Markers of History

Colonial Parkway mark­ers
Cheatham Annex

Location: Colo­­nial National His­­toric Pkwy, York­­town, VA 23691

Vis­ited: July 4, 2009, 12:05pm

Tran­scrip­­tion of marker: The piers and struc­tures across the water are an exten­sion of the Naval Base at Norfolk. This takes advan­tage of the excel­lent York River deep water chan­nel as did Cornwallis when, in 1781, he chose Yorktown as his base.

My impres­sions: It is about this point where I decided (espe­cially with the dis­tance involved) not to worry too much about mil­i­tary stuff. I mean, the US wouldn’t be stu­pid enough to put some­thing sen­si­tive within site of a tourist attrac­tion that includes sig­nage point­ing out that the mil­i­tary is oper­at­ing there. Besides, how much can you tell from this far away anyway?

State Historic Marker
Virginia Z-265
York County/Warwick County

Location: East side of US-17, at the bor­der between Newport News and York County, just S of Commerce Cir, Yorktown, VA 23693

Visited: July 4, 2009, 10:45am

Transcription of marker:

York County side:

York County

Area 136 square miles

One of the eight orig­i­nal shires formed in 1634. First called Charles River, which was named for King Charles I. The name was changed in 1643 to York for Yorkshire, England. Cornwallis’s sur­ren­der, October 19, 1781, took place at Yorktown.

Warwick County side:

Warwick County

Area 69 square miles

One of the orig­i­nal shires formed in 1634, it was given the name of Warwick River. The river itself was named for the Earl of Warwick.

My impres­sions: So this is the sec­ond time today that we found a state his­tor­i­cal marker at the bor­der of a city. This is from the Z series of mark­ers (from the let­ter in their alphanu­meric code). These are double-sided mark­ers, placed at bor­ders of coun­ties with infor­ma­tion on both juris­dic­tions. This one is not found in the cur­rent edi­tion of the marker book. If I had to guess, I might guess that it’s because Warwick County doesn’t exist any longer. In 1958, in con­sol­i­dated with the City of Newport News.

I also found it inter­est­ing that the let­ters were larger on the Warwick County side than the York County side. It was obvi­ously an adjust­ment made to ensure that both sides were filled, given that the York County side has more text on it.

There was a small piece of inter­est­ing his­tory I found in the Wikipedia arti­cle on the for­mer County. In 1949, Newport News attempted to annex the county. Warwick County was able to fend it off by ced­ing 4 square miles to York County, which Wikipedia calls “a clever legal maneu­ver which was seen as a narrowly-won tech­ni­cal vic­tory.” In 1952, the county suc­cess­fully peti­tioned the General Assembly to become an inde­pen­dent city (since Virginia’s inde­pen­dent city sta­tus guar­an­tees that land can’t be annexed by adja­cent com­mu­ni­ties). Without the threat of annex­a­tion, nego­ti­a­tions on annex­a­tion con­tin­ued and six years later, the vot­ers of both cities (Warwick and Newport News) approved con­sol­i­da­tion in a referendum.

Markeroni sta­tus: Logged.

State Historical Marker
Virginia K-265
Fort Nelson

Location: Crawford Pkwy, west of Court Street, Portsmouth, VA 23704

Visited: June 23, 2009, 1:50pm

Transcription of marker: On the site of Portsmouth’s Naval Hospital stood Fort Nelson. There, Virginia’s Revolutionary gov­ern­ment late in 1776 con­structed the fort of tim­ber and rammed earth. Three years later, the British fleet com­manded by Admiral Sir George Collier con­fis­cated its artillery and sup­plies and destroyed most of the para­pet. In 1779 – 1781, Lord Cornwallis and General Benedict Arnold occu­pied the fort. It was recon­structed in 1799 of earth lined with brick, fol­low­ing a design by archi­tect B. Henry Latrobe, and aban­doned after the War of 1812. The Confederate gov­ern­ment strength­ened Fort Nelson, but on 10 May 1862 the Union army occu­pied Norfolk and Fort Nelson.

Department of Historic Resources, 1997

My impres­sions: It is some­times inter­est­ing to think about forts that do this, pass­ing from one set of hands to another mul­ti­ple times. It seems that if it wasn’t good enough to pro­tect the other side, why would you want it to save yours? Or is it just the invin­ci­ble assump­tion of the vic­tors that they are supe­rior to the van­quished? Or is a fort only as strong as the peo­ple who defend it?

Markeroni sta­tus: Logged.

State Historical Marker
Virginia Q-8-F
Cornwallis at Portsmouth

Location: Crawford Pkwy, west of Court Street, Portsmouth, VA 23704

Visited: June 23, 2009, 1:45pm

Transcription of marker: Lord Cornwallis, com­mand­ing the British troops in the south, reached Portsmouth, July, 1781. He pre­pared to send a por­tion of his force to New York. Before the move­ment was made, orders came for him to take up a posi­tion at Old Point. Cornwallis selected Yorktown, how­ever, and Portsmouth was abandoned.

Virginia Conservation Commission, 1948

My impres­sions: Terse to the point of being use­less, in my opin­ion: He came, he saw, he departed. Lord Cornwallis was here. Doesn’t tell me any­thing, and doesn’t tease me enough to excite me to learn more about Cornwallis. Oh, well.

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.