With a father and grandfather who ran a cannery at the steamboat wharf, John Cowart's telling brought to life the Adams Floating Theatre, the rich singing of the Black men in his family’s oyster house, and the dynamic interaction at the country store.

Mr. Crosby was an African-American raconteur, a Lancaster County legend, who founded a snack shop just north of White Stone on Rt. 3. A veteran of the fishing industry, he knew every aspect of boating and sold seafood in Richmond over a forty-five year period.

Walther Fidler (1923-2013). Remembering his early boyhood, Walther Fidler spoke of bicycles flung asunder on the wharf, sneaking onto and all around the steamboat as it stopped in his home community of Sharps. Legislator Fidler speaks in vivid imagery of muscular Black stevedores entertaining the masses while loading recalcitrant calves aboard the tall, white vessels. He spoke of the vast disparity between Black and white households in the community and marveled at the positive spirit displayed by neighboring African-Americans.

Thomas A. Williams (1925-2006). Son of an innovative Menhaden fishing boat captain, Williams provided an inventory of steamboat landings and lighthouses. He described the wide range of goods delivered to and from Northumberland County by steamers. 

Rubie Lee Norris (1916-2012). Then still living in a pre-Civil War house built by her great uncle near Topping on the Rappahannock River, Norris remembered riding the steamers to college in Fredericksburg and told vivid stories of clerking in her father’s store, which was supplied by steamers. 

Interview with Robert Stewart Edwards

At 100 years old Mrs. Morgan, with the help of her son, legislator Harvey Morgan, recalled her honeymoon voyage aboard a side-wheeler in the 1920s. The Morgan family has operated a pharmacy in Gloucester Court House for generations. 

The first part of Mrs. Olivia Mariam Williams Haynie's (1917-2006) interview is spent in bitter recollection of the atrocities committed by the Yankees during the Civil War, tales of great incivility passed down from her grandparents who witnessed affairs firsthand. From here Miriam Haynie takes listeners from her Reedville home to and through the Baltimore. Steamboats occasioned close relations between the Northern Neck and this cosmopolitan city.

Larry Chowning (Age 54 at the time) with Michael Kline and Dianne Jordan in Larry's Mother's living room in Urbanna.  Sprung from generations of family in Urbanna, Chowning displays a flair for uncovering intriguing details of the Chesapeake region through first person accounts. He is prolific author and knows every detail of making a living on the water over the past century.

A local newspaper reporter, Haynes is owner of historic Hudgins House adjacent to the Crickett Hill Steamboat Wharf on the Piankitank River near the Gwynn’s Island bridge. She discusses the handwritten boarding house ledger dating from 1916 and overnight guests who came from far and wide.