Author recalls Christmas traditions in Morehead City, N.C.

During the Depression years in Morehead City, N.C., as Christmas approached, everyone got involved in the preparations, recalled Shirley Wade Lucas. 

She was one of 12 children born to Howard Jesse Wade and Sallie Daniels Wade. Their house on the corner of 8th and Bay streets in Morehead City was built on land acquired by the Wade family (Martin Thomas Wade and Martha Davis Wade), in 1890.

 

Shirley was a local author who contributed her writings to “Christmas Memories,” a collection of essays published during 1990-92 in The Mailboat publication. The stories have been preserved for future generations by the Core Sound Waterfowl Museum & Heritage Center on Harkers Island. 

In the 1930s, “my daddy would bundle up the smaller children and walk to the Crab Point area to find our Christmas tree,” Shirley said. “In those times, everyone knew everyone, and the farmers would gladly give permission for a tree, some yaupon, holly, cedar and pine to be cut.”

 

“Daddy would load the greenery in the arms of the children and hoist the tree on his shoulder and home we would come. The greenery was placed over pictures, on mantles, over doors and around the front door. The big tree was placed in a bucket filled with dirt and tied to the wall to keep it upright. All the decorations were handmade by all the family members.”

 

“Mama cooked on a wood range with an oven and a firebox that burned cord wood. About a week before Christmas, Mama began her baking of pies and cakes. Daddy built shelves on the back porch to hold all the pies and cakes, then covered them with mosquito netting to keep out dust and insects.”

 

Shirley remembered going caroling to bring some Christmas joy and cheer to the sick and shut-ins. She said, “We walked the town over, with people joining us along the way. When we would get so cold we couldn’t sing, back home we trod to find big pots of steaming hot chocolate, prepared by Mama.”

 

“On Christmas Eve, we went to church at First Methodist where a program for young and young-at-heart was held.” She said that Charles S. Wallace, who served as the church’s Sunday school superintendent for 51 years, assured that everyone received a red or green cloth bag filled with an orange, tangerine, apple, nuts, gum and hard candy.”

 

Tangerines are known as the Christmas orange. The tangerine’s peak season is in December, and the fruit was once a common gift for children’s Christmas stockings. It is named for the city of Tangiers in Morocco, where it originated. In Asian culture, mandarin oranges and tangerines are symbols of abundance and good fortune.

Charles S. Wallace, who was born at Portsmouth village on North Core Banks, was one of Morehead City’s most prominent citizens at the time, having amassed great wealth in the commercial fishing industry in the early 20th century, operating fish processing plants in Morehead City and Smyrna as well as in Florida. 

Historians said that in order to ensure a local supply of ice to preserve and transport the seafood on the railroad, by ship and by wagon to markets along the East Coast, Wallace helped start up the Carteret Ice and Transportation Storage Co. in Morehead City, believed to be the first ice-making plant in eastern North Carolina. 

He invested in a multitude of other business interests, ranging from banking and boatbuilding to real estate and gasoline and oil wholesaling. 

Wallace served as Morehead City’s mayor from 1898-1908 and then represented Carteret County in the North Carolina House of Representatives from 1909-14. He served on the Carteret County Board of Commissioners from 1918-20. 

Education was Wallace’s true passion, and it is reported that he served on the Morehead City School Board from 1906-33, and was board chair from 1908-33. When the town built a modern graded school in 1929-30 on Bridges Street, it was named the Charles S. Wallace School.

 

 

 

In 1917, Christmas in Carteret County was ‘frozen solid’

Core Sound in Carteret County, N.C., froze over in the winter of 1917, when Bessie Willis Hoyt was 11 years old.

 

She wrote about that experience for “Christmas Memories,” a collection of stories assembled by The Mailboat publication in 1990-92. The small booklets have been preserved by Core Sound Waterfowl Museum & Heritage Center on Harkers Island.

Bessie said the family Christmas custom was to travel from their home in New Bern to Morehead City and then take the mailboat to Davis in the Down East section of Carteret County to spend the holidays at her grandparents’ house there. 

In late December of 1917, “each night the weather got colder, and soon Core Sound began to freeze. It was three miles wide with a deep channel, but in a week, the ice was so thick the daily mailboat could not come. Papa had arrived on the last trip.” 

“The marshes where wild fowl lived were frozen, and ducks and geese came up into the gardens searching for food,” Bessie said. “Every garden had rows of collards, but they were frozen stiff and had to be cut with an axe.” 

“We had stewed ducks every day. My uncle said he was afraid that if he opened his mouth too wide, he would quack. Every night the grown folks sat around a tub in the kitchen and picked the mallards, red heads and black heads. Often there were geese. The supply of feathers for beds multiplied fast.”

 

She said two large black bears came up out of the Oyster Creek swamp and “promptly became food for those families who were tired of duck.” Her grandmother got a share of the bear meat and stewed it all day. 

“The meat was stringy and tough, but we ate it. ‘Now, we can growl,’ laughed my wise-cracking uncle.” 

The cold snap went into its third week, and Bessie’s father had to get back to work at the bank in New Bern, so he walked across the still-frozen marsh to Jarrett’s Bay. His brother took him to Beaufort, “and he caught the train for home.” 

“No deaths occurred and no babies were born during the big freeze,” Bessie said. There were some arguments, however, that occurred at Uncle Frank Davis’ store, where people would come to sit around the pot-bellied stove to warm their hands. 

“People up the road were Democrats and Missionary Baptists; the ones down the road were Republicans and Free Will Baptists,” Bessie said. “The arguing sometimes erupted into quarreling and name calling.”

 

The Washington (N.C.) Daily News called this period, which extended into January 1918, as the “big freeze.” The entire coastal region was “in the ice box.” The larger Albemarle and Pamlico sounds also froze over.

 

Writing for Our State magazine in 2014, correspondent Bryan Mims shared a story about the December 1917 journey of a small sailboat named Clem, which carried three fishermen from Sea Level out to dredge for oysters into the Neuse River near where it forms the Pamlico Sound. They were J.E. Taylor, Louis Elliott and Edward Salter.

 

“Before setting out, they had no seven-day forecast to consult, no computer models to foretell of the impending ice invasion,” Mims said. They didn’t know they were headed into a “polar purgatory,” but they were experienced watermen who knew “just about every slough, bay, gut, inlet, cove, bend, ditch, tributary, estuary and spit of sand along the wide-open mouth of the Neuse River.” 

Snow kept falling and the temperature kept dropping. Mims said that the men knew of a place called Henry Hills Harbor along a remote stretch of northern Piney Island across from Raccoon Island. Here, they threw down their anchor to wait out the storm. 

Mims cited an account written by Allen Taylor (brother of J.E. Taylor) stating that after three dark and stormy nights, Clem “was held firm in an icy grasp. The men sheltered themselves from the winter tempest inside the boat’s cabin. They had a two-burner oil stove that they used for cooking and for melting ice from their water barrel.” 

“Temperatures during the day barely broke out of the low teens. The men watched, hoped and waited through the week,” Taylor wrote. “The freeze became worse instead of better, ice forming around their boat four or five inches thick.” 

“They had a grim decision to make: Stay with the boat to freeze or starve to death, or strike out across the ice, which could very well be a death march itself.” 

Mims said it was clearly time to abandon ship…but now the choice was whether to “take the route over land, with its great expanses of marsh grass and ice-encrusted undergrowth – land thoroughly devoid of human habitation between here and home – or trek across the ice, with air holes waiting to swallow them?” 

They selected to walk the frozen water route, said a prayer and drove nails through the heels of their shoes to avoid slipping on the ice. Mims said the men carried what little food they had left, a frying pan, a hatchet and a boat hook to gauge the thickness of the ice. They also had 10 yards of rope. 

J.E. Taylor held the middle of the rope and led the men in a V-formation – “as the wild geese fly” – so that if he plunged through thin ice, Elliott and Salter could pull him back out. 

The men crossed New Stump Bay and Long Bay, edging southward, toward Sea Level. It took them six and a half hours to walk to Sea Level, about a dozen miles in a straight line but longer by their water route, Mims wrote.

Memories of Christmas seasons past

Beginning in 1990, The Mailboat, a much-loved publication dedicated to preserving the heritage and culture of Down East Carteret County, N.C., started publishing a collection of articles labeled “Christmas Memories.” 

These small storybooks are now of a prized collection at the Core Sound Waterfowl Museum & Heritage Center on Harkers Island. 

Among Madge Guthrie’s favorite “winter memories” growing up on Harkers Island are: 

“Deep feather beds that have ‘sunned’ all day.” 

Bed sheets, pillows and pillowcases that are allowed to “go outdoors” and soak up some sunshine make for better sleeping.

 

“Cold linoleum that made me run tip-toe to the warmth of a ‘red-hot’ coal stove.” 

“Feet stuffed in paper and covered with paper bags, so I could play in the snow that was often wished for, but rarely seen.” 

“The smell of shortbread and sugar cookies from Mother’s oven when I came home from school ‘half-starved.’”

 

“Riding the mailboat to town (Beaufort) and keeping so very warm by the engines.” 

“Roasting oysters on an open fire protected by scrub-oaks and then helping Mama roast yaupon in a cracked iron washpot in the same shelter.”

 

Yaupon leaves make great tea, high in antioxidants and less bitter than green tea. Yaupon has the highest caffeine content of any plant native to North America.

 

However, don’t eat the berries of yaupon (and the other hollies), as they are considered highly toxic to humans. Eating as few as six yaupon berries can cause a child to vomit, and consumption of 20 to 30 berries can be fatal to children.

 

“Cleaning lamp globes each day to get all the soot off, and studying each night by the same oil lamps.”

 

“Watching Mother ironing starched shirts with irons heated on the stovetop.” 

Joel Hancock Sr. of Harkers Island reflects on one of the “more charming and evocative memories” of his youth – “when my father would take my brother Teff and me to Shackleford Banks in search of Christmas trees.” 

“We would head to Wade’s Shore, at the west end of the Banks, and the best place on Shackleford where cedars still could be found in abundance. Daddy had gotten the family’s Christmas tree from there since any of us could remember, and there was no reason to go somewhere else – a Wade’s Shore tree was pretty much a family tradition.” 

“Just to make sure that Mama wouldn’t be disappointed with his selection, Daddy usually cut a couple extra trees. The others could be shared with any of several other families in our neighborhood after Mama had exercised her preference.” (Smart man, that Papa Hancock.) 

“Our home would radiate with the smell of fresh cedar as Mama and my sisters began the trimming. Ella Dee would make a special concoction from Fab detergent that renders a garnishing of ‘snow’ to (place on) several of the higher branches. A few ceramic bulbs, two strings of lights and a big star to adorn the top were all that we needed to finish off…our Holiday decorations.” 

In later years, the Hancock family would abandon its practice of cutting trees on Shackleford Banks, choosing to purchase firs from “the Colonial grocery store in Beaufort.” Later, the Hancocks bought a synthetic tree “so void of fragrance that Mama had to buy aerosol cans of ‘evergreen’ scent to try and recapture some of the holiday flavor.”

 

Joel Hancock

“Christmas memories…are suspended in time and cannot be bought or sold. I can buy a fir tree many times larger and much more shapely than the stunted cedars that Teff and I used to pull through the sand hills. But none could ever (take) the special place in our hearts reserved for this and the many others of our Christmas memories.” 

Ellen P. Simpson reminds us that back when she was a girl, “Christmas was observed…in quite a different way than it is today.” 

“There were no electric lights in most rural homes, so tree trimming was done with what was available; homemade garlands and paper lanterns cut from colored construction paper and glued together.”

 

These were placed at intervals around the tree, as were “candy canes, gingerbread cutouts and glass balls. Then, candles in tinfoil holders were fastened to the tree with small wire. A homemade star, also covered in tinfoil, was hung from the top of the tree, representing the Star of Bethlehem.”

Ms. Simpson said, “An odor of baked sweet potatoes, mincemeat pies, smoked sausages and baked goose filled the air. Garlands of holly and cedar were placed over the fireplace, and cotton balls were used to resemble snow.” 

“Turkey was unknown at our house; goose, ducks, ham, oysters and sausage were the foods we were most familiar with.” 

“We had been taught that the ‘Christ Child Was Born on Christmas Morn’…still it was ‘Old Santa’ who filled our stockings on Christmas Eve, after we were safely tucked in for the night.” 

“Typical gifts were: dolls with moving eyes and long curls, a tea set, a doll bed or carriage, crayons and coloring books and a child’s reading book; our stockings were always filled with apples, oranges, tangerines, nuts and candy; then topped with fireworks, sparklers and Roman candles.”

 

“Long before dawn, we were outside firing firecrackers, or lighting sparklers or Roman candles; soon we were joined by other children and older boys and girls with their air rifles and fireworks; by seven-thirty, we were glad to be called inside to a ‘big’ Christmas breakfast.”

 

Eggnog season is here; take a taste!

Right on schedule, as the calendar would flip to December each year, our next-door neighbor Bev would call on the landline telephone to announce that the season for eggnog and euchre had arrived. “So, come on over,” she would say. 

An evening sipping holiday beverages and enjoying a game of cards would then ensue. Bev’s aromatic, secret-recipe cold eggnog with just a splash of bourbon was optional. She was quite understanding, however, that not everyone savors the nutmeg-flavored, dairy-based drink. 

(A Canadian whisky-based old fashioned, laced with bitters and a slice of orange, topped with a long-stemmed maraschino cherry, is an acceptable holiday substitute.) 

Back to the eggnog. Michelle Darrisaw, a contributor to Southern Living magazine, said eggnog was concocted in Great Britain during medieval times by monks working in a monastery winery. 

They added whipped eggs and figs to their sherry, port or brandy, flavored it with cinnamon and warmed it up over the fire. The monks said they were searching for a tasty drink to ward off the flu. You bet.

 

Allen Tatman of Paddy Malone’s Pub in Jefferson City, Mo., said the American colonies were fertile ground for the spread of eggnog. “Lots of farms and plenty of eggs and milk and cream. But, the heavily taxed liquors of sherry, port and brandy were soon replaced with rum from the Caribbean, which was cheap and abundant during the colonial period.” 

Food history professor Dr. Frederick Douglass Opie of Babson College in Wellesley, Mass., said: “Colonists referred to rum as grog; bartenders served rum in small wooden carved mugs called noggins. Thus, the drink eventually became ‘egg-n-grog’ and over time ‘eggnog.’” 

America’s first president George Washington, a Virginian, was a fan of eggnog. Editors at The Old Farmer’s Almanac uncovered two eggnog recipes that may have been attributed to Washington. The “mild” one was spiked with a full bottle of bourbon.

 

The “industrial strength” version specified “one quart cream, one quart milk, one dozen eggs, half a cup of sugar, one pint brandy, one pint rye whisky, one pint Jamaican rum and one pint sherry.” After adding the other ingredients, let mixture “set in cool place for several days. Taste frequently.” 

An infamous “Eggnog Riot” occurred on Christmas Eve in 1826 at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, N.Y. Approximately 80 cadets went berserk after consuming vast quantities of alcohol in their eggnog.

 

Carol S. Funck of the U.S. Army Heritage Foundation said the academy was established in 1802. Since its founding, administrators had historically “turned a blind eye to the ritual” of cadets celebrating certain holidays by judiciously imbibing in “spirituous beverages.” 

The rules changed dramatically in 1826, when Col. Sylvanus Thayer, the superintendent, “expressly forbid the purchase, storage or consumption of alcohol at West Point.” 

The cadets were not happy. Writing for Smithsonian magazine, Natasha Geiling reported that “some cadets set about smuggling in liquor from nearby taverns” for the annual Christmas Eve party. They amassed three to four gallons of hooch. 

The merriment got out of hand. Windows were smashed in the North Barracks. As a result, 11 cadets who were deemed guilty of the most serious violations were dismissed from West Point. Eight others were severely reprimanded. 

One of those involved but spared from punishment was Jefferson Davis, future president of the Confederacy. 

Another cadet far removed from the ruckus was Robert E. Lee, who became a general and commander-in-chief of the Confederate grays. 

Perhaps Lee and some pals were studying in the library…or off-campus playing euchre.

Treat your family to a good Christmas Eve mystery

Santa’s original reindeers “Dunder” and “Blixem” may hold the key to solving a Christmas mystery that is almost 200 years old. Who wrote the classic yuletide poem, “A Visit from St. Nicholas?”

 

On Dec. 23, 1823, the epic poem was first published authorless in the Troy (N.Y.) Sentinel, a semi-weekly newspaper in upstate New York near Albany. It was contributed by an unnamed reader. 

Today, we recognize this poem by its opening line: “Twas the Night Before Christmas….” 

Joyce Bassett of the (Albany) Times Union said recently: “This poem is largely responsible for the conception of Santa Claus from the mid-19th century to today.”

 Almost everyone believes Clement Clarke Moore of New York City wrote the legendary poem, but the true author just may have been Henry Livingston Jr., of Poughkeepsie, N.Y. Both men were learned writers whose work include poetry. 

Bassett said a mock trial was held in 2013 at the Rensselaer County Courthouse in Troy. In the case of “Livingston v. Moore: Who Really Wrote ‘A Visit from St. Nicholas’?” two teams of local lawyers argued the case on behalf of their respective “clients.” 

It was all for fun. Bud Malone, a retired state supreme court justice, told the crowd and a gaggle of news reporters who had gathered for the trial: “We have a hung jury.” 

Most historical accounts believe Moore, who lived in Manhattan, penned the poem on Christmas Eve of 1822. At the time, he was employed as a professor at the General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church.

 

Charles Clark Moore

Bassett said Moore composed “A Visit from St. Nicholas” in his head – all 56 lines – during a family sleigh ride. He wrote out the poem after arriving home and recited it for the amusement of his six children. 

“Tradition tells that Harriet Butler, who was a holiday visitor to the Moore home, took a copy of the poem home with her to Troy, where the next year it was submitted anonymously to the Sentinel for publication,” Bassett said. 

Moore originally referred to the poem as “a mere trifle” and didn’t want his name associated with the poem, “because as a stodgy man of academia, it was beneath his dignity; he preferred to be known for more scholarly works,” Bassett reported.

 

As published, lines 20 through 25, are critical to the literary mystery. 

And he whistled, and shouted, and call’d them by name:

“Now! Dasher, now! Dancer, now! Prancer, and Vixen,

“On! Comet, on! Cupid, on! Dunder and Blixem;

“To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!

“Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!” 

“Dunder” and “Blixem” are Dutch words for “thunder” and “lightning,” so their use is appropriate, as names that might have been selected by St. Nicholas himself…a kindly old man who emerged from old Nordic folktales. 

Some critics said the Dutch reindeer names were unlikely to have been penned by Moore, because his family roots were pure English. 

Livingston, though, was nine-tenths Dutch by inheritance, according to documents cited by Poughkeepsie area librarians. Livingston’s ancestors believe that he wrote the poem as early as 1805.

 

Henry Livingston Jr.

The librarians’ research suggested: “‘A Visit from St. Nicholas’ is absolutely in the Dutch tradition of Henry Livingston…and just as absolutely not in that of C. C. Moore.” 

The leader of the pack of those doubting Moore’s authenticity is Dr. Don Foster, a retired professor of English literature at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie.

 

Dr. Foster described Moore as “something of a curmudgeon,” while Livingston was an “irrepressible levenslust,” full of joyful exuberance…just like St. Nick.

Take a stroll along the Duke Gardens pathways

Before moving on down the road on U.S. Route 70 from Durham toward Raleigh, stop to smell the roses and other posies on the Duke University campus in the Sarah P. Duke Gardens, one of the university’s most treasured landmarks. 

The American Public Gardens Association ranks the 55-acre Duke Gardens as one of the top 10 public gardens in the country.

 

As background, Trinity College in Durham was rechartered in 1924 as Duke University, named in honor of Washington Duke, an American tobacco industrialist, who lived from 1820-1905. 

The benefactors were his sons, Benjamin Newton Duke (1855-1929) and James Buchanan “Buck” Duke (1856-1925). 

In the 1930s, Dr. Frederic M. Hanes, a neurologist and member of the founding faculty of Duke’s medical school, and a passionate horticulturist, developed a plan to convert a neglected, debris-ridden ravine near the hospital into a garden spot. 

He approached Sarah Pearson Angier Duke, the widow of Ben Duke, about his idea. She agreed in 1934 to contribute $20,000 to transform the site into a lush garden (about $405,500 in today’s dollars).

 

“By 1935, more than 100 flower beds were in glorious bloom in the area that is now the South Lawn,” a university spokesperson said. “They included 40,000 irises, 25,000 daffodils, 10,000 small bulbs and assorted annuals.” 

Heavy rain destroyed the original garden, but Dr. Hanes refused to give up. After Sarah Duke died in 1936, he worked with her daughter, Mary Duke Biddle, to rebuild the gardens bigger and better than ever. 

Ellen Biddle Shipman, a pioneer in American landscape design, was selected to design the plans for both the construction and the plantings for the new gardens. The “new and improved” Sarah P. Duke Gardens was dedicated in April 1939.

 

There are five miles of allées, walks and pathways throughout the botanic gardens. More than 300,000 visitors from all over the world visit annually. Admission is free, and the gardens are open from 8 a.m. to dusk, 365 days a year. 

It’s an easy walk from the gardens to the majestic Duke Chapel, the centerpiece of West Campus. The Duke family wanted the church to be the central building in order to have a profound influence on the spiritual lives of the students. 

Its cornerstone was laid on October 22, 1930. It was formally dedicated on June 2, 1935.

 

Entombed in the “Memorial Chapel” are Washington Duke and his two sons, Ben Duke and Buck Duke. 

Down below in the basement is the “Crypt,” which contains the remains of other Duke dignitaries. The crypt seats about 30 people for prayer meetings and Bible studies. 

“Tuesdays in the Crypt,” an evening worship, became a Duke tradition. 

Needless to say, the Crypt is hallowed (if not haunted) ground a Duke.

 

More uplifting, perhaps, is the bronze statue titled “The Sower,” which was acquired by Buck Duke in Leipzig, Germany, and installed on the Duke campus in 1914. The subject is a 17th century peasant sowing his fields, planting seeds from his knapsack by hand.

 

The university archivist said: “At a time women students were permitted only three dates a week and these were carefully defined, students could stroll about certain areas of campus without it counting as an allowed date.” 

Hence, “The Sower” assumed the role of Cupid. “Couples started placing pennies in the statue’s open hand; if the coins were gone the next time the couple visited, the gentleman could claim a kiss.” 

The campus caretaker was instructed to collect the coins regularly and deposit them in the university coffers.