Peninsula Enterprise, December 22, 1894
Untitled
Natural resources -- Conservation - Game
The Eastern Shore Game Protective Association will hold their annual meeting at Drummondtown, on court day next. It is the regular meeting for the election of officers.
Untitled
Moral -- Other
A band of Gypsies has encamped on the premises of Mr. James Savage, near Savageville, and propose to make it their winter quarters. They are telling fortunes and taking in payment chickens, geese, &c., the colored people being for the most part their dupes and victims.
Untitled
Transportation -- Water - Steamboats
Mr. P. R. Clark, who has been the general agent for the Eastern Shore Steamboat Company for the past twenty-seven years, has resigned that position and has accepted the office of cashier and assistant to Vice-President Bond, of the Baltimore , Chesapeake and Atlantic Railway Company.
Untitled
Transportation -- Water - Steamboats
Mr. James E. Byrd, who for many years was the secretary and treasurer of the Maryland Steamboat Company, which was absorbed by the Baltimore, Chesapeake and Atlantic Railway Company, has been appointed assistant general manager of the new company. He entered upon the duties of his new office last Saturday.
Untitled
Sea -- Shellfish - Oystering : SeasideTransportation -- Water - FreightInfrastructure -- Commercial - GroceriesSea -- Shellfish - Oystering : Re-immersionMigrationInfrastructure -- Commercial - Insurance companies
Chincoteague.
Schooner Thomas Thomas was loaded this week with oysters for Fair Haven, Conn., and schooner J. G. Connor with like cargo for New York, and schooner Palestine for Morris river. Over 600 barrels were shipped on this day of writing.
Joseph G. Savage, Robert Scarborough and D. J. Whealton were here this week looking after their oyster interests. They say we send the finest and fattest oysters to that market, and the citizens there say they have never seen oysters of finer flavor.
William Scott has opened a grocery store on Assateague, the first store of that place.
Some of the leading oyster shippers of Franklin City were here this week to rent oyster boxes. They will drink their oysters here as they have not the convenience for doing so at home and oyster will not give satisfaction without it.
Our two steamers are making from five to six trips daily from this place to Franklin city, leaving as early as 4:42 a.m., and running until 7:30 p.m., which gives an opportunity for leaving and returning here nearly every hour in the day.
Capt. Odeal Clock, of Long Island; Thomas Adkins and family, and Mrs. Daniel Lewis, of Frankford, Del., have moved to this place.
Your Chincoteague correspondent last week gave a timely warning against life insurance frauds. The country is full of them, Three companies have exploded, sold out, and robbed this writer of policies amounting to $8,000, and cash dues of several hundred dollars all paid up faithfully to the last day. Another company swindled my father out of $1,800. Why don't the authorities stop and punish these criminals?
The Lynchites are all leaving us for Baltimore and we will soon be rid of the whole band.
Untitled
Migration
Onancock.
Capt. F. T. Boggs, formerly of Boggs wharf, now resides on Main street. Mr. N. W. Nock, custom-house officer, has moved here with his family and lives on Kerr street, Mr. Tindall, of Pungoteague, is now a citizen of the town too, and on King street, Onancock. We welcome all good citizens like these.
Untitled
Professionals -- SurveyorsInfrastructure -- Commercial - Real estate
Parksley.
D. F. White is surveying land in the neighborhood of New Church.
Mr. Z. William Mason, has bought the farm known as "Staunton" and "Staunton Woodland" from the Parksley Land & Improvement Company for the sum of nine hundred and fifty dollars.
Untitled
Transportation -- Road - MaintenanceInfrastructure -- Public : Schools
Sanford.
Our roads are in a better condition than they have been for a number of years.
The principal and assistant of Sanford Graded school say, they will not take any more pupils from Messongo school, and others need not apply.
Notice to Stockholders.
Infrastructure -- Commercial - Banks
The annual election of twelve Directors of the First National Bank, will take place on Tuesday, January 8th, 1895, between the hours of 10 a.m., and 4 p.m., at the Banking House in Onancock.
E. A. HERBST, Cashier.
Distressing accident.
Tourists and sportsmen -- Field sportsfield sports - Hunting : Personal injury
Earnest Guy, aged about 13 years, son of Mr. John W. Guy, near Melfa station, met with an accident on last Saturday which has resulted in the loss of his right hand. While out hunting his gun bursted in the attempt to discharge it, and his hand was so terribly lacerated that it had to be amputated on the following day. Two of the fingers were blown from the hand by the discharge and the balance of it was torn almost into shreds. Drs. Edward T. Mason and E. W. Robertson performed the operation, cutting it off just above the wrist. He was doing well when last heard from.
Of Interest to Our Farmers.
Farmers -- Innovation
MR. EDITOR:
Your late editorial urging upon the Eastern Shore the necessity for diversifying its crops, is so sensible it seems to me every farmer should paste it in his hat. No utterance of the ENTERPRISE has embodied more wisdom, or held out more timely and valuable admonitions. As a farming community, the outlook for our people is gradually growing worse from year to year. Our lands are steadily depreciating in quality and value, and our farmers drifting more hopelessly into debt. And yet we have a climate, soil and other natural advantages that should make the Eastern Shore farmer the most independent laborer on the face of the globe. We have no recurring famines, no destructive blizzards, no demolishing overflows. We have only to plant and cultivate to reap abundant harvests, and these of the most diversified varieties.
But the Eastern Shore farmer has become almost as much dependent of his pocket-book, or on his credit, for his meat, lard, butter, hay and corn, as he is for his coffee, sugar and clothing. He has apparently overlooked the fact that agricultural conditions have materially changed during the past few years. Farms that once yielded good crops of corn and fodder, with peas or beans in the hill, have been too long slighted and neglected to respond to the meagre attention now spared them. The farmer must now buy the provender and bacon he formerly raised at home, and the milk and butter his own dairy afforded, instead of having to spare for the country villager. And the worst of it is he realizes that, however unstable and uncertain may be the market-price for potatoes, these staple necessities maintain a standard price and are not subject to glut. The fact is simply, that he has followed the prevailing fashion of growing immense crops of potatoes, most of them necessarily latter, to the exclusion of other needful provisions which the potato-crop was to supply, and the failure of his one enterprise is the failure of his year's work. Worse than that, the experiment has brought him into debt.
Our farmers ought to remember, before planting another crop of sweet potatoes, that the time will never come back to us when the latter crop of sweet potatoes will pay for the cultivation. Time was when the Eastern Shore pretty nearly controlled the near-by markets. But potatoes are railed in too many contiguous localities now to leave us the contingency of a bare market. Our competitors have not yet learned to cope with us successfully in the early crop; it is the one single advantage that is left us. A gentleman recently told the writer he had raised this year on his farm in Caroline county, Va., three acres of as fine sweets as he ever saw. They only failed to compete with the Eastern Shore crop in point of time.
What then are we to do about sweets as a crop -- reject them entirely? Not at all. The fact remains that we have certain natural advantages of climate and soil that settle the choice for us in favor of the sweet, and will do so for years to come. But the logic of the situation at the same time circumscribes the limits of this choice. There is no reason why we should lose the little advantage we have by attempting to compete with all our neighbors in a glutted market. Let us be wise enough to know when to begin and when to stop.
The writer at some pains has been enabled to estimate the average Accomac crop at 70,000 sprouts to the farm. Suppose that the amount of manure, labor and care expended on the 70,000 was concentrated on 35,000; would not the half yield in income more that double the whole? This is a problem in agricultural arithmetic I will leave for the Eastern Shore farmers to ponder on by his winter fire-side before he lays his plans for the spring-time planting. But if he must pay $2.50 or $3 for his corn, $20 for his hay, 12 and a half cents for his bacon and lard and 20 cents for his butter, it might be well to let all that into the calculation. The inevitable balance sheet might not be so surprising and discouraging at the end of another year. With so much waste lands, so kind to clover, timothy and the several new fangled grasses, it does seem to be a pity and shame that so much of our scanty currency should go North every year, not only for provender, but for that which pasture provides.
G. W. L.
Untitled
Farmers -- Innovation
An article in this issue under the caption "of interest to our farmers" should be read carefully by all of them, and everyone of them will, in our opinion, act wisely who profits by the suggestions therein contained. No one will read the article and attempt to question the soundness of the writer. It is such a plain, practical, common sense production that no one could disparage the views of the writer if he challenged them. That farming as conducted by many of our farmers at present does not pay, is a proposition that will be accepted without dissent -- how to make it pay is the question, which the article clearly and forcibly answers. Intelligent farming we believe, always pays with us, but it consists, as clearly pointed out by the writer, in not planting one crop, however well our soil and climate may be adapted to it, to the exclusion of every other crop. "Do not carry all your eggs to market in one basket" is a homely adage, but it teaches an important lesson which our farmers cannot learn too soon. We must diversify our crops -- we cannot afford to buy longer from abroad many things which we can raise better at home, of better quality and at comparatively a small expense. The necessity of a change in our methods of farming, as urged by the writer for this paper, commends itself not only to our reason, but is in line with the spirit of progress elsewhere throughout the South. Cotton is the principal crop there, but the extract below from the Savannah News, indicates that the farmers of the Empire State have made the mistake in raising cotton and rice which we have made in planting potatoes to the exclusion of other crops. That paper says in a late issue: "The greatest expense on a farm is the feed bill for men and animals, and when the South produces its own corn and meat the profits of middle-men and the cost of transportation provisions from the West will be added to the profits of Southern farmers. What then remains above the cost of production of the amount received for the cotton, rice and tobacco crops will be profit, and will not have to go to pay provision bills." Good farming, with us as with them, consists in adapting ourselves to the changed condition of things, and the sooner the fact is realized and the course laid down by the writer for this paper and endorsed by the Savannah Times is followed by our farmers the better off and more independent they will be.