March 28, 2010

This is a story about a young slave woman who “belonged” to America’s most powerful family and yet, with pluck and determination we can only imagine, escaped and thwarted every attempt to capture her.

I learned about Oney Judge while in Philadelphia last weekend. In Independence Square, right next to the building where the Liberty Bell rests, are the foundations of the “President’s House,” which both George Washington and John Adams occupied while that city served as the capital of the new nation.
He and his wife, Martha, moved into the house in November 1990, along with her two grandchildren, an assortment of secretaries, eight enslaved Africans from Mt. Vernon and about 15 white servants. Oney Judge, who had been born at Mt. Vernon, was Martha’s personal servant.

This is where things get sticky. Pennsylvania had banned the importation of slaves, although those who already had slaves could keep them. Those living temporarily in the state, however, could not do so if they resided there longer than six months. To get around this law, the president and his entourage regularly packed up and traveled to Virginia before the deadline, then returned to the federal city. (There’s a fascinating, thorough account of this story at www.ushistory.org/presidentshouse.)

Washington’s views about slavery were evolving. Although he owned many slaves, he planned to free them upon his death, and was gradually replacing those in Philadelphia with white servants. But Martha was quite possessive about Oney and informed her that she planned to give her as a wedding gift to Elizabeth Custis, her granddaughter, who had recently married English ex-patriot Thomas Law.

Twenty-three years old, realizing that she’d likely be enslaved for life, Oney planned her escape.


While George and Martha were having dinner one night in May 1796, she slipped out of the house and fled to the home of free black friends. Martha was furious. Although George opposed the idea, she had an ad run in the Pennsylvania Gazette saying that the woman had “absconded from the household of the President of the United States,” giving a description, offering $10 for her capture and warning ship captains against letting her on board. But somehow, Oney managed to board a northbound ship and made her way to Portsmouth, N.H.

Then this lowly escapee managed to thwart the will of the most powerful man in America. A family friend spotted her in Portsmouth and informed the Washingtons who put on a full-court press to get have her captured and returned. Washington’s treasury secretary wrote to Joseph Whipple, Portsmouth’s customs collector. And this minor functionary, with the full weight of the federal executive on his case, found Oney and interviewed her. His reply should place him among the all-time profiles in courage. It did not appear, he said, that the woman had been decoyed – as had been alleged – but had fled because of “a thirst for compleat freedom.”

Oney, no-doubt terrified, offered to return on condition that the Washington’s guarantee her freedom upon their demise, but the miffed president replied that he was not about to “reward unfaithfulness” with such an assurance. Two years later, he sent his nephew, Burnwell Bassett Jr., to New Hampshire to meet with Gov. John Langdon and have Martha’s property returned.

Langdon, a close friend who had served in the Continental Congress, would have no part of this plan. He sent word to Judge, who was now married and a mother, to immediately go into hiding. There was such a thing as the Fugitive Slave Law – which Washington had signed in 1793 – and the governor was aiding a runaway.

Oney spent the rest of her long life – she lived to be 75 – as a fugitive, but at least a free one.

Cover illustration from a book for young readers, The Escape of Oney Judge, by Emily Arnold McCully. Courtesy of Farrar, Straus and Giroux LLC.

The President's House in Philadelphia. Courtesy Independence Hall Association.

March 21, 2010

The entrance to Nanneys Creek as seen from Back Bay. Photo by Paul Clancy. Click to enlarge.
Here’s how a canoe trip can lead you deep into history.
We thought we were on Nawney Creek last week. That’s what most of the maps call it. That’s what state and federal water quality folks think it’s called. That’s what determines the boundaries of state political districts. It’s also the name of the tract of land recently added to Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge.
I should have suspected something, though, when we turned off Mill Landing Road onto what our map refers to as both Nawley Creek Road and Nawney Creek Road, while the actual road sign insists that it’s Nanneys Creek Road.
Well, we’d puzzle that out later. It was one of the first fine days of spring and this wide, slow-moving creek, whatever its name, was inviting, and Barbara and I would investigate its secrets on a leisurely paddle out to Back Bay.
It’s pretty enough, although invasive phragmites seems to be winning out over the native cordgrass. But the dominant theme of the creek, aside from its peace and quiet, is nobby kneed cypress trees, hundreds of them.
A pair of Canada geese took off honking. A furry animal, probably a nutria, moved in the brush. A red-tailed hawk circled above the marsh. A flock of snow geese winged high overhead. After about an hour each way, plus a short cruise along Back Bay’s western shore, we were back. But the name part kept nagging. What creek were we on?
Barbara Henley, city councilwoman, farmer and history buff, didn't hesitate. “Everybody here calls it Nanneys Creek because that’s what it’s been since the 1600s,” she said. That’s how you can tell a “come-here” from a “been-here,” she added.
A map maker must have misspelled it long ago and “Nawney” made it onto maps and even, for a time, road signs. But Henley, as president of the local civic league, went to the city with deed books showing the correct spelling again and again, especially when property was described as being bounded by the creek. Nanney was promptly restored.
But who or what was Nanney?
Lillie Gilbert, owner of Wild River Outfitters and author, with Vickie Shufer, of several books on rivers, creeks and local history, thinks it’s an Indian word that made it into record books as early as 1691 as “Nani” or Nanni.” In their book Wild River Guide to Coastal Waterways from Corolla to Cape Henry there’s a description of one property, from “Nani Creek to Machipungo, and so southerly.”
And Machipungo? The name of an Indian tribe, from which the village of Pungo derived its name. Who knew that?
OK, one last question: What about Charity Neck, a road that connects with Nanney Creek Road?
Got its name from Charity Church, Henley said. She found records from 1796 in which a place called Dawley’s Meeting House gave three-fourths of an acre for a Methodist church, which in turn became Charity Chapel, taking its inspiration from the biblical faith, hope and charity.
Henley has been working with residents at the Senior Resource Center near Creeds to pull together much of the region’s history. They frequently meet to share stories and bring old photos, letters and newspaper clippings. And now they’re working on a small “starter” book on what they’ve found, hoping it will generate more interest.
“Nobody’s ever done historical research for this part of Princess Anne County,” she said. “The longer you wait, the more things are lost.” So they’re working hard at putting it together a piece at a time.
History lurks just about everywhere in Hampton Roads, even its creeks.

March 14, 2010

It was April 1914 and Bernard P. Holland, in his second term as mayor of Virginia Beach, was fighting to save the site of the Princess Anne Hotel – destroyed by fire seven years before – from being chopped into lots and sold for cottages.

But Norfolk Southern Railroad Co. was on the brink of receivership and couldn’t wait any longer for a hotel deal to come through. The company, a distant relative of the present Norfolk Southern Railway, had absorbed another line that ran trains to the Beach, built the hotel and sold land for cottages. Holland had worked for the railroad as superintendent, selling land for development, but now the shoe was on the other foot.

“It would be disastrous to us as well as to the company,” Holland wrote to company president C. H. Hix. “The hotel and the Pavilion have been the sole inducement to the investors who make the Beach their homes and to businesses here.”

The letters are part of a collection of Holland’s papers that have been given to the Princess Anne County/Virginia Beach Historical Society, in the care of Virginia Wesleyan College, by Ann Holland, his granddaughter. They provide a rare glimpse into the personal and business dealings of Holland who became the first mayor of the then-small town of Virginia Beach in 1906. He served two years, then returned for another term in 1913.

When he first came to the Beach in the mid-1880s, one of Holland’s papers says, there was just one cottage and a partly built hotel. The luxurious Virginia Beach Hotel – later the Princess Anne – would soon open, attracting the rich, famous and powerful. Holland was in the thick of it, selling off lots for the railroad.

The papers include deeds he signed on property along Atlantic Avenue, including 1200 acres north of Rudee Inlet for $125,000. One deed is for an “Infant Sanatorium.” There’s an 1893 train schedule (leave Virginia Beach 7:30 a.m., arrive Norfolk 8:20 a.m.), and a brochure for the Princess Anne touting “the most beautiful beach on the Atlantic Ocean, a site of about 1600 acres, one thousand of which is covered by a primeval pine forest, many of whose trees are more than a century old.”

There’s a list of property owners that includes Barton Myers, a prominent Norfolk businessman and former mayor. There’s also the 1909 deed of sale for Holland’s own commodious cottage on 12th Street to Cecile Amelie and Cornelius de Witt. The de Witt Cottage remained in that family for many decades until it became the Atlantic Wildfowl Heritage Museum.

After retiring from the railroad, Holland became a shopkeeper, telegrapher and postmaster. He also rented out a portion of his store for the town’s first library.
For history buffs, there are minutes of a 1903 property owners’ meeting that included B.P. Holland and C. de Witt. The sense of the meeting was they wanted to “incorporate Virginia Beach as a town.” A committee was appointed to draft a charter permitting the town to levy taxes, lay out streets, make by-laws, provide for fines and penalties and “imprisonment for violators thereof.”

There’s even a yellowed Norfolk Landmark clipping headlined MAY INCORPORATE RESORT AS A TOWN. This, of course, came to pass and eventually the tiny Beach town became a city that swallowed Princess Anne County whole.

The loss of the hotel would be a huge setback for the new town. Holland urged the Norfolk Chamber of Commerce to step in, then tried to gather a group of residents to buy the land and hold it for a “first class hotel.” But he couldn’t pull it off. There are letters from a real estate company pressing for a decision, and finally one from Norfolk Southern’s Hix regretting that “on account of our financial condition we could not see our way clear to accede.“

Stephen S. Mansfield, archivist for Virginia Wesleyan, said the Holland papers fill several gaps in the historical record of the resort city. They also show “the eclectic nature of his influence and interests. He really did personify the Beach back then and provided a bridge between the railroad and the community that came about.”

The historical society will be discussing the Holland papers during its March meeting today.

Photo: Bernard P. Holland stands in front of his general store on 17th Street. Courtesy of Virginia Wesleyan College.

March 7, 2010

It was before dawn on January 4, 1781 when Thomas Jefferson, then governor of Virginia, was startled by someone pounding on his door. It was a messenger with the alarming news that a large fleet of British warships was nearby on the James River. He realized they planned to take Richmond and, certainly, capture him. After sending off his wife and three daughters, he mounted his horse and rode through the city, issuing orders to raise the militia and remove important state papers. Then he galloped safely away.

This long nightmare of running from the invaders, from Richmond, from Charlottesville and elsewhere, is the subject of a well-received new book, “Flight from Monticello, Thomas Jefferson at War,” by Michael Kranish. During the invasion, the author of the Declaration of Independence comes across as indecisive. If this is an oft-told tale, that is not the case for the many subplots in which other characters, both powerful and vulnerable, dwell.

The British force, led by that famous traitor Benedict Arnold, did not go straight to Richmond but paused at a place where the general suspected they would be cordially received, Westover Plantation.

Westover had been the extravagantly wealthy domain of William Byrd III, but he had managed to bury himself deeply in debt from gambling and mismanagement, and he feared that his loyalty to the crown had put him on the wrong side of history. On New Year’s Day1777 he put a pistol to his head and pulled the trigger.

A thousand acres of fields, forest and swamp, Westover was now held together by his widow, Mary Willing Byrd, whose patriotism was in some doubt. As Kranish writes, “She harbored resentment against revolutionaries, whom she blamed for her husband’s suicide, and yet was also a subject of sympathy because of the vast obligations she was left on the day Byrd died.” But what raised eyebrows the most was the fact that her first cousin, Peggy Shippen, was Arnold’s wife.

Family lore has it that Arnold galloped into the mansion on his horse, slashing at the mahogany banister with his sword, but that might have been to give her a cover story. At any rate, she received her sudden guests with “propriety,” as she later wrote to Jefferson. “I consulted my heart and my head, and acted to the best of my judgment, agreeable to all laws, human and divine. If I have acted erroneously, it was an error in judgment and not of the Heart.”

Hundreds of soldiers set up tents on the grounds, helped themselves to crops, slaughtered animals and made off with dozens of her slaves – although Arnold promised she would be compensated. But they left her house and its contents undisturbed, then marched off and invaded Richmond. By that time, Jefferson had escaped.

Although he was sympathetic to Byrd, Jefferson later joined with members of his council in passing a resolution accusing her of treason. She protested that she had done nothing wrong. “I would rather die than betray my country,” she wrote a friend. But she would have to defend herself in court and face the consequences, loss of property, jail or even execution.

Byrd went by carriage to Richmond to face her accusers, but was informed when she arrived that a key witness was unavailable and the case was dropped. No explanation was ever given, but it appeared that well-connected Virginians had deliberately detained the witness.

If Mary Willing Byrd believed in anything, it was survival. Much as Scarlett O’Hara clung to Tara, she found a way to keep Westover.

The Norfolk Historical Society will sponsor a talk and book signing by Michael Kranish this Wednesday from 7 to 8 pm at the Chrysler Museum. He will also speak and sign books on March 17 at 5:30 pm at the DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum in Williamsburg.


Illustration: Mary Willing Byrd, by John Wollaston. She was accused of helping British invasion forces. Courtesy of Virginia Historical Society.