June 28, 2009

Maybe it’s the flag, white with a red cross, fluttering in the breeze in the midst of the brave little earthen fort.
Maybe it’s the nature trail that winds through the dense woods on the banks of Roanoke Sound, with signs that spell out the usefulness of wild substances for survival. Boil this, cultivate that, use this for wood, that for wine-making. “How long could you survive without relying on outside supplies?” a sign asks, and our best answer is to reach for the bug spray.
Whatever it is, whether trampling on the soft, leaf-covered paths of the Fort Raleigh National Historic Site on Roanoke Island or plunging into the literature that deals with this fascinating subject, I am now – like almost everyone else who has ever ventured here on an Outer Banks vacation -- hopelessly ensnared in the most enduring mystery in American history.
As if there weren’t enough to delve into in Hampton Roads, where America supposedly began, Our Stories fearlessly stumbles into the place where it might have, or should have, or possibly really did (?) begin.
We know the outlines:
With the backing of Sir Walter Raleigh, a first expedition lands at Roanoke Island in the spring of 1585 but leaves the following year after botching whatever good will there was with local Indians.
A much more ambitious attempt is made in 1587, this time with the intention of establishing a permanent settlement on the southern end of the Chesapeake Bay – possibly present day Virginia Beach or Norfolk. But after what was to be a brief stop at Roanoke, the party of 110 men, women and children is marooned there. The daughter and son-in-law of John White, leader of the settlers, give birth to Virginia Dare, the first English child born in the New World.
Desperate for supplies, White leaves for England with a promise to return soon, but war with Spain frustrates his attempts. When he finally obtains passage with a group of privateers in 1590, the colonists have vanished, leaving only the word CROATOAN carved on a post.
Whether from indecisiveness or powers beyond his control, White never investigates either Croatoan, then the name for Hatteras Island, or the southern Chesapeake, and the would-be colony becomes, forever, the Lost Colony. Thanks a lot, Mr. White.
So, where did they go?
Twenty-five years ago, historian David Beers Quinn made a strong case that the lost colonists decided their best hope of survival was to go north, to their original destination, and that they lived side by side with the Chesapeake Indians. One possible location was the village called Skicoak on the banks of the Elizabeth near Norfolk. But then, when Powhatan declared war on the Chesapeakes, the white settlers were murdered.
This would have been shortly before 1607, just before the Jamestown settlers arrived, and they did attempt to find their long-lost countrymen, but without even a hint of their passing. I’d love to think that the lost colony could someday be found here, but the chances are somewhere between none and zero, I think.
Ivor Noel Hume, indisputably the leading authority on early American settlement, told me he’s convinced that at least some of the colonists went down to Hatteras because that would have been the best place from which to watch for relief ships. But where the rest of them went, he said, “I really don’t know; everybody’s guessing.”
What makes the story so fascinating, he suggests, is the missing child. Virginia Dare’s story, like that of Pocahontas, is shrouded in mystery, and all of us, historians, playwrights, tourists and column writers alike, prefer it that way.
When White’s party returned to Roanoke Island, they called out the names of their long-lost friends and loved ones, only to be answered by silence. Today, as we walk the beautiful nature trail on the island, our footsteps and our questions are met by the same response.

Illustration from Fort Raleigh National Historic Site

June 21, 2009

It was not a happy beginning. The town that was to become the city of Hampton sprang up in the midst of the Indian settlement of Kecoughtan after the natives were driven off by the English, who then – God-fearing to the core – created a church to serve the new community.
It was July 9, 1610, the date that marks not only the founding of Hampton but of the oldest Protestant parish in America, St. John’s Episcopal Church. And, like the city, St. John’s is one year shy of its 400th anniversary.
It would be impossible to tell the church’s story without mixing in the history of Hampton, and James Tormey, a member of the St. John’s congregation, has succeeded in tightly weaving the two together in a new book, How Firm a Foundation. He recently spoke at the Hampton History Museum, where his book has gone on sale.
Tormey’s book walks you from the Jamestown settlement in 1607 through the founding at Kecoughtan – the original name of the town – three wars and four church buildings. Almost miraculously, the fourth, built in 1728, survived all that Hampton’s turbulent history has thrown its way, including a devastating fire that leveled the town during the civil war.
Little is known of the first church, although it was probably near the mouth of a small stream known as Church Creek near present-day La Salle and Chesapeake avenues. It’s clear that the colonists were serious about church attendance, imposing stiff fines on laggards and imposing a church tax, usually paid with tobacco, on every household.
“When the price of tobacco fell in the London markets,” Tormey writes, “the effective salary of the ministers decreased. The General Assembly sought to offset this by decreeing that the twentieth calf, pig, and goat produced on every farm should be given to the minister.”
A second church was built on the east side of Hampton River near present-day Hampton University in 1623. It survived until 1667 when “the most dreadful hurricane that ever the Colony groaned under,” as one observer put it, destroyed most of the town. That same year, a third church rose on the west side of the river near the present West Pembroke Ave. Building foundations and several gravestones dating to the 17th century survive there.
Unlike the other buildings, which were built of wood, the fourth was made to last, with two-foot-thick brick walls. They’d be needed.
Hampton made it through the Revolutionary War unscathed, but during the War of 1812 the British invaded, turning the church into a barracks for soldiers and the churchyard a slaughtering pen for their animals. After the war, during a “period of religious apathy,” the church suffered from neglect and was reduced to “four walls and a leaky roof, without doors, windows, floors…while the decayed timbers of the belfry on the steeple fell down.”
St. John’s was restored, but the most devastating blow was soon to follow. In 1861, as Confederate troops fled the city, they torched the town, leaving it a smoldering ruins. Tormey quotes a Union topographer who “came upon the ruins of St. John’s Episcopal Church. The fire had gutted it completely. The tower had fallen down in a heap, roofs clean gone, and nothing but bare walls left standing.”
At least they had the walls, and soon after the war a massive rebuilding campaign began. Among those who helped restore the church were Yankee industrialists, including some who had fought on the Union side.
Tormey took me on a tour of the church and its museum last week, pointing out that although the building is colonial on the outside, the rebuilt interior has many Victorian touches, especially the ornate, vaulted wooden ceiling. There are fascinating stained glass windows, including one that depicts Pocahontas’ baptism.
Among the prize possessions of St. John’s are the communion silver pieces that were made in London in 1618. They were donated to a church at Smith’s Hundred not far from Jamestown. They endured an Indian massacre and several transfers before ending up at St. John’s, and have been in continuous use since 1627.
There is no way to do justice to the church’s history in this space, no less that of Hampton. Both are intimately intertwined, and you see that clearly walking among the gravestones in St. John’s massive churchyard, where Hamptonians from the Revolutionary War to the present are buried.
Some of that history seemed to be slipping away, and Tormey was eager to capture it. “This is a time,” he said, “when the story really needs to be told.”

“The old Episcopal Church at Hampton, from Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, Aug. 17, 1861. Hampton History Museum.

June 14, 2009

A horseback rider on the road from Surry Courthouse to Smithfield notices the wide expanse of the James River at Burwell’s Bay and eases his mount down a steep path to the beach.
“The breeze invigorates horse and rider, the green waves break and glossy curves glide smoothly up as if on glass, the traveler bursts into a song and straightens up in his saddle, the horse feels the reins tighten and canters off with a swing and a bound, the bluff face shows a million green mosses and trickling springs, great oaks hold out their arms from the top in a perpetual attitude of blessing, the eye ranges freely down Burwell’s Bay, across Hampton Roads to the Chesapeake…”
The writer is Sidney Lanier and this is an excerpt from his novel “Tiger Lilies,” which he had begun writing while serving in the Confederate Army at Fort Boykin in Isle of Wight County.
This is one of the fascinating things about the ancient fort, which had guarded this stretch of the James since the first settlers determined in 1623 to protect themselves against “Spaniards by sea and Indians by land.” A century and a half later, as American patriots guarded against attack by the British, the bluff overlooking the river was again fortified. It was revived during the War of 1812 – a decisive battle, in which British raiders were driven back to their ships, was fought there – and again in the Civil War.
You can see why Fort Boykin, named for Francis Boykin, a state senator, militia general and owner of the surrounding property, had so many incarnations. It was one of the best possible locations for monitoring river traffic because shallows forced river traffic close to the bluffs and exposed them to cannon fire.
It’s now a state park and you can ramble through its meadows, where maple and walnut trees, and at least one magnificent horse chestnut, stand guard. It’s interlaced with trenches that gave the fort the nickname “the Castle.” Purple flowers spill down the side of the bluff. And, to me best of all, you can hike down the path to the beach where, for centuries, people have found giant sharks’ teeth. Millions of years ago, when the ocean extended as far west as Richmond, whales and great white sharks patrolled these waters and huge scallops feasted on whatever drifted their way. As the James cut down through centuries of sediment, cliffs were exposed and fossils spilled onto the beach as the cliffs eroded.
(When my wife’s parents had a cabin on the James in Surry, my father-in-law, John Berguin, seemed to have an uncanny knack of finding the sharks’ teeth. I tried to see with his eyes but found only deer tracks and small lumps of iron.)
If you visit the park, you can also see what inspired a young signal corps soldier from Macon, Ga., to write extravagant poetry about the natural world.
The Isle of Wight County Museum in Smithfield has a copy of a letter that Lanier wrote to his father from “Boykin’s Bluff,” telling how the outlines of his novel were forming in his mind. Even as he stood night watch, scenes and incidents crowded his thoughts and the plot, “in spite of all the confusion, is taking the matter into its own hands, and is gradually shaping itself. I think one more guard-night will finish it.”
“Tiger Lilies,” set partly in the hills of Tennessee and the shoreline of the James, delves deeply into the grim realities of war. It touches on the presence of Union gunboats out on the river. Their lights shown as if “a glittering crown of stars had fallen down out of the generous heavens and encircled the dark land.” But the novel doesn’t mention the fall of Fort Boykin.
Shortly after the battle of the Ironclads in March 1862, Union ships headed up the James towards Richmond. On May 8, three of the ships attacked the fort and the Ironclad Galena was able to stand off out of range of Confederate guns and pound the fort. When landing parties returned nine days later, they found it deserted and partly destroyed. It was Boykin’s last hurrah as a fort.
But not as a place of natural beauty.

A young Sidney Lanier. From Bing.com.

June 7, 2009

My previous visit to Smithfield was by water. There’s something about the approach on the dreamily beautiful Pagan River that sets the stage for the deep history of the place.

When wind was the only engine driving boats, anyone coming to Smithfield had to arrive on a rising tide and depart on a falling one. Remember how the first diaries of the Jamestown settlers said they fell from London. You realize the ships were utterly dependent on tides unless they just happened to have strong wind at their backs. I understand that the settlers chose the site for the town because pirates wouldn’t dare follow them all the way up the long, winding river for fear of being stuck and captured before the following tide would take them out of there.

The name of the river itself takes you back to the primitive beginnings when Indian villages lined its shores and settlers derided, or feared, their culture. Captain John Smith, who dropped in on the natives in 1608, found them to be peaceful and generous, departing with 30 bushels of corn for the starving Jamestown settlers. But of course the settlers would keep coming, eventually displacing the natives. Soon, another Smith, this one Arthur, laid claim to1450 acres along the waterfront. In 1750, Arthur Smith VI, presumably his great grandson, surveyed the land, sold the lots and turned it into the town bearing his name.

There’s fabulous history here, the growth of a seaport that sent tobacco and peanuts and cotton around the world – long before pork and ham arrived – and caused captains of industry and captains of ships to build extravagant homes on the bluffs overlooking the harbor. Today, fine examples of Colonial, Federal, Georgian and Victorian homes have been restored, making Smithfield one of the best-preserved old seaports in the country.

The places that are really intriguing are the so-called steamboat gothic residences, inspired by the once-glorious vessels that called on this and other river towns: houses like the one built by ham king Pembroke Decatur Gwaltney Jr. for his new bride in 1901. It’s loaded with turrets, towers, gables, stained glass windows and apparently every other decoration he could think of. The “epitome of Queen Anne style of Victorian architecture,” a self-guiding brochure says.

Then there’s the courthouse. Built when the town was founded in 1752, it was abandoned when the county seat was moved in 1801. Fortunately, those who converted the building to a house left the interior walls. It’s now one of Virginia’s few surviving colonial era court structures. And right next to it is the venerable Smithfield Inn, once a tavern that served the Norfolk-to-Richmond stage coach route.

One of the best parts of a visit to Smithfield is the Isle of Wight County Museum in the old Bank of Smithfield building. It has recently reopened after extensive repairs due to water damage. You can’t help but be drawn inside.

The first thing that greets you is a room that looks like an authentic general store, complete with potbelly stove, a post office, bolts of cloth and figures of a man and woman at the cash register. In other parts of the museum are fossils from the banks of the James, a stuffed red-tailed hawk, Civil War shells and cannon balls, plans for forts Huger and Boykin, both active during the Civil War, a 1913 bank vault and a small theater that looks like it belongs on a steam boat.

And then the most unlikely thing for a museum in Smithfield: a giant storage jar that looks like something you’d see in ancient Greece. But the 85-pound olive oil vessel, circa 1775, has been traced to Tuscany! Seems it washed out of a ravine near Battery Park and was long used as a rain barrel and flower planter.

The museum’s reopening is a signal that history and curiosity are alive and well here.

Photo: Smithfield homes overlooking Pagan River. Associated Press. Courtesy Isle of Wight Museum via Daily Press.