Portsmouth Village

About this property

Portsmouth was a fishing and shipping village located on Portsmouth Island on the Core Banks in North Carolina, United States. Portsmouth Island is a tidal island connected, under most conditions, to the northern end of the North Core Banks, across Ocracoke Inlet from the village of Ocracoke. The town lies in Carteret County, was established in 1753 by the North Carolina Colonial Assembly, and abandoned in 1971. Its remains are now part of the Cape Lookout National Seashore. 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 war 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 closing of the post office in 1959. In 1967 Portsmouth Island and village had already been acquired by the National Park Service, then incorporated into the new Cape Lookout National Seashore. The last two elderly residents, Marian Gray Babb and Nora Dixon, left the island in 1971 after the death of Henry Pigott, who although approximately the same age was essentially their caretaker. In 1978 Portsmouth Village was added to the National Register of Historic Places. The inhabitants of Portsmouth Village were heavily engaged in fishing and other maritime trades, like piloting and manning vessels, even building a small man-made island, Shell Castle, out of oyster shells for use as a shipping depot. Later, many worked as fisherman and clammers. Much of Portsmouth's population was African American, descending from the slaves brought to the island. After the Civil War, most African Americans left Portsmouth, but some families remained, including the Pigott family, whose descendants were some of the island's last inhabitants: Henry and Lizzie Pigott. 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.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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