Living with water in Hobson, Virginia

Mary Hill was baptized in the Nansemond River, in the water adjoining the Village of Hobson, now part of the City of Suffolk.

“When people got baptized, people would come over from the other villages in their canoes or boats, and they'd sit out in the river and they'd watch us get baptized,” Hill recalls. “We would sing and march from where the entrance of the church is, all the way to the river. That's where I got baptized. I remember that like yesterday. I was six years old.”

But her connection to the water goes back further. She can trace her roots back through seven generations, and fights to maintain the legacy of working on the water that provided income and sustenance for her ancestors.

Hill is one of the remaining village members working to keep the legacy of Black watermen alive. Across the street from her family home, built by her great grandfather, she can see the building where watermen in the village used to stop for warm soup before they spent the day out on the water. She recalls the sound of women singing while they worked in oyster shucking houses, which could be heard throughout the village.

However, many members of the waterman village were forced to find work elsewhere, after a chemical called kepone was dumped in the James River in the 1960s and 1970s, closing the oyster and crabbing opportunities that the watermen relied on as an income source and their industry. At this time, many turned to work in meatpacking factories or at the shipyard to support their families.

Even after community members found work elsewhere, Hill remembers their call to keep the oyster grounds, which she maintains as part of her business, named Barrett’s Neck Seafood after the original name of Hobson Village.

“They said, “You all don't let those grounds go, because you're going to need them for your survival one day,’’ Hill recalled. “That's all they talked about when they came from the shipyard or the meatpacking company, they would get underneath the tree and they would talk about how passionate they were working that river and being watermen and making a livelihood.”

Hill heeded their words, and continues to work the oyster grounds today. But even recently, environmental concerns continue to challenge Hill’s business, like a sewage leak in the James River that occurred when an old pipe broke, allowing untreated sewage into the James River and closed oystering and fishing grounds.

“For watermen, they couldn't sit around,” Hill said. “The captains I had to run my boat, they couldn't sit around and wait for the river to open back up, so they had to go find work elsewhere, like when the river closed for my dad. I lost people who had to go find work, and they felt fear of, ‘Well, if I give up this job and go back, how do I know this won't happen again?'”

Around the same time as the kepone closures, a private neighborhood development called Sleepy Lake development, which was annexed from the Hobson Village, built a dam on Carter’s Creek, cutting off the access to the Chuckatuck Creek and the Nansemond River that historically gave Black watermen access to their oyster grounds. What was once home to a historic African American watermen village slowly turned into newer homes and homeowners’ associations.

“To show how serious this is, when you go in the Sleepy Lake development, one of their streets is named Carter's Cove,” Hill said. “They have taken the original names of our streets, our roads, and put them in their development, and changed our name.”

Both new and old residents of Hobson are faced with flooding problems that persist in the village and will likely worsen in the future. Although the first residents of Hobson found the relative high ground to build and develop, the area is still close to water level and prone to flooding. “Living with water,” a phrase which once paid homage to the tradition of working on the water, now refers to the standing water that pools in peoples’ yards and drainage ditches.

“We’ve never seen this kind of flooding,” Hill said. “Trying to control the water, it’s like telling wind ‘You’re going to blow this way.’ It isn’t going to happen.”

People moving into the area may not fully understand the reality of flooding, Hill explained. New houses built in the area have also worsened the flooding challenges for other houses nearby, a problem Hill attributes to homes being built on too-small lots. Hill has seen newcomers move in and leave within several years due to flooding issues on the properties they move to.

“They're having problems with drainage, too, especially with this house. Where they're building it, it's causing the water to overflow onto their property,” Hill said.

The remnants of the watermen’s village live on in Hill’s home, like the compasses watermen placed on the sides of their boat to help them balance when they worked their oyster grounds. Many more relics were lost when the City of Suffolk tore down buildings on Hill’s other properties that housed many historic items.

When Hill moved home to care for her mother, she also began investigating the history of her village with the blessing of the village’s elders. After hours spent digging through courthouse records and reading through historic documents, she located the names of “Carter and others,” the group of freedmen with George W. Carter, the Quaker for whom Carter’s Cove was named—including Hill’s great, great grandfather, James Newby.

“The deed was made the 14th day of December in the year of our lord 1878 between John Moore, which that's Moore's Point Road if you go down Sleepy Lake where they dammed our creek,” Hill explains about the deed. “And it says 'And Mary E, his wife of the county of Nansemond and State of Virginia of the one part, and the George W. Carter, James Newby, Isiah Riddick, Queenie Joyner, Furnnie Hampton, and Richard Crocker of the county and state forsaid of the others.' That's who the others were! We found them.”

This investigation into her roots launched an effort to get Hobson’s role in Virginia’s maritime heritage officially acknowledged by the state and National Historic Registry. She has also contributed her perspective to advisory committees and stakeholder groups. Her work resulted in a historic landmark sign with a brief overview of Hobson, but Hill wants full acknowledgement for her village.

“We have a highway marker, but we don’t want to be known for a highway marker. Oystering and fishing sustained us, and we want to be a thriving community and village,” Hill said. “We’re still fighting that same fight. I want my mother to see the fruits of her labor. I want to prepare for future generations, because it was prepared for me.”

Beyond undamming the creek at Carter’s Cove to provide watermen and recreational boaters with access to the water, Hill envisions a future where her redeveloped properties bring back businesses to the area, like the mom n’ pop shops that were present at the Hobson’s peak. She also envisions a bank and food markets that would contribute to the village’s financial independence.

She would also like to build a pier at her family home on the water, where she can keep her workboat. This would also help her grow her business and employ others in the trade that sustained her community in generations past.

“That's my desire, is to run a pier out there to those grounds, and put my boat out there, instead of me getting in my car, and having to drive 45 minutes. We always had access to the water,” Hill said. “Here I am, here I stand.”