Tag Archives: local coastal history

Honoring the Last “Old Salt” of Ocracoke

The last of a generation of Ocracoke Island men who were true “old salts” died recently, but Edgar Maurice Balance will be remembered on this island with love and respect. Known locally as Morris, Ballance was born to Elisha and Emma Gaskins Ballance in 1927.  He was one of nine children, born at home in a big white house on Back Road. <Read more here>  12:04

Film chronicles stories of a changing Seabreeze

StarNewsOnline.com – “A Sense of Place,” which explores local coastal history from the unique perspective of area black fishermen and women, will premiere Friday night at the N.C. Aquarium at Fort Fisher.

When Joe Farrow Jr. and Luther Hardis McQuillan first started fishing the Intracoastal Waterway at Myrtle Grove Sound as children in the 1930s, Seabreeze was bustling with tourists and the black resort town was known for its clam fritters and juke joints. In those days, the men – now 84 and 90, respectively – would fish with family members and sell their catch of mullet, speckled trout and flounder to one of the restaurants in the little community north of Carolina Beach, or to fish markets in Wilmington. Their wooden boats didn’t have motors and were often homemade. continued