Markers of History

State Historic Marker
Virginia Q-8I
City of Portsmouth

Location: US Route 17 at bor­der between the cities of Portsmouth and Chesapeake, High St W, oppo­site Academy Ave, Portsmouth, VA, 23703

Visited: July 4, 2009, 9:50am

Transcription of marker: The site of this city was patented in 1659 by Captain William Carver. Established as a town in 1752 and named by its founder, Lt. Col. Wm. Crawford. Chartered as a city in 1858, it has the country’s old­est naval ship­yard. Established 1767, the nation’s old­est naval hos­pi­tal, com­menced 1827, and is the birth­place of the world’s largest naval installation.

Virginia State Library, 1959

My impres­sions: After all the mark­ers I’ve found in the older areas of Portsmouth, it came as a sur­prise to hear my wife say she’d spot­ted one as we were dri­ving past a sea of fast-food out­lets and busi­nesses. (You can see the Wendy’s in the back­ground of the photo, even.) Though the set­ting seems a lit­tle incon­gru­ous, what bet­ter place to recount the his­tory of the city but as you enter it? (OK, we were leav­ing, but it was on the far side of the road, intended for those enter­ing, I’m sure.) That said, I think there are other mark­ers to com­mem­o­rate nearly every event described on this marker, so it almost seems super­flu­ous. Then again, this is right on US 17, and not every­body is going to ven­ture to the older part of town, so per­haps it has ben­e­fit for get­ting more eyes on the city’s history.

Markeroni sta­tus: Visit logged.

Pillar Box

Location: Just south of the High Street ferry land­ing, Portsmouth, VA 23704

Visited: June 23, 2009, 3:25pm

Transcription of plaque: PILLAR BOX

A let­ter box from Portsmouth, England pre­sented to the City of Portsmouth, Virginia in com­mem­o­ra­tion of our Sister City & 350th Anniversary of Royal Mail Service

NOVEMBER 30, 1985

My impres­sions: I have no idea whether or not Markeroni will con­sider this a marker or not, but it was of enough inter­est to me that I wanted to blog about it any­way. The first thing that caught my eye on this? The EIIR word­mark, which might have been a curios­ity back in Canada but was cer­tainly not what I expected to see walk­ing down an American street. And then when I man­aged to read the plaque, it made some sense. Of course, Portsmouth, Virginia would have a sis­ter city rela­tion­ship with the orig­i­nal Portsmouth. And that explained why this Royal Mail box was sit­ting in a park in the United States. I do have to say, the pil­lar box is so much more styl­ish than the mail­boxes I’ve seen used by either the USPS or Canada Post.

Markeroni sta­tus: This has not been submitted.

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.

Note from Scott: This post was orig­i­nally set to be posted this morn­ing, but WordPress’ sched­ul­ing func­tion didn’t work prop­erly (which seems to be an issue that WordPress blames on hosts and host­ing com­pa­nies blame on WordPress). At any rate, this post should have appeared before the Gosport Navy Yard post (to stay in the order I saw the mark­ers that day), but here it is, a few hours later than expected:

Direct-logged
In Commemoration of the Last Public Appearance of William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody at Portsmouth, Virginia on November 11, 1916

Location: Water St, park­ing lot between High St & Columbia St, Portsmouth, VA 23704

Visited: June 23, 2009, 3:10pm

Transcription of marker:

William F. Cody, asso­ci­ated with a Western exhi­bi­tion titled “Buffalo Bill (Himself) and the 101 Ranch Wild West Combined,” passed by this spot on a route that would take the parade to the inter­sec­tion of Washington and Lincoln Streets, site of the “Grand Finale.”

The suc­cess enjoyed by the Fourth of July cel­e­bra­tion known as “The Old Glory Blowout” at North Platte, Nebraska, on July 4, 1882, con­vinced William F. Cody to orga­nize “Buffalo Bill’s Wild West” and tour the United States and parts of Europe. Buffalo Bill was and is a sym­bol of a glam­orous and col­or­ful era in United States history.

He lit­er­ally crated and shipped sam­ples of the “Wild West” to cen­ters of pop­u­la­tion around the world, giv­ing mil­lions of Americans and Europeans the oppor­tu­nity to view first hand a part of American his­tory that had cap­tured the pop­u­lar imagination.

Dedicated to William F. Cody, an illus­tri­ous American, remem­bered as the “Father of Rodeo,” “The First International Star,” and “America’s Goodwill Ambassador-at-Large”

Sponsored by Backtrailing Buffalo Bill Cody
Presented by the Fletcher Family, November 11, 1987

My impres­sions: I have to admit to not hav­ing much of a clue who Buffalo Bill was. Colorful and show­man are about the only impres­sions I have. I didn’t know of a Portsmouth con­nec­tion until see­ing this marker. I do won­der whether this marker is com­mem­o­rat­ing his last pub­lic appear­ance or his last pub­lic appear­ance in Portsmouth. I pre­sume it’s the for­mer, though I am not cer­tain on this point.

This marker is inter­est­ing to me, because it appears to have been pri­vately spon­sored and because it sits in a small area sur­rounded by park­ing lots and build­ings, which is to say, not in typ­i­cal his­toric Portsmouth.

Markeroni sta­tus: Direct-logged and await­ing its proper code in the Markeroni database.

Civil War Trails
Gosport Navy Yard

Location: At the east end of Columbia St, Portsmouth, VA 23704

Visited: June 23, 2009, 3:15pm

Transcription of marker:

Gosport Navy Yard
Birthplace of the CSS Virginia

Before you is the Gosport Navy Yard (Norfolk Naval Shipyard). Gosport is the old­est Navy ship­yard in the nation. Here is where the USS Merrimack was burned and then trans­formed by the Confederates into the pow­er­ful iron­clad ram, the CSS Virginia.

Gosport Navy Yard was first estab­lished in 1767 by British naval agent Andrew Sprowle. It was occu­pied by patriot forces in 1775 and oper­ated as a ship­yard by the Virginia State Navy. Gosport, the largest ship­yard in America, was burned by the British in 1779 when they occu­pied Portsmouth.

In 1794 the yard was loaned to the U.S. Government and pur­chased by the U.S. Navy Department in 1801. The USS Chesapeake was one of a group of six frigates autho­rized by Congress to “Provide a Naval Armament,” and was the first ship built at Gosport Navy Yard in 1798 – 1799. On June 17, 1833, the 74-gun ship-of-the-line USS Delaware entered the newly com­pleted Dry Dock No. 1. The Delaware was the first ship to enter a dry dock in America.

When Virginia left the Union, the U.S. Navy evac­u­ated and burned the yard. Gosport was imme­di­ately occu­pied by local Confederates. Salvaged stores and equip­ment, includ­ing 1,085 can­nons, were used to equip and for­tify the many land bat­ter­ies erected in the Tidewater region and at other loca­tions through­out the South.

The steam frigate Merrimack, with 40 guns, had been under repair at Gosport and dur­ing the Federal evac­u­a­tion was burned and sunk. The Confederates raised it, placed it in Dry Dock No. 1 and from designs drawn by Naval Constructor John L. Porter, a Portsmouth native, con­verted it into the iron­clad CSS Virginia. While on its trial in Hampton Roads, Virginia sank the USS Cumberland and USS Congress on March 8, 1862. On the next day it fought the iron­clad USS Monitor, prov­ing that wooden war­ships were obsolete.

Gosport Navy Yard pro­duced sev­eral other gun­boats and part of another iron­clad, the CSS Richmond. On May 10, 1862, the yard was burned again, this time by the evac­u­at­ing Confederates and imme­di­ately reoc­cu­pied by the U.S. Navy. The Union con­trolled Gosport dur­ing the rest of the war.

My impres­sions: Again, I’m impressed by how much his­tory, the Civil War Trails mark­ers man­age to include on one marker. They are full of con­text and details and color. They also appear to me to be well-written. I real­ize that this helped clear up some of my con­fu­sion around the Fort Nelson marker which speaks of how many times the fort was burned. But it seemed too pas­sive to me. This marker, while dis­cussing another site, explains the rea­sons why the instal­la­tion was lost to fire. It doesn’t talk about how it “was burned,” it tells us who burned it and why, and makes a lot more sense to me than the guesses I was mak­ing as to the fire’s causes.

Markeroni sta­tus: Direct-logged and await­ing its proper code in the database.

One other way of deal­ing with the back­log (and the sense I have of some series of posts get­ting repet­i­tive) is to try to com­bine some posts where mul­ti­ple mark­ers are in the same place or on the same sub­ject. I don’t have hard and fast rules about when to com­bine, but this is one of them, where there is a state his­tor­i­cal marker which is for a build­ing in the same loca­tion which is also on the National Register of Historic Places.

State Historical Marker
Virginia Q-8-V
St. Paul’s Roman Catholic Church

National Register of Historic Places
St. Paul’s Catholic Church

Location: 518 High St, Portsmouth, VA 23704

Visited: June 23, 2009, 2:55pm

Transcription of state marker: St. Paul’s Roman Catholic Church was first built by French and Irish immi­grants between 1811 and 1815 and was the first Catholic con­gre­ga­tion estab­lished in Portsmouth. Increasing mem­ber­ship neces­si­tated the build­ing of new struc­tures in 1831 and 1851. Fire destroyed the third build­ing in 1859; that same year the con­gre­ga­tion began con­struct­ing a fourth struc­ture, com­pleted in 1868. It burned in 1897. The cur­rent Gothic Revival church here, noted for its stained glass win­dows, was designed by John Kevan Peebles and ded­i­cated in 1905. It was listed on the Virginia Landmarks Register and the National Register of Historic Places in 2002.

Department of Historic Resources, 2003

Transcription of another plaque beside the state marker:

A bur­ial ground for early paris­hon­ers and clergy of St. Paul’s Catholic Church was located on this site dur­ing the nine­teenth cen­tury. Among those buried here were:

Patrick Robertson, who bequeathed the funds to pur­chase this prop­erty in 1810 and con­struct the first St. Paul’s; Rosalie and Bartholomew Accinelli, found­ing mem­bers of this con­gre­ga­tion; Antonio Sylvestre Bilisoli, a found­ing mem­ber of this con­gre­ga­tion who fought dur­ing the American Revolution; Rev. Francis Devlin, pas­tor from 1844 to 1855, who died min­is­ter­ing to the cit­i­zens of Portsmouth dur­ing the Yellow Fever epi­demic of 1855; and Rev. Joseph Plunkett, pas­tor from 1855 to 1870 and dur­ing the con­struc­tion of the fourth St. Paul’s.

My impres­sions: This is cer­tainly a strik­ing look­ing build­ing (and given their past his­tory, they seem lucky that it has stood for more than a cen­tury). I liked the tiny plaque in the gar­den beside the state marker, because it helped move my thoughts from the grand build­ing to the fact that there were peo­ple con­nected to this site. It was even bet­ter because it explained why each per­son named was impor­tant to the his­tory of St. Paul’s. And, since I’ve been going through mark­ers from Portsmouth, nice to see some con­nec­tions, includ­ing the men­tion of the Yellow Fever epi­demic, which I think I first read about in a marker in Fort Nelson Park (that appeared on this blog over the hol­i­day weekend).

Markeroni sta­tus: I’ve logged both the state marker and the loca­tion from the National Register of Historic Places, but have not sub­mit­ted the other plaque tran­scribed here.

Welcome back, and I hope you had a great hol­i­day week­end. We’re most of the way through my June 23 trip to Portsmouth, but I’m begin­ning to get a back­log, so I hope to post two sites each day for a while to catch up. Once we fin­ish with this Portsmouth trip, there will be a cou­ple from Norfolk that I found on the way home, there will also be one we found unex­pected in Virginia Beach on our way home from Virginia, and then there are sev­eral that I found in Norfolk on Friday when I was there for the re-opening of Town Point Park and the start of Harborfest and on the Fourth of July when we trav­eled to Yorktown and Jamestown. I hope you’re enjoy­ing these as much as I’m enjoy­ing find­ing them!

National Register of Historic Places
Cedar Grove Cemetery

Location: Bordered by Fort Ln, Firehouse Ln, and Effingham St, Portsmouth, VA, 23704

Visited: June 23, 2009, 2:45pm

Transcription of marker:

Cedar Grove Cemetery
Est. 1832
has been placed on the
National Register of Historic Places
by the United States
Department of the Interior

My impres­sions: I feel almost funny about includ­ing this. I didn’t actu­ally get in to the ceme­tery, but I did stand at its gates for a moment look­ing in. I believe there is a Path of History marker for the ceme­tery, but I didn’t man­age to see it that day. I was in a bit of a hurry to get away from a cou­ple of peo­ple I passed on my way to the gates, as well as to get back to the ferry and on my way back home.

I do hope at some point to go back for a proper visit.

If you’d like more infor­ma­tion about the cemetary and the rea­sons for its inclu­sion on the National Register of Historic Places, you can read the cemetery’s nom­i­na­tion form (PDF), which includes details about the his­tory of this place.

Markeroni sta­tus: Logged.

Markers of History is going to take a hol­i­day week­end off from post­ing, but I didn’t want to leave you high and dry, so we’ll close today with a bumper load of his­tor­i­cal markers.

Path of History
Fort Nelson Park

Location: Fort Nelson Park, cor­ner of Crawford Pkwy & Effingham St, Portsmouth, VA 23704.

Visited: June 23, 2009, 1:55pm

On my last trip to Portsmouth, I came across Fort Nelson Park which con­tained roughly a dozen Path of History mark­ers about Portsmouth Naval Hospital. I’m cross­ing my fin­gers, hop­ing that I man­aged to get all of them. (I’ll have to double-check next time I’m in Portsmouth.)

Given the large num­ber of images and mark­ers included in this post, I will spare the front page of this site and ask you to click the link to see the mark­ers and their texts, but I’ll break with my tra­di­tional order and open this post with:

My impres­sions: I was impressed with the pleas­ant set­ting for these mark­ers. That said, I was dis­ap­pointed (on a hot June day) not to find more shade. Thinking back, I’m won­der­ing what may have stood on that site before the park, which only opened three years ago.

Related to this: See Monday’s post for a state his­tor­i­cal marker about Fort Nelson.

Read the rest of this entry »

A word of expla­na­tion about the blog over the next cou­ple of days.

This post will be the only one today, and it will be fol­lowed tomor­row with a spe­cial history-related (but not historical-marker-related) post. On Thursday, I’ll resume look­ing at mark­ers I found on a recent trip to Portsmouth, VA in a mega-post about Fort Nelson Park, which con­tains roughly a dozen mark­ers from Portsmouth’s Path of History, which I’ll com­bine in one post so we don’t have an entire week or two on the his­tory of the Portsmouth Naval Hospital.

Now on to the marker about Collier’s Raid:

State Historical Marker
Virginia Q-8-G
Collier’s Raid

Location: Crawford Pkwy & Washington St, Portsmouth, VA 23704

Visited: June 23, 2009, 1:55pm

Transcription of marker: A British fleet under Commodore Sir George Collier sailed up the Elizabeth River and shelled Fort Nelson in May 1779, dur­ing the Revolutionary War. A land­ing force of 1,800 infantry­men led by Brig. Gen. Edward Mathew cap­tured the fort on 10 May after a brief resis­tance. The British occu­pied Portsmouth, Gosport, and Norfolk, and burned Suffolk and the Gosport ship­yard. Collier also cap­tured or burned 137 ves­sels in Hampton Roads and dis­man­tled Fort Nelson. The British force then embarked and sailed to New York.

Department of Historic Resources, 1998

My impres­sions: As some­body from out­side the US, from a coun­try that peace­fully moved from colony to coun­try, it takes me aback to think that this was hap­pen­ing in 1779, three years after that “magic” date of 1776. Reading the marker it seems almost ran­dom: the British forces did a lot in this area and then the one cryp­tic sen­tence: The British force then embarked and sailed to New York.

It almost sounds like “Nothing left to destroy here, we might as well move along…want to catch a Broadway show?” This is actu­ally a tan­ta­liz­ing taste to me. That one sen­tence on its own seems so incon­gru­ous that it leaves me want­ing to research what actu­ally hap­pened. WHY did they leave here and sail to New York?

Markeroni sta­tus: Logged.