Tyrrell County, Day One

On Monday, October 13, I drove from Philadelphia to Tyrrell County, North Carolina.  

It rained until Virginia.  When the skies cleared, I entered an unending T-Mobile dead zone, which left me without that directive yet reassuring little voice that says “In a half mile, remain in the right lane and turn right onto US 17 South.  Turn onto 17 South!” 

At 20 miles long, the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and Tunnels was a far longer and more beautiful crossing than I had imagined.  Everything was shimmering, silvery and ethereal.

After the bridge, I made a few wrong turns and had a few time-wasting off-road adventures.  Everything looked the same to this traveler: flat farm fields, planted with yellowed soy beans that shone golden in the late light, broken by the occasional cotton field and long expanses of forested swamp. 

As I got closer to my destination, Columbia, the billboards began to advertise Outer Banks destinations, and the horizon began to promise nearby water.  I spotted a road sign that said “red wolf crossing.”  There was a subtle shift in the landscape, a sense of increasing wildness and isolation.

It did not feel like going home.  It felt like going toward something unknown and unaltered by the 21^st century, a perfect landscape for travelling back in time, hunting ancestors.

It was also blackpowder deer hunting season in North Carolina, I learned after I checked into the Brickhouse Inn.  Two hunters in the room across the hall from mine were also traveling back in time, using muzzle-loading rifles to recreate an earlier hunting experience. 

I was about to learn just how much Tyrrell County -- with its sparse development, swamps, forests and humidity -- welcomes retrospective pursuits.

Ready, set, go -- down home!

I have procrastinated, delayed, watched the weather, finally decided on a mode of transportation, stopped my mail delivery and in five days, I’ll be in Columbia, NC for a short week of research.  I’ll stay at the Brickhouse Inn B&B, and spend my time in courthouses, libraries and cemeteries, trying to establish a feel for a past I've never known. 

In the past few weeks, I’ve discovered Facebook groups that I wish I’d known about a year ago!  There’s  the North Carolina Genealogy Network, the Tyrrell County Genealogy group, and the Washington County Geneaology group.  Great group of serious researchers, some of whom are familiar to me, such as Taneya Koonce and Shannon Christmas. 

Through these groups, I’ve discovered some new relatives, learned that I’ll be missing the 23^rd annual Scuppernong River Festival by two days, and generally found myself moving out of the abstract world of family trees, old photos and paper ephemera and into an excited anticipation of being in the present and among the living in a different landscape.

I’m planning to visit Somerset Place, and hopefully, with one of my DNA relatives from Virginia.

My next post will be from Down Home.