Last Virginia Pole-driven River Ferry Set to Close July 1st

Last pole-driven river ferry may close in Virginia

By BOB LEWIS – 1 hour ago

SCOTTSVILLE, Va. (AP) — For more than 130 years, ferrymen have jammed poles into the James River's gravelly shallows to push the Hatton Ferry slowly across to other side.

The unique calling now may be days from extinction: America's last known hand-poled ferry is a casualty of ebbing state finances and politics.

On July 1, Virginia stops funding the Hatton Ferry. Unless private donors, nonprofits or local governments find the cash to keep it open, its last crossing is Sunday afternoon, weather permitting.

"The future is your kids, our kids, our grandkids, and when this is gone, it's gone forever," said Ashley Pillar, 30, who grew up around Hatton's ferrymen on the flat-bottomed steel barge. He became its operator in 2002.

The ferry powered by human muscle is a romantic relic and historical anachronism that hasn't been commercially significant in decades.

But amid the unspoiled Blue Ridge foothills that harbor Thomas Jefferson's Monticello estate and that inspired television's nostalgic series "The Waltons," the Hatton Ferry is a treasure of the heart, not a balance sheet asset.

Cont.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5h_3A3V6FqJI5jlqifYk-Qz5J9KowD991NOBO0

See related:

http://www.wtop.com/?nid=25&sid=1704419


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Anthony Johnson, Virginia 1670

Court document regarding Anthony Johnson

By virtue of a writt granted to me from [names listed here, which are illegible] John Stringer Escheator for the countys of Northhampton and Accomack to enquire what lands Anthonio Johnson late of Accomack County either in his life tyme. . . a jury of free. . . in the said Accomack County to enquire. . . doth declare that the said Anthony Johnson lately deceased in his life tyme was seized of fifty acres of land now in the possession of Rich. Johnson in the County of Accomack aforesaid and further that the said Anthony Johnson was a negro and by consequence an alien and for that cause the said land doth escheat to this . . . .

From the collections of the Library of Congress

In August of 1670, several months after Anthony Johnson's death, a jury in a Virginia court decided that, because "he was a Negro and by consequence an alien," ownership of the 250 acres Johnson once owned should be escheated, or reverted, to England.

Anthony and Mary Johnson had sold 200 acres of this land to two white settlers; the other 50 they gave to their son, Richard, who soon thereafter sold the land to another white settler.