Onancock: The Year One of Continued Prosperity on Eastern Shore.

(Special to The Times-Dispatch.)

ONANCOCK, ACCOMAC COUNTY, VA., December 31.

The year just closed has been one of continued prosperity for this section. Large yields and remunerative prices have, as a rule, prevailed. The receipts of this county for the year, from land and water, have been fully four million dollars.

A great deal of building has been done, probably than in any preceding year. Farms are being divided and sub-divided, and many comfortable homes erected. Every farmer is engaged in trucking. Much of the land is being sold to those who have heretofore been vendors, and the future promises that the tillers of the soil will become, to a large degree, the owners of the soil.

This town shows a marked advance. Among the many buildings erected is a handsome and commodious structure for the High School. The line of steamers to Baltimore have found it necessary to increase their wharf facilities.

The improvement in every section is general. Parksley, to a large increase in buildings, is adding an electric plant.

Experience having demonstrated that black peas and scarlet clover sowed in the fall or late summer are more valuable than the coat of pine shatters heretofore universally used for the coming crop of potatoes. Many are now selling the medium size pine timber for mine props in the coal fields. The cutting and shipping of this timber has become a business of large magnitude.

Interest in education is increasing. Several of the districts have increased their local taxation. Tangier Island, where thirty years ago only a small portion of the adults were able to read or write, now has a school building just completed, that cost $5,000, with a corps of four teachers. At least a third of the cost of the building was the voluntary contributions of the patrons.

For the first time since the organization of the county not a license to sell liquor is now in force.

The crops of both Irish and sweet potatoes in the county were the largest for many years. That of Irish potatoes amounts up to 300,000 barrels, and of sweets to 1,250,000 barrels. The Irish potato crop was unprofitable, the large yield in the South having broken prices when harvest time came for the Virginia Peninsula. The farmers, as a body, about even after marketing the crop, some few having a small balance to their credit.

What was lost, however, on round potatoes the good price obtained for sweets overbalanced. Sweets cleared one cent for every sprout set out the season through. They did not get below one dollar a barrel until after October 1st. Much of this was due to the proper distribution throughout the United States, made by the farmer's agency, the Eastern Shore of Virginia Produce Exchange. That exchange, by selling about half of the farm products, is enabled to scatter the yield so that no one market is overstocked and thus break prices.

The number of packages of strawberries, peas, onions and cabbage will count up to about 200,000.

The receipts from oysters, fish and clams was about $1,150,000, the largest ever known. The development of the shipments of shucked oysters from the planting section on the ocean side to the peninsula has been marvelous. Two cars are attached to the local express train every night to handle the receipts. Orders are received from over a greater part of the country. Chicago, Kansas City, Minneapolis, Omaha and many other large Western cities are large customers.