Interview with Robert Stewart Edwards

Charles R. Winstead, Age 88 (1915-2008). Captain Winstead spent most of his working life aboard a menhaden (type of fish) fishing boat. A powerful and articulate seaman, Winstead elucidates the inner workings of a steam-powered fishing vessel, including singing an example of the chanteys he led as a crew member to draw in the nets. Winstead, the first African-American in the region to acquire a pilot and captain’s license, rode passenger steamboats on several occasions during his younger days.

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. 

Clarence Benjamin "Buck" Rowe (1921-2005). Interviewed by Carrie & Michael Kline with Dianne Jordan for the Steamboat Era Museum; 11/3/03. At the time of the interview Mr. Rowe was keeping a store at Bena in the Guinea community of lower Gloucester County. The store was established by his father in 1920, at the height of the steamboat era. His vivid memories brought to life details of nearby wharves where he went twice weekly as a young boy with a wagon and team to pick up deliveries for the store. 

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.