Letter from Eastville, Va.
Eastville, Va., March 13, 1906.
Messrs. Longnecker Bros. -- Dear Sirs: -- I have been at this place for several days and find it is a great Irish potato-growing section. Everybody who has land plants them -- it is the main crop. As one person expressed it, "they plant potatoes everywhere, even in the back yard." Eastville is the county seat of Northampton county and is on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. Every two months they have "Court Day," the court holding sessions and farmers from all over the county drive to town. Those who have no court business come to see the others, and it is a great day with all, several hundred being here during the day. Yesterday was one of these days. It is similar to a farmers' picnic. They meet and talk and transact business among themselves, have dinner at the hotel, which is run without a liquor license, and last year the proprietor cleared a thousand dollars, showing that the country don't go to the dogs where they get rid of the licensed liquor business. Both Accomack and Northampton counties are "dry" except Cape Charles City and that will take a quiet, peaceable attitude on April 1st next, as the people have voted it "dry" also.
The sentiment in Pocomoke City and throughout Worcester county, is strong against the license business and as this is the only Eastern Shore county in the State that has license, the belief is that the advocates of no license are going to win. The hotel proprietor at Pocomoke told me that when they took his license away he was going out on his farm to live. I said to him: "I hope they will soon put you out there."
The editor of the Eastern Shore Herald, at Eastville, Va., Mr. T.B. Robertson , is anxious to get a canning establishment started in this section to pack sweet potatoes. Those interested in canning should write him for particulars as I believe such a proposition would pay. They know how to grow sweet potatoes and have to store them to keep them so that a cannery could be run for a good many months in the year, perhaps all the year. Accomack county grows many hundreds of thousands of bushels annually. Many farmers grow 40 to 75 acres of late sweet and Irish potatoes.
Eastville is a very old town, it being known in history as far back as 1660. It is close to both the Chesapeake bay and Atlantic ocean and almost opposite to Jamestown, just across the bay.
The Jamestown Centennial Exposition, to come off next year, is being largely advertised. It is to celebrate the three hundredth anniversary of the settling of American by the English people at Jamestown, and promises to be a big affair. The exposition will be held below Norfolk, the grounds and buildings being now prepared. Congress will make the necessary appropriation to carry to a successful issue.
Coming down by rail I stopped at Parksley, Accomack county. It has a monument of granite erected by Harmanson-West Camp, Confederate Volunteers, in memory of their dead comrades from Accomack and Northampton counties. The other sides of the monument are inscribed as follows: "At the call of patriotism and duty they encountered the perils of the field and were faithful even unto death." "They fought for conscience sake and died for the right." "They died for the principle upon which all true Republics are founded."
Near Pocomoke City I passed the ground where the old court house stood that once served for Wicomico, Somerset and Worcester counties, and where, it is said, Washington city was once located.