PREFACE
With precise regularity the incoming tide sweeps across oyster beds and mudflats and at its pleasure erases footprints left by a “crankie” in the black mud. Similarly time obliterates much information sought by later generations but regrettably lost forever.
Masonboro Sound, on the indentured coast of North Carolina, was from early times a fashionable resort area as well as a fishing community. Now it is becoming the fastest growing suburban area of New Hanover County and changing complexion so rapidly its enchanted past should be zealously preserved. Masonboro has been the home or summer residence of such historically important persons as William Hooper, Cornelius Harnett, and Archibald Maclaine. However, this is not the standard type history of notable figures, though they do appear, or of wars and governments, though they do play a necessary part. This is a community history—a story about most of the families who have lived on Masonboro.
This account is written with two audiences in mind: those persons interested in documented historical material, and, primarily, those residents of Masonboro interested in reading about the earliest settlers and about their forebears.