Peninsula In Passage

there was a “sweat house” to test the cans to see if they could stand heat. They also canned oysters and they were shipped to San Francisco, possibly from Baltimore. This route required crossing the equator twice, hence the testing of the can for its resistance to heat. John Wright remembers hearing stories about a ship that went down in the San Francisco harbor in the 1850’s with cans from the Waverton cannery found aboard. In 1850 the plantation had 22 slaves and 10 years later, 60 slaves. There were three slave villages on the property, with the largest one called Red Row. William Joseph had four sons in the Confederate Army. John and William were Captains. William died from his wounds during the Battle of the Wilderness Campaign. His black servant brought his body, along with his gold watch and sword, to the home of Captain Sylvania Johnson in Petersburg, Virginia. William was buried in the Johnson plot at Blandford Cemetery in Petersburg. The Wright family still has his sword and watch. The other two brothers, Joseph Solomon and James Edwin, were both scouts working directly under Robert

(Left) Eric Sasser, (middle) John Wright, (right) Hinton D. Hurff at the restored Wright family cemetery

E. Lee. Since Waverton was often within Union lines William Joseph had access to northern publications that he collected and had his son Thomas Judson Wright smuggle across the Nansemond River to Joseph and James who carried them to Confederate headquarters in Petersburg. William Joseph was under constant scrutiny and thrown in prison by the Yankees several times but never was apprehended in his clandestine activities. William Joseph died in 1876 and his third wife, Martha, lost the farm in the late 1870’s as the southern economy was still recouping from the war. In the 1880s it was brought back into the family. Generations of the Wright family lived at Waverton into the next century. During the Depression the family started Waverton Dairy and opened the first pasteurization plant in the area. The Matthews took over the dairy in 1947. The family eventually moved to Churchland.

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