The Old Trading Station

Okay.  Back out on the street.  Now, John says down the street and around the corner is an old fort - or what's left of it.  I like forts.  Let's go.  It's a beautiful day, and I love walking down old streets and looking at o-o-old buildings.

Isn't it funny how they bricked the front to make it classier, and now we put stone on the front to make it classier...  Old buildings I like; old abandoned buildings I don't.

Down the street and around the corner, just like the man said, and there it stands. 

or what's left of it...

Seems we were about 30 years too late.  (Click on the description, and it should enlarge so you can read it.)

But the story is still here, and I'm always up for a good story!  There is a plaque on the side of what's left of the structure.  It was placed there by the D.A.R. (Daughters of the American Revolution) over a hundred years ago (1909) declaring that this was the site of Major Peter Jones' trading station, owner of Peter's Point, later to be known as Petersburg.

Mural adapted from a William Waud drawing in Harper's Magazine during the Civil War

This structure variously served as a headquarters for trade with western settlers, Indian tribes, and foreign countries - especially England - and as a storage place for trade goods, then powder and guns after the Revolutionary War (1785-1791).  It was the departure point for various explorations of the western and southern regions of Atlantic America. 

This building was probably built in the mid 1600's or early 1700's. That puts it at a half century - maybe even a full century - before Bethabara and Salem, North Carolina. Ditto for the Old Stone Warehouse in Fredericksburg, Virginia.  And this baby was still standing up until 1980.  Cool.

It was a 3 1/2 story building.  Many of the rocks had mica crystals in them.  When it was new I would imagine the building sparkled diamond-like in the sunlight.  That would be pretty impressive.

This is where Union soldiers (down here in the South they aren't referred to as "Union" soldiers but as "Federal" soldiers) and Union sympathizers were imprisoned during the Civil War, including not-much-talked-about Native American Union soldiers.  Bad behaving Confederate soldiers were imprisoned here, too.  John is none of the above, so he is standing on the outside of the bars.  :-)

He is standing at the backside of the building at the bottom of the 3 1/2 stories with the river to his left behind me.  Rivers were the super highways of early America (early everywhere on earth actually). 

This is the back side of the front wall of the trading station that you can see through the open doorway in John's picture.

That wall is at least two feet thick.  Was that for structural purposes? or protection?  or both?  Actually, most of the east coast Indians weren't too terribly violent.  It's when you crossed the mountains to the interior of the continent that they got kind of testy.

This location was at the limit of navigation on the Appomattox River as just beyond here is a waterfall that prevented any further river travel west.  From here one had to go on foot.  Trappers and those with goods to trade made their way here, sold their stuff, and it was loaded for shipment to places as far away as England.  The goods were floated out on barges, flatboats, ferries, canoes, canoas (hollowed out logs), small rowboats, or carried out on wagons, horse trains (as far as Alabama), railroads, or oxen-pulled tobacco hogsheads.  Products included deerskins, ship's masts, tobacco, wheat, and flour. 

(I have heard that tobacco plants are indigenous only to Peru, and that it was forbidden to export the plant so that Peru could maintain a monopoly on its production.  Obviously, someone managed to smuggle a few out... naughty-naughty.)