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Robin Daniels Holt. You don’t recognize the name; you don’t know her.

Well, now. She embarked on a truly marvelous undertaking, that being to write a book about life on the Outer Banks, Hatteras Island and especially about the arduous life of women. Her focus was on the year 1900.

If you read her book, “My Daily Bounded Realm”, you will question why in heaven’s name women were ever called the weaker sex.

Let me give you a dollop from a portion of just one page.

It gave a recipe for egg custard pie. Then a date: Friday, September 28, 1900. Then she gives us an insight into a sale from a shipwreck.

“Nearly everything on the island, man, animal or building, owed its existence to some boat lost off the coast. Homes were built from wrecked ship’s timbers and furniture came from the captain’s quarters or cabins. The people were just the same as the furniture, “ came ashore on boards and pieces of mast. They’re worse mixed up than a stew. Most ‘em’s English, but there’s Swedes, and Irish and Portuguese and Germans; and even a couple of Arabs.”

When a ship grounded on a shoal (shipwrecked), folks would row out and bring back everything possible to the shore. They were watched carefully by an appointed wreck commissioner, the life saving keeper or an insurance representative for the ship owner. Buyers then came from miles around, even as far as the mainland, and the wreck commissioner would auction, to the highest bidder, all the salvage. Little Bannister Midgett, Pharoah’s father, had once been a wreck commissioner.

“ Every wreck left its mark. A ship might be loaded with green paint; for years afterward every house on the island would seem to be celebrating some Irish holiday. Or the cargo might be bananas and for weeks humans and animals alike would live on the golden fruit until even the cow’s milk bore a strong banana flavor,” according to an article in the October 1955 of Reader’s Digest.
Robin’s book will have almost incalculable archival value. It will be very interesting and truly informative, and will, as the years roll by, be read by probably a very great number of people.

As for me, I want my Incomparable First Wife to make an egg custard pie.

Oh, yes.