A very brief history of Portsmouth Island, NC

 Portsmouth Island, NC is located 6 miles SW of Ocracoke village and is separated from Ocracoke Island by Ocracoke Inlet. At one time this island was a thriving sea port and shipping center. 

In the year 1753, the General Assembly of North Carolina, passed legislation on March 27 to lay out a town on Core banks in Carteret County. The town was to be named Portsmouth and it would be fifty acres and divided into half acre lots. The cost for one of these lots was 20 shillings and you had to build a house or warehouse of at least 20 by 16 feet. 

By 1758 the town had been laid out and was inhabited. For the next 102 years this island was home to many people. At its height, just before the Civil War, the population was almost 600. 

Then the decline started due to the war, storms that ravaged the island over the next century and the inlet closing and a new one forming that offered better shipping lanes. By 1960, three people were left on the island. One man and two women. 

When the man became ill and died in 1971, the families of the two women insisted they leave the island. They went to the mainland and thus the habitation of Portsmouth island ceased. 

Journey Begins

 As you recall from yesterday's post, my dear friend Sameerah asked me to help her with her family tree. So I told her what information I needed from her , which she gave to me, and I dug in. 

As i explored the branches of her family tree, I became more interested in one particular line, on her maternal side. It was the most fascinating to me. The reason being, because she had a connection to North Carolina. 

African American genealogy is generally difficult to do because we run into slavery.  Before the 1870 census, African Americans were not counted by name. Another problem is once freed from slavery, African Americans had to choose a last name (surname). In my research I have seen surnames changed once or twice before settling on a surname.

This is what I noticed with this branch of her maternal line. Family members even spelled the name differently, but it is the same family. Also, other freed slaves from the area also took the last name as their surname. 

Where did the surnames come from, you may ask? That's complicated. There were many reasons that African Americans chose the last names they did. One of the most popular last names was Freeman or Freedman, which is pretty self explanatory after the Emancipation. 

In Sameerah's family, her great great grandmother had the last name of her former enslaver; Ireland. She had this name in 1870 and 1880. However, in 1900 her last name was Pickett. In official documents the descendants later have spelling variations of Picket, Pickette, Pigott, Piggot or Piggott. 

A Reintroduction

 Hey Everyone! I am back after many years of forgetting how to get into this blog! So much has happened since I started this blog. I have been divorced. I also had my paternal grandmother pass away in 2014. I have had cancer twice, with two surgeries and radiation. My Mama passed away in 2020 as well. I have also taken up coaching cheerleading. But through it all I have never stopped doing my family research.

I had friends ask me to help them, as well as co-workers. I have traced one line or several lines of their family trees. I have now done research in Canada, Mexico, England, Wales, Ireland, Scotland, Germany, France and The Netherlands. 

I did publish a book for my dad about our direct Parrish line. 

Now that I know how to get into this blog again, I will keep posting. I am now working on a project with a dear friend of mine named Sameerah. 

She contacted me not too long ago asking me to help her with her family history. She gave me what I needed to start with and off I started. We have found some cool stuff as well as some sad stuff about her family. For the next several months, I will be blogging about this research and how it has led us to doing a project that we are both excited about! Stay tuned!