The Hands the Built the Mid-Atlantic Coast

   —By Tiffany Amber Stockton

If you haven't snagged your FREE e-book copy of Magic of the Swan, my novella retelling of Swan Lake, join the FanTAStic Reader community and receive the book today.

Moving on to more about the people who shaped life along the Delmarva coast. When I think about those people, I usually picture watermen out on the water. But somebody had to build the boats they worked from, and somebody had to carve the decoys that hunters set out on the marsh. Then, I realized those people rarely make it into stories. If they do, there's barely a mention. And that sent me on one of those rabbit hole research deep dives to learn more. This post is the result.

The Boats Built for the Bay

The shallow bays behind Chincoteague and Assateague have constantly shifting channels. A waterman needs a boat that can carry a heavy load of oysters or clams through it. Builders on the Atlantic side of Virginia’s Eastern Shore came up with a V-bottomed skiff for tonging and crabbing. It had flared sides, a wide beam, and a straight, raked bow, and it had a reputation for being both fast and seaworthy. Another local design, the seaside bateau, was about twenty feet long and drew barely a foot of water.

What I love about these boats is that they weren’t designed on paper in some office. They were worked out by trial and error, one builder and one customer at a time, until the shape was right for the water where it went to work.

A lot of that building happened in boatyards, and plenty more happened in backyards. A man with the right tools, a stack of lumber, and a lifetime of watching the water could put together a working boat in the space beside his house.

The Man Who Built His Own House

The craftsman who caught my attention was Ira Hudson, who lived from 1873 to 1949. Like me, he was born in Maryland and grew up in Delaware. Eventually, he settled on Chincoteague and knew my great-grandfather. He and his wife Eva raised nine children there, some of whom were friends with my grandfather. He built his own home, he built boats, and in 1897 he started carving decoys.

I'm even more amazed that Hudson never used a pattern. Every decoy came out of his own eye and hands. No two were quite alike. He carved ducks, geese, and shorebirds, and he used whatever wood he could get, including driftwood and pieces of old ship masts. He gave his birds different poses and shaped the tails in different ways, even using plain iron upholstery tacks for eyes.

Carving was a family business in the Hudson house. The children helped with the sanding, with bushel baskets full of decoy heads waiting for their turn. Three of his children, Norman, Delbert, and Alice, went on to design and sell decoys of their own. Estimates put the number of decoys Ira carved into the tens of thousands. My grandfather had a few of them in his apartment above the barber shop. The photo to the right is the bottom of one of the decoys. It's impressive knowing these decoys were all made by a single man and his family with nothing but time and hand tools.

Today, his decoys are sought after by collectors around the world. He did his job well.

Hudson wasn’t the only one, though. Miles Hancock was born in Delaware in 1887, and his family moved to Chincoteague when he was seven. Hancock was a market gunner, and he had a houseboat he named Tarry Awhile and guided hunters from the city. Whenever Hudson was swamped with orders, Hancock pitched in carving decoys.

Hancock lived to be 87 and Hudson lived to age 76. With both, you could tell what kind of men they were just by looking at how they worked. A lifetime of knowledge lived in people's hands.

Work as Worship

Scripture talks about skilled work as well. In Exodus 31, God singles out a craftsman named Bezalel. He fills him with His Spirit and gives him skill, ability, and knowledge for working in wood and metal. The Bible treats craftsmanship as a gift from God to be used well, and I find that remarkable.

Colossians 3:23 puts it in everyday terms: "Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as though you were working for the Lord." I don’t think Ira Hudson set out to create art. He was feeding a big family and filling orders. But he gave each bird his full attention, and that’s why people are still looking at his work a century later.

Graveyards by the Sea

  —By Tiffany Amber Stockton

If you haven't snagged your FREE e-book copy of Magic of the Swan, my novella retelling of Swan Lake, join the FanTAStic Reader community and receive the book today.

October often invites us to think about the people who came before. The leaves let go, the days shorten, and the autumn air can make the past feel closer than usual. For me, that pull toward remembrance gets especially strong when I'm deep in research, and I found a great little tidbit for this month's feature.

It involves a cemetery. A small one, mostly unmarked. On an island most people have only ever visited for the ponies.

The Village That Disappeared

photo courtesy of Fishing & Wildlife

Most visitors to Assateague Island today see wildlife, wild ponies, and beach. What they don't see is the ghost of a village that once stood near the base of the Assateague Lighthouse bluff.

Assateague Village was established around 1794. At its height it was home to roughly 250 people. A real community, with a Baptist church, a schoolhouse, a dry goods store, and families who had lived there for generations. The residents harvested the sea, hunted waterfowl, grazed livestock, and built their lives on predictable rhythms.

Then, in the early 1900s, a Baltimore businessman named Samuel Fields purchased most of the Virginia portion of Assateague Island and fenced off the land. Suddenly the villagers couldn't reach Tom's Cove or the fish factories that sustained them. Cut off from their livelihood, they did what Eastern Shore people have always done when the water or circumstance forces their hand. They adapted. Gradually, they floated their houses on barges and moved them across the channel to Chincoteague. The church went too. The schoolhouse went. By 1932, the last residents had left.

Today, all that remains of Assateague Village is a handful of building foundations, a historical marker, and a small cemetery.

What the Cemetery Holds

The Assateague Village Cemetery sits on a rise near where the church once stood. It's not much to look at now. The grave markers are mostly gone. Small stone corner markers outline where the churchyard was, and a simple metal plaque marks the location of unidentified human remains located in 2010.

A few names have been pieced together from historical records: Henry Birch's wife and three of their children. Jesse McGhee. George Elliott. Roxilla Birch Scott.

There's also a remote graveyard about half a mile north of the village site. Separate and set apart. Those who remembered the village said it might be connected to a smallpox outbreak around 1900. No one is entirely sure. The records either didn't survive or were never made.

These were people with names and stories and families and faith. They built a church. They gathered on Sundays. They buried their dead with care and marked the graves. And then the community moved on, and the markers weathered away. Now, a metal plaque testifies that someone is here.

The Ones the Sea Is Still Claiming

The sea level along Virginia's Eastern Shore is rising at roughly three times the global average. Old family cemeteries scattered across the barrier islands (some dating back to the 1700s) are now sitting at the edge of tidal wetlands that didn't used to be there. Some have already been partly lost. Holland Island in the Chesapeake, whose last residents left in the 1920s, has a cemetery that has largely fallen into the bay.

The Eastern Shore's coastal cemeteries are, as one conservation writer put it, "long-forgotten cultural markers now threatened by erosion." The people buried there likely never imagined it. They chose high ground, built to last. And now the ground itself is moving.

Why Remembrance Matters

Every one of those names that's been lost belonged to someone whose life mattered. Someone who loved their children, weathered storms, sang hymns, worked their hands raw, and hoped for something beyond what they could see.

That belief is what has sustained coastal communities through loss after loss. They built cemeteries because they believed the dead deserved to be remembered. They marked graves because names mattered. And when the markers wore away or the water rose, the faith that had shaped those communities said this is not the end of the story.

Eula Dukes, the last person born on Assateague Island, returned to the village site in the early 1990s after more than sixty years away. She had lived just two miles from her birthplace her whole life and had never gone back. When she finally did, she went with her sister, her brother, and a cousin. All of them, the last people alive who remembered what had been there.

I don't have family names on the markers on Assateague, but there are family members buried on Chincoteague, and I've paid my respects many times during visits to that little island. The stories of those from the past make the lives of the present possible.

Whisper in the Woods: Folklore of the Marsh

 —By Tiffany Amber Stockton

If you haven't snagged your FREE e-book copy of Magic of the Swan, my novella retelling of Swan Lake, join the FanTAStic Reader community and receive the book today.

September always feels like the right time of year for stories that live in the shadows. The air starts to shift, the days get shorter, and you're well on your way to the early autumn time that makes old tales feel a bit more alive.

And Chincoteague, it turns out, has plenty of old tales.

Strange Lights and Uneasy Spirits

Elisha Bloxom house

Back in May of 1890, a reporter for the New York Sun traveled to Chincoteague and wrote up what he found there. He was clearly charmed by the island and its people. And among everything he observed, he devoted an entire section of his article to what he simply called, "Ghosts and Charms."

He described a community that read meaning into everything around it. The wind sighing through the pines. Strange voices drifting in from the sea. Calls from across the meadows that couldn't quite be identified. And strange lights that danced above the stagnant water in the glades.

My great-grandfather lived there during that era. When you live on an isolated island with no books, no newspapers, and few neighbors, surrounded by marsh and open water, the supernatural tends to fill the space that other explanations can't reach.

The reporter also wrote about a specific haunted house. The home of a man named Elisha Bloxom, who had drowned in an accident at sea when a yawl capsized and struck him on the head. His neighbors suspected his mates could have saved him and didn't. The story claims old Elisha's soul couldn't rest. Sounds visited the house at night. The widow moved out. A family of newcomers who didn't know Elisha moved in ... and moved right back out before their lease was up. That was eight years before the reporter visited, and the house still stood empty, its reputation firmly intact.

What Fear Tells Us About Faith

The reporter noted something that I find quite profound. He wrote that when the preachers eventually came to Chincoteague with their prayers and sermons, the old islanders would attend, and listen, and believe, but they wouldn't be wholly comforted.

I mulled a bit on that and realize faith doesn't always arrive all at once or replace everything that came before it overnight. These were people in the middle of a transition between an older world of signs and spirits and conjurers, and a newer one shaped by Scripture and the church. The two coexisted for a long time on that island, just as they have in communities throughout history.

Folklore and superstition were never really about the supernatural. They were about the very human need to believe that the world has meaning, that suffering isn't random, that there is something to appeal to when your own hands aren't enough. First John 4:18 says that perfect love casts out fear. The Chincoteague residents of 1890 hadn't fully arrived there yet. But they were looking for the same thing faith offers: a reason to believe that the darkness around them wasn't the whole story.

The strange lights still dance above the glades in autumn. The pines still sigh when the wind comes in off the Atlantic. The island still holds its secrets. But the stories those things once generated say more about the hope for something bigger than the actual subject of the story itself.

---

* Have you ever heard a piece of local folklore that turned out to have a real emotional or historical lesson underneath it?

* Do you think superstition and faith can coexist in the same community, or even in the same person?

* Is there a place near where you grew up that has a spooky reputation, and do you know what gave rise to the stories?

Leave answers to these questions or any comments on the post below.

** This note is for our email readers. Please do not reply via email with any comments. View the blog online and scroll down to the comments section.

Come back on the 9th of each month for my next foray into historical tidbits to share.

---

BIO

Tiffany Amber Stockton has embellished stories since childhood, thanks to a very active imagination and notations of talking entirely too much. Honing those skills led her to careers as an award-winning and best-selling author and speaker, while also working as a professional copywriter. Through her love of words, she encourages others to Get Rooted in truth and live a life of purpose.

Currently, she lives with her husband and fellow author, Stuart Vaughn Stockton, along with their two homeschooled teens, and five cats in southeastern Kentucky. In her 20+ years as a professional writer, she has sold twenty-six (26) books so far and has agent representation with Tamela Murray of the Steve Laube Agency. You can find her on Facebook and GoodReads. She also rebooted her longtime blog and is expanding her content creation to Instagram and Twitter, maybe even an audio podcast at some point.

Faith in the Tempest: When the Storm Comes

—By Tiffany Amber Stockton

If you haven't snagged your FREE e-book copy of Magic of the Swan, join the FanTAStic Reader community and receive the book today.

August always makes me think about storms. There's something about this time of year — the heavy air, the way the light changes before a weather system moves in — that feels charged with possibility, and not always the good kind. For the communities along Virginia's Eastern Shore, August has historically been the month when everything could change overnight.

The Storm That Changed Everything

On August 23, 1933, a hurricane hit the Eastern Shore and continued battering the coast for two days. By the time it moved off, the town of Broadwater on Hog Island was practically destroyed, as were houses on Assateague. The resort on Cobb Island was totally destroyed.

Locals still call it simply "the '33 storm," and older families along the Shore speak of it the way people speak of a turning point. A before and after that reshaped everything. The storm ended what historians call the Golden Age of Virginia's barrier islands. Prior to that August, people actually lived year-round on several of these islands. After it, most never came back.

The storm produced 100-year flooding from its surge, setting records that stood for 70 years, and caused at least 47 deaths across the region. In Virginia alone, storm surge reached nearly ten feet above normal water levels in Norfolk, destroying boats in harbors and washing out roads and bridges.

A Town That Refused to Simply Disappear

Broadwater was a thriving waterman's community of about 300 people. Houses, a school, a church, a cemetery. The 1933 hurricane inundated the entire island. The pine forest that had sheltered the town for generations was killed by saltwater. The lighthouse was eventually swallowed by the sea.

But the people didn't simply walk away and leave everything behind. Many of the houses and other buildings were loaded onto barges and moved to the mainland, where they still stand today in the towns of Willis Wharf and Oyster, Virginia.

Read that again. They put their houses on barges.

These weren't people who gave up easily. They took what they had built, loaded it onto the water that had just tried to destroy them, and carried it somewhere safer. The community didn't disappear. It relocated. Schools closed. Churches emptied. Stores vanished. What had once been functioning island communities slowly became ghost landscapes of marsh grass, cedar trees, and collapsing pilings. But the people themselves, and the things they had made? Those survived.

What You Do When the Waters Rise

So, what sustained these communities through that kind of loss?

They weren't strangers to hardship. Life on a barrier island was never easy. Isolation, unpredictable weather, work that was physically grueling and economically uncertain. The storms of 1896 and then 1933 weren't the first time the sea had tested them. But the faith tradition that ran through these communities was the thing underneath everything else.

After the hurricane, immediate emergency relief was organized through local Red Cross chapters. Materials to rebuild homes, furniture, household goods, issued family by family according to need. That kind of mutual aid only happens in communities held together by something more than geography.

Psalm 46 says God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble, and then immediately: "Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea." The people who wrote those words knew exactly what it felt like to watch the ground beneath them literally shift and give way. So did the watermen of Hog Island who floated their houses to safety on barges.

The Shore Remembers

One of the things that strikes me most about researching this stretch of coastline is how long the memory runs here. Along the Eastern Shore, older families still speak of the storm in ways that sound like a turning point in local history.

Formative events become part of how a community understands itself. The '33 storm is in the Eastern Shore's bones. A shared reference point for what it means to face something enormous and find a way through it anyway.

Most of us aren't going to face a hurricane that washes away our town. But we all face seasons that feel like the ground is giving way. Circumstances that seem designed to take everything we've built. When the waters rise, what do you put on the barge? What is worth carrying to the other side?

Those island folks chose their homes, their community, their faith. They started again on the mainland with the bones of the old life still intact around them. I don't know about you, but I find that more than a little inspiring.

Independence and the Island Spirit

 —By Tiffany Amber Stockton

If you haven't snagged your FREE e-book copy of Magic of the Swan, join the FanTAStic Reader community and receive the book today.

And now, on with this month's post.

When I think about Independence Day, I think about flags and fireworks and parades. But the deeper I dig into the history of these coastal communities, the more I realize these barrier islands didn't treat independence as a holiday. It was a way of life, and sometimes it was a choice that cost something.

Cut Off From the Rest of the World

For most of their history, the barrier islands of Virginia's Eastern Shore were genuinely isolated. They were part of a small sliver at the very bottom of the Delmarva Peninsula. Before the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel opened in 1964, getting to or from the mainland was a long ferry ride at best. The island communities that built up here — Chincoteague especially — developed a satisfying self-reliance simply because they had no other choice. Geography shaped the character the same way it always does when people are left to solve their own problems without much outside help.

You can still see it. These communities were defined by fishing, oystering, boat-building, and the practical ingenuity that comes from living at the edge of things. They knew how to read the weather, manage the tides, and handle whatever the season brought without waiting for someone else to fix it.

The July Fourth That Meant Something

In July of 1861, the country was coming apart. Virginia had just voted to secede from the Union, which put the island communities of the Eastern Shore in an extremely uncomfortable position. Their whole economy depended on selling seafood to markets in Philadelphia and New York. Siding with the Confederacy would have cut off everything.

On July 4th of that year (the 85th anniversary of American independence), 418 men from the barrier islands of Maryland and Virginia gathered on Chincoteague and signed a document pledging their loyalty to the United States. A War of 1812 veteran named Captain Edward Whaley stood up and declared he would defend the old flag to his last drop of blood. Not long after, Chincoteague voted to remain in the Union by 138 votes to 2, becoming the only part of Virginia to do so.

John A.M. Whealton, a merchant and oyster entrepreneur, was the man who organized that loyalty and made sure Washington knew about it. He later explained the decision plainly: "We sold nearly all the oysters we raised in Philadelphia. It would have meant starvation to us to have seceded." When Confederate sympathizers on the mainland tried to force the issue, Whealton's men took to flatboats and turned them back without losing a single islander.

Practical men, making a principled stand. That is the very essence of the Eastern Shore. And it's often found in smaller communities anywhere you go.

The Island Spirit

Interesting that these men chose to celebrate Independence Day in 1861 by signing a loyalty pledge. With the country fracturing around them, they gathered on their island and recommitted to the idea that freedom was worth defending. That some things don't bend.

That instinct runs all the way through the history of these communities. The barrier islands shaped people who were stubbornly self-reliant but also fiercely tied to one another. Islands by their nature draw people together. You take care of your neighbor because your neighbor is the only neighbor you have.

What happened on Chincoteague that Fourth of July didn't make the history books the way bigger battles did. Confederate Virginia barely noticed. As one account put it, Richmond simply didn't care about a small island choosing to go its own way. But Chincoteague didn't need Richmond to notice. They knew what they'd decided and why, and they went back to catching oysters.

This is just one of the many quiet decisions, made by ordinary people in ordinary places, that don't get monuments or headlines but shape everything that follows. I've been writing historical fiction long enough to know that the best stories are usually hiding in the footnotes. Chincoteague's July Fourth of 1861 was one of those footnotes. But it carried a lot of what independence actually means.

Phantom Ships of the Chesapeake

—By Tiffany Amber Stockton

There's something about open water and a dark sky that invites stories. Just think about all the sea shanties that have been written or the rich maritime folklore full of tales. And on a coastline with as many shipwrecks, storms, and hard histories as this one, there's no shortage of gaps to fill.

The Coast That Swallowed Ships

The waters off Assateague Island and along the Virginia Eastern Shore were among the most treacherous on the entire Atlantic coastline. Shallow shoals, sudden storms, and tricky inlets meant that ships met grief here regularly. There are dozens upon dozens of documented wrecks in this stretch of coast alone.

One of the most famous involves a Spanish warship called the La Galga. In September of 1750, she was driven ashore in shallow water at Assateague by a hurricane that rerouted her voyage from Havana back to Spain. The crew made it to shore, but the ship didn't. And according to local legend, not everyone who went down with her stayed quietly beneath the waves. It is said the spirits of those who died in the wreck still comb the beach near the Assateague Lighthouse to this day.

Now, I'm not here to argue for or against ghost stories. But when you walk that beach at dusk and the light shifts the way it does over open water, the stories don't exactly feel unreasonable.

Fire on the Water

Ghost ship legends tend to follow a pattern along the Atlantic coast. The image that shows up again and again is a ship on fire, visible from shore, impossible to approach, there one moment and gone the next.

The most famous version of this legend along the northeastern coast belongs to a ship called the Palatine, said to appear as a burning phantom off Block Island in Rhode Island. Benjamin Congdon, born around 1788, gave what he called a typical explanation for the apparition. He said the burning ship was sent by an Almighty Power to punish wicked men who had wronged her passengers. The people didn't just tell ghost stories for entertainment. They used them to make moral sense of tragedy.

That same impulse shows up all along the coast. When something terrible happened at sea and no good explanation came with it, the story that filled the space often came with answers. Greed was punished, cruelty was answered, and the innocent were remembered. The ghost ship wasn't used just to scare people. It was a form of justice that the law couldn't always provide.

What the Stories Were Really Doing

The part that interests me most as a fiction author is what the stories meant to the people who told them.

The Chesapeake region had the ideal conditions for this kind of folklore. Isolated coves, historic battle sites, and centuries of storms and shipwrecks all set the stage. These weren't just idle campfire tales. They were community memories, shaped into compelling narratives. A phantom ship burning on the water could be a warning to stay away from a dangerous stretch of shoals, a reminder of a tragedy the community hadn't finished grieving, or a way of saying that some things don't go unanswered even when no one is watching.

And there's a thread of faith underneath all of it. The watermen and island communities were deeply rooted in their churches. They didn't read ghost ship sightings as random. They read them as meaning something. In their understanding, things had consequences. Those who observed the burning Palatine shortly after the original wreck believed it to be a warning from an Almighty Power. That's not so far from a worldview shaped by Scripture.

I think about Pop-Pop's stories again here. He never told ghost stories exactly. His tales were always adventure, always rescue, always triumph. But he understood the dangers of the water. History happened out there. People died out there. And he didn't dismiss any of that reality. He simply chose to reframe the stories in a way that meant something to my brother and me.

The Light You Can Explain and the Light You Can't

Before the Assateague Lighthouse was operational, ships navigated this coastline by whatever lights they could find, and sometimes they found none at all. The lighthouse was built precisely because too many ships were lost in darkness. A real light saved lives. A false light, in some of those darker legends, lured ships to destruction.

That tension of true light versus false light runs all the way through Scripture. "Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path." Psalm 119:105. The people who lived along these shores and watched for burning ships in the dark knew firsthand exactly what it meant to need a reliable light.

The phantom ships still show up in Eastern Shore stories. Some of them probably have explanations like bioluminescence, fog, or distant burning debris. Some of them are just stories that got better with each retelling. Either way, they tell you what the people who lived here feared, and what they believed. 

The Songs the Watermen Sang

  By Tiffany Amber Stockton

I didn't go looking for this story. I went looking for something else entirely and stumbled right into it.

While digging into the broader history of Chesapeake Bay watermen for the series I'm currently writing, I kept running across references to singing as something central to the work itself. That sent me down a whole rabbit trail. Here's just a snippet of what I found.

Music That Moved With the Work

Most people have a passing familiarity with sea shanties. Those rollicking call-and-response songs that have had something of a revival in recent years online. But the music sung by watermen along the Virginia coast and the Chesapeake Bay had its own distinct character, separate from the classic sailor songs of transatlantic ships.

The crews hauling menhaden nets were predominantly African American men, and they drew on a deeply-rooted work song tradition to accompany the backbreaking labor of pulling in those massive nets. The chanteys provided energy, camaraderie, distraction, and spiritual encouragement all at once.

Picture the scene: as many as 40 men in long rowboats, hauling a purse seine net filled with thousands of pounds of fish. To coordinate those movements, they sang. The rhythm of the song literally kept the men pulling together at the same moment. Without it, the work fell apart.

Where the Songs Came From

The roots of these chanteys trace back through African American work song traditions that stretch all the way to the Middle Passage. They carried meanings that went far deeper than keeping time with the nets.

Some chanteys were newly written while others were adapted from religious music, other land-based work songs, and folk songs from various communities. Spirituals blended into work songs and back again. The line between a hymn sung in church on Sunday and a chantey sung on the water Monday morning wasn't always a clear one.

Isn't that fascinating? These men didn't compartmentalize their faith. It traveled with them onto the boats, into the nets, into the songs they sang to get through hard days on the water. Whatever sustained them in the pews sustained them on the bay too.

A Tradition Nearly Lost

By the mid-twentieth century, hydraulic power blocks began replacing the hand-hauling work that had made the chanteys necessary. When the labor changed, the singing faded. There was simply no longer a practical reason to keep time that way.

What saved this particular piece of history was a group of retired fishermen in Virginia's Northern Neck region who kept performing the old songs long after the nets were put away. As young men they had worked those boats, and as old men they kept the tradition alive for audiences who had no idea such music had ever existed.

What Music Does That Nothing Else Can

The songs ranged from hymns to work songs and everything between. People who sing like that are processing life. Grief, homesickness, faith, humor, solidarity. All of it found its way into the music. Colossians 3:16 talks about singing with gratitude in your heart. The watermen of the Chesapeake may or may not have been thinking about that verse while they hauled nets in the rain. But I do think they they knew something important. Music carries what words alone cannot hold. And for the men living those hard lives far from home with unpredictable water and weather, the music they had made a world of difference.

My Pop-Pop never sang shanties in his barbershop stories. But he had his own version of this with the way certain phrases and rhythms would slip into his storytelling whenever the tale got particularly dramatic. Now I wonder if that habit came from somewhere older than just him.

The Midwives and Miracles of the Marsh

 By Tiffany Amber Stockton

There was no hospital on the island and no doctor within easy reach. Just a woman who knew what to do.

She Knew What Grew in the Marsh

When I started digging into the history of isolated coastal communities for this series, I learned a bit about midwives. When someone got sick, or a baby was on the way, they called on a woman. Usually older. Trusted by everyone within a day's travel. And she was the closest thing to a doctor most of those communities ever had.

Midwives along the Eastern Shore weren't trained in any formal school. They learned from the woman who came before them, who learned from the woman before her. They knew which plants to gather from the marsh and the kitchen garden. Mullein for coughs, plantain leaf for wounds, bayberry bark when a fever climbed too high.

A lot of that knowledge had roots in the traditions of the region's original peoples—the Powhatan and Accomack—passed along through generations of living side by side.

And they weren't just called for births. They mixed tonics, dressed wounds, sat with the dying, and managed the everyday medical crises that had no other solution when the nearest doctor was miles away across open water.

More Than Herbs and Remedies

Here's the part I find most interesting. Faith was woven directly into how these women worked.

Prayer wasn't something separate from the remedies. It was part of the care. A midwife might pray over a laboring woman, gather neighbors from the local church to stand in prayer when a fever refused to break, or whisper Scripture over a child in the night. There was no hard line between what she knew how to do and what she trusted God to do. She worked right up to the edge of her knowledge, and then she handed it over.

That resonates with me. Psalm 139 says God knit each of us together in our mother's womb. The women who spent their lives welcoming new life into those salt-air rooms knew that better than most. They had too much experience of what lay beyond human hands to believe they were ever truly in charge of an outcome. They were instruments. And they showed up anyway.

The Ones Who Went Unrecorded

The hard part of researching this topic is learning most of these women were never written down.

As professional medicine became more formal through the 1800s, midwives and folk healers got pushed out of the official record. Their knowledge was dismissed, their contributions went undocumented, and what they knew often died with them or survived only in family memory that eventually faded too. Finding their specific names and stories takes real digging, and sometimes you come up empty.

What I did find is they were trusted by their neighbors in the most vulnerable moments a person experiences. They carried knowledge no book recorded. And they were faithful, showing up in the middle of the night when someone needed them.

Storm Warnings and Sailor Signs: Maritime Superstitions of the Eastern Shore

By Tiffany Amber Stockton

Before the Coast Guard, and before life insurance, there was the Church.

Folklore and Belief Mixed Together

If you grow up around open water, you learn early that it has a personality. It doesn’t answer to schedules, and it certainly doesn’t care about your plans. Long before weather radar and storm tracking maps, the watermen who worked around Chincoteague Island and the broader Eastern Shore of Virginia relied on something far less scientific. They lived their lives by observation, experience, and a collection of sailor signs passed down through generations.

Some of those signs were practical. Others bordered on superstition. Most were a little of both.

One of the most repeated bits of coastal wisdom is an old rhyme. You've probably heard it. “Red sky at night, sailor’s delight. Red sky in morning, sailor take warning.” That wasn’t folklore pulled from thin air. It reflected real weather patterns moving west to east. But to watermen heading out before sunrise, it was enough of a warning for them to decide whether to stay tied to the dock or head out to sea.

Superstitions and Stories

Then there were the taboos.

• Whistling on a boat was said to “whistle up the wind.”
• Renaming a vessel without ceremony invited disaster.
• Women on a boat brought bad luck.
• Bananas aboard ship were considered bad luck (they got them at the docks).
• Certain days were thought unlucky for setting out.

And these beliefs didn't just exist on tall ships or in far-off oceans. They lived right along the Virginia coast. The waters off Assateague and Chincoteague were notorious for shoals and sudden storms. Before the Coast Guard established modern rescue systems, a mistake or misreading of the sky could mean a wreck.

There are dozens upon dozens of documented shipwrecks dotting the history of this region. Newspaper reports from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries frequently described vessels "driven aground during nor’easters," their crews rescued by local surfmen or sometimes lost entirely. The U.S. Life-Saving Service, which later became part of the Coast Guard, maintained stations along Assateague precisely because the waters were so treacherous.

When people aren't certain about survival, they look for patterns. For some semblance of control.

The Source of Their Strength

At the same time, Eastern Shore communities were deeply rooted in church life. Psalm 107 is a powerful song of thanksgiving celebrating God’s enduring mercy and deliverance. Verses 23-30 address "those who go down to the sea in ships…” This passage was often read in maritime congregations. Bells tolled after wrecks. Prayer meetings gathered when storms threatened. Faith and folklore existed side by side as equal attempts to make sense of the unknown.

I remember childhood visits to the island and the stories spun in Pop-Pop’s barbershop. He had a way of blending fact and imagination so seamlessly that my brother and I never questioned which was which. In those tales, storms always rolled in dramatically. There was definitely a fanciful aspect to his storytelling. The sea always tested us. And somehow, through grit and cleverness, the hero (almost always Pop-Pop himself) brought us home.

But despite hearing stories, I could tell there was an element of truth underneath all the embellishment. Coastal life has always required respect for the forces bigger than life itself. Whether a man crossed himself before casting off lines or quietly studied the sky for signs of change, he understood that once the dock disappeared behind him, certainty did too.

Generational Traditions

Superstitions may sound quaint when you hear them now. They might even seem humorous. But in them, you learn something important about the people who held them. They were observant. Cautious. Aware that they couldn't afford to make mistakes, that their lives depended on them being alert at all times.

Today, modern forecasts tell us what satellites see hundreds of miles away. Boats are equipped with GPS and radios that early watermen couldn’t have even imagined. And yet, if you spend enough time around working docks, you’re bound to still hear some of those old sayings repeated.

Tradition carries weight. The sea hasn’t changed its temperament. It still demands humility. Maybe that’s why those sailor signs endure. They're reminders passed from one generation to the next to pay attention, respect the water, and never assume you’re in charge.

The Bridge That Changed Chincoteague

  _By Tiffany Amber Stockton

For centuries, both Chincoteague and Assateague Island existed as a world unto themselves. They sat as a barrier between the mainland and the sea, a salt-scented haven surrounded by marsh and tide.

Four miles! That's how far the island sat from the mainland.

Islanders relied on boats and ferries to reach the mainland. Groceries, mail, supplies, and even doctors came by water, and life flowed with the rhythm of the tides. That isolation shaped a culture of self-reliance and a close-knit community that became as much a part of the island’s identity as the oysters and ponies.

Then came the bridges. Six, to be exact.

When the Island Connected to the Mainland

The causeway and drawbridge officially opened in 1922, and it served as the beginning of transformation. The wooden planks stretched across the marsh like an invitation to progress. Locals watched the slow transition as cars replaced boats, tourists arrived with cameras, and new businesses cropped up along Main Street to serve them. For the first time, Chincoteague was accessible to anyone curious enough to cross.

This is an excerpt from the book: You Wouldn’t Believe: 44 Strange and Wondrous Delmarva Tales, written by Jim Duffy.

"The road was quite an engineering feat. A canal was dug out alongside the proposed route so that crews and supplies could access the construction area. Humongous “mud-digger” machines scooped up muck from here and there, then dropped that muck inside of pilings sunk into the marsh. Multiple layers of oyster shells went atop that mud. Heavy rollers packed those shells down. More mud went atop the shell layers. Six separate bridges would be built to carry the roadway over the various creeks, sounds, and narrows between Chincoteague and the mainland. One of those bridges would have a newfangled drawbridge to let boats through."

At first, some celebrated. Others worried. Older islanders spoke wistfully of quiet nights when only the sound of gulls and wind filled the air. Eventually, talk of land sales, vacation cottages, and “outsiders” occupied most conversations.

Yet the bridges and causeway also brought opportunity. Children could more easily attend mainland schools, fishermen could sell their catch to more markets, and merchants found steady income beyond the tourist season.

This was the era when families like mine witnessed firsthand the island’s shift from insular to interconnected. I remember my grandfather talking about seeing the very first automobile on the island after it crossed the drawbridge. And for my great-grandfather, the growth eventually brought new clients into his barbershop, which helped him better feed his family.

In hindsight, that bridge became a symbol. It connected not only two pieces of land but two ways of life. It tested the island’s resilience and reminded its people that progress, though sometimes uncomfortable, can coexist with preservation. The islanders have made sure of that by honoring the traditions handed down from generation to generation while valuing the natural beauty and wildlife of the islands.

Today, visitors drive across the modern causeway (the six bridges are now each less than 30 years old) with little thought to the history beneath their tires.

Yet, Chincoteague still balances that same tension. It teeters between holding fast to its roots while also welcoming change. The bridge stands as both a literal and metaphorical link between past and present, reminding us that even when the tide of time brings new currents, the heart and resiliency of the island endures.

Another island strikes this same balance, although the governing leaders decided to not allow gas-powered vehicles there. Read more about Mackinac Island between the larger part of Michigan and the Upper Peninsula.

NOW IT'S YOUR TURN:

* Have you ever visited a place that felt “frozen in time” until modern development changed it? How did you feel about that shift?

* What do you think communities lose or gain when they become more connected to the wider world?

* If your hometown had a “bridge moment” that changed its history, what would it be?

Leave answers to these questions or any comments on the post below.

** This note is for our email readers. Please do not reply via email with any comments. View the blog online and scroll down to the comments section.

Come back on the 9th of each month for my next foray into historical tidbits to share.

---

BIO

Tiffany Amber Stockton has embellished stories since childhood, thanks to a very active imagination and notations of talking entirely too much. Honing those skills led her to careers as an award-winning and best-selling author and speaker, while also working as a professional copywriter/copyeditor. She loves to share life-changing products and ideas with others to help them get rooted in truth and live a life of purpose.

Currently, she lives with her husband and fellow author, Stuart Vaughn Stockton, along with their two children, two dogs, and five cats in southeastern Kentucky. In her 20+ years as a professional writer, she has sold twenty-six (26) books so far and has agent representation with Tamela Murray of the Steve Laube Agency. You can find her on Facebook and GoodReads.

Floodwaters and Foundations on the Eastern Shore

_By Tiffany Amber Stockton

Tucked away in a quiet corner of southeastern Kentucky, my little nook is usually spared the brunt of nature’s wilder tantrums. But my beloved Chincoteague Island? Not so fortunate.

Dancing with the Elements

Let’s start with a geography lesson...with a twist.

Many in the U.S. aren't familiar with the name Delmarva. And I get it. This area often gets overlooked as insignificant. Many regions do, especially if they don't create national impact. But this peninsula is made up of DELaware, plus parts of MARyland and VirginiA. Pretty straightforward, right? Not for everyone, as I've learned. Chalk it up to being raised in the area and surrounded by the regional influences. :)

Years ago, during a family reunion on Chincoteague, I told a relative I was from Delaware. They blinked at me and asked, “Where’s that?” Rather than spell it out, I asked them if they knew the name of the peninsula where they lived, and they said, "Delmarva, of course." I then asked what the name Delmarva meant. Their answer? “That’s the electric company!”

Cue my teenage eye roll.

Eventually, I asked them to name the states that make up Delmarva. Some got Virginia and Maryland right away. Delaware? Crickets. Now, mind you, Delaware isn’t just one of the three. It actually takes up over 60% of the land area. For lifelong residents of the peninsula not to know that? That’s a sad commentary on the state of geographic literacy in our country. But I digress.

Forgotten in the Forecasts

Just as Delaware often gets left out of conversations, so does Delmarva when it comes to national weather reports. Hurricanes are tracked up the Eastern Seaboard with warnings issued for Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas, New Jersey, and New York. But Delmarva and the MidAtlantic? Often skipped.

And yet, this region has experienced record-breaking flooding after some of the most devastating hurricanes in U.S. history. One such nor'easter in 1933 permanently severed a barrier island just south of Ocean City, MD and created 2 separate islands. Storms in this area hit quite hard with lasting effects.

Why? Because of how the weather systems collide.

Hurricanes coming from the southeast often clash with cold fronts sweeping toward the coast from the northwest. The result? A swirling, soggy mess that parks itself right over the peninsula, dumping rain for days. Historically, these storm patterns affected everything from local farming to smuggling operations during the Revolutionary War, when blockade runners would navigate Chincoteague Harbor to move goods south.

But when the peninsula turned into a swampy floodplain in late summer, travel became treacherous. There was more marshland than dry ground. One of these storms occurred when the famous horse, Misty, was about to give birth to one of her foals. He was named Stormy, as a result.

Wading Through Chincoteague

Flooding isn’t a freak occurrence on Chincoteague. It’s part of the rhythm of life.

As a kid visiting in late summer, I remember rolling up my jeans and kicking off my sandals to wade through water that sometimes reached our knees...or higher! On stormy weeks, residents would break out rowboats to navigate the streets. Picture this: getting dressed for Sunday meeting, only to pile into a boat instead of a car.

Some folks swoon over the gondolas of Venice, Italy. But I’m not so sure I’d enjoy that as a yearly lifestyle. There’s a fine line between charming and exhausting. And Chincoteague’s flooding can easily tip the scales.

The Aftermath and Adaptations

Of course, it’s not all whimsical boat rides and soggy socks. Flooding brings real danger. Property loss, structural damage, and sometimes even loss of life. That’s why so many homes and buildings on Chincoteague are built elevated, with raised foundations or full-blown stilt systems, much like beachfront homes all across the coastlines.

When storms destroy, rebuilds happen. Elevation has now become a way to survive.

Rain Boots and Resilience

Having grown up all around the Chesapeake Bay, I’ve seen my share of hurricanes, nor’easters, and relentless downpours that stretch for days.

My most recent visit to Chincoteague? Pony Penning Day. Unlike the last time I visited and had to trudge around the island with soaked shoes and mud-splattered legs, this time the weather cooperated with blue skies and warm temperatures. The ponies? Totally unfazed. The soggy marshland is their playground.

And it’s not just summer rains that cause trouble. Winter storms combined with high tides have also brought eerie sights. Ice floating in flooded streets. Snow meeting saltwater. Frozen sheets of water. A frosty floodplain.

Chincoteague takes it all in stride, just like the ponies. The islanders adapt, rebuild, and press on. It’s part of their story. And thanks to family roots and muddy memories, it’s part of mine, too.

NOW IT'S YOUR TURN:

* Have you ever experienced flooding where you live? How did your community adapt or prepare for future storms?

* If you lived on Chincoteague Island, would you embrace the “boat-to-church” adventure or head for higher ground?

* Do you know the geography of your own region? What fun or surprising facts could you share that most people overlook?

Leave answers to these questions or any comments on the post below.

** This note is for our email readers. Please do not reply via email with any comments. View the blog online and scroll down to the comments section.

Come back on the 9th of each month for my next foray into historical tidbits to share.

---

BIO

Tiffany Amber Stockton has embellished stories since childhood, thanks to a very active imagination and notations of talking entirely too much. Honing those skills led her to careers as an award-winning and best-selling author and speaker, while also working as a professional copywriter/copyeditor. She loves to share life-changing products and ideas with others to help them just get rooted and live a life of purpose.

Currently, she lives with her husband and fellow author, Stuart Vaughn Stockton, along with their two children, two dogs, and five cats in southeastern Kentucky. In her 20+ years as a professional writer, she has sold twenty-six (26) books so far and has agent representation with Tamela Murray of the Steve Laube Agency. You can find her on Facebook and GoodReads.

Ash Wednesday Storm of 1962 on Chincoteague

 By Tiffany Amber Stockton

With each passing week, I find myself returning to the culture, resilience and strength I find in a tiny little island with a big history, and one where my own family history is so richly intertwined. As I'm still buried in this current book where I hope to showcase that charm, let's take a little walk together through the sands of time.

The Resilient Community of Chincoteague Island

Throughout history, certain places stand as testaments to human resilience, where the past and present merge to tell stories of perseverance. Chincoteague Island is one such place—a small coastal town that has weathered many storms through the strength of its people. Known for its wild ponies, maritime traditions, and tight-knit community, Chincoteague offers a glimpse into a past where survival depended on cooperation, ingenuity, and an unwavering commitment to one another.

From its early days as a fishing and oystering community to its modern role as a beloved tourist destination, the island has faced its share of challenges. Fierce hurricanes, devastating fires, and economic shifts have tested the mettle of its people.

One of the most defining moments in Chincoteague's history was the Ash Wednesday Storm of 1962 (the same storm where Misty gave birth to her foal, Stormy, and another author penned a book about him). This brutal nor'easter ravaged the island, flooding homes and businesses, and leaving residents with an overwhelming task of rebuilding.

It was called the "Storm of the Century" for this area, but neighbors helped neighbors, families opened their doors to the displaced, and the town came together to restore what had been lost. In doing so, they preserved more than just buildings—they safeguarded a way of life rooted in community.

Chincoteague's history is also about the enduring strength of its people. The annual Pony Swim, a tradition dating back to 1925, is a perfect example of how the island's residents have turned their way of life into a legacy. Orchestrated by the Chincoteague Volunteer Fire Company, the event supports the town's emergency services while keeping a unique historical tradition alive. What began as a practical solution for managing the island's wild pony population has become a symbol of the town's unity and determination.

This unyielding spirit, passed down through generations, remains the foundation of life on the island. Here, history is found in the hands of fishermen mending their nets, in the voices of storytellers sharing tales of storms and survival, and in the quiet strength of a town that refuses to be defined by its hardships.

Visitors may come for the island's beauty and folklore, but they leave with something more—a deep appreciation for a place shaped not just by time, but by the indomitable spirit of its people.

NOW IT'S YOUR TURN:

* What is a storm (literal or figurative) you've weathered? Did you do it alone or with support?

* Do you live in a small town? What do you love the most, and what's one of the biggest challenges you face?

* If you don't live in a small town, would you ever? Why or why not?

Leave answers to these questions or any comments on the post below.

** This note is for our email readers. Please do not reply via email with any comments. View the blog online and scroll down to the comments section.

Come back on the 9th of each month for my next foray into historical tidbits to share.

---

BIO

Tiffany Amber Stockton has embellished stories since childhood, thanks to a very active imagination and notations of talking entirely too much. Honing those skills led her to careers as an award-winning and best-selling author and speaker, while also working as a professional copywriter/copyeditor. She loves to share life-changing products and ideas with others to help improve their lives in a variety of ways, but especially from the inside out.

Currently, she lives with her husband and fellow author, Stuart Vaughn Stockton, along with their two children, three dogs, and three cats in southeastern Kentucky. In her 20+ years as a professional writer, she has sold twenty-six (26) books so far and has agent representation with Tamela Murray of the Steve Laube Agency. You can find her on Facebook and GoodReads.