Pea Island Lifesaving Station

N.C. Aquarium Will Highlight Keeper Of Pea Island Lifesaving Station
By Jeff Hampton / The Virginian-Pilot -Feb 07, 2015 AT 12:00 AM

Image description from article about painting: Top Image is a painting of Richard Etheridge, keeper of the first all-Black U.S. Lifesaving Station at Pea Island, stands with his crew at the far left. His portrait has been enlarged to the right in this painting. the painting is by Outer Banks artist James Melvin. -End of Description about Painting.

-Second image: The grave of Richard Etheridge at the North Carolina Aquarium on Roanoke Island. Photo credit:
North Carolina ECHO (Project)

-Third image: Photograph of the Graves in the Richard Etheridge Cemetery is encircled by a fence and features interpretative signage. The headstones are flat on the ground. Photo credit : Catherine Kozak

Begin Article - MANTEO, N.C.

The remains of the keeper of the nation's first all-Black lifesaving station (on Pea Island) are buried in the front yard of the North Carolina Aquarium.

Visitors often wonder about the grave's peculiar placement and the man interred there - Richard Etheridge.

An exhibit inside the aquarium answers much of the mystery.

But a recently uncovered document found deep in the archives of the nearby Dare County Airport reveals why Etheridge and his family's headstones lie flat rather than upright and were discovered beneath a building.

The aquarium plans to fence the graveyard and erect more explanatory panels to tell the formerly enslaved Richard Etheridge's story.
(Note- the bottom photo in the collage above shows that this has been done since this article was written) End Note.

The site has been significant since Colonial days, said

Kitty Dough, the media technician who works with aquarium exhibits. She found a January 1942 letter written to Melvin Daniels, then chairman of the Dare County Airport Commission.

The county was building an airport at the north end of Roanoke Island as World War II began. Daniels sought guidance on what to do with burial plots of whites and Blacks in the way of the proposed runway and facilities.

The graves on the runway site had to be removed, wrote Army Corps of Engineers Maj. R.A. Sharrer. Other graves on the property could remain, but the headstones "may be replaced flat on the ground" and built over, he wrote.

"That was my answer, right there," Dough said.

The Navy took over the airfield during the war and built an infirmary over Etheridge's grave, Dough said. Dare County got the land back after the war.

The building was used as a 4-H camp recreation hall, among other things, she said. In the 1970s, the buildings were torn down to make way for the Marine Resources Center, predecessor to the North Carolina Aquarium on Roanoke Island.

Aquarium Director Rhett White and others researched Etheridge in the 1980s and erected signs by the graves.

"It turned out we had a hero buried on our doorstep," Dough said.

Etheridge was born (enslaved) on Roanoke Island and was a young, expert waterman when the Union captured the region early in the Civil War. He joined the 36th U.S. Colored Troops serving in Maryland, Virginia and Texas and rose to the rank of sergeant, according to a history provided by Dough.
(Click link at end of this article to learn more about Richard Etheridge's life)

He returned home to farm and fish and eventually went into business with his former enslaver. Part of Roanoke Island was set aside as the Freedmen's Colony, where formerly enslaved people established a village.
Etheridge joined the U.S. Lifesaving Service in 1875, a year after it was formed. The documents describe him to be "as good a surfman as there is" and "a man among the men," according to the history.

He was made keeper of the Pea Island Station in 1880. When white surfmen would quit, he would recruit blacks from his home on Roanoke Island. Etheridge instilled a military discipline at the station. He and his men made daring rescues, including saving the crew and passengers of the schooner E.S. Newman in 1896. Etheridge died in 1900 - possibly of malaria - while still at the station, Dough said.

Outer Banks artist James Melvin painted Etheridge and his crew in the 1980s from old photos. That painting and others of subsequent Pea Island station keepers hang in the aquarium.

The Coast Guard awarded Etheridge and his crew Gold Lifesaving Medals in 1996 - 100 years after the famous rescue.

Soon, roughly 250,000 annual visitors to the aquarium will learn more about Etheridge and why his gravestone lies flat in the front yard.

Article Source: https://www.pilotonline.com/.../article_c4692fbc-b44c...

Read More About Richard Etheridge Here: https://www.facebook.com/.../a.1900559283.../348900379167884