No one lives in Portsmouth anymore: 

 no one to tell how changing ways and the 

 fickle sea took away Portsmouth's purpose 

 and its people, one by one. 



Portsmouth, though, lives on — as a 

 Cape Lookout National Seashore testimo- 

 nial to an island lifestyle, gone forever. 

 And Portsmouth lives on in the hearts of its 

 exiled natives, who still cherish the cluster 

 of sunwashed buildings, empty now for 28 

 years, as their hometown. 



"When I say home, I mean Ports- 

 mouth," says Jessie Lee Babb Dominique. 

 "I wish I could go back, every day." Now 

 of Beaufort, she was the last baby bom in 

 Portsmouth, 71 years ago, the last scholar 

 at its one-room school. Her sister and her 

 aunt were the last two residents of 

 Portsmouth, before isolation forced them 

 off the island in 1971. 



In i860, the population reached 



a high of nearly 700 people, 



including 117 slaves. The population 



was only 320 in 1870. 



A decade later, it had fallen to 220. 



Dominique is among a handful of 

 former residents who can remember 

 Portsmouth, across Ocracoke Inlet from 

 the village of Ocracoke, as a vibrant, small 

 community. 



In Dominique's childhood, families 

 were close-knit and friends were always 

 ready to help. The men served in the Coast 

 Guard, as her father did, or fished for a 

 living. Her hard-working elders relaxed on 



summer evenings with a croquet match. 

 She worshipped at the picturesque 

 Methodist church on Sundays. She saw her 

 neighbors on weekday afternoons in an 

 island ritual that underscored Portsmouth's 

 remoteness. 



"We'd go and wait for the mail to 

 come in," she says. "It came from the 

 mainland in the afternoon. The general 

 store was where people gathered." 



The post office, established in 1840, 

 occupied one comer of the general store 

 and a prominent place in the far-flung 

 village's daily life. Everything from letters 

 to mail-order furniture to visitors arrived 

 via the mailboat. 



When Cape Lookout National 

 Seashore was created in 1976 and took 

 custody of Portsmouth, memories like 

 these were deemed an important part of 

 state and national heritage. The National 

 Park Service keeps Portsmouth more or 

 less as it was when occupied in the first 

 half of the 20th century. 



"Nothing much has changed," says 

 Cape Lookout education specialist Laurie 

 Heupel. "That's the point of Portsmouth." 



On the National Register of Historic 

 Places, Portsmouth today consists of about 

 20 structures and several cemeteries, 

 scattered over about 250 acres at the 

 northernmost tip of North Core Banks. The 

 buildings and graveyards are located 

 wherever high ground rises above the 

 marsh. A mile of sand flats, sometimes 

 underwater, separates the edge of the village 

 and the Atlantic. 



Though Portsmouth's history stretches 

 back almost 250 years, most buildings date 

 to the early 1900s. The houses last occupied 

 are painted a light yellow. The Methodist 

 church, considered the village symbol, was 

 built around 1914; the schoolhouse in 1920. 

 The turn-of-the-century Life Saving 

 Service's barracks and watchtower, 

 boathouse, summer kitchen and stables are 

 at the rim of town nearest the ocean. 



The oldest structure is thought to be the 

 Washington Roberts house, dating to the 

 late 1700s. Its massive wood foundation 

 blocks were likely cut from timbers washed 

 ashore from a shipwreck. Losses at sea 

 sometimes were Portsmouth's gain, as 

 islanders salvaged such cargo as coffee, 



8 EARLY SUMMER 1999 



