother, Marian Nelson Guthrie, from Brown's Island just north of Harkers Island, also came from a family of fishers and seafaring people.
The tradition originates, in part, from the 19th century community of Diamond City, a windswept outpost on Shackleford Banks once served by the Cape Lookout lighthouse. Diamond City was a fishing and lightering village where residents who wanted boats built their own. A series of severe hurricanes in 1898 and 1899 prompted the entire population of Diamond City to relocate. Julian Guthrie's father, a fisherman who was born in Diamond City, was among those who moved to Harkers Island.
"There was always something to do," Mr. Guthrie said about growing up on the island. The Guthries kept a garden, hunted, and fished for croakers and trout and mullet. During the seasons, they would shrimp and clam. Occasionally, they built a boat to sell. Guthrie remembered that it was a good life, and fun.
For about 35 years, Guthrie owned and operated Hi-Tide, a boatbuilding shop on the island. From his shop, he sold boats from Maryland to Florida. There he expanded his designs from the 20-foot skiff to 85-foot yachts and trawlers. He also created the "Red Snapper," a large workboat to accommodate commercial fishermen who complained that they could not stay out long enough to be cost effective. In his design, a styrofoam-insulated box in the boat holds 20,000 lbs. of fish and tons of ice, a capacity that allows the boat to be out for a week at a time.
Guthrie retired from his shop in 1985, but his influence continued. Over the years, he shared his talents with younger builders who remain in the business today. He was honored at UNC-Wilmington by the Institute for Human Potential with its "Living Treasure of North Carolina" award. His most enduring reward, however, was more pervasive and daily: the "Guthrie Boat" is a recognizable boat type today along the southern end of the East Coast. Many folks would own nothing else.
Art Form: Folk/Traditional Music
"I think you can live a life and sing blues. Even doctors, lawyers, and preachers, I tell them, I say 'Y'all have the blues at times.' You lose a loved one and you're sad--that's blues. Lose your money, that's blues. Through our lives somewhere seems like we all have the blues."
Richard "Big Boy" Henry knows a lot about the blues, for he has been singing them since he was a boy. Born in Beaufort in 1921, he moved with his family to New Bern when he was twelve. Bluesmen who played on street corners and in juke joints were part of a rich African American musical culture that thrived in the town during the Depression. One itinerant South Carolinian, Fred Miller, had a profound influence on young Richard Henry. "He was a great guitarist, but he couldn't sing," remembers Mr. Henry. "And he said 'Richard, why don't you come go around with me. We might could pick up a few pennies at the house parties and dances and fish fries.'"
To Miller's accompaniment, Mr. Henry sang popular blues songs that he picked up from records or other singers. From his partner, he also learned the rudiments of blues guitar. After Miller moved to New York, Big Boy began visiting the city to continue their partnership. There he met other Piedmont bluesmen, including Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, who accompanied Henry in a recording session in 1951. Disappointed that these recordings were never issued, Big Boy returned home to New Bern and laid his guitar down.
During the 1950s and '60s, Mr. Henry supported his family by working on menhaden crews, fishing his own nets, oystering, and running a grocery store. He also preached in local churches, though he never accepted money for his services. In 1971, he moved back to his family home in Beaufort, where some younger musicians recognized him and encouraged him to return to playing. "If you love something, it's hard for you to quit," he explains. "And that's the way it was with me about the music. The minute I picked it up, it all come back to me."
Though arthritis has diminished his abilities as a guitarist, Mr. Henry's voice remains forceful and expressive. He is a creative singer, re-interpreting blues standards as well as composing his own songs about current events and local happenings. "Mr. President," written in response to cuts in social welfare programs in the 1980s, earned him a W.C. Handy Award from the Blues Foundation.
To help preserve blues music, Mr. Henry has taken many young musicians under his tutelage. In addition, he has encouraged older members of his community to maintain and record an important worksong tradition once heard along the coast. Interested in folklorists' attempts to document the worksongs sung by himself and other African Americans who fished on menhaden boats, he helped organize a group of retired fisherman to re-create the singing. He also encouraged the group, now known as the Menhaden Chanteymen, to share their music with a wider public.
Such acts of selflessness have given him a reputation as a kind-hearted and generous man, quite different from the popular image of the restless and self-focused bluesman. For Mr. Henry, singing blues is a blessing rather than a curse. "They're in my heart, not because I'm troubled that much now. But I just love to look back. And things that are happening to other people, I like to sing about."
Art Form: Folk/Traditional Music
For more than a century, folklorists and ballad hunters have mined the North Carolina mountains for folksongs and traditional crafts, virtually unaware that such treasures could be found in abundance along the watery byways of the coast. Many of the richest folk traditions in the state are associated with maritime occupations, or "working the water," as people say.
In the town of Beaufort, in Carteret County, commercial fishing enterprises have long operated fleets to net huge catches of menhaden, or shad fish, as they're more commonly called by the local fishermen. In processing facilities along the water, the fish are converted to a remarkable variety of uses, from feeds and fertilizers to paints and perfumes.
The ship-board crews employed by the fisheries have been predominantly black over the years, and the work assigned to them has been physically demanding. Menhaden are caught by quickly encircling large schools of fish in two small "purse" boats, which surround the fish with their nets. This purse seine must be pulled tight or "hardened," drawing it in from the bottom in order to capture the fish and lift them to the surface of the water. A special "scoop" net then brings the catch to the hold of the main fishing vessel. Since the mid-1950s, this work has been performed with the aid of hydraulic winches and lifters; prior to this time it was done by hand. As it was not uncommon for a catch to exceed 100,000 fish, hardening the net required great strength and coordination on the part of the crew.
To help ease and pace this extraordinary labor, the men sang "chanteys" or worksongs. Generally a leader would sing out the first line of the song by himself, to be answered with another line sung in harmony by the rest of the crew. The songs or lines were drawn from many sources, including hymns and gospel songs, blues, and barbershop quartet songs, and were often improvised.
Folklorists Michael and Debbie Luster, hired by the North Carolina Arts Council in 1988 to survey the folk culture of Carteret County, were fascinated by what they'd heard of the chantey-singing tradition. They arranged a gathering of about a dozen retired fishermen, hoping that a few might be able to recall verses or even perform some of the old songs. Though they had not sung together in more than thirty years, the singers found their parts with ease. The lines were recollected almost effortlessly when they began to pantomime the action of working the net.
The great success of the venture persuaded the men to accept an invitation to perform in public at an event sponsored by the North Carolina Maritime Museum, in Beaufort. This reunion concert brought misty eyes to the audience and singers alike, and renewed the pride of the community in these beautiful sounds that once rolled across the water.
After that memorable occasion, the Menhaden Chanteymen, as they liked to be called then, were constantly in the public eye. They performed for the North Carolina General Assembly and the National Council on the Arts, appeared at Carnegie Hall, and were featured on national television and radio. And every Friday night they gathered at the parish house of St. Stephen's Congregational Church in Beaufort to sing for themelves and to share the fellowship wrought by decades of rugged camaraderie at sea.
Art Form: Folk/Traditional Crafts and Visual Arts
"I started carving out six- and eight-inch hulls when I was ten," recalls James Allen Rose, a lifelong resident of Harkers Island. "I had to carve them out with an old pocket knife. Me and other boys spent a lot of time by the shore playing with model skiffs. When they saw my little skiffs bobbing up and down, they thought they were outstanding. I traded them to friends for marbles, spin-tops, and other things."
James Allen's models were inspired by the boats constructed on Harkers Island. "I remember Daddy taking a sail skiff to Straits or Otway to trade fish for sweet potatoes, flour, and other staples we didn't have on the Island," he says. His father and cousins also built fishing boats, powered by gas and diesel engines, that could ply deeper waters. "Commercial fishing and boat building are tied together," he asserts. "How she takes the sea, for instance, or whether the keel is too straight on her; in other words, what would make the best sea-going vessel."
In the off-season for fishing, he worked alongside local boat builders and absorbed the skills that enable him to construct boats "by the rack of the eye" rather than using blueprints. "There was a time when it was all that anyone out here did," he remembers. "There would be a boat in every other yard." James Allen has built more than eighty boats himself, some up to forty feet long, under the oak trees behind his house.
In 1984, arthritis and changes in the fishing industry forced James Allen to give up commercial fishing. Rather than find work off the island, he devoted himself to making models of the large boats that he once built and fished. From spritsail sailing skiffs and roundstern fishing boats to cabin cruisers and mail boats, the models he constructs and displays in his shop represent more than a century of life on the waters of Core Sound.
James Allen estimates that he has sold nearly three thousand miniature boats to people who find their way to him home on Harkers Island. The realization that his models have become symbols of North Carolina's coastal heritage justify the time and effort he has devoted to his craft. "I've dedicated many, many, many hours to little boats," reflects James Allen. "No doubt I could be doing something else, masonry work, building homes. But personally, I derive a great deal of satisfaction from making them. I love every one of them, wherever they are."