Hampton Roads

“ Within twenty minutes’ ride of Norfolk, Portsmouth, Hampton, Newport News and Old Point Comfort is Sewell’s Point, the site of the exposition. In this vicinity nature and man have combined to create a territory supremely attractive and beautiful. The grounds face Hampton Roads, and embrace more than four hundred acres in area, forming a beautiful setting for the [459] architecture of the exhibit buildings, which will be entirely of the colonial period. ”

“ The next day April 30, they rowed to a point of land on the opposite side of Hampton Roads where they found a channel “which put us in good comfort. Therefore we named that point of land Cape Comfort (present Old Point Comfort) .” Upon the invitation of some friendly Indians to come ashore to their town called by them Kecoughtan, Captain John Smith says: “Wee coasted to their town running over a river running into the main where these savages swam over with their bowes and arrows in their mouths.” ”

“ Hampton Roads is famous in history as the scene of the first engagement between iron-clad vessels. In the spring of 1861 the Federals set fire to several war vessels in the Gosport navy yard on the Elizabeth river and abandoned the place. ”

“ Vessels bound up James river exempted from stopping in Hampton Roads.Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That from and after the passage of this act, it shall not be necessary for any vessel bound up James river, in the state of Virginia, to stop in Hampton Roads, to deposit a manifest with the collector at Norfolk. ”

“ Jamestown, the first settlement in Virginia,—now an island with a few huts only, and two or three chimney-stacks of burnt houses,—looking as desolate as when first destroyed, at the time of Bacon’s rebellion, near two hundred years ago; Newport News below, a place with a few shanties, and a row of grinning batteries; Hampton Roads, bristling and animated with shipping,—the scene of the fight between the “Merrimac” and the “Monitor,” initiating a new era in naval warfare; Hampton away on the north, with its conspicuous square white hospital; Norfolk on the south, up the Elizabeth River ”

“ The town consists of about 1,200 inhabitants, and the society in it is thought to be more extensive and more genteel at the same time than what is to be met with in any other place of its size in America. No manufactures are carried on here, and scarcely any trade.
“From Williamsburgh to Hampton the country is flat and uninteresting. From this town there is a regular ferry to Norfolk, across Hampton Roads, eighteen miles over. Norfolk would be a place of much greater trade than it is at present were it not for the impolicy of some laws which have existed in the State of Virginia. ”

“ When they go a little higher up, they go to Hampton Roads; and, before the war, small vessels anchored up in Newport News, in a gale of wind.
Q. Where did the Minnesota anchor, in respect to Hampton Roads?
A. We anchored outside, sir. I can only say this from the pilot. When commanding the Ohio, he asked me whether I wished to anchor inside the Roads. Baltimore pilots have permission to go into Hampton Roads, and no farther. That is considered as neutral ground for all vessels. ”

“ Within the bar of the Rip Raps is the spacious harbor called the Hampton Roads, wherein vast navies might ride with safety. Twice, hostile fleets have cleft those waters. The first was in October, 1775, when Lord Dunmore, driven by his fears, as we have seen, from Williamsburg, gratified his desire for revenge by destroying the property of the patriots. The people of Hampton anticipated an attack by the British fleet, **** and applied to the Committee of Safety for assistance. Colonel Woodford, with one hundred Culpepper men, was sent to protect them ”

“ Some enjoy trips to Williamsburg, Jamestown, Yorktown, historic Hampton Roads and Fort Monroe, the beautiful Skyline Drive, the battlefields surrounding the city and the many diversified industrial plants, while others participate in their favorite sport or seek diversions in the many forms of entertainment to be had. ”

“ Although most of the interstate system in Virginia will not be completed for a few more years, some portions of the five Virginia links are already open for traffic.
A series of bridges, many toll-free, help the growth of transportation. Construction plans for one of the most difficult water crossings are underway in connection with a $200,000,000 bridge-tunnel to run 171⁄2 miles across the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay in the Hampton Roads area. This crossing will run from Chesapeake Beach near Norfolk to Cape Charles on the Eastern Shore. ”

“ Clemens was the only unhappy man in and about Hampton Roads. Exhilaration shrieked from the whistles of every launch that plied between the steel ships and the pier at Old Point, there was promise of joy in the piled cases of beer that awaited transport to th battleships against Thursday night's feasting. ”

“ The effect of the whole, threaded by winding roads, shaded by trees, and interspersed with gardens and shrubs, is picturesque and practically convenient. The main value of Hampton, however, is found in what is done within these buildings—the teaching, the industries, the making of character. ”

“ Boar's Head is on the seacoast of the old town of Hampton, in the State of New Hampshire. Taking a team from Mr. Dumas' well-stocked stable, one will find the most delightful drives, extending in all directions through the ancient borough. The roads follow curves, like the drives in Central Park, and two centuries and a half of wear have rendered them as solid and firm as if macadamized. Three short miles from the hotel is the station of Hampton, on the Eastern Railroad, by which many trains pass daily.
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For the historical student the region affords much of interest. ”

“ Area, 42,450 square miles; greatest length, east and west, 440 miles; greatest breadth, 190 miles. Coast line, about 120 miles, or tidal frontage, 1,500 miles. Number counties, 100. Temperature at Norfolk: winter, 40° to 48°; summer, 75° to 80°. Rainfall at White Sulphur Spring, 38 inches.
Richmond, capital and metropolis; pop., 63,600. Pop. of Norfolk 21,966; of Petersburg, 21,656. Hampton Roads is one of the best harbors on Atlantic coast. Seven ports of entry.
Number farms, 118,517; 51 per cent. of laborers are engaged in agriculture. Average value per acre, cleared lands, $9.42 ”

“ If the city of Hampton was emblematic of our modern world in which haphazardness has replaced order, Fillmore Street may be likened to a back eddy of the muddy and troubled waters, in which all sorts of flotsam and jetsam had collected. Or, to find perhaps an even more striking illustration of the process that made Hampton in general and Fillmore Street in particular, one had only to take the trolley to Glendale, the Italian settlement on the road leading to the old New England village of Shrewsbury. Janet sometimes walked there, alone or with her friend Eda Rawle. ”

“ Her way lay along Faber Street, the main artery of Hampton, a wide strip of asphalt threaded with car tracks, lined on both sides with incongruous edifices indicative of a rapid, undiscriminating, and artless prosperity. ”

“ The old town, extending from Poplar to Hammersmith, will be the nucleus, and the various railway lines will be the projecting rays.
There are still, however, some few nooks within reach of the metropolis which have not been be-villaged and be-terraced out of all look of rural charm, and the little village of Hampton, with its old-fashioned country inn, and its bright, quiet, grassy river, is one of them, in spite of the triple metropolitan waterworks on the one side, and the close vicinity on the other of Hampton Court, that well-loved resort of cockneydom. ”

“ Access, no horror turns away our eyes.
The panorama is one of green meadows, garden grounds, shady islands, cuts and creeks, Sunbury Lock, boat-houses, inns, water-works, racecourse enclosures, and hints of villages lying back from the river; but Hampton Church stands out on the bank; then a string of islets brings us on to the mouth of the Mole opposite Hampton Court. This palace of popular resort, with its galleries,{39} courts, gardens, and park avenues, its barracks, its many houses of entertainment, and its terminus of London tramways, is in Middlesex ”

“ Tram cars often ran along the middle of the street, with barely room for a vehicle to pass on either side. The huge motor busses came tearing towards us in a manner most trying to novices, and it seemed, time after time, that the dexterity of the drivers of these big machines was all that saved our car from being wrecked. We obtained only the merest glimpse of Hampton Palace, and the time which we had consumed made it apparent that if we expected to reach our hotel that night, we must immediately retrace our way through the wild confusion we had just passed. ”

“ The terraces, the gardens, the maze, the trim vistas cut through long lines of trees, the Dutch primness and precision of the grounds, and above all the thousand acres of Bushey Park, with its renowned avenue bursting with the tinted blossom which in summer perfumes the air like “an odour sweet of cedar log and sandal wood,” are the true delights of Hampton Court. ”

“ So prosperity turns out the picturesque or, at least, relegates it to the basement, and so a street with all the charm of past centuries clinging to it is fast becoming commonplace, and strangers driving through it laugh at the feeble attempts to give the commercial air of Harrods to a row of cottages—about as sensible a proceeding as it would be to attempt to assimilate the façade of Hampton Court with that of Hampton's in Pall Mall. ”

“ The inhabitants of East Hampton are so much in love with their healthy home, which dates from 1648, that on its two hundred and fiftieth anniversary, celebrated in 1898, the announcement was made that they "like East Hampton in a thick fog better than any other place in full sunshine." Eastward from Jamaica, in the western centre of Long Island, are Creedmoor, the noted rifle range, Hempstead, where the New York troops were mobilized in 1898 for the Spanish War, and Garden City, the model suburban town laid out by Alexander T. Stewart, containing a handsome Episcopal Cathedral. ”

“ Such a home is a beacon-light in the community to diffuse intelligence and the spirit of order and progress. That is what Hampton is doing. It is building homes and schools all through the South. What a cloud of witnesses we should have, could we summon those seven hundred graduates, each one bringing the implements of his trade—the carpenter with his saw, the blacksmith with his hammer, the harnessmaker with his knife, the farmer with his hoe! What a long line there would be of the graduates alone! ”

“ At Hampton itself, at Richmond and Kew, there are [178] large open spaces once the gardens or parks belonging to kings, but now open as public pleasure grounds, ideal places for the man who has a small family to take with him, and whose holiday is limited to a day. For those who are free from encumbrances, there are always boats to be had in abundance, at a much cheaper rate than one would have to pay for them at, say, Maidenhead; and the scenery itself, though not so fine as some higher up, is pleasant and attractive. If the day be wet or uncertain there is the palace at Hampton to explore ”

“ The faint sound of a far whistle reminds us that time has passed since we last stood in Hampton's one street: a mile and a half away, the station, which is to advertise the name of the village to travelling humanity for ever, has been finished, and several times each day trains to and from Birmingham condescend to pause in their puffing progress at the tiny platform. ”

“ Here we drove on the beach for a time, then returned to the boulevard, the beach flies becoming more and more troublesome, until our horse was nearly frantic. Our fine road changed to a hard sandy pull, and we were glad to get on the Hampton River Bridge. All went smoothly until we were nearly across the longest wooden bridge in the world, a mile, when obstructions loomed up, the trolley track being the only passable part. Workmen came forward, and said, rather than send us so many miles round, they would try to take us across. ”

“ APPROVED Beginning at the junction of present US Routes 63, 18 and State Route 34 in New Hampton, thence north over present US Route 18, approximately 1/2 mile, thence continue north and northeast on new location to intersection with present US Route 63 approximately 1 1/2 miles northeast of New Hampton. ”

“ Few of the older citizens of Hampton were able to explain why something rose in their gorges, why they experienced a new and clammy quality of fear and repulsion when, on the day following Antonelli's advent, these strangers arrived from nowhere to install themselves—with no baggage to speak of—in Hampton's more modest but hitherto respectable hostelries. ”

“ The ancient city of Hampton and its Theological Seminary are well known. To the wanderer under the elms of the quaint old town there is imparted an impression of cleanliness and a serene complacency, derived, doubtless, from the countenances of the many who, clad in sombre vesture and clean linen, pass and repass in the quiet streets. No man can be long in Hampton without feeling the theological influence; unconsciously the wayfarer adopts the prevailing manner, becomes deliberate in his walk and grave of aspect ”

“ In speaking of East Hampton and the habitudes of its people, the late President Dwight said, emphatically: "A general air of equality, simplicity, and quiet is visible here in a degree perhaps singular. Sequestered in a great measure from the busy world, the people exhibit not the same activity and haste, which meet the eye in some other places. ”

“ Mr. Carr’s mention of Johnson’s frequent visits recalls the answer he made to Garrick when asked how he liked the spot: “Ah, David! it is the leaving of such places that makes a death-bed terrible.” Some interesting matter relating to the Garricks at Hampton will be found in Mr. Henry Ripley’s History and Topography of Hampton-on-Thames. The existence of the villa has recently been threatened by the westward extension of London’s electric tramways, but, happily, the danger of its removal has been averted. ”