As we sleuth and sift through volumes of courthouse records, reeled newspapers, and fragile, frayed personal letters of local historical figures, our glimpses into Princess Anne County’s past reveal an amazing inter-connectedness amongst its families.  We find the saying “it’s a small world” to have been more applicable than ever in by-gone days.

Downriver and on the opposite bank from Ferry Farm, in what is today’s Thalia, was the plantation Summerville.  Of recent discovery, records tell us that commonalities between the Ferry and Summerville estates include two shared owners! Yet another common denominator between the two plantations is revealed when digging further back in time to pre-Summerville days, as none other than a Walke owned land in Thalia in 1773.

The Walkes were major landowners in the county associated with not only Ferry Plantation, but also with Fairfield, at the location of the shopping center of the same name.  One of the frustratingly many Anthony Walkes of the area owned land in Thalia.  More than likely, he was “Colonel” Anthony Walke (1726-1782) of the impressive, baronial plantation at Fairfields.

A later owner of both the Ferry and Summerville plantations was the esteemed gentleman George F. McIntosh (1768-1863).  McIntosh, a wealthy Scottish merchant in Norfolk, married into the well-known and affluent Walke and Calvert families: his wife, Elizabeth Mason Walke (1784-1855) of Ferry Plantation, was a niece of Cornelius Calvert, a member of the Governor’s Council.   Land deeds tell us that McIntosh owned Thalia’s plantation Summerville from at least 1810.  Summerville featured its sixteen-urned manor house, Flat Top, and what at least one visitor claimed to be a “matchless view down the river.”

To illustrate McIntosh’s relative position of wealth, which was often determined by number of owned slaves, in 1810 there were sixteen slaves on his Summerville plantation.  That year, when the county was populated with 2681 white males, only about fifty county landowners owned more than sixteen slaves.   That McIntosh was by all accounts well off in Norfolk while simultaneously maintaining his Summerville plantation in Princess Anne County is further testimony to his prosperity.

The Walkes of Ferry Plantation House lived essentially across the Lynnhaven River from George McIntosh’s Summerville plantation.  One might wonder if the proximity of the estates led McIntosh to meet his wife.  In his recorded recollections of his Walke family, Admiral Henry Walke described Ferry Plantation as a “seat of refined and generous hospitality.”   During their courtship, perhaps George McIntosh and Elizabeth Mason Walke called on one another and mingled at the eloquent soirees hosted by their respective plantations.  Or perhaps they met during one of the week-long excursions full of dance and music, in which families pooled resources, boarded barges, and headed for the bay shore, having sent servants ahead with tents, furniture and refreshments.  Along these lines, Louisa Venable Kyle painted the following mental picture of past comings and goings on the Lynnhaven:

There was much water traffic in those days when barges and sailing skiffs carried these cousins, for sooner or later most of these families were related by marriage, moving back and forth across the river as they did for visits and gay balls and parties. Ferryboats also operated, history tells us, summoned by ‘a Holler or a Flare.’

It was McIntosh who purchased and rebuilt his father-in-law’s Ferry Plantation House after its burning, which is estimated to have occurred sometime between 1830 and 1840.  He gave the home to one of his five sons, Captain Charles Fleming McIntosh (1813-1862), USN and CSN.  As yet another illustration of inter-connectedness between the two plantations, the propitious Charles was later bequeathed the cross-shores Summerville plantation, as well.

When next you find yourself boating, fishing, or merely gazing upon the gently rolling, lovely Lynnhaven River, allow yourself a moment to reflect on days gone by.  Consider the power of this tranquil waterway in its promotion of strong ties among families and friends of an earlier era.