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Mattie Midgette’s Store is a rare and compelling historic site. The property presents a singular example of the area's past form, traditions, and customs. Once a thriving grocery, seasonal tourist home, commercial and retail fishing operation, it served as the nucleus of the resort community. It evokes a palpable sense of "place" that embodies the Outer Banks of a century ago.
The old grocery also served as home to the Beachcomber Museum from 2003 through 2018. It contained a remarkable cache of seaside artifacts collected by Mattie’s eccentric daughter, Nellie Myrtle Pridgen. Like her mother, she was born in their family home in the tightly knit soundside community of Nags Head Woods.
A passionate beachcomber and early environmentalist, Nellie became a local legend as a fierce protector of the beach with a voracious appetite for information about the ocean and all things related to the natural world.
Beachcombing expert Richard LaMotte, who has visited the museum several times, had this to say about her collection in his 2015 book, "The Lure of Sea Glass":
“Inside a weary 1920s bungalow patiently sits the most extraordinary and diverse collection of seaside relics ever amassed by a beachcomber.” "The Lure of Sea Glass”
The Godfather of Sea Glass
Richard LaMotte Boosts the National Profile of Sea Glass
Few sea glass collectors DON'T recognize the name of Richard LaMotte. As the author of Pure Sea Glass: Discovering Nature's Vanishing Gems, LaMotte is a nationally recognized authority on sea glass. His book is now in its 5th printing, and he is routinely interviewed by national media including Coastal Living magazine.
Mattie Midgette's grocery was opened to the public for
30 days as the Nellie Myrtle Pridgen Beachcomber
Museum for the first time in the Fall of 2003, during
the Centennial Celebration of the Wright Brothers'
historic 1903 flight at "Kill Devil Hill". More than
a thousand people toured Mattie Midgette's Store
to learn about Mattie's parents' connection to
the history of Wright Brothers Monument.
Since that time, thousands more people have
visited the museum to see the artifacts collected
locally by Mattie's daughter, Nellie Myrtle Pridgen,
a legendary and now internationally recognized
beachcomber and inspirational local icon.
Speaking about this site at the time of its listing in
the National Register of Historic Places in December,
2004, preeminent Outer Banks Historian David Stick
had this to say:
"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. It is an integral part of the
Nags Head Cottage Row Historic District."
