Raising the Story

Reposted from nccatch.org 2024 post by Liz Biro, interview by B. Garrity-Blake

Hidden on the back roads between Bath and Swan Quarter, Belhaven seems to float on the intersection of Pantego Creek and Pungo River. Driving to Goldring Satchell’s home near downtown feels like a journey that’s a hair below sea level.

The town’s location where those two formidable waterways meet made it the perfect spot for commercial fishing and seafood processing ventures. From its founding in 1705, Belhaven seafood businesses were central to the town’s economy. And Satchell, 91, was one Belhaven’s most legendary crab pickers.

Satchell could pick crabs so quickly and cleanly that she was a shoo-in to win the town’s long-ago crab picking contest. But crab picking was no game for Satchell. It was a career that helped her give her 11 children a better life than she had growing up and provided money to send all 11 of them to college.

Life in Belhaven was not easy for a young Satchell and her three siblings. In the 1920s, the town’s fishing industry grew tremendously, hosting America’s largest crab processing facility employing 225 workers and six fishing boats. Satchell was born in the early 1930s, when The Great Depression closed some of Belhaven’s major industries, including lumber.

The town struggled through, but crab, fish and oyster industries continued to thrive and by the 1940s, World War II impacted the town’s economy in a positive way, with the seafood industry experiencing expansion due to military food supply orders. Around that time, Satchell started picking crabs as a young girl to help her family make ends meet and continued the work after she was married at age 20.

Satchell shared her experience as a crab picker in an interview with NC Catch’s “Recognizing African American Participation in the North Carolina Seafood Industry” project team. The following excerpts have been edited for length and clarity. Click here for the rest of the story.