New book dives into the detailed history of Hatteras Island Women

“When I became involved in the cemetery, I really became involved in genealogy,” she said. “I grew up in Wanchese and I didn’t have a lot of family left growing up, until I started researching and found out I’m pretty much kin to everyone.”

“I just find it fascinating how intertwined all of us are,” she added. “I don’t have a family tree – I have a family wreath. It just goes around and around and around.”

After discovering her love for local research, Holt frequented ancestry websites and the Outer Banks History Center, and slowly untangled her family and Hatteras Island’s story. It was information she regularly shared with newly discovered relatives and authors – like Justin Cook of the Tide and Time Project – but she never considered condensing her years of research into a book of her own.

Then one day, while rooting through the many records at the Outer Banks History Center, she found 47 years’ worth of journals by an early 1900s Pine Island woman named Lily Baum.

“I was looking at one of the journals, and it had this mention of ‘Hog Work.’ I thought, “What in the world is Hog Work?’”

As Holt continued reading, she discovered that when a hog was killed, the women would spend three long days dismantling, butchering, processing, and preserving the meat before the carcass spoiled and started to smell.

“Soon after, I started researching more about women’s roles here on the island, and kept reading the journals, and eventually, I realized that this need to be recorded.”

“There are so many Outer Banks history books out there about the men – the fishermen, the lighthouse keepers, the life–saving station crew members – but nothing about the women.”

Using Lily Baum’s journals as a guide, Holt started to sketch out a journal-style story from a Hatteras Island woman’s point of view, focusing on the intricacies of daily life, and the many roles they had to take on.

“The men were making a living. They were oystering and crabbing, and working at the life–saving station, and for most of the time, they were gone,” she said. “So someone had to take care of the family and the home. And the women had a hard, hard life.”

The story is set in the 1900s, before the Industrial Revolution and 50 years before Hatteras Island got a bridge, a highway, or even electricity.

It was an era where islanders relied on sustainable living and the barter system to get by, coupled with whatever work would add a little bit of money to the family income.

“They killed anything that was big enough to eat. They fished, and crabbed, and they even sold feathers to the milliners – the hat people – in Manteo, or they sent them to New York. We live on the Atlantic Flyway, so the plumage here was unlike anything else, and it was a way to make a little money” said Holt.

Meanwhile, the women worked as servants or housekeepers as teenagers, until they married and took on a whole new arsenal of varying job descriptions, not the least of which was having and caring for children.

“In the book, [main character] Martha has 11 kids, and that wasn’t unusual for the time,” said Holt. “There wasn’t much else to do, and they didn’t have birth control.”

Holt’s new book follows Martha’s teenage years as a servant, her marriage to Pharoah Farrow, and her everyday life in a four-bedroom home with a separate cookhouse on the edge of the modern-day Salvo Day Use Area.

It took Holt three years to borrow scraps of history and stories from the 47 journals to write her book, and My Daily Bounded Realm: A Journal of Daily Life in the Outer Banks in 1900 debuted in 2025 to local acclaim.

The book has a collection of photos and recipes – some passed down through generations of Holt’s own family – but its main focus is on the missing history of women on Hatteras Island, which is the aspect that resonates with local readers.

“I’m amazed at how well it has been received. Apparently, a lot of people agreed with me that this part of our history needed to be preserved. There are certainly some references about what the men did, but it’s mostly about the women.”

“I never ever dreamed I would write a book,” she added. “But I just went by newspaper reports, stories from other books and other writers, and interjected what a woman might have thought in that same situation. For example, what did it take for the women to make the Olde Christmas a celebration? The men just showed up and had a great time, but how did the women put this celebration and other events together?”

Folks who have read Holt’s book are already asking for more. They tell her that they miss spending time with Martha and her husband Pharaoh, (“Fair” for short), and they want to uncover more about the remarkable women of Hatteras Island who were somehow able to hold entire homes, families, and communities together.

“But I always tell people, ‘write your own book, because you have that history too,’” said Holt. “Our Outer Banks home has so many stories. And when you start looking and digging, you’ll be amazed at what you find.”

My Daily Bounded Realm: A Journal of Daily Life in the Outer Banks in 1900 is available to purchase at Buxton Village Books, the Liberty Gas Station in Rodanthe, at Downtown Books in Manteo, and online on Amazon.

Holt will also be hosting a book signing and discussion at the Chicamacomico Life-Saving Station and Historic Site in Rodanthe on Saturday, March 29, from 1 p.m. to 2:30 p.m.