These first Virginia fish factories were crude affairs consisting of five or six iron kettles, each with a capacity of one hundred or more gallons. They were established on a brick firebox with a chimney in the center of the unit and openings at both ends for firing. This was protected by a rough frame shelter with a slab-pine roof. This was a typical factory, though the number of kettles varied.

Cordwood was used for fuel. Scows with sails were sent to the heads of the rivers where wood was brought down from "the forest" and loaded on them.

At the temporary Ketchum's Camp factory the fish were pulled up on the shore in haul seines. After that they were caught in purse seines operated from sailing vessels.

It had been found, as previously explained, that by cooking the fish much more oil could be extracted. The fish were boiled and then dipped out with dip-nets and put in what was called a press. Burlap was then placed over the mass of fish, and then boards on top of that. The boards were then pulled down tight with a screw-jack.

After the oil and water had been pressed out, the residue of fish was spread out on the wharf in the sun to dry. To hasten this process the mass was turned over and over by men with pitchforks. Acid was sprayed on the "green scrap" to kill the maggots. It usually took about a week to change the menhaden from the raw state into oil and guano.

The following government report is probably the first of the menhaden industry of the Chesapeake and its tributaries. It is dated 1869.

Men employed on vessels fishing 12 Vessels employed 4 Men employed making guano 9 Fish taken 3,000,000 Oil made 200 bbls.

Guano made 300 tons

In 1873 Reed's factory on Point Pleasant burned. The next year he built another factory on another point on Cockrell's Creek on a spot where a windmill for grinding corn had been previously located. This location was known as Windmill Point. Later the village of Reedville grew up on this small peninsula.

By 1874 the manufacture of menhaden oil and guano had become identified as one of the important industries of this country. The annual yield of the menhaden oil now exceeded the whale oil (from American fisheries) by about 200,000 gallons.

By 1878 the menhaden industry of the Chesapeake area had grown considerably according to the government report of that year:

Men employed on vessels fishing 286 Vessels employed fishing 78 Men employed on shore 201 Fish taken 118,309,200 Gallons of oil made 234,168 Tons of guano 10,832

The next advancement in the industry came when steam cooking superseded the use of the kettles. The first steam factory in Virginia was built by Elijah Reed in 1879. The first fishing steamer used in the business in the Chesapeake, _Starry Banner_, was purchased by him in Rhode Island.

This steamer's capacity was one hundred and fifty thousand fish.

The menhaden fishing industry continued to grow and to advance with the times. It brought prosperity to the lower Northern Neck. Reedville became an important menhaden fishing center and fishing port.

Eventually menhaden became the biggest fishery in America.

_THE OLD STONE PILE_

About 1868 the tower lighthouse on Smith Point was condemned by the government as unfit for use. At that time a new lighthouse of the screw pile type was built two and one-half miles offshore from Smith Point.

After the tower was condemned the keeper's house on the government reservation was rented to various tenants. In summer the Point became a social center for the neighborhood. Carriages, road-carts, and perhaps even ox-carts tied up at Tranquility, the nearest farmhouse, on a Sunday afternoon, and their occupants strolled up the beach with their picnic baskets.

The breakwater some distance out in the water from Smith Point was a favorite fishing spot, but the high point of any trip there in those days was a climb to the top of the condemned tower. The long, full skirts of the ladies of that era were hard to maneuver up the narrow spiral stairway.

The tower finally became too dangerous to enter. During an easterly storm in the spring of 1889 it crumbled in the night, so gently that the people living in the keeper's house didn't hear it fall.

The sandstone blocks lay there for many years and later generations knew them as "the old stone pile." Each year the sea took its toll of the Point until the land between the tower and the water, where "ten rows of corn" had once grown, finally disappeared completely. And then "the old stone pile" was swallowed by the persistent sea.

The keeper's house gradually deteriorated and then it too was claimed by the sea. For many years after, people of the region came at low tide and loaded their ox-carts and wagons with the stones and bricks. The stones were used for foundations of buildings and the bricks were used to line wells. Only the burial ground was left at Smith Point. There on the bank, "under the wide and starry sky," rest some of the early keepers of the light.

_KEEPERS OF THE LIGHT_

When the new lighthouse was built two-and-one-half miles offshore from Smith Point in 1868, it was manned by only two men. Shore leave or need for provisions meant a trip for one man in a small open sail boat, weather permitting, and a lonely watch for the man left behind.

If a keeper became ill he had to make out as best he could with a chest of medicine and a doctor's book. He had to be his own cook and housekeeper. Due to lack of refrigeration the lighthouse diet became monotonous, although seafood was a help. Kerosene for the lamps and firewood was brought by a lighthouse tender. The lonely keepers of the light often kept pets. Canaries and parrots made good companions, but dogs sickened and died.

The lighthouse keeper had to be a machinist, carpenter and painter, in order to keep the lighthouse in working order. Stamina was perhaps the quality most needed in a keeper of those days. The bell had to be wound up like a clock every half hour and kept ringing during storm and fog.

There were instances when the keeper sometimes stayed awake for eight days and eight nights. But he kept the bell ringing, and without the aid of alcoholic drink.

A lighthouse keeper had to be a waterman, and that meant a man who had been born and bred in the region. Many lives were saved by these early lighthouse keepers. Winters were colder then. In those days the Bay often froze over like a mill-pond.

The winter of 1895 was a cold winter. The Bay was frozen, and, to make matters worse, in February there was a blizzard that went howling through the region of Smith Point. Both keepers were on duty that night when part of the ice started moving. They felt it hit the lighthouse and they loaded whatever they could find on a boat and somehow they got out alive. Before they started away the lighthouse had gone to pieces. They took turns pushing the boat over the ice toward land. That was a long two-and-a-half miles, but they made it.

They were welcomed by people on shore who waited, with lanterns, to serve them hot coffee and food. They had seen the light go out and had been anxiously waiting, as there was nothing that they could do to help.

The lighthouse keepers were taken into warm homes that night. Later they found that the ice had carried the remains of the lighthouse six miles away from its foundation.

Years later one of the keepers who had been on Smith Point lighthouse that night said: "Things like that happened all the time then."

A light-ship was stationed at Smith Point until another lighthouse could be built. The new lighthouse was built on a cylindrical pier of metal.

The tower was square and made of brick, with an octagonal dwelling. It was completed in 1897.

_THE HEADLESS DOG_

In those days between the end of the Civil War and the turn of the century, life in the Northern Neck still followed the old Southern pattern, but in a diminished way. War had destroyed all glamour and pared the design down to its skeleton. The planter had become a farmer, the mistress of the plantation a farmer's wife. An independent way of life remained, however. Each farm was a self-sustaining unit, though besides the occasional day hands there were usually only a colored girl who helped with the housework, laundry and dairy and a colored boy who tended the stock, did the chores and worked in the fields. The Boy and Girl, as they were always called, were regarded with affection, especially by the children.

"Evening-time," when work was over for the day, was something to be looked forward to by the children. They gobbled their suppers with a listening ear toward the soft murmur of voices in the kitchen, for they were anxious to hear the latest news about the Headless Dog, who prowled the by-roads, bottoms and graveyards of the Neck after dark.

As soon as permission was granted the youngsters to leave the supper table they would make a dash for the kitchen where the Boy and Girl sat at the big pine table lingering over their dessert. When pressed for the latest news of the Headless Dog they pretended an indifference and ignorance that was maddening. The children then began a breaking down process, made up of threats and cajolery, which they had cunningly developed from experience over a period of time.

Finally, the Boy would remember that he did "just catch a glimpse" of the Dog the night before when returning from the store. As he reached the bottom it seemed that the Dog appeared for an instant and faded before his eyes.

Bottoms, which were low places where creeks or ponds "made up" near the roads, seemed to be favorite haunts of the Headless Dog. This was possibly due to the mists which arose from the marshy places and made his appearances and disappearances quite easy, as well as dramatic.

Sometimes, when the Boy borrowed the horse and road-cart for a Sunday's visit to his people "up in the forest," he encountered the Dog near a graveyard. The sudden halt of the horse and the pointing of his ears were signals of the Dog's proximity. If you wished to see him, the certain way was to look at the space between the horse's ears, like sighting through a camera. You could always find him in that spot--"a great big dog with no haid a-tall." Further details as to the Dog's appearance were left to the imagination. When the horse lowered his ears and began to move cautiously forward, you knew that the Dog was continuing his journey to some other graveyard or bottom and it was safe to proceed.

The Boy's meetings with the Dog were much more exciting than the Girl's, maybe because she did not travel very much at night. Sometimes she would see him at the "edge of dark," usually just before or shortly after the death of some local person. Her stories were always gruesomely connected with death.

While these tales were spinning out in the kitchen where the fire burned low in the iron range, the children, who had heard them a hundred times before, huddled closer and closer together. Their eyes shone round and bright, and, if the flame of the lamp flickered, they jumped and drew away from dark corners. When the Girl had washed and dried the last dish and set the morning rolls to rise behind the stove, the Boy took his hat from its peg and prepared to depart for his nightly visit to the store.

Hours later the children, snug in their beds, were aroused by music. In that delicious stage between sleep and waking they lay half-dreaming and unaware that they were listening to some unwritten bars of a blues melody that were being created and lost to posterity on the still night air. They only knew that the perfect notes were being produced by the Boy on his jew's-harp and accompanied by the yeast powder bottles, mouth organs and guitars of his companions, the Nehemiahs, Daniels and Zechariahs of the neighboring farms. (Bible names were popular then.)

The children knew, too, that their friends were wending their leisurely way home from the store where the nightly session was over. Their interest was not in music, but in the hope that the Boy had met with adventure in that marshy, ferny and woodsy-smelling place known as the bottom.

The lower section of the Neck was evidently a favored land at that time.

Besides being a hideout for the Headless Dog, a white mule and a Headless Man, it also furnished a routine route for another interesting Dog. This Dog had a head. Furthermore, the head was punctuated by glaring red eyes. According to good authority, he was as big as a calf, brown in color except about the mouth which was patched with gray. His neck was encircled with a chain which dragged on the ground and rattled as he moved. He was a methodical animal and traveled always at night, and only between Cockrell's Neck and Heathsville, and only before or after the death of some local person. Instead of appearing suddenly and fading out like the Headless Dog, he had a disconcerting habit of trailing moving vehicles.

After motor vehicles became numerous the Headless Dog was seen no more, but the Cockrell's Neck Dog was still seen occasionally for some time after that. His systematic ways probably kept him going longer. Some said that he was not brown but black, and if you struck at him with a whip it went clear through him.

PART IV