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.