Portsmouth, North Carolina - History

History

Ocracoke Inlet was a popular shipping lane during colonial times. Established in 1753, the town of Portsmouth functioned as a lightering port, where cargo from ocean-going vessels could be transferred to shallow-draft vessels capable of traversing Pamlico and Core Sounds. Portsmouth grew to a peak population of 685 in 1860. Though small, Portsmouth was one of the most important points-of-entry along the Atlantic coast in post-Revolutionary America.

In 1846, two strong hurricanes cut Oregon Inlet and deepened the existing Hatteras Inlet to the northeast, making Ocracoke Inlet a less desirable shipping lane by comparison. The waters around Portsmouth's harbor also began to shoal up, hastening its decline as a port. The Civil War was yet another blow as many people fled to the mainland when Union soldiers came to occupy the Outer Banks. Many didn't return after the bloodshed had ended and the Village of Portsmouth continued its decline, sped along by the occasional hurricane. The mammoth 1933 Atlantic hurricane season also served as a benchmark in the island's population decline, though more as a focal point of memory and a symbol of decline than the real cause of it. (These were the same hurricanes that led to the depopulation of the barrier islands on the Eastern Shore of Virginia and Maryland.) A further blow was the decommissioning of the US Life-Saving Station there in 1937, and when the post office closed in 1959, it was clear the end was drawing near—the final curtain coming down on the village in 1971 when Henry Pigott died, and the last two residents reluctantly abandoned the town.

Portsmouth Island (including the village) had already been acquired by the National Park Service before the last inhabitants left in 1971. It was then incorporated into the new Cape Lookout National Seashore.

Prior to and for long after the Civil War, much of Portsmouth's population was African American, including two of its last inhabitants, Henry and Lizzie Pigott. Henry Pigott's death in 1971 precipitated the move of the last white inhabitants away from the island (two elderly ladies named Marian Gray Babb and Nora Dixon). Pigott, a fisherman and clammer, was approximately their own age but had been essentially their caretaker. Both Henry and Lizzie Pigott were denied an education by the State of North Carolina. Under segregation, black and white children could not legally attend the one-room schoolhouse on Portsmouth Island together. The state never built a separate school for blacks, so African Americans who remained on the island in its declining years never received the benefits of a formal education. African Americans (most of them slaves) were heavily engaged in fishing and other maritime trades on Portsmouth, piloting and manning vessels, even building a small man-made island, Shell Castle, out of oyster shells for use as a shipping depot.