Markers of History

State Historical Markers
Virginia Q-8-Q
Arnold’s British Defenses, 1781

Location: Crawford Pkwy, west of Court Street, Portsmouth, VA 23704

Visited: June 23, 2009, 1:45pm

Transcription of marker: A brick wind­mill near here was close to the south­ern limit of a line of British redoubts erected in March 1781 by order of Brigadier General Benedict Arnold, who under Major General William Phillips, com­manded British troops occu­py­ing Portsmouth. This line of for­ti­fi­ca­tions extended north in an arc along Washington Street to the water­front near Court Street.

Virginia State Library, 1962

My impres­sions: I’m a lit­tle con­fused when I take this marker together with marker num­ber Q-8-P, also titled Arnold’s British Defenses, 1781, which I blogged about on Thursday. I am fairly cer­tain that at least one of these mark­ers is no longer in the loca­tion the marker text assumed, because there is very lit­tle north-south dif­fer­ence between their loca­tions, only the width of Crawford Parkway.

They may both be moved from their orig­i­nal loca­tions, because Q-8-P seems fur­ther east than the arc described in this marker, and the cur­rent marker [Q-8-Q] seems to be too far north, given Q-8-P’s ref­er­ence to Dinwiddie Street.

The other thing that strikes me about this marker is that the low­er­case q in the marker num­ber seems “off” to me. It doesn’t look like a q should look in that type. It looks like some­body was impro­vised with a back­wards p. But that could just be my eyes.

Markeroni sta­tus: Logged.