Peninsula In Passage

Norfolk County to the docks at Pinners Point. Many farmers began shipping truck - potatoes, spinach, kale, strawberries, string beans, cucumbers and more - to northern markets by rail instead of steamboat. Driver was named after E. J. Driver who operated a prosperous country store there after the Civil War. Beech Grove siding on the ACL ran to Bennett’s Pasture Road to pick up produce from the Jones and Eberwine Farms. Folks caught the train at the busy Driver Station to go to “town.” Wreck of the “Old 38” One of the worst train wrecks in Virginia’s history happened about five miles east of Driver on the Atlantic Coastline near Bruce’s Station in 1905. An ACL special excursion train from Kinston, North Carolina was headed to Portsmouth for a day of shopping. After Driver the train passed Deans and Pughsville headed toward the bridge over the Western Branch of the Elizabeth River. The draw was open at Bruce’s Station for a tug towing a raft of logs through. An eyewitness who was later interviewed in 1986 said: When she made the turn and started for the river I could hear her steam was up and she wasn’t breaking down and I said to myself, ‘Cleve…she’s going into the river…and she did too. At least 15 passengers including the locomotive engineer and fireman were killed and scores were taken to the hospitals in Portsmouth. One of the passengers from North Carolina appeared at the Atlantic Coastline office and asked to be sent back home to Kingston:

…if you’ll jest git me back boss I’ll swar befo Gawd I’ll never come to Norfik agin ’cept on oxcart or afoot. Driver had a population of about 200 by 1930 and included several churches, commercial buildings, a Masonic lodge, a grange hall, and a new school complex. The Ramsey Package Corporation in Driver manufactured wooden baskets, barrels, and crates used by local farmer for shipping vegetables. A sawmill was still operating in the early 1970s. Trotman Wharf – Monogram Field

One of the larger truck farms along the Nansemond in the early 1900s belonged to the Trotman brothers who purchased several smaller farms along Sleepy Hole Road to create the Monogram Farm. T.E. and H.L. Trotman owned many farms in the area as well as the Trotman Manufacturing Company, producers of fertilizers sold to local farmers. Barbara Bryant Enfield shared information about her family connection to Monogram Farm in a letter. Her father, John Simeon Bryant, was born in Nansemond County in 1904 and graduated from Driver High School. His father owned the farm as he grew up. A deed recorded in Nansemond County, dated January 4, 1913, shows his father (John William Batten Bryant) purchased farm land “known as W.T. Everett farm, bounded by County Road to Sleepy Hole Wharf

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