Life on Chincoteague, Part 2
THE CHINCOTEAGUE SMUGGLER.
It is scarce necessary to say that the Chincoteaguer of the present day would not smuggle -- at least nothing worse than a few sloop and schooner loads of seed oysters from North Carolina water, contrary to the law in such case made and provided. Besides, he couldn't if he wanted to, for the reason that there is a Custom House on the island, and the Collector would seize the smuggling craft if he knew anything about it. But in the old days long ago the Custom House was over on the Chesapeake side of the peninsula, and things were different. The Chincoteaguer was not rich enough to own a whole sloop, but he had an interest in one now and then, and commanded her. He knew every inch of water along this much indented coast, and in handling sloops he had no superior. Besides, no sharper, swifter sloops were ever built for merchant service than those launched on the Chesapeake Bay. Loading his craft with hoop poles, staves, and shingles, the Chincoteague skipper sailed away for Matansas, or Santiago, or Jamaica, and after a while came back, and running into some inlet, tarried there for a night or two or three, and then came up to the bay here, and anchoring near the mainland went off to the Custom House and reported his return "in ballast." The collector always came over and examined the sloop, poked his cane into the sand ballast, which to any other eyes might have looked suspiciously fresh, drank freely from a bottle of superior rum, smoked excellent cigars, and went away. Then the Chincoteague skipper went back to his inlet for a night or two or three after which he loaded oysters in bulk for New York or Philadelphia. Oysters in those days covered a multitude of rum barrels and the old Chincoteaguer chuckles to this day as he tells of outwitted customs officials.
CHINCOTEAGUE WAS LOYAL.
When the stranger comes to Chincoteague and makes the acquaintance of such typical old natives as J. A. M. Whealton, Martin G. Connor, and Uncle Ken Jester, the first thing they will say to him is that their ancestors lived on the island before the independence of the United States, and fought in the war of the Revolution for American freedom. J. A. M. Whealton's father, Joshua, and his Uncle Daniel were wounded in battle then; Connor's father was taken from his sloop by a British press gang, served three years on a British man-o-war, and then escaped to fight with Washington. Uncle Ken's father, John, was in a Virginia regiment. In all a dozen or more men, about half the voting population of the island at the time, were in the American service. The traditions of their deeds, told over and over, made the Chincoteaguers revere the old flag as few others in the South did. Then, too, the Chincoteaguers were oystermen and coasting sailors rather than farmers, and traded to New York and Philadelphia for their merchandise, which they bought with oysters. Their only business interest with the State of which they were a part was through the sale of ponies, while of sentimental interest there was little or none.
When the ordinance of secession passed at Richmond, was sent to the people for ratification, Chincoteague turned out to a man to vote, and every man save one, Joseph Hill by name, voted against the ordinance. J. A. M. Whealton, as Justice of the Peace, kept the registry of the votes, and was right glad he had preserved them before three months had passed.
Having voted to stay in the Union, the Chincoteaguers hoisted the American flag to a pole 110 feet high that had been erected in honor of Bell and Everett. The peninsula was overwhelmingly rebel, the flag was seen from the mainland, and a committee came over and warned the Chincoteaguers that the "Yankee flag" must come down or the terrors of war would burst over the island. Justice of the Peace Whealton, as the leading citizen, heard the spokesman of the committee with gravity, and then, stroking his long beard, said:
"Gentlemen, Jinkatig did not secede. We hoisted that flag and it don't come down 'less we go down with it, but so long as we have a dram of powder and an ounce of lead and are able to use them thah the flag stays."
And there it did stay, and there was never an hour when the American flag could not be seen there until after Lee surrendered.
Meantime forty-eight men from the island fought for Uncle Sam -- a larger proportion of the male population than any other Northern State sent to the war. The islanders had a deal of trouble about supplies at first for they were beset by the rebels on shore and the Federal cruisers at sea, but Justice of the Peace Whealton, as the capitalist of the island, sent George W. P. Smith with the registry of votes on the secession ordinance to Washington, and he brought back permits signed by A. Lincoln for fourteen Chincoteague vessels to trade to New York and Philadelphia. Then the steamer Louisiana came and anchored in the bay to keep off the rebels, and Gen. Lockwood came down and occupied the peninsula with Union forces, and thereafter peace reigned, high prices for oysters prevailed, and the Chincoteaguers drank whiskey and danced with a vigor and frequency unknown before.
CHINCOTEAGUE PIETY.
It should not be supposed that because the Chincoteaguer got hilarious at the oyster roasts he was irreligious. From time out of mind the Methodists and Baptists have counted many Chincoteaguers among their numbers, and every year the presiding elder of the Methodist district came over with two or three evangelists and a host of mainland citizens and held a camp meeting. No better place for a camp meeting than a pine-covered ridge on Chincoteague could be asked for. The sand, carpeted with pine needles, made a perfect woodland floor. The boughs of the trees interlacing over head made such domes and archways as no cathedral ever boasted, and shut out the sun and softened its rays till twilight prevailed at noonday. The wind sighed through the forest in dirges. At night the dark vaults were lighted up by huge fires of pitchy pine.
Standing there while the lurid flames dared up till the ghostly limbs above appeared and then died away till all was dim and uncertain, only to blaze again, the evangelist in solemn voice, portrayed the terrors of hell until, wrought up by their superstitions, the audience swayed to and fro and wept and shrieked in a wild delirium.
Then, when the excitement rose to a dangerous point, the skilful preacher, to change the mood, started some old chorus like "No man shall hindah me, for I love Jesus," or "We are going home to die no moah," and thereupon with shouts of "Glory" the whole throng rose and sang til the arches rang to their voices. There was no doubting the Chincoteaguer's religious enthusiasm while it lasted.
Three years ago the influx of mainland church people had become so great that the natives were far outnumbered, and then a wave of prohibition sentiment swept from the shore out across the bay. The church people united, speakers were brought over from the mainland, meetings were held by night in the churches, and parades by day in the streets. Numbers of oystermen who had squandered their money in liquor repented, and told over and over again how mean and wicked they had been and how good they had become since they stopped drinking, and thanked God amid a chorus of amens that they were not as bad as some other folks. Then an election was held under the local option law of the State and Chincoteague cast 38 votes in favor of licensing liquor dealers to about 300 against it.
A most interesting old native is Kendal Jester. For no one knows how many years Uncle Ken has met the stranger who visits the island with one set of expressions. He introduced himself to me as he has done to every other visitor:
"My name's Kennaljester."
"Glad to meet you, sir."
"I drinks a little whiskey, sometimes."
"Indeed! Will you have some now?"
"Reckon. Doctor says gots drink quart 'er days keep away bilious -- drink quart in pint -- never have bilious."
And he does it. He has no trouble getting it. He came down the other day to celebrate his seventy-fifth birthday. By noon he had taken his daily allowance and concluded to carry a bottle home to his wife so she could help celebrate. But he was driving a half wit pony, and in his exuberance of youthful spirits Uncle Ken dropped the reins as he started away, that he might drink the health of a friend who happened along. Thereupon the pony ran away up the street, with Uncle Ken sitting bolt upright, whooping like a boy at a baseball match, and having almost as much fun as he did at oyster roasts in his youth. People expected to see him tipped out and killed, but when the pony had kicked the thills and dashboard to pieces it got away, was captured again, and Uncle Ken mounted and rode home bareback in triumph. If there is any place where prohibition does not prohibit it is on Chincoteague, the overwhelming vote in its favor to the contrary notwithstanding.
THE FIRST GRAVEYARD.
In many rural communities the dead are buried in sequestered spots on the farms on which they have died. In Chincoteague a public cemetery was provided. Winding along between two spacious glades is the backbone of the island, known to the natives as Rattle-snake Ridge. It terminates at the lower end in a sandy bluff that is perhaps the highest land of either Assateague or Chincoteague. Barren of trees and covered only with sparse wiry grass, it is about as desolate a spot as ever overlooked the sea. Here for 200 years the dead of Chincoteague were buried. Figureheads and other carved timbers from the wreckage that sometimes washed ashore often served in place of tombstones, but at other times plain boards or uncarved stones were used. A more appropriate burial place for the rude and uncouth old native of Chincoteague could scarcely be found. But the wind and the ceaseless roll of the sea have well nigh obliterated the old graveyard, laying bare many an old skeleton as they tore the sand away, while the influx of new peoples, who have brought new ideas and new wealth, will soon, with time's aid, obliterate the native Chincoteaguer.
THE NEW POPULATION.
The immigrants, or new Chincoteaguers, are not like the natives. Most of them are from New Jersey and Maryland and a few from Long Island. They were attracted here by the oysters, and they have come in such numbers that they dominate the community. And yet, although not to such manners born, they build little homes much like those the Chincoteaguers live in, and fall into Chincoteague habits of dress and food to a curious extent, and only when the oyster business has tonged and dredged out a fortune, and they have got too old to fully appreciate a different manner of life do they try to adopt anything better. That the immigrants come here expecting to make the island a temporary home, to be abandoned for the old home when enough money has been accumulated, is plain from the condition of Chincoteague village. The narrow and unkempt streets and the little ill-kept homes are those of the temporary sojourners. Yet, even if the home should be a temporary one, it is all but incredible that people should be so careless of the simplest sanitary laws. Not only are the kitchen slops and garbage thrown into the streets or on the sandy lots, as already told, but there is a cesspool in every yard and in half the yards wells for drinking water. These wells are nowhere to exceed ten feet deep, and many are but six. They are often less than two rods from cesspools. The deaths numbered 43 last year out of a population of 2,300. Parts of the town are too new to have as yet become very unhealthy.
There were 450 voters at the last election, of whom 80 were Mahone Republicans: of 55 colored men, 40 were Republicans. There are three schoolhouses, for which seven teachers are employed at an annual expense of $3,000. The money paid to Chincoteaguers who man the life-saving stations, the lighthouses, the lightship, the Custom House, and the Post Office amounts to over $22,000 a year.
The people live well in the village when they wish to do so. Roast beef of good quality sells for eight cents a pound, and most food products at equally low rates. There is no printed bill of fare at the Atlantic Hotel, but George the colored lad of 12, who is head waiter and staff in one, stacks up about each plate the following or an equivalent, for breakfast, which is the lightest meal: Ham and eggs, beefsteak, broiled yellow legs, fried oysters, fried shad, poached eggs, biscuit, light bread, cream toast, canned peaches, sweet milk, and coffee. Griddle cakes hot off the range are served at short intervals during the meal. The butter is good and yellow unlike Southern butter commonly. The guest who does not make a square meal cannot blame the hotel.
CHINCOTEAGUE CRIME.
There is no jail on the island, nor is there much use for one. Not until August, 1886, was anyone murdered on the island so far as any one knows. Theft is unknown. During the summer of 1886 William Freeman, a young man of 25, was employed on the farm of Timothy Hill, formerly a Cape Cod man, and probably the wealthiest man on the island. Freeman fell in love with Jennie, the 18-year-old daughter of his employer. Jennie did not discourage his suit, but when the old folks learned of it they shut off his flow of sentiment harshly. Freeman grieved over this day and night, but was not the sort of a fellow to carry his sweetheart into a flying bateau some windy night and sail for the mainland and a parson, as many a better man has done, but he grew desperate, and finally went hunting Bill Bunting of whom he was jealous. Failing to find him, he went to the home of the girl next day, and found her there with her mother. He carried a gun and a revolver, and without parley opened fire. Both women ran out of doors with Freeman after them, firing as he ran. The girl fell dead and the mother received two bullets in her body. At that a brother of the girl's came running from a neighbor's. Seeing him, young Freeman put the revolver to his own forehead and blew his life out with the last cartridge in the revolver. The mother recovered.
There was another homicide a year ago last summer. George Lewis, mate of the Winter Quarter Shoal lightship met William C. Dryden, an oysterman in the village here, and got to arguing in the presence of others about the depth of water at a certain stage of the tide at a certain place of the beach. From argument they went to insults, then to blows, and then to weapons. Dryden was the quicker and stabbed Lewis so that he died. Dryden was arrested, had a hearing before the magistrate, and was sent to the county jail to await the course of the law. He escaped from the jail and is now at large. He is known to be living in Delaware the people say, but Lewis had no relatives to push the matter, and the State authorities never offered any reward, and so no effort has ever been made to bring him to justice.
OYSTERS.
The bay in which Chincoteague lies is one vast oysterbed. A part of the bay is a natural bed, but every available foot is now taken up and planted. Of the value of this industry to Chincoteague, some idea may be formed when it is known that up to April 1 this season 43,501 barrels of oysters and clams had been shipped by rail, via the Widgeon, to Northern cities, and that by the end of the season few short of 50,000 will have gone forward. They have roughly an average of $4 a barrel, or $200,000 cold cash, to a community of 450 voters. Besides these, many were shipped North by sloop and schooner in cold weather. The estimated number varies from 20,000 to 30,000 barrels. They lower estimate being made by the railroad men. It is fair to suppose that 20,000 barrels went by water. The heaviest shippers forwarded from 2,000 to 7,000, and took in from $20,000 to $28,000 each. It is asserted by the oystermen themselves that after allowing for every expense oysters cost the planter a dollar a barrel. Some three or four planters have therefore received incomes of $10,000 to $20,000 each bed the past season.
The majority of the men on the island, however, are laborers, and the few capitalists reap the harvest. The beds are planted with seed oysters gathered from natural beds down along [North]Hampton county, from James River and Chesapeake Bay, and from Albemarle Sound. The seed oysters cost from six to ten cents a bushel at the natural beds, and a regular fleet of sloops and schooners is now employed bringing them here and selling them at from twelve to sixteen cents a bushel. From 500 to 800 bushels are spread over an acre of land under water, and since the bay is for the most part shoal three to eight feet deep and the bottom good, a vast territory is covered. The oysters are left down until the second season to grow and so each planter tongs up the oysters on but half his area every year. The yield this year has been excellent. Thus a man who planted 1,800 bushels of seed on a three-acre patch tonged up 2,800 bushels, which he sold for $3,300 net, making a clear gain of $1,100 per acre. The produce from an acre of dry land on Chincoteague could, perhaps, be sold for $50 net, that being the profit made on sweet potatoes on like land on the peninsula.
OYSTER BOATS.
The difference between tools used by men in the same occupation at different points along the Atlantic coast is interesting. On Long Island the oystermen use a round-nosed yawl rigged with a single spritsail when gathering oysters. On Chincoteague they use a scow, and it is what might be called a cat yawl in rig. There is a sail forward that is of the shape of a catboat sail, though spread with boom and sprit, instead of boom and gaff. The mainsail is a leg of mutton. A fifty-foot boat in the seed oyster trade has the same rig with a rib added. The size of her sail is simply enormous, and the oystermen "carry on" like Captains of clipper ships. But the rig is very safe, for in case of a squall down comes the big foresail, and there the boat lies with the leg o' mutton to keep her head to the wind. The Long Islanders' yawl costs $100; the Chincoteaguer's scow $50.
The men who work on the beds as laborers are paid from 10 cents a bushel when tonging on unworked beds in September, to 40 cents a bushel when scraping the gleanings off in May. They make all the way from $2 to $4 a day. With the wintry wind howling over the bay, and the salt water skimming over with ice in the bottom of the boat, they earn all they get. It is a hard life, but a man with energy and ambition can become a capitalist and get into business for himself more readily than in any occupation where so little training is necessary to acquire skill needed as in this.
CHINCOTEAGUE WILD FOWL.
The readers of THE SUN who are interested in forest and stream, and so read the reports from game resorts, have very often seen the name of Chincoteague. In the seasons Chincoteague furnishes rare sport for the few who come to it. The bay, the glades, and the marshes afford feeding and nesting land for untold millions of wild fowl while the flight of shore birds and snipe are at times wonderful. The yellow legs have been flying for two weeks, and English snipe for over a week. By the time this article is in print the season for shore birds will be fairly open. On a cloudy day, with a good stiff southwest wind the Chincoteague gunner digs a hole in a sand hill over on Assateague or at the southern end of Chincoteague, and, setting up his decoys, sits down and whistles. His tune is not from an opera either comic or serious though it is the prelude to a tragedy. He mimics the cry of the willett and the curlew, and the neighborly flocks above, seeing a flock on the sand, are deceived by the cry and down they swing and flutter til bunched just above the decoys. Then the gunner turns loose the blasts of powder and shot right and left, killing sometimes dozens with a single charge, while the rest go screaming away.
After June, when the shore bird flight is over -- indeed, before it is over, the weakfish begin to bite in the bay, and later, the bluefish off shore, and later still, a few striped bass may be had in the natural ditches through the marshes. But the chief fish is the weakfish, and they are taken on hook and line by the hundred an hour.
But the glory of Chincoteague as a sportsman's resort begins in November. The storms of fall have by that time driven the wild fowl thus far on their journey south. Then the Chincoteaguer scours up his old rusty shotgun, daubs fresh paint on his home-made decoys, draws on double flannels, and rowing out on the shoals where the water is 24 to 30 inches deep, sticks a lot of fresh-cut brush up in the mud so that a little grove large enough to conceal him and his little skiff is made. Then he spreads out his decoys, goes back to his blind, and lies down and waits. It is a warm, bright day when all wild fowl does not come to him who waits. Redheads, black ducks, mallards -- all sorts of ducks and geese and brant as well -- come to the decoys, though canvasbacks are very scarce. Sink boxes or batteries are also used. W. D. Sharpley, Jack Snead, and Capt. Pruitt of the Widgeon stand at the head of the local gunners. Although a few men come here from Philadelphia and Wilmington, there is no such thing as a club house on the bay, and few sportsmen seem to realize what a resort this is for wild fowl.
Wallop's Island, below Chincoteague, has recently been purchased by a club of gentlemen at Pottsville, Pa., of which O. Beecher of Pine Grove[, Pa.] and W. K. Woodbury of Pottsville are leading members. They gave $8,000 for the island, which is about seven miles long and nearly a mile wide. They have built a pier and wharf at an expense of $5,000 and William Conant of Chincoteague has a contract for building an $8,000 club house this summer. The island is a delightful place. The surf does not roll on a finer beach anywhere than at Wallop's Island.
The presence of this club will serve to quicken the game constables to a sense of duty and stop the unlawful practice now prevalent of shooting wild fowl at night by jack light.
An interesting feature of Chincoteague is the presence of great numbers of tamed wild geese. When the Chincoteaguer wings a wild goose he saves it alive if he can. His flock is very often added to in another way. Seeing and hearing the tamed geese the wild fellows often come down to them and make friends as well as to enter coops where feed is provided generously when such visitors are expected. The wild goose thinks that is the greatest luck he ever did see, and concludes he will stay there all night. Before morning his wings have been clipped and he stays longer. Meantime the food has been so good he does not care very much about going away anyhow, and so there he stays till old age or a Christmas dinner carries him off. Flocks of from thirty to fifty exist here. The wild ones cross with the tame. The hybrids are called mungrums by the natives and are valued highly because a mungrum yields three times the weight of feathers that a tame goose does and twice the weight of a wild one. The hybrids lay eggs, but the eggs will not hatch.
CHINCOTEAGUE'S TIDAL WAVE.
When the Chincoteaguer grows lugubrious and the world seems turned against him, and he has but one friend who is a stranger willing to listen, the tale of a great storm is told. It was long ago in 1821 -- when the houses were few and small, that the storm came on. The clouds off to southard gathered thick and black one morning, the wind fell, the air grew oppressive, and as the day wore away the silence and gloom and the sky off to the sea became terrifying. The gulls and the wild fowl took alarm and fled to the glades, where all night long their cries were heard; but when day broke every sound died out. Then the people with ghastly fear saw that the sea had receded for miles off shore. They were not kept long in suspense. While they stood looking a vast cloud of water and wind was hurled in from the sea. The pines of Assateague, the water in the marshes, and everything in its path on Chincoteague were swept up and carried away no one knows where. Then a roar as of thunder was heard seaward by those who remained, and the sea, in a wave higher then the sandhills and higher than the trees that had covered them, came foaming in over its bed, over the beach, over the hills, over the marshes, across the bay and far up on the sloping ground of the mainland miles away. How many were lost and where the bones of the dead found resting place no one knows but the story of two marvelous escapes is told by those whose houses stood at the north end of the island out of the track of tornado and wave. Old man Hickman gathered his little grandson in his arms as the wind storm came. The walls and roof of the house fled away with the wind, leaving the two unharmed. Then came the deluge and unconsciousness, and when the wind resumed its sway the old man, with the boy still in his arms and safe, was lying in the brush on King's Bush Marsh on the mainland a mile inshore from the bay. A man named Andreas, with his family of a wife and eight or nine children, was carried off by the wave. The neighbors found Andreas some hours later hanging by his belt in a tree 20 feet above the ground half a mile from where he started. His family were never heard from. Chincoteague lies just awash. When another such storm comes more than 2,000 people will be found in the path of the tidal wave.
YOUNGISH OLD FOLKS.
The aged Chincoteaguer is proud of the fact that he is spry. Uncle Ken Jester, who celebrated his 75th birthday in the lively manner already described, is a fair sample of a number of others. He will break the wildest pony, scull a bateau when common men would fear the sea and dance at an oyster roast with a vigor that takes the shine off of many a younger blood. Martin G. Connor is another young man of the same age. The Birch family has four boys in it whose ages are 62, 67, 76, and 79. They have no notion of giving up the oyster business for twenty years yet, anyhow. Their sister, Mrs. Eliza Thornton, at 72, is as spry as they are. Another sister, Mrs. Mary Watson, met an untimely death recently at the age of 83. David and Isaac Daisey are, at 75 and 78 respectively, able to do a good day's work, as a day's work is counted in this easy-going climate. People will be surprised if the two do not live to be as old as their mother, who died at 93. More than a score of people on the island are nearer 70 than 60, though not yet 70. And all this in a community of 450 voters. Nor is account taken of three or four colored people whose ages are uncertain.