Please join us this Thursday evening, March 5th, for a reception and lecture to celebrate the opening of the newest exhibit in Wilson Library‘s North Carolina Collection Gallery: Cultivating the “Great Winter Garden”: Immigrant Colonies in Eastern North Carolina, 1866-1940. Following a 5pm reception, historian Susan Taylor Block will give a talk entitled “Mules to Mozart: Holocaust Escapees at Van Eeden,” drawn from her 1995 book Van Eeden, which tells the story of a group of European Jews whose lives were saved during the Holocaust when they obtained agricultural visas and moved to a farm in Pender County, NC.
The book’s cover, as you can see, features a Hugh Morton photo of his grandfather Hugh MacRae, whose role in the establishment of NC’s agricultural colonies was explored in a recent post by Stephen.
We hope to see you there!
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Processing the Hugh Morton Photographs and Films
Wish I could be there on the fifth.It is nice to see Mr.MacRae remembered for his success in establishing colonies of European farmers in Eastern North Carolina. He was a pioneer in protesting the destruction of the soil with the planting of only cotton, corn, and tobacco. Hugh said that when he was at Chapel Hill a professor (Dr. Hobbs) told his class that New Hanover County had the highest agricultural income (per acre?) of any county in the United States during the depression except for a grape growing county in California. If that is accurate, the Dutch at Castle Haynes, who were leaders in intensive farming, deserve the credit. You have posted a photograph of a field of daffodils ready in February to be harvested for the northern markets. First of five “truck” crops that be would planted each year. I believe the importatioin of flowers from other countries and the arrival of itinerate farm labor cut into this “crop” somewhat in later years. But how right Mr. MacRae was!