hen Jessie Lee Babb Dominique 

 was born Aug. 2, 1927, Portsmouth was 

 still a going concern of about 100 people. 

 But its future was cast. She was the last 

 baby bom in the village. 



In her childhood Portsmouth, 

 family and friends were close. Her 

 mother, Lillian Dixon Babb, had two 

 sisters and a brother who lived 

 together down the lane. Her father, 

 Jesse Babb, was in the Coast Guard. 



"I spent a lot of time with older 

 people," Dominique recalls. "I would get 

 up in the morning and say, 'I think I'll go 

 spend the day with Miss Hub.'" Miss Hub 

 was Annie Hubbard Styron, who with her 

 husband, Jody Styron, and her brother, 

 Tom Bragg, operated a hunting 

 lodge. Tom Bragg taught her to fish 

 and tell time, Dominique recalls. 

 When she was a little older, 

 Dominique helped in the kitchen, 

 preparing supper for the sportsmen. 



The Babb home was among 

 the first to have electricity, 

 furnished by a generator. Jesse 

 Babb also wired the nearby 

 Methodist church for generator 

 electric lights. 



Once a month, a minister from 

 Ocracoke came by mailboat to 

 preach, staying over the weekend 

 because of the boat schedule. 

 "We'd have him for three days," 

 Dominique says. In between, 

 islanders held their own Sunday 

 school. 



She remembers weekday 

 gatherings at the post office, 

 awaiting the mail. Portsmouth 

 relied on mail-order for everything 

 residents couldn't make, grow or catch, 

 and the mailboat was the primary means of 

 transportation to and from the mainland. 



In earlier times, the boat, which also 

 served Ocracoke, tied up at a fish factory 

 dock on Casey's Island just off Ports- 

 mouth, and the goods were ferried ashore. 

 After the dock deteriorated, Portsmouth's 

 letters and parcels and travelers were 

 transferred to the mailman's skiff in mid- 

 channel. 



Memories 

 of Home 

 Iran 



Portsmouth's 

 Last Baby 



By Julie Ann Powers 



Portsmouth is still home for Jessie Lee Babb Dominique. 



Henry Pigott was the last mailman. 

 Henry and his sister, Lizzie, were the only 

 blacks on the island, descendents of the 

 slaves who worked in the early 

 Portsmouth's shipping industry. Lizzie 

 Pigott was known for cutting hair and 

 growing flowers. 



'1 loved them dearly," Dominique 

 says, and recalls many days at Lizzie's side 

 as a child. 



"After supper she would take a bath 

 and put on a freshly starched and ironed 



dress — those were the old hand irons, 

 heated on the stove," Dominique remem- 

 bers. "And she would smell so good. She 

 would walk down to our house, and they 

 would play croquet." 



The one-room school, built in 

 the 1920s, once had an enrollment 

 of 45. But Dominique was among 

 just three who attended the last term 

 in 1943. Her classmates, children of 

 Coast Guardsmen stationed on the 

 island during World War II, moved away 

 that summer, and the school closed. Her 

 parents didn't want to send their youngest 

 daughter to Ocracoke, so Dominique 

 forewent the last year of high school. 

 Two years later, she left Portsmouth - 

 for New York City. Her oldest 

 sister Edna had married a Coast 

 Guardsman from New York, and 

 the young family went to the big 

 city when his service in Portsmouth 

 was over. To keep her sister 

 company in the new surroundings, 

 the teen-aged Dominique traveled 

 alone by boat and bus and train to 

 New York. She stayed two years, 

 working in a pocketbook factory 

 and later as a bookkeeper for Talon 

 Zipper Co. 



Meanwhile, her parents 

 moved to Beaufort. Dominique 

 went to work in a Morehead City 

 restaurant when she returned to 

 North Carolina, where she met her 

 future husband, Robert Dominique, 

 a Coast Guardsman, in 1948. 



Her mother later returned to 

 live in Portsmouth, and is buried on 

 the island. Dominique's other 

 sister, Marian Gray Babb, also returned to 

 Portsmouth. Babb, who died in 1993. and 

 her aunt Elma Dixon, who died in 1990, 

 were the last residents of Portsmouth. Their 

 reluctant departure from the island in 1971 

 was the end of an era. 



But not, Dominique and other former 

 residents insist, the end of Portsmouth, 

 which persists in spirit among those who 

 lived there and love it still. 



"We won't let it die," she says. □ 



COASTWATCH 13 



