CBM
talk of the bay KINSALE MUSEUM 447 Kinsale Road Kinsale, Va. 22488 804-472-2013/804-450-7651 Open: Friday and Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Kinsalefoundation.org
This replica of the skipjack Rita Elizabeth by George Lucas Perry took more than 2,000 hours to complete.
Kinsale, Virginia— A Journey into the Past by Ann Eichenmuller
ERIC EICHENMULLER
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n July 14th, 1813, three British ships sailed into the Yeocomico River, their sights set on the thriving port of Kinsale. They were met by the three-gun schooner Asp, captained by Boston-born midshipman James Butler Sigourney. The Asp held them off at first, but the invaders kept coming. Outnumbered and outgunned, with most of his crew dead or wounded, the young captain fought on, lashing himself to the mast before the Asp was boarded. Sigourney’s body, shot and stabbed, was cast away, and heavy smoke filled the air as his ship was burned to the water. If you think history is boring, you haven’t been to Kinsale. A major shipping center from its birth in 1706 to the end of the steamboat era, this now sleepy Virginia town is home to deep water, tranquil anchorages, and some of the nicest people you will ever meet. It is also home to stories— three hundred years’ worth—and you can hear them at the Kinsale Museum. ChesapeakeBayMagazine.com
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Just a short walk up the hill from the Kinsale Harbor Marina, the museum is the realization of a dream shared by a small group of residents who banded together in 1977 to form the Kinsale Foundation. Their goal was the preservation of Kinsale’s history and its sense of community. The Museum opened in 1993, its collection formed from the memories and donations of its residents and brought to life by director Lynn Norris. “We encourage people in the community to share their personal family history through the museum,” she explains, pointing to nineteenthcentury, brown, velvet dress, which is one in a collection of clothing hand-stitched by Nannie Louise Parks Evans and recently donated by Norris’ granddaughter. “Nannie was born in Kinsale in 1868 and, as a young woman, fell in love with Captain Evans, a Smith Island waterman who was having a boat built here. He met her and he never left.” This story, like many others in the museum, reflects the town’s deep connection to the water. One wall is covered with photographs and playbills from the James Adams Floating Theatre, a 700-seat steamboat that brought performances to the town’s harbor and other sites around the Bay. It was here that novelist Edna Ferber was inspired to write the 1926 novel Show Boat which became the
May 2019
4/2/19 10:40 AM