PART III

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.

[Illustration: _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.

[Illustration: _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.

[Illustration: _"Yankee" foragers during the Civil War._]

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.

"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.

[Footnote 10: Pantalettes were generally worn about 1830-50. The fact

that they were still being worn by children of the Northern Neck is

probably due to the isolated location of this peninsula.]

_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.