Feb. 28, 2010

“WHAT I LOVE ABOUT OLD PHOTOS,” she says as we turn onto Great Neck Road in Virginia Beach, “is you can just imagine the people who lived behind those four walls.”

It was the discovery of such photographs in history rooms of libraries, as well as richly detailed maps showing where old houses once stood, and numerous road trips through the countryside, that has led to Then & Now, Virginia Beach, a book by Amy Hayes Castleberry.

Castleberry, an interior designer, has long protested the loss of historic houses and buildings in Norfolk and Virginia Beach. Some have fallen into ruin, some have been destroyed by lightning, but many, as she puts it, have suffered “death by developer.”

It’s raining. Her windshield wipers keep time with choral music that plays softly on her car stereo as we turn onto Rose Hall Drive. At the end of the street, an elegant white house, circa 1730, once stood on 615 acres. The owners of Rose Hall were the Jacob Ellegoods, father and son, the latter a British loyalist who fled to Canada.

When the house burned down, it was replaced by an equally elegant mansion in 1820, exactly matching the footprint of the original. There was a burial plot nearby, populated by descendents of the original owners.

Castleberry founded a group called Preservation Watchdogs, who tried to save Rose Hall, and at one point they thought a purchaser had been found who would restore it or move it. But this fell through and in 2003 a developer tore the house down and replaced it with large brick houses. The only thing left are the bricks that now line a walkway at Ferry Plantation, a historic house that has survived.

We circle around on Little Lake Drive so she can point out where the burial plot was and an old tree still stands.

“It’s hard for me to come back here because it’s so disturbing,” she says.

She’s brought along old maps of Princess Anne County that are covered with handwriting that indicates where homes once stood and who owned them. There are long lost and strange names like Blackbeard’s Hill, Newsom Farms Colored Settlement and – my favorite – Starvation Hill. And lost roadway names like Pungo Ridge Road. Near the present Oceana Naval Air Station is Salisbury Plains, where a house of that name once stood until the air base arrived.

We turn off Great Neck onto Plantation Avenue. There’s a surviving gem here called Lower Wolfsnare, a gambrel-roofed house with Flemish bond brickwork that goes back to about 1720. It was originally on 6.5 acres, but now, although there’s still a brooding old magnolia tree and some fine manicured bushes, the property is surrounded by new houses and its “historic context,” as she puts it, has been lost. “You just don’t have a sense of how open it was.”
Or how interesting its history is.

Her book is organized by old and new photographs. In this case, there’s one of the old house surrounded by an open field and one of the present house that’s hemmed in by its neighbors. The caption shows Castleberry’s dogged research.

“There was a landing on the creek called Pallet’s Landing, after the family that built the house on the Jacob Hunter farm long ago. In 1651, the creek was called Oliver Van Hick’s Creek, and later it was known as Wolf Snare Creek. In the early part of the 20th century, some of the old pits used to trap wolves were still visible. The house was used as Confederate headquarters during the Civil War and was rumored to have an underground tunnel where whiskey was smuggled.”

These are only a few of about 80 old houses that made it into Amy Castleberry’s book. Some have been restored but many are gone and live only in photographs and fading memories. And now, in the pages of her book.

Amy Hayes Castleberry will have a book signing at Prince Books in Norfolk on March 13 from 1-3 p.m.

Salisbury Plains, circa 1727, survived until 1954 when it was torn down to make room for a runway at Oceana Naval Air Station. Arcadia Publishing.

Feb. 21, 2010

Photo of Yvonne and Challis Dawson, with their son, Gerard, in Scotland, Ill., September 1930. Courtesy of the Suffolk-Nansemond Historical Society.
When Sue Woodward moved to Suffolk in the 1970s she lived on Franklin Street in a historic and gracious part of old downtown, where a fascinating family, the Dawsons, lived. He was a doctor who dabbled in painting, she a French concert pianist. But they were rarely seen, except when they got in their car, perhaps leaving on one of their frequent trips to Europe.
“She was a rare bird to be admired from a distance,” she says of “Madame Dawson,” as everyone called her.
Little did Woodward dream that one day she would be the historian of the Suffolk-Nansemond Historical Society and that the Dawson House, an imposing French Second Empire mansion, would become its headquarters.
Nor could she have imagined the demons that haunted the good doctor.
Challis Dawson of Scotland, Ill., went to France during World War I as a doctor with the American Army. There he fell in love with Yvonne Dienne, a talented musician who was playing for the troops behind the lines. They married and moved to New York, although they frequently returned to Paris where she performed. While there in 1927, a son, Gerard, was born.
Dawson got a job as public health officer in Suffolk in the late 1930s, and in 1941 they bought the Franklin Street house. It had been built around 1881 by Horace P. Phillips who made a fortune in the lumber business and, as his fortune grew, so did the house. Eventually, he moved the entrance from Franklin to Bank Street, with a large mahogany door, stained glass sidelights and a magnificent grand staircase.
Dawson had a medical practice in Suffolk, as well as the health service job. In his spare time, he did small sketches and watercolor scenes, some of which now decorate the entrance hall of the house. She taught piano lessons, and gave occasional local recitals. There were back-to-back baby grand pianos in her music room on which she and her students sometimes played duets.
Gerald went to Suffolk schools, then to Harvard, but didn’t follow his father into medicine, instead going to work at Tiffany & Co. He divided his time between Suffolk and New York, and when he died in 2002 left the house to the historical society as a memorial to his parents.
And he left a stack of thick envelopes containing a rambling, 240-page, typed memoir that his father had sent to him at Harvard. It is titled, “Random thoughts at 4 a.m.” They’re random, all right, but poignant and full of pain.
Dawson had given up a lot, it seems, for the woman he loved, living in expensive apartments in big cities, losing a chance to focus on his career. “With financial help, I could have been a great physician, perhaps well known or even renowned,” he wrote.
He seemed tortured by a lack of sleep, even wondering how much a body could do without. He complained of vertigo and the constant sound of rain.
“The steady drop of water on the stone – result, a hole. Day after day and night after night, the almost constant percussion of continuous small irritations and annoyances, the telephone, the door bell, senseless questions, result – the wearing away and the wearing down of nervous resistance, like the hole in the stone from the drop of water.
“The past six years have been killers, just as much so as the hired gunman in the Hemingway picture, ‘The Killers.’” Those were the years they had lived in that house.
“It just wasn’t in him to be satisfied,” Woodward says.
And the house? Is it an albatross or…? The society has just had the slate mansard roof restored, and is raising money for about $700,000 more in upgrades – everything from the heating and wiring to the plumbing and plastering. But, given the fabulous old neighborhood and rich history, she sides with a friend who calls it a blessing.

Feb. 14, 2010

There was a catchy song way back when about places that changed their names…”Even old New York was once New Amsterdam”…and, my favorite, “If you’ve a date in Constantinople she’ll be waiting in Istanbul.”

We could have a song about Hampton Roads but it’d probably be too complicated to follow. Thanks to consolidations, political machinations and anglicizations, there have been so many name changes and outright name extinctions that you’d better not have a date in any of the old cities and counties around here without a new road map.
This is more than a little scary, but I’m going to try getting this right.

First, there were four “ancient boroughs,” Kecoughtan, James City, Charles City and Henrico City. But almost immediately, King James I directed that eight “shires” be formed. These included Elizabeth City, the mother of us all here in Hampton Roads (both sides). The “heathen” name Kecoughtan, as the English considered it, was no more.

So was a shire with a name almost no one could spell: Warrosquyoake Shire. Heathen again. Isle of Wight went down like cream to English tastes, although the old name must have lingered. In worrying about the British invasion fleet on the James River in 1781, Thomas Jefferson wrote a dispatch saying they had just passed “Warrasqueak.” (Squeaked by?)

In 1636, Elizabeth City was split in two, with the Peninsula retaining the Elizabeth City name, and the south side becoming New Norfolk (If you’re keeping score, that included the present five independent cities).

But wait! Within a year, New Norfolk became Upper and Lower Norfolk counties. Upper Norfolk in turn became Nansemond County. Lower Norfolk later morphed into Norfolk County – including present-day Norfolk, Chesapeake and Portsmouth – and Princess Anne County, destined to become Virginia Beach. At this point, we can take a breather. Almost no changes were instigated for 200 years.

Then the fur really flew. First of all, Norfolk County – which had its seat in Portsmouth (!) – found its land being chipped away by the aggressively expanding Norfolk City: the town of Berkley, for instance, the community of Ocean View and areas known as Sewell’s Point and Willoughby Spit. Portsmouth became an independent city in 1859, but kept the county seat of the increasingly isolated county. West Norfolk and Churchland were lost to Portsmouth.

When Norfolk attempted to annex even more of Norfolk County’s land, the county and South Norfolk circled their wagons. As Norfolk tried to move further east, so did Princess Anne County and the small resort city of Virginia Beach. The results in 1961were the creations of the sprawling independent cities of Virginia Beach and Chesapeake. Well, at least one ancient Indian name, Chesapeake, had been revived.
But, like a couple of critically endangered species, the names Princess Anne and Norfolk County went extinct.

So did Nansemond, which became an independent city in 1972, then ceased to exist 18 months later as it was swallowed by sprawling Suffolk.

And so did Warwick. Once Warwick River Shire, then Warwick County, then Warwick City, it surrendered its name to Newport News. Elizabeth City County would give up the ghost to Hampton.

In each case, the name changes were approved by voters, even if, as a historian friend puts it, they swallowed hard in giving up their historic names. Even so, we can sing, as they did in that song:

“Why they changed them I can’t say. People just like it better that way.”

There won’t be a test.

What’s in a name? England’s Queen Anne was a princess in 1691 when Princess Anne County, now Virginia Beach, was formed. Like many others in Hampton Roads, the name has all but vanished. From Parliament.uk.

Feb. 7, 2010

Illustration: Angolan musicians and dancer by Antonio Cavazzi, about 1690. Courtesy of the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation. (Click to enlarge)

In the summer 1619 a Portuguese slave ship departed from Luanda, a port city in the West African country of Angola, bound for Vera Cruz, Mexico. But on the way the ship was attacked by British privateers. About 20 of the Africans, now considered prize cargo, were taken to Jamestown and traded for supplies.

Although these first Africans apparently were not treated as slaves but as indentured servants, this date is considered the beginning of slavery in America. The economics of raising and curing tobacco soon favored forced, cheap labor and ushered in two centuries of slavery.

This bleak chapter in the state’s history is being explored by two Virginia tourist attractions, Jamestown Settlement and Colonial Williamsburg, in observance of Black History month. Whether visiting these exhibits in person or virtually, much can be learned about the culture from which the slaves emerged and the culture of the nation that exploited them.

What the Jamestown Settlement has done is produce a family gallery guide, “From Africa to Virginia,” that takes you to the rural villages and towns of West Central Africa and the extensive civilization that existed there. The Angolans were well versed in making metal implements, and cultures like the Akan were well known for their gold jewelry. The Congo region also produced kuba cloth made from the raffia palm, which was highly valued by European traders.

Through the influence of the Portuguese, Christianity was widespread in the region, although with an African flavor. Among the exhibits at the Settlement is an African crucifix with a black Jesus draped in kuba cloth.

Although some Angolans knew how to read, write and speak Portuguese, West Central Africans mainly spoke the Bantu languages Kikongo and Kimbundu. Visitors can find language phones and listen to one of the native languages being spoken.

There’s a striking resemblance between the African and Indian cultures – at least in the eyes of European artists. The dancing African figure in the drawing by Antonio Cavazzi, an Italian priest, is reminiscent of the first impressions of native Americans by John White, one of the leaders of Walter Raleigh’s expeditions to the New World.

Colonial Williamsburg is delivering its message about the slave trade to school children through “electronic field trips” on its Web pages. Schools throughout the state are able to access them.

They include professionally produced video segments showing the origins of slavery. One of the segments was recorded on board the Schooner Virginia, the most readily available traditional sailing vessel.

The video presentations ask how a country founded on the principle that all are created equal can engage in slavery. A planter attempts to justify his actions by explaining how profitable the plantation system is. One slave trader boasts that he can pack more than 700 captives in the hold of his ship by making them lie sideways.

But the most captivating (if you can use that term) element may be a game called “Tracking the Slave Traders,” in which students interview various participants, learn where the trade takes place, intercept ships off Cuba and Africa and interrogate ship captains. In each case, there’s either an excuse for carrying their cargo or, in one case, a boast that the slaver would be back on the seas in no time. As long as planters will pay good money for slaves, he says, the practice will continue.

Finally, off the coast of Africa, more ships are stopped but we learn the brutal truth about the whole business, “The slave trade will not end as long as money can be made. It will not end until slavery is abolished.”