Rediscovering America_ Exploring the Small Towns of Virginia & Maryland - Bill Burnham [79]
TIP: Two ferries depart from the Reedville vicinity. Turn right down Route 702 for the ferry to Tangier Island (May-October, tel. 804-453-2628). Make a left to Smith Point for the Smith Island Ferry (May-October, tel. 804-453-3430).
TRIVIA: Someone with a sense of humor came up with a bumper sticker seen around this town. It reads, “Elijah Reed was a come here,” poking fun at the practice of labeling people who settle in Virginia from other parts as “come heres.”
Kilmarnock
Around Town
Signs for Kilmarnock’s “Town Information Center” led us into a huge, but crammed-full, antique gallery. We were puzzled, but sure enough, the lady at the front desk pointed toward the customer lounge that doubles as a welcome center. Not only do they stock a good selection of brochures, but there are public restrooms and a soda machine. Now that’s small town!
The antiques in the Kilmarnock Antique Gallery on School Street fill room after room – 22,000 square feet with more than 100 dealers. On the way out, the owner asked us to come by again and offered to work with us on prices. Later, we learned Stephen Spielberg’s movie crew shopped there for props for Minority Report, starring Tom Cruise, portions of which were filmed in nearby Gloucester County.
Kilmarnock grew out of Steptoe’s Ordinary, a roadside inn established in 1719. Since then it’s been the commercial hub of the lower Northern Neck. Before the automobile became popular, the town was extremely isolated. No railroad ever reached town, and ferries rather than bridges connected the tip of the peninsula to the outside world. For a time the steamboat era brought vacationers from Norfolk and Baltimore, but that died down when the storm of 1933 took out many of the steamboat wharfs. The millionaire Alfred duPont came on a steamboat – he liked to hunt on the Northern Neck. He met and married a local girl, Jessie Ball, of the Mary Ball Washington line.
TABOO: Don’t pronounce it “Kil-Mar-KNOCK.” Say it fast, so the last syllable is like “nick” or “nuck,” and the emphasis is on “MAR.”
The Kilmarnock Museum tells this and other great stories about the town. Like most local museums on the Northern Neck, Kilmarnock’s exists thanks to volunteer effort, so the hours are a bit sketchy. If you’re lucky, you might catch the museum’s founder, Augusta Sellew, whose family has lived here for generations. On both sides of her family tree are important members of the Kilmarnock business community. Her grandfather Eubanks owned the general store and the hotel. Her grandmother ran the hotel and her mother was born and raised there. The brick building, which now houses offices, is the second reincarnation of the hotel. The first, a frame structure, burned in 1909. The brick store is now American Standard Insurance.
Selew is among those who remember the big fire of 1952, the third great conflagration in the town’s history. The same section of north Main Street burned in 1909, 1915 and 1952 – the last one Sellew watched, horror-stricken as a teenager. Hopes of saving memories of the town prompted Sellew to pursue a museum. Word spread of a need for artifacts and photographs and all sorts of old things appeared on the building’s door step – and still do. While we visited one afternoon, Sellew opened the sceen door to find an old aerial photograph someone had donated anonymously.
The museum also became the repository for a lot of things people might normally have thrown out. They call it “ephemera” on the PBS Antiques Road Show – items such as old theater programs and invitations from the town’s Holly Ball, a debutante affair that’s been held every year since 1895. There’s a melted bottle salvaged from the dairy that burned in 1952, a spoon from the soda shop, and Coke bottles from the now-defunct Tidewater Bottling Co. Old crab traps, newspaper clippings and old photographs are carefully displayed. Separately, they might