Interview with Atlantic, NC resident and local history buff Danny Taylor, conducted January, 2002 by Heiti Narma for OriginalDownEast.com

H: Now, you were telling me about a Down Easter who had been the pilot of the CSS Virginia (AKA Merrimack of Monitor and Merrimack ironclad fame)...

D: Yeah, his name was Silas Gaskill, he was a coxswain, steering the Virginia, in March of 1862 I think it was, when they fought the Monitor. The way I found this information out was, a guy, a friend of mine called me one night about the Virginia, And told me he had found a list of the sailors on it. And he sent 'em to me, the list, and there was actually two from Atlantic, two from the Stacy area, and that one from Sea Level on there.

H: on the same boat... a lot of Down Easters in one place...

D: Well, they were sailors...

There was 5 guys from Carteret county, two of 'm locally, one of 'em from Portsmouth Island and one from Cedar Island, and one from Sea Level that fired the last cannon at Appomattox... actually it was after Lee had signed the surrender papers, during the Civil War. Thomas Goodwin from Cedar Island and William Cullifer from Sea Level were the two I can remember their names, one guy named named Simpson from Beaufort and Anthony Dennis from Portsmouth Island.

We had one from Atlantic that run a blockade runner. during the civil war, his name was William Smith, captain of the old Dominion. The Confederate Government had it built in England he went and picked it up and run it for years. There was two guys from this area in the Spanish American war that I know about... one from Stacy and one from Atlantic. And several in the Revolution, in the militia... got land grants after the Revolution... they gave them a thousand acres of land.. the Continental Congress gave them a thousand acres of land...one or two they had down in the Straits area, down in that area, Crow Hill, back of Otway...They had a big mustering field there where they did the marching and maneuvering and all that type...

Otway Burns ... was a privateer out of Beaufort, I guess, originally, and he is buried in the Old Burying Ground in Beaufort, I know that... I've been to his grave there, I think he lived down around Swansboro after that.

H: I guess he was born up in Queens Creek...

D: Yeah.

One of the first provincial governors of North Carolina, some of his people are buried here,in Atlantic, 1700s... they were Wallaces...Governor Wallace had a big palace on the island off of Portsmouth called Shell Castle. Some of those are buried here in Atlantic, some of his relatives... Wallaces... still got descendants around the Morehead area right now.

One of the first Masonic Lodges in North Carolina was in Straits. It was... They had a Church of England, and a Masonic Lodge. Early 1700s way before the Revolution, I do have a copy of the deed and paperwork. A guy named Migett deeded 'em the land and let 'em build a building on it. And I think years later it moved to Beaufort and they changed the name.

Portsmouth Island had a thousand bed marine hospital and was at one time one of the busiest ports for sailing ships on the east coast. That was in the 1700s...And then Hatteras Inlet opened up, Portsmouth kinda closed up.

H: What about the Lost Colony?

D: I've read a lot about that. Milan Willis' granddaddy, wrote a book. That is very interesting... I think he taught school up at the University of North Carolina... history, for a while...and he retired and looked all that up, went to England and looked up all the dates...the weather than was logged on the charts, and the inlets that were open and the degrees, latitude and longitude, and figured out that the only possible inlet they coulda come in was Ocracoke -- Hatteras wasn't open at that time -- and I think in the 1930s, during the depression days, the local political guys up around Dare County knew that this guy, name of Paul Greene, had wrote a play about the Lost Colony, an outdoor play and I think they always claimed it was Roanoke Island and once that got started good, you know how the political thing is, they didn't want to change it even though it probably weren't no where near Roanoke Island. It was Cedar Island. There has never been an artifact of any kind found on Roanoke Island that would identify the Lost Colony as being there. And all the names in the back of Mel Robinson's book, he had a list of names of all the people that was on the ship that came over with White and every one of 'em is a Carteret County name -- Guthries, and Willis's and Salters and Taylors and Morris's and none of them are Dare or Hyde county names like Grays or Midgetts or Gibbs or that type name. And they said they left and went to Croatan and the only known place in North Carolina (that's) Croatan is up the Neuse River, Between Cherry Point and New Bern. So it basically makes sense...

H: Are you aware of any artifacts that were ever found?

D: Not around here, no. I don't know that anyone ever looked for any. That's all government land now... Wildlife refuge...But what everyone thinks, and what he thought, what they called Fort Raleigh was a civil war earthen works from the old fort over there, that they found...

H: There was an old clay pit down around Straits?

D: Yeah, I think that was somewhere around Wards Creek, I heard, where that clay pit was

H: The deep pit or... and I guess some of that clay had been used for the foundations at Fort Macon?

D: I think that's where they made the brick, where they got the clay and made the brick. Willie Louis told me one time his granddaddy told him something about it... There's still a lot of the old brick there where they broke some of 'em, makin' 'em, and they'd put them on a barge and take 'em -- which is not very far -- from Ward's creek to Fort Macon, really... just go out the North River there, the mouth of the North River and go right on to Fort Macon.

D: Smyrna's a real old town... I think one of the oldest churches in this part of the state was right there around Smyrna... Huntin' Quarters run all the way from Stacy, Sea Level and Atlantic...an old Indian name, Huntin' Quarters. Still some deeds, and I think my father's birth certificate... he was born in 1906... had Huntin' Quarters on it. There was a lot of Indians in this area, I think... I heard my father talking about when they built the first road in the early '30s, from Cedar Island to Beaufort, they paved it with shells, and it was a big shell pile on Hog Island, which is right off of Cedar Island, and the state barged them across and they found all kinds of Indian bones, from where they buried their people in 'em... skulls, Indian artifacts and stuff...

I remember when I was a kid, there was 7 or 8 stores on Sea Level and on Atlantic...

H: About Atlantic Field?

D: I've tried to find it on the Internet, the history of this place (Atlantic Field), I've talked to guys, matter of fact a couple of weeks ago an old guy came out here, said he flew planes out of here 60 years ago. I've got one aerial photo taken in 1943...it's a big one... I've got a picture of all the civilians that worked out here, there was about a hundred civilians worked out here... I got a picture of all them in one group....and I know their names, but they are all dead, 'cause the last one died about 2 years ago. They got relatives around here. There's one or two Marines that live around here right now that was here in the Second World War and there's loads of them all over the country, that come down here in the summer, at different times in the summer. I try to find out everything I can about it but they don't remember too much, they remember some of the squadron names, numbers... I try to find out which foundation was what building and stuff... I'd like to find out a lot about it, Maybe the Marine Corps somewhere, if you knew how to get in that Marine Corps history thing, but I've tried it on the Internet, I just can't find anything on it...I know they've got a history, Marine Corps History in Carlyle Barricks, Pennsylvania somewhere...but how you get in it, I don't know I do know the head two guys out here, Marines, stayed well after the war was over, about 1953 they began tearing the buildings down. Then they kept a Marine sergeant out here... ever since the war there's been a few Marines out here... Caretakers... It would be interesting...

H: Settlement?

D: As far as I know there's been people living here ever since the Lost Colony.

H: Well, what do you figure for a real date for the settlement here, do you think it was the late 1600s?

D: late 1500's

H: OK... Are there any written documents you know about? Old Bibles or...deeds or ?

D: Umm, The early gravestone was like I was tellin' you, those Wallaces, 1714... and they'd been here a while, you know they had been, when they were buried. That was here in Atlantic...that was the earliest markers...but there was a lot of old wood markers long before that you can't read or just can't tell... they've deteriorated, and that...

H: Lot o' history here...

D: Well, as far as locals, my cousin Zack Taylor from Sea Level... he became an Air Force general, fighter ace in World War 2, flew in Korea and then did some pretty important stuff in Nevada, as to how we can be winning the war now.

NOTE: By any measure General R. G. "Zack" Taylor was an extraordinary man. A WWII fighter ace flying P40 Warhawks. A visionary mind helping to develop the weapons and tactics of modern airwarfare. A pioneer of adversarial air warfare training which resulted in the development of the "RED FLAG" exercises which are held four times a year. A champion of electronic warfare training.. so that our pilots could recognize and counter missile and antiaircraft threats. No man has contributed more to the success of our airwar in Afghanistan than he. And he was also a son of DownEast, being raised in Sea Level, NC. The present Mid Atlantic Warfare Range embodies the best of his vision...... located in his beloved DownEast.

While gone his legacy lives on.

D: Yeah! I can't remember it right now... I used to be in it more, but I haven't worked on it lately... the last year or so.... But if I think of anything else I'll write it down and give it to you. I've got a lot of papers and stuff...

H: Well, you spent a lot of time in the National Archives, didn't you?

D: Yeah, went to the National Archives, State Archives, Virginia Archives... just about anybody...you can get a lot of it out of Virginia...

H: Well, they used to think they owned Carolina, right?

D: Yeah. Well most of 'em came from up that way... Jamestown or in that area and migrated this way.

H: Except for the Lost Colonists on Cedar Island...

D: Yep. They were here already. Even Lawson, you know about Lawson writing the first history of North Carolina?

H: No.

D: Early 1700s...he said there was people here that was friends with the Indians and mixed with the Indians way before he wrote the first history in the early 1700s.

H: Now somewhere I ran across a thing on the Internet, which isn't up there anymore that somebody had come and see the Indians and they spoke English but they didn't write...

D: That's right, Lawson, John Lawson,

H: That was in Lawson?

D: Yeah.

H: But when he asked them how long they'd been there, they said forever...

D: Yeah.

H: So I guess they'd been, I guess, a couple generations...

D: Yeah. They'd been here a long time. Lot of Indian artifacts along the shore, too... you can find them all the time... pottery, clay pipes I've found... yeah, you can find loads of that... broken pottery mostly.

H: Any of that stuff that you've got...

D: I gave it to a cousin of mine and he sent it to the Smithsonian I had a bunch of it... I've still got the clay pipe...

H: Like to talk some more... thanks, Danny!