The history of human activity in Chincoteague, on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, begins with the Native Americans. Until European explorers possessed the island in the late 17th century, the Chincoteague Indians used it as a place to gather shellfish, but are not known to have lived there; Chincoteague Island lacked suitable soil for their agriculture. The island's name derives from those early visitors: by one popular tale, chincoteague meant "Beautiful land across the water" in their language.
Use of Chincoteague Island by European settlers began in the 17th century, when the island was granted to a Virginia colonist. Legal disputes followed, and it was not until 1691 that title was determined by the courts. Although a few people were living on the island by 1700, it was primarily used as a place to graze livestock. This was probably the origin of the Chincoteague ponies, feral horses that long roamed in the area. They are no longer present in the wild on Chincoteague Island. During the American Revolutionary War, the islanders supported the new nation's bid for independence. The local seafood resources began to be systematically exploited in the early 19th century.
In the American Civil War, the islanders supported the Union despite being located in a seceded state, and the war touched Chincoteague only lightly. Oysters became a major industry in the postwar years. Chincoteague's relative isolation ended in 1876 with the arrival of the railroad at Franklin City, Virginia, across Chincoteague Bay from the island, and the initiation of a dedicated steamboat service between the two settlements. Nevertheless, contemporary visitors found Chincoteague primitive. Part of the island was incorporated as the Town of Chincoteague within Accomack County in 1908; the municipality annexed the remainder of the island in 1989. Road traffic could reach the island with the completion of a causeway in 1922. Two devastating fires in that decade caused the establishment of the Chincoteague Fire Department in 1925; the new volunteer company took over the traditional pony penning, and soon had ponies from nearby Assateague Island swim the narrow channel between the two islands as part of that roundup. The carnival, pony swim, and subsequent auction constitute a highlight of the town's calendar, attracting tens of thousands to the island.
The seafood and poultry industries thrived through much of the 20th century, but neither is important to the island's economy today. Chincoteague is a major tourist destination on Virginia's Eastern Shore, with many coming to enjoy the beaches on Assateague Island. The success of Marguerite Henry's 1947 children's book Misty of Chincoteague and its sequels helped publicize Chincoteague, as did the 1961 film Misty.
Setting and Native American use
Chincoteague is the name of a town, and the barrier island on which it is located, on Virginia's Eastern Shore, in the United States. The island is about long and wide. Sand forms its soil, with a thin layer of loam above it away from the water, enough to support pine trees and grass. Chincoteague Inlet, a break in the barrier island system, occurs near Chincoteague Island, at the southern end of Assateague Island. Assateague shelters Chincoteague from the Atlantic and stretches north almost to Ocean City, Maryland.
The local Native Americans, called by Europeans the Chincoteague Indians, did not in fact reside on Chincoteague Island itself, but lived on the mainland, where there was suitable land for hunting and agriculture. They lived near what was at first called Chincoteague Creek, on the mainland, and is today Little Mosquito Creek. The tribe moved to a new village site every few years, and visited Chincoteague Island to obtain shellfish. Although many references state that the name Chincoteague is the Native American word for "Beautiful land across the water", according to local historian Kirk Mariner, this legend is of 20th-century origin, invented to promote a song by that name by an islander. The name, he states, instead derives from the tribe's word for "large stream" or "inlet".
The Chincoteague Indians gradually withdrew northwards in the late 17th century as European colonization grew; most settled on a reservation at present-day Snow Hill, Maryland, with allied tribes of Native Americans, though some may have remained in their traditional area. They were later forced from the reservation, and their descendants are among the Nanticoke people in southern Delaware.
Colonial Chincoteague
Although Virginia was settled in 1607 with the advent of the Jamestown Colony, it was not until 1680 that Europeans settled Chincoteague Island. A patent to Chincoteague Island had been granted by the British colonial authorities to Daniel Jenifer in 1671; that interest had been transferred to Thomas Welburn, husband of Jenifer's stepdaughter and prominent local merchant who lived on the mainland side of Chincoteague Bay. To fulfill the terms of the patent and gain title, the holder or his designee had to live on the land for a year—in the contemporary term, to "seat" the land. Welburn and several employees built a house there and cleared land for a small farm. His employee and tenant, Robert Scott, lived there for only the required year. Once it had expired, the house was abandoned, but Welburn, despite considering the land his own, did not register his efforts to perfect title.
Unaware that Welburn had seated the land, the authorities declared Chincoteague Island abandoned and issued another patent for the land in December 1684 to John Clayton, who conveyed it to Colonel William Kendall of Northampton. When Welburn learned that Kendall was planning to seat the land himself, he threatened to shoot trespassers on the island. Instead, Welburn sued, and the case dragged on in the Accomack County courts until the local justices transferred it to the General Court in the capital of Williamsburg. Welburn lost the case, as the General Court ruled in 1691 that as Jenifer had never lived on the island, he had not conveyed a valid patent to Welburn. Fresh patents were then issued, dividing the island between Kendall and another prominent citizen of Northampton, Major John Robins, with the dividing line near present-day Church Street.
Once ownership of the island was settled, it was used mostly as a place to house livestock, since there was no need for fences or other enclosures to prevent the animals from straying, and they could feed off of the marsh grasses. This usage was most likely the origin of the ponies that have made Chincoteague and Assateague Islands famous, though there are legends that the ponies' ancestors survived a shipwreck of a Spanish vessel. One such ship did run aground on Assateague Island in 1750, but according to John Amrhein Jr. in his account of his efforts to locate that vessel, "the mystery of the origin of the wild ponies became fused with the oldest memories of the Spanish shipwreck."
An early inhabitant was Henry Towles, who had seated the island for Kendall in 1686. He bought land from Kendall on the island, lived there, and sold it in 1709. The first permanent residents were likely George and Hannah Blake, originally tenants; their son John bought land from Kendall in the 1690s. Blake's Point, which extends out into Chincoteague Bay, testifies to their residence on the western side of the island. The will of John Robins, recorded in 1709, documents the presence of horses on Chincoteague—he bequeaths one, and mentions that his livestock were on the island. He also willed a "mallato [recte mulatto] boy Charles son of Hannah, which said boy is now on my part of Jengoteague [sic] Island". Through the 18th century the population slowly expanded until by the end of it about 200 people, mostly tenant farmers and squatters, lived on Chincoteague and Assateague.
Antebellum period (1776–1860)
When the Thirteen Colonies broke away from the British Crown in 1776, early decrees of the provisional Virginia Convention affected Chincoteague. In May 1776 the body ordered that the coastal islands be stripped of livestock that might be taken by British ships. In June the islanders petitioned for a repeal or exemption, as they had [the petition stated] "the most fervent desire to do everything in their power to defeat the[...] enemies of American liberty" and a forty-man militia. The convention allowed Chincoteague and other islands along the Atlantic coast to retain their livestock.
In mid-1776, the convention voted to fortify Chincoteague's harbor—it was then being used by ships evading the British blockade of Chesapeake Bay. Smuggled goods were unloaded on the mainland, and taken down the Eastern Shore toward more populated areas. The resulting fort was built on Wallops Island, across the inlet from Chincoteague. The smuggling route maintained its importance as the American Revolutionary War continued, and in August 1779, the sole action in the area took place—a British privateer, pretending to be a smuggler, disabled the fort's guns and captured a cargo ship at anchor in Chincoteague Bay. Island legend holds that four men from Chincoteague fought for the Americans at the Battle of Yorktown in October 1781, and that one was delayed in returning to the island because General George Washington had the soldier transport the battle flag to the general's home at Mount Vernon.
By 1800, the original large parcels of land on Chincoteague Island were being broken into plots of or larger. There were some two hundred people living on Chincoteague or Assateague, but there were no stores or other retail enterprises. A school, unusual for Virginia's Eastern Shore at the time, was erected sometime before 1804. Three island families were free African-Americans; two other households had black servants or slaves. One of the free African-Americans, Ocraw Brinney, became a major island landowner. Born in Africa and transported by slave ship, he was freed in 1787 and was supposedly 130 years old when he died around 1840, but was more likely aged about 100. His holdings included what today are the Carnival Grounds, south of downtown Chincoteague.
In the first half of the 19th century, Chincoteague became a source of seafood. As the cities along the eastern seaboard, such as New York and Philadelphia, continued to expand, their local areas could not supply them with enough shellfish. Islanders saw the opportunity, and many abandoned agriculture, instead harvesting the sea. The villagers of Chincoteague petitioned the Virginia General Assembly three times between 1833 and 1851 seeking the repeal of various fishing laws. The first post office was established in 1854, and the first doctor arrived four years later. By 1860 there were 150 families resident on Chincoteague, 126 oystermen on the island, and others belonging to allied trades. That year a hotel was operating on the island, located in what today is the downtown area—in the mid-19th century that part of the island developed as Chincoteague's commercial core.
The first accounts of pony penning are from an 1835 letter to the editor published in the Farmer's Register by Thompson Holmes of "Chincoteague"—that is, the mainland opposite the island, then also called by that name. According to his letter, few horses remained wild on Chincoteague Island, and residents would go over to Assateague to build temporary corrals to place the local herds in. Selected horses were branded, gelded, and sold. Holmes told about an earlier practice, to drive the horses directly into the water, which had been abandoned because too many had drowned. Holmes mourned that the pony pennings of his day were only "a shadow of their former glory". The pennings, the letter related, nevertheless attracted crowds from far and near.
Civil War (1861–65)