Voices of the Chincoteague: Memories of Greenbackville and Franklin City

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1. COMMUNITY ANCHORS

The fierce independence of these people, their deep felt need to be self sufficient, and their isolation from more populous areas where some forms of social order were mandated, led them to reject formal governmental structures. That said, there are still some things that require collective action and cooperation.

Like other unincorporated small towns with no official government, life is structured by the organizations within those towns. The few social institutions and organizations that were and are tolerated by residents of these communities are remembered and described in this section.

THE RIGHT ARM OF COMMUNITY

An important link to the outside world, it also was, and still is, information central for the community.

A post office has continuously operated in Greenbackville since 1887. In addition to being an important link to the outside world, it also was, and still is, information central for the community. Since the early days, information about the community, its people, events, and the like has always been available at the post office.

Some of the activity there is the official business of providing addresses, selling postage, and delivering mail to boxes. Other activity is not directly postal business, but still fairly formal in nature—posting dates for events and contact persons, collecting clothes and food for the needy, and raising funds for a variety of causes.

Equally central to the functioning of a small community’s post office is its role as the center for information and gossip about the health of residents, who is mad at whom about what, what kid is in trouble and why, when the new widow went to bed and with whom, whose dog died, where the rescue squad went last night, and so on.

The post office came into being as a result of many folks’ needs and interests; but, the prime mover was the first young schoolteacher sent by the state in the 1870s. He recognized the need for a post office but also had the motivation and know-how to file an application and lobby officials in Washington, D.C. A village had already begun to grow and Greenback caught on as its name. Lore has it that at the beginning of the oyster boom, a jealous inland land owner commented that the marshland that was being sold for $100 an acre was worth about as much as a greenback (the then-new unpopular paper currency issued after the Civil War). When the young schoolteacher completed the application and went to lobby for his post office, he tacked ville onto the town’s name because it somehow seemed more respectable to him.

Once the federal government decided to establish a post office in Greenbackville, the question of where it would be located began. In those days, not only on Virginia’s Eastern Shore but throughout the country, post office jobs were part of the patronage system (this was true until 1970). In other words, if the Democrats were in office, you could be pretty sure the postmaster would be a Democrat. Likewise, when the political tide turned, the mantel was handed over to the other party and on it went for years. One additional characteristic of the patronage system was that the post office was always located within an existing business, usually a store owned by a prominent Republican or Democrat.

Sorting the mail in the Greenbackville Post Office in 2006 isn’t much different than it was 50 or 100 years earlier. (Courtesy Brice Stump.)

Not only did this patronage system provide income for the postmaster, it also provided an additional perk—rent. Back then, the federal government could ill afford to build a post office in every little town, so the astute local politician who snared the appointed job also had a subsidy for their business because the post office would be located there and the government would pay rent.

In Greenbackville, the address of the post office moved up and down Stockton Road depending on which political party was in power. During the Roosevelt New Deal years, it was located in the Selby Store where today’s post office is. During the preceding Hoover years, it was down the street at the Bevins Store across from the Union Church.

In 1969–1970 with the passage of the Postal Reorganization Act, the patronage system in the post office ended. In reality that simply meant that the postmaster/mistress was no longer chosen by the political powers-that-be. But it also meant that the Post Office Department became an independent agency of the federal government and as such could establish employment criteria, which it did. Passing a rigorous test was one requirement for a postmaster/mistress after 1970. The demise of the patronage system also led to more job security and higher salaries for postal employees. The postmaster/mistress had always been a person known to everybody in town, but now that person was in place long enough for everyone to count on them to know everyone and everything. In Greenbackville, it is the only government job and is a position of prestige.

Before and after the reorganization of the post office system, Greenbackville’s mail is first delivered to New Church and then transported to Greenbackville. One of the men who carried the mail from New Church always noticed when free samples were a part of the mail being transferred to Greenbackville. If those samples were of something he liked, he sometimes failed to deliver all of them and kept some for himself. One day he was particularly taken with some samples of chocolate that were a part of the mail and consumed a great deal of it on his travels from New Church to Greenbackville. It was only later that he discovered that those chocolate samples were really Ex-Lax.

One postmistress longed for the old days when, she said, The post office is there but it’s not in the store like it used to be. It’s not really ours anymore. Even though it’s the Greenbackville Post Office it’s run by Washington, Richmond, or whatever.

Railroad workers at the Franklin City Station waiting to unload ice and other essentials from an incoming train before reloading it with seafood and produce.

IRON HORSE OF THE EASTERN SHORE

Small villages where the rail depot was the only link with the outside world. . .

With any situation, to be accurate, one must go back to the beginning. And often when the investigator arrives at the beginning, it is unclear what the impetus really was for what followed. Which came first: the chicken or the egg? The tree or the forest? The horse or the carriage? In this instance, the question at hand is, what was responsible for the boomtowns of Greenbackville and Franklin City—the railroad or the oysters? Clearly, the oysters were there before the railroad; however, they were of little value until the railroad could take them to the cities where merchants and their customers were willing and able to pay top dollar for them. This is a story of the railroad that took the oysters to market, helped build two towns, enriched the lives of people who lived in the towns, and linked small and insular communities with the outside world.

The large, fat oysters were discovered by early settlers and later by a schooner captain laying over off Cockle Point. Landowners, namely Lindsay and Franklin, recognized the discovery and began to launch schemes to get rich quick—Lindsay laid out his marshland in lots that became Greenbackville. Meanwhile, Franklin convinced his fellow board members of the Worcester Railroad that there was money to be made by running a line from Snow Hill to the Chincoteague Bay. And by the way, as the decision to extend the railroad was being made, Franklin had already laid out his town that bordered the route the rail line would take. Cronyism? Luck? Or just a cunning businessman using the system?

Origins

The main railroad on the Eastern Shore in the 1860s was the Junction & Breakwater, a subdivision of the Philadelphia, Wilmington & Baltimore Railroad. It began in Delaware around what is now Harrington and Georgetown with the main goal of reaching Rehoboth. As that railroad grew, it began to establish branches and spurs and later joined forces with the Worcester Railroad that ran from Selbyville, Delaware to the Maryland towns of Berlin and Snow Hill and on to Franklin City. This joint effort reached Franklin City where there were ferries to Chincoteague Island by April 1876—less than ten years after Greenbackville was founded. A year later the Delaware, Maryland & Virginia lines merged and were managed under the Philadelphia, Wilmington & Baltimore Railroad—later to become the Pennsylvania Railroad. At that time, the D.M.V. Railroad was the only independent rail spanning those three states with 98 miles of track. In 1882, Poor’s Manual (an uncopyrighted publication compiled by H. V. Poor and H. W. Poor that was printed annually in New York from 1868 to 1924) reported that the Worcester Railroad had 3 locomotives, 3 passenger cars, 2 baggage cars, 17 box cars, 1 stock car, 20 platform cars, and 5 service cars—at that time, a very respectable inventory. These trains were the link to the outside world in terms of commerce, news, and mail.

The Section Gang

Trains came and went but it would never have been possible without the dedicated men who made sure the tracks and roadbed were sound. They not only had to patrol and fix problems, they did it regardless of the weather and before the next scheduled train arrived. The section gang were the ones who kept the trains goin’. I remember two white men and one black one—there may have been more, but these are the ones I remember. They started out of a morning early, I don’t know the time. They’d leave Franklin City with a hand car and a small trailer type car behind it. If you ever saw one of them, you’d know. It was a hand car with wheels that fit right on the railroad tracks and was moved by the ones on it pullin’ back an’ forth like sawin’ wood to move it over the tracks. Trouble was, they had to move not only themselves and the car they was on, but also the one behind with all their supplies an’ tools. The trailer car carried the replacement spikes, pieces of rail, ties, tools, and the like that they’d need to repair any track that was broken or loose. You go figure how much a railroad tie would weigh. An’ I know that the rails themselves weighed 80 pounds per foot an’ that’s not countin’ the tools and spikes and everything else. They were strong men! And, didn’t matter what the weather... they went . . . no cab . . . no heat . . . sometimes, they’d stop an’ take shelter at a station till the weather’d clear. An’ if a train came along, they’d pick up the hand car and the trailer and put both off the tracks so the train could pass an’ then they’d have to put it back on and continue their work. Even when they got to the end of their section, they still had to work the car and trailer all the way back home. They’d work from here to up to Snow Hill or Newark/Queponceco Station, probably 15 or 20 miles. Many years later, they put motors on these little cars but it was still hard work by very strong men in all kinds of weather.

The Conductor

The little girl who lived this story is now a woman in her mid-80s: Early on, we lived with my grandparents in Greenbackville and many in my family worked on the water, but not my father. He was a conductor on the train. I remember when I was just a little kid how he’d go off to work. He’d walk to Franklin City to get on the train. He’d get everyone on and settled and then, he’d be sure he was on the south side of the train as it pulled out of the station. That way, he could always return the wave from his mother, my grandmother, who was waitin’ to see him go from her back porch. He’s the one that would yell ‘All ’board . . . Hursley [now Stockton], Girdletree, Scarboro, Snow Hill, Wesley, Queponco, Ironshire, Berlin, Friendship, Showell, Bishop, Selbyville, Frankford, Dagsboro, Millsboro, Stockley, Georgetown—ALL ABOARD! ’

He’d be gone overnight and then back home the next day an’ then he’d go again. He was gone every other night and home on Sunday. I guess I’d have to say, my mother was really the one who raised me.

Because my father worked for the railroad, he had a steady income and as far as I can remember, we always had a car. When the Depression came, there were fewer trains and his hours got cut back. He couldn’t any longer go from Franklin City. He’d come to Franklin City, stay home for a day an’ then, he’d have to go back to Harrington on another train to get on the one that’d bring him back to Franklin City. He taught me to drive the car when I was twelve. You know back then you were always havin’ flat tires. So, there was a man in town who didn’t have a car or know how to drive but my father would have him come with us in case there was a flat, and I would drive my father to Pocomoke City where the other train would come to take him to Harrington. So, I drove him to work every other day at the age of