Nance's Shop Cemetery, Charles City Co., Virginia
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(excerpt from a letter by John Crouch)
Dear Mrs. Gerbetz,
I have found what may be an ancestral site of ours: Nance's shop, on a fork
of Possum Run in Charles City County, on the way to Williamsburg. At Nance's
shop are a radio tower, a graveyard, and Nance's Shop Farm. No mailboxes
in the area bear the name "Nance," but the graveyard is full of
Nances, & the stones show how they're related to the other families
still living around there. Stones only go back to the 1850s or so. It's
a pretty place, with cypresses, near the Chickahominy River.
Charles City is one of those Virginia counties with no towns and no traffic
lights, where not much has changed in three hundred years. It is the site
of several celebrated plantation houses-including Berkely, Westover, Shirley,
Sherwood Forest, and Evelynton-and the birthplace of our three most stodgy
and agrarian presidents. Nance's shop may or may not be on the former "college
lands" once owned by our ancestors Richard and Alice Nance (the College
of William and Mary is in the next county).
The place lies between the roads which go from Richmond to Williamsburg.
Route 5, to the south of it, is the scenic route along the James River,
where the great plantations are. To the north are I-64 and US-60. From I-64,
you would take Va. 106 south, then after crossing the Chickahominy River
turn right on Va. 609. In two miles turn left on Va. 603, and a radio tower
will be on your left. That corner is known as Nance's shop. I don't know
if there's anything else there. If coming from Va. Route 5, you would turn
north on 609, and it would be about eight miles to the radio tower. If you
were approaching from the south, the Petersburg battlefield would be on
your way there.
[Explanatory note -- information added after I had actually visited the
place was never sent to the addressee. Letter was sent before visit.]
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