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.

Henry Driskill -- The Mayor of Woodstock

George Henry Driskill was born May 15, 1900 and grew up just a few hours west, in Keysville, VA. He married his sweetheart Alice in his early 20's, and in his late 20's he moved to Norfolk to accept a job offer from the Ford Plant on Indian River Road. He and Alice rented a home on the river in the historic Oaklette neighborhood, but by the 1940's he wanted land of his own. In 1947 he purchased 8 acres of partly cleared, mostly wooded farm land on Providence Road in rural Kempsville, where spent his non-work hours bird hunting, then rabbit hunting, then drinking, then herding goats; all the while earning the admiration of his neighbors.

Henry retired from the Ford Plant in 1965; and by this time, Kempsville's transition from rural to residential was underway. I-64 construction would overtake his neighbor's property within the next couple of years; and by the late 1970's, most of the farm land around Henry's patch had given way to home construction.  Henry's neighbor Harry Davis donated part of his property on the other side of Providence Road to the city for the development of Woodstock Park. You can read some of Henry's thoughts on the changes in a Virginia Beach Beacon article from 1981 here -- page 1, page 2, page 3.

Henry Driskill died on May 23, 1988. His wife Alice died just a few years later, in December of 1991.   The Driskills had no children of their own, so the land was left to a good friend, a self-described "adopted grandson". Richard Spreder did the reasonable thing and sold the land for development, but he insisted that the new right-of-way that serviced the new homes be named in honor of Henry and Alice.

Henry and Alice, 1965. Henry is admiring his retirement present from the guys at the Ford Plant. I am told that one of their favorite married-couple activities was dynamiting tree stumps.

Before retiring, Henry purchased a car from the Ford Plant for Alice -- a 1964 Galaxy 500. He dubbed it "Miss Alice". It is in pristine condition, with just over 20K miles on it. It is currently under the care of the adopted grandson.

The Driskill residence on Old Providence Road, ca. 1980.  You can see "Miss Alice" in the garage.   The view from the overpass inspired Mr. Driskill to refer to his property as "Driskill Valley"

The same view from the same location in 2013. Trees have grown since then...

looking north, on the property line separating Driskill's property from Avalon Church of Christ.

Next door, neighbor Eloise Cesil's house was in the path of I-64 construction. Henry helped her move her home out of the construction zone and then provided a parcel of land for her to live on. When development began on Driskill Court, this house was moved to Pungo.

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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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