My Dad was visiting from Florida last week and we took the opportunity to take a field trip to Surry County, Virginia where my grandmother grew up and our people have lived since 1618 well before it became a County in 1652. Accompanied by my wife and sister, we took the Jamestown-Scotland Ferry[1], which is a vehicle boarded ferry that runs between Jamestown and Surry County. The ride takes 15 minutes or so and you can move about the deck and take in the views. It passes Jamestown Settlement, which is the location of the first permanent English settlement in the New World in 1607. I was fortunate to grow up in nearby Yorktown and have visited Jamestown several times – most recently last fall.
After a delicious lunch at Surry Seafood Company, our first stop was at my great-grandparent’s farm, which is on Rt. 10 in Surry County near Alliance. It was sold out of our family in 1973 when my great-grandmother died, but in one of those “it’s a small world” connections, my brother-in-law and nephews belong to a hunt club in Surry County that rents a house to meet in and it happens to be the same house. It was interesting to walk around and listen to my dad talk about how much he loved visiting his grandparents there as a child. I also remember visiting as a child as my great-grandmother died when I was nine years old.
Dad recently told me a story about visiting the farm when he was about 12 years old. One morning his grandfather said to him “Come on Frank, we have to bury a mule.” He recounted that his grandfather had placed a dead mule up by the road to be picked up by the County, but that they had not come and the mule had been out there for a couple of days. His grandfather tied the mule to a tractor and dragged it from the road to a partially dug hole out back. They shoveled awhile to get the hole big enough for the animal and at some point his grandfather said, “That’s enough Frank.” Dad said that he could see that the hole wasn’t big enough but stayed quiet about it. His grandfather tractor dragged the mule over the hole to drop him in and he landed legs up. I asked my dad how much of the legs were sticking up out of the hole. His reply – two to three feet! Can you guess what happened next?
His grandfather told him “Don’t worry about it Frank. Go and get me a saw from the barn.” Oh yeah it was about to get real. His grandfather spent the next 10 or 15 minutes sawing that dead mule’s legs off. When he completed the task at hand, he tossed them in and they filled in the hole, which resulted in a mound of dirt. So, his grandfather ran the tractor over it a few times to sort of flatten everything down. I asked my dad about what he thought about it and he said, “Well, that’s just country life.”
After visiting my great-grandparents farm, we traveled up the road a few miles to Oak Grove Methodist Church Cemetery to pay our respects to my grandparents, my Rowell great grandparents, my 2x Edwards great-grandparents and a few other Rowell and Berryman relatives interred there.
My dad recently remembered a story from his childhood in the late 1940s or early 1950s about visiting this same cemetery. He said that enjoyed going with my great-grandparents and other Surry relatives on Sunday afternoons to visit cemeteries including Oak Grove. My great-grandparents would load their hardback kitchen chairs into the bed of an old pickup truck, which my great-grandfather would drive very slowly from cemetery to cemetery to visit the graves of their loved ones. Dad said that he particularly enjoyed the large glass of sweet tea he got to take for the road. Do you visit cemeteries to visit loved ones or just to wonder around? I love cemeteries for genealogical reasons, but also they are peaceful, interesting and great for photography. The first funeral I attended was my great-grandfather Rowell’s in February 1968 was at this church.
Our final stop of the day was at Arthur Allen’s Brick House, which was built in 1665. Arthur Allen (1608-1669) was my 10x great grandfather. Born in Worcestershire, England about 1608, Allen first came to Virginia during the 1640s as an agent representing tobacco merchants from Bristol, England. By 1649, he had settled between Lawnes and Chippokes Creeks in what was then James City County. In 1652, the portion of the county on the southside of the James River became Surry County. Arthur Allen was appointed to the local Court and was also a Lawnes Creek parish vestryman. By the 1660s, Arthur Allen, had managed to acquire more than 2,000 acres and decided to build a house.[3] Not just any house, but a three-story, 5,000 square foot, brick house – in 1665. The bricks, mortar and lumber all were produced locally. And 357 years later it’s still standing – a part of the portfolio of historic properties maintained by Preservation Virginia – and operating as a museum.
Arthur Allen I died in 1669 and the house was inherited by his son Arthur Allen II. The house later became known as Bacon’s Castle[4], after Nathaniel Bacon, who led hundreds of Virginia colonists in a 1676-1677 rebellion against the Virginia Government of Sir William Berkeley. While Bacon is not known to have occupied the house, some 70 of his supporters did so for four months in 1676. Among the leaders of the Surry rebels that occupied the house was my 9x great-grandfather Arthur Long – son-in-law of Arthur Allen I. My 7x great-grandfathers, Samuel Judkins and Samuel Plaw and my 8x great-grandfather Edward Pettway were also among the Surry rebels.
You can read about those interesting events in an upcoming blog post from A Son of Virginia!
[1] Jamestown-Scotland Ferry – Travel | Virginia Department of Transportation (virginiadot.org)
[2] Oak Grove United Methodist Church Cemetery in Surry, Virginia – Find a Grave Cemetery
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