Markers of History

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.

Path of History
Craney Island

Location: Crawford Pkwy, just west of Court St, Portsmouth, VA 23704

Visited: June 23, 2009, 1:40pm

Transcription of marker:

Craney Island played a sig­nif­i­cant role in the War of 1812, fly­ing the Flag of 1795, with fif­teen stars and stripes. American defend­ers held off over­whelm­ing British forces there on June 22, 1813.

Two hun­dred British sol­diers were killed, thir­teen taken pris­oner and forty deserted. There were no American casu­al­ties. This suc­cess­ful bat­tle saved Norfolk, Portsmouth and the Gosport Shipyard from British occu­pa­tion and destruction.

The USS Merrimack (1856 – 1861) was at Norfolk Navy Yard in 1861, when Virginia seceded from the Union. The Federal forces burned and sank the Merrimack as they with­drew from the Navy Yard.

The Confederates sal­vaged the ship and con­verted her to an iron­clad. She was com­mis­sioned the CSS Virginia in February 1862.

In May of 1862, as the Confederates aban­doned the Norfolk area, efforts were made to lighten the Virginia enough to allow her to move up the James River. Unable to do so, she was destroyed by her crew off Craney Island on May 11.

My impres­sions: More War of 1812. And I’ll con­fess that about all I remem­ber from what I learned of that war in his­tory class was “We won.” Oh yes, “and the Americans think they did.” I know the def­i­n­i­tion of “win” is what is impor­tant in fig­ur­ing out what one believes about the war, but as usual, I lack the knowl­edge of what hap­pened to even begin to under­stand it. Maybe a library trip is in my future, so I can pick up the his­tory that isn’t con­densed into only a few para­graphs on a marker here and there.

Given my under­stand­ing of the geog­ra­phy, this seems like a strange loca­tion for a marker about Craney Island, pre­sum­ably there because of the desire for the Path of History to be a walk­a­ble path.

I also received word, via a Flickr com­ment, that next month a his­tor­i­cal marker will be unveiled com­mem­o­rat­ing the Battle of Craney Island. (From fur­ther research, I believe that this will be a state his­tor­i­cal marker, but can’t con­firm that detail yet.) Unfortunately, it appears that my sched­ule won’t per­mit me to attend the unveil­ing, but I def­i­nitely hope to get there in the days after it’s unveiled.

Markeroni sta­tus: Awaiting response on inclu­sion of Path of History.