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The Confederate Monument stands in front
Tommy Swain, 82, a lifelong resident of Bowling Green, helped fight the 1955 fire that destroyed downtown.
The manor house at Bowling Green, Audrey Torrence used to dance every weekend at the USO Club when the military was stationed at nearby Fort A. P. Hill. The USO building is now used as the Town Hall. |
FOR THE FREE LANCE-STAR
"SO WHY is Bowling Green historic?"
"Because it's old," volunteer hostess Mary Frances Coleman said, sharing a laugh with the tourist.
There's a ring of truth to her quip, however, and "A Guide to Historic Bowling Green, Virginia" is a great place to start to learn why Bowling Green is indeed historic.
Written by Carolyn A. Roth, a retired college professor living in the town's historic district, the booklet was published by the Caroline Historical Society, and copies are for sale at the Bowling Green Visitor Center at 109 Courthouse Lane.
Remember Jamestown was settled in 1607, but even by the late 1600s the English had settled in only a few areas in Virginia beyond the Williamsburg-Jamestown area, Roth reminds us.
In what would become Caroline County, American Indians were hostile to English settlers and authorities made land grants to only a few, mostly to "military men who possessed skills required to cope with the Indians, tame the wilderness, and establish plantations," according to Roth.
"One of these men was Major Thomas George Hoomes, who was granted 3,000 acres by the British Crown in 1667. He established control over his land, naming it Bowling Green after his ancestral estate in England," she wrote.
"Although little is known about Maj. Hoomes, his success in establishing a home and estate led eventually to the present town of Bowling Green."
Maj. Hoomes' son, Col. John Waller Hoomes, built New Hope Tavern about a half-mile north of his family's manor house, still popularly known as Old Mansion, according to Marshall Wingfield in his book "A History of Caroline County, Virginia," published in 1924.
The community that developed around the tavern became known as New Hope. In 1803, Col. Hoomes deeded to Caroline County land for a courthouse across the road (now Main Street, U.S. 301 Business) from where the tavern stood. The same year, the New Hope community took on the name Bowling Green and became Caroline's county seat.
The Jeffersonian-design Caroline Courthouse was completed in 1835, and Bowling Green was incorporated as a town in 1837.
Until recently, the Hoomes family manor house was believed to have been built in 1669. However, Steve Nicklin, after buying the house and the remaining 126.8 acres of the original Hoomes estate in 2003, hired a tree-ring expert to determine the age of timbers used to build the front part of the Colonial home.
As a result of borings into the house timbers, the expert determined the home had been built in 1741.
Nicklin, a Washington advertising executive, was quoted in a 2005 Wall Street Journal article as saying: "I would have loved if it was built in 1669. But I want to be accurate from a historical perspective."
Revival of the estate's original name by Nicklin is reflected by a sign he has had erected at the entrance to the mansion: Bowling Green Farm.
According to Wingfield, Col. Hoomes, a great sportsman and importer of Thoroughbred horses from England, continued the horse races begun by his father on the track in front of the family's house.
As a result, Bowling Green shares with Caroline County the title of being "the cradle of American horse racing."
TWO EASTER SUNDAY FIRES
In the course of the two centuries following the town's founding, Bowling Green has experienced two wars and two fires that burned the business district in the center of town--the first on Easter Sunday, April 10, 1900, and the second on Easter Sunday, April 10, 1955.
It's believed the 1900 fire started in a second-story rented room above a store on Main Street when a kerosene lamp was knocked over. The town had no fire department then, and townspeople were powerless to stop the flames from burning the entire downtown.
As for the Easter 1955 fire, state fire investigators determined that it started in a hay barn behind a gas station and car dealership on Milford Street. Winds whipped the flames eastward onto nearby Main Street.
Shortly after the fire engulfed the frame buildings on Main Street, a power failure knocked out the town's water pumping system, so firefighters couldn't get water for their hoses.
Pumper trucks from Fredericksburg and other regional fire departments arrived, and firefighters rigged up an emergency pumping system at a pond to supply water for firefighters' hoses.
"But I don't think if we had had all the water in the world that we could have put out that fire," said Tommy Swain, 82, of Bowling Green. A World War II Navy veteran, he was one of the first firefighters on the scene and battled the fire through the night.
Eight families lost their homes, 25 buildings were destroyed and damage estimates ran as high as $1 million.
To this day, some townspeople say the fire was caused by boys smoking in the hay barn. But Swain said he didn't believe that was the cause.
State Fire Marshal C.S. Mullen Jr. said that the cause may have been spontaneous combustion, but he didn't rule out someone having started it, The Caroline Progress reported several days after the fire.
Ed Altizer, who is now state fire marshal, checked but said he couldn't find Mullen's report on the 1955 fire investigation.
THE TOWN IN WARTIME
During the Civil War, Bowling Green saw no such fiery destruction.
But at least one family
Police today would describe it as a "home invasion." The soldiers broke into a family's home on the town's main road. Years later, A.B. Chandler Sr., a Confederate veteran who served as Caroline County's commonwealth's attorney, told what happened as revealed by family members on his
"The Northern soldiers filled my grandmother's residence, stole everything they could carry off, and what they could not carry away, they destroyed," Chandler said when interviewed by Marshall Wingfield.
Wingfield included the interview in his book on the history of Caroline.
"My father was sick and died while his bedchamber was full of these soldiers. After they appropriated everything on the place that could be eaten, my grandmother asked them what she was to live on, and they told her to 'eat grass,' and this she almost had to do."
During World War II townspeople never had to face enemy soldiers in their homes, but they experienced those 1941-45 war years in a display of home-front patriotism. They bought $25 bonds to help finance the war, and they reported any planes they saw.
"We had a little shack beside the water tower and we reported every plane that flew over," said Audrey Borkey Torrence, 85. She was one of the volunteer spotters.
The town and all of Caroline County were impacted in 1941 when the federal government took 77,000 acres, nearly one-third of the county's land, to develop training grounds and firing ranges for thousands of troops.
"I worked for the federal government when they were buying all the land for [Fort] A.P. Hill," Torrence said. "It was a sight to see, all the people crying and carrying on, having to leave their homes. Nobody had a whole lot of money, and it was hard for them to find someplace else to live. None of them wanted to leave their homes."
Fort A.P. Hill, just northeast of town, remains a major training installation for all the armed forces. Every so often townspeople hear the booms of artillery and tank fire.
During World War II, a Caroline Progress editorial writer put in perspective the training of thousands of soldiers at Fort A.P. Hill: "Not since the War between the States has there been so many large-scale troops here."
Torrence and others
To provide comfort and recreation for thousands of soldiers stationed at Fort A.P. Hill, the town requested and received $56,940 of federal money and constructed a USO building.
At the USO, soldiers enjoyed food and soda pop and talking and dancing with the local girls before going off to war.
"We all had to have chaperons, and the dance hall used to be full," Torrence remembers.
"We would jitterbug and dance to a big band." The Jesse Pine Band of Fredericksburg often played for the dances on Wednesday and Saturday nights, she recalled.
In 1947, with the building no longer needed for a USO, the town acquired it for use as Town Hall. The Town Council and the Planning Commission meet there, and the town manager works there as well. On occasion the building is still used for social gatherings and dances.
In the 1950s, Bowling Green was on Virginia's political map because one of "Byrd's lieutenants," State Sen. Thomas Hunter Blanton, lived in the town. Back then, U.S. Sen. Harry F. Byrd, a conservative Democrat, was the dominant figure in state politics. In the 1952 presidential election, Byrd took a "silence is golden" stance and wouldn't support Democrat Adlai Stevenson, while Blanton did. But the Bowling Green senator remained in good standing with Byrd, and served as chairman of the state Democratic Party from 1955 until 1958.
Years later, after Blanton's death, the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot praised the senator. "Nobody ever got mad at Thomas H. Blanton of Bowling Green because he declined to get mad at anybody. His refusal to be ruffled made him the ideal choice
Veterans honored
All the soldiers who came to know Bowling Green during the Civil War and World War II are gone, but they are not forgotten, nor are all the other Caroline veterans. Take a look on the courthouse green.
A clock memorial commemorates the valor of Caroline's war veterans with an inscription saying "For those who fought for it, freedom has a taste the protected will never know."
Also on the courthouse lawn, two monuments, two Civil War Trails commentary postings and a mural draw attention to local Civil War history.
One monument honors Confederate soldiers. It was dedicated in 1906. An inscription at the base of the statue reads "Erected by the people of Caroline County to commemorate the valor and endurance of its soldiers furnished to the Army of the Confederate States of America 1861-1865."
The mural, commissioned in 1996, was painted by local artist Sidney E. King. Depicted are Union soldiers marching through town on May 20, 1864. A livery stable is on fire. Townspeople watch the soldiers from the roadside.
The other monument--a multicultural monument--is a black granite obelisk.
The 1835 county courthouse, built of brick, survived both of the Easter Sunday fires.
After the 1955 fire left Bowling Green's downtown in ruins, property owners rebuilt with brick like the courthouse, instead of wood.
As Daphne Dailey saw it, the reconstruction would reflect the spirit of a town that would not die.
She projected her vision of a rebirth of the town's business district in a letter published in The Caroline Progress four days after the fire: It read in part: "Son, while life lasts, you can't defeat Bowling Green."
