Markers of History

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
Commercial Place

Location: NW of where Commercial Pl & E Main St meet, Norfolk, VA 23510

Visited: June 1, 2009, 2:55pm

Transcription of marker: When a sur­vey was done in 1680 to lay out the town of Norfolk, one of the few streets shown was “the street that lead­eth to the water­side.” The orig­i­nal loca­tion was just to the west of this site. It fanned out from Front (now Main) Street south to the Elizabeth River. As the new town devel­oped, this area became its com­mer­cial hub. When a mar­ket was built here near Front Street in the early 1700’s the area became known as Market Square. At the river’s edge a ferry dock and com­mer­cial wharves devel­oped. About 1900 the name changed again, to Commercial Place. This illus­tra­tion “Old Norfolk Evening” by artist John Morton Barber, recre­ates the south­ern end of Market Square/Commercial Place in 1887. Double-edged steam fer­ries shut­tle back and forth across the Elizabeth River to Berkley and Portsmouth. The English ship Carnarvonshire is being towed into the har­bor to load goods for her voy­age across the Atlantic, and the side-wheel steamer Luray is car­ry­ing pas­sen­gers down­stream toward Town Point.

My impres­sions: I’ve been near this spot before but hadn’t really paid atten­tion to the marker, nor the small strip of green around it in down­town Norfolk. This cir­cle is dom­i­nated by a Confederate mon­u­ment (which I’ll have to snarf at a later date, since my bus came before I could take a photo of it).

Markeroni sta­tus: My visit was logged on Sunday, after the marker was added to the database.