Winnie Blount of Ocracoke Island, North Carolina

I am Winnie Blount. Here is my story...
In 1855, Daniel Tolson purchased the land that was once Blackbeard's hangout, where Tolson lived with his family and 22 slaves. The censuses from 1790 and 1860 show that there were from 16 to over 100 slaves on Ocracoke during that period.

At the end of the Civil War, former slaves fled Ocracoke. One couple, Harkus Blount and Winnie Bragg Blount, both formerly enslaved, moved to the island. Winnie and Harkus had two children, their daughter, Jane, married Leonard Bryant, a cow worker at the Doxsee Clams factory. They had 13 children, including Muzel Bryant.

Winnie lived to be 105 years old, and her granddaughter, Muzel lived to be 103. For more than 100 years, members of the Blount family were the only African Americans to live on Ocracoke.

This mid-19th century portrait is of Winnie Blount, Muzel's Bryant’s grandmother. Aunt Winnie, as she was called by islanders, when she came to Ocracoke shortly after the end of the Civil War to work as a domestic.

Soon after her arrival on the island, she married Harkus (Hercules) Blount who came to Ocracoke from Blount’s Creek in Beaufort county after the Civil War. He worked on the island as a carpenter and boat builder.

Together they purchased a large tract of land from Mary Jane Bragg (the daughter of John Bragg, with whom Aunt Winnie appears to have had a connection). Aunt Winnie and Harkus built a small frame home on their land, just south of where the Island Inn sits today.

Few details about their lives exist and no photographs of Harkus Blount have survived. We do know they had 12 children, but only two-- Annie Laura and Elsie Jane lived to adulthood. Elsie Jane married Leonard Bryant in the late 1900's and they chose to stay on Ocracoke. They had 9 children, including Muzel Bryant who was born in 1904.

According to Walt Wolfram, coastal North Carolina had a sizable slave population and more than 100 slaves lived on Ocracoke. After the war ended in 1865, all of the former slaves on Ocracoke left the island. Harkus and Winnie Blount are believed to be the only two African Americans to have moved from the mainland to Ocracoke when the war ended.

Today, Ocracoke continues to honor the history of this important island family. While the Blount homestead may be gone, Winnie Blount Road, just off Irvin Garrish Highway is named in Aunt Winnie's honor.

Source: Museum of the Albemarle - Originally posted by Ocracoke Preservation Society on 2/5/21.