Truckin' on the Western Branch

Ashton Lewis Sr. Ashton Lewis Sr.’s earliest memory is leaving Amelia with the family belongings piled into a 1946 Chevy two-ton stake body truck. He was five years old when his mother, Lula “Lu” Belle Davenport Lewis, finally agreed to leave her family farm in Amelia, Virginia, and come to Portsmouth where her husband, William O. “Bill” Lewis, and her brother Charles Davenport had opened the Davenport-Lewis Chevrolet dealership on Turnpike Road and Harbor Drive in Portsmouth in 1946.

The Lewis family rented a house in Green Acres for three years and then bought 30 acres for a farm off Tyre Neck Road in 1957. When he was 16 years old, Ashton Lewis bought his uncle’s tractor and planted soybeans and wheat on 12 acres. He farmed with his father who had a reputation for some of the best tomatoes around.

I had no extracurriculars at Churchland High—I was busy farming. I did get out of one class by telling the teacher I had to cultivate the soybeans. After school I’d visit Jack Griffin at the shop or Rufus and James Lilley, who were my farming mentors.

By 1964 when I graduated from Churchland, I was farming 200 acres in Point Elizabeth.

I remember stories of Budgie Ellis and his horse-drawn produce cart in Churchland and Ellis’s restaurant that became Speers’. Henry Trotman had a big farm up on River Shore but was taxed out of farming. People began building houses like crazy all over Churchland.

Ashton Lewis Sr. Images by Sheally

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