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This is a painting of the Nixon Cottage at Nags Head as it looked in the late 1960's. In the early 1900's it was purchased by Thomas Nixon of Hertford, NC. Back in those days, when the family came to "summer" they had to catch the ferry from Elizabeth City that would unload its passengers at the docks on the Soundside of Old Nags Head. My grandfather, Brack Dawson, was about 14 years old when he began his summer job with his pony and cart to taxi families and vacationers from the docks to their cottages on the ocean side. One spring afternoon, the Nixon family arrived with their many trunks and bags to live in the Nixon Cottage for the Summer. Young Dawson began loading up his cart when he saw Mr. Nixon's daughter, Edna Nixon, for the first time and immediately fell in love with her. It was then that he introduced himself and lifted her up on her trunk to ride to her parent's cottage on the ocean. Several years later he married her and the newlyweds had their first child Nancy Dawson Rascoe, my mother. Later during the 1940's young Nancy lived here during the summer when it was her nightly chore to pull down the black curtains over the ocean side windows of the cottage as ordered during the WWII "Blackout", to prevent Nazi Subs from using the eastern US coastline lights to silhouette potential torpedo prey in the form of cargo ships convoying in the Atlantic shipping lanes. Many times during the war, trunks and boxes would drift ashore from sunken ships and my mother and her friends would pull them up under the cottage in the cool shade to unload the contents.
During the 1960's and the 1970's, the Brugh Family from Amherst County Virginia, would rent the Nixon Cottage to vacation on the Outer Banks. It was here that I met one of my best friends, Mason Brugh. The big family of seven would pull up and unload as much luggage as my grandfather did for his future wife's family many years before.
