Markers of History

Cannonball Trail
Armed Forces Memorial

Location: West end of Town Point Park beside Elizabeth River, Norfolk, VA 23510

Visited: July 3, 2009, 2:25pm

Transcription of marker:

The Armed Forces Memorial is located here on a river that has for more than 200 years car­ried ser­vice­men off to war and returned them home to loved ones. Within the Memorial are 20 inscrip­tions from let­ters writ­ten home by U.S. ser­vice mem­bers who lost their lives in war. The let­ters have been cast in thin sheets of bronze and are scat­tered across the Memorial as if blown there by the wind. From the Revolutionary War through the Gulf War each con­flict is represented.

Revolutionary War 1775 – 1783 • War of 1812 1812 – 1815 • Civil War 1861 – 1865 • World War I 1917 – 1918
World War II 1941 – 1945 • Korean War 1950 – 1953 • Vietnam 1962 – 1975 • Gulf War 1990 – 1991

Caution: The Memorial con­tains bronze let­ters pro­trud­ing from the walk. Please watch your step and show appro­pri­ate respect. Adults should accom­pany chil­dren, and no pets please.

Examples of bronze letters

My impres­sions: This is quite the unique mon­u­ment and it is very touch­ing. There is some­thing about let­ters between peo­ple who know each other. And I’m not sure it has trans­lated as well into the e-mail and instant mes­sag­ing age. Reading these let­ters feels quite inti­mate, and that we are get­ting to hear from these peo­ple as they really were.

I also have to admit to some sur­prise that the Memorial, with its curls of bronze “paper” on the ground was ever approved. It seems that so eas­ily some­body could trip and fall (though I believe there is ample space around them for wheelchair/walker access). I won­der if the fact that it’s sur­rounded by water on two sides (and there­fore is not a “con­ve­nient short-cut” to any­where, as well as only hav­ing two entrances in the brick wall that sur­rounds the memo­r­ial helped.

I am glad that it is there, because I think it ful­fills excel­lently its func­tion of help­ing us to remem­ber the sac­ri­fices made by those who have served and those who were left behind by fam­ily mem­bers who served their coun­try (and those who could not return).

Markeroni sta­tus: Direct-logged.

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.

One other way of deal­ing with the back­log (and the sense I have of some series of posts get­ting repet­i­tive) is to try to com­bine some posts where mul­ti­ple mark­ers are in the same place or on the same sub­ject. I don’t have hard and fast rules about when to com­bine, but this is one of them, where there is a state his­tor­i­cal marker which is for a build­ing in the same loca­tion which is also on the National Register of Historic Places.

State Historical Marker
Virginia Q-8-V
St. Paul’s Roman Catholic Church

National Register of Historic Places
St. Paul’s Catholic Church

Location: 518 High St, Portsmouth, VA 23704

Visited: June 23, 2009, 2:55pm

Transcription of state marker: St. Paul’s Roman Catholic Church was first built by French and Irish immi­grants between 1811 and 1815 and was the first Catholic con­gre­ga­tion estab­lished in Portsmouth. Increasing mem­ber­ship neces­si­tated the build­ing of new struc­tures in 1831 and 1851. Fire destroyed the third build­ing in 1859; that same year the con­gre­ga­tion began con­struct­ing a fourth struc­ture, com­pleted in 1868. It burned in 1897. The cur­rent Gothic Revival church here, noted for its stained glass win­dows, was designed by John Kevan Peebles and ded­i­cated in 1905. It was listed on the Virginia Landmarks Register and the National Register of Historic Places in 2002.

Department of Historic Resources, 2003

Transcription of another plaque beside the state marker:

A bur­ial ground for early paris­hon­ers and clergy of St. Paul’s Catholic Church was located on this site dur­ing the nine­teenth cen­tury. Among those buried here were:

Patrick Robertson, who bequeathed the funds to pur­chase this prop­erty in 1810 and con­struct the first St. Paul’s; Rosalie and Bartholomew Accinelli, found­ing mem­bers of this con­gre­ga­tion; Antonio Sylvestre Bilisoli, a found­ing mem­ber of this con­gre­ga­tion who fought dur­ing the American Revolution; Rev. Francis Devlin, pas­tor from 1844 to 1855, who died min­is­ter­ing to the cit­i­zens of Portsmouth dur­ing the Yellow Fever epi­demic of 1855; and Rev. Joseph Plunkett, pas­tor from 1855 to 1870 and dur­ing the con­struc­tion of the fourth St. Paul’s.

My impres­sions: This is cer­tainly a strik­ing look­ing build­ing (and given their past his­tory, they seem lucky that it has stood for more than a cen­tury). I liked the tiny plaque in the gar­den beside the state marker, because it helped move my thoughts from the grand build­ing to the fact that there were peo­ple con­nected to this site. It was even bet­ter because it explained why each per­son named was impor­tant to the his­tory of St. Paul’s. And, since I’ve been going through mark­ers from Portsmouth, nice to see some con­nec­tions, includ­ing the men­tion of the Yellow Fever epi­demic, which I think I first read about in a marker in Fort Nelson Park (that appeared on this blog over the hol­i­day weekend).

Markeroni sta­tus: I’ve logged both the state marker and the loca­tion from the National Register of Historic Places, but have not sub­mit­ted the other plaque tran­scribed here.

I’m going to break out of the usual for­mat of this blog today for a cou­ple of rea­sons. First of all, today is July 1st, and while I’ve been out­side of Canada on Canada Day before, this is the first time I’ve actu­ally been liv­ing else­where (and not just on vaca­tion). But it also seemed to be a per­fect day on which to respond to a ques­tion that Roy posed on Facebook in response to my post on the first marker titled Arnold’s British Defenses, 1781.

In that response, he said:

You know, I’ve never actu­ally under­stood why the British colonies from Georgia to Maine declared inde­pen­dence, but those in Canada didn’t.

And I don’t know that I’d ever really thought about it before. And I admit that the first place I turned in try­ing to draft my response was Google. And the first page I found was on a web­site from the Faculty of Law at McGill University in Montreal titled “Why Canada Did Not Join the American Revolution.”

His first point brought up a law that would fig­ure in the other responses I read about that day, the Quebec Act, 1774:

1) The British Parliament in London adopted the Quebec Act, 1774 which implies the right to the French lan­guage, and con­firms the right to the Roman Catholic reli­gion and to the French civil law, and the right of the Catholic Church and the seigneurs to impose taxes. The test oath was abol­ished. The pur­pose of the Act was to encour­age the “cana­di­ens” not to join the American rebellion.

And to me as a schoolkid in Canada (espe­cially one in a French immer­sion his­tory class­room), I can hardly think of how a civ­i­lized nation could gov­ern Quebec with­out allow­ing for the French lan­guage and the Catholic reli­gion. I don’t think it occurred to me even to link the time period too much in my head to the Revolution that would take place around the same time to our south.

But it didn’t take long for me to find a con­trary point of view:

Resolved, N. C. D. That the fol­low­ing acts of Parliament are infringe­ments and vio­la­tions of the rights of the colonists; and that the repeal of them is essen­tially nec­es­sary in order to restore har­mony between Great-Britain and the American colonies, viz:

…

Also the act passed in the [last] ses­sion [of par­lia­ment] for estab­lish­ing the Roman Catholick Religion in the province of Quebec, abol­ish­ing the equi­table sys­tem of English laws, and erect­ing a tyranny there, to the great dan­ger, from so total a dis­sim­i­lar­ity of Religion, law, and gov­ern­ment of the neigh­bour­ing British colonies, by the assis­tance of whose blood and trea­sure the said coun­try was con­quered from France.

Those words are from the Journals of the Continental Congress, an entry dated Friday, October 14, 1774.

In the inter­ests of brevity, I’ll turn to Wikipedia for an expla­na­tion of some of these feelings:

The Quebec Act was a piece of leg­is­la­tion unre­lated to the events in Boston, but the tim­ing of its pas­sage led colonists to believe that it was part of the pro­gram to pun­ish them.…The Quebec Act offended a vari­ety of inter­est groups in the British colonies. Land spec­u­la­tors and set­tlers objected to the trans­fer of west­ern lands pre­vi­ously claimed by the colonies to a non-representative gov­ern­ment. Many feared the estab­lish­ment of Catholicism in Quebec, and that the French Canadians were being courted to help oppress British Americans.

So I’m going to say that, in the con­text of feel­ing like they had no say, American colonists felt that this set up rel­a­tively close to them a colony under the same gov­ern­ment that pro­tected a reli­gion they didn’t trust, and prob­a­bly worst of all, expanded the bor­ders of that colony to include land they were eye­balling for west­ward expan­sion. Wikipedia explains that the Quebec Act expanded Quebec’s bor­ders “to take over part of the Indian Reserve, includ­ing much of what is now south­ern Ontario, plus Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, and parts of Minnesota.”

Also, given what I would guess of Protestant sen­ti­ment of the time towards the Roman Catholic church, I would guess that those colonists who had served in the British forces dur­ing the French and Indian War to gain con­trol of New France (now Quebec) for the British felt betrayed by allow­ing the “French-ness” and “Catholic-ness” of this ter­ri­tory to pre­vail despite their defeat.

(A word of digres­sion here: until yes­ter­day morn­ing, when I was writ­ing this piece, I couldn’t have told you any­thing about the French and Indian War. Why? Because it wouldn’t have been taught to me under that name. Wikipedia explains that in Canada, it would be called part of the Seven Years War that was going on in Europe, and in Quebec is often known sim­ply as the Guerre de la Conquête (War of the Conquest). Another reminder to me that his­tory is always viewed through a lens and that even such a triv­ial detail as the name of a war does not escape those lenses.)

So, if I had to sum up in a few words my answer to why the Canadian colonies didn’t sep­a­rate, it would come down to the Quebec Act, where Britain granted the peo­ple of Quebec the most impor­tant things they desired from their (rel­a­tively new) European col­o­niz­ers while con­tin­u­ing to not give what the American colonists were seek­ing from them.

I know I’m still quite early in under­stand­ing American his­tory and at look­ing at this ques­tion, so I expect that as I con­tinue to study over the years, I’ll come to greater under­stand­ings of var­i­ous aspects of this ques­tion, and it wouldn’t sur­prise me if my answer a year from now is some­what dif­fer­ent, but for today? That’s what I’m thinking.

To my fel­low Canadians, enjoy your day today (and I hope to watch the noon show from Parliament Hill online later today). To my fel­low Americans (if you’ll per­mit me to call myself one of you, as I await my green card), enjoy your long week­end com­ing up. I know that I owe a lot of who I am today to both countries.

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.

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.

Path of History
Crawford Bay

Location: Crawford Pkwy, just east of the inter­sec­tion of Court St, Portsmouth, VA 23704

Visited: June 23, 2009, 1:35pm

Transcription of marker:

The peace­ful waters of Crawford Bay play host each year to a num­ber of boat­ing events includ­ing the Cock Island Race and the Crawford Bay Crew Classic. The homes vis­i­ble across the inlet are in a neigh­bor­hood called Swimming Point.

One of the few eighteenth-century manor houses remain­ing in Hampton Roads, the Dale-Reed House, is located in Swimming Point. The fam­ily of Revolutionary War hero Richard Dale once lived in this home. Although mod­ern­ized, the home still has sec­tions of what is prob­a­bly the old­est house in Portsmouth.

My impres­sions: This is a busy area for mark­ers: There is another Path of History marker just west of Court Street. Across from that, there is a block that includes three state his­tor­i­cal mark­ers and a Civil War Trails marker.

Markeroni sta­tus: Awaiting response about inclu­sion of the Path of History list to Markeroni.

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.

You can cer­tainly tell that I was excited to get out and around after my cold! I missed the bus to start my trip. Rather than wait an hour for the next bus in that direc­tion, I decided to cross the road, catch the bus in the other direc­tion a few min­utes later, and then see if I could fig­ure my way there on my own.

Four bus trips and a ferry trip later, I was in Portsmouth (though I ended up arriv­ing there about the time I had planned to start head­ing home!)

The first mark­ers I saw (not count­ing the three I saw from the bus…and yes, I kept track of their loca­tions so I can go back for them) were three mark­ers between Crawford Pkwy and the Elizabeth River: two state his­tor­i­cal mark­ers and this Civil War Trails marker about Portsmouth Naval Hospital

Civil War Trails
Portsmouth Naval Hospital

Location: Crawford Pkwy (between Harbor Ct and Court St), Portsmouth, VA 23704

Visited: June 23, 2009, 1:30pm

Transcription of marker:

Portsmouth Naval Hospital
* * *
Administering to Both the  Union and Confederacy

This is the site of the Portsmouth Naval Hospital which served both the Union and the Confederacy dur­ing the Civil War. The Portsmouth Naval Hospital, the U.S. Navy’s first hos­pi­tal, was founded in 1827 by Secretary of the Navy Samuel L. Southard. Architect John Haviland cre­ated Building No. One’s impres­sive Greek Revival design which fea­tures and embell­ished Doric por­tico of 10 columns. The facil­ity opened in 1830. The hos­pi­tal was built on the site of the Fort Nelson of the Revolutionary War and War of 1812 era, which was a for­ti­fi­ca­tion made obso­lete by the con­struc­tion of Fortress Monroe across Hampton Roads on Old Point Comfort. Materials sal­vaged from the fort’s demo­li­tion were used in the con­struc­tion of the hos­pi­tal building.

When Virginia left the Union the hos­pi­tal was used by the Confederacy until Portsmouth was aban­doned by Southern forces on May 10, 1862. The Union main­tained the hos­pi­tal through­out the remain­der of the War sup­port­ing the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron.

In the hos­pi­tal grave­yard is a memo­r­ial to the 337 dead of USS Cumberland and USS Congress killed when these ves­sels were sunk on March 8, 1862, by the CSS Virginia. Fifty-eight Confederates are also buried there.

My impres­sions: This is an inter­est­ing place­ment for this marker, with the hos­pi­tal vis­i­ble across the water. I won­der if this is an attempt to “future-proof” the loca­tion, so that, if the naval hos­pi­tal were to expand at some point in the future, it wouldn’t be caught inside the new gates. it was also fun to have such a scenic loca­tion for a clus­ter of three mark­ers. Was a nice way to get the excite­ment up after the crazi­ness of the morn­ing!  I also have to say that this marker does a remark­able job of con­dens­ing a whole lot of his­tory into a small area.

Markeroni sta­tus: I direct-logged my visit ear­lier today.

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.