Core Sound Communities

I didn’t see any reason to leave; everything I wanted was right here.

Roy Hilton Willis, Stacy

             Stacy, formerly Mason Town and Piney Point, is located between Oyster Creek to the south and Nelson Bay to the north. Before canals were cut from Beaufort and Morehead City to the Neuse River, vessels rounded Down East and sailed north along Core Sound en route to the trading port of New Bern. Piney Point was an important landmark half way from Harkers Island to Cedar Island, before mariners turned west up the Neuse River.

            Stacy’s western edge borders a massive 57,000-acre pocosin swamp drained a century ago for farmland. The project was a failure until taken over in the 1930s by “Miss Georgina” Yeatman, who built a landing strip so she could fly herself in and out of the remote site from her home state of Pennsylvania. Today, Open Grounds Farm, dubbed the largest contiguous farm east of the Mississippi, produces industrial quantities of corn and soybeans.

            Stacy is the smallest Down East community, with a population of about 200. Hurricane Isabel damaged all but five homes in the community of Stacy in 2003. The long-term effects of the storm can be seen today with many of the homes having been elevated or abandoned, but most residents of Stacy have adapted, continuing to work and live in the footprint of their ancestors. 

            Stacy was settled in the midst of some of the best waterfowl hunting grounds of the region with its marshes, hummocks and sheltered sound waters. The village sits across from Core Sound’s north Core Banks, including Portsmouth Island, and the historic hunting lodges of the Pilentary Hunt Club, the Carteret Rod & Gun Club, and Harbor Island Hunt Club that thrived in the 1920s and early 1930s. Hundreds of hunters came to the banks to experience the sound’s winter duck hunting season. This provided important income during the winter for hunting guides and decoy carvers, who fished during the summer. Making a living was season-dependent. 

            Stacy is known as the decoy carving capital of Down East. Early carvers chopped out decoys for utilitarian purposes – first to feed their families and later, for hunters visiting from northern metropolitan areas. Stacy’s carvers turned out pintails, redheads, coots, buffleheads and canvasbacks that reflected their innate understanding of waterfowl and their skills in creating life-like ducks of wood to attract migratory birds into the waters of Core Sound.

             “They never did use no sandpaper on the decoy body,” said Roy Willis, a Stacy carver.  Willis, using his typical economy of words, described how his father, Eldon Willis, and his father’s partner worked together. “He’d take a log and just chop it into the shape of a decoy, give it to Mr. Elmer. Mr. Elmer would put it in a wood vice, with a draw-knife and slick it off with that.”

            Stacy was home to Mitchell Fulcher, Carteret County’s most accomplished carver. Born in 1869, Fulcher was known for his attention to artistic detail in his carvings. He’d draw patterns on shoe box lids and carve wood salvaged from boats with a hatchet, hand saw, and pocket knife. His nephew, Edfred Gaskill, recounted a tale that shows the old carver’s sense of humor.

            “One of his neighbors came walking through his yard, and he had three decoys sitting on the edge of the porch. He had just painted them. The guy talked to him and then went on to the landing and came back and the decoys were gone. He asked Mitchell, ‘What happened to your decoys?’ He said, ‘Well, the cat came up here and drug one of them off and eat it. The other one, Susie came out here and got him and took him in the house and cooked him. The other one there, a flock of ducks come by and he flew off.’”

             Homer Fulcher, known as “Mr. Homer,” helped bridge the space between function and art with his interpretation of ducks and shorebirds. His worked ranged from no-nonsense, functional decoys to more artistic mahogany carvings of fish and shorebirds. Recipient of the North Carolina Folk Heritage Award, he and his lifetime friend Julian Hamilton, Jr. brought decoy carving to the highest ranks of the state’s traditional arts. Homer Fulcher became one of the first in the region to teach classes in carving. He and fellow carver Alvin Harris of Atlantic taught the first carving classes at Sailors Snug Harbor in Sea Level, sharing the craft with retired merchant mariners. His efforts inspired the training that is offered today, ensuring a “next generation” of decoy artisans.