THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 5, 1994 TAG: 9406050042
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B4 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LORRAINE EATON, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: 940605 LENGTH: MANTEO
Visiting Manteo has always been like going back in time. And now visitors can travel a little farther back in time by taking in ``Glimpses of the Past - Photographs from the 'Teens and 'Twenties,'' a new exhibit at the Outer Banks History Center on Iceplant Island.
{REST} The photos come from D. Victor Meekins and nobody seems to know exactly what it was that turned the young man into the first native shutterbug. Perhaps it was the influence of Manteo's lone photographer who came here in 1905 and operated a studio for three years.
Possibly it was a fascination with the cameras owned by the smattering of wealthy tourists who frequented the island in the early 1900s. Or maybe it was simply a young boy's fascination with magic of photography.
``What kindled it, I don't know,'' said Francis W. Meekins, Victor's son. ``He had a passion for most anything involving the arts that existed back in those days.''
Whatever the catalyst, the late D. Victor Meekins, born in Manteo in 1897, left behind a legacy of photography that documents life on Roanoke Island from 1912 to 1930.
Recently, Roger Meekins, Victor's eldest son, loaned 283 glass negatives, each about the size of a paperback book, to the Outer Banks History Center. Prints were made and 54 will remain on exhibit throughout the year.
There's a pair of young bucks sneaking a smoke on the way to Sunday services at the Baptist church. A boatbuilder stands proudly by his creation, a flat-bottom shad boat. A team of horses hauls logs along a stretch of soundfront beach, its cargo destined to shore up distant coal mines.
``It was almost like he discovered documentary photography himself, without a lot of antecedents to go by,'' said History Center curator Wynne Dough.
No matter how simple and sober the photographs, they illuminate a period of Outer Banks history that has never before has been largely documented in print. ``There were photographs here and tax maps there . . . ,'' Dough said. ``Meekins is the first native photographer to produce a large body of work of both historical and artistic value.''
It's one thing to hear that there used to be a boatworks where the Lost Colony parking lot is, Dough added. It's another thing to see it.
The 18 years that the photographs chronicle is what Dough calls ``the grim period'' on the Outer Banks. Before the Civil War, Roanoke Islanders lived a comfortable life. The inlets were important shipping lanes and there was plenty of work for boatbuilders, pilots and other maritime workers. But the advent of railroads and inland canals in the 1850s made the inlets less important and left the local economy in shambles. The fledging tourism trade was devastated after the Civil War left Southern families in financial ruin.
Many of the photographs might seem historically insignificant at first glance. The value is apparent only after a closer look.
Consider the posed portrait of old Caje Etheridge who sits tall and proud on the porch of the Meekins' homestead, sword in hand, the stars and stripes draped in the background. Whether Caje was a Civil War vet is not known, but the picture illustrates an odd point of Outer Banks history. Though geographically in the South, Union sentiment was strong here during the Civil War. Hatteras Island seceded from the Confederacy and even sent a congressman to Washington, D.C.
The fact that many of the photographs are of black families illustrates another anomaly of Outer Banks history. According to Dough, the racism that seethed in the South following the Civil War was not so strong here. Blacks and whites worked together in several of the lifesaving stations dotting the beaches and lived together in mixed neighborhoods. Integration ``was no big deal,'' Dough said.
The photographs also tell us something of ourselves. It's hard to not notice that every business and home in the photographs of downtown Manteo has a wide, sheltered porch where people are eating and gossiping and visiting.
``That doesn't happen anymore,'' Dough said. ``We've improved transportation and communication, but no one ever does it anymore. It's crazy.''
But, this local penchant for porch gatherings made identifying the photos difficult for the history center staff. In one photo, six people represent five different families.
Meekins' enthusiasm for his hobby is also evident. In February 1914, the Benedict, a three-masted, 697-ton schooner, ran aground in thick fog on a South Nags Head beach. Meekins, then 17, shot the only known photographs of the wreck.
``It had to be a real chore,'' Dough said. ``There was no bridge from Manteo to Nags Head (that was built in 1927). It took a certain amount of drive to cut a day of school and haul all this equipment with you.''
Meekins never pursued photography as a profession. Instead, he went on to a distinguished and varied career as county sheriff, postmaster and chairman of the county board of commissioners. But he is best known for founding the Dare County Times, now the Coastland Times, the local newspaper currently run by his son Francis.
When the paper was started in 1935, reproducing photographs was expensive and few were printed. But later, when technology made reproduction more affordable, Dough speculates, some of Meekins' work appeared in the local paper.
``A lot of photos in the early Coastland Times were probably his,'' Dough said. ``Once a shutterbug, always a shutterbug.'' by CNB