officer was on a British ship in 

 or near Beaufort when he fell 

 ill, perhaps with yellow fever. 

 At the time, North Carolina was 

 a British colony. As he failed to 

 recover, realizing he would die, 

 he made a request to be buried 

 with his boots on. His tomb 

 says he is buried standing in 

 salute to the king of England. 



There's an old verse about 

 this story, and it's often cited 

 when the Beaufort burial is 

 mentioned: "Resting 'neath a 

 foreign ground, here stands a 

 sailor of Mad George's crown. 

 Name unknown, and all alone, 

 standing in the rebel's ground." 



The Crissy Wright mass 

 burial contains the remains of 

 four men who died in a ship- 

 wreck off Cape Lookout in 



1 886. On a bitterly cold January 

 night, the Crissy Wright 

 encountered a violent storm and 

 tried to drop anchor. When the 

 anchor didn't hold, the ship ran 

 aground and began breaking 

 apart. The people who lived on 

 the cape in Diamond City could 

 see that the ship was in trouble, 



but the water was too rough to launch 

 any rescue boats. Three of the seven 

 men onboard were washed away. The 

 remaining four tied themselves to what 

 was left of the mast and wrapped 

 themselves in sailcloth to protect 

 against the cold, reported to be 8 F. 

 When rescuers found them the next 

 day, only one sailor was still alive. As a 

 result of this tragedy, the Cape Lookout 

 Lifesaving Station was established in 



1887. Down East, people will still say 

 that a particularly cold day "is pretty 

 near as cold as when the Crissy Wright 

 came aground." 



Dr. James Hunt has the unusual 

 distinction of having married for the 

 second time, written his will and died — 

 all on the same day in 1848. He had 

 come to Beaufort as an Army surgeon in 

 the War of 1 8 1 2, and he stayed on and 

 practiced medicine. Apparently, on the 

 day that he died, he married his house- 



A Confederate soldier's marker in Beaufort 



keeper so that he could leave his estate 

 to her. He wanted to thank her for being 

 a faithful and helpful servant. 



An unusual grave contains a girl in 

 a keg, buried in the early 1800s. For 

 years, the 12-year-old had wanted to 

 travel with her merchant father to 

 London, but her mother wouldn't allow 

 it. When she finally relented, the mother 

 made her husband promise to bring the 

 child back, no matter what the circum- 

 stances. So, the girl and her father 

 traveled to London and had a wonderful 

 time. But on the return trip, she fell ill 

 and died. The protocol for a shipboard 

 death is burial at sea, but her father 

 couldn't bring himself to do this after 

 promising his wife he'd bring their 

 daughter home. So, he purchased a keg 

 of rum from the ship's hold and put her 

 body in it. The entire keg, containing 

 rum and girl, were buried when he 

 returned to Beaufort. 



Another child was buried in 

 a glass-topped casket. Appar- 

 ently, 2-year-old Vienna Dill 

 died in 1865 of yellow fever, 

 which was rampant in the area. 

 She was placed in a casket with a 

 glass top, perhaps so that she 

 could be viewed without people 

 fearing contagion since they 

 didn't know at the time what 

 caused the fever. Legend holds 

 that years later, vandals dug up 

 her grave and saw that her body 

 was intact. But when they 

 opened the casket top, her 

 remains crumbled. She was 

 reburied. 



The unusual marker for 

 Capt. Christian Wulff of the 

 Royal Danish Navy was im- 

 ported from Copenhagen. Wulff 

 died of yellow fever in 1856 

 while in port. Apparently, the 

 ladies of the town had nursed 

 him to no avail, and they had 

 written to his sister in Denmark 

 to report his fate. The sister had a 

 marker carved and delivered to 

 Wulff s grave. In another tragic 

 twist to this story, the sister died 

 as she was traveling to visit her 

 brother's grave. She was aboard the 

 Austria, which burned at sea. 



The Manney family plot has a 

 bittersweet love story. In the early 1800s, 

 Dr. James Manney brought his family 

 from New York to Beaufort. Feeling that 

 his children weren't being educated well 

 enough, he hired 18-year-old Charles 

 French to tutor them. Charles had been a 

 law student in Philadelphia, but he didn't 

 have enough money to finish his 

 education. So he tutored the Manney 

 children for two years. During that time, 

 he fell in love with Nancy, the oldest 

 daughter. But Dr. Manney disapproved 

 of the romance because Charles was 

 poor, and he ordered the tutor to leave. 

 First, however, Charles and Nancy 

 pledged their love for each other and 

 promised to write. And they did, but 

 their letters were intercepted by the 

 postmaster, a friend of Dr. Manney. He 

 did this at the direction of Dr. Manney or 



8 MARCH/ APRIL 1997 



