A cannon was how you called the ferry.
The site at Old Donation Farm in Virginia Beach goes back to 1642, when Savill Gaskin started the second ferry service in Hampton Roads, carrying passengers along the Lynnhaven River to the county courthouse and out to the plantations on the water. It ran eleven stops, and a cannon was used to signal it. The first ferry in the area had been started nearby by Adam Thoroughgood, and the house's own timeline credits Adam Thoroughgood II with commissioning the service up and down the Lynnhaven in that same year.
The ground has carried several different buildings. Local Indians cleared the area in the 16th century and their artefacts still turn up on the site. In 1735 the third Princess Anne County courthouse was built here, the first brick courthouse in the county, complete with stocks and a pillory. The court moved on to Newtown in 1750. From 1751 the Walke Mansion stood here instead, owned by William Walke, who may have run a tavern out of it during the American Revolution. It burned down on 12 September 1828.
The house standing today was built in 1830 out of the ruins of the one before it. Every brick came from the Walke Mansion, laid as three-course American bond in the Federal style. A West Bay addition followed in 1850. There are ten rooms with heart-of-pine flooring and several original features, and the exterior was once covered in oyster shell stucco. The rear of the house faces the western branch of the Lynnhaven River, on a plot of about a tenth of an acre.
It has been a plantation, a courthouse, a school and a post office. It is now a museum and education centre, run entirely by volunteers since 1996, with a summer history camp that teaches children about life here in the 18th and 19th centuries.
It is also reputed to be haunted by eleven spirits, which is a lot for a house with ten rooms.
Other places on the map within a couple of hours.
