Gee's Bridge.—Capture of Colonel Gee.—A Yankee Overseer.—Passage of the Roanoke into Carolina.—
Gee's Bridge. goal was Gee's Bridge over the Meherrin River, which I expected to reach by three o'clock in the afternoon, but a divergence into a wrong road for the space of three or four miles, delayed my arrival there until sunset. Nor was delay the only vexation, for, to regain the right road, I had to wheel and face the driving storm until I was thoroughly drenched. In this condition I was obliged to travel a red clay road four miles after crossing the Meherrin, to obtain lodging for the night.
Gee's Bridge was a rickety affair, and was used only when the Meherrin, which is similar in volume and current to the Nottaway, was too much swollen to allow travelers to ford it.
On its southern side, the road ascends at an angle of forty-five degrees, and, to make it passable, is filled with small bowlders near the bridge, and logs laid transversely up the steeper portion.
For the use of this bridge, the stones and logs, the traveler is taxed a "levy" at the top of the hill by the overseer of Gee's plantation. * At dark I reached the house of Dr. Gregory, who entertains strangers, and under his comfortable roof I rested, after a most wearisome day's travel for man and horse. The doctor was absent, and I passed an hour after supper with his overseer, an intelligent young man from New London, Connecticut. He had peddled wooden clocks through that region, and having sold many on credit, he settled there eight years before to collect his dues. He hired himself as an overseer, and there he yet remained, full of faith that he would ultimately collect all that was due to him. From him I obtained a good deal of information respecting the husbandry of Lower Virginia; the sum of his testimony was, "The people seem to try how soon they can wear out the soil, and then abandon it."
The storm was over in the morning,Dec 28, 1848 and a cold, bracing air came from the north. Ice skimmed the surface of the pools by the road side, and all over the red earth the exhalations were congealed into the most beautiful creations of frost-work I ever beheld. There were tiny columns an inch in height, with gorgeous capitals like tree-tops, their branches closely intertwined. These gave the surface the appearance of a crust of snow. Art, in its most delicate operations, never wrought any thing half so wonderful as that little forest, created within the space of an hour, and covering tens of thousands of acres. The road was wretched, and it was almost two hours past meridian when I reached St. Tammany, on the Roanoke, a small post station in Mecklenburg county, about eighty miles from Petersburg, and about thirty below the confluence of the Dan and Staunton. The Roanoke is here almost four hundred yards wide, with an average depth of about thirteen feet, and a strong current. ** I crossed upon a bateau, propelled by means of a pole worked by a single stout negro. When the stream is much swollen, three or four men are necessary to manage the craft, and even then there is danger. After ascending the southern bank, the road passes over a marsh of nearly half a mile, and then traverses among gentle hills. Two
* Mr. Gee. I was informed, is a descendant of Colonel Gee, who commanded a militia regiment when the British invaded Virginia. He resided further down, between the Meherrin and the Nottaway, and was captured by Colonel Simcoe's cavalry while that officer was securing the fords of the river for the passage of Cornwallis's army. "We proceeded," says Simcoe, "with the utmost expedition, to the Nottaway River, twenty-seven miles from Petersburg, where we arrived early the next morning. The bridge had been destroyed, which was easily repaired, and Major Armstrong was left with the infantry. The cavalry went on to Colonel Gee's, a rebel militia offieer. He attempted to escape, but was secured, and, refusing to give his parole, was sent prisoner to Major Armstrong."—Journal, page 207.