MANTEO – The Outer Banks History Center is seeking letters, diaries, photographs and artifacts of from the Civil War for an exhibit that’s part of the commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the war.

The Manteo museum is especially interested in items from Roanoke Island in the early 1860s for the exhibit titled “The Civil War Comes to Roanoke Island: Fishers, Fighters and Freedmen.”

When the exhibit opens March 2, it will tell the story of how a sparsely populated Roanoke Island became an important engagement early in the war and paved the way for additional Union control of North Carolina. During this period, Roanoke Island became home to thousands of blacks. Representatives of the national Freedman’s Bureau worked at settling, educating and employing the freedmen.