Truckin' on the Western Branch

In revenge, a few days later the British sailed into the Hampton River and burned and pillaged Hampton. Then they sailed north to Washington, D.C., and invaded the capital. The war with Great Britain continued until 1815 on the Great Lakes and in Canada. In the end everyone declared themselves winners . . . Great Britain, Canada, and the United States. Plantations and Farms Initially, Colonial farmers grew tobacco as their cash crop but turned to cotton, corn, wheat, and vegetables by the turn of the 18th century. The close proximity to the local markets in Norfolk and Portsmouth and to the port of Norfolk made vegetables a viable product. Lumber was another important export with a wide variety of hard and soft woods growing locally. Cedar shingles from the Dismal Swamp were shipped down the Western Branch, and local shipbuilders had an abundant supply of Dismal Swamp lumber shipped to Lovett’s Point. Churchpoint Plantation—Speers House in Green Meadow Point (as told by George Spears in 1988) The oldest house in Western Branch, Churchpoint Plantation, once stood along Drum Creek where Green Meadow Point is today. King Charles I of England granted the 1,800 acres to Charles William Bruce and Richard William Bruce in 1634. The Bruces traded directly with England, sending goods from their farm wharf. By 1720 the plantation included a large house, a gristmill, and a brick kiln. The Bruce family supported colonial interests at the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, generating legends about British soldiers searching the plantation. The plantation grew to 2,200 acres by 1840. When William A. Bruce died, he left a share to each of his seven children. Those farms became the King, Mackie, Jones, Peake, Deanes, Duke, and Bruce farms. The Civil War The people in the village of Churchland and surrounding areas found themselves in a predicament at the outbreak of the Civil War. The plantation and farm owners, historically dependent on the ownership of slaves, were patriotic Virginians and Americans. They had fought for the United States in both the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 and valued their citizenship. Virginia’s secession from the Union on April 17, 1861, tested their allegiances to Virginia and the United States. Several families gave up their property and returned north. On April 18, 1861, citizens met in Churchland to organize a military company and home guard. Three days later the Gosport Navy Yard was evacuated and set on fire by Northern forces and several ships burned. On April 21, over 150 “hands” were at Craney Island “throwing up batteries.” Artillery Entrenchment on Goose Creek Commodore French Forrest of the Virginia Navy, and later the Confederate Navy, was commodore in Portsmouth at the shipyard in 1861 when the ironclad vessel, the CSS Virginia , was being built on the hull of the USS Merrimack , a former 275-foot-long, steam-powered, propeller-driven frigate. Her mission was to break the Union blockade.

Forrest ordered an artillery battery entrenchment constructed on the banks of Goose Creek near the mill site along Jolliff Road to protect the nearby Seaboard Railroad and Petersburg & Norfolk railheads at Bowers Hill.

Confederate reinforcements were brought in by rail from Petersburg, Georgia, Louisiana, and North Carolina to help fortify batteries along the shorelines. Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond was the South’s only source of iron, which came through Bowers Hill on the Petersburg & Norfolk Railroad until Union forces overran Portsmouth in May 1862.

Forrest’s entrenchment fort was manned by the local Jackson Light Grays Company A, 61st Virginia Regiment with William Fredrick Niemeyer in command. Niemeyer was born in Norfolk County in 1840. He was a West Point graduate, but in 1861, he was appointed 2nd Lieutenant, Corps of Artillery in the Confederate States Army. On May 10, 1862, Confederate forces evacuated Norfolk and Portsmouth to Suffolk and Petersburg. Niemeyer was later killed at Spotsylvania Courthouse. Confederate soldiers from Georgia and Louisiana camped on farms between Craney Island and Hoffler Creek anticipating an invasion of Union troops from Fort Monroe across the James River to capture batteries at Pig Point, Craney Island, and the Gosport Navy Yard. Because local farmers sold food and firewood to the troops, the road leading to Respass Beach from Churchland became known as “the Georgia Road.”

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