Chapter XII: Part III: Nineteenth Century (2)

Whether Doctor Stuart rendered surgical aid to the man in the tattered uniform is still a controversial subject in that region. They did receive food and were waited on by Junius and Patsy Dixon, servants at Cleydael. Tradition says that the older man left a note to Doctor Stuart in which he enclosed a five-dollar bill and grudgingly thanked him for "what we did get."

Stories vary as to where the two men spent the night of April 23rd.

At some time or other they rested in the yard of St. Paul's Church, it is said. One account says that they spent the night at the house of a man named Rollins near Office Hall. Another story says that they found shelter for the night in the cabin of William Lucas, a Negro, and that the next day the man who was burning with fever, ordered Lucas's son to take him and his companion to the Rappahannock ferry at Port Conway.

All accounts seem to agree that the men came to the Rappahannock in daylight on April 24th, and that they were in a spring wagon driven by a Negro man.

It seems that the ferryman was fishing and wouldn't come ashore for only two fares. At this point three Confederate soldiers who, it has been said, were veterans of Mosby's Raiders and were on their way home, rode up on horseback.

The haggard man got out of the wagon and limped over to the soldiers, the story goes, and told them who he was and asked them to help him. Tradition says that the young veterans moved off and held a conference together and when they had reached a decision they told him that they were not in sympathy with what he had done, but since he had thrown himself on their mercy they would help him.

One story says that the Confederate veterans then leveled their rifles at the ferryman and ordered him to come ashore at once and get them or he would have his head blown off. The ferryman came ashore and the two men and at least one of the veterans got on the ferry.

It was in this way that John Wilkes Booth, who had shot and killed Abraham Lincoln in Washington on the night of April 14th, and his faithful companion, Herold, finally completed their journey across the Northern Neck, from the Potomac to the Rappahannock. In their devious flight across the Neck they had traveled perhaps twenty miles.

The painful journey was in vain, however, for it was only a matter of hours before Federal soldiers would track down the assassin and his companion and find them in a barn on Garrett's farm.

_AFTER THE WAR_

The old order of things finally died in the Northern Neck with the surrender of 1865. But, though the splendor was gone, the people continued to cling to the old ways--the traditions, customs, family life and ties of kinship.

With the younger generation--the war children--there began a new type of manhood. Knowing nothing except privations, they grew up with hard bodies and practical minds, and though thrust into manhood while they were still adolescent, they shouldered their responsibilities.

Those who lived near the water turned to it because it was now more fruitful than the land. Its harvests could be reaped more quickly, and they could be reaped by one man working alone, or by several men working together.

Bundled up in home-made garments and warmed by caps, mufflers, socks and mittens knitted by their mothers and grandmothers, these boys sallied forth at dawn in the bitterest weather to tong oysters. Winters were much colder then. They worked until nightfall, often in open boats, stopping only long enough to refresh themselves with a hearty lunch, which was usually packed in a tin bucket, and usually included pork, biscuits and sorghum molasses. This was washed down with cold coffee drunk from a stone jug.

The girls too had changed and they now belonged to this new regime. During the winter evenings they helped the older women to knit fish nets. They used home-made wooden needles for this, and sometimes they fastened one end of the net to wooden pegs driven in the wall. (Years later people were to wonder why those pegs were found in some homes of the lower Neck.) The women helped the men to fashion sails for their boats by sewing together pieces of canvas.

With the nets and small sailing vessels the men caught fish in what were known as pound nets. These were staked out on weir poles.

The seafood and whatever other marketable farm produce they could assemble was conveyed up the Bay to the nearest and best cash market, which was Baltimore, one hundred miles from the end of the Neck. They brought back from this city clothing, sugar, molasses, kerosene and hardware, among other things. This contact with a large cosmopolitan city greatly influenced the lives and natures of the natives of the Northern Neck. Those who could manage it sent their children there to be educated. Other children were educated by older relatives, or by anyone who would teach them. Some received very little education during this period.

Children had few toys and those they had were almost as crude as those of the pioneer children--toys made of corn-cobs and pieces of wood. Children were glad to have an old coffee pot to pull on a string. There was no money for toys.

Farther inland men turned to the forests where they cut cordwood and railroad ties. These were carried to the heads of the rivers and loaded on vessels bound for Baltimore, Philadelphia or Norfolk.

Men then did any sort of work where they could make an honest dollar and still stay in the Northern Neck. It was rugged but they managed to survive.

As things began to ease up, they picked up some of the old sports again--horse-racing, fox-hunting and jousting. The men were intensely interested in politics.

Court Day was one of the biggest events for the men in those days. These were colorful occasions, with the hundreds of people gathered together, horses tied to the rails and ox-carts, stallions and hucksters all milling about the green. This was an opportunity for making a little cash. There was a man at Heathsville, at one time, who made a specialty of "cent cakes" on Court Days. These were of especial interest to little boys who came with their fathers. The cakes were big round and flat and had one raisin in the center of each. Negro women cooked oyster stews in the open and served them on tables improvised from dry-goods boxes and covered with clean sheets. Bars were in full swing, brass knucks, pistols and knives glinted here and there. There were many fights, or tests of prowess. It was often late at night when the revelers, or perhaps their horses, found the way home over rough country roads.

The women had less exciting pleasures, such as quilting parties, "spending the day" with a neighbor, and church socials.

The colonial pattern of living and way of speech lingered on until the beginning of the twentieth century. Tradition tells of a wedding feast as late as 1872 where roast suckling pig with an apple in its mouth, conical sugar loaves and butter sculptured in the form of Solomon's Temple were featured. The flavor of seventeenth century England still lingered in the Northern Neck at that time.

The marriages between the families of the Neck were endless and thus the Anglo-Saxon strain remained pure in the region.

_SPEECH_

The early population in the Northern Neck were mostly from London and the surrounding counties where the classic English language of Shakespeare was spoken.

There is evidence that the speech of the people of the Northern Neck had from early days little of the provincial or dialectal about it.

Until the early part of the twentieth century such Shakespearean expressions as, "wrack upon ruin" and "all mommicked up," were commonly used in the Neck. The now archaic word mommick meant to mutilate. The play of the double noun was also frequently heard until a late date--men-folks, women-folks, baby-child, man-child, boy-man, and so on.

Many of the indentured servants came to the Northern Neck from Warwickshire and their manner of speech was added to the region, for instance: off sporting, or frolicking, meant, having a good time; traipsing about, meant, off walking about; make the fire, meant, kindle the fire, and peart, meant, lively.

The constant reading of the Bible also helped to keep the speech pure and simple.

_SHOPPING TRIPS_

After the war the shopping trips to Baltimore were resumed, but with a difference. There were few men in the Neck now and the women had changed. Hardened by sorrow and privations they were now able to face realities. There were many widows.

They gathered their children together, and all the produce they could assemble, and traveled to town on the sailing vessel of some older relative or neighbor who might be taking a cargo of oysters or cordwood to market.

When they arrived in Baltimore, usually in the very early morning, the sleepy children must be aroused and dressed. Pantalettes,[10] so painstakingly laundered before leaving home, were now dirty and wrinkled. With the bedraggled children, coops of quacking ducks and hissing geese, crates of eggs and firkins of lard and butter, the brave women finally landed on the dock and made their way up Light Street to the commission merchants, who would buy their produce. After disposing of their business they went to the stores to shop for necessities to carry home to the Northern Neck.

[Footnote 10: Pantalettes were generally worn about 1830-50. The fact that they were still being worn by children of the Northern Neck is probably due to the isolated location of this peninsula.]

_MENHADEN_

In their voyage of discovery in the Chesapeake Captain John Smith and his companions found schools of fish agitating the surface of the water. The written accounts of these men state that the fish were so thick that they attempted to dip them up in a frying-pan but it proved to be "not a good instrument to catch fish with."

These fish are believed to have been menhaden, known to naturalists as brevoortia. This ordinary looking fish was destined to change the course of history in the lower Northern Neck.

The Indian names for this species, munnawhatteaug (corrupted to menhaden), and pauhagen (pogy), literally means fertilizer--"fish that enriches the earth." The Indians were accustomed to employ this species, with others of the herring tribe, in enriching their cornfields. They showed the white men how to make their corn grow by putting two dead fish in each hill of corn.

The following passage written by Thomas Morton in 1632 shows the use of fish as fertilizer in Virginia at that time: "There is a fish at the spring of the yeare that passe up the rivers to spawn in the ponds, & are taken in such multitudes that the inhabitants fertilize their grounds with them."

The menhaden was called alewife by the Virginia colonists because of its resemblance to the allied species known by that name in England. Alewife was corrupted to old-wife and ell-wife. It has been said that the half-grown menhaden were called bug-fish by Virginia negroes in early days because they believed them to have been produced from insects. This superstition probably arose from the fact that a parasitic crustacean, known to watermen as "a fish louse," was often found clinging to the roof of the menhaden's mouth.

The menhaden had many other popular names, among them: porgie, bony-fish, poggie, mossbunker, greentail, bunker, yellowtail, white-fish, fat back, and another Indian name, chebog. "Mossbunker" is a relic of the Dutch Colony at New Amsterdam. It was in use there as early as 1661, probably a corruption of their Dutch word, _marsbancker_.

It is said that the Indians did not like to eat menhaden because of their oily content. Many years later it was learned that this fish was also rich in minerals. Early settlers ate them, salted them for winter use, and fed them to the stock.

Catesby wrote, 1731-1742, concerning a fish called a "Fatback: It is an excellent Sweet Fish, and so excessive fat that Butter is never used in frying. At certain Seasons and Places there are infinite Numbers of these Fish caught, and are much esteemed by the Inhabitants for their Delicacy."

Menhaden were used to some extent as a food by watermen for many years but it does not appear probable that they were ever extensively used for food except in seasons of scarcity. They were used for many years to feed stock.

Menhaden were used at an early date as a fertilizer all along the Atlantic coast. In 1792 a paper published in New York gave directions concerning the use of fish as a fertilizer: "Experiments made by using the fish called menhaden or mossbankers as a manure have succeeded beyond all expectation. In dunging corn in the holes, put two in a hill on any kind of soil where corn will grow, and you will have a good crop. Put them on a piece of poor loamy land and by their putrefaction they so enrich the land that you may mow about two tons per acre." About eight or ten thousand fish to the acre was considered about the right amount.

Farmers also spread the fish "head to tail" in a plowed furrow and covered them with earth. They also mixed the fish with earth in a compost.

It seems that the possibilities of making use of the fish oil were not considered at this time. Whale oil was still being used. It was not until about 1850 that the value of menhaden oil was recognized.

The following statement of Eben B. Phillips, a Boston oil merchant, dated 1874, throws some light on the beginning of the use of menhaden oil: "In about 1850 I was in the oil business in Boston. An elderly lady by the name of Bartlett, from Bluehill, Maine, came to my store with a sample of oil which she had skimmed from a kettle in boiling menhaden for her hens. She told me the fish were abundant all summer near the shore. I told her I would give her $11 per barrel for all she would produce. Her husband and sons made 13 barrels the first year. The fish then were caught in gill-nets. The following year they made 100 barrels. From that time and from that circumstance has grown a business as extensive as I have represented."

Mr. Phillips then furnished nets, and large kettles, which they set up out-of-doors in brick frames, for drying out the fish. It was thought that much oil was thrown away with the refuse fish or scrap, and the idea of pressing this scrap was suggested. At first this was accomplished by pressing it in a common iron kettle with a heavy cover and a long beam for a lever. Later it was weighted down by heavy rocks, in barrels and tubs perforated with auger holes. Mr. Phillips then fitted out some fifty parties on the coast of Maine with presses of the model known as the screw and lever press.

Others claim to have manufactured menhaden oil at about the same time. "At that time," according to another statement from Rhode Island, "there were some few whalemen's try-pots used by other parties in boiling the fish in water and making a very imperfect oil and scrap."

Tradition says that at first some of the oil merchants mixed the menhaden oil with whale oil, or sold it outright as whale oil. It was used for tanning hides, currying, in paint, in soap, for "smearing sheep" and for other things.

After the value of menhaden oil was recognized many makeshift menhaden fish factories were established along the coast of Maine and elsewhere on the northern coast. It was much easier for the whaling men to go offshore a few miles, return with a boat-load of fish and spend the night at home.

By the end of the Civil War the menhaden catch along the coast of Maine was beginning to drop off.

In 1866 a party of New Englanders visiting the Chesapeake found menhaden in almost incredible quantities--"they were so thick that for 25 miles along the shore there was a solid flip-flap of the northward swimming fish." One member of the party is said to have jumped into the water and with a dip-net thrown bushels of fish upon the beach.

In December, 1866, the floating fish-factory, _Ranger_ of 1,500 tons, hailing from Greenport, N. Y., came to Virginia. She was equipped to cook fish and extract oil on board. Tradition says that on these first floating factories the scrap was thrown overboard. The _Ranger_ remained in Virginia only about eleven days during that year but returned each of the two succeeding years.

In the late summer of 1867, Elijah W. Reed, of Sedgwick, Maine, loaded his kettles and presses on two small sailing vessels, the _Two Brothers_ and the _A. F. Powers_, and sailed for Virginia. He landed first at Back River, then moved up the Chesapeake and operated his kettles and presses on the Bay shore between the Little Wicomico and the Great Wicomico Rivers. The spot was in Northumberland County and was later known as Ketchum's Camp.

That winter the New Englander moved into Cockrell's Creek, in the same county. It was a sheltered harbor near the mouth of the Bay with deep water running close to the shore. He built there, at Point Pleasant, the first menhaden plant on the Chesapeake Bay.

From 1868 factories were built from time to time by local people, and others, on points in Cockrell's Creek, and at other points on various inlets of the Chesapeake, and on Tangier Island.

These early factories were known as "kettle-factories." The kettles were brought down the Bay from Baltimore. The menhaden products, oil and green scrap in bulk, were carried back to the same city by sailing vessels. The scrap, or guano, was sold both in the city market and locally for fertilizer.

These first Virginia fish factories were crude affairs consisting of five or six iron kettles, each with a capacity of one hundred or more gallons. They were established on a brick firebox with a chimney in the center of the unit and openings at both ends for firing. This was protected by a rough frame shelter with a slab-pine roof. This was a typical factory, though the number of kettles varied.

Cordwood was used for fuel. Scows with sails were sent to the heads of the rivers where wood was brought down from "the forest" and loaded on them.

At the temporary Ketchum's Camp factory the fish were pulled up on the shore in haul seines. After that they were caught in purse seines operated from sailing vessels.

It had been found, as previously explained, that by cooking the fish much more oil could be extracted. The fish were boiled and then dipped out with dip-nets and put in what was called a press. Burlap was then placed over the mass of fish, and then boards on top of that. The boards were then pulled down tight with a screw-jack.

After the oil and water had been pressed out, the residue of fish was spread out on the wharf in the sun to dry. To hasten this process the mass was turned over and over by men with pitchforks. Acid was sprayed on the "green scrap" to kill the maggots. It usually took about a week to change the menhaden from the raw state into oil and guano.

The following government report is probably the first of the menhaden industry of the Chesapeake and its tributaries. It is dated 1869.

Men employed on vessels fishing 12
Vessels employed 4
Men employed making guano 9
Fish taken 3,000,000
Oil made 200 bbls.
Guano made 300 tons

In 1873 Reed's factory on Point Pleasant burned. The next year he built another factory on another point on Cockrell's Creek on a spot where a windmill for grinding corn had been previously located. This location was known as Windmill Point. Later the village of Reedville grew up on this small peninsula.

By 1874 the manufacture of menhaden oil and guano had become identified as one of the important industries of this country. The annual yield of the menhaden oil now exceeded the whale oil (from American fisheries) by about 200,000 gallons.

By 1878 the menhaden industry of the Chesapeake area had grown considerably according to the government report of that year:

Men employed on vessels fishing 286
Vessels employed fishing 78
Men employed on shore 201
Fish taken 118,309,200
Gallons of oil made 234,168
Tons of guano 10,832

The next advancement in the industry came when steam cooking superseded the use of the kettles. The first steam factory in Virginia was built by Elijah Reed in 1879. The first fishing steamer used in the business in the Chesapeake, _Starry Banner_, was purchased by him in Rhode Island. This steamer's capacity was one hundred and fifty thousand fish.

The menhaden fishing industry continued to grow and to advance with the times. It brought prosperity to the lower Northern Neck. Reedville became an important menhaden fishing center and fishing port.

Eventually menhaden became the biggest fishery in America.

_THE OLD STONE PILE_

About 1868 the tower lighthouse on Smith Point was condemned by the government as unfit for use. At that time a new lighthouse of the screw pile type was built two and one-half miles offshore from Smith Point.

After the tower was condemned the keeper's house on the government reservation was rented to various tenants. In summer the Point became a social center for the neighborhood. Carriages, road-carts, and perhaps even ox-carts tied up at Tranquility, the nearest farmhouse, on a Sunday afternoon, and their occupants strolled up the beach with their picnic baskets.

The breakwater some distance out in the water from Smith Point was a favorite fishing spot, but the high point of any trip there in those days was a climb to the top of the condemned tower. The long, full skirts of the ladies of that era were hard to maneuver up the narrow spiral stairway.

The tower finally became too dangerous to enter. During an easterly storm in the spring of 1889 it crumbled in the night, so gently that the people living in the keeper's house didn't hear it fall.

The sandstone blocks lay there for many years and later generations knew them as "the old stone pile." Each year the sea took its toll of the Point until the land between the tower and the water, where "ten rows of corn" had once grown, finally disappeared completely. And then "the old stone pile" was swallowed by the persistent sea.

The keeper's house gradually deteriorated and then it too was claimed by the sea. For many years after, people of the region came at low tide and loaded their ox-carts and wagons with the stones and bricks. The stones were used for foundations of buildings and the bricks were used to line wells. Only the burial ground was left at Smith Point. There on the bank, "under the wide and starry sky," rest some of the early keepers of the light.

_KEEPERS OF THE LIGHT_

When the new lighthouse was built two-and-one-half miles offshore from Smith Point in 1868, it was manned by only two men. Shore leave or need for provisions meant a trip for one man in a small open sail boat, weather permitting, and a lonely watch for the man left behind.

If a keeper became ill he had to make out as best he could with a chest of medicine and a doctor's book. He had to be his own cook and housekeeper. Due to lack of refrigeration the lighthouse diet became monotonous, although seafood was a help. Kerosene for the lamps and firewood was brought by a lighthouse tender. The lonely keepers of the light often kept pets. Canaries and parrots made good companions, but dogs sickened and died.

The lighthouse keeper had to be a machinist, carpenter and painter, in order to keep the lighthouse in working order. Stamina was perhaps the quality most needed in a keeper of those days. The bell had to be wound up like a clock every half hour and kept ringing during storm and fog. There were instances when the keeper sometimes stayed awake for eight days and eight nights. But he kept the bell ringing, and without the aid of alcoholic drink.

A lighthouse keeper had to be a waterman, and that meant a man who had been born and bred in the region. Many lives were saved by these early lighthouse keepers. Winters were colder then. In those days the Bay often froze over like a mill-pond.

The winter of 1895 was a cold winter. The Bay was frozen, and, to make matters worse, in February there was a blizzard that went howling through the region of Smith Point. Both keepers were on duty that night when part of the ice started moving. They felt it hit the lighthouse and they loaded whatever they could find on a boat and somehow they got out alive. Before they started away the lighthouse had gone to pieces. They took turns pushing the boat over the ice toward land. That was a long two-and-a-half miles, but they made it.

They were welcomed by people on shore who waited, with lanterns, to serve them hot coffee and food. They had seen the light go out and had been anxiously waiting, as there was nothing that they could do to help. The lighthouse keepers were taken into warm homes that night. Later they found that the ice had carried the remains of the lighthouse six miles away from its foundation.

Years later one of the keepers who had been on Smith Point lighthouse that night said: "Things like that happened all the time then."

A light-ship was stationed at Smith Point until another lighthouse could be built. The new lighthouse was built on a cylindrical pier of metal. The tower was square and made of brick, with an octagonal dwelling. It was completed in 1897.

_THE HEADLESS DOG_

In those days between the end of the Civil War and the turn of the century, life in the Northern Neck still followed the old Southern pattern, but in a diminished way. War had destroyed all glamour and pared the design down to its skeleton. The planter had become a farmer, the mistress of the plantation a farmer's wife. An independent way of life remained, however. Each farm was a self-sustaining unit, though besides the occasional day hands there were usually only a colored girl who helped with the housework, laundry and dairy and a colored boy who tended the stock, did the chores and worked in the fields. The Boy and Girl, as they were always called, were regarded with affection, especially by the children.

"Evening-time," when work was over for the day, was something to be looked forward to by the children. They gobbled their suppers with a listening ear toward the soft murmur of voices in the kitchen, for they were anxious to hear the latest news about the Headless Dog, who prowled the by-roads, bottoms and graveyards of the Neck after dark.

As soon as permission was granted the youngsters to leave the supper table they would make a dash for the kitchen where the Boy and Girl sat at the big pine table lingering over their dessert. When pressed for the latest news of the Headless Dog they pretended an indifference and ignorance that was maddening. The children then began a breaking down process, made up of threats and cajolery, which they had cunningly developed from experience over a period of time.

Finally, the Boy would remember that he did "just catch a glimpse" of the Dog the night before when returning from the store. As he reached the bottom it seemed that the Dog appeared for an instant and faded before his eyes.

Bottoms, which were low places where creeks or ponds "made up" near the roads, seemed to be favorite haunts of the Headless Dog. This was possibly due to the mists which arose from the marshy places and made his appearances and disappearances quite easy, as well as dramatic.

Sometimes, when the Boy borrowed the horse and road-cart for a Sunday's visit to his people "up in the forest," he encountered the Dog near a graveyard. The sudden halt of the horse and the pointing of his ears were signals of the Dog's proximity. If you wished to see him, the certain way was to look at the space between the horse's ears, like sighting through a camera. You could always find him in that spot--"a great big dog with no haid a-tall." Further details as to the Dog's appearance were left to the imagination. When the horse lowered his ears and began to move cautiously forward, you knew that the Dog was continuing his journey to some other graveyard or bottom and it was safe to proceed.

The Boy's meetings with the Dog were much more exciting than the Girl's, maybe because she did not travel very much at night. Sometimes she would see him at the "edge of dark," usually just before or shortly after the death of some local person. Her stories were always gruesomely connected with death.

While these tales were spinning out in the kitchen where the fire burned low in the iron range, the children, who had heard them a hundred times before, huddled closer and closer together. Their eyes shone round and bright, and, if the flame of the lamp flickered, they jumped and drew away from dark corners. When the Girl had washed and dried the last dish and set the morning rolls to rise behind the stove, the Boy took his hat from its peg and prepared to depart for his nightly visit to the store.

Hours later the children, snug in their beds, were aroused by music. In that delicious stage between sleep and waking they lay half-dreaming and unaware that they were listening to some unwritten bars of a blues melody that were being created and lost to posterity on the still night air. They only knew that the perfect notes were being produced by the Boy on his jew's-harp and accompanied by the yeast powder bottles, mouth organs and guitars of his companions, the Nehemiahs, Daniels and Zechariahs of the neighboring farms. (Bible names were popular then.)

The children knew, too, that their friends were wending their leisurely way home from the store where the nightly session was over. Their interest was not in music, but in the hope that the Boy had met with adventure in that marshy, ferny and woodsy-smelling place known as the bottom.

The lower section of the Neck was evidently a favored land at that time. Besides being a hideout for the Headless Dog, a white mule and a Headless Man, it also furnished a routine route for another interesting Dog. This Dog had a head. Furthermore, the head was punctuated by glaring red eyes. According to good authority, he was as big as a calf, brown in color except about the mouth which was patched with gray. His neck was encircled with a chain which dragged on the ground and rattled as he moved. He was a methodical animal and traveled always at night, and only between Cockrell's Neck and Heathsville, and only before or after the death of some local person. Instead of appearing suddenly and fading out like the Headless Dog, he had a disconcerting habit of trailing moving vehicles.

After motor vehicles became numerous the Headless Dog was seen no more, but the Cockrell's Neck Dog was still seen occasionally for some time after that. His systematic ways probably kept him going longer. Some said that he was not brown but black, and if you struck at him with a whip it went clear through him.