Before Pine Knoll Shores, before the Roosevelt
family, 
before Alice Green Hoffman, during the time when John A. Royall owned three quarters of Bogue Banks, there was Abonita, Carteret County, NC. It was 82-acres of real estate bought by Oscar Kissam of Huntington, New York. Known on many early deeds and maps as Aibonito, it came to be variously spelled Abonito, Abonita or Aibonita. How this development started, who settled there and how it fits with the history of Pine Knoll Shores are all part of this story.
before Alice Green Hoffman, during the time when John A. Royall owned three quarters of Bogue Banks, there was Abonita, Carteret County, NC. It was 82-acres of real estate bought by Oscar Kissam of Huntington, New York. Known on many early deeds and maps as Aibonito, it came to be variously spelled Abonito, Abonita or Aibonita. How this development started, who settled there and how it fits with the history of Pine Knoll Shores are all part of this story.
Early
Settlers on Bogue Banks
Cold and foul winter weather in northern states
has always inspired those who could to search for a winter retreat in a more
hospitable clime. This longing drove both John Royall and Oscar Kissam, at
about the same time, to the milder climate of Bogue Banks. Having boats gave
them access.
Before John Royall and Oscar Kissam came to Bogue
Banks, the only known residents in the early 1900s west of Hoop Pole Creek were
squatters in Salter Path. A Meginnis/Maginnis family listed as residents,
probably in the area now known as McGinnis Point, appeared in 1800 and 1820
census reports, but did not reappear in the 1900 census. Like Native Americans
who camped and fished on Bogue Banks before them and mainland residents who came and
bought property here, they left few modern-day traces of their presence. Oscar
Kissam and John Royall would leave their marks.
While Oscar was working on his 82-acre development,
John Royall, of Boothbay Maine, was acquiring three quarters of Bogue Banks. He
bought land from Atlantic Beach (from where the Doubletree Inn is today) west
to the end of the island, approximately 8,000 acres.
Although the size of their holdings were vastly
different, Oscar Kissam’s 82 acres in some ways had a greater impact on the
development of Pine Knoll Shores than did Royall's 8,000 acres. The Kissam
acreage was and still is in the center of the early-developed portion of Pine
Knoll Shores.
The Abonita property when overlaid on the current
map covers, approximately, Sycamore Dr. & Oakleaf Dr. west to Mimosa
Blvd., due south to about the canal, east to Hall Haven and straight north,
along Sycamore, more or less.
Owners of
the Land Kissam Bought
Often, people who come to a remote island like
Bogue Banks do so because they know someone who owns property in the area. The
land Oscar and his wife Lucy Simpson of Huntington, New York, decided to buy
was owned by acquaintances Burton James Coleburn and his wife Mary Ellena Eaton
(known as Mollie) of Carteret County, NC.
The Kissams purchased two tracts of land from the
Coleburns in December 1908[i]. Both
tracts were approximately 40 acres each.
What Oscar
Kissam Did with His Purchase
Mr. Kissam, clearly intending to create a
settlement on Bogue Banks, plotted the land into streets and avenues, laying
out lots and registering them in the Deeds Office.[ii] The
property included two 40-foot wide access paths to the ocean. The plot plan was
like a typical city housing plan and made no allowances for natural dune
formations or ridge lines.
He was ready to sell the lots he had created. However, in 1910, the location of Oscar Kissam’s real- estate venture and a complete lack of amenities significantly limited the property's appeal. There is no indication the road system detailed on the registered plot plan was ever more than stakes in the ground. The earliest aerial photo of this location available is from1939, and it contains no hint of roads having been cut in Abonita. This was raw land that required an adventurous spirit and a boat to access.
But, Mr. Kissam
did have some early success selling lots to his New York friends and acquaintances,
who were mostly seamen and wanted a spot down south for the winter when their boats
were pulled out of the water up North.
The plat in the Recorder of Deeds office includes the spelling Aibonito, all deeds issued to the lot buyers identifies it as Abonita, the name we use today.
Included among his buyers were the following:
Lot #1, Section
I was deeded to Fredrick H. Eaton, January 11, 1911
Lot #2, Section
I was purchased by a Mrs. Martha K. Smith, of Lynnbrook, NY, February 2,
1911
Lot #3, Section
I, was purchased by three friends—W.G. Young, T. Cottrell Sammis, and Herbert
A. Rosell, all from Long Island, March 14, 1910. 'Herby' Rosell, his son lived
in PKS for a number of years, in the 80's and 90's.
Lot #2, Section
II was split in two, sold to James BF Thompson and Mr. J.A. Palmer, Jr. of Long
Island, October 17, 1910
Lot#3, Section
II sold to Joseph Irvin, March 14, 1910. This being the first lot
recorded. (The sound front lots listed above
sold for $1.00 per foot of sound frontage.)
Lot #17, Section
I, on the corner of Hawthorne and Sycamore, was purchased by Capt. William G.
Young
As pictured below these men came, cleared land and built hunting and fishing camps.
Small Cabin at Abonita,
circa 1910s
Photo from Young family
collection.
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They built retreats on Bogue Banks and,
appreciating the unparalleled beauty of the island, preserved its natural
state. Among these individuals was the author's grandfather, Captain William
Glover Young (1881-1918), of Huntington, Long Island. The second son of Ira
Benjamin Young and Harriett Kelsey, he began his nautical career as a seaman in
his father’s steam ferry company and eventually became captain of the steamer
“Huntington.” He later captained a Long Island Railroad steamer and
subsequently became an inspector for the United States Government.
In 1910, when Captain Young purchased a lot in
Abonita from Oscar Kissam, he and his wife, Carrie E. Conklin, built a small cottage they named “Camp Magellan.”
With their two children, Woodhull and Caroline, they spent several winters in
their cottage and took photographs. Fortunately for us, they preserved and
shared their photographs.
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| Pictured in front of Camp Magellan left to right are; the ships hand, Harriet K. Young (author's Great Grandmother) holding Woodhull B. Young (author's father), and Carrie C. Young (author's Grandmother) |
After an initial burst of sales, Oscar’s scheme to
sell lots, sight unseen, to northern buyers was essentially a failure. He only
managed to sell about a quarter of the acreage, and by 1915, he moved on to
endeavors elsewhere.
But, Aibonito remains in the center of Pine Knoll
Shores today. Why that happened is the rest of this story, but before going
there, knowing a bit more about Oscar Kissam fleshes out the portrait of this
man who can be considered one of the founding fathers of Pine Knoll Shores.
What We
Know About Oscar Kissam
"Kissam" has an exotic and foreign
sounding ring, perhaps due to its lyrical similarity to the ancient Persian
philosopher Omar Khayyam. But, in fact, Oscar Kissam was from a family who came
to America from Europe well before the revolution. The Kissam Family Association[iii]
identifies the first Kissam recorded in America in 1644. Genealogy
studies trace the family back to Ireland, Wales, Holland, or maybe Sweden. The
family had many members residing in the New York-New Jersey region. The Kissams
were among the first to settle in the northwestern sound-side region of Long
Island, and the family name gets intertwined with Roosevelts, Vanderbilts and
other notable families on the North Shore. The Kissams who settled in
Huntington, Suffolk County, Long Island, first arrived there in the early 1700s
and were among the original patentees of the town of Huntington.
The Kissams prospered in public administration,
farming and the mercantile field. Census records indicate that, when Oscar was
a child, the family may have operated a vessel repair and sales business in
Huntington. (The current president of the Huntington Historical Society is
Toby Kissam, perhaps a distant relative of Oscar.)
Oscar, one of five children, was born January 28,
1846, in Huntington, to Charles M. Kissam (1815-1879) and Elizabeth I. Mott
(1813-1898). Oscar married Lucy B. Simpson (1847-1911). They had three
children—Ella (1873-1959), Charles (1877-1950), and Emeline (1879-1954), who
married Edward Willis Underhill.
In an article in Engineering and Contracting,
Volume 29, June 3, 1908, Oscar Kissam describes at length his methods for
clearing land. He is referred to as living in Halesite, NY, and supervising
blasting work. Halesite is a hamlet near Huntington. This work experience is a
clue that indicates Oscar was involved, at least tangentially, in the land
development business in New York—experience he brought to Bogue Banks.
In 1898 George Taylor bought
a large estate on Huntington Bay and named it Halesite. Taylor was an admirer
of Nathan Hale and the spy mission he undertook in September 1776. Legend has
it that Taylor’s estate was the starting point of that mission. Taylor hired a
local contractor to move a commemorative bolder to his property. He referred to
that contractor as “Oscar ‘Dynamite’ Kissam”[iv].
John Royall’s Dealings with Oscar Kissam
The real-estate mantra, “location, location,
location,” provides an understanding of why Oscar Kissam and his Aibonito
settlement is so important to Pine Knoll Shores. Both Kissam and Royall
selected the same relative location on this island to settle.
Between 1910 and 1915, when John
A. Royall owned most
of Bogue Banks, he
built a hunting lodge for his family to the east of the Aibonito property
and enjoyed several winters on the Banks. In the spring of 1915, Alice Green
Hoffman came to Bogue Banks and met John Royall at his lodge. Finding the
island and its remoteness appealing, she asked about acquiring a 2,000-acre
portion of his land.
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| Mimosa Boulevard location |
Alice
Hoffman and the Roosevelts Deal with Abonita Owners
Alice Hoffman bought property from Royall in 1917,
and several of the Abonita lots Royall had not been able to acquire before he
sold the land to her would,
after her death, be incorporated into the street and lot plan of Pine
Knoll Shores. During the time of Mrs. Hoffman's ownership of the surrounding
lands, she had made several
attempts to buy the remaining Abonita lots from New York owners, as
had the Roosevelts when they controlled the surrounding acreage.
When owners of those lots declined all offers, the Roosevelts designed the Pine
Knoll Shore street pattern and lot configuration to accommodate
existing Abinita lots.
Another work-around the Roosevelts devised to
accommodate the lots they did not own can be seem in the configuration of the
channels dredged during the late 1960s.
As PKS developed, owners of these lots were
contacted to sell to the Roosevelt developers. Some sold, but others held onto
their lots. Dredging was done in front of all the Roosevelt lots. When the waterway reached Aibonito lots, the channel angles out to
the main navigation channel. Aibonito frontage was left shallow since those lots
were not part of the Roosevelt development property.
Was the dredging decision made solely because these owners
would not sell to the Roosevelts or pay for dredging? From a business
standpoint, the cost of dredging could not be recovered in the sale price
of the abutting or affected property. Other considerations could have driven
this design, such as navigation, sand flow and silting—Corps of Engineer concerns.
In the above 1971 aerial photograph, the west
branch of the canal is under construction, the outlet to the sound is still
blocked by a dam, and there is no bridge at Mimosa. The channels parallel to
the shore in the sound clearly veer away from the shore at the approximate
location of the original Aibonito sound-front lots.
The Roosevelts
had a survey conducted to document their holdings. Part of that survey is
shown below, with Aibonito property identified.
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| Rivers & Associates map commissioned by the Roosevelt Family |
The street plan we currently
travel also was partially determined by the efforts of Oscar Kissam. We can
think of him along with John Royall, Alice Hoffman and the Roosevelts as founders of Pine Knoll Shores. They all left their marks.
What’s in
a Name
The source of the name Aibonito, as well as its
assorted spellings, Abonito, Abonita, Albonita, all of which appear in various
documents, has an historical link to Peurto Rico and the Spanish-American War.
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| Flag of the municipality of Aibonito, Puerto Rico |
During a recent discussion with a resident of Puerto Rico who at one time lived near Aibonito and visited it many times, I learned “It’s in the middle of the island, lots of mountains, famous for flowers and agriculture. It’s said to have gotten its name from the first Spanish explorers, who, when they saw the views, said, ‘Ay, que bonito’ – Oh, how beautiful.”
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That same Spanish expression applied when Oscar and his friends came to Bogue Banks. It continues to describe Pine Knoll Shores today.
Note: There are a number of other lots Oscar
sold before the development was abandoned. With further research, the blanks
will be filled in. Anyone related to individuals mentioned in this post or
having Aibonito connections, please let us know at pkshistory@gmail.com.
Post Author: Martha Edwards, with assistance from Walt Zaenker, revised May16 2015
To contact the author or the History Committee pkshistory@gmail.com