Day: December 2, 2009

We just added a great coastal map from 1822 to the North Carolina Maps site. The “Chart of the coast of North Carolina comprising the three Capes Hatteras, Lookout, and Fear, with the Harbors of Ocracock, Beaufort, and Smithville,” by Robert H. B. Brazier, shows exactly why the waters off of North Carolina were known as the “Graveyard of the Atlantic.” The map details many of the shifting currents, shallow waters, breakers, and changing inlets along the Outer Banks.

My favorite details on the map are the windmills shown in Beaufort and on Pivers Island.

Death noted: Singer and folklorist Bess Lomax Hawes, age 88, in Portland, Oregon.

Although best remembered (and understandably so!) for co-writing “M.T.A.,” the half-century-ago Kingston Trio hit, Hawes also did ambitious folklore advocacy for the National Endowment for the Arts from 1977 to 1992.

In “Sing It Pretty: A Memoir” (2008) she recalled how “North Carolina, a long, thin state… was celebrated in a major first-time folk festival… on a long, thin piece of land where traditional arts of each section of the state could celebrate together in their own special places on the ‘map,’ producing a vivid demonstration of the cultural excitement a trip through North Carolina has to offer. Every single member of the legislature attended that festival in order to have his picture taken with the folk artists of his own domain.”

Along with father John A. Lomax and brother Alan Lomax, Hawes was, as the New York Times noted, “part of the premier family of American folk scholarship.”