Markers of History

Cannonball Trail
Half Moone Fort, 1673

Location: West end of Town Point Park, just north of the Armed Forces Memorial, Norfolk, VA 23510

Visited: July 3, 2009, 12:45pm

Transcription of marker: Hostilities between the British and the Dutch con­tin­ued for a num­ber of years after the British took New Amsterdam in 1664 and estab­lished the colony of New York. The effects were felt in Hampton Roads where Dutch ships destroyed a fleet of tobacco ships at the mouth of the James River in 1667 and another fleet in Lynnhaven Bay in 1673. Following the 1673 attack the Virginia Assembly autho­rized con­struc­tion of a fort in Lower Norfolk County to pro­tect British set­tle­ments from pos­si­ble future attacks by the Dutch. The new fort was built here, sev­eral years before the town of Norfolk was estab­lished, at a site then called Foure Farthing Pointe. The act spec­i­fied that “the model be in the form of a half moon.” It was armed with demi-cannons and cul­verins due to the broad expanse of the river at this loca­tion. The cul­verin was an early long can­non capa­ble of shoot­ing an 18 pound (5 inch) ball accu­rately for about 1300 yards. Building the fort cost Lower Norfolk County 35,000 pounds of tobacco.

My impres­sions: I guess I have two main thoughts after read­ing this…other than know­ing that New York had been under Dutch con­trol (“Even old New York was once New Amsterdam / Why’d they change it? I can’t say, / People just liked it bet­ter that way!”), I have no idea how else the Dutch were involved in the New World. I cer­tainly wouldn’t have expected any­thing related to them to hap­pen this far south in the US. These mark­ers keep turn­ing up gaps in what I know! (And rais­ing ques­tions I’ll have to research at some point!)

The other thing is the evi­dent use of “pounds of tobacco” as almost a stan­dard cur­rency. It seems so strange, when we’re used to dol­lars and cents.

Markeroni sta­tus: Direct-logged.

Our trip away from Town Point Park will wait one more day, as I dis­cov­ered pho­tos of a cou­ple more mark­ers I found before leav­ing the park for lunch.

Cannonball Trail
The Cedar

Location: West end of Town Point Park, near Nauticus museum.

Visited: July 3, 2009, 12:40pm

Transcription of marker: A cedar tree near this loca­tion, then known as Foure Farthing Pointe, was described in the orig­i­nal patent describ­ing the west­ern bound­ary of the 50 acres that com­prised Norfolk Town. In August 1680 John Ferebee, sur­veyor for Lower Norfolk County, was instructed to sur­vey a town site on the Elizabeth River. This was com­pleted in October 1680, but it was not until August 1682 that the county, through its agents Anthony Lawson and William Robinson, bought the town site from Nicholas Wise, a ship­wright. The price was ten thou­sand pounds of tobacco. The sur­veyed town site extended east­ward from this point along Main Street, for­merly Front Street, on a ridge of high land to Dun-in-the-Mire, gen­er­ally where Harbor Park is now located. The other prin­ci­pal road, “the road that lead­eth out of town,” went north from the cur­rent inter­sec­tion of Main Street and St. Paul’s Boulevard. The orig­i­nal town site was laid out with half acre lots for houses and busi­ness. The lots were priced at 100 pounds of tobacco.

My impres­sions: This is a newer look at much of the same his­tory as was found in the Four Farthing or Town Point marker I posted about on Thursday. As some­body attempt­ing to tran­scribe mark­ers, one of the things it high­lights for me is how much eas­ier it is to fully under­stand a marker when it is writ­ten in mixed case. A case in point: it wasn’t until I read this marker that I was sure that I had cor­rectly tran­scribed “Lower Norfolk County” in the pre­vi­ous marker. In the ear­lier marker (writ­ten entirely in cap­i­tal let­ters) there was no way to know if this was just the lower part of Norfolk County or a sep­a­rate juris­dic­tion. It’s also nice to have the map illus­tra­tion on this marker, even though these mark­ers seem less per­ma­nent than those with raised letters.

Markeroni sta­tus: Direct-logged.

Cannonball Trail
Downtown Waterfront Revitalization

Location: East end of Town Point Park, near the inter­sec­tion of Waterside Dr & Martins Ln, Norfolk, VA 23510

Visited: July 3, 2009, 11:30am

Transcription of marker: In the 1950s the water­front con­tained an assort­ment of aging facil­i­ties — wharves, ware­houses, rail lines, ship chan­dlers, tug­boat oper­a­tions, and ferry docks. The City of Norfolk made a sig­nif­i­cant deci­sion. An area of down­town along the Elizabeth River should be trans­formed from a work­ing water­front into a pub­lic water­front. As the old was cleared, the new appeared, begin­ning with the pub­lic esplanade and hotel in 1974. The first Harborfest cel­e­bra­tion in 1977 demon­strated that pub­lic attrac­tions could help revi­tal­ize down­town. Town Point Park and the Waterside Festival Marketplace opened in 1983. Nauticus, the National Maritime Center, anchored the west end of the water­front in 1994.

The three can­nons at the head of Otter Berth were found dur­ing the dredg­ing of this part of the water­front in 1982. They are of unknown for­eign ori­gin, but their vin­tage is com­pat­i­ble with the bom­bard­ment of Norfolk on January 1, 1776. Otter Berth is named for HMS Otter, one of Lord Dunmore’s ships that bom­barded Norfolk on January 1, 1776.

My impres­sions: It seems quite fit­ting for me to have seen this marker on the first day of this year’s Harborfest. Nice when coin­ci­dences like that hap­pen. It’s funny that, even though there are stretches of “work­ing water­front” not too far away, I find it impos­si­ble to think about Norfolk with­out its park beside the river. It is my favorite part of Norfolk’s downtown.

Another thing I like is in the last para­graph of the marker, where there is an acknowl­edg­ment that we don’t know every­thing about his­tory, such as the exact ori­gin of the can­nons in the park (which, I have to admit, I don’t recall see­ing). It would have been all to easy to make leaps to a pre­sumed ori­gin for them, and while the marker comes close to that, it acknowl­edges the lack of knowl­edge and allows the reader to make a guess as to the answer.

But most of all, I’m just glad the water­front is there to be enjoyed.

Markeroni sta­tus: Direct-logged.

Today, I’ll start post­ing mark­ers I found while in and near Town Point Park in Norfolk for the park’s re-opening after con­struc­tion and for the first day of Harborfest. Today’s mark­ers come from the east­ern end of the park, closer to The Waterside build­ing. Tomorrow, I’ll start post­ing other mark­ers I found in down­town Norfolk on my way back from lunch that day, and later in the week the blog will return to Town Point Park.

Cannonball Trail
The Underground Railroad

Location: East end of Town Point Park, near Elizabeth River beside The Waterside build­ing, Norfolk, VA 23510

Visited: July 3, 2009, 11:20am

Transcription of marker: After north­ern states began abol­ish­ing slav­ery dur­ing the Revolutionary era, fugi­tives from through­out south­east­ern Virginia and north­east­ern North Carolina started to escape by ship from the Norfolk water­front. With luck and deter­mi­na­tion, many suc­ceeded in enlist­ing the aid of black crew­men work­ing aboard northward-bound ves­sels. Two of the South’s most famous Underground Railroad fugi­tives, George Latimer and Shadrach Minkins, escaped from Norfolk, most likely by sea. A few ship cap­tains were known by local Railroad agents as being sym­pa­thetic to fugi­tives or at least agree­able to trans­port­ing them secretly for a price. Captain William D. Bayliss of the Keziah and Captain Alfred Fountain of the City of Richmond bravely trans­ported run­aways from Norfolk dur­ing the 1850s when local sen­ti­ment against the Underground Railroad was at its high­est. The City of Richmond docked at John Higgins’ wharf, east of the Berkley Bridge. Higgins was a for­mer owner of Shadrach Minkins.

The City of Norfolk was placed on the National Park Service’s Underground Railroad Network to Freedom in 2004.

My impres­sions: The Underground Railroad is quite the story, and I know that I come nowhere near to under­stand­ing it, with what lit­tle knowl­edge I have gained as a kid in small-town Canada. I find it hard to set aside my absolute con­tempt for those who would enslave and exploit and even begin to under­stand how local sen­ti­ment could turn against work­ing for free­dom and how oth­er­wise upstand­ing peo­ple could accept injus­tice that appals me. Intellectually, I know there is more com­plex­ity to the issue of slav­ery but I find it hard to try to really under­stand what hap­pened, because my dis­gust and dis­ap­point­ment make it hard to see any other point of view than the one I hold from my com­fort­able posi­tion in the 21st century.

I do find it sad that the names of “two of the South’s most famous Underground Railroad fugi­tives” are unknown to me. I don’t know whether this is a bit of hyper­bole on the part of those who wrote the text of this marker or a blind spot in the pop­u­lar teach­ing of his­tory. I have my sus­pi­cions, though.

One small tech­ni­cal note, from what I’ve seen, I believe the last sen­tence is slightly mis­taken. I don’t believe that any cities (includ­ing Norfolk) are listed on the Underground Railroad Network to Freedom by the National Park Service. What I did find listed is the down­town Norfolk water­front, which would include the area of this marker. OK, I know…time to set down the red pen and move on…

Markeroni sta­tus: Direct-logged.

Municipal Historical Marker?
Fort Tar

Location: Monticello Ave (US-460) just north of Virginia Beach Blvd (US-58), Norfolk, VA 23510

Visited: June 23, 2009, 4:15pm

Transcription of marker: This is the site of Fort Tar, built to guard the approach to the city from the west, sit­u­ated on the out­skirts of Norfolk, near Armistead’s Bridge, which spanned Glebe Creek nearby. It served with Forts Barbour, Norfolk, and Nelson to pro­tect Norfolk and Portsmouth from inva­sion by the British in the War of 1812.

Owen Mfg. Corp.     Norfolk, Va.

My impres­sions: This, like yesterday’s Four Farthing or Town Point marker is of unknown type. It’s listed in the Markeroni data­base (as it was in pre­vi­ous edi­tions of the Virginia marker guide­books) as an un-numbered state marker, but it is not in the cur­rent book and when one looks at the marker, one finds the seal of Norfolk where the seal of Virginia is nor­mally found and the name of the man­u­fac­turer where the name of the state body erect­ing the marker is usu­ally found.

This is one of those that almost devolves into laundry-list mode. We find out that the fort was built to guard the west­ern approach to the city. After that it goes into the local geog­ra­phy briefly before list­ing var­i­ous other forts in the area. It does seem incon­gru­ous to think of a fort at what’s now a busy inter­sec­tion, though.

Markeroni sta­tus: Logged.

Update (7/16): After some dis­cus­sion, I’ve decided to con­sider these mark­ers as city mark­ers, so have changed the head­ing and cat­e­gory tag to match that. As there are not enough of these City of Norfolk mark­ers out­side the Cannonball Trail series to form a list, I have included them in the par­ent cat­e­gory “Municipal Historical Markers.”

Cannonball Trail
Granby Street

Location: Granby St (as you might have guessed), on the west side of the street between Main St and Plume St, Norfolk, VA 23510

Visited: June 23, 2009, 4:00pm

Transcription of marker:

Granby Street was named in 1769 to honor Englishman John Manners (1721 – 1770), Marquess of Granby. The orig­i­nal street ran three blocks from Bute Street south to Town Back Creek, a semi-navigable stretch of marsh­land run­ning the length of today’s City Hall Avenue. Town Back Creek was a bar­rier to devel­op­ment in the north­ern por­tion of the Borough until a bridge was built in 1818 to span the creek at Granby. As it became more acces­si­ble, Granby Street was trans­formed into a res­i­den­tial area of stately homes.

The elec­tric street­car debuted in Norfolk in 1894, and neigh­bor­hoods were estab­lished along the route. Many Granby Street res­i­dents moved to the new sub­urb of Ghent, and busi­nesses of every kind replaced their for­mer homes. By 1910, Granby Street sur­passed Main Street as Norfolk’s busiest shop­ping dis­trict. From 1976 to 1986 part of Granby was closed to vehic­u­lar traf­fic and renamed Granby Mall. Granby Street declined through the 1990s, but with the open­ing of Tidewater Community College and MacArthur Center it has been revi­tal­ized with res­i­dences, the­aters, and restaurants.

My impres­sions: I think the big sur­prise to me in this marker is how hon­est a por­trayal it appears to be of some very recent events. I mean, to only one decade later, refer to an area as declin­ing, as this describes Granby Street through the 1990s, shows a will­ing­ness to face harsh realities.

Going off the topic of his­tor­i­cal mark­ers, I find it inter­est­ing that at one point part of the street was closed to vehi­cles, but that it didn’t work to attract peo­ple. It reminds me of the Sparks Street Mall in Ottawa, which never seems to live up to its poten­tial (although part of the prob­lem there may be the num­ber of gov­ern­ment build­ings in that area).

It’s also inter­est­ing for me to see how recent some things I take for granted are. I mean, I just moved to the area six months ago, so it stretches my mind to think of the area with­out the MacArthur Center, despite how recently it’s been built.

Markeroni sta­tus: Awaiting inclusion.

Cannonball Trail
The Customhouse, 1859

Location: W Main St (oppo­site the foot of Granby St), Norfolk, VA 23510

Visited: June 23, 2009, 3:55pm

Transcription of marker: Construction of this cus­tom­house began in 1852 and was com­pleted in 1859, replac­ing an 1819 cus­tom­house located at Water and Church Streets (now Waterside Drive and St. Paul’s Boulevard). This build­ing was designed by Ammi B. Young (1798 – 1874), the first super­vis­ing archi­tect for the United States Treasury Department, who estab­lished high archi­tec­tural stan­dards for fed­eral build­ings. During his career Young designed some 70 gov­ern­ment build­ings around the coun­try, includ­ing the cus­tom­houses in Richmond and Petersburg. Departing from his more cus­tom­ary Tuscan designs, Young devel­oped a rich Classical Revival design for this gran­ite struc­ture. Adapting a new mate­r­ial to tra­di­tional forms, both the inte­rior columns and the cap­i­tals of the exte­rior columns are made of cast iron. All of the Federal agen­cies in Norfolk, includ­ing courts on the upper floor and the post office in the base­ment, were housed in this build­ing until space needs prompted the con­struc­tion of a new Federal cour­t­house and post office in 1900. The exte­rior of the build­ing has not been sig­nif­i­cantly altered since its construction.

My impres­sions: This is one of those moments when I con­fess to a bit of fear. Unfortunately the draw­ing on the marker is the clos­est I came to tak­ing a photo of the build­ing, largely because I believe it is still (in part) a fed­eral build­ing, and while I’m still await­ing my per­ma­nent res­i­dency sta­tus, I still feel funny about doing things that might invite scrutiny. So I exer­cised cau­tion, per­haps more than war­ranted. So, this 2005 photo, posted to Flickr by Tom Hammond under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial License, is your chance to see the glowingly-described building.

“U.S. Customhouse,” © 2005 Tom Hammond. Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license. The marker is vis­i­ble in the lower right of the photo.

All that out of the way, I love the way this build­ing looks. It seems to me to be a typ­i­cally American style; by that I mean that it isn’t a style that I saw nearly enough of back in Canada. I’m not quite sure what that says, but it’s a dif­fer­ence I think I’ve noticed.

Markeroni sta­tus: I have a request in about the Cannonball Trail mark­ers, because most of them that I’ve found have not been in their data­base yet. This one might be in the data­base already under a slightly dif­fer­ent name and I’ve sought clar­i­fi­ca­tion on that.

Municipal Historic Marker
Four Farthing or Town Point

Location: Wall of S side of build­ing, W Main St & Granby St, Norfolk, VA 23510

Visited: June 23, 2009, 3:55pm

Transcription of marker: Here at a cedar tree was the west­ern limit of the fifty acres con­sti­tut­ing the orig­i­nal town of Norfolk. The land was bought in 1682 as a port for Lower Norfolk County from Nicholas Wise, Jr. for “tenn thou­sand pounds of tobacco and caske.” It was deeded to Capt. Wm. Robinson and Lt. Col. Anthony Lawson as feof­fees in trust for the county.

Owen Foundry Mfg Co Inc     Norfolk VA

My impres­sions: Well, this marker is unusual com­pared to those I’ve seen around here for sev­eral rea­sons. For one, it doesn’t have a post: it is built into the wall of the build­ing. For another, I’m not exactly sure how to clas­sify it. Markeroni has included it as a state marker. My copy of Virginia’s Historical Markers does not include it, it doesn’t have a num­ber, and it has a seal of the city of Norfolk instead of the seal of the Commonwealth of Virginia. However, in search­ing I found (thanks to Google Books) a pre­vi­ous edi­tion of the book which did include it and oth­ers (pre­dom­i­nantly in Norfolk, I think) in a sec­tion of unnum­bered state mark­ers (although it erro­neously titled it “Fort Farthing or Town Point”). I’m not sure what the ratio­nale is behind drop­ping them from the cur­rent edi­tion. Did they fall through the cracks because they didn’t have num­bers? Was it deter­mined that these were actu­ally mark­ers from cities or coun­ties instead of the state? I don’t know the answers to these ques­tions, but they’re ques­tions that are get­ting into my brain.

As for the marker itself, it seems strange to me today to use a tree (which could be cut down or destroyed by fire, etc.) as a bound­ary marker for a town. But when I read this marker, along with one I found about 10 days later, this cedar tree was it.

And then there’s the vocab­u­lary ques­tion. Is feof­fees a word or did the foundry start a word too close to cof­fee break and then get dis­tracted part­way through the word? It actu­ally is a word. According to Wikipedia:

Feoffee, or more cor­rectly within this con­text feof­fee to uses, is a his­tor­i­cal term relat­ing to the law of trusts and equity, refer­ring to the owner of a legal title of a prop­erty when he is not the equi­table owner.…

The mod­ern equiv­a­lent of a feof­fee to uses is the trustee, one who holds a legal and man­age­r­ial own­er­ship in trust for the enjoy­ment of the beneficiary.

I guess trustees were more impor­tant for pub­lic access to things before gov­ern­ments were as strong as they are today.

Markeroni sta­tus: I logged my visit yesterday.

Update (7/16): After some dis­cus­sion, I’ve decided to con­sider these mark­ers as city mark­ers, so have changed the head­ing and cat­e­gory tag to match that. As there are not enough of these City of Norfolk mark­ers out­side the Cannonball Trail series to form a list, I have included them in the par­ent cat­e­gory “Municipal Historical Markers.”

Path of History
The Elizabeth River

Location: Elizabeth River, at the High St ferry land­ing, Portsmouth, VA 23704

Visited: June 23, 2009, 3:20pm

Transcription of marker: The Elizabeth River, an arm of the Chesapeake Bay, runs between the cities of Portsmouth and Norfolk. The river was named “Elizabeth” in honor of Princess Elizabeth Stuart, the eldest daugh­ter of King James I of England.

The river was first called “Chesapeake,” after the tribe of Native Americans who lived on its banks. They were an Algonquin-speaking peo­ple who depended on the land and water for exis­tence. When John Smith explored the east­ern area in 1608, he saw their “golden plots” and other indi­ca­tions of Native American habitation.

My impres­sions: I can get all caught up in the dif­fer­ences between Canadian and American his­tory that I can some­times for­get about the sim­i­lar­i­ties. And as I come to the end of the pho­tos from this trip to Portsmouth (a city with a name that would be at home in England), along a river named for Elizabeth (ditto), and pre­pare to cross back to a city named Norfolk (ditto), this (espe­cially cou­pled with the pho­tos you’ll see in today’s bonus third post) reminded me that we share a lot of his­tory from before our paths diverged.

Markeroni sta­tus: When Path of History data entry is com­plete, I’ll be log­ging this visit on Markeroni.

Path of History
First Order Fresnel Lens from the Hog Island Light

Location: River Front Park, Portsmouth, VA 23704

Visited: June 23, 2009, 3:20pm

Transcription of marker:

This pavil­ion dis­plays a first order Fresnel lens from the sec­ond Hog Island Light. The lens began ser­vice in 1896. Originally built in 1852, the first build­ing was destroyed by ero­sion and rebuilt in 1896, only to be deac­ti­vated in 1948. The loca­tions of both these lights are now under water off the Eastern Shore.

The Fresnel Lens was named after Augustin Fresnel — the French physi­cist who devised the opti­cal sys­tem around 1822. At about 10 feet high and 2,500 pounds, this lens is among the largest and bright­est of its kind, with more than 250 prisms of opti­cal glass. Only the lens at Makapu’u Point Light, Hawaii is larger.

Established in 1852, the Hog Island Light was located on the north side of the Great Machipongo Inlet on the Eastern Shore of Virginia until its demo­li­tion in 1948.

The restora­tion of the lens and the con­struc­tion of the pavil­ion were funded by the Portsmouth Museums Foundation, Inc. in coop­er­a­tion with the City of Portsmouth and the Fifth Coast Guard District. The ded­i­ca­tion cer­e­mony of the Fresnel Lens Pavilion took place on November 5, 2003.

My impres­sions: Well, I cer­tainly had no idea what a Fresnel lens was (even though I’d read sev­eral times that there was one on the water­front in Portsmouth). But, hav­ing lived in Central Canada all my life (with the largest nearby body of water being the Ottawa River), it is inter­est­ing to see all the his­tory around here that relates to liv­ing on the water.

Markeroni sta­tus: Once the data entry of the Path of History is com­plete, I’ll be log­ging my visit.