Ancestral Weather Events - the Eiland Plantation

Your ancestry search can make you look at today's events in a different light. Whenever a hurricane of significant strength begins to makes it way towards the Texas coast, I am reminded of my seventh great grandfather, Richard Eiland. Richard settled in North Carolina in the early 1700's but I sometimes wonder if he knew what he was doing. As you can see on the map below, Richard chose land very near the North Carolina coastline. Not just the coastline but the area of North Carolina that sticks out into the Atlantic Ocean, just waiting for a hurricane to demolish it.

Here's a closer look. The plantation was just south of the Virginia line.

Here it is blown up a little more. It doesn't look so bad here and maybe by being on the inner coastline along the bay, he was a bit shielded from any major devastation. But note that the main road through this area, Highway 615, is known as the Marsh Causeway. Not too encouraging.

I was able to do a little research on North Carolina hurricanes but the data only went back to the 1850's. There were a few significant storms during that decade as there were every decade since so I can only assume that the same was probably true during the early 1700's. The family endured for several years there, then headed for Georgia and this time they opted for land a little farther in.