Markers of History

Historic Jamestowne mark­ers
Swann’s Tavern, 1670s

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

Visited: July 4, 2009, 1:55pm

Transcription of marker: Although coun­cil­man Colonel Thomas Swann resided across the James River at his Swann Point plan­ta­tion, he also leased a Jamestown tav­ern that pro­vided accom­mo­da­tions to colonists who attended the assem­bly and courts, or had busi­ness in town.

Documents and exca­va­tion of a large brick foun­da­tion iden­tify this struc­ture as pos­si­ble Col. Swann’s tav­ern. The elon­gated four-room ground floor was typ­i­cal of such estab­lish­ments. An abun­dance of bot­tle glass and a brass spigot from casks of beer or cider stored in the cel­lar, pro­vide addi­tional evi­dence of such use.

Because Col. Swann, nick­named “ye greate toad,” advised the rebel Nathaniel Bacon, his Swann’s Point plan­ta­tion remained undam­aged dur­ing Bacon’s Rebellion. Charred tim­bers here, how­ever, sug­gest that his tav­ern burned dur­ing the sack of Jamestown. Repaired by 1679, the tav­ern con­tin­ued to oper­ate along with the dozen oth­ers in the town.

My impres­sions: The first thing that started ring­ing bells from this marker for me is the name Nathaniel Bacon, because at about the time I was start­ing to snarf land­marks and log them on Markeroni (and later on this blog), my wife and I drove to a church retreat a cou­ple of hours away. And on the way, we passed numer­ous his­tor­i­cal mark­ers. On the way home, I counted about a dozen. But because of dis­tance, time, and the fact that we were dri­ving another mem­ber of our con­gre­ga­tion with us, we didn’t stop for any of them, but I def­i­nitely remem­ber the odd-sounding title of Bacon’s Castle. So, while I expect I’ll learn more when we make our next trip that way and I’m able to read the marker, I also know what name to research should I want to learn more in the interim.

The other thing, related to that, is to think about the influ­ence of being an insider. From the retelling on this marker, Swann was able to use his insider’s “pull” to keep his lands across the river safe from Bacon and his rebel­lion. But it also shows that the pull has lim­its, as the tav­ern here appar­ently burned. Some things seem to be with us for­ever, and insider influ­ence seems to be one of them!

Historic Jamestowne mark­ers
Foundations at Jamestown

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

Visited: July 4, 2009, 1:55pm

Transcription of marker: The remains of Jamestown now lie buried beneath the ground. Archeologists have unearthed some of the known town site, but the orig­i­nal foun­da­tions of struc­tures would erode quickly if left exposed to wind, weather, and acid rain. The foun­da­tions have been reburied. The bricks you see here today are mod­ern repro­duc­tions of the orig­i­nal foun­da­tions underneath.

My impres­sions: This is another case of good place­ment. The marker is as you are enter­ing the park, so you learn this as you’re going in. In one sense, it’s dis­ap­point­ing not to be see­ing the actual struc­tures that were orig­i­nally built there. But by explain­ing that upfront, I under­stood why that’s the case and was able to enjoy the site with­out the frus­tra­tion that would have come if I’d found out later.

I also raise my eye­brow a bit at the spec­i­fi­ca­tion of “acid rain.” I can under­stand that it would make rain more of a haz­ard than “plain old rain,” I found it a lit­tle dis­tract­ing, espe­cially when paired with wind and weather: nat­ural phe­nom­ena. Because what I want to take away from this is a reminder that one has to be care­ful with irre­place­able his­tor­i­cal arti­facts. There’s the stereo­typ­i­cal image of some­body in an archives wear­ing gloves and gin­gerly han­dling old books and papers, but even the build­ing mate­ri­als here would dis­ap­pear if re-exposed to nature’s whims. Although I guess “plain old rain” would be included under “weather,” mak­ing acid rain a dif­fer­ent hazard…perhaps.

Taking it easy for the week­end, so only one post today…tomorrow, I’ll start post­ing some of the mark­ers I found in Norfolk when I was there for the re-opening of Town Point Park and the first day of Harborfest ear­lier this month.

Wildcard Markers
History of Thalia

Location: Thalia Station Dr, just S of Virginia Beach Blvd, Virginia Beach, VA 23452

Visited: June 27, 2009, 7:25pm

Transcription of marker:

HISTORY OF THALIA

The word “Thalia” is derived from the Greek “thallein”, mean­ing to flour­ish and bloom. The com­mu­nity of Thalia is gen­er­ally bounded on the west by Thalia Creek, on the east by Lynn Shores Road, on the north by the Eastern Branch of the Lynnhaven River and on the south by the Virginia Beach-Norfolk Expressway. Thalia is a part of the Edward H. Mosley estate known as “Summerville Plantation”, and appears in the offi­cial deed of record book at the Princess Anne County (now Virginia Beach) Courthouse dated 1807. Thalia was a sched­uled stop for the Norfolk, Albemarle and Atlantic Railroad. During World War II, Camp Ashby, (aka Camp Thalia) the German Prisoner of War Camp, was located on what is now the site of The City of Virginia Beach Central Library and the prop­erty adjoin­ing it.

AUNT PENNY’S PARK

This pri­vate park is to honor John J. and Paula L. “Aunt Penny” Collins for their unique con­tri­bu­tions to the com­mu­nity of Thalia. They estab­lished one of the very first com­mer­cial busi­nesses in Thalia, pre-1950. Their “Cabins-in-the-Pines”, at 4145 Virginia Beach Blvd., encom­passed a restau­rant, tourist court, hard­ware store and an Amoco gas sta­tion They were devoted to the com­mu­nity of Thalia and gave unselfishly of their time in pub­lic ser­vice. Among other con­tri­bu­tions, they played a lead­ing role in estab­lish­ing the first all-volunteer fire depart­ment in the City of Virginia Beach (for­merly Princess Anne County) at Thalia in 1952. In 1990, Aunt Penny real­ized her life­time dream with the devel­op­ment of Collins Square Shopping Center.

My impres­sions: I’m not sure I recall ever see­ing a marker like this one before. Superficially, the col­or­ing reminds me of the plaques for Canadian national his­toric sites, but I’m intrigued by what would lead this marker to be placed. I’m guess­ing (and I could quite eas­ily be wrong) that it was either “Aunt Penny” or her fam­ily who placed this marker. And so it’s one that I would take with a grain of salt.  Not only because there wasn’t likely, say, the sort of review pro­cees a state marker or one placed by a city would have, but also because there are some def­i­nite leaps to hyper­bole or mar­ket­ing. The last sen­tence, espe­cially with­out any expla­na­tion of what her “life­time dream” actu­ally was and how the shop­ping cen­ter devel­op­ment real­ized it…over the top.

But putting all that aside, I did learn some things about Thalia…I didn’t know there had been a rail­way sta­tion or a POW camp there and the vol­un­teer fire depart­ment infor­ma­tion was neat to see. Most of all, it was nice to see some pri­vate recog­ni­tion of his­tory in a place that appears turned over to strip malls, traf­fic, and devel­op­ment. The char­ac­ter of the area may have changed, but the marker is a reminder of ear­lier days. I just hope that, if the com­plex ever gets taken over by new own­ers that the pub­lic and vis­i­ble reminder of the area’s his­tory will remain.

Markeroni sta­tus: Logged.

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.

I have to admit to a certain…uncertainty about what to feel when I come across his­tory of the American Revolution. I come from a coun­try which was peace­fully granted its gov­er­nance grad­u­ally and peace­fully. Canada doesn’t really have any sto­ries of war­ring with those who gov­erned us (those same Brits). In fact, Canada still looks to the Queen as our head of state, though the posi­tion is almost exclu­sively cer­e­mo­nial today. But when in Rome and all that…

Unknown his­tor­i­cal marker
Revolutionary War at Portsmouth

Note: This marker is of a sim­i­lar form to the Virginia state his­tor­i­cal mark­ers, but is not num­bered and does not appear to list a depart­ment and year, as do all state mark­ers I have seen to date. I hope to inves­ti­gate this side of things fur­ther. Hopefully, if it’s a state marker, it will be listed in my copy of A Guidebook to Virginia’s Historical Markers, cur­rently on its way from Amazon. Otherwise, I may try some of my own research into the place­ment of this marker.

Location: In front of the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard Museum, High St & Water St, Portsmouth VA 23704

Visited: June 1, 2009, 1:20pm

Transcription of Marker: In October 1775, Virginia’s last royal gov­er­nor, the Earl of Dunmore, made his head­quar­ters at Gosport, one mile south of here. After his defeat at Great Bridge and the destruc­tion of Norfolk, he entrenched at Hospital Point, one mile north, but was again dri­ven out in May 1776. Portsmouth was again invaded by the British: Sir George Collier in 1779, General Leslie in 1780, the trai­tor Benedict Arnold and General Phillips in 1781. Here, on this Portsmouth water­front in August 1781. Lord Cornwallis embarked his 7000 troops and sailed to Yorktown where he sur­ren­dered to the vic­to­ri­ous American and French forces, 19 October 1781.

My impres­sions: I think that this is one of those that I’m not qual­i­fied to say a whole lot about right now. I know far too lit­tle about the American Revolution and thus lack the frame­work to hang these names and dates on. It doesn’t do much to inspire me to want to learn about it, but I won­der if my reac­tion would be dif­fer­ent if I’d learned about some of this stuff in his­tory class when I was in school.

Markeroni sta­tus: This has not yet been sub­mit­ted to Markeroni, await­ing more infor­ma­tion on the source of the marker (if I can find it) as well as a low­er­ing of the “whelm” level.