|
 |
Norfolk Highlights 1584 - 1881
By George Holbert Tucker
Chapter 14
George Washington in Norfolk
George Washington visited the Norfolk area many times, but according
to historical evidence he was in Norfolk proper on only two occassions.
The initial visit was on May 25, 1763, when the thirty-one-year-old
Washington was on his way to visit the Dismal Swamp for the first time.
The second was on May 28-29, 1763, when he was on his way back to Mount
Vernon.
Washington first passed through the Norfolk area late in 1751, when
he sailed with Lawrence Washington, his half brother, out of the Virginia
Capes for the Barbadoes. After returning by the same route a few months
later, he was absent from the Norfolk area until 1763, when he became
interested in the Dismal Swamp as a money-making proposition.
Washington, along with five others, had formed a company known as "Adventurers
for the Draining of the Great Dismal Swamp." The company had acquired
about forty thousand acres of rich timberland in the swamp, and Washington,
as manager of the company, visited the swamp to gain firsthand information
about it.
Leaving Mount Vernon on May 16, 1763, Washington set out for Williamsburg
to attend an extra session of the House of Burgesses. On Wednesday,
May 25, 1763, according to his carefully kept expense accounts, he set
out on horseback down the Virginia Peninsula for Hampton, where he paid
one shilling, five pence to be ferried over to Norfolk. Arriving there,
Washington took another ferry to Portsmouth, paying one shilling, six
pence for his fare, and proceeded to Colonel Edward Riddick's plantation
in Nansemond County, from which he set out to explore the Great Dismal,
which he described as "a glorious paradise."
On Saturday, May 28, 1763, he arrived at Great Bridge in Norfolk County,
from where he rode into Norfolk and stayed overnight at a tavern kept
by John Reinsburg, paying him one pound, seventeen shillings, and six
pence for board, lodging, and horse hire. Tradition says that since
Washington was in Norfolk on a Sunday, he attended Morning Prayer at
the Borough Church, now St. Paul's Episcopal Church. But there is no
contemporary evidence that he did so.
After taking a ferry for Hampton on Sunday, May 29, Washington rode
back to Mount Vernon by way of Williamsburg.
Washington is known to have made at least five other visits to his
lands in the Dismal Swamp, but there is no record that he ever passed
through Norfolk again. Records indicate that he used Suffolk as a base
from then on because of its closer proximity to the swamp. But when
Washington wanted his Dismal Swamp holdings charted, he entrusted the
survey to Gershom Nimmo (? -1764), the surveyor of Norfolk County, whose
map, dated "Norfolk, 20 November 1763," has been preserved.
This chart includes the earliest known map of Lake Drummond.
Two other Norfolk-area Washington associations deserve mention.
On September 18, 1781, a month before the British troops under Lord
Cornwallis laid down their arms at Yorktown while the bands played "The
World Turned Upside Down," Washington, accompanied by members of
his staff and several French officers, dined and held a council of war
with Admiral Compte Francois Joseph Paul de Grasse aboard his flagship,
the Ville de Paris, off Cape Henry. When six-foot Washington came aboard
and was hugged around the middle by De Grasse, a short, stocky man,
and was addressed as "Mon petit general!" everyone laughed
heartily, launching the conference on a merry note.
The other incident took place in Norfolk on February 22, 1800, two
months after Washington's death. On that occasion, thousands of Norfolk-area
citizens, wearing deep mourning, marched to dirgelike music behind an
empty black coffin to what is now St. Paul's Episcopal Church for a
solemn funeral service, minus the corpse, in memory of the recently
departed Father of His Country.
 Chapter
15
Streets Where History Walked
|
