By Glenda Winders
How could we not be intrigued by a city that romantically bills itself as being "first from the seas, first to the stars"? So during our recent visit to Virginia, my companion and I decided to stop in Hampton for a few days to explore this sun-splashed city and figure out what the motto means.
The logical place to begin exploring was at the Hampton History Museum, which shares space with the visitors center. As Mike Cobb, the museum's founding curator, showed us the museum's artifacts and told us stories, the rich history of this singular place began to unfold.
The "from the seas" portion of the motto is easy enough to understand since the city is situated on one of the world's largest natural harbors, Hampton Roads, which empties into Chesapeake Bay. This sensible destination is where the first British ships arrived in 1607 to bring settlers to the New World and is where they established Fort Algernon near the Algonquin tribe's village of Kecoughtan, a complex that would come to be named the Town of Hampton in the 1690s. Because of this early presence, the city technically has the right to call itself the oldest continually occupied English-speaking settlement in the United States. (Jamestown, which usually comes to mind as the first, was abandoned for two days in 1610 and then permanently in 1698.)
Each of the 10 galleries in this museum teaches about a different time, and one of the most stunning bits of information we gleaned about the Civil War era was that in 1861 Hampton's own Confederate inhabitants burned the city to the ground to keep it from being captured by the Union army.
A short walk from the museum brought us to St. John's Church, the oldest continuous English-speaking parish in the United States, where they have been "fighting sin since 1610." It also houses the oldest communion silver in the country and a stained-glass window that depicts the baptism of Pocahontas.
As we continued our adventures around town we soon learned that the area's deep history permeates every activity, which means that we continued to learn even while we were having fun. Take, for example, our cruise around the harbor aboard the Miss Hampton II. Narrator Herb Myers explained the significance of everything we passed, from the historic Hotel Chamberlain — now a retirement center — to the military ships docked at Norfolk Naval Base. He also pointed out the Navy police boat that never left our side while we were in the vicinity of the base.
"They know we're a tourist boat," he said, "but they still have to do their job."
We passed Fort Monroe, which we would tour later that afternoon, and learned about how Blackbeard's head was displayed on a spike near here as a warning to other pirates. We also made a stop at Fort Wool, a manmade island designed after the War of 1812 by one of Napoleon's former engineers. One of 40 forts commissioned to help protect East Coast ports from European invaders, it was situated across the harbor from Fort Monroe so that anyone attempting to enter could be stopped by crossfire between the two installations.
The two forts saw action during the Civil War, when they remained in Union hands even though Virginia was part of the Confederacy. Then, during World War I, they were fortified against poisoned gas. Their last involvement was during World War II, when a German submarine tried to enter the harbor with a commercial ship. U.S. and British boats sank the U-boat, and its crew was buried with honors in Hampton.
Our afternoon tour of Fort Monroe's Casemate Museum offered a window into the facility's colorful past. The moated, seven-sided structure is the largest stone fort ever built in the United States, and on its grounds is the oldest active lighthouse in the country, built in 1802. Within sight of the fort the famous Battle of the Ironclads between the CSS Virginia and the USS Monitor took place in 1862. Edgar Allen Poe was stationed here, and Jefferson Davis was imprisoned here for two years after the Civil War.
The fort was also the site of Gen. Benjamin Butler's "Contraband Decision," which determined that escaped slaves were the contraband of war and did not have to be returned to their owners. Butler made this judgment based on just a few cases, but word spread and Fort Monroe became a symbol of freedom that attracted other runaways and eventually their families. When the numbers grew beyond those who could be housed at the fort, the city established the "Grand Contraband Camp" (nicknamed "Slabtown"), where Harriet Tubman served for a while as a nurse.
Our heads now stuffed with facts about the area's past, we sought respite in art - only to learn that the Hampton University Museum, too, was freighted with historical significance. This oldest African-American university in the country was founded in 1868 to educate freed slaves, and it counts among its graduates Booker T. Washington, who went on to found the Tuskegee Institute. On its grounds is the Emancipation Oak, where the Emancipation Proclamation was first read to the people of Hampton in 1863.
Still, our search for art was rewarded with real treasures. The museum is home to galleries that house art by African-Americans, Africans and native peoples. One of the African-American gallery's prize possessions is "The Banjo Lesson" by Henry O. Tanner, a painting that later inspired the Harlem Renaissance. There is also a "Changing Spaces" gallery that draws on the museum's collections to showcase such pieces as one of the pens Abraham Lincoln used to sign the Emancipation Proclamation.
Despite the weight of its past, this is a city that knows how to have a good time - much of it on or around the water. In their free time locals and visitors head to the Paradise Ocean Club for swimming, picnics and music. Annual events include the Hampton Cup Regatta, the Blackbeard Pirate Festival and several beach volleyball tournaments. Restaurants along downtown's trendy Queens Way feature every variety of fresh seafood.
We understood now what the seas had to do with Hampton's motto, but what about the stars? For that we headed to the Virginia Air and Space Center, which is the visitors center for the NASA Langley Research Center (where the U.S. space program began) and Langley Air Force Base, and where volunteer coordinator Ken Flick told us, "Our main mission is education."
To this end visitors can experience more than 100 hands-on exhibits that tell the story of aviation and space travel. Four actual space capsules are on display - from the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions as well as the upcoming mission to Mars - along with the Apollo 12 command module and a lunar excursion module simulator. The multiple-story galleries contain every kind of aircraft from a replica of the Wright flyer to advanced military test planes and airliners. Visitors can walk through some and take command in simulators of others. Many exhibits were specifically designed with children in mind.
As we drove out of town we congratulated ourselves for solving the mystery of the city's motto and laughed when we saw a bumper sticker with the state's popular "Virginia is for lovers" slogan on it. We knew what that one meant, too: We had fallen in love with Hampton.
WHEN YOU GO
The place to start planning a visit to Hampton is www.hamptoncvb.com, where you'll find information about all the places we visited. Many of the attractions are free, but check out the Sea to Stars package, which includes admission to the Virginia Air and Space Center and Riverside IMAX theater, the Hampton History Museum, Miss Hampton II and the city's historic carousel for $39 (adults) and $25 (children).
We stayed at the conveniently located Courtyard by Marriott: www.marriott.com/hotels/travel/phfch-courtyard-hampton.
There's a lot of good eating in Hampton, much of it fresh seafood. Some of our favorite places were Venture Kitchen and Bar (www.venturekitchenandbar.com), the Deadrise at Fort Monroe (100 Monair Drive, 757-788-7190) and Conch and Bucket (13 E. Queens Way, 757-864-0865).
Glenda Winders is a freelance writer. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
View Comments