This book punctures the myth about the nature of the small North Carolina coastal village of Southport.  Today it is known as "the town with all the antique stores," but it's past is very different.  From the mid 1800s to the 1950s Southport was a hard working, sometimes kind of rough, even industrial, town, not merely a fishing village. Only later could it be called "quaint."   The author unfolds that past for us. 

The reader will learn not only of patriots in the Revolution and Civil War blockade-runners, but the story of the little known role her people played in saving lives using converted shrimp boats to seek out German U-boats offshore during World War II.

From after the Civil War until well after World War II, the robust people of Southport transformed the community.  They brought about a nearly explosive growth of commercial seafood processing in the shrimp and menhaden industries, which for many years were the economic backbone of Southport.  Before We Were Quaint tells the story of the lives of people who lived with the threat of disease, survived hurricanes and children who grew up swimming, fishing, and getting into mischief along the town's waterfront.

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What you are about to read is the result of  more than a dozen years of research, more than 80 interviews, and hundreds of hours of just talking to Southport natives about how it was in their lifetime, and what they were told by those who went before them.

                The earliest interviews were done for two video documentaries, Southport Remembered: Glimpses of Our Past, released in 2001, and Vanishing Village: The Southport That Used to Be, released in 2005. Most of those interviews—like those done later—lasted for well over an hour, yet there was room in the documentaries for only about 15 to 20 per cent of their content.

                In addition to the previously unused portion of those early interviews, another 40 or so were done with a wide range of both Southport natives, and others who have been here for quite a while and fit the category of, “I wasn’t born here, but I got here as fast as I could.” I am one of those.

                As is the case in any small town, outsiders and newcomers in Southport are looked on with a degree of suspicion. One of the biggest challenges I faced was convincing locals that, for me, arriving in Southport was like the line in a John Denver song, “…coming home to a place I’d never been before.” And from the time I first saw it in 1990, I didn’t see anything I thought needed changing. For the first three or four years here—and a lot of the time after that—I simply listened. It helped that I was a small town kid and born south of the Mason-Dixon Line. I am a passionate and serious student of history and I studied everything I could find about Southport. The frank answers and unvarnished stories that came out in many interviews were surprising, and gratifying. Some of the things told brought back uncomfortable memories for those being interviewed, and in a few interviews with some of the town’s old characters, there were stories and language that, although it’s tempting, I cannot print.

                This is not a comprehensive history of Southport. The need for that was addressed in 1992, when Susie Carson wrote “Joshua’s Dream” I do however, deal with some early history in the first several chapters for those unfamiliar with it. From that point on, however, Southporters themselves tell a lot of the story. In those cases, I try to stay out of their way as much as possible.

                It is only somewhat chronological, but grouped more by subject. Some told me “you can’t do a history book that way.”  You be the judge.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Larry Maisel