Nineteenth Century
ROBERT E. LEE
In 1791, Light-Horse Harry Lee became Governor of Virginia. While he was in Richmond he had the opportunity to visit the plantations along the James River.
When Harry rolled up before Shirley in all the trappings of a Virginia governor, it is not surprising that the young daughter of the house saw in him her "heart's desire."
But Charles Carter did not see Harry through his daughter's rosy vision. He saw him as a widower who was seventeen years older than Ann, and as a soldier who had been disillusioned by war and had not adjusted to peace.
However, Harry won his suit and carried the happy Ann back with him to Stratford. Ann was a brunette of medium height and twenty years old. Little else is known about her except that she was good.
Ann's first impression of the Lee mansion must have been a gloomy one. Gayety had left Stratford with Matilda. The musicians had long since been gone, and the blooded horses. The windows once so brightly lighted were dark, and with no voices and laughter to fill the house, one could hear the wolves howling at night in the forest. This remote fortress in the fastness of the Northern Neck was different from anything that this great-granddaughter of King Carter had ever known. Shirley had been warm and happy.
Harry had no taste or ability as a farmer, and even if he had, Westmoreland County was now losing ground as a tobacco country. At first Ann may have traveled to Richmond with her husband and visited Shirley, for Harry was thrice elected to the governorship of Virginia. But as the years went by, Ann and her small children were more and more alone at Stratford. As his political career waned, Harry stayed away from home more and more, chasing various "will o' the wisps" which he believed would recoup his fortune.
Sometimes Ann stayed at Stratford as long as six months at a time without going anywhere to visit, or without seeing her social equals. Still, Ann wrote a friend that she was too busy to be bored. We can imagine her moving about the house, sometimes carrying a charcoal brazier with her into the living room, to warm her frail body or to give the illusion of warmth.
Young Robert E. Lee learning to ride.
Into this sombre setting was born, on January 19, 1807, a new baby. He was christened: Robert Edward Lee. He was born in the southeast bedroom of Stratford, the same room in which the other great Lee men had been born.
The nursery was probably the coziest room at Stratford in those days. Ann's one known accomplishment was singing, so we can picture her there as she sang to the new baby while she rocked him in his wooden cradle, and watched the flames in the fireplace as they illuminated the guardian cherubs on the iron fireback. Perhaps those days with her children were not unhappy. She taught her boys to be "honorable and correct" and to "practice the most inflexible virtue."
Meanwhile, Harry's last wild speculations had ended in his complete financial ruin. Ann and the children were now living on a trust fund left to them by her father, Charles Carter, when he died in 1806.
One day, when Robert was not yet four years old, a carriage stood in front of Stratford, waiting to take the family for their last ride down the driveway. Stratford had been left to Matilda's son, Henry, and he had now come of age and was ready to take over the estate. Harry and his family traveled to Alexandria where they moved into a smaller house.
A legend says that when everything was ready for departure little Robert could not be found. He was finally discovered in the nursery saying good-bye to the two cherubs on the fireback.
After this Harry had still greater misfortunes. His body was broken and maimed for life. In 1813, when Robert was six years old, his father left Virginia, bound for the British West Indies, seeking health and a new grip on life. He spent the next five years wandering about among the islands. In 1818, he sailed for home but became so ill that he was put off at one of the islands. There he found the family of his old friend, General Greene. He was tenderly cared for by them during his final illness. He died there and was buried in their family burying ground on Cumberland Island, off the coast of Georgia.
Note: In 1913 the body of General Henry (Light-Horse Harry) Lee was brought from Cumberland Island and placed in the Chapel at Lexington, Virginia, beside that of his famous son, Robert E. Lee.
SMITH POINT LIGHT
For many years the watermen of the Chesapeake "steered by the stars," by trees, and by a lighted window here and there.
One of the earlier government lighthouses on Chesapeake Bay was the Smith Point Light located at the mouth of the Potomac on Smith Point, Northumberland County.
There seem to be no available records concerning the erection of this lighthouse. In an 1804 issue of Blunt's American Coast Pilot reference is made to a lighthouse having been "erected lately on Smith Point." This establishes the date of its erection as prior to 1804.
In the 1833 issue of the same book there is a small drawing of the lighthouse at Smith Point which shows a tower with a house close by. These structures appeared to be situated on the tip end of a point with a gently sloping hill, or bank, in the rear. The picture shows a lighthouse with the same general appearance as the first government lighthouse at Cape Henry at the entrance to the Chesapeake, built in 1791. The Smith Point tower, however, was round instead of octagonal.
According to older natives of the region who remembered the original lighthouse at Smith Point, it was a round tower built of sandstone blocks, approximately sixty or seventy feet high. A spiral inside stairway with stone steps led up to the lantern at the top.
The sandstone blocks for the tower at Cape Henry had been brought from abroad as ballast in ships. The same thing may have been true of the sandstone blocks of which Smith Point lighthouse was built.
The light at Cape Henry first consisted of oil lamps burning, in turn, whale oil, colza (cabbage) oil, lard oil, and finally kerosene after the discovery of petroleum in Pennsylvania in 1859. The same type of lamps and fuel were doubtless used at Smith Point.
The keeper's house at Smith Point, according to tradition, was located thirty or forty yards back of the tower. It was a brick story-and-a-half house with outside chimneys on each end and an ell in the back. There were fireplaces in every room and a dark underground room which was referred to in later years as the "dungeon."
When this early lighthouse was built there were still a few pirates lurking about the Bay.
THE RAIDERS
Frightening rumours must have flown up and down the Northern Neck in the early part of the year of 1813.
In June, 1812, Congress had declared war against Great Britain. The Virginia militia had been called out to drill, and to prepare to defend Washington if necessary. The sound of drum and fife was heard once more in the countryside. Brass buttons were polished and firelocks were put in good shooting condition.
Now, in February of 1813, Admiral George Cockburn of the British Navy had entered the Chesapeake with a flotilla of two brigs, several tenders and a force of land troops.
Along the grapevine ran the news that Admiral Cockburn was directing his efforts principally against the citizens. The farmhouses and plantations along the waterfront were being plundered and burned and the cattle were being driven away or slaughtered. While the planters were away with the militia some of their families had taken refuge with their tenants who lived in the forest.
Naval battles were taking place in the rivers. In April, the U. S. S. Dolphin was captured in the Rappahannock by the British ship St. Domingo. In July a battle was fought in the Yeocomico, a tributary of the Potomac. The U. S. S. Asp, a three-gun sloop, was at that time overpowered by five British barges.
Troops were stationed at Windmill Point, at the mouth of the Rappahannock, in November, 1813. Here, April 23, 1814, the British made a landing and pillaged a vessel. They were driven off by militia stationed across the creek. It was perhaps on this same trip that the raiders visited Corotoman.
The crew went ashore and made themselves at home in the old house built by John Carter, while the officers took over the home built later by his son, King Carter. The well-stocked wine cellar and an abundance of fine Rappahannock oysters furnished the ingredients, tradition says, for an all-night party.
In August, 1814, reinforcements consisting of many vessels of war and a large number of troops arrived in the Chesapeake from Europe. Of this force several frigates and bomb vessels were ordered to ascend the Potomac.
At this time the shores of the Potomac were ravaged and a number of fine and ancient homes were burned. Washington city was captured and burned, and President Madison and his wife Dolly were forced to seek refuge in Virginia.
Skirmish between the Virginia Militia and the British during the War of 1812 at Farnham Church.
In October, 1814, a force of British troops came up the Coan River and marched to Heathsville. This force with some mounted troops continued their march up through the Neck, pillaging, burning and destroying as they went. At North Farnham Church, in Richmond County, a skirmish was fought between the raiders and the Virginia militia, leaving bullet holes in the walls of the church to mark the battle.
In September, 1814, the British were on their way to bombard the city of Baltimore. The Sunday before at their camp on Tangier Island, in the Chesapeake Bay, they had been warned of their coming defeat by Joshua Thomas, the Methodist "Parson of the Islands."
At Fort McHenry the "Parson's" prophecy came true, and at the same time an immortal song was born—"The Star-Spangled Banner."
STEAMBOATS
The Chesapeake was the first steamboat on Chesapeake Bay. She made her first run in 1813. The next steamer to make her debut was the Washington, on the Potomac, in 1815. The next year the Virginia started running from Norfolk to Richmond.
From then on until the Civil War the steamboat business expanded. All the bay and river boats had both freight and passenger services to Baltimore, Washington or Norfolk. These services were interrupted by the war.
During the Civil War, according to several unpublished letters of that period, the steamboats George C. Peabody and North Point collided in the Potomac on the night of August 13, 1862. Of the three or four hundred persons on board the two boats only one hundred were saved.
After the Civil War the steamboat services were restored.
When the first steamboat ran up the Rappahannock, Bewdley was used as a landing place. This Lancaster County home belonged to the Ball family, relatives of George Washington's mother. When passengers awaited the arrival of the boat at Bewdley, a white flag was raised as a signal by day, and at night a light was placed in one of the many dormer-windows.
HANNAH AND THE FALLING STARS
It was Hannah's custom to get up before daybreak. She was a sixteen-year-old Negro girl of Northumberland County. On this particular morning she was to get the scare of her life. She started to go to the well for a bucket of fresh water but when she stepped outside she dropped her bucket and ran to her mistress screaming: "The stars are all falling down!" Needless to say the whole plantation was aroused to watch the strangest phenomenon they had ever beheld.
Hannah was not the only person who was scared or bewildered that morning. Throughout the eastern part of North America people were exclaiming: "it is snowing fire," "the end of the world has come," "the sky is on fire," "the Judgment Day is here!"
What Hannah and the others had witnessed was the Leonid shower of November 12-13, 1833, which lasted from midnight until day. People of that time were generally uninformed about meteoric showers. It was a topic of comment and speculation for many generations.
Hannah lived many years to tell of the time when she saw "the stars fall." She outlived most of her children and those who were living at the time of her death were too feeble to attend her funeral. She was buried in a quiet spot among the pines on the banks of the Great Wicomico River. Her tombstone bears this inscription: "Hannah Crocket, 1817-1933, Age 116 yrs."
DEAR TO HIS HEART ...
Near the beginning of the Civil War, General Robert E. Lee's daughter visited Stratford. The great manor no longer belonged to the Lee family. She wrote to her father who was in the South at that time, and described her visit to his childhood home. He answered her as follows:
"I am much pleased at your description of Stratford and your visit. It is endeared to me by many recollections and it has always been a great desire of my life to be able to purchase it. Now that we have no other home, and the one we so loved (Arlington) has been so foully polluted, the desire is stronger with me than ever. The horse-chestnut you mention in the garden was planted by my mother. I am sorry the vault is so dilapidated. You did not mention the spring, one of the objects of my earliest recollections."
On Christmas Day, 1861, General Lee wrote his wife: "In the absence of a home I wish I could purchase Stratford. That is the only other place that I could go to, now accessible, that would inspire me with feelings of pleasure and local love. You and the girls could remain there in quiet. It is a poor place, but we could make enough bread and bacon for our support and the girls could weave us clothes."
General Robert E. Lee's desire was never fulfilled.
THE BLOCKADE
From time to time various writers have stated that the isolated Northern Neck of Virginia was "out of bounds" or "bypassed" in the Civil War. Despite these statements, which so lightly dismiss the Neck during the war years, natives of that region, did not spend that time in the carefree, unmolested state thus implied.
All able-bodied men of the Neck were away on the battlefields. Anxiety for them, and for the South, hung like a pall over the remaining population. More tangible worries beset them also.
Although the bordering waters of the Potomac, Rappahannock and Chesapeake were rich with food, when the Virginians tried to take the oysters, crabs and fish, a tug from the Federal flotilla which patrolled these waters would come "steaming out to hasten them home, with sometimes a six-pound shot sent after them for emphasis."
The women, girls, old men and boys raised what they could, but many fields, once lush with corn, tobacco, sugar cane and other crops, now lay barren save for sedge and pine seedling. Many of the men had ridden away to war on the horses. The people at home gave as much as they could of what they could raise to the men at the front.
The Federal gunboats shelled homes and landed soldiers who carried off everything they could find. Many are the tales that lingered on in the Neck about the geese that were struck down by swords, the bowls of milk that were lifted to mouths and gulped down, the firkins of butter that were carried away by soldiers who thrust their arms elbow deep in the butter and carried it off that way, the cattle that were slaughtered before the hungry eyes of the natives, the churches that were profaned—the list could go on and on. And there were some instances when the invaders were kind, or fair.
The resourceful women of the Neck invented substitutes for lost luxuries. Tea was brewed from sassafras, wheat, sage or mullein; coffee was concocted from sweet potatoes and other things. Sorghum and honey served for sugar. They got out the discarded spinning-wheels and looms and revived those skills. They carded, spun and wove the wool from their sheep. Polk berries and walnut hulls were used as dyes, and a special mixture of plants produced a shade that would pass as Confederate gray. The latter was used to dye garments made of the homespun so that there was always a new suit ready for the soldier when he came home on furlough. Thorns were used for pins, and seeds such as persimmon had holes bored in them and were used for buttons.
In spite of these and other ingenious substitutes the supplies of food and clothing had been very nearly exhausted by 1862. Thus, the natives of the Northern Neck were driven to running the blockade.
At that time Hampton Roads was blockaded by Union naval forces, and the rivers were patrolled by them. Maryland, just across the Potomac from the Neck, was divided territory. Leonardtown, in southern Maryland, was a trading center for the blockade runners from the Neck.
On the Virginia side of the Potomac, Kinsale in Westmoreland County, situated on an estuary called Yeocomico River, was one point of departure and arrival. This village had become quite cosmopolitan, for the country people were not the only ones who ran the blockade. Strangers from the North and South—merchants, speculators, adventurers, Northern draft dodgers, Southern sympathizers from the North, pro-Unionists trying to reach the North, even ladies, usually married women traveling with their husbands—all rubbed elbows in Kinsale. And there was at least one blockade-runner among them who dodged the tugs on the Potomac and blistered his hands on the muffled oars for no more serious reason than romance.
A steady stream of canoes from Maryland sneaked through to the Neck bringing quinine and other drugs, food, and Southern sympathizers. They landed anywhere in the Northern Neck.
The rivers were probably dark, for by the latter part of April, 1861, practically all lights in the lighthouses and lightships had been extinguished, removed or destroyed, from the Chesapeake to the Rio Grande by the Southerners.
THE HOME GUARD
Though no major battles were fought in Northumberland County during the Civil War, it was the scene of a number of skirmishes which were never recorded in history.
The geographical position of this county in the tip end of the Neck and surrounded on three sides by water isolated it from the main stream of the war, but made it vulnerable to enemy naval raiders. Also, small groups of Union cavalry rode through the Neck from time to time looking for deserters from their own army and for Confederate soldiers who might be at home on furlough. Homes were looted.
A Federal flotilla was stationed across the Potomac at Piney Point, Maryland, and although this river was not formally blockaded during the war, it was patrolled, and the smaller rivers were patrolled from time to time. Many of the homes adjacent to the shoreline were shelled by these boats. The crew often landed and raided farms and houses.
For the purpose of keeping these raiders away and defending the women and children, a home guard was organized. (They were probably organized in all the counties of the Neck.) Since the able-bodied men of Northumberland were away on the battlefields, this group was composed of teen-aged boys and old men.
Except traditionally, very little has been known about this organization. A notarized statement written by a former member of the Northumberland Home Guard, sheds some light on their activities. It is as follows:
"I'm going to try and write something in regard to the Home Guard to which I belonged but hardly know what to write. I was only a boy then, and as to giving dates, I couldn't tell you what month or even the year we organized but we didn't organize untill those Yankee raids began to take place. The Gun Boats would come in the rivers and land soldiers, go to the farm Houses and carry off anything they wanted, so we organized to try and keep off those raids and defend the Women and children while the men-folks were in the War. Our Company, I suppose was what you might call an independent company, don't think the Confederate Government ever furnished us with anything except Guns and ammunition. I think they permitted us to organize.
"Yankee" foragers during the Civil War.
"We had several skirmishes with the raiders, one in the vicinity of Lotsburg where we captured a Horse and perhaps killed the rider. His fellow soldiers got Him away but we got the Horse. After getting their wounded or dead comrad aboard ship they left. On another occasion at Glebe Point on the Great Wicomico River, we opened fire on a Gun Boat that was going up the river. She stoped immediately and turned around and went on down the River. We kept up our fire untill she was out of Gunshot. They gave us a severe shelling of shrapnell but shot too high, didn't kill anyone. I heard one Horse was killed. And at another time on Raisons Creek we captured a little Picket Boat No. 2. She carried one brass cannon and a crew of seven men. One man was shot in the leg. The Captain of the Boat gave up His Sword and revolver to our Captain. We sent the Prisoners to Richmond and Burned the Boat."
(Signed) Bertrand B. Haynie
Apr 7—1927
Further data are added concerning this organization by Rev. C. T. Thrift, who spent his boyhood at Wicomico Church, Northumberland County. He writes:
"Many Yankee gunboats came in the Great Wicomico River from time to time. Marauding parties landed and did much pillaging. Poultry and pigs and other things were taken. The women and children were frightened not a little.
"One such boat came in and anchored on the Wicomico side between Rowe's landing and Blackwell's Wharf. A band of pillagers landed and took what they wanted and then returned to their boat. Young ... had hidden himself while the band was at the home where he lived. He waited until they had left the shore. Then he took an old rifle and crept down to the water's edge, hiding in the bushes. The captain greeted his marauders upon their return and stood leaning against the deckhouse sunning himself.
"Young ... raised his rifle aimed carefully and fired. The bullet struck the captain in the forehead, killing him instantly. Panic ensued on board, for they had no idea where the shot came from nor did they have any idea how large a force might be attacking. There was no time to be lost for they needed to go and they could not stand on the order of their going.
"So they unfastened the end of the anchor chain at the capstan and fled, leaving the chain and the anchor in the mud of the river bottom. He said (many years later) that he supposed this was still where it was left. He had thought of going there to search for it but he had never done so."
Young ..., tradition says, was a member of the Northumberland Home Guard.
THE MYSTERY OF HORSE POND
When the Yankee gunboats patrolled the waters surrounding the Northern Neck during the Civil War they found the entrance to Little Wicomico River—where the Potomac and Chesapeake meet. They entered through its natural channel which was open then and quite deep.
Men went ashore to hunt for provisions—vegetables from the gardens, eggs, milk and freshly made butter. Even preserves and jellies from the shelves of the good housewives of Little Wicomico. They searched for men who might be at home, too.
One day near the beginning of the war, a small sailing vessel, probably twenty-two feet in length, and with several persons on board, came into Little Wicomico. She sailed in through the channel with the stone tower lighthouse on Smith Point to her right and Tranquility Farm to her left. She passed through Rock Hole, by tiny Bamboozle Island and around Gough's Point. It was straight sailing then with Ellyson Creek to the right and Sharps Creek to the left.
When the boat passed the tract of land between Sharps Creek and Horse Pond those on board were too far away to note the face of a woman pressed to a window pane of the house on the left bank of the River.
The woman, Sardelia, watched the boat with interest for it was a strange boat, and no doubt with a little uneasiness since those were dark times. Any unfamiliar boat was cause for alarm.
To Sardelia's surprise the boat dropped anchor just beyond her house and abreast of a strip of woodland near the pond where the horses drank. She saw the persons on board go ashore and enter the woods. After a short while they came out, boarded their boat, headed out of the River and sailed out of sight.
Sardelia called her little girl, Florence, and together they hurried through their barn-yard and into the woods. They found the place where the men had come ashore, their footprints on the sand, broken bushes and bruised foliage in the woods, but they could find no clue to the mysterious mission. Sardelia finally gave up her search and sat down under the big water oak tree there in the woods to ponder what she had seen.
Nearly four years later, after the close of the war, Sardelia again saw almost an exact re-enactment of the same scene she had witnessed before. The same boat came into the River, stopped at the same place and the persons on board went ashore and disappeared into the woods. After a short while they boarded their boat and sailed away—for the last time, so far as Sardelia ever knew.
Sardelia again hastened to the woods. This time her search was not in vain. About forty feet back from the shore amidst the trees she found a newly dug hole. It had been hastily and loosely refilled with earth.
This called for more than one period of meditation under the water oak tree. Who were they? Why did they select this particular spot to bury whatever they had buried? (The island at the mouth of the River would have been a perfect setting for buried treasure.) Why did they come into an inhabited area—almost in the barn-yard? Were they evading Federal gunboats? Or, perhaps they were from the North themselves. Did they come from one of the islands in the Chesapeake? And what did they bury?
Tales of buried treasure circulated around Little Wicomico for a long time, although many who lived close by never knew how it all started. The woods became haunted, too, especially the big water oak. But the haunts must not have been too bad because Uncle Zeke, a respected colored man, lived peacefully for many years in his little house in the woods by Horse Pond.
SCHOONER IN A MILL-POND
On November 18, 1863, Abraham Lincoln passed through Baltimore on his way to dedicate a battlefield cemetery at Gettysburg.
At least one Virginian, happened to be in the city on that same day also. Captain Jehu, who hailed from the lower Northern Neck, was in Baltimore on business. His schooner, Pioneer, lay at a city dock, unloaded of her cargo of wood and ready for the return trip home, but the Captain was having difficulty in getting his money for the wood.
Nerves were tense in Baltimore on that day. Maryland was officially a neutral state but her loyalties were divided. Matters were very bad with the Confederate army near the end of 1863, and Captain Jehu was a Virginian. He finally settled for part of a load of lime in payment for the wood and sailed back down the Chesapeake as fast as the wind would carry him.
When he arrived home he found that matters were even worse there. Word had spread that the Yankees were burning boats. Watermen were carrying their boats to the heads of the rivers in a desperate attempt to save them—perhaps they would be overlooked there, or the waters would be too shallow for gunboats.
Captain Jehu unloaded the lime and sailed the Pioneer, in company with a number of other boats, far up the Great Wicomico River to a place called Betts' Landing. The other boats were left by their owners to take their chances there on the mud flats where the water was only two or three feet deep, but Captain Jehu was not satisfied. He loved the Pioneer; she was like a part of him, and besides that, if the war ever got over, he had to make a living for his wife and children. In desperation he thought of an idea that he might have laughed at in ordinary times.
Captain Jehu sailed the Pioneer on to Public Landing at the very head of the River. He waited there until the tide was at its full height, then cautiously he floated the seventy-five-foot schooner through the almost hidden entrance to a mill-pond.
Once the schooner was well inside the pond Captain Jehu took down the sails and bundled them up and carried them ashore and hid them in a nearby barn.
He then did something that any waterman would hate to do—he bored a hole in the bottom of his boat.
Captain Jehu went ashore again and started walking toward Burgess Store, which was quite a distance. He had heard that men were being recruited there for the Confederate army. He was in his late thirties and he had a wife and several small children depending on him, but men were desperately needed to fight and the time had come when he was needed even more on the battlefield than at home. He joined the army that day.
While in the Confederate army, Captain Jehu was taken prisoner by the enemy and carried to Point Lookout, Maryland. There in a log pen he had plenty of time to look up at the stars by which he had steered so many times and to wonder what it was all about anyhow. He had not heard from his family for so long—he didn't even know if they were still living. His thoughts probably wandered to his early life.
He had been cast out of his home by a cruel stepmother when he was twelve years old, and had found refuge on a schooner that freighted lumber from the river heads of the Northern Neck to Baltimore and Philadelphia. He was too young to do much but he had helped with the cooking. This was done in a fireplace which was in the cabin and was the only source of heat on the "wood lugger." The fireplace was made of brick and the chimney protruded through the top of the cabin.
Those were hard days too. No doubt he thought of the proud day when he finally owned his own schooner, the Pioneer. And how was she faring now? Was she still sinking into the mire of the mill-pond or was she just another charred skeleton?
At last an eternity at Point Lookout came to an end. The prisoners were herded on board an old tub of a steamer and carried to Richmond where they were to be exchanged for Federal prisoners in Libby Prison.
When Captain Jehu arrived at Libby Prison he was too weak to get in line for mess. A big Irishman took pity on him, covered him with a blanket where he lay on the floor and brought him his own rations. The food tasted good after the maggoty fat back he had been living on at Point Lookout, but the steaming coffee was the thing that revived him.
Meanwhile, back in the Northern Neck, Captain Jehu's family was having a hard time. His wife, who "never weighed more than a hundred pounds in her life," raised what she could to feed her children. She grew cotton and spun and wove it and made clothes for them. In the winter, and winters were very cold in the Neck then, she went into the woods and cut enough cordwood to keep them warm. In the words of one of her sons, "She got along any way she could."
One day, some time after the close of the war, Captain Jehu arrived home, having walked all the way from Newport News. His wife didn't recognize him and one of his small sons ran away and hid in the woods all day thinking that he was a Yankee. He wore Yankee breeches and jacket with nothing underneath. Years later one of Captain Jehu's sons described the return of his soldier-father: "An awful-looking object came walking home. He was hairy as a monkey, lousy, barefoot, and had lost interest in everything."
The happiness of being at home again and the necessity of making a living must have aroused Captain Jehu's interest before very long. The first thing he did was to go up the Great Wicomico River to look for his boat. When he reached Betts' Landing he found a graveyard of blackened ribs sticking out of the water. The Yankees had done a thorough job there.
It must have been with great trepidation that he once more entered the mill-pond. But there—hidden among the cattails and deep in the mud—lay the Pioneer.
At low tide he shoveled the mud out of his boat, plugged up the hole and bailed her out. He then floated her out of the pond on high tide and carried her down the River to a place called Deep Landing, where he cleaned her up and got ready for the sea once more. (He found the sails safe in the barn, where muskrats had nested in the folds.)
After the Pioneer was put in shape again Captain Jehu freighted lumber in her for twenty years.
WAR BONNETS
Shopping trips to Baltimore were curtailed by the Civil War. Even if it had been possible to slip through the Federal patrol, Confederate money was of little value.
Women who still wanted bonnets for themselves and for their daughters were forced to be resourceful. The most practical substitute they could find for straw was the corn-shuck. They picked the shucks in the early fall while they were still green and put them aside to work on during the lonely winter evenings beside the fireplace.
By that time the shucks were dry and stiff but the women soaked them in water until they were pliable. Long strips were plaited and sewed around and around together to form crown and brim. The finished product was trimmed with a feather plucked from the barn-yard rooster, or with some natural material, such as dried grasses, gum balls, sea shells or small pine cones.
One corn-shuck hat, made for a "Confederate bride" of the Neck, was trimmed with flowers made of small white feathers. Each flower was centered with a bit of gold from a raveled Confederate epaulette.
AMANDA AND THE YANKEES
On an April day in 1864 a young couple on horseback traveled down a muddy Northern Neck road. Once they paused by the wayside to drink from a spring that bubbled conveniently near, and toward evening they drew rein under a giant mulberry tree at the head of a lane where gateposts with acorn finials marked the entrance. From this vantage spot a cabin roof showed here and there at the edge of the woods, and open fields enclosed by zig-zag chestnut rail fences could be pointed out and called by name—Upper Field, Lower Field, Middle Field, Back Field and Shelly Bank.
The house at the end of the lane could be glimpsed through its grove of locusts, paper mulberry and towering ailanthus. It was a typical early Tidewater Virginia house—story-and-a-half, without dormers. Three or four brick outside chimneys and a small entrance porch were the outstanding features. It was flanked on the right by a barn, cornhouse and tobacco house, and on the left by a smokehouse, off kitchen, laundry house and small sheds.
In the background water gleamed where Cockerell's Creek meandered into one of its many coves, and finally trickled up on either side to form marshes, lush with wild flags and the foliage of wild lilies and mallows.
The couple were bride and groom and this was the bride's first view of her future home, Pleasant Grove. The groom had little time to familiarize his new wife with his ancestral acres as he was a Confederate soldier and the honeymoon must end when his furlough ended, which was soon.
When the bridegroom went back to join Lee's dwindling forces, the bride took up her new duties as mistress of Pleasant Grove. She was alone except for the servants. How many stayed on after the war started, tradition does not say. Amanda was well versed in the art of housekeeping, thanks to the rigid early training of her mother. There was plenty to do. The groom was an orphan and an only child and he had been living in solitary freedom for some time before the war. She was too busy at first to be lonely.
The central passage, paneled to chair rail height and plastered above, was as dark as night when all the doors were closed. If she opened the heavy front door she could look out and see the little porch with its built-in benches on each side that looked something like short church pews. The yard was enclosed with a horizontal plank fence and the gateposts had small acorns to match the larger ones on the Outer Gate. They were always called the Outer and Inner Gates.
The rooms of the house, like the fields, were named. Besides the doors to the parlor and dining-room which opened from the passage, there was a small door which opened to reveal a narrow twisted stairway which led up to the Big Room and the Little Room.
The shed addition on the rear was two steps lower than the main house. There Amanda found the Chamber Room, the Middle Room and the Back Room. All walls were of white-washed plaster and the floors and woodwork were of heart pine. (The house was built of heart pine and put together with hand-made nails. The cornhouse was fastened together with wooden pegs.)
Amanda had fun exploring the old house and bringing it back to life once more. One day she was dusting the clock on the dining-room mantel when she discovered that it hid the opening to a secret metal box built in the chimney. A hiding place for valuables! A lot of good that did her. Confederate notes were of little value and the tobacco which she used in place of money couldn't be hidden there.
Amanda finally chose the Chamber Room as her bedroom, because it was usually full of sunlight, had a cozy fireplace and a view of the creek and garden. At the back of the house there was a combination garden of flowers, herbs, vegetables and fruit trees, laid out in the English manner. A walk down the center led to the Creek. Trees grew on both sides of the Creek and Amanda's view ended where the Creek disappeared around a point. She wondered what was on the other side and if the water was deep enough for a Yankee gunboat.
One afternoon Amanda was taking a nap in the Back Room when she was suddenly and violently awakened by a great noise. The whole house seemed to be shaking. Her eardrums felt like they would burst. After the noise had subsided and the house became still and she had gotten her wits together again she ventured outside. The frightened negroes pointed to a jagged hole in the underpinning under the Back Room and a fragment of cannon ball lying nearby.
After the gunboat's rude salutation, Amanda was not surprised when one day she looked up the lane and saw a number of Federal soldiers on horseback turning in at the Outer Gate. She went out on the porch and waited for them.
Many years later Hannah, one of the servants, described the incident. Through the cracks in the cornhouse where she was hiding Hannah saw the soldiers dismount. Two of them went to the porch where "Missus" was waiting. They talked some, then "Missus" went in the house and the men who had talked with her sat down on the porch. The other soldiers sprawled on the grass under the trees. Pretty soon she heard "Missus" call so she "snuck" out of the cornhouse.
"Hannah," said "Missus," "they are going to stay to dinner so we must hurry and cook a good meal. Kill some chickens, put those ducks that are already dressed in the oven and get a ham out of the meat house."
Hannah remonstrated. "Stay to dinner, all dem men and dem wearing blue coats, too!" But "Missus" was determined. "They are hungry, Hannah, and I invited them. Besides, if they get a good dinner maybe they'll go away and not burn the house or take the tobacco."
Such a dinner! Baked duck, chicken, fried ham, batter bread and hot biscuits—more things than Hannah could remember—and little glasses of wine to "top off wid." After dinner the soldiers went out in the yard again. A fat old goose came wandering around and one of the men took out his sword and was about to cut off its head, but "de boss" who had talked most with "missus" told him to put up his sword.
The officer no doubt felt mellow and relaxed after the good meal. After resting awhile they all rode away in high good humour, waving warm good-byes.
Thus the goose was saved. When a tired Confederate soldier came walking home from Appomattox after the war had ended he found everything intact as he had left it.
THE HORSEHAIR RING
When in the beginning of May, 1864, General Lee permitted General Grant to cross the Rapidan without molestation in order to lure him into the Wilderness, where it would be impossible for the Federals to use their artillery, he intended to destroy the Federal Army in the depths of that "bewildering thicket" by a surprise attack where Grant would be forced to fight at a great disadvantage.
The woods were very thick—so dense that a regimental commander could not see the whole of his line at the same time, and in many instances the only guides were the points of the compass.
The battle was raging on May 6. In a bulletin sent to the Secretary of War at the close of that day, General Lee stated: "Our loss in killed is not large, but we have many wounded, most of them slightly, artillery being little used on either side."
General Grant's army had suffered severely, and he had become convinced that it was useless to try to drive Lee from his position. He decided to move his army southward to Spotsylvania Court House and get between Lee and Richmond.
During the afternoon of May 7, Grant sent his trains off in the direction of Spotsylvania Court House, which was only fifteen miles distant, and ordered the army to prepare to follow at nightfall.
Among Grant's wounded men there was by some mistake a wounded Confederate soldier. Perhaps the color of his home-made uniform, dyed with a brew of herbs and vegetables concocted by his wife was not too accurate a shade of Confederate gray, especially when obscured by the blood and filth of the long battle. Whatever the reason may have been, he was carried along by the enemy with their own wounded men.
Near Spotsylvania Court House a home was commandeered by the Federals for their wounded, but when the Confederate's uniform was recognized, he was left lying in the yard.
The lady of the house saw him there. She dared not take him inside, but she made a pallet on the ground for him, and stayed by him, and comforted him as best she could.
The soldier was still conscious. He told her of his wife, her name and where she lived, of his children, and of a ring in his pocket. He told her that when he was holding the horses one day while a battle was in progress, he had plucked some hairs from the mane of a horse and fashioned a ring as a gift for his wife. It was a crude thing, he said, entirely lacking in beauty, but he had woven his love into it. He hoped that in some way it could be conveyed to her.
The woman promised the dying man that his wish would be carried out, having faith that in some way she could fulfill her promise.
Satisfied by her promise, the soldier died quietly there on the pallet, toward evening of May 7, 1864.
The woman covered his body and left him there until nightfall. Under cover of darkness she returned with a woman servant, and together they laboriously dug a grave for him there in her yard. Before laying him to rest she searched his pockets and found the ring and two Confederate notes for fifty cents each, both issued April 6, 1863. Two Confederate notes and a ring made of horse-hair—the total possessions on his person.
The ring, as the soldier had said, was lacking in beauty, but it was skillfully made. He had fastened together a circle of horse-hair about the size of a slender woman's finger, then he had covered it by weaving a few strands of the hair around it, making a sort of button-hole stitch on both edges.
After the war had ended the woman managed in some way to fulfill her promise. She wrote the soldier's widow a letter telling her the details of her husband's death and enclosed the contents of his pockets. Whether the postal system had been restored in the region where the letter traveled, or whether it was conveyed by hand, is not known, but it did finally reach its destination.
As soon as it was possible, relatives of the bereaved family, an old man and a small boy, made a long, weary and sad journey by ox-cart from their home in the lower Northern Neck, through Fredericksburg to Spotsylvania Court House, a distance of more than a hundred miles, for the purpose of transporting the remains of their kinsman back to his homeland. When this mission was accomplished, the remains of the young Confederate sergeant were laid to rest in the family burial ground, near Burgess Store, in Northumberland County.
For many years the soldier's widow and the loyal Southern lady corresponded. Although they never did meet, their spirits were bound together by that common denominator—war.
MIRACLE AT KETCHUM'S CAMP
Toward the close of the Civil War the fortunes of the lower Northern Neck like those of the entire South were low. This section was then so isolated that news from the battlefields was long in coming, and usually bad when it did arrive. Food was meager and monotonous and, despite the ingenious efforts of the women, could only be stretched so far.
As another war Christmas approached there was little heart to make merry, but for the sake of the children the older people felt that an appearance of festivity was necessary. A fowl of some sort was killed and dressed and hung in the cold smokehouse in readiness for its last minute stuffing. The tree had been selected but would not be cut until late Christmas Eve. Some chose a holly, because it needed less trimming and the berries held up for quite a while in the poorly heated rooms, but cedar was still the favorite. The little ones were stringing long garlands of holly berries and popcorn and making ornaments from whatever they could find.
On the night of December the twenty-third, the small spark of Christmas spirit that had been kindled was dampened by a terrific storm that raged over the Chesapeake, dashing huge breakers against the beach and shaking and rattling the houses along its shoreline, like some monster bent on destruction. By morning the wind and waves had subsided leaving a chill gray atmosphere that warned of a snow-storm in the making.
It is the natural thing for people who live close to the water to scan the horizon the last thing before retiring and the first thing upon arising, so on this bleak Christmas Eve it was not long after dawn when residents along that section of the Bay between Smith Point and Taskmakers Creek had observed two dark objects drifting toward shore near a spot later known as Ketchum's Camp. In those uncertain days anything unusual was viewed with great alarm. Not long before this, one of the houses along this same stretch of beach had been fired upon by an enemy gunboat and saved only because two daughters of the house had waved a sheet on a pole and implored the officers who came ashore to cease firing.
Now, as the alarm went out members of the Home Guard swiftly assembled with their miscellaneous firearms ready for action. These fiery lads were sometimes overzealous in their defense tactics so on this day they were restrained by their elders until the objects drifted in so close that all could see that they were nothing but clumsy unmanned boats of the scow type.
The boys and a few very old men who were there hastened out in small boats to the stranded vessels. As they pulled back the tarpaulin coverings they could scarcely believe their eyes when they saw that both boats were loaded with provisions. After much discussion, they concluded that these must be Federal supply boats which had broken loose during the storm while being towed up the Bay. Of course, the idea that they were putting one over on the Yankees appealed to the Home Guard even more than the food. They hastily and joyfully began the task of transporting the windfall to shore. By midafternoon the beach was lined with people who had learned the good news through the grapevine.
A nondescript crowd they were, but representative of the countryside at that time. Very old men, children and boys were there but the majority were women of all ages. The clothes of every one were knitted and homespun, their main virtue being warmth. They had come on foot, on horseback, in carriages and wagons. Their faces were alight with the thought of real coffee and tea on Christmas morning after months of nauseous brews made from sweet potatoes, wheat or sage, sweetened with sorghum. Real white loaf sugar! Their eyes glistened with delight—or maybe, tears. Bacon, too, and flour and molasses! Plenty for all. They did not doubt that this was a miracle.
The children jumped and screamed in ecstatic anticipation of the wonderful Christmas to come. Snow began to fall but now it was not the dreaded stuff that makes the woes of the poor greater, but, instead, it was the beautiful, dream-making substance that belongs to Christmas. It fell softly on the loaded vehicles and on the heads of those who knelt with one accord on the lonely sand beach and gave thanks to God.
Note: This spot which was called Ketchum's Camp soon after the Civil War, because a sawmill camp was located there, has in recent years been known as Chesapeake Estates, a summer cottage area.
DESPERATE PASSAGE
It was April of the year 1865, and Lee had already surrendered his army at Appomattox.
On the night of April 22nd a row-boat moved cautiously across the Potomac in the direction of the Virginia shore. This was the second time, it is believed, that the two men in the boat had tried to make the river crossing from Maryland to Virginia. The night before they had failed because it had been too dark and the tide had been too strong. The past eight days had doubtless seemed like an eternity to them.
Now they could see the Virginia shore and the dim outline of a landing but the thin youth at the oars did not head for the public wharf. He rowed on until he came to a smaller landing which belonged to a private home. They landed there, at Upper Machodoc Creek near what later became Dahlgren, in King George County.
The younger man helped his passenger out of the boat and together they approached the house on the bank of the creek, knocked on the door and asked for lodging for the night. The mistress of the house could doubtless see that the dark handsome man in the muddy Confederate uniform was badly in need of rest. Tradition says that she took them in for the night.
The next morning the two men left the Quesenberry home. The older man was limping badly and seemed to be in much pain. That day they traveled slowly on foot over back roads.
Toward dusk they came to a home set in a grove of beautiful trees. It was Cleydael, the residence of Doctor R. H. Stuart. Tradition says that the men knocked on the back door and asked for food and aid.
Whether Doctor Stuart rendered surgical aid to the man in the tattered uniform is still a controversial subject in that region. They did receive food and were waited on by Junius and Patsy Dixon, servants at Cleydael. Tradition says that the older man left a note to Doctor Stuart in which he enclosed a five-dollar bill and grudgingly thanked him for "what we did get."
Stories vary as to where the two men spent the night of April 23rd.
At some time or other they rested in the yard of St. Paul's Church, it is said. One account says that they spent the night at the house of a man named Rollins near Office Hall. Another story says that they found shelter for the night in the cabin of William Lucas, a Negro, and that the next day the man who was burning with fever, ordered Lucas's son to take him and his companion to the Rappahannock ferry at Port Conway.
All accounts seem to agree that the men came to the Rappahannock in daylight on April 24th, and that they were in a spring wagon driven by a Negro man.
It seems that the ferryman was fishing and wouldn't come ashore for only two fares. At this point three Confederate soldiers who, it has been said, were veterans of Mosby's Raiders and were on their way home, rode up on horseback.
The haggard man got out of the wagon and limped over to the soldiers, the story goes, and told them who he was and asked them to help him. Tradition says that the young veterans moved off and held a conference together and when they had reached a decision they told him that they were not in sympathy with what he had done, but since he had thrown himself on their mercy they would help him.
One story says that the Confederate veterans then leveled their rifles at the ferryman and ordered him to come ashore at once and get them or he would have his head blown off. The ferryman came ashore and the two men and at least one of the veterans got on the ferry.
It was in this way that John Wilkes Booth, who had shot and killed Abraham Lincoln in Washington on the night of April 14th, and his faithful companion, Herold, finally completed their journey across the Northern Neck, from the Potomac to the Rappahannock. In their devious flight across the Neck they had traveled perhaps twenty miles.
The painful journey was in vain, however, for it was only a matter of hours before Federal soldiers would track down the assassin and his companion and find them in a barn on Garrett's farm.
AFTER THE WAR
The old order of things finally died in the Northern Neck with the surrender of 1865. But, though the splendor was gone, the people continued to cling to the old ways—the traditions, customs, family life and ties of kinship.
With the younger generation—the war children—there began a new type of manhood. Knowing nothing except privations, they grew up with hard bodies and practical minds, and though thrust into manhood while they were still adolescent, they shouldered their responsibilities.
Those who lived near the water turned to it because it was now more fruitful than the land. Its harvests could be reaped more quickly, and they could be reaped by one man working alone, or by several men working together.
Bundled up in home-made garments and warmed by caps, mufflers, socks and mittens knitted by their mothers and grandmothers, these boys sallied forth at dawn in the bitterest weather to tong oysters. Winters were much colder then. They worked until nightfall, often in open boats, stopping only long enough to refresh themselves with a hearty lunch, which was usually packed in a tin bucket, and usually included pork, biscuits and sorghum molasses. This was washed down with cold coffee drunk from a stone jug.
The girls too had changed and they now belonged to this new regime. During the winter evenings they helped the older women to knit fish nets. They used home-made wooden needles for this, and sometimes they fastened one end of the net to wooden pegs driven in the wall. (Years later people were to wonder why those pegs were found in some homes of the lower Neck.) The women helped the men to fashion sails for their boats by sewing together pieces of canvas.
With the nets and small sailing vessels the men caught fish in what were known as pound nets. These were staked out on weir poles.
The seafood and whatever other marketable farm produce they could assemble was conveyed up the Bay to the nearest and best cash market, which was Baltimore, one hundred miles from the end of the Neck. They brought back from this city clothing, sugar, molasses, kerosene and hardware, among other things. This contact with a large cosmopolitan city greatly influenced the lives and natures of the natives of the Northern Neck. Those who could manage it sent their children there to be educated. Other children were educated by older relatives, or by anyone who would teach them. Some received very little education during this period.
Children had few toys and those they had were almost as crude as those of the pioneer children—toys made of corn-cobs and pieces of wood. Children were glad to have an old coffee pot to pull on a string. There was no money for toys.
Farther inland men turned to the forests where they cut cordwood and railroad ties. These were carried to the heads of the rivers and loaded on vessels bound for Baltimore, Philadelphia or Norfolk.
Men then did any sort of work where they could make an honest dollar and still stay in the Northern Neck. It was rugged but they managed to survive.
As things began to ease up, they picked up some of the old sports again—horse-racing, fox-hunting and jousting. The men were intensely interested in politics.
Court Day was one of the biggest events for the men in those days. These were colorful occasions, with the hundreds of people gathered together, horses tied to the rails and ox-carts, stallions and hucksters all milling about the green. This was an opportunity for making a little cash. There was a man at Heathsville, at one time, who made a specialty of "cent cakes" on Court Days. These were of especial interest to little boys who came with their fathers. The cakes were big round and flat and had one raisin in the center of each. Negro women cooked oyster stews in the open and served them on tables improvised from dry-goods boxes and covered with clean sheets. Bars were in full swing, brass knucks, pistols and knives glinted here and there. There were many fights, or tests of prowess. It was often late at night when the revelers, or perhaps their horses, found the way home over rough country roads.
The women had less exciting pleasures, such as quilting parties, "spending the day" with a neighbor, and church socials.
The colonial pattern of living and way of speech lingered on until the beginning of the twentieth century. Tradition tells of a wedding feast as late as 1872 where roast suckling pig with an apple in its mouth, conical sugar loaves and butter sculptured in the form of Solomon's Temple were featured. The flavor of seventeenth century England still lingered in the Northern Neck at that time.
The marriages between the families of the Neck were endless and thus the Anglo-Saxon strain remained pure in the region.
SPEECH
The early population in the Northern Neck were mostly from London and the surrounding counties where the classic English language of Shakespeare was spoken.
There is evidence that the speech of the people of the Northern Neck had from early days little of the provincial or dialectal about it.
Until the early part of the twentieth century such Shakespearean expressions as, "wrack upon ruin" and "all mommicked up," were commonly used in the Neck. The now archaic word mommick meant to mutilate. The play of the double noun was also frequently heard until a late date—men-folks, women-folks, baby-child, man-child, boy-man, and so on.
Many of the indentured servants came to the Northern Neck from Warwickshire and their manner of speech was added to the region, for instance: off sporting, or frolicking, meant, having a good time; traipsing about, meant, off walking about; make the fire, meant, kindle the fire, and peart, meant, lively.
The constant reading of the Bible also helped to keep the speech pure and simple.
SHOPPING TRIPS
After the war the shopping trips to Baltimore were resumed, but with a difference. There were few men in the Neck now and the women had changed. Hardened by sorrow and privations they were now able to face realities. There were many widows.
They gathered their children together, and all the produce they could assemble, and traveled to town on the sailing vessel of some older relative or neighbor who might be taking a cargo of oysters or cordwood to market.
When they arrived in Baltimore, usually in the very early morning, the sleepy children must be aroused and dressed. Pantalettes,[10] so painstakingly laundered before leaving home, were now dirty and wrinkled. With the bedraggled children, coops of quacking ducks and hissing geese, crates of eggs and firkins of lard and butter, the brave women finally landed on the dock and made their way up Light Street to the commission merchants, who would buy their produce. After disposing of their business they went to the stores to shop for necessities to carry home to the Northern Neck.
MENHADEN
In their voyage of discovery in the Chesapeake Captain John Smith and his companions found schools of fish agitating the surface of the water. The written accounts of these men state that the fish were so thick that they attempted to dip them up in a frying-pan but it proved to be "not a good instrument to catch fish with."
These fish are believed to have been menhaden, known to naturalists as brevoortia. This ordinary looking fish was destined to change the course of history in the lower Northern Neck.
The Indian names for this species, munnawhatteaug (corrupted to menhaden), and pauhagen (pogy), literally means fertilizer—"fish that enriches the earth." The Indians were accustomed to employ this species, with others of the herring tribe, in enriching their cornfields. They showed the white men how to make their corn grow by putting two dead fish in each hill of corn.
The following passage written by Thomas Morton in 1632 shows the use of fish as fertilizer in Virginia at that time: "There is a fish at the spring of the yeare that passe up the rivers to spawn in the ponds, & are taken in such multitudes that the inhabitants fertilize their grounds with them."
The menhaden was called alewife by the Virginia colonists because of its resemblance to the allied species known by that name in England. Alewife was corrupted to old-wife and ell-wife. It has been said that the half-grown menhaden were called bug-fish by Virginia negroes in early days because they believed them to have been produced from insects. This superstition probably arose from the fact that a parasitic crustacean, known to watermen as "a fish louse," was often found clinging to the roof of the menhaden's mouth.
The menhaden had many other popular names, among them: porgie, bony-fish, poggie, mossbunker, greentail, bunker, yellowtail, white-fish, fat back, and another Indian name, chebog. "Mossbunker" is a relic of the Dutch Colony at New Amsterdam. It was in use there as early as 1661, probably a corruption of their Dutch word, marsbancker.
It is said that the Indians did not like to eat menhaden because of their oily content. Many years later it was learned that this fish was also rich in minerals. Early settlers ate them, salted them for winter use, and fed them to the stock.
Catesby wrote, 1731-1742, concerning a fish called a "Fatback: It is an excellent Sweet Fish, and so excessive fat that Butter is never used in frying. At certain Seasons and Places there are infinite Numbers of these Fish caught, and are much esteemed by the Inhabitants for their Delicacy."
Menhaden were used to some extent as a food by watermen for many years but it does not appear probable that they were ever extensively used for food except in seasons of scarcity. They were used for many years to feed stock.
Menhaden were used at an early date as a fertilizer all along the Atlantic coast. In 1792 a paper published in New York gave directions concerning the use of fish as a fertilizer: "Experiments made by using the fish called menhaden or mossbankers as a manure have succeeded beyond all expectation. In dunging corn in the holes, put two in a hill on any kind of soil where corn will grow, and you will have a good crop. Put them on a piece of poor loamy land and by their putrefaction they so enrich the land that you may mow about two tons per acre." About eight or ten thousand fish to the acre was considered about the right amount.
Farmers also spread the fish "head to tail" in a plowed furrow and covered them with earth. They also mixed the fish with earth in a compost.
It seems that the possibilities of making use of the fish oil were not considered at this time. Whale oil was still being used. It was not until about 1850 that the value of menhaden oil was recognized.
The following statement of Eben B. Phillips, a Boston oil merchant, dated 1874, throws some light on the beginning of the use of menhaden oil: "In about 1850 I was in the oil business in Boston. An elderly lady by the name of Bartlett, from Bluehill, Maine, came to my store with a sample of oil which she had skimmed from a kettle in boiling menhaden for her hens. She told me the fish were abundant all summer near the shore. I told her I would give her $11 per barrel for all she would produce. Her husband and sons made 13 barrels the first year. The fish then were caught in gill-nets. The following year they made 100 barrels. From that time and from that circumstance has grown a business as extensive as I have represented."
Mr. Phillips then furnished nets, and large kettles, which they set up out-of-doors in brick frames, for drying out the fish. It was thought that much oil was thrown away with the refuse fish or scrap, and the idea of pressing this scrap was suggested. At first this was accomplished by pressing it in a common iron kettle with a heavy cover and a long beam for a lever. Later it was weighted down by heavy rocks, in barrels and tubs perforated with auger holes. Mr. Phillips then fitted out some fifty parties on the coast of Maine with presses of the model known as the screw and lever press.
Others claim to have manufactured menhaden oil at about the same time. "At that time," according to another statement from Rhode Island, "there were some few whalemen's try-pots used by other parties in boiling the fish in water and making a very imperfect oil and scrap."
Tradition says that at first some of the oil merchants mixed the menhaden oil with whale oil, or sold it outright as whale oil. It was used for tanning hides, currying, in paint, in soap, for "smearing sheep" and for other things.
After the value of menhaden oil was recognized many makeshift menhaden fish factories were established along the coast of Maine and elsewhere on the northern coast. It was much easier for the whaling men to go offshore a few miles, return with a boat-load of fish and spend the night at home.
By the end of the Civil War the menhaden catch along the coast of Maine was beginning to drop off.
In 1866 a party of New Englanders visiting the Chesapeake found menhaden in almost incredible quantities—"they were so thick that for 25 miles along the shore there was a solid flip-flap of the northward swimming fish." One member of the party is said to have jumped into the water and with a dip-net thrown bushels of fish upon the beach.
In December, 1866, the floating fish-factory, Ranger of 1,500 tons, hailing from Greenport, N. Y., came to Virginia. She was equipped to cook fish and extract oil on board. Tradition says that on these first floating factories the scrap was thrown overboard. The Ranger remained in Virginia only about eleven days during that year but returned each of the two succeeding years.
In the late summer of 1867, Elijah W. Reed, of Sedgwick, Maine, loaded his kettles and presses on two small sailing vessels, the Two Brothers and the A. F. Powers, and sailed for Virginia. He landed first at Back River, then moved up the Chesapeake and operated his kettles and presses on the Bay shore between the Little Wicomico and the Great Wicomico Rivers. The spot was in Northumberland County and was later known as Ketchum's Camp.
That winter the New Englander moved into Cockrell's Creek, in the same county. It was a sheltered harbor near the mouth of the Bay with deep water running close to the shore. He built there, at Point Pleasant, the first menhaden plant on the Chesapeake Bay.
From 1868 factories were built from time to time by local people, and others, on points in Cockrell's Creek, and at other points on various inlets of the Chesapeake, and on Tangier Island.
These early factories were known as "kettle-factories." The kettles were brought down the Bay from Baltimore. The menhaden products, oil and green scrap in bulk, were carried back to the same city by sailing vessels. The scrap, or guano, was sold both in the city market and locally for fertilizer.
These first Virginia fish factories were crude affairs consisting of five or six iron kettles, each with a capacity of one hundred or more gallons. They were established on a brick firebox with a chimney in the center of the unit and openings at both ends for firing. This was protected by a rough frame shelter with a slab-pine roof. This was a typical factory, though the number of kettles varied.
Cordwood was used for fuel. Scows with sails were sent to the heads of the rivers where wood was brought down from "the forest" and loaded on them.
At the temporary Ketchum's Camp factory the fish were pulled up on the shore in haul seines. After that they were caught in purse seines operated from sailing vessels.
It had been found, as previously explained, that by cooking the fish much more oil could be extracted. The fish were boiled and then dipped out with dip-nets and put in what was called a press. Burlap was then placed over the mass of fish, and then boards on top of that. The boards were then pulled down tight with a screw-jack.
After the oil and water had been pressed out, the residue of fish was spread out on the wharf in the sun to dry. To hasten this process the mass was turned over and over by men with pitchforks. Acid was sprayed on the "green scrap" to kill the maggots. It usually took about a week to change the menhaden from the raw state into oil and guano.
The following government report is probably the first of the menhaden industry of the Chesapeake and its tributaries. It is dated 1869.
| Men employed on vessels fishing | 12 |
| Vessels employed | 4 |
| Men employed making guano | 9 |
| Fish taken | 3,000,000 |
| Oil made | 200 bbls. |
| Guano made | 300 tons |
In 1873 Reed's factory on Point Pleasant burned. The next year he built another factory on another point on Cockrell's Creek on a spot where a windmill for grinding corn had been previously located. This location was known as Windmill Point. Later the village of Reedville grew up on this small peninsula.
By 1874 the manufacture of menhaden oil and guano had become identified as one of the important industries of this country. The annual yield of the menhaden oil now exceeded the whale oil (from American fisheries) by about 200,000 gallons.
By 1878 the menhaden industry of the Chesapeake area had grown considerably according to the government report of that year:
| Men employed on vessels fishing | 286 |
| Vessels employed fishing | 78 |
| Men employed on shore | 201 |
| Fish taken | 118,309,200 |
| Gallons of oil made | 234,168 |
| Tons of guano | 10,832 |
The next advancement in the industry came when steam cooking superseded the use of the kettles. The first steam factory in Virginia was built by Elijah Reed in 1879. The first fishing steamer used in the business in the Chesapeake, Starry Banner, was purchased by him in Rhode Island. This steamer's capacity was one hundred and fifty thousand fish.
The menhaden fishing industry continued to grow and to advance with the times. It brought prosperity to the lower Northern Neck. Reedville became an important menhaden fishing center and fishing port.
Eventually menhaden became the biggest fishery in America.
THE OLD STONE PILE
About 1868 the tower lighthouse on Smith Point was condemned by the government as unfit for use. At that time a new lighthouse of the screw pile type was built two and one-half miles offshore from Smith Point.
After the tower was condemned the keeper's house on the government reservation was rented to various tenants. In summer the Point became a social center for the neighborhood. Carriages, road-carts, and perhaps even ox-carts tied up at Tranquility, the nearest farmhouse, on a Sunday afternoon, and their occupants strolled up the beach with their picnic baskets.
The breakwater some distance out in the water from Smith Point was a favorite fishing spot, but the high point of any trip there in those days was a climb to the top of the condemned tower. The long, full skirts of the ladies of that era were hard to maneuver up the narrow spiral stairway.
The tower finally became too dangerous to enter. During an easterly storm in the spring of 1889 it crumbled in the night, so gently that the people living in the keeper's house didn't hear it fall.
The sandstone blocks lay there for many years and later generations knew them as "the old stone pile." Each year the sea took its toll of the Point until the land between the tower and the water, where "ten rows of corn" had once grown, finally disappeared completely. And then "the old stone pile" was swallowed by the persistent sea.
The keeper's house gradually deteriorated and then it too was claimed by the sea. For many years after, people of the region came at low tide and loaded their ox-carts and wagons with the stones and bricks. The stones were used for foundations of buildings and the bricks were used to line wells. Only the burial ground was left at Smith Point. There on the bank, "under the wide and starry sky," rest some of the early keepers of the light.
KEEPERS OF THE LIGHT
When the new lighthouse was built two-and-one-half miles offshore from Smith Point in 1868, it was manned by only two men. Shore leave or need for provisions meant a trip for one man in a small open sail boat, weather permitting, and a lonely watch for the man left behind.
If a keeper became ill he had to make out as best he could with a chest of medicine and a doctor's book. He had to be his own cook and housekeeper. Due to lack of refrigeration the lighthouse diet became monotonous, although seafood was a help. Kerosene for the lamps and firewood was brought by a lighthouse tender. The lonely keepers of the light often kept pets. Canaries and parrots made good companions, but dogs sickened and died.
The lighthouse keeper had to be a machinist, carpenter and painter, in order to keep the lighthouse in working order. Stamina was perhaps the quality most needed in a keeper of those days. The bell had to be wound up like a clock every half hour and kept ringing during storm and fog. There were instances when the keeper sometimes stayed awake for eight days and eight nights. But he kept the bell ringing, and without the aid of alcoholic drink.
A lighthouse keeper had to be a waterman, and that meant a man who had been born and bred in the region. Many lives were saved by these early lighthouse keepers. Winters were colder then. In those days the Bay often froze over like a mill-pond.
The winter of 1895 was a cold winter. The Bay was frozen, and, to make matters worse, in February there was a blizzard that went howling through the region of Smith Point. Both keepers were on duty that night when part of the ice started moving. They felt it hit the lighthouse and they loaded whatever they could find on a boat and somehow they got out alive. Before they started away the lighthouse had gone to pieces. They took turns pushing the boat over the ice toward land. That was a long two-and-a-half miles, but they made it.
They were welcomed by people on shore who waited, with lanterns, to serve them hot coffee and food. They had seen the light go out and had been anxiously waiting, as there was nothing that they could do to help. The lighthouse keepers were taken into warm homes that night. Later they found that the ice had carried the remains of the lighthouse six miles away from its foundation.
Years later one of the keepers who had been on Smith Point lighthouse that night said: "Things like that happened all the time then."
A light-ship was stationed at Smith Point until another lighthouse could be built. The new lighthouse was built on a cylindrical pier of metal. The tower was square and made of brick, with an octagonal dwelling. It was completed in 1897.
THE HEADLESS DOG
In those days between the end of the Civil War and the turn of the century, life in the Northern Neck still followed the old Southern pattern, but in a diminished way. War had destroyed all glamour and pared the design down to its skeleton. The planter had become a farmer, the mistress of the plantation a farmer's wife. An independent way of life remained, however. Each farm was a self-sustaining unit, though besides the occasional day hands there were usually only a colored girl who helped with the housework, laundry and dairy and a colored boy who tended the stock, did the chores and worked in the fields. The Boy and Girl, as they were always called, were regarded with affection, especially by the children.
"Evening-time," when work was over for the day, was something to be looked forward to by the children. They gobbled their suppers with a listening ear toward the soft murmur of voices in the kitchen, for they were anxious to hear the latest news about the Headless Dog, who prowled the by-roads, bottoms and graveyards of the Neck after dark.
As soon as permission was granted the youngsters to leave the supper table they would make a dash for the kitchen where the Boy and Girl sat at the big pine table lingering over their dessert. When pressed for the latest news of the Headless Dog they pretended an indifference and ignorance that was maddening. The children then began a breaking down process, made up of threats and cajolery, which they had cunningly developed from experience over a period of time.
Finally, the Boy would remember that he did "just catch a glimpse" of the Dog the night before when returning from the store. As he reached the bottom it seemed that the Dog appeared for an instant and faded before his eyes.
Bottoms, which were low places where creeks or ponds "made up" near the roads, seemed to be favorite haunts of the Headless Dog. This was possibly due to the mists which arose from the marshy places and made his appearances and disappearances quite easy, as well as dramatic.
Sometimes, when the Boy borrowed the horse and road-cart for a Sunday's visit to his people "up in the forest," he encountered the Dog near a graveyard. The sudden halt of the horse and the pointing of his ears were signals of the Dog's proximity. If you wished to see him, the certain way was to look at the space between the horse's ears, like sighting through a camera. You could always find him in that spot—"a great big dog with no haid a-tall." Further details as to the Dog's appearance were left to the imagination. When the horse lowered his ears and began to move cautiously forward, you knew that the Dog was continuing his journey to some other graveyard or bottom and it was safe to proceed.
The Boy's meetings with the Dog were much more exciting than the Girl's, maybe because she did not travel very much at night. Sometimes she would see him at the "edge of dark," usually just before or shortly after the death of some local person. Her stories were always gruesomely connected with death.
While these tales were spinning out in the kitchen where the fire burned low in the iron range, the children, who had heard them a hundred times before, huddled closer and closer together. Their eyes shone round and bright, and, if the flame of the lamp flickered, they jumped and drew away from dark corners. When the Girl had washed and dried the last dish and set the morning rolls to rise behind the stove, the Boy took his hat from its peg and prepared to depart for his nightly visit to the store.
Hours later the children, snug in their beds, were aroused by music. In that delicious stage between sleep and waking they lay half-dreaming and unaware that they were listening to some unwritten bars of a blues melody that were being created and lost to posterity on the still night air. They only knew that the perfect notes were being produced by the Boy on his jew's-harp and accompanied by the yeast powder bottles, mouth organs and guitars of his companions, the Nehemiahs, Daniels and Zechariahs of the neighboring farms. (Bible names were popular then.)
The children knew, too, that their friends were wending their leisurely way home from the store where the nightly session was over. Their interest was not in music, but in the hope that the Boy had met with adventure in that marshy, ferny and woodsy-smelling place known as the bottom.
The lower section of the Neck was evidently a favored land at that time. Besides being a hideout for the Headless Dog, a white mule and a Headless Man, it also furnished a routine route for another interesting Dog. This Dog had a head. Furthermore, the head was punctuated by glaring red eyes. According to good authority, he was as big as a calf, brown in color except about the mouth which was patched with gray. His neck was encircled with a chain which dragged on the ground and rattled as he moved. He was a methodical animal and traveled always at night, and only between Cockrell's Neck and Heathsville, and only before or after the death of some local person. Instead of appearing suddenly and fading out like the Headless Dog, he had a disconcerting habit of trailing moving vehicles.
After motor vehicles became numerous the Headless Dog was seen no more, but the Cockrell's Neck Dog was still seen occasionally for some time after that. His systematic ways probably kept him going longer. Some said that he was not brown but black, and if you struck at him with a whip it went clear through him.