Edwin Veola Hutt (1918-2009)

By the age of fourteen, Hutt was running the family cannery, helping out on the farm and boxing eggs in the post office located in his father’s general store. Hutt donated to the Museum several cannery tokens that were used in place of cash to pay his workers through the World War Two era.

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. 

Interview at Gwynn's Island Museum with Ms. Gazelle Moore (Tootie) (Age 95), Uncle Henry Gwynn Edwards (Age 99), Ella Wanda "Teeniest" Edwards (Age 83), and Robert Stewart Edwards (Age 89). These life-long Gwynn’s Islanders together remembered nearly 350 years of vivid details of community and natural events. Their criss-crossing experiences helped jog each other’s memories of the steamboat era, including the Adams Floating Theater.

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.

At 101 Mrs. Braxton was articulate and good humored. A native of Middlesex County, she described her tenure teaching at African-American schoolhouses and earlier, working in the dairy at her childhood home. She graphically depicted the sounds and excitement that ensued with the coming of the steamboats. Her daughter Xennia Long rounded out the interview with her poetry on local life and culture.

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.

Part 1. Frances Simmons (1928-2018). Widow of C. Jackson Simmons, Irvington historian, attorney and author, Frances Simmons wove together a cohesive picture of life about her father’s farm, including threshing machines, 4-H fairs, Adams Floating Theatre, beach excursions, dinners at home for family and black farmhands, wagon travel, and stevedores singing while loading goods on the wharves. Mrs. Simmons concluded her testimonial with recommendations for the Steamboat Era Museum.

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.

Interview with Gazelle Moore

"Right now, I can close my eyes and see that boat and hear the noises that it made.  When it came in the creek, it would blow the whistle and black smoke would come from it.  It was just great watching that steamboat come in."