Tag Archives: “Finest Kind: A Celebration of a Florida Fishing Village”
Mullet fishermen: A journey from Carteret County to Florida
The salt mullet trade to Cuba began to fade at the end of the 19th century, however. In the 1880s and 1890s, the first railroads reached Tampa. The railroads then began to inch further into southwest Florida, opening up the fresh fish trade to other parts of the United States for the first time. Like so many in Carteret County, Miss Lela’s husband wasn’t going to miss out on the opportunity. “So in July of 1911 we come on the sharpie to Morehead (City), me and him and our first two children, and then we got on the train to New Bern and stayed the night,” Miss Lela told Ben Green. They took the train to Tampa, boarded a steamer down the coast to Bradenton and then took a taxi to Cortez. “Once we got settled I liked it,” Miss Lela remembered. “But that first year I was still so homesick for North Carolina that I cried all Christmas Day.” photos, >click to read< 13:15
