Markers of History

State Historical Markers
Virginia Q-8-Q
Arnold’s British Defenses, 1781

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

Visited: June 23, 2009, 1:45pm

Transcription of marker: A brick wind­mill near here was close to the south­ern limit of a line of British redoubts erected in March 1781 by order of Brigadier General Benedict Arnold, who under Major General William Phillips, com­manded British troops occu­py­ing Portsmouth. This line of for­ti­fi­ca­tions extended north in an arc along Washington Street to the water­front near Court Street.

Virginia State Library, 1962

My impres­sions: I’m a lit­tle con­fused when I take this marker together with marker num­ber Q-8-P, also titled Arnold’s British Defenses, 1781, which I blogged about on Thursday. I am fairly cer­tain that at least one of these mark­ers is no longer in the loca­tion the marker text assumed, because there is very lit­tle north-south dif­fer­ence between their loca­tions, only the width of Crawford Parkway.

They may both be moved from their orig­i­nal loca­tions, because Q-8-P seems fur­ther east than the arc described in this marker, and the cur­rent marker [Q-8-Q] seems to be too far north, given Q-8-P’s ref­er­ence to Dinwiddie Street.

The other thing that strikes me about this marker is that the low­er­case q in the marker num­ber seems “off” to me. It doesn’t look like a q should look in that type. It looks like some­body was impro­vised with a back­wards p. But that could just be my eyes.

Markeroni sta­tus: Logged.

We’re in a bit of a con­fus­ing land right now, because there are appar­ently three state his­tor­i­cal mark­ers, each titled Arnold’s British Defenses, 1781. So far, I’ve seen two of them. So this one is from the bend in Crawford Pkwy, right near the Civil War Trails marker I wrote about yes­ter­day, next to the Elizabeth River and its marker (which I’ll write about next).

State Historical Marker
Virginia Q-8P
Arnold’s British Defenses, 1781

Location: Crawford Pkwy, Portsmouth, VA, 23704

Visited: June 23, 2009, 1:30pm

Transcription of marker: This marks the north­ern limit of a line of British redoubts erected in March 1781 by order of Brigadier General Benedict Arnold who, under Major General William Phillips, com­manded British troops occu­py­ing Portsmouth. This line of for­ti­fi­ca­tions extended in an arc south along Dinwiddie and Washington Streets to Gosport Creek and defended Portsmouth from American attack from the west.

Virginia State Library, 1962

My impres­sions: I had to look up what a redoubt actu­ally was. And when I did, one of the Flickr results that came up for me was of one in Kingston, Ontario, just a few blocks from where I lived my sec­ond year of uni­ver­sity there. I guess I’ll have to make sure to get back there, next time I’m in town. (Whenever that is!) I never man­aged to make it to that museum while I lived there. Always meant to…

Markeroni sta­tus: Logged.