Monday, February 29, 2016

Aunt Winnie

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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