Rediscovering America_ Exploring the Small Towns of Virginia & Maryland - Bill Burnham [95]
After the Civil War, Smithfield became the center of a flourishing peanut industry. The Historic District Walking Tour describes 60 historic homes of Victorian, Colonial and Federal architecture, built by ship captains and merchants. Pick up the self-guided brochure, rent an audiotape to go with it, and watch an orientation video in the visitor center housed in the Old Courthouse of 1750, which was modeled after the Capital Building in Williamsburg. It’s open daily 9 am-5 pm; free admission. (130 Main Street, tel. 800-365-9339)
The Battle of Smithfield was fought right here, on Main Street. Although a minor skirmish of the Civil War, it’s been a great source of pride and storytelling for the town. While most of Smithfield’s residents were attending church on Sunday, Jan. 31, 1864, a Union gunboat pulled up to the bottom of Church Street (where Smithfield Station now stands). Women and children were sent into a basement, and Confederate troops fired canon straight down Main Street, hitting the gunboat. Before the ship was blown up, its gilded eagle emblem was grabbed from the bow as a trophy. It’s displayed at the Isle of Wight Museum, a reminder that this was the one southern town that refused to surrender during the Union’s Peninsula Campaign of 1862.
Located at the corner of Main and Church streets, the museum also houses the history of the Smithfield ham, displaying a “pet ham” cured more than a century ago, Native American artifacts, and a 1900 country store. The museum is open Tuesday-Saturday 10 am-4 pm, Sunday 1-5 pm; admission is free. (tel. 757-357-7459)
Immediately outside Smithfield, the farm and forestland of surrounding Isle of Wight County show unmistakable symptoms of suburbia. Keep driving. Miles beyond the half-million dollar homes, the county holds onto the past two centuries in such picturesque settlements as Foursquare, Moonlight, Comet and Rescue. The county seat, at a crossroads called Isle of Wight, is a cluster of modern brick buildings mixed with historic 18th-century county offices. The very modern looking county complex is built on land originally donated by Major Francis Boykin, who ran a profitable hostelry next door. Private residents raised $800,000 for the renovation of Boykin’s Tavern, now open to visitors.
North, near the James River, watermen still bring their catch to the docks at Battery Park, as they have done for generations. Up the hill, a customhouse built in the 1780s still stands overlooking the James River. Two shillings per hogshead was the duty paid in Colonial times on the two- and three-masted schooners that docked and stocked here. In its heyday, three general stores kept pantries full. An oyster-packing house and two blacksmith shops provided work for laborers and tradesmen. Earlier this century, a cinder block service station with a jukebox inside sold nickel cold drinks and gas for a penny per gallon. The stores, shops and gas station are gone. Yet Battery Park, an enclave of neat, white clapboard homes and one of Isle of Wight’s oldest settlements, still speaks of a long ago time.
Nearby Attractions
Built in 1632, Historic St. Luke’s Shrine, four miles south of Smithfield, is the oldest existing English church in the country and houses the oldest operable organ in the country. Open Tuesday-Sunday; closed in January. (14477 Benns Church Blvd., tel. 757-357-3367, www.historicstlukes.org)
Set high on bluffs overlooking the James River is Fort Boykin Historic Park, six miles west of Smithfield. Dating to 1623, when the original structure was built in the shape of a seven-pointed star, the fort was manned during every major campaign