Life On Chincoteague (Part 2): From the New York Sun of 2 May 1890

(The New York Sun was a daily newspaper, published in New York City, New York, from 1933 until 1950. It was one of the most influential American newspapers through the early twentieth century; and was the first successful penny daily paper in the United States.  It was known for it's witty, humorous treatment of news, a clear style of journalism, and the occasional sensational approach to scandals.)

  **Please excuse any out-of-date or derogatory terms that are used.  This is a true, uncorrected transcription of the original newspaper article. **  This account is signed  by John R. Spears:

  "A line of railroad controlled by the Pennsylvania Company runs down the eastern shore of the peninsula and terminates on a pier in a queer little community called Franklin City, on the shores of the bay in which Chincoteague lies.  The train, for there is but one a day,reaches Franklin City early in the afternoon.  It finds there a little tug of a steamer called the Widgeon, waiting to ferry the wayfarer over the water to Chincoteague.  The steamer has a low hull, with a narrow engine house amidships, and a hurricane deck propped upon stilts about six feet above the main deck.  On the upper deck is a seven-by-ten cabin and a pilot house, and a bench running around the outside for use in fair weather.  Sitting up here, the traveller watches the roustabouts, who are white, and Capt. Pruitt himself,trundle the merchandise from the car to the steamer, and then, after a few toots to call in the passengers who may be loitering in Franklin City stores, away she goes like a great fat duck - and not much faster.  It is said to be a seven-mile run across the bay, and it takes the Widgeon just an hour to swim it.

  As the steamer approaches the island the distinctive characteristics of the people appear. Dozens and scores of the kind of little shanties in which colored people live in the rural districts of Long Island and New Jersey are to be seen, and it is not without a mental shock that the New Yorker notices that the occupants are almost in variably white. Scattered about among these shanties are perhaps a dozen or more houses of a style of architecture and finish that would be creditable in any village near the metropolis.  Surprising as this mixture appears, the wonder of the visitor at the sight becomes little if any short of amazement on landing.  The main street literally follows the coast of the bay, winding along about 100 feet from the water's edge and following the crooks and turns very faithfully.  From this street at intervals side streets run at various angles.  The main street varies from 30 to 60 feet in width, apparently at the whim of the property owners facing it.  The side streets are from 10 to 10 feet wide.  The streets have never been either paved or graded.  They are the universal dumping ground for house sweepings and refuse, save only where a vacant lot adjoins a dwelling; in that case the refuse goes on the vacant lot because it is handier to the kitchen.  Tin cans, torn paper, old rags, odds and bits of bones, bottles, and oyster shells, especially oyster shells, appear everywhere, but the bones are invariably dry and clean of meat or muscle, for the pigs that run the street have a watchful eye for such things.  It is along such lanes as these that the handsome residences seen from the steamer are to be found.
  Both sides of the main street are pretty well lined with stores, and these vary in size and style more than the dwellings do.  Some of these buildings are so old that the moss-grown shingles are dropping to pieces rotten.  Some are so new that only the  first coat of paint has been applied, and the shingles are bright with the color of the original cedar.
  Standing around, singly and in groups in front of these stores, or straggling along the streets, or sitting in chairs tilted back against the front of the big hotel, can be seen fair specimens of the present population of Chincoteague.  The population can be divided on one line into two classes - the native and the imported. It is greatly to the sorrow of the native class that the immigrants have become so numerous in recent years as to crowd the natives very hard in more respects than one.  By another division of the population there are the producers and the non-producers, the producers being without exception oystermen, while a majority of the non-producers, so-called, being capitalists, have their money invested in some way in the oyster business, and so those who are strictly non-producers are very few in numbers.  Chincoteague is founded on oysters; it lives, moves and grows rich on oysters; it even gets fat on them; but this assertion must be limited to the immigrant class.  The native Chincoteaguer does not get fat, though now and then one, like old Uncle Ken Jester, becomes rotund on abundant whiskey.
  The native Chincoteaguer has long, bony legs, a gaunt body, long,dangling arms, long, skinny fingers, a long, wrinkled neck that sprouts out from between his shoulders like a tangent from a curve; a head of long, wriggly hair, and cheeks that are as hollow as his chest is concave.  The hair under his chin grows undisturbed.  On his upper lips, chin, and cheeks it is chopped off by the wife with scissors, ordinarily, but on state occasions, such as election days and at pony round-ups, he shaves himself, and it is a shave that is so close in spots as to draw the blood and so far away in others that the hair is left in broad patches undisturbed. His eyes are watery, his teeth scattered and worn, his breath redolent of strong drink and tobacco. How in the world it happens that the daughters of such men should be sweet-faced and of rounded forms, often voluptous and how these girls who are so charming at 18 or 20, should be shriveled and cadaverous at 30, is one of the things not fully understood, but these are the facts.
  The Chincoteague man was raised on homespun trousers cut high in the waist and short in the leg, a shirt that was short in the arm and opened as low in front as the evening dress of a society woman, a soft hat that rose to a peak on top of the head. He would be glad to wear that sort of a dress now, but he cannot afford it. It takes so long to raise the flax, and hackle, spin, and weave the product that the time can be devoted to oysters much more profitably. He now buys store clothes of such ample widths and folds as to the body and scantiness as to length of arm and leg, and of such diversity of colors, checks and stripes that either Solomon or Joseph in all their glory could hold a candle to him. But it is in his footwear that he takes a special pride. In the season, and that means while oysters can be shipped, the feet of the Chincoteaguer are encased in rubber boots that may be drawn up to his hips. But though they may be, they seldom are. The pliable tops are turned down half way below the knee, and then turned and drawn part way up again, and there they hang in such wide folds that the Chincoteaguer must needs straddle. Just imagine a man six feet tall, stooped and gangling, with boots whose rolling tops measure a foot across, straddling along the street, with his arms swinging in unison with his legs; then you have the native Chincoteaguer in all his pride.
  The wife of the old native is to be seen about the streets on every pleasant day. She comes to town riding in a cart. The cart has wheels 5 feet in diameter, with tires 3 1/2 inches wide. It has thills or shafts like those of the garbage carts of New York, only they are longer. Between these thills stands the team, a cow or an ox or a pony or a mule, just as the owner happens to own one or the other. If it is a cow, it has to keep its neck stretched to prevent the ends of the thills chafing its horns.  Seated on a board laid across the box of this cart is the woman, dressed in a calico gown and a sun bonnet, while sitting about her feet are four or five of the younger children - say from a third to a half the number of the family. The wife is gaunt and worn; the children are fat and good looking.
  The homes of the Chincoteaguers are built on one model; it is that of the dry goods box. They were originally of logs, but for the last thirty years or so are made of lumber. They have a single room with a low attic above, reached by a cross between a ladder and a stairway. A doorless cupboard in one corner holds a few dishes. A pot, a frying pan, a coffee pot, and a few basins and pie tins are piled behind a rusty stove. In one corner stands the bed. No such bed as that, probably, can be found in the metropolis. The bedposts are as thick as a common stovepipe. Huge timbers serve as rails, and the bedding rests on a rope that is stretched criscross around pegs in the rail. But the most noticeable feature of all is the stock of feather beds. They swell up like hay in a New England mow. Winter and summer the Chincoteaguer must have a soft bed, and his idea of softness is in no way so well met as by abundant feathers. The thought of such a bed in such a climate as this is in August is enough to make a Northern man gasp, but there the Chincoteaguer sleeps content. The children sleep on the trundle bed and on feather beds on the floor in the attic.
  The Chincoteaguer is exceedingly hospitable. He will share his well-feathered nest and his pork, corn bread, and coffee for such is his diet, with a stranger at any time, and be heartily glad of the opportunity. If the stranger will only take a drink from the ever-present whiskey bottle and then sit down and chew tobacco and spit in the stove hearth while the old woman sits by in the old wooden rocking chair and smokes a stone wall pipe with a fish pole stem, the comfort and pleasure of that family is complete. But it takes a stranger with iron nerve and stomach to stand the ordeal.
  Living in an isolated hut on an isolated patch of land, with no books, no newspapers, and no schools or teachers, the tendency of the Chincoteaguer's mind was inevitably toward a belief in the supernatural. The wind sighing through the pine, strange voices from the sea, strange calls from across the meadows, strange lights that danced above the stagnant water in the glades - all came to him as manifestations and tokens of the spirit world. Old Elisha Bloxom, living a mile below the village, went one day down the beach to help discharge the cargo of a beached vessel - wrack the ship, as they say here. Coming ashore the yawl was capsized, and Elisha was struck on the head by the boat, stunned, and drowned. Some thought his mates should have saved him. In a short time they were sure of it, for the soul of the old man, they said, could not rest in the grave they dug for him in the sand hill overlooking the sea. Sounds that were unaccountable were heard in the old house. The widow and her children moved out and a family of immigrants, who knew not Elisha, moved in. Before the year of their lease was up they moved out, unable to stand the nightly visitations. That was eight years ago, but no tenant has lived there since, while the belated wayfarer on the old road that leads by the house runs by it with hastening step and bated breath, fearful lest the old man appear to seek vengeance for his untimely death.
  For many years Widow Zippie Tulle lives in a little hut near Jamestown, on the mainland. Old Nigger Dave Blake lives alone in the swamp near Horntown, also on the main. Neither priest nor secular ruler ever exercised a stronger sway over parish and subject than these ignorant old conjurors over the minds of the old Chincoteaguers. Did husband suspect his wife or wife her husband of loving another, they believed, good souls, that the erring one was bewitched. Did the husband become petulant or the wife peevish unexpectedly, so that quarrels followed, the evil eye had fallen upon that household. Did aches and pains or distress of any sort come; did the cholera affect the pigs, or murrain the cow or some other disease the ponies, or green gill the oysters, the powers of the evil spirits were at the bottom of it all. There was but one hope for relief. Widow Zippie or Nigger Dave must be consulted. The Chincoteaguers went over the bay in their dugouts by the dozen at times to see thee two conjurors. The widow held the hands of those that applied to her, examined the skull of a drowned sailor found on the beach, mumbled over the dried heart of a frog, and made the sign of the cross again and again with a wand made of a serpent's skeleton bound together with human hair plucked, she said, by unseen spirits from the heads of those who had offended her. This done, she gave to the applicant a powder wrapped in black paper, and with that for a charm the distressed one went away comforted.
  Old Nigger Dave's process was more mysterious still. The visitor found the old man in the hut in the swamp rolling a ball of unknown composition on a shaky table. To and fro, round and round, the old darky sent the ball, while he bent his whitening head above it and whispered words which no one understood. Not infrequently the visitor would not be allowed to either explain the cause of the visit or ask a question; he must stand in silence while that ball rumbled about on the table till the old colored man was ready to stop it. Then, to the amazement of the Chincoteaguer, the old conjurer would tell in a solemn voice all about the trouble that had brought his visitor to the hut in the swamp. Surely, the powers of darkness must have told him about it, and impressed with that belief the Chincoteaguer paid the price, took the proffered charm and went away to obey the injunctions of the conjurer to the letter.
  The fame of old Dave as a healer of domestic woes became wider than the confines of Chincoteague or Accomack county. In the plenitude of his power he brought the one complained of before him when the complainant was absent, and by his mysterious knowledge of facts and his awful threat extorted the truth, and then said such commands on both husband and wife as invariably healed the difficulty; for faithfulness and kindliness, one toward the other, followed on the commands of the old negro. Though he practiced the black arts he did for the Chincoteaguers what neither judges nor juries nor religion could do. There was a deal of hearty sorrow in many homes that he had made happy when one morning a visitor in distress went to the little old hut in the swamp and found old Dave sitting by the table with his face down on one arm, and the conjuring ball in his hand. He did not move when the visitor entered, nor answer when spoken to, nor was he ever able to again set the ball rolling in the interests of either health or peace for he was dead. The widow Zippie had died before him, and no one has arisen to take their places. The preachers came to the island of Chincoteague with their prayers and sermons, but while the old Chincoteaguer will attend, and listen, and believe, he will not be wholly comforted."

** Again, this is a word for word transcript of a newspaper report written and printed in 1890. Please do not hold the use of the common word for African-Americans at that time against me, personally. **
This is the second of three or four parts of the article.  I hope you enjoy reading it.