N.C. fishermen migrated to Cortez, Fla.

Cortez, Fla., is one of The Sunshine State’s last surviving commercial fishing centers. 

What’s amazing is that the village was founded in 1883 by families who migrated from Carteret County, N.C. 

They were attracted by an abundance of prized jumpin’ mullet that thrived offshore from Sarasota Bay in the Gulf of Mexico. 

For many, many years, one of Cortez’s leading citizens was Dr. Mary Frances Fulford Green, who died in 2022 at age 96. Her grandparents were North Carolinians Capt. William “Billy” Thomas Fulford of Straits and Sallie Adams Fulford of Morehead City. They were the very first settlers to arrive in Cortez. 

One writer said: “Billy and Sallie Fulford always had room to bed down a guest, and there were many extra chairs for the family dining table, piled high with good victuals.” 

Mary Green earned her bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate degrees at what is now Florida State University. She married Benjamin Clyde Green of Perry, Fla.

 

Dr. Mary Green

A son, Ben Green of Tallahassee, Fla., is the author of “Finest Kind: A Celebration of a Florida Fishing Village,” published in 1985. He documents the history of Cortez, remembering how his ancestors and other families left Down East Carteret County to establish a new fishing village some 600 miles away in Florida. 

Cindy Lane, editor of The Anna Maria Island Sun, reported that the book’s title has special significance. “‘Finest kind’ is the Cortezian answer to about any question,” she said. “How’s your day going? Finest kind.” 

Lane added that locals also refer to Sarasota Bay as “The Kitchen” – where the seafood comes from that feeds the village. That sounds eerily familiar to Down East terminology. Wonder if Cortezians ever feel mommicked? 

Dr. David S. Cecelski of Durham, a noted historian with roots in Carteret County, specializes in North Carolina’s coastal heritage. The Fulfords and others who relocated to Cortez “must have liked the wildness of the place and the feeling of being on a new frontier”…that felt a lot like home, he said.

 

“At the turn of the century, settlements in Florida were still few and far between all the way from Sarasota Bay to the Everglades. In 1900, Tampa was still just a little town.” 

“What southwest Florida did have though was endless miles of mangrove swamp, remote keys and wild barrier islands – and fish. Lots of fish,” Dr. Cecelski said. 

“Foremost among those fish were striped mullet, or as people in Carteret County call them, ‘jumpin’ mullet.’ For much of the 19th century, Carteret County’s salt mullet trade had been one of the largest saltwater commercial fisheries anywhere in the southern states,” he commented. 

“Jumpin’ mullet was the fish that bound Carteret County and southwest Florida together,” Dr. Ceselski said. 

Lane always referred to Mary Green as the “matriarch of Cortez.” Her “commanding personality,” made her a force to reckon with. 

Karen Bell, owner of A.P. Bell Fish Co. in Cortez, said: “Mary was never one to take ‘no’ for an answer. I like to think she symbolized the people of this village – strong, tough, spirited and, at times, somewhat impossible! She was so proud of her family’s history.” 

Kay Bell of the Cortez Village Historical Society said: “Mary fiercely defended this little village. She persevered against developers, big industry and anything that would change the footprint of the village and its way of making a living.” 

Fittingly, Mary Green wrote her own epitaph: “She did all she could.” 

No one in Cortez disagrees.

 

 

Cortez was just a train ride away from Carteret County

 

Halee Turner of The Florida Maritime Museum in Cortez has documented the journeys made by some of first settlers who came to Cortez. 

Two of those pioneers were Neriah Elijah Taylor and Lela Garner Taylor, who were married in Cedar Point in Carteret County, N.C., in 1907. 

In 1911, the Taylors, with two young sons, boarded a train from New Bern to Tampa, took a steamer down the coast about 35 miles to Bradenton and then were carted over to Cortez. 

“In 1921, the west coast of Florida was hit by a powerful storm; this hurricane destroyed many buildings along the Cortez waterfront,” Turner said. “Neriah used materials salvaged from the wreckage to construct a building on the water. 

“The top floor served as living quarters for the family. Below was the N.E. Taylor Boatworks,” one of Cortez’s most legendary businesses.

 

Author Ben Green interviewed Earl Guthrie, who also rode the train from Carteret County to Florida. In 1921, he paid $20.13 for his ticket. 

“Every one of us Guthrie boys from up there, as soon as we were grown, would head for Florida,” he recalled. 

“If they couldn’t afford a ticket, they jumped on a boxcar and rode down that way. That’s how a lot of them came, by boxcar.” 

Manly Bell liked to joke that he “bought a one-way ticket and never made enough money to be able to return.” 

Grey Fulford said his mother Mamie made a living by running a boardinghouse in Cortez. 

Most of her boarders were those young Carteret County fishermen. “She’d charge them about $5 a week and another 50 cents to do their laundry,” Fulford said. 

“Sometimes she’d have six or seven of them at a time sleeping on cots in the old house. It was like a hotel. Momma had two old wood stoves, and she hired two women to help with the cooking. Grandma would make biscuits and the cornbread.” 

Neriah and Lela Taylor’s youngest son, Alcee, was born in 1923. After he retired from running the family boatyard business, he became known as the “Ambassador of Cortez.” He used to “hold court most afternoons” on the family dock, near an old, weathered sign that reads: “Cast your nets and feed the multitudes.” 

Alcee died in 2011 at age 87, but some of his relics have been preserved at the museum, Turner said. 

Of special interest is a gill net skiff built in 1932. The vessel was used by two of Cortez’s most celebrated mullet fishermen, Walton “Tink” Fulford and his nephew Thomas “Blue” Fulford. These two gents have been enshrined in the Manatee County Hall of Fame. 

Cindy Lane of The Anna Maria Island Sun said: “In Cortez, everybody who’s anybody has a nickname.” Goose, Gator, Snooks, Chainsaw, Rabbit, Mermaid, Bugsy, Soupy, Dutch. 

Alcee Taylor’s nickname was “Boogie.” 

“Even the village’s name is eccentric,” Lane said. The people called this place Hunter’s Point, but “the U.S. Postal Service Postal Service named it ‘Cortez’ for a Spanish explorer of the 15th century whose first name was Hernando, but not the one who actually came ashore in nearby Bradenton, Hernando De Soto.” 

“Like some of the creatures swimming near its shores,” Lane said, “Cortez is an endangered species, a commercial fishing village fighting to stay that way come hell or high water.”

Here are some of the faces of Cortez: