Markers of History

Memorial and Statue
The Georgia Volunteer

Location: In park at Park Ave & Bull St, Savannah, GA 31401

Visited: August 13, 2009, 8:20am

Transcriptions of markers:

East face:

In grate­ful remem­brance of
Stephen N. Harris
who served his coun­try well
as a sol­dier and cit­i­zen
Private, Co. B 2nd Ga. Infantry
1898
Cdr. Worth Bagley Camp No. 10 Dept. Ga. U.S.W.V.
1932
Commander Dept. of Ga. U.S.W.V
1900       1931
Adj. Gen. United Spanish War Veterans
1928       1929
Chief of Staff, Council Of Adm. Ga. U.S.W.V.
1937       1938
His char­ac­ter and lead­er­ship inspired his
com­rades and fel­low citizens.

North face: [Spanish War Veterans’ insignia]

West face:

A trib­ute to that
Soldier · Comrade · Citizen
William L. Grayson
1870       1941
1st. Lieut. Co. “M” 1st Regt. Ga. Vols.
Spanish American War
Commander Department of Georgia U.S.W.V.
1925 — 1927
National Commander in Chief U.S.W.V.
1928 — 1929
His dis­tin­guished ser­vice has endeared him
to all vet­er­ans of all wars
1946

South face (front):

To those
Georgians who
vol­un­teered and
served their
coun­try in the
Spanish American
War

My impres­sions: This marker was high on my “want to visit” list for our trip to Savannah, because I found out about this through find­ing a Spanish-American War memo­r­ial in Portsmouth, VA and the link­age made by an edi­tor of The Historical Marker Database to other mark­ers that fea­ture The Hiker, by sculp­tor Theo Alice Ruggles Kitson.

It is kind of amaz­ing to see some­thing famil­iar and appar­ently unique (until one learns the fuller story) in two dif­fer­ent set­tings, nearly 500 miles apart. And that isn’t dimin­ished too much by the fact that I knew I would see it and had planned the visit in Savannah.

I remem­ber, early on in my days at Markeroni see­ing some­body refer to “their marker,” a marker near their home with which they felt a strong affin­ity. At the time, before I’d started being inten­tional about snarf­ing (and before I’d logged any mark­ers on the site), I didn’t really under­stand it. It clicked in for my last month, as I was in Portsmouth, VA for about the third time to find mark­ers. That day I was “on a mis­sion” to com­plete vis­it­ing a series of mark­ers (for the city’s Path of History), but my walk­ing route took me past sev­eral mark­ers that I’d pre­vi­ously snarfed…and there was a famil­iar­ity that made it almost as though I was pass­ing an old friend, because I had vis­ited these mark­ers, taken their pho­tos, tran­scribed them, and writ­ten about them. So, stand­ing in a park in Savannah, the first time I’d ever done more than drive through the state of Georgia, I felt at home…even though, I still know woe­fully lit­tle about the Spanish-American War.

Markeroni sta­tus: Not yet logged (and it appears I also did not log the sim­i­lar mon­u­ment in Portsmouth, VA yet).

Credit: Thanks to hmdb.org and their page on this mon­u­ment for their tran­scrip­tions of this marker.

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.

State Historic Marker
Virginia Q-8I
City of Portsmouth

Location: US Route 17 at bor­der between the cities of Portsmouth and Chesapeake, High St W, oppo­site Academy Ave, Portsmouth, VA, 23703

Visited: July 4, 2009, 9:50am

Transcription of marker: The site of this city was patented in 1659 by Captain William Carver. Established as a town in 1752 and named by its founder, Lt. Col. Wm. Crawford. Chartered as a city in 1858, it has the country’s old­est naval ship­yard. Established 1767, the nation’s old­est naval hos­pi­tal, com­menced 1827, and is the birth­place of the world’s largest naval installation.

Virginia State Library, 1959

My impres­sions: After all the mark­ers I’ve found in the older areas of Portsmouth, it came as a sur­prise to hear my wife say she’d spot­ted one as we were dri­ving past a sea of fast-food out­lets and busi­nesses. (You can see the Wendy’s in the back­ground of the photo, even.) Though the set­ting seems a lit­tle incon­gru­ous, what bet­ter place to recount the his­tory of the city but as you enter it? (OK, we were leav­ing, but it was on the far side of the road, intended for those enter­ing, I’m sure.) That said, I think there are other mark­ers to com­mem­o­rate nearly every event described on this marker, so it almost seems super­flu­ous. Then again, this is right on US 17, and not every­body is going to ven­ture to the older part of town, so per­haps it has ben­e­fit for get­ting more eyes on the city’s history.

Markeroni sta­tus: Visit logged.

Municipal Historical Marker?
Fort Tar

Location: Monticello Ave (US-460) just north of Virginia Beach Blvd (US-58), Norfolk, VA 23510

Visited: June 23, 2009, 4:15pm

Transcription of marker: This is the site of Fort Tar, built to guard the approach to the city from the west, sit­u­ated on the out­skirts of Norfolk, near Armistead’s Bridge, which spanned Glebe Creek nearby. It served with Forts Barbour, Norfolk, and Nelson to pro­tect Norfolk and Portsmouth from inva­sion by the British in the War of 1812.

Owen Mfg. Corp.     Norfolk, Va.

My impres­sions: This, like yesterday’s Four Farthing or Town Point marker is of unknown type. It’s listed in the Markeroni data­base (as it was in pre­vi­ous edi­tions of the Virginia marker guide­books) as an un-numbered state marker, but it is not in the cur­rent book and when one looks at the marker, one finds the seal of Norfolk where the seal of Virginia is nor­mally found and the name of the man­u­fac­turer where the name of the state body erect­ing the marker is usu­ally found.

This is one of those that almost devolves into laundry-list mode. We find out that the fort was built to guard the west­ern approach to the city. After that it goes into the local geog­ra­phy briefly before list­ing var­i­ous other forts in the area. It does seem incon­gru­ous to think of a fort at what’s now a busy inter­sec­tion, though.

Markeroni sta­tus: Logged.

Update (7/16): After some dis­cus­sion, I’ve decided to con­sider these mark­ers as city mark­ers, so have changed the head­ing and cat­e­gory tag to match that. As there are not enough of these City of Norfolk mark­ers out­side the Cannonball Trail series to form a list, I have included them in the par­ent cat­e­gory “Municipal Historical Markers.”

Path of History
The Elizabeth River

Location: Elizabeth River, at the High St ferry land­ing, Portsmouth, VA 23704

Visited: June 23, 2009, 3:20pm

Transcription of marker: The Elizabeth River, an arm of the Chesapeake Bay, runs between the cities of Portsmouth and Norfolk. The river was named “Elizabeth” in honor of Princess Elizabeth Stuart, the eldest daugh­ter of King James I of England.

The river was first called “Chesapeake,” after the tribe of Native Americans who lived on its banks. They were an Algonquin-speaking peo­ple who depended on the land and water for exis­tence. When John Smith explored the east­ern area in 1608, he saw their “golden plots” and other indi­ca­tions of Native American habitation.

My impres­sions: I can get all caught up in the dif­fer­ences between Canadian and American his­tory that I can some­times for­get about the sim­i­lar­i­ties. And as I come to the end of the pho­tos from this trip to Portsmouth (a city with a name that would be at home in England), along a river named for Elizabeth (ditto), and pre­pare to cross back to a city named Norfolk (ditto), this (espe­cially cou­pled with the pho­tos you’ll see in today’s bonus third post) reminded me that we share a lot of his­tory from before our paths diverged.

Markeroni sta­tus: When Path of History data entry is com­plete, I’ll be log­ging this visit on Markeroni.

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.

Civil War Trails
Gosport Navy Yard

Location: At the east end of Columbia St, Portsmouth, VA 23704

Visited: June 23, 2009, 3:15pm

Transcription of marker:

Gosport Navy Yard
Birthplace of the CSS Virginia

Before you is the Gosport Navy Yard (Norfolk Naval Shipyard). Gosport is the old­est Navy ship­yard in the nation. Here is where the USS Merrimack was burned and then trans­formed by the Confederates into the pow­er­ful iron­clad ram, the CSS Virginia.

Gosport Navy Yard was first estab­lished in 1767 by British naval agent Andrew Sprowle. It was occu­pied by patriot forces in 1775 and oper­ated as a ship­yard by the Virginia State Navy. Gosport, the largest ship­yard in America, was burned by the British in 1779 when they occu­pied Portsmouth.

In 1794 the yard was loaned to the U.S. Government and pur­chased by the U.S. Navy Department in 1801. The USS Chesapeake was one of a group of six frigates autho­rized by Congress to “Provide a Naval Armament,” and was the first ship built at Gosport Navy Yard in 1798 – 1799. On June 17, 1833, the 74-gun ship-of-the-line USS Delaware entered the newly com­pleted Dry Dock No. 1. The Delaware was the first ship to enter a dry dock in America.

When Virginia left the Union, the U.S. Navy evac­u­ated and burned the yard. Gosport was imme­di­ately occu­pied by local Confederates. Salvaged stores and equip­ment, includ­ing 1,085 can­nons, were used to equip and for­tify the many land bat­ter­ies erected in the Tidewater region and at other loca­tions through­out the South.

The steam frigate Merrimack, with 40 guns, had been under repair at Gosport and dur­ing the Federal evac­u­a­tion was burned and sunk. The Confederates raised it, placed it in Dry Dock No. 1 and from designs drawn by Naval Constructor John L. Porter, a Portsmouth native, con­verted it into the iron­clad CSS Virginia. While on its trial in Hampton Roads, Virginia sank the USS Cumberland and USS Congress on March 8, 1862. On the next day it fought the iron­clad USS Monitor, prov­ing that wooden war­ships were obsolete.

Gosport Navy Yard pro­duced sev­eral other gun­boats and part of another iron­clad, the CSS Richmond. On May 10, 1862, the yard was burned again, this time by the evac­u­at­ing Confederates and imme­di­ately reoc­cu­pied by the U.S. Navy. The Union con­trolled Gosport dur­ing the rest of the war.

My impres­sions: Again, I’m impressed by how much his­tory, the Civil War Trails mark­ers man­age to include on one marker. They are full of con­text and details and color. They also appear to me to be well-written. I real­ize that this helped clear up some of my con­fu­sion around the Fort Nelson marker which speaks of how many times the fort was burned. But it seemed too pas­sive to me. This marker, while dis­cussing another site, explains the rea­sons why the instal­la­tion was lost to fire. It doesn’t talk about how it “was burned,” it tells us who burned it and why, and makes a lot more sense to me than the guesses I was mak­ing as to the fire’s causes.

Markeroni sta­tus: Direct-logged and await­ing its proper code in the database.

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.

Civil War Trails
Olde Towne Portsmouth

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

Visited: June 23, 2009, 1:45pm

Transcription of marker:

Olde Towne Portsmouth
* * *
Southern  Architectural Splendor

The one square block his­toric dis­trict before you is Portsmouth’s Olde Towne. The dis­trict dates to 1752 when Portsmouth was founded by William Crawford. Olde Towne con­tains one of the largest col­lec­tions of his­toric build­ings in Virginia fea­tur­ing Colonial, Federal, Greek Revival, Georgian, and Victorian archi­tec­tural styles.

Olde Towne is the cen­ter­piece of Portsmouth’s Civil War his­tory. Several of the build­ings found through­out the dis­trict played an impor­tant role in events that unfolded in Portsmouth dur­ing the war.

The 1846 Courthouse was once the site of gov­ern­ment in old Norfolk County. Before the Civil War, slaves were sold at the front of the build­ing, and it was here that a vote was taken approv­ing secession.

On April 19, 1861, the day before the Federal evac­u­a­tion of Gosport Navy Yard, mem­bers of Portsmouth’s mili­tia com­pa­nies slept with their weapons in the cour­t­house. The build­ing was used as a hos­pi­tal by Union troops from 1862 until 1865.

The Macon House Hotel knew both gai­ety and despair dur­ing the war. From its Middle Street porch the Virginia Defenders, a local vol­un­teer infantry com­pany, accepted a flag from the ladies of Portsmouth. After the Confederates evac­u­ated Portsmouth in 1862, the Federals used the Macon House as a troop quar­ters and hos­pi­tal. The names of Federal sol­diers carved into the hotel’s floor are still visible.

Two houses, Pass House and the William H. Peters House, played a major role in the Union occu­pa­tion of Portsmouth. The William H. Peters House served as head­quar­ters for Major General Benjamin Franklin Butler while he com­manded the Union forces in Portsmouth. Local leg­end claims that Butler earned his nick­name of “Spoons” while in Portsmouth because of the sud­den dis­ap­pear­ance of fam­ily sil­ver­ware when homes were occu­pied by his troops. The James Murdough Home, known as the Pass House, took on an omi­nous air when it became the head­quar­ters of the Union Adjutant General. In order to leave the city, cit­i­zens first had to report here and secure a pass.

These his­toric build­ings and the many oth­ers that line Olde Towne’s streets pro­vide a glimpse into what a Southern city looked like dur­ing the Civil War.

My impres­sions: When it comes to the National Register of Historic Places, one of the things I’ve avoided record­ing so far are his­toric dis­tricts, because it is too easy to say “Yes, I’ve been there,” but not have done any­thing to appre­ci­ate the his­tory there. A marker like this, though, opens the area up to me, and so I think next time I pay a visit to Portsmouth, I’ll spend some time in Olde Towne, appre­ci­at­ing it, and I’ll record my visit here and at Markeroni.

Markeroni sta­tus: I have direct-logged this site, which has not yet been trans­ferred to its proper data­base code to be recorded by others.

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.