Truckin' on the Western Branch

Wolf Bounties The forests and marshes of the area were a wilderness compared to the villages and towns that people had left in England. Domesticated pigs, sheep, and cattle, imported to begin new farms, were fair game for the local wolf population. In 1632 the General Assembly in Jamestown passed wolf bounties. White settlers earned bounties of cash, tobacco, wine, and corn, while Native Americans earned blankets and trinkets .

General Assembly records from 1639 showed that a bounty of 50 pounds of tobacco was paid for each wolf head turned into local sheriffs. By 1782 wolf bounties had reached 200 pounds of tobacco per adult wolf. The wolf bounty worked, and by 1850, wolves were very nearly extinct on the entire East Coast of the United States.

Land Rents or Quits Often large landowners leased small acreages, charging one pound of corn or tobacco per acre. Land began to change hands in the late 1600s. Norfolk County Court records of March 15, 1694, tell about one land sale: “John Tucker and Mary, his wife, of the western Branch of the Elizabeth River in the county of Norfolk, and Andrew Taylor of the same place . . . for and in consideration of 8 pairs of French fall shoes (sell) about fower or five acres . . . at the head of the Western Branch…”

Records also show that John Jolliffe, who had patented 867 acres beginning in 1653, passed his plantation to his son Joseph. Joseph’s son, William, was born on the plantation in 1695. By the mid-1720s William Jolliffe, who was educated as a lawyer, had moved west to Frederick County and Joseph Jolliffe sold off the plantation.

Landholders all were required to pay a “royal tax” that went to England. These quit-rents were paid to local tax commissioners or sheriffs who sent the payments back to England. Cash money was scarce, so the tax was paid in tobacco with the rate varying from one shilling per fifty acres or one pound of tobacco per acre. Quit-rents were abolished when the colonies won their freedom in 1781. Modern-day real estate taxes serve the same purpose. River Names Rivers were the major “highways” for both the Native tribes and colonial travelers using dugout canoes. When John Smith first drew a map of local waters he identified the James River as Powhatan Flu and the Elizabeth as Chesapioc . The English anglicized some names, renaming the Chesapioc “Elizabeth” in honor of Princess Elizabeth Stuart, eldest daughter of King James I of England. Powhatan Flu became the James River. Elizabeth River The Elizabeth River has three major tributaries, the eastern, southern, and western branches, with each branch fed by smaller rivers, creeks, and marshes. Colonial plantations depended on the Western Branch as their lifeline to markets in Boston and the West Indies. Bailey’s Creek and Goose Creek, the headwaters tributaries of the Western Branch, connected interior farms to markets in Norfolk. Lumber from the Dismal Swamp was shipped down the river to mills and shipyards at Lovett’s Point, located at the confluence of the Western Branch with the main stem. Lovett’s Point was an important deep-water port in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and remains a commercial crossroads for container cargo piers, shipbuilding, industry, and marine construction. Indian Trails to Colonial Roads The overland trails of the Indians became colonial footpaths and then seventeenth-century roads. Remnants of the oldest roads in English America remain in the Western Branch and Churchland area. Part of Portsmouth Boulevard follows “the King’s Highway,” which ran from the Sleepy Hole Ferry on the Nansemond River headed for Portsmouth. Named “The Road,” it wound by the Glebe Church dodging the headwaters of creeks southeast on what is now Jolliff Road. Near Jolliff Road was the intersection with the old Gum Road, which merged with Pughesville Road and on to Town Point Road and West Norfolk Road. At Bowers Hill the road split northeast toward Portsmouth town and south toward Deep Creek and Great Bridge back toward Norfolk. All of these roads connected farms to the waterways and later to the railroad. Dock Landing Road, reflective of river transportation, runs parallel to the Western Branch between Drum Creek and connects to Jolliff Road at the site of Hall’s Mill. By 1715 a ferry from Norfolk served the Craney Island Road from Lovett’s Point south. By the early 1800s, Hodges Ferry carried passengers and farm wagons across the Western Branch near Drum Creek.

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