Peninsula In Passage

crowd of whites and negroes would gather there, as the public hiring out and selling of negroes would take place there; and on that day the negroes were in their glory, eating the eight inch molasses cakes, imbibing “something strong”, and forming rings and whirling on the “light fantastic toe” to the music of quills and clapping, while many of the whites being rather “full and top heavy” would act humorously and pleasantly; but others would quarrel and have big fisticuffs, and go home with swelled heads and black eyes. I have, while a boy, spent many happy days at that old place, and I often think of them in passing. That was the place always selected to spend the Easter holiday; the sporting men with liquor in their heads would form rings and bring forth their blooded game cocks well-armed with keen steel gaffs, and pit them for a barbarous and cruel fight, and such betting they would do. Thanks to a better and more exalted morality all such has passed many years ago. Jordan also recorded, in 1916, memories of his grandmother in Driver. My grandmother kept a sort of Public Place, as this was the stopping place of the stage route between Portsmouth and Sleepy Hole Ferry; that was before the road was cut through the swamp beyond the Tony Pugh place. There is at this time (1916) a cedar tree standing across the road that the stage horses were hitched to be curried… Tony Pugh’s Tavern

In the early 1800s there was a tavern, known as Tony Pugh’s, located near Driver where the stage from Edenton, North Carolina, to Portsmouth stopped to feed horses and travelers. Pugh was a highly respected free black man who ran a livery stable, blacksmith shop and a popular eating-house for travelers. Pugh’s station or “shop” was where the delegations from Nansemond County and the town of Suffolk met General Lafayette on his official visit in February 1825. The exact location of Tony Pugh’s place is not clear. Some local historians place his tavern close to the intersection of Bennett’s Pasture Road and Sleepy Hole Road while other accounts place the tavern on the “main road” close to Driver. Glebe Church and Glebe Farm In 1640, a gentleman named Percival Champion donated 450 acres to the Anglican Church. A frame church was built on this land, called the glebe, about 1643. Glebe farmlands were rented or farmed to cover living expenses of the church rector. The only record of this church was an entry in the Vestry book, which stated that the church was in “ruinous condition” and that a new church should be built. The land on which the new church was to be built was a part of the lands and cash donated in 1676 by Richard Bennett, his grandson Richard, and Thomas Tilly. The second church was begun in 1737 and completed in 1738 and was known as Bennett’s Creek Church. Dr. Billy Jordan

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