Reminiscences

by
Alonzo Milton Rollinson I

Taped in February 1990 while talking to his daughter, Christine.

April 16, 1992 Dear Lon & Sue, I made Dad's tape a couple of years ago, but recently decided to transcribe it and send a copy to Sam and each of you nephews. Thought you might like to have it. I haven't tried to verify any of his stories-just wrote them as he told them, from his viewpoint. Much love to all, Aunt Christine (Christine Rollinson Dickson)

In talking about his father, Samuel Milton Selby Rollinson, about his becoming a representative for the House of Representatives of North Carolina: "He had a selfish motive for getting himself elected. He had a store and he outfitted commercial fishermen. He stood good for their groceries during the seasons when the fish weren't running. Then he took a cut of their profits. In order to do that, they had fish houses that were built offshore on pilings. They would clean the fish and ice them. The fish houses were built offshore because the schooners couldn't get in close to the mainland to pick up the fish. So my Father got himself elected Representative in the House of Representatives for North Carolina. One of' the first bills he offered was to have a channel dredged from deep water to the mainland of Hatteras Village. The channel today is shown on the map as Rollinson Channel-the way you get into Hatteras Village.

"Samuel left from there and went to Elizabeth City, where I was born. He went into the wholesale grocery business and was very successful. He was also active in the Masonic Lodge. The Masons sponsored an orphanage in Raleigh, North Carolina at that time. Perhaps they still do, I don't know. He was carrying some orphans from Elizabeth City to the orphanage in Raleigh by train. He was going to take care of the insurance premium on his business while he was up there. But on the trip, before he got his premium paid, his building burned down. Then he had to go to work as a salesman. He did this almost the rest of his life.

"My Father's travelling as a salesman in those days was practically all by horse and buggy or by train. On train trips it was a common practice by a great many of the salesmen to write poetry and little things like that to pass away the time. Dad would write things like that and send them home to Mother. One that I happen to remember was written in dialect, so he was talking, about himself when he wrote it."

I'm a Rambling Man

I'm a rambling man with nervous feet
That never were made for a steady beat.
I've had many jobs for a little while,
Been on the bum, and I've lived in style.
There was a road winding mile after mile
And nothing to do but go.

So beat it, Bo, while your feet are mates.
Take a look at the whole United States.
You can pause for only a little spell
On the long, grey road to Fare-thee-well
That leads to Heaven ­ or maybe Hell,
And nothing to do but go!

S.M.S. Rollinson

Q: Didn't you tell me that the minister found out about your Dad's death before your Mother did?
A: That's right! He called her and sympathized with her on my Father's death. Mother didn't know he was dead.
Q: Was he a salesman at that time?
A: Yes, he was a salesman.
Q: He was no longer a Representative?
A: No, that was when he was a younger man, before I was born.
Q: Was he over on the coast selling, or what?
A: Yes, at that time they had diesel-powered boats running up and down the coast in North Carolina and to the Outer Banks. When I was a young fellow they didn't have any powered boats. You had to go by sail. They did have steamboats, but they couldn't get into the small islands. They ran one as an excursion boat from Elizabeth City to Nags Head every weekend. Dad got there on the mail boat, the Hattie Creef, at Stuffy Point. When you got off the boat you had to climb up a rather steep sand dune into town. My Father had had a physical in Norfolk the week before. When he got off the boat he climbed the sand dune and went into a little store. He saw another travelling salesman, a good friend of' his named Dan Morgan, walked up to him, slapped him on the back, and said, "How are you, Dan?" and then dropped dead, was dead when he hit the floor. Of course communication then between the mainland and the islands was very poor. Somehow the word was relayed to Elizabeth City, and the preacher was told about it instead of telling Mother. The preacher assumed that they had already told her. He called on her and sympathized with her about my Father's death. She really was hit hard. She just couldn't believe it because he had left home, apparently in the best of health. He was only 56 years old, and I was only 16 years old at the time.

Dad left quite a few writings. He wrote poetry for Mother. A number of his poems were published, one of them in the "Reader" that was furnished to the school children at that time in North Carolina. I don't know who has a copy of my Father's poems now, but my sister collected a lot of them. I presume that they were passed down to her children. Perhaps Sonja might have them. I don't know. She is the daughter of' Mary Branch. Most of them are in my Father's handwriting. If she has those she could have them copied for you.

My Father, probably mistakenly, was very much in favor of the discipline that was imposed on the German people by Kaiser Wilhelm, and later by Hitler. Dad admired the German people and more or less agreed with the theory of a superior race through breeding. He self-taught himself the German language and spoke it rather fluently. He also spoke Spanish.

Q: What kinds of things did he sell?
A: Well, for a long time he traveled for a company named W. P. Gillice Company, out of New York, selling tea and coffee. At that time he introduced some of the brands that are still major brands today, such as Chase &, Sandborn and Maxwell House. He had a large sample case that had coffee beans and they were not ground. He would carry his samples for a month or two and then he .would bring them home to Mother-and get fresh supplies. You could smell the beans roasting in the oven when you would get up in the morning. They would really wake you up!

Q: Would you tell me some stories of our family history?
A: Well, Grandpa Rollinson, to give you a little bit of history, had dinner with the commander of the Confederate Fort on Hatteras Island. The Fort was made of turf. The next day the Federal gunboats stood offshore and knocked the fort down with a few shots. Grandpa left the island, with his family, because he knew the Federals would be coming ashore. From there he went to Plymouth, N. C., on the Outer Banks. They stayed there with a doctor who befriended them. While there my Father was born. He was named after the doctor, Samuel Milton Selby. Grandpa's home on Hatteras Island was taken over by a politician from the mainland ,and was claimed as the Liberated Capitol of the State of North Carolina. So Grandpa's house was the capitol of' the state of' N. C. for a time.

Later on my grandfather had one of the few licenses from the U. S. Government to catch bottle-nosed dolphins (porpoises). They used the oil from a cavity in the skull for the very finest of mechanisms: watches , compasses and things of that sort. It was quite a sight to see them pull those things in. They would take what was a comparatively very fine net. With a crew of men they would lay it out beyond the porpoises on the surf and lead them into the point where the surf was shallow enough that they could wade out. Then they would lay a net made of rope behind the porpoises and pull that in from each end of the net. When I was a boy I saw them make one of the biggest catches ever made. They pulled in 101 or 102 porpoises in the one haul. The killed them on the beach, took the leather-the hides-and the porpoise oil and left the carcasses on the beach to deteriorate. You could smell them for five miles when the wind was in your direction.

They also ran what they called a seaweed factory. They gathered seaweed (kelp) and dried it and shipped it in bales. It was used to fill cushions, mattresses and things of that sort. It and the porpoise boat were owned by either General Wainwright's father or uncle. I don't know which.

When I was a young fellow in Hatteras and on the Outer Banks most everyone ate a lot seafood and a lot of waterfowl. You could go around the Hatteras Lighthouse after a storm and pick up various birds that were good to eat-pick out what you wanted. I had one uncle, Arthur Fulcher, that had a covered pen with its top and sides covered with poultry wire. He kept live decoys in there. He had grey geese, snow geese, brandts and mallard ducks that I recall. They would take these waterfowl up on to the reef on the Sound side of Hatteras Island, go onto one of the little islands out there on the reef, just high enough that you could build a blind, and set these birds out with a lead anchor attached to their legs, so that they could swim around, but not fly. They would honk at the flocks of waterfowl flying over head and the flock world come down and light around the decoys. The hunters could kill them then almost like killing chickens in a chicken coop. They would do this in freezing weather, and when they had a deck-load frozen, they would carry the birds up to Norfolk, Va., and sell them in the markets just like we would sell chickens or tame ducks.

Q: You have told me that you have also eaten swan?
A: Oh yes, swan was a delicacy. There weren't that many swans. Baked wild swan was a very delicious food.
Q: Where did they get them?
A: Same place, out there on the reef.

Black Beard, William Teach, used the islands down there to clean his schooners-his pirate ships. He would run them up on a shoal of water in high tide. when the tide would go out the boats would lean over as they hit the bottom. At that time they would go ahead and scrape the barnacles off and do what repairs were needed such as, caulking and painting. Teach was welcome up and down the islands because he was 'money'. He bought his supplies there and at the same time he would bring things for sale. Lt. Maynard, of the young U. S. Navy, ran Teach up the Fear River, out from Cape Fear, attacked and whipped him, with quite a bit of blood shed. Lt. Maynard nailed Teach's head to the bowsprit and sailed it back into Washington, N. C. They hung several of the crew there also.

This area is called the graveyard of the Atlantic; I don't know how many ships have sunk there, but it is a surprising amount up into 2,000 to 3,000, something like that. This is recorded history.

Among the people there one oh the chief occupations was the Lifesaving Service, which is now the U. S. Coast Guard; and incidentally, is the oldest branch of the American services-older than the army or the navy.

My Grandfather was also the first man to bring a ship into Hatteras Inlet. After a strong hurricane passed through at Cortland Inlet at the south end of Hatteras Inlet, for the next, few days they recovered buildings that had ,washed to sea that had cattle on the roofs, and rescued the cattle. This inlet, they said, was approximately a mile wide. Clipper ships started using it then to come in there for the same purpose that William Teach, Blackbeard the Pirate, had used it for: to clean the ship and take on fresh water and supplies.

My Grandparents had three sons, Octavius, Junius and Arthur, and three daughters, Letitia, Anges, and Betty, my Mother.
Q: How was your Mother's name spelled?
A: B-e-t-t-y A-1-i-c-e.
Q: Not Bettie then?
A: No.
Q: Did you know your grandparents?
A: I knew Mother's Mother. But I was quite young. I don't remember much about her. One of the stories that Mother told me was about my Father, who had two uncles that captained clipper ships. One of his sisters married the captain of a clipper ship. When my grandfather was a young fellow, one of' the uncles wrote my grandfather and told him that on a certain date he would be off Hatteras and would lay to and run up his signal flags, and that if they would bring my grandfather out to the ship that they would take him on as a cabin boy and teach him navigation. My grandfather said, No, he couldn't go because all of the other Rollinson men had gone to sea, and that instead he was going to get an education. On the date that his uncle had told him, the boat laid offshore, ran up its flags and stayed for thirty or forty minutes and took off. My Grandfather was pretty heartbroken about it, but he finally did graduate from Trinity University, which is now Duke. He taught school, a little private school. I think he charged 50¢ a month--something like that. He also ran his own store and kept a pair of forceps by his cash drawer. They didn't have cash registers in those days. He also pulled teeth for 50¢ a job.
Q: Did you ever see him do that?
A: No. that was before I was born. These are things that 'have been told to me. His sister, Missouri, traveled the world over with her husband. Their home eventually was in Washington, N. C. Her husband's name was Capt. Willis.
Q: Grandma Rollinson, what was her name?
A: Acsah. I did not get to know her. She died before I was born. Mother's Mother's name was Cynthia. Her father's name was Lefis.
Q: Can you tell me about my great-grandfather's log?
A: I do have some slides of my Grandfather's diary. he called it a journal. The original copy is in the possession of my brother John's wife, Alice. They also have copies of it in the State Museum in Raleigh.

Q: Will you tell me a little bit about who you and your family visited and who you spent the summers with when you were at Cape Hatteras, and also how you got there?
A: Well, after school was over for the summer Mother would take me and Harry. Sometimes she would go back with Harry, and 1 would spend just about all of the summer. At that time the only access you had to the Outer Banks was by sailing vessels. We had three uncles down there that ran stores, and also a great-uncle that I was named for, Alonzo J. Stowe, at Hatteras. Arthur Fulcher was at Trent and Octavius Fulcher was at Buxton. They owned a schooner jointly to haul their merchandise. I went there by their boat. I would catch it when it came into Elizabeth City. It came in there to buy some things. I could ride free down there on schooner. Usually I would go first to Uncle Alonzo's at Hatteras. I would spend some time with him and his wife, who was my Father's sister, Elvia. Then I would go down some times and spend a little time with Bill Tice Willis, who lived about two miles from there, opposite Creef's Hill Lifesaving Station on the Sound side. I also spent some time at Buxton with a uncle down there who married my Father's sister, Letitia. Her husband was keeper of the lighthouse, and we stayed in the keeper's cottage. That is how I know that in a blow, in a storm, waterfowl would pile into those lights when they would see the flash of the lights-and break their necks. Then you would pick out what you wanted to eat for dinner.

Q: Will you tell me about how your Mother met your Dad?
A: She was going to school under him. She was a student. There was a man who came ashore there. They all called him Pharaoh. I don't know whether that was his right name or not. The family name became Farrow. In the marriages over the generations the family lost their Egyptian look. My Father was engaged to Miss Farrow. After he had married my Mother instead, she was sometimes teased about this. She would laugh and say that Miss Fanny Farrow got the engagement ring but she got the husband!

Q: What did your Dad teach?
A: Reading, writing, arithmetic-anything they wanted to study. Mother's father was an ordained Methodist minister. She said she knew one fellow there who taught Sunday School. Every Sunday this teacher would tell the children, "Be sure to come back next Sunday. And if you can't bring a penny for the offering, bring an egg."

Researchers came down to the Outer Banks and made recordings of the residents' speech because the natives spoke Elizabethan English. These are on record there and you can go hear them if you want to.

Q: Tell me about the early land grants to the property down there.
A: Back before there was a government in this country (can't give dates to you because I can't remember them), I presume it was my Great-Grandfather, was given a grant of' land by the then King of England, one of the Georges (I don't know whether it was the Fourth, Fifth, or Thirty-ninth!), and it was kept in the safe of the family store that had belonged to my Father. My Father had taken his family to Elizabeth City. My Uncle Bill was given the store and the house by Mother. My Mother's father wouldn't permit her to marry Father until he had a home to take her to. So my Grandfather Fulcher deeded the house to my Father. When they moved to Elizabeth City, Father told Mother that he would build her a home there if she would give Uncle Bill the home on Hatteras Island. That was the deal, and that is what they did. Uncle Bill was running the store and had the Grant of Land from the King of England, with the royal seal on it, in the safe.

In the early days when the travelling salesmen came through the villages on the Outer Banks they were always looking for some antiques they could buy. They stripped most of them off of the islands. Uncle Bill was showing this Land Grant to a travelling salesman and had to stop to wait on one or two customers. When he finished waiting on them the salesman was gone and so was the Grant! So we lost that out of the family. This happened before I was born, so I never got to see it.

I don't know that there is now, but even back after your Mother and I were married (1924), there was a lot of real estate still in the family name. I presume that the Federal Government has taken it over as a National Seashore. One of the family, I believe it was Dolf Burrows, wanted a particular piece of' land there to build a home on-he was a direct descendant-so started getting Quit-claim deeds from the other descendants. It took him quite a while, two or three years, to get a clear deed because every time he would get a satisfactory deed worked out with quit claims, one of the heirs would give 'birth to another baby. This had to be taken into account, but that is the way he got it, and he is living there now.

Wild ponies still thrive on Assateague and Chincoteague. They originated on the Outer Banks, probably from some Arabian horses that survived a shipwreck-that were on a ship consigned to someone in perhaps, Norfolk. Over the years, through inbreeding, they have developed a formation of their spine that is entirely different. They are considered the only original breed of horses in the United States. A cousin of mine, Bill Burrows, is very interested in them. If you are ever down there he will show you a couple of ponies and tell you all about them. You will find him at the Red Dot (I believe-at least Red Something) Chain Store. It is an expansion of the original store that my Uncle Alonzo Stowe and his partner built. The diary records things like this. It also has a record of the deed and the fact that it was originally built and stocked for approximately $500.00. It was in the Stowe family then and still is. It goes way back yonder! Dolph, his brother, lives there. They would be your two best resources I know of. They would be cousins. Lucy Burrows and Dolph have two children: Bill and Adolphus Burrows. Their grandmother and grandfather are buried there at their home, right near the residence. That was the custom back then. There were no undertakers. My Grandmother and Grandfather Fulcher were buried near their home at Frisco, which is now Trent. Their graves are covered over with sand dunes, so it is not known how or where to find them.

Not authenticated, but this is a family story: The old Rollinson house had some 'build' timber, but most all of the frame and some of' the interior were made from hand-hewn timbers. At that time, when they had no undertakers, they preferred to make coffins from planks that were wide enough so that they were just one piece across and wouldn't have a seam. My Grandmother was a rather stout woman. She had been very sick and my Grandfather had been sitting up with her for several days and nights. Before she died he was so tired that he went into his bedroom, laid on the bed and was staring up at the ceiling, and noticed that two of the planks were about 30" wide each and were hand-hewn. Right then one of the boards cracked crossways, and at that same time Grandmother died. They used the boards to make the coffin. This is supposed to be a true story, but I can't vouch for it!

The first car on Hatteras Island was brought down there by schooner and transferred from the schooner to the island by raft. It was a Model T Ford, and was bought by Elsworth Burrows. It was back when they had gas headlights, a tank on the running board, and the shift lever on the running board. Elsworth took the manual and studied it for two or three days and took off. In those days you had only horse tracks, most of it through sand roads. He did very well starting the car. He got off very good and then when he had to stop he couldn't remember how, so he slowed her down and ran her into a fence. This is a true story. It was some few times before he got squared away and knew where the brakes were. Every time he used that car (I can vouch for this and saw it done), he would run it into his garage (it was called an outhouse then), wash it down to get all of the salt off, dry it off, and kept it looking like brand new. Back then, where the wagon roads went over a sand dune they would start up the dune with two people in the car, and the driver, in low gear. When it slowed down from the deep sand the driver would step out, go around and push. When he got to the top of the dune the driver would get back in over the back of the car. That is when they didn't have solid tops. This is also a true story!

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