HATSELL HOUSE circa 1827
     About 1778, William Hatchell brought his family from Virginia to the White Oak River area of Carteret County. His son William married Esther Green and lived on Bogue Sound until his early death in 1816. Esther and William's son Andrew Lee Hatchell came to Beaufort and married Charity Fuller in 1826. In his 1827 will, Belcher Fuller left Old Town Lot 55 to daughter Charity. A few years after Andrew Lee Hatchell died, in 1844 Charity married clerk, turned carpenter, William Read; the couple remained in the house and had daughters Julia Franklin Read and Charity A. Read.  
      Son, George Andrew Hatsell, was one of the Confederates at Fort Macon when it was taken by Federal troops. On April 25, 1862, it is said that "Miss Charity" and sympathetic neighbors watched the shelling from her second floor piazza. After Charity Hatchell Read's death in 1891, her spinster daughter "Miss Julia" Read (1847-1932) became head of household; she used the outside kitchen as a private school.