Markers of History

Memorial and Statue
The Georgia Volunteer

Location: In park at Park Ave & Bull St, Savannah, GA 31401

Visited: August 13, 2009, 8:20am

Transcriptions of markers:

East face:

In grate­ful remem­brance of
Stephen N. Harris
who served his coun­try well
as a sol­dier and cit­i­zen
Private, Co. B 2nd Ga. Infantry
1898
Cdr. Worth Bagley Camp No. 10 Dept. Ga. U.S.W.V.
1932
Commander Dept. of Ga. U.S.W.V
1900       1931
Adj. Gen. United Spanish War Veterans
1928       1929
Chief of Staff, Council Of Adm. Ga. U.S.W.V.
1937       1938
His char­ac­ter and lead­er­ship inspired his
com­rades and fel­low citizens.

North face: [Spanish War Veterans’ insignia]

West face:

A trib­ute to that
Soldier · Comrade · Citizen
William L. Grayson
1870       1941
1st. Lieut. Co. “M” 1st Regt. Ga. Vols.
Spanish American War
Commander Department of Georgia U.S.W.V.
1925 — 1927
National Commander in Chief U.S.W.V.
1928 — 1929
His dis­tin­guished ser­vice has endeared him
to all vet­er­ans of all wars
1946

South face (front):

To those
Georgians who
vol­un­teered and
served their
coun­try in the
Spanish American
War

My impres­sions: This marker was high on my “want to visit” list for our trip to Savannah, because I found out about this through find­ing a Spanish-American War memo­r­ial in Portsmouth, VA and the link­age made by an edi­tor of The Historical Marker Database to other mark­ers that fea­ture The Hiker, by sculp­tor Theo Alice Ruggles Kitson.

It is kind of amaz­ing to see some­thing famil­iar and appar­ently unique (until one learns the fuller story) in two dif­fer­ent set­tings, nearly 500 miles apart. And that isn’t dimin­ished too much by the fact that I knew I would see it and had planned the visit in Savannah.

I remem­ber, early on in my days at Markeroni see­ing some­body refer to “their marker,” a marker near their home with which they felt a strong affin­ity. At the time, before I’d started being inten­tional about snarf­ing (and before I’d logged any mark­ers on the site), I didn’t really under­stand it. It clicked in for my last month, as I was in Portsmouth, VA for about the third time to find mark­ers. That day I was “on a mis­sion” to com­plete vis­it­ing a series of mark­ers (for the city’s Path of History), but my walk­ing route took me past sev­eral mark­ers that I’d pre­vi­ously snarfed…and there was a famil­iar­ity that made it almost as though I was pass­ing an old friend, because I had vis­ited these mark­ers, taken their pho­tos, tran­scribed them, and writ­ten about them. So, stand­ing in a park in Savannah, the first time I’d ever done more than drive through the state of Georgia, I felt at home…even though, I still know woe­fully lit­tle about the Spanish-American War.

Markeroni sta­tus: Not yet logged (and it appears I also did not log the sim­i­lar mon­u­ment in Portsmouth, VA yet).

Credit: Thanks to hmdb.org and their page on this mon­u­ment for their tran­scrip­tions of this marker.

Monuments, Statues, and Memorials
Jamestown Tercentenary Monument

Location: Historic Jamestowne, Colonial NHP, Jamestown, VA 23185

Visited: July 4, 2009, 1:45pm

Transcription of monument:

[north side]

Virginia Company
of London
Chartered April 10, 1606
Founded
Jamestown
and sus­tained
Virginia
1607 — 1624

[west side]

This mon­u­ment
was erected by
the United States
A.D. 1907
to com­mem­o­rate
the three hun­dredth
anniver­sary of
the set­tle­ment here

[south side, at same level as other engrav­ings]

Jamestown
The first per­ma­nent
colony of the
English peo­ple
The birth­place of
Virginia
and of
the United States
 – May 13 — 1607 -

[south side, on the base]

“Lastly and chiefly the way to pros­per and achieve good suc­cess is to make your­selves all of one mind for the good of your coun­try, and your own, and to serve and fear God, the giver of all good­ness, for every plan­ta­tion which our heav­enly Father hath not planted shall be rooted out.”

Advice of London Council for Virginia to the colony — 1606

[east side]

Representative
gov­ern­ment in
America
began in the
first House of
Burgesses
assem­bled here
July 30, 1619

My impres­sions: This is a very tall and impres­sive mon­u­ment. There seems to me to be some­thing very American about the obelisk: I don’t recall any off the top of my head that I saw in Canada, but this is the third sig­nif­i­cant one I’ve seen in the U.S. (The other two were in my pre-snarfing days: the Washington Monument in Washington, DC and the Masonic mon­u­ment to Washington in Alexandria, VA.) I don’t know what that says that the United States adopted the obelisk so often as a symbol.

Coming, as it does, as you are enter­ing Historic Jamestowne, the mon­u­ment is a great intro­duc­tory reminder to how much his­tory the place holds. It also chal­lenged a bit of my faulty mem­o­ries of his­tory. I had it in my head that Nova Scotia was the birth­place of rep­re­sen­ta­tive gov­ern­ment in the British Empire, but the Internet tells me I’m mis­taken. Nova Scotia saw the start of rep­re­sen­ta­tive gov­ern­ment in Canada, but that came in 1758, well over a cen­tury later than the estab­lish­ment of the House of Burgesses here. (In fact, Nova Scotia cel­e­brated the 250th anniver­sary of its estab­lish­ment there just last year.)

It also awes me to see a mon­u­ment like this and know that it was made early in the 20th cen­tury and that it was erected with­out all of the tech­nol­ogy we have today. And to think of the num­ber of hours it would have taken for all that lettering…what patience and ded­i­ca­tion and craftsmanship!

OK, if I didn’t want to say much of any­thing about the American Revolution or the Civil War, I’m likely to be even less forth­com­ing about the Spanish-American War. Truth be told, about the only thing I knew about it was its name. It wasn’t until a few min­utes ago that I real­ized that it was about Cuba.  But any­way, on to the monument:

Spanish-American War statue

Location: Crawford Pkwy at North St, Portsmouth, VA 23704

Visited: June 1, 2009, 2:10pm

Transcription of marker:

Spanish-American War
1898 – 1902

Erected by the cit­i­zens of Portsmouth and Norfolk County. Sponsored by the Austin R. Davis Camp No 4 — United Spanish War Veterans and Auxiliary to com­mem­o­rate the valor and patri­o­tism of those who vol­un­tar­ily served in the war with Spain, the Phillipine insur­rec­tion and the China relief expedition.

Dedicated May 23, 1942

My impres­sions: The statue looks inter­est­ing, but it is intrigu­ing how the text was placed. The marker I tran­scribed above is to the back of the man it por­trays. The front of the pedestal has a crest of the Spanish American War Veterans. I find it inter­est­ing how many mark­ers and mon­u­ments in Portsmouth are in the mid­dles of streets: there were the first two state his­tor­i­cal mark­ers I saw there, as well as the Confederate Monument, and now this one. Though this one doesn’t have the fence of the Confederate Monument, its set­ting is nicer, with more grass, and I could actu­ally get to it with­out wor­ry­ing that I was going to be struck by a car.

I won­der whether the logo/crest was instantly rec­og­niz­able in the era when this statue was placed. And the tim­ing is curi­ous: 1942, four decades after the war ended (using the date there). Was it sim­ply a mat­ter of funds? Did World War II have any­thing to do with it? I don’t know the answers, but they are cer­tainly inter­est­ing ques­tions. Maybe some­day I’ll do some read­ing and see what I can find to answer them.

Notes for snar­fers: This is very close to the North Street ferry landing.

Markeroni sta­tus: This site has not yet been sub­mit­ted for inclu­sion in the Markeroni database.

After this, I took the ferry, and there was one more snarf in Norfolk before I returned home, and you’ll read about that in my next post.

Statue
William Craford

Location: Corner of High Street and Crawford St, Portsmouth, VA 23704

Visited: June 1, 2009, 1:25pm

Transcription of plaque:

Col. William Craford
founder of
Portsmouth, Virginia
February 27, 1752

Today, known as
Col. William Crawford

My impres­sions: As I’m writ­ing about these and orga­niz­ing them to write about them, I noticed that this is part of a mini-sequence of Cra[w]ford posts. I remem­ber com­ing across this statue on my first visit to Portsmouth last sum­mer and being instantly pulled in. I’m not sure whether it’s the statue itself or the space around it. I just remem­ber being impressed by it. It isn’t a tow­er­ing mon­u­ment, but I think he feels quite human-sized, and that may be part of why I relate to it.

This is one of those stat­ues that almost looks bet­ter when you get behind it. I had walked down the street to a state his­tor­i­cal marker (that I’ll write about in my next post) and when I came back I was cap­ti­vated by the detail of the bag Craford car­ries. I’m not aware of any mean­ing to the bag, but artis­ti­cally, it impresses me.

Notes for future snar­fers: This one’s pretty much in plain site at its loca­tion. Make sure to step behind it and look at the detail back there, too!

Markeroni sta­tus: I will sub­mit this statue to Markeroni once the whelm level drops.

While stopped to snarf the state his­tor­i­cal marker for Grace Sherwood, we also stopped to look at this statue, acces­si­ble from the same park­ing lot.

Location: Alongside Witchduck Rd, in front of Sentara Bayside Hospital at the inter­sec­tion of Independence Blvd, Virginia Beach, VA 23455.

Visited: May 19, 2009, 7:10pm

Description: A statue of Grace Sherwood with a small ani­mal. I’d like to do some fur­ther research into the ani­mal and its inclu­sion and how that relates to Sherwood’s story.

The statue sits on a base and there are four plaques, one on each side of the base: I’ll go through each, begin­ning with the side clos­est to Witchduck Rd and pro­ceed­ing counter-clockwise around the statue.

Plaque #1
Letter from Governor Kaine

[Virginia state seal]

Timothy M. Kaine
Governor

Ms. Belinda Nash

Dear Ms. Nash:

I am pleased to join the mayor of Virginia Beach in extend­ing best wishes as you work to pro­mote jus­tice in the 1706 “witch duck­ing” case of Grace Sherwood.

With 300 years of hind­sight, we all cer­tainly can agree that trial by water is an injus­tice. We also can cel­e­brate the fact women’s equal­ity is that a con­sti­tu­tion­ally pro­tected today, and women have the free­dom to pur­sue their hopes and dreams.

The his­tor­i­cal records that sur­vive indi­cate that Ms. Sherwood, a mid­wife and wid­owed mother of three, sur­vived her “trial by water” in 1706. Those records also indi­cate that one of my pre­de­ces­sors, Governor Alexander Spotswood, even­tu­ally helped her reclaim her prop­erty. The record also indi­cates Ms. Sherwood led an oth­er­wise quiet and law-abiding life until she died at age 80.

Today, July 10, 2006, as 70th Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia, I am pleased to offi­cially restore the good name of Grace Sherwood.

Sincerely,

[signed]
Timothy M. Kaine

Patrick Henry Building, 1111 East Broad Street, Richmond, Virginia 23219
(804) 786‑2211, TTY (800) 828‑1120
www.governor.virginia.gov

Plaque #2

Grace White Sherwood
Born 1660 Died 1740
Married April 1680 to James Sherwood
James died 1701
Survived by sons,
John, James, and Richard

Sentara Healthcare

has gra­ciously pro­vided this site in
recog­ni­tion of their com­mu­nity, and
the his­tory that sur­rounds us.

This 21st day of April 2007

Sculptor
Robert Cunningham

Plaque #3
The Trial of 1706

At Witchduck Point, 10am July 10th 1706 Grace Sherwood, the daugh­ter of a car­pen­ter and the wife of a planter in the County of Princess Anne, was accused by neigh­bors of witch­craft. Grace was tried in the sec­ond Princess Anne County cour­t­house, found guilty, and con­sented to the tra­di­tional trial by water, Grace was tried cross­bound and dropped into water above man’s depth. If she were to sink and drown she was inno­cent and could be buried on holy ground, Grace did float, thus was guilty as the pure water was cast­ing out her evil spirit. She was incar­cer­ated in the local jail just beyond this statue. After her release, Grace paid the back taxes on her prop­erty in 1714, returned to her farm and worked the land until her death at age 80 in the autumn of 1740. Grace Sherwood, Virginia’s only con­victed witch tried by water, she lays claim to Witchduck Road. Her leg­end lives on as “The Infamous Witch of Pungo”

Plaque #4
Major Donors

[not tran­scribed here, but pic­tured below]

My impres­sions: I really like this statue and the plaques around it. I like the way it tack­les an injus­tice, fac­ing up to what hap­pened, while admit­ting that an injus­tice was done. I also found that the texts here human­ized Grace Sherwood far more than the dry state marker a cou­ple of hun­dred feet away. It’s mark­ers like this that make me want to dig around and find more of the real story behind them.

Notes for future snar­fers: This and state marker K 276 are both acces­si­ble from the Bayside hos­pi­tal park­ing lot.

Where do I go from here: I’m off to fig­ure out how to log this. I’m pretty sure it’s a wild­card (a site not on Markeroni’s exist­ing lists), but I’m not sure whether I should be log­ging the whole thing as one, or whether I’d log plaques #1 and #3 sep­a­rately (#2 doesn’t appear to me to qual­ify and #4 def­i­nitely doesn’t).

So I’ll have some ques­tions for Markeroons more expe­ri­enced in the ways of Markeroni than I, and I’ll report back here when all is prop­erly decided and logged.

Update (6/2): Yesterday, The Virginian-Pilot pub­lished a brief arti­cle by Kathy Adams about the name Witchduck Road which men­tions Grace Sherwood’s story, as well as the statue described above.