Hannah Fentress

 I am happy to count Hannah Fentress as one of my neighbors.  Hannah's husband Joseph moved to Woodstock in 1952, having purchased the house and property that is today 604-612 Woodstock Road.  Hannah and Joseph married after the death of his first wife, Emily (d. 1965) and Hannah remained a Woodstock resident until she died in 2001 at the age of 91.

If you think it odd that I consider a woman who died 10 years before I moved here a neighbor, then I beg your favor in this matter.  Woodstock is defined not only by the present, but also the past; and there are neighbors still living here that remember Hannah.  We both traveled along the same road, and I wonder if someday my road will lead to where she is.

I don't know why Hannah wrote this short biography less than two years before her death in 2001, but it fills me with awe to think that I know neighbors who knew Hannah -- who recalls leaving her birthplace in a covered wagon.

Thanks to Mark Robison who sent me this document and photo back in 2013.

History of my Life

I was born in Portland, Oregon in 1909, on December 13. Just think if I had been born nine years sooner I would have lived in 1900 and 2000.

We left Portland in 1911 in a covered wagon. Not many people had cars then. We went to Illinois by train in 1915. My Mother's people lived there. Her sister took us someplace where we sat on a bank. I was five years old and I thought that it was the end of the world. The fifth child was born there. We went to Charlotte, N.C. in 1920 to see my Father's family. In 1920 my brother was born. We were living at Camp Green. We had a well there and the soldiers would stop and get a drink of water. There was a persimmon tree by. They were nice and rosy cheeks but by no means ripe. They looked tempting. I don't know how many soldiers tried them but some did. They got a very bitter mouthful as they are supposed to be soft and brown.

We came to Ocean View, Norfolk. We purchased property and put up a tent my Father built sides to, and finally had nice house. We moved several times but finally settled in Glenrock where we built and I married in 1929.

I went to work for the City Manager of Norfolk as a cook. They found out that I was going to get married and asked us to go to their Summer House in Accomack County.

We bought 100 chicks right away. The first night the rats got half of them. The next night they got the rest. That was the end of our chicken business. They had a yacht and paid my husband to take them out in it. They had oyster floats where the crabs shed their shells. They had clams and fishes, also. People were not there always. We had the place to ourselves especially in winter. They had a Methodist Church. We picked strawberries in the Spring when we came back to Norfolk.

I went to work at the Navy Yard. I had a little machine that I set up my own work. When they were laying the women off, there were eight left. I had a piece of material the size of a thimble. I made each of us a thimble and the boss, too. After that I went to work in a clothing plant in the coat department. Each piece of the coat was made separately and then put together. 

When that closed down I took in children and kept them until I was past seventy years old and settled down to be a housewife.

I was baptized at fourteen years and have been going to the same Church for seventy-one years. Praise the Lord!

At the time that I was taking care of children I was getting married again. I had four children from the same family that I had kept over four years. My fiance told their Mother that we would take them if we could adopt them. She took them back. The youngest; Debbie, kept crying for me. Her Mother said we could adopt her. She is now forty-two years old and has helped me a lot, although she has been married eight years. They haven't any children, yet. I will be ninety years old in December. Praise the Lord that I can still keep house and go to Church each Sunday.

Thomson's Corner & Coleman Farm

In 2003 a group from Oaklette United Methodist Church published a book entitled Indian River: From Farmland to Suburbs 1700-1960. They gathered dozens of stories and hundreds of photos from members and neighbors to produce a detailed history of the Oaklette/Norfolk Highlands area. Unfortunately the book is out of print and hard to come by these days, so hopefully a parishioner will see fit to donate a copy to the Virginia Beach Public Library.

 

There are a couple of photos in that book that might be of interest to Woodstock residents, and the good people of Oaklette UMC have granted me permission to share them with you:

 

THOMSON'S CORNER

 

This photo is originally credited to Marjorie Wolters.
Reprinted here by permission of Oaklette UMC.

 

Look carefully and you will see handwriting in the top-right corner that says "Thomson's store 1902". Thomson's Corner, known more recently as Barrett's Corner, is the intersection of Providence and Indian River Roads. The structure at the center of the photo is Thomson's store, which was located on the property that is now Lidl's northeast parking lot. To the right, Indian River Road extends northwest toward Norfolk Highlands, Oaklette and Berkeley; and to the left, [Old] Providence Road extends southwest toward South Norfolk (though in 1902 Providence Road was referred to as Kempsville Road or "the road from Kempsville to Providence Church.").

While the photo is clearly from an age gone by, the 1902 date is in question. Robert Thomson was born in 1881 in Lanarkshire, Scotland, and emigrated to the U.S. in 1904. In 1909 he purchased several acres of land between Indian River and [Old] Providence roads (from the intersection west to the old bank property) and set up shop. It is certainly possible that the photo is from 1902 but the structure was referred to as "Thomson's store" when the photo was labeled and cataloged at a later time. It is also possible that the photo was taken at some point between 1909 and 1936.

Robert Thomson died in October of 1936. In June of 1946 the land was purchased by Joseph A. Barrett, Sr. The area is still referred to as Barrett's Corner today.

 

COLEMAN FARM

 

This photo is originally credited to Bonnie P. Moore.
It is reprinted here by permission of Oaklette UMC.

 

Immediately behind Thomson's store, a little further down Providence Road and about 40 years later, is the G.C. Coleman Farm (now College Park). The barn pictured here survived until recently, having served for many years as the meeting hall of Trinity Tabernacle Church (aka "The Barn"). Today that land hosts the 900 Aquoa apartment complex.

This photo is dated ca. 1945; and based on the angles of the buildings in view, I will guess that the photo was taken somewhere near the Dunkin Donuts entrance on Old Providence Road, facing south. Providence Road was re-routed ca. 1970 to the other side of the barn as Coleman Farm was developed into the College Park subdivision.

A special "thank you" to Frank Nuckols Jr., who let me borrow his copy of the book.

 

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Elizabeth Mae "Lizzie" Sawyer Walker

Lizzie M. Walker purchased 34 acres of land along what is now Sterling Road and I-64 from Junius T. Sheets back in 1917. She sold the property to brothers Robert and Samuel Perdue in 1921, but she re-aquired it in 1938 when Robert moved his family back home to Maryland. The private drive that served that property became Walker Road in the 1940's, and so the Walker name is now permanently etched into the Woodstock landscape.

By 1917, Lizzie was a busy mother to 6 young children, ranging in age from 4 years to 15 years old. Her Husband, Pealedge P. "Pete" Walker was a tugboat captain. There is some question as to whether or not the Walkers actually maintained a residence on this property, or if it was held as an investment. What is certain is that their primary residence was in Norfolk.

Lizzie's grandson James Walker sent me this photo. The date is uncertain; but if Mrs. Walker was born in 1885, and we assume she is in her early 20's in this photo, that would date the photo around 1905-1910.

There is one bit of historical-geographical irony here: James built one of the houses on Woodgrove Court in the early 1980's and lived there for more than 20 years, unaware that his grandparents at one time owned land just down the street.

 

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A History of Woodstock -- PowerPoint

Dear Readers:

It may be bad form to publish incomplete research; but then again, I'm not a historian, so I'm not concerned about loss of credibility with my (non-existent) historian peers. I'm acting on the (perhaps tenuous) assumption that there are others in my neighborhood who are as interested in its history as I am. I'm also looking to put this research to work, to draw the attention of people who actually know what they are talking about.

This Power Point is a presentation of most of my research to date. It presents the history of Woodstock from 1833 to the present as told by property deeds, Ancestry.com and the first few personal interviews I've been able to arrange. I do hope to expand this presentation in the coming months and years, so check back periodically.

I've moved the slide show over to Google Slides, so you can view it here.

When the presentation opens in a new window, click "present" in the top right corner to start the slide show.

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