Letter by Dawn Taylor
We the descendants of those who manned the Historic Cape Hatteras Light Station located on North Carolina's Outer Banks and citizens of the United States,are petitioning NC Congressman Walter Jones and the National Park Service to preserve and protect the original granite foundation stones which bear the names and dates of our forefathers who honorably gave of themselves to provide those at sea a beacon in which to safely navigate the dangerous waters known as the Graveyard of the Atlantic.
In 1999, the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse was moved back 1,600 feet to protect it from the encroaching Atlantic Ocean.After the move the Outer Banks Lighthouse Society spent almost $12,000 to have the original granite stones which had been cut away from the lighthouse foundation, engraved with the names and dates of all of the keepers of the Hatteras light. The stones were then arranged in a circle to mark the original location of the historic lighthouse.
Over the years, due to coastal storms,this historic site which mean so much to the keeper descendants and lighthouse enthusiast alike,has been covered with sand and the stones scattered around by waves. Just as the lighthouse was moved for preservation's sake, we want these stones to also be maintained and protected from the sea.They represent such a large part of our island's heritage and history.
In May of 2013, in a letter to the Outer Banks Lighthouse Society, seashore superintendent Barclay Trimble said, “Because of coastal processes, namely shoreline erosion and dune migration, the stones have routinely become covered with sand requiring substantial effort to keep them uncovered.”
The National Park Service has also responded by stating that it no longer intends to keep maintaining the stones due to it being no longer practical to keep uncovering and rearranging the stones after each storm. To most, this is an unacceptable answer.
Each year,especially through peak tourist season, thousands visit the lighthouse per day and purchase Climbing Tour Tickets at $8 for adults and $4 for senior citizens. It is not hard to do the math and to see that indeed, there are funds out there to preserve the site we are petitioning.
These original Cape Hatteras Lighthouse Foundation Stones located at the original lighthouse site,with the names of our forefather's etched in their remembrance, should be preserved. We the lighthouse descendants and all who cherish and honor it's existence are hereby joining together by the creation of this petition to make our voices heard and to see that these cherished stones will still be there for future generations to visit, just as we have.
Signed...
Dawn Farrow Taylor
President - Cape Hatteras Genealogical and Preservation Society
https://www.change.org/petitions/nc-congressman-walter-jones-and-the-national-park-service-cape-hatteras-to-maintain-preserve-and-protect-the-original-foundation-keeper-stones-located-at-the-site-of-the-cape-hatteras-lighthouse
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It is just possible that John Rolfe was responsible for the worms—specifically the common night crawler and the red marsh worm, creatures that did not exist in the Americas before Columbus. Rolfe was a colonist in Jamestown, Virginia, the first successful English colony in North America. Most people know him today, if they know him at all, as the man who married Pocahontas. A few history buffs understand that Rolfe was one of the primary forces behind Jamestown's eventual success. The worms hint at a third, still more important role: Rolfe inadvertently helped unleash a convulsive and permanent change in the American landscape.
Like many young English blades, Rolfe smoked—or, as the phrase went in those days, "drank"—tobacco, a fad since the Spanish had first carried back samples ofNicotiana tabacum from the Caribbean. Indians in Virginia also drank tobacco, but it was a different species, Nicotiana rustica. Virginia leaf was awful stuff, wrote colonist William Strachey: "poor and weak and of a biting taste." After arriving in Jamestown in 1610, Rolfe talked a shipmaster into bringing him N. tabacum seeds from Trinidad and Venezuela. Six years later Rolfe returned to England with his wife, Pocahontas, and the first major shipment of his tobacco. "Pleasant, sweet, and strong," as Rolfe's friend Ralph Hamor described it, Jamestown's tobacco was a hit. By 1620 the colony exported up to 50,000 pounds (23,000 kilograms) of it—and at least six times more a decade later. Ships bellied up to Jamestown and loaded up with barrels of tobacco leaves. To balance the weight, sailors dumped out ballast, mostly stones and soil. That dirt almost certainly contained English earthworms.
And little worms can trigger big changes. The hardwood forests of New England and the upper Midwest, for instance, have no native earthworms—they were apparently wiped out in the last Ice Age. In such worm-free woodlands, leaf litter piles up in drifts on the forest floor. But when earthworms are introduced, they can do away with the litter in a few months. The problem is that northern trees and shrubs beneath the forest canopy depend on that litter for food. Without it, water leaches away nutrients formerly stored in the litter. The forest becomes more open and dry, losing much of its understory, including tree seedlings.
