SHENANDOAH VALLEY

Leaving the Jamestown area, we headed northwest to visit the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia where some of my ancestors lived during the time of the Revolutionary War.

The first thing I learned after nearly 40 years of driving Interstate 81through Virginia was that the mountains to my right going north were NOT the Blue Ridge but the Massanutten Mountains. (Why would you ever name something "Mass of Nothing"?) The Blue Ridge and the its Skyline Drive extension of the Blue Ridge Parkway are the next mountain over to the east and you can't see them from I81 or Route 11.

The next thing I learned is the Shenandoah River has a north fork and a south fork.  The much larger south fork flows between the Massanutten Mountainss and the Blue Ridge in Page County and that valley is the one named Shenandoah Valley.   The North fork of the Shenandoah River flows beside I81 through Shenandoah County.  

From a history point of view, prior to the beginning of European settlers moving down into Virginia, there was a footpath leaving  the Pennsylvania area following approximately the same path as highway US 11.  This was called the Warrior's Path and was used by native American tribes moving north and south to fight with each other.

When European settlers began migrating south, the more well-off moved their belongings in Conestoga wagons built in Lancaster County Pennsylvania by German settlers who named the wagon for a local Indian tribe. The path was widened to accommodate the wagons and became known as the Great Wagon Road.

Not too far down the Great Wagon Road, later called the Great Valley Road,  the town of Woodstock, Virginia was founded in 1752.  My ancestors settled here to obtain more farmland. That is where we were headed.  We parked Snoopy in the Creekside Campground in the little town of Edinburgh, 8 miles south of Woodstock.

Imagine our surpise (and my delight) when the street down to the Campground turned out to be HISEY STREET.   Hisey is my maiden name and the surname of my ancestors who moved to the Valley in the 1700's.  We were in search of the HISEY AVENUE I knew to be in Woodstock, but did not expect to find my very own street in Edinburg too!.

We set up Snoopy near the creek,

 and I fed the ducks and geese that hung out around out site,

 while Chick caught a couple of small fish in the creek.

The next day we headed for Woodstock.

 It is a small, extremely neat and clean town. It is proud of its history, and focuses on its role in the Revolutionary War primarily.  The original courthouse, designed by Thomas Jefferson in 1795 is now a museum, and we started out there.

As we entered we were welcomed by a woman who started to tell us about the museum.  On a lark I asked her if she lived in Woodstock.  She said yes, all her life.  I then asked her if she knew anyone named Hisey.  She stopped then said, "Why yes.  I am a Hisey,  My name is Marjorie Hisey Tackett.
Why do you ask? " I told her we were exploring where my ancestors John and Jacob Hisey* lived at the time of the Revolutionary War.  As we talked we realized we are "cousins", descended from the same Hisey's of so long ago!   Pretty incredible.

Marjorie Hisey Tackett and Dorene Hisey Palermo

After we finished with the museum, we visited the Woodstock Cafe and had a sturdy lunch accompanied with the local beer and plotted our next destination.

I have a document that shows where the Hisey Land  was in the 1700s and we set out to find the creek -  Narrow Passage Creek-- that ran on their property.

  The street heading out of town to the creek crossed HISEY AVENUE and we stopped right away for pictures.

Continuing a short distance out of town we found the creek with no trouble.

LAND ON 682--- EAST & ADJACENT NARROW PASSAGE CREEK

PASSAGE CREEK, WOODSTOCK, VA

 As I left the truck to get pictures I walked up a driveway to a beautiful brick home that had been built by a family of Sheetz in the 1800s on the land that had been the Hisey property.

To finish off our day of "Woodstock" we followed an ever-degrading road out of town, and up the side of the Massanutten Mountain to find the Woodstock Tower.  Up the steep,  narrowing black top road, continuing onto an even narrow, gravel and dirt road we finally came to a stop at a spot wide enough for a few cars, right in front of a stone marker for the Woodstock Tower.

 As short walk through the woods brought us to a shiny metal tower of steep steps.  From its heights you could look down both sides of the mountain...to the east lay the Shenandoah Valley.

WOODSTOCK TOWER

 To the west lay the town of Woodstock and you could see 7 turns of the north fork of the Shenandoah River as it snaked through the fields of the fertile valley.  It was easy to see why the early German settlers loved these valleys and how they made them into healthy, well tended farms.

LOOKING EAST INTO THE SHENANDOAH VALLEY

NORTH FORK OF THE SHENANDOAH RIVER

The next day belonged to  the real Blue Ridge Mountains and the Skyline Drive. As we headed out of Edinburg we passed the Cedarwood Cemetery and decided to see if there were any HISEY relatives hanging out there.  We hit the jackpot on finding plots of Hisey's .   I took photos of the large markers and on some rainy night in Durham I will work on ancestry.com to see if any are my aunts and/or uncles.  (We saw 5 or 6 large markers like this. )

We intended to visit Luray Caverns in the morning, but when we got there it was a ZOO!  Hundreds of cars, people everywhere, ....it was AWFUL! So...we spent a lot of the day being lost on tiny backroads in the valley as I tried to find a 'back way' up to theSkyline Drive.  What beautiful farms and pretty streams.

VIEWS FROM SKYLINE DRIVE

We took a couple of moderate hikes along the drive.  One drawback of hikes that depart from roads that run along ridges is that the first part of the hike is down!  That means the return is up!!

 We think we got all the way to the bottom of the 70' waterfall before we quit, but if we didn't, it was pretty anyway.  Just being in the woods again was wonderful for me.

As we finished one hike the clouds rolled in over the mountain and you could not see five feet in front of you.  We took that as a sign that we should head for the valley and back to Snoopy. Steak on the grill and salad with ice cream for dessert finished off a perfect day.


* Family History information:

At age 50, Hans George Hisey (5GGF) came from Rotterdam on September 24, 1751 on the ship Neptune (John Mason, Captain. 284 passengers) most of them from Switzerland. He settled in Pennsylvania.

Christian Hisey (4GGF), son of Hans, bought land on Narrow Passage Creek, VA January 13, 1773. He married Christina Hulz (4GGM). Their sons were John, Christian Jr., and Daniel.  Christian Jr. was a Revolutionary War soldier.Christian Sr. died in 1777 in Virginia.

John (Johannes) (3GGF) , son of Christian Sr.,was born in Pennsylvania. He married Mary Anne Hawse(Haas) (3GGM) October 9, 1781 in Virginia. He died April 12, 1803 in Shenandoah. Their eight children included Jacob Hisey. 

Jacob Haas Hisey (2GGF) was born November 3, 1790 in Woodstock, Virginia, served in the Virginia Militiain the war of 1812. He married Isabella Abigail Spiggle Funkhouser (2GGM)May 25, 1819 in Strasburg, VA. They immediately moved to Harrison County, Indiana where in 1838 he received a Land Grant from President Van Buren of 40.3 acres. He died in August 25,1839 leaving his wife with a family of 10 children to raise. Jacob is buried on his farm on Big Indian Creek about 3 miles southwest of Corydon, Indiana. Abigail lived until  April 3, 1882 and is buried at Louden's Chapel Cemetery near Corydon.

Jacob and Abigail's children included James Hisey (GGF), born May 13, 1832 in Harrison County, Indiana (Corydon) . He married Nancy Jane Benson(GGM) on March 13, 1866 in Indiana. Their son Teda Alva (T.A.) Hisey(GF), my father's father, is the family member who ended up in Tennessee, married to Penelope Cobb King (GM), descendent of the Cobbs of Jamestown. 

THE HISTORIC TRIANGLE - JAMESTOWN, YORKTOWN, WILLIAMSBURG AUGUST 15-18

Reminder: The first part of this trip is to learn a bit more about my ancestors and answer the questions a) where did they come from, b) why did they come c) where did they come to and d) how did they get to Tennessee (where I was born).

Our journey began where America began...or at least the English/Anglican portion of it...Jamestown, Virginia.  We arrived at the Chippokes Plantation State Park on Monday afternoon, and took some time get oriented.

Established in 1619 by English Captain William Powell, a Lieutenant Governor of Jamestown, this 1,400-acre farm located opposite Jamestown Island, has been the site of an active agricultural operation for nearly four centuries. Powell named the plantation after Choapoke, an Algonquian Indian Chief who was friendly to the English settlers in Jamestown. The mansion was built by Stewart family in the 1900's

 The Plantation lies on the south bank of the James River (Surry County) where the large plantations were situated, once the English settlers figured out they were going to have to work for a living, instead of just looting the native Americans for their wealth as the Spanish had been doing.

In 1607 The first colonists (104 on 3 small ships, sailing 4 1/2 months from England)

were neither mentally prepared for what they found, nor equipped with the skills needed to be successful. It took several changes of leadership, and multiple ships bringing supplies and skills before the Jamestown colony became viable. Fortunately for my family history, my 9th Great Grandfather Joseph Cobb had the good sense not to come to America until they had figured out a viable way to make money (tobacco farming) and they decided to bring women over and try to establish a real colony.

Joseph Cobb arrived in Jamestown in 1613 on the ship the "Treasurer".  He returned at one point to England and returned in January 1624 to live in Elizabeth City, on the north side of the James River. My 10th Great Grandfather, Pharoah (Farrar) Flinton, a surgeon,  had arrived in 1612 on the ship "Elizabeth" and became friends with Joseph Cobb. His daughter, Elizabeth arrived in 1623 at the age of 25 on the ship Bonny Bess and subsequently married Joseph Cobb becoming my 9th Great Grandmother.

Joseph Cobb had 300 acres along Lawne's Creek in Surry County.

LAWNES CREEK SURRY COUNTY

 Chick and I went to the Creek and his land, and Chick went fishing in the Creek.

CHICK FISHING LAWNES CREEK, SURRY COUNTY

 He also had land in another part of Surry County (100 acres) and Newport County (400 acres.) In our travels we explored the places where his various landholdings were.

So to answer the ancestry question: This branch of the family tree paid their own way from England to Jamestown to make money and become wealthy landowners (no religious persecution).  Their path to Tennessee (to be explored later) simply dropped into Eastern North Carolina and moved west eventually reaching East Tennessee. They arrived at me through my father's mother's line.

Having dealt with the questions of my ancestors, Chick and I then explored the various plantations scattered around Surry County,

Bacon's Castle is distinguished as America's premier example of high style 17th-century domestic architecture and the oldest documented house in Virginia. The house was built for prosperous planter Arthur Allen in 1665.

 Smith’s Fort Plantation is nestled on the south side of the James River, located on the site of Captain John Smith’s planned “New Fort”, on the land given by Chief Powhatan as a dowry for his daughter Pocahontas upon her marriage to John Rolfe.

SMITH'S  "NEW FORT" SITE

We took the ferry boat back and forth to Jamestown,

FERRY BOAT FROM SURRY COUNTY TO JAMESTOWN

and visited the actual site of the Jamestown landing and Fort James.

VIEWS OF HISTORIC JAMESTOWN and FORT JAMES FROM THE JAMES RIVER

We had an excellent archeology tour on the site

HOUSES WERE NOT LOGS BUT LOOK LIKE ENGLISH HOMES IN THE MIDLANDS. THE FORT WAS SIMPLY A FENCE BUILT IN A TRIANGLE ON THE SHORE OF THE JAMES RIVER.

ARCHEOLOGISTS HAVE PARTIALLY RECONSTRUCTED THE SECOND ANGLICAN CHURCH WHERE POCAHONTAS AND JOHN ROLFE WERE MARRIED IN APRIL 1614 

In 1617-1619 when Samuel Argall was governor, he had the inhabitants of Jamestown build a new church "50 foot long and twenty foot broad." It was a wooden church built on a one-foot-wide foundation of cobblestones capped by a wall one brick thick. 

DETAIL OF FOUNDATION.  THIS CHURCH IS WHERE MY 9TH and 10TH GREAT GRANDPARENTS WORSHIPPED. 

and spent a whole day in a fantastic museum adjacent the park called Jamestown Settlement.

HUGE MUSEUM - JAMESTOWN SETTLEMENT

The reconstructed ships were quite revealing, as we saw how cramped the travelers were. But even better is the 'year-by-year timeline history' of the early 1600's in the museum!  We spent hours and hours there and still did not see it all.

The rest of the days there we drove to Yorktown and Williamsburg.  Yorktown is a beautiful historical city...not very commercial, with a beautiful shoreline on the York River.  The history there is largely related to Revolutionary War, as was Williamsburg.

GEORGE WASHINGTON

ON THE STREETS OF YORKTOWN

SHORELINE OF YORK RIVER IN YORKTOWN

 We did not even bother to buy the tickets for Williamsburg ($40 apiece for 1 day) and were glad we had seen Williamburg before it became simpley an outdoor museum with gatekeepers.  We strolled up and down the streets had lunch at Chowning's Tavern (where we had eaten years ago) and headed home.

LUNCH AT CHOWNINGS TAVERN