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Film of baldhead Island and Hamlet-1916
Posted: Fri February 28, 2014, 3:21 pm
by jamesharoldsmith
This was sent to me by my cousin, Jerry Pait While the length says 15 min it only runs about 7 min.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7LfMQQI3cQ
Jim Smith
HHS Class of "59
Re: Film of baldhead Island and Hamlet-1916
Posted: Fri February 28, 2014, 3:24 pm
by jamesharoldsmith
Opps- Jerry said it was made by T. F. Boyd and only recently discovered.
Jim Smith
HHS Class of '59
Re: Film of baldhead Island and Hamlet-1916
Posted: Fri February 28, 2014, 8:50 pm
by Jody Meacham
This a very interesting film because of what it shows about Hamlet before probably every visitor to Our Hamlet was alive. But the film's existence has been known for at least nine years.
A documentary video was made by the N.C. Department of Transportation of the Hamlet Depot restoration project, which was released in 2005, and it contains some of the railroading scenes from the Boyd film. I have a copy of that video, and it may be on sale at the depot. When I was last in North Carolina in February 2013, Sharon Davis and I visited the New Hanover County Library in Wilmington and watched the Boyd film there. I'm not sure, but I think the library is where the original film is stored although obviously the state archives in Raleigh put the film on YouTube.
Re: Film of baldhead Island and Hamlet-1916
Posted: Fri February 28, 2014, 9:29 pm
by Jody Meacham
As an addition to what I just posted, I googled Thomas Franklin Boyd and found the New Hanover County Library document describing his family papers, which were donated to the library by his granddaughter, Margaret Grace Boyd of Tennessee, in 2005. Quite a collection of papers, photographs and family memorabilia is catalogued in the document, which you can read at
http://www.nhcgov.com/Library/finding%2 ... 6-1990.pdf.
The document says Boyd was on the board of the Bank of Hamlet, which I grew up knowing as Commercial State Bank, and built the Hamlet Opera House, which I knew as the Hamlet Theatre, Boyd family home and many other houses in East Hamlet, all of which are shown in the film. He was one of the first people to develop Palmetto Island, now called Bald Head Island, as a tourist destination and many of the scenes in the film are from there. Because of Boyd's connections to the southeastern N.C. coast and because the library document mentions an "Andrew Kure" several times, I wonder if Andrew was part of the Danish family that founded that beach town.