. Coast watch. Marine resources; Oceanography; Coastal zone management; Coastal ecology. A HISTORIAN'S. The Purvis slave cabin in Greene County is one of the last surviving slave cabins in North Carolina. The Book of Nature r By David Cecelski Photos courtesy of North Carolina Museum of History n 1895, a popcorn peddler named Allen Parker told the story of his life as a slave on the North Carolina coast. Parker published only a few copies of Recollections of Slavery Times for his friends and family in Worcester, Mass., where he lived after the Civil War. The slim, 97-page book quickly faded in
. Coast watch. Marine resources; Oceanography; Coastal zone management; Coastal ecology. A HISTORIAN'S. The Purvis slave cabin in Greene County is one of the last surviving slave cabins in North Carolina. The Book of Nature r By David Cecelski Photos courtesy of North Carolina Museum of History n 1895, a popcorn peddler named Allen Parker told the story of his life as a slave on the North Carolina coast. Parker published only a few copies of Recollections of Slavery Times for his friends and family in Worcester, Mass., where he lived after the Civil War. The slim, 97-page book quickly faded into obscurity, unknown even to the leading scholars on American slave narratives. Then, two or three years ago, I stumbled upon a copy of this priceless lost memoir at the Illinois State Historical Library in Springfield, 111. How the book ended up in Illinois remains a mystery. But that manuscript turned out to be the only surviving copy of Parker's Recollections in any library or archive in the United States. I do not know if I can put into words the excitement, almost the sheer joy, that a historian feels at discovering a document like Parker's Recollections. I find these discoveries just as exhilarating as paddling into a swamp wilderness or exploring a remote barrier island after a big storm. A whole new world opens up before you — you never know what wonders and surprises will be revealed in that uncharted territory. For me, this may be especially true of a slave narrative like Parker's Recollections. As I travel along the coast, I rarely find any trace of its slave past. Though African American slaves once made up a majority of the population in many tidewater towns and counties, they are virtually invisible in the historic sites, museums, monuments, and markers that portray coastal life before 1865. When Parker decried the fate of his mother, he described that of all slaves who lived and died in coastal North Carolina. In his words, she "now lies buried in an unma
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookcollectionunclibra, booksubjectoceanography
