NEW BOOK

In the summer of 1608 John Smith started out on an exploration trip of the Chesapeake Bay. He traveled from Cape Charles and went up the bay to the Potomac River and went up as far as present day Washington D. C. and back down to Jamestown. It was actually two trips for at one point he was very badly hurt by a stingray and had to return to Jamestown to be treated. It was during these two voyages that he came across a group of islands in the middle of the bay. He named them the "Russell Isles," for a Doctor Russell who was then on board ship with him and had saved him from death.


This group is today what is known as Smith's, Tangier and Watts Islands. Tangier Island is about 6 miles below the Maryland-Virginia State line and at one point all the islands below the state line were known as the "Tangier Islands" (with the "s") in Virginia's records not Smith's Island. These, among others, included Shanks, Old Walnut Island, Piney Island, Queen's Ridge, Horse Hummock, South Point, and Hog Neck. The latter three being attached to the lower part of Smith's Island in Maryland. The "s" was lost sometime after 1880 when erosion took its toll on these islands and the inhabitants moved to Crisfield MD, Onancock VA or Tangier Island itself. All of these islands were at one time inhabited with Smith's Island people, who had more dealings with each other and Maryland and even when to the one church on Smith's Island at the time which was on Old Orchard Ridge now known as "O'er the Gut."


It was during this long walk through my own personal history that I decided to link that section of Virginia to Smith's Island MD and came across an idea. I would take the 1870 Virginia Census of these Islands and join them back together. I listed each Household and the people in it and then added their parents, any children born after 1870, where they were from and where they went. I also included who those children married.


About seven years ago, when the Smith's Island Visitor's Center was in planning, I suggested that some genealogy could be included there, for family history was also the history of the Island itself. There was just one question. "What was the best way to do this?" It was then that I decided to enhance the above project with interesting personal information on the residents then and load it into a computer so that visitors and Islanders alike could use it. This work is the hard copy of the data available on the computer at the Visitors Center located on Ewell, Smith's Island MD in 1999 and contains over 3000 people who have Smith's Island connections. Indexed, 300 pages. Ten dollars of the sales will be donated to the Visitors Center.