Markers of History

It’s amaz­ing how great the Internet is for find­ing infor­ma­tion that you didn’t even know you were miss­ing. I’ve men­tioned Markeroni reg­u­larly on these pages, but I haven’t yet men­tioned The Historical Marker Database or HMDB (except for adding a link to the sidebar).

Schenectady, NY. Photo: Howard C. Ohlhous, 2007. Courtesy of hmdb.org

Yesterday, though, I learned through the exper­tise of one of their edi­tors about links between a war memo­r­ial I had vis­ited in Portsmouth, VA and oth­ers across the coun­try. Almost two months ago, I saw a memo­r­ial com­mem­o­rat­ing those who served in the Spanish-American War. But through an editor’s links, I found that the depic­tion on that 1942 mon­u­ment, ded­i­cated to those who vol­un­teered from Portsmouth and from Norfolk County, was actu­ally some­what famous.

Their data­base includes exam­ples from three other places:

• Schenectady, NY, ded­i­cated in 1921 (and reded­i­cated in 1996) to honor those who served from Schenectady County;


Savannah, GA. Photo: Mike Stroud, 2008. Courtesy of hmdb.org

• Savannah, GA (a city my wife and I will be vis­it­ing next month), erected in 1931 to honor those who vol­un­teered from Georgia; and


Arlington, VA. Photo: Richard E. Miller, 2008. Courtesy of hmdb.org

• Arlington, VA, where it has stood in Arlington National Cemetery (where my wife and I attended a bur­ial ear­lier this year) since 1965.

According to Wikipedia, there are many more copies around the coun­try, with esti­mates of 39 in an arti­cle on another exam­ple to roughly fifty, accord­ing to the arti­cle on the sculp­tor, Theo Alice Ruggles Kitson (1871 – 1932). Born in Brookline, MA, she was denied entry to the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, because she was female. She started study­ing with sculp­tor Henry Hudson Kitson in 1886 and went on to marry him. Kitson was the first woman to be admit­ted to the National Sculpture Society.

So next month, when we go to Savannah, I think I’ll have to see if I can get to this marker. And I’ll def­i­nitely be keep­ing my eyes open online to see what else I can learn about his­tory (and his­tor­i­cal mark­ers) from others!

It’s amaz­ing what you can learn from the Internet these days!

On Monday, this blog will con­tinue our trip towards Yorktown and later in the week, we’ll travel from there to Jamestown on the Colonial Parkway. I hope you’ll join us.

OK, if I didn’t want to say much of any­thing about the American Revolution or the Civil War, I’m likely to be even less forth­com­ing about the Spanish-American War. Truth be told, about the only thing I knew about it was its name. It wasn’t until a few min­utes ago that I real­ized that it was about Cuba.  But any­way, on to the monument:

Spanish-American War statue

Location: Crawford Pkwy at North St, Portsmouth, VA 23704

Visited: June 1, 2009, 2:10pm

Transcription of marker:

Spanish-American War
1898 – 1902

Erected by the cit­i­zens of Portsmouth and Norfolk County. Sponsored by the Austin R. Davis Camp No 4 — United Spanish War Veterans and Auxiliary to com­mem­o­rate the valor and patri­o­tism of those who vol­un­tar­ily served in the war with Spain, the Phillipine insur­rec­tion and the China relief expedition.

Dedicated May 23, 1942

My impres­sions: The statue looks inter­est­ing, but it is intrigu­ing how the text was placed. The marker I tran­scribed above is to the back of the man it por­trays. The front of the pedestal has a crest of the Spanish American War Veterans. I find it inter­est­ing how many mark­ers and mon­u­ments in Portsmouth are in the mid­dles of streets: there were the first two state his­tor­i­cal mark­ers I saw there, as well as the Confederate Monument, and now this one. Though this one doesn’t have the fence of the Confederate Monument, its set­ting is nicer, with more grass, and I could actu­ally get to it with­out wor­ry­ing that I was going to be struck by a car.

I won­der whether the logo/crest was instantly rec­og­niz­able in the era when this statue was placed. And the tim­ing is curi­ous: 1942, four decades after the war ended (using the date there). Was it sim­ply a mat­ter of funds? Did World War II have any­thing to do with it? I don’t know the answers, but they are cer­tainly inter­est­ing ques­tions. Maybe some­day I’ll do some read­ing and see what I can find to answer them.

Notes for snar­fers: This is very close to the North Street ferry landing.

Markeroni sta­tus: This site has not yet been sub­mit­ted for inclu­sion in the Markeroni database.

After this, I took the ferry, and there was one more snarf in Norfolk before I returned home, and you’ll read about that in my next post.

State Historical Marker
Virginia Q-8-N
Norfolk County Court House 1845 – 1862

Visited: June 1, 2009, 1:35pm

Location: Corner of High St & Court St, Portsmouth, VA 23704

Transcription of marker:

Begun 1845, occu­pied 20 July 1846. The archi­tect, Wm. R. Singleton, a Portsmouth native, also designed the old Norfolk city court house. This build­ing stands on one of the four cor­ners des­ig­nated for pub­lic use in 1752 by Lt. Col. William Crawford, founder of Portsmouth. The site was for­merly occu­pied by the clerk’s office when an ear­lier court house, occu­pied in 1803, stood on the north­east cor­ner, opposite.

Virginia State Library 1961

My impres­sions: The set­ting is nice for this marker, but I find it under­whelm­ing, both because it’s about some­thing that used to be there and isn’t now, and because it isn’t all that clear why the site of the for­mer cour­t­house should be impor­tant. I think that there were far more com­pelling facts on the Path of History marker for Towne Square, across Court Street from this state marker.

Notes for future snar­fers: Besides this and the Towne Square marker, there’s also the Confederate mon­u­ment in the mid­dle of Court Street and Trinity Episcopal Church across High Street. There are many other mark­ers in the area.

Markeroni sta­tus: Logged visit yesterday.