They disliked central authority, except when it was far removed and stayed out of their business. They disliked routine and confinement, except that dictated by nature. There are many Bankers alive today who left the islands only to perform military service or attend college. They returned to the unfettered and independent life on the Banks to live forever.

In their aggressive independence and sometimes quaint personal differences, Bankers resemble not so much their geographically closer cousins of' the coastal plains and the Piedmont as the mountain Carolinians of the Blue Ridge and the Smokies.

While the subject matter of the lore and legends of the Banks is different from that of its mountain counterparts, it has the same drama and sense of aloneness that mountain lore has. It speaks of storms and shipwrecks and lifesavers making lonely rescues in terrifying gales, of humans against the elements. It tells of pirates and privateering, of larger-than-life heroes and villains who break all the rules and either win everything or lose everything. Banker lore recalls mysterious Indians and shipwreck survivors from exotic lands, haunted ships and monster whales, buried treasures and royal lineage.

Like their mountain counterparts, Bankers retain a distinctive brogue, a "hoigh-toide" accent that outsiders insist on characterizing as "Elizabethan." The brogue not only sets Bankers apart from outsiders, it gives the community its own sense of self-identification.

Just as mountain folks have held onto old herbal remedies and even created an export business out of the rare ginseng plant, Bankers were still using herbs for medicinals when the rest of the state had already gone to patent medicines and store-bought remedies. Even as late as World War 11, the Bankers found outside markets for seaweed and yaupon.

Both regions had barter economies well into the twentieth century and used their available natural resources in lieu of store-bought goods. Mountaineers used animal skins for clothing and bed coverings, for door hinges and water skins. Bankers used dolphin and shark skins for household hardware such as hinges, conch shells for lamps fueled with whale oil, and seaweed for mattress stuffing.

Both mountaineers and Bankers resisted secession, and Union sentiment in these regions persisted throughout the war. Both areas tended to be physically and mentally remote from state authority at Raleigh, and they often had stronger family and economic ties with Virginia and South Carolina than with their own state.

The Bankers also held to the national or northern hierarchy of Methodism when the church split over slavery- The Banks were not suitable for plantation farming, and slavery never took root. When the church split over slavery the people of Shackleford Banks retained their northern affiliation through the war and through the last half of the nineteenth century.

When San Ciriaco blew their homes and lives away in 1899, some of the people of Shackleford Banks moved to an area called the Promised Land in Morehead City. They took their northern-affiliated church with them into a town not ten miles removed but leagues apart in feelings. It was the Methodist Blue Ridge Conference of the North Carolina mountains that came to the support of the displaced Shackleford congregation at the other end of the state.