Peninsula In Passage

Dorothea and Jacob had two sons, Conrad and John George, and two daughters, Wilhelmina and Annie Mary. The girls married into the Ames and Spivey families. Conrad married Mary Lassiter and John George married Annie M. Gaskins. The Gaskins family claims roots back to the Plantagenet Kings

Old Chimneys

of France and the Lords of Yorkshire, England. Thomas Gaskoyne, born in 1591, came to America with his wife, Mary, on the ship Bona Nova as early as 1619 and settled on what is now the Maryland Eastern Shore. Thirty years later he received a king’s grant of 250 acres along the Wicomico River and changed the family name to Gaskins in 1665. Many of his Gaskin descendants migrated south to various spots in Virginia, including Nansemond County. John George “J.G.” Eberwine was born May 26, 1871 in post-war Nansemond County and raised in that rural setting. He went to the Yeates Free School for a few terms, leaving when he was, he said, and “not very far advanced.” At 15 he started truck farming on a small scale, growing Irish potatoes and cabbage, and showed a real talent for coaxing produce from the soil. His success earned him a designation as crop reporter for the U. S. Department of Agriculture. Just 27 years later he owned 849 acres of land and had invested in banks and manufacturing companies. By 1931 he owned five farms totaling over 1000 acres. When asked the secret of his agricultural success he told a news reporter, I attribute my success, as you call it, to the use of tile, (for underground, subsurface drainage), heavy fertilization and crop rotation. I also believe that if I neglected fertilizing and supplying the fields with organic matter I would have failed.

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