By the end of the Civil War in
1865 all of Ocracoke’s former
slaves had fled the island. Interestingly, two former slaves, Winnie
Blount (“Aunt
Winnie”) and her husband Harkus (Hercules) Blount, moved to
Ocracoke from
Bount’s Creek, NC, with a Williams family in 1866/1867. Harkus
was a boat
builder and carpenter; Aunt Winnie (ca. 1825 – 1925), worked
as a domestic. The
Blounts were the only post-Civil War black family to call Ocracoke home
for
more than one hundred years.
 |
| Aunt Winnie |
Aunt Winnie's granddaughter, Muzel Bryant (1904-2008), was the last of the family to live on Ocracoke. Muzel died just shy of her 104th birthday.
Click
here for more information about slavery on Ocracoke Island.
Our latest Ocracoke Newsletter is the story of Beatrice Wells, child
evangelist, who preached at Ocracoke in the late 1930s/early 1940s. You
can read it here:
http://www.villagecraftsmen.com/news022116.htm.
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