Joel Hancock

This article describes Joel Hancock's book regarding Mormons settling on Harkers Island. This and other articles may be found in the University Archives.

Citation for this article is: Rees, Franceine Perry, "Joel Hancock," ECU Report, Summer 1989, Volume 20, No. 1.

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A little-known episode in coastal North Carolina's past is the subject of Strengthened by the Storm: The Coming of the Mormons to Harkers Island, N.C. (1897-1909), a newly-published history by Joel Grant Hancock '74, '75, a fourth-generation Harkers Islander.

His book tells how a catastrophic 1899 storm brought Shackleford Banks refugees to Harkers Island, resulting in a surge of conversions to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormon). At that time, missionary elders from Utah weren't having much success in North Carolina.

Hancock's account reveals much about life in isolated fishing communities at the turn of the century as well as details of the hardships and persecutions suffered by the elders and their flock.

As a boy growing up on Harkers Island, Hancock recalls hearing stories of the Mormon elders and the turbulent beginnings of the island's Mormon community, but says these stories were part of an oral tradition "that was rapidly becoming blurred even in the minds of the old people" who were actually alive at the time.

Unfortunately, by the time he began his research -- about five years ago -- all of the original converts had died, leaving Hancock the task of gathering information from widely-scattered sources.

The bulk of his information came from journals kept by missionary elders. Most of the Latter-Day Saints Church mission work is done by young men who travel, at their own expense, to faraway places and try to establish or expand Mormon communities in these areas.

These missionaries, termed "elders" by the church, are required to live simply and to keep a written record of their daily activities. Journals kept by elders named Adams, Johnson, Hansen and Petty proved to be Hancock's most valuable resources for Strengthened by the Storm. Finding their journals, however, was not easy.

The elders came to eastern North Carolina from Utah, Idaho and Arizona; their descendants have since moved all over the Midwest and West.Hancock says he wrote at least 200 letters in pursuit of these written accounts.

Most were glad to send photocopies of the precious pages; one woman mailed him her ancestor's original journal. "It was such an incredible experience to open the package and see the old book in its red leather binding," Hancock recalls.

The missionaries' late 19th century accounts reveal their wonderment at the marvels they encountered after their long train journey to North Carolina.Some had never before seen black people, or eaten watermelon and yams, or suffered from chigger bites.In 1897 Elder William Hansen wrote about the "good, humble, but poor people" on the coast whose livelihood depended on the few fish they could catch.

"The elders didn't have much luck converting the coastal people until the devastating storm of 1899," Hancock explains. "The Shackleford Banks town, Diamond City, had been a thriving community of about 700 people before it was inundated by waters from the sound and the ocean. When the water receded, the once-fertile soil was covered by a thick layer of beach sand.

"The people were forced to evacuate Diamond City and move elsewhere," Hancock says. "While some migrated to mainland settlements, most of them went to Harkers Island and joined the less than two dozen families already on the island."

On Harkers Island, with its hundreds of displaced refugees, the Mormon teachings began to take hold. "The elders had great success with converts on Harkers Island after the storm," Hancock says. "These were people whose ancestral homeplaces were buried and whose ties to their immediate past were broken.The Mormons eventually became the largest religious group on the island, outnumbering the Methodist Episcopal (Northern Methodist) Church population."

Hancock's grandmother, Bertha Willis Lewis, became an enthusiastic convert after she mysteriously recovered from a crippling childhood ailment following an encounter with one of the visiting elders.

The Mormons' progress among the Harkers Islanders continued, unimpeded for the most part, until a national wave of anti-Mormon sentiment reached the remote community in 1904.Most of the opposition concerned the church's early practice of polygamy (plural marriage), which had long since been outlawed and repudiated by the church.

Inflammatory anti-Mormon editorials appeared in newspapers all over the country. "Here, and in Utah, the profession of Mormonism . . . is a cloak to vice and immorality, and an attempt to evade the law on the hypocritical pretense of religious belief," declared the Raleigh News and Observer in March, 1904.

In coastal North Carolina, the Mormon elders were feared as evil interlopers who would lure young women into becoming slaves to Mormon men in Utah.

Fear and distrust of the Mormons on Harkers Island grew into open hostility among the Protestant populace. Previously, Northern Methodists and Mormons had enjoyed what Hancock terms a "give and take" relationship, with members of the churches attending each others'meetings. Northern Methodists now hurled rocks and oyster shells at the windows of the Mormon church during services. At least once, a firearm was discharged through a church window, and in 1906 the Mormon church was burned to the ground.

The elders, and to a lesser extent their followers, were threatened on several occasions. In one particularly violent incident, Mormon women and children formed a guard around the elders, shielding them from some angry pursuers.

All this seemed to increase the Mormons' determination to keep their faith, Hancock says, even throughout a three-year period when they had no religious services on the island at all; it was considered too dangerous.

Within a few years, the hostility abated, and peace between the Mormons and their neighbors was restored. By the 1930s the Mormons had a new church building, outgrown two decades later as the congregation increased.

The current Harkers Island Mormon church is one of the largest buildings on the island, but it has "remarkably small windows," Hancock observes with a smile, speculating that this may be a result of the long-ago "chunking" of rocks and shells.

While still in manuscript stage, Hancock's book received considerable praise from other historians and from publishers of scholarly works.Finding a publisher, however, was no easy task.

North Carolina university presses were reluctant to publish Strengthened by the Storm. It was well-written and interesting, Hancock was told, but his concern with Mormon history was too far out of the mainstream of North Carolina. Conversely, Latter-Day Saints publishers in Utah found much that was praiseworthy but regarded the location of the events -- coastal North Carolina -- as too far outside the mainstream of Mormon culture.

Ultimately the book was produced by Hancock himself in cooperation with a local press -- Campbell and Campbell Publishers of Morehead City -- with the author, his parents and in-laws underwriting most of the initial publication costs.

Reviews have been enthusiastic, and Hancock's narrative style has come in for as much acclaim as the fascinating and spellbinding story he tells. More than once, Hancock has been told that his book would make an exciting film.

A Morehead City newspaper reviewer termed reading the book "an enjoyable history lesson . . . the book affords the reader a chance to weather the storms in the Shackleford Banks community of Diamond City . . . float over to Harkers Island in the exodus, encounter the first Mormon missionaries on the Island, and learn a great deal of the county's history in the meanwhile...."

In the book's forward, a leader of the Latter-Day Saints in North Carolina pays tribute to the "subtle art" of Hancock's handling of Harkers Island history during the 1897-1909 period. The book "evokes a presence of the Island itself," he says, "as though the tale were being told as we ourselves sit under the branches" of the weathered old oaks.

Strengthened by the Storm is a large format volume, casebound with an illustrated dustjacket. The 168-page book includes photographs, bibliographical references and an index.