On the Waterfront

Brown's Island

By Kelly Hancock

This is the second installment of an occasional series about the history of the American Civil War Museum’s neighborhood on Richmond’s James River waterfront.

Visit Brown’s Island on any day when the weather is at least halfway decent, and you will not find yourself alone. This six-acre, manmade island is teeming with life — mothers with children in tow, joggers, school groups, tourists, and business people out for a noonday stroll. Locals automatically associate Brown’s Island with the Richmond Folk Festival, Friday Cheers, Dominion Riverrock, and other outdoor events.

Most people with a knowledge of Civil War Richmond will think of the explosion that occurred on the island at the Confederate States Laboratory on March 13, 1863. This accident, which resulted when 18-year-old Mary Ryan banged a varnishing board on the side of a table to loosen a stuck percussion cap, caused the deaths of at least 45 people, and injured many others.

It was as a result of earlier, small-scale, explosions that Confederate officials chose the island as a new home for the laboratory, which “employed from three to four hundred females, of all ages, ranging from twelve to twenty years.” Because the island was a “pretty little wilderness” of “bamboca (a type of bamboo) and brush-wood,” the hope was that any explosion there would not produce collateral damage. Yet, the accident devastated Richmonders and still stands today among the city’s worst.

Brown’s Island was created in 1789 with the excavation of a canal to channel water that powered the extensive Haxall-Crenshaw flour mill a few hundred yards downriver. Originally, the spillway created not just one island, but two, dividing the acreage that comprises modern Brown’s Island from the north bank of the James and bisecting it perpendicularly.

Bearing the name of Elijah Brown, who purchased the property in 1826, the island had its fair share of history before the American Civil War. Later, another owner, Hall Nielson, tried to persuade people to call it after him, but Richmonders are stubborn about name changes. (How many people do you know who still refer to the Altria as the Mosque or to the Diamond as Parker Field?) Hence despite the various property owners over the years, it has remained Brown’s Island.

According to an historical marker on the island, Elijah Brown was a gunsmith, who relocated from Rhode Island and went to work for the Virginia Manufactory of Arms. Brown later joined the public guard, serving as a lieutenant and paymaster. Brown’s activity in the guard may be why a military tradition associated with the island developed.

This 1865 stereograph taken by Alexander Gardner from Gamble’s Hill shows the ruins of the Virginia Manufactory of Arms in the foreground, the Haxall Canal, Brown’s Island, the ruins of the Richmond-Petersburg Railroad bridge, and the James River beyond. Tredegar Iron Works is hidden from view in the lower right of the image.

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Newspaper accounts from the 1840s through the early 1850s document the tradition of localmilitia units marching to the island on the Fourth of July for dinner and toasts. Captain Goode’s Guards, the Mechanics Guard, and the Public Guard used the island in various years, and the Richmond Fayette Artillery made the island its primary gathering place. (Originally founded in 1821 as the Richmond Light Artillery, the battery changed its name in honor of the Marquis de Lafayette, who visited in 1824 and presented them with two 6-pounder cannons.)

The Richmond Fayette Artillery got particularly creative on July 4, 1848, and, in addition to the usual suspects – George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Independence, and fallen heroes – offered toasts accompanied by a one-gun salute to Republican France, Ireland, the plough, and education “in primary schools, in Grammar schools, in high schools, in all academies, in all colleges — to be cherished as the true and solid basis of the liberties we enjoy.” Of all the toast recipients, only “woman” received a two-gun salute.

The toasts given two years later in 1850 were particularly reflective of the growing fissure in the nation. Captain Robert G. Scott, who had commanded one of the companies of the First Virginia during the Mexican War, toasted “The Union: Its dissolution cannot be effected by the government of the United States and the politicians at Washington. It can only be dissolved by the States and the ascertained will of the people of the States.” Lieutenant Rawlings raised his glass to “The South against the North: Our cause is just, and our quarrel honorable,” and Quartermaster Gooch offered, “Our own South: She has been hitherto hunted as the Deer; let her now arise and be the Lion.”

The use of the island as a celebration ground for the militia seems to have ceased when Thomas Ball opened an establishment on the island in March 1854. The Daily Dispatch commented that Ball “is now having built a large ‘flat boat,’ to convey persons to and from the landing in rear of the Armory, free of charge; and as he intends keeping refreshments of all kinds on hand to supply his customers, we have very little doubt that he will do a fine business. Richmond is entirely destitute of places of resort for recreation and amusement for business men at leisure hours, that Brown’s Island cannot fail to become popular if properly conducted.” Ball’s plans for success hit a snag, however, when in August some “fifteen to twenty persons” became violently ill with “vomiting and cramps” after consuming soup. Fortunately, no one died.

The Daily Dispatch speculated that “the cook or someone else must have mistook some deadly poison for seasoning, and used it as such.” By 1855, the island appears to have gone to the seedy side. Peter Natalie, who was renting the island and operating an establishment there, was charged with selling ardent spirits without out a license in February 1855. Although the charge was eventually dismissed, the island became a place for unsavory amusements. Cock fights were advertised, and in April 1856, a young fireman named Augustus Churchill was arrested for setting fire to the ten-pin alley. The island became a refuge for gamblers and perhaps for thieves. On September 22, 1859, the Daily Dispatch reported that Woodson Dunn, a “young burglar,” sought to evade the law by hiding in a “cock-loft” in a small house on the “south-side of the basin.”

Kelly Hancock shares the history of Brown’s Island while touring the island during the annual Teacher’s Institute.

ACWM

The Civil War brought industry to the island with the establishment of the Confederate States Laboratory in 1863, and, although there was a brief period of inactivity following the war, as the newly reunited country moved toward the turn of the century, the island resumed its industrial activity. In 1894, a coal power plant was built by the Richmond Railway and Electric Company. The nation’s first practical streetcar system had been launched in Richmond in 1888.

A few years later in 1899, the Virginia Railway and Power company (forerunner of today’s Dominion Energy) built a hydroelectric power plant. In response to the United States’ entry into World War I, the company beefed up security for its plant by placing several large arc lights on the western portion of the island, causing the Richmond Times-Dispatch, to report in April 1917 that the “lights make it practically impossible for anyone to approach the electric plant from the west without being seen.”

Another resident of the island was the Dixie Paper and Pulp Company, which took over the old 1894 coal power plant in 1916. Boasting the “most modern machinery,” the company planned to specialize in wrapping paper. However, within three years, it was taken over by the Albemarle Paper Company, in operation since 1887.

The Albemarle Paper Company expanded its operations, purchasing the Tredegar Iron Works property when the company folded in 1957 and acquiring the Ethyl Corporation of Delaware in 1962. Albemarle adopted the Ethyl Corporation’s name and is today’s New Market Corporation.

Industry on the island waned, and in 1975 (three years after record flooding from Hurricane Agnes dealt a deathblow to riverfront industry), the last plant closed. In 1987, Brown’s Island became part of the James River Parks system, developing into the hub of recreation that it is today. Interpreters often tell groups that a tour of Brown’s Island provides a microcosm of Civil War Richmond. In reality, the history of Brown’s Island encompasses much more than that. It provides a lens for viewing Richmond’s change over time and exploring its development into a modern city.

Kelly R. Hancock is the Museum’s Public Programs Manager. She gives tours of Brown’s Island focusing the Civil War or life in Civil War Richmond.