Outer Banks Beachcomber Museum

The view from the second floor front deck above Mattie Midgette's Store

UNDER CONSTRUCTION

4-13-2019 Update

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Speaking about this historic site

at the time of its listing in the

National Register of Historic Places,

Outer Banks historian David Stick said:

"Let’s put it this way, I would say next to Jockey’s Ridge

and the Wright Brothers Memorial, it is the most

historically significant place on the northern Outer Banks"

From the Virginian Pilot, November 24, 2004.

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Mattie Midgette's Store and House:

National Register of Historic Places

2004 Nomination:

MMS NRHP Nomination DR0574.pdf
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Type : pdf

Mattie Midgette's Store and House

The selling price reflects the irreplaceable historic value and the two structures which are both individually listed in the National Register of Historic Places. The property will be sold to a

buyer who is committed to preserving the history the site contains and represents.

It will not be sold as a tear down.

Contrary to what many people think, the listing of a property in the National Register

of Historic places no obligation or restriction on a private owner using private resources to maintain or alter the property. Over the years, various federal incentives have been

introduced to assist private preservation initiatives. A private owner of a National Register

property becomes obligated to follow federal preservation standards only if the owner

seeks and receives a special benefit that derives from National Register designation,

such as a grant or a tax credit as described below.

We are working with the NC State Historic Preservation Officer and retired National Park Service Historian Doug Stover on pinning down the history of the back house and having that corrected

in the National Register of Historic Places. We recently discovered that the house is actually the William Otis Twiford homestead, the last remaining house from the old Nags Head Woods community of locals, where it was built circa 1890.

The file below contains recent information discovered

while researching the history of the Twiford home:

MMS NRHP National Register Registration Form Amendment f 4-11-2019.pdf
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Type : pdf

National Register FACT Sheet HERE

Information about Tax Credits available

for a "Certified Restoration" of the site....HERE

Drone video over the site & Old Nags Head...HERE

Circa 1914 Midgette's Store layout

2004 Property Survey: 62'x300' Lot:

MMS Plat survey 2004 pdf.pdf
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Type : pdf

View from west side of the property

Circa 1890 Twiford Midgette House layout

Midgette's Store and House are on the right, with two empty lots to the south on the left.

The lot adjacent the property is for sale for $350,000(Lot 1) and Lot 2 may be available as well.

Original Soundside location of Mattie Midgette's Store and House

on left from an ACE 1932 photograph of the new Beach Road.

Closeup of Soundside location in 1932.

Thanksgiving Open House at the Outer Banks Beachcomber Museum in Mattie Midgette's Store, November 24, 2017.

Mattie Midgette's Store

Miscellaneous Information about this Historic Site:

Mattie Midgette's parents, William and Nellie Twiford

Willie Otis Twiford, seen here in a photograph taken

at his Nags Head Woods homestead, was a surfman

at the Kill Devil Hill Life Saving Station at the time the Wright Brother's historic flight at Kill Devil Hill in 1903.

Mattue Midgette's House was the family home there

before being moved to the Soundside circa 1931.

David Stick writes about the relationship between

Twiford and his father Frank Stick in the document below...

W Twiford Stick exhibit text 11-25-2011.pdf
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Type : pdf

Mattie Midgette's Store has been the home

of her daughter's now internationally recognized Nellie Myrtle Pridgen Beachcomber Collection, also known as the Outer Banks Beachcomber Museum, since 2003.

Sea glass and beachcombing expert Richard LaMotte's new book, The Lure of Sea Glass, is a sequel to his classic, Pure Sea Glass: Discovering Nature’s Vanishing Gems, which was published in 2004. That book, which has become the definitive book on the subject, helped spark the increasingly popular pastime of collecting treasures from the sea.

"Her gatherings from the shore are a time capsule of goods from the first half of the 20^th century. She spent the majority of her life methodically accumulating and researching over 50 years of American history, along with a few objects that pre-dated her by several hundred years. Most of the collection is neatly archived in boxes or cases, on shelves or in piles.

This is not a hoarder’s mess, Nellie was well read and understood history quite well, but the collection seems to have outgrown the modest cottage. Glass bottles and sea glass make up a noteworthy part of the menagerie.

More on Richard LaMotte's

"The Lure Of Sea Glass" >>> HERE...

Nellie Russell Twiford

The Nellie Myrtle Collection was highlighted

in sea glass and beachcombing guru Richard LaMotte's 2015 book, "The Lure of Sea Glass".

LaMotte writes...

"In old Nags Head, on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, is an important piece of history that could soon be lost to the fury of an Atlantic hurricane.

Inside a weary 1920s bungalow patiently sits the most extraordinary and diverse collection of seaside relics ever amassed by a beachcomber.

Known today as the Outer Banks Beachcomber Museum, this classic coastal cottage was once a local Nags Head grocery store and home to Nellie Myrtle Pridgen.

Nellie was a woman with one primary passion since the 1920s; she walked the beaches almost daily in search of treasure, not gold or silver but virtually any items lost to the sea. "

For the latest information from the

Outer Banks Beachcomber Museum,

"I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide

Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;

I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,

To the gull's way and the whale's way

Where the wind's like a whetted knife."

From ~ Sea Fever ~ By John Masefield

"For most of her 74 years, Nellie Myrtle – as everyone called her – walked at dusk and dawn, day in and day out, along the oceanfront, the sound side and the dunes at Jockey’s Ridge, scouting for beach glass, bottles, old dolls, anything interesting that the sea tossed aside or the sands gave up. By the time she died in 1992, she had amassed jar after jar of sea glass, sorted by color; seashells of every distinction; colorful plastic toys that fill a big basket; bottles of every color and size, some containing messages; and numerous nautical artifacts."

Catherine Kozak ~ The Virginian Pilot ~ Norfolk Virginia