CHAPTER 14

1848 Island Manor House

CHINCOTEAGUE ISLAND

After washing up on the sandy wetlands, these restless souls yearn for the shelter of the dark ground, and some may reach out desperately to the living for help in reaching eternal rest…Delmarva has a large number of ghosts because phantoms cannot get off the peninsula, cannot travel across water, as the old superstition says.

—Ed and Kathleen Okonowicz, Crying in the Kitchen

THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO DOUBT in the mind of Jerry Prewitt, proprietor of the 1848 Island Manor House, that his establishment is haunted by no less than three ghosts, and many of his guests have sensed the presence of one or more of them with no prompting from him. But far from ever being compelled to run screaming from the house in terror, he says, he has come to enjoy a sense of security with his spectral boarders.

My wife and I spent a weekend at Jerry’s inn on Chincoteague Island in mid-March 2008, as part of a ghosthunting expedition that included investigation of the nearby Assateague Lighthouse. Jerry and I had actually crossed paths some fourteen months earlier, when he attended some of my historical lectures during a cruise on the Regal Princess through the Panama Canal in January 2007, a coincidence we discovered when we began talking about my visit to the island. We thus had the pleasure of meeting Jerry for the second time during our trip.

Diane and I had wanted to visit the historic island for many years, but despite having lived in the Old Dominion for nearly two decades, had never found the opportunity to do so. That is not as strange as it might sound at first, however, as the town of Chincoteague is almost as far from our home in Springfield, Virginia, as it could be and still be in the same state. And, because of the intervening Chesapeake Bay, the quickest way to reach it involved a drive that was predominantly through the adjoining state of Maryland and via its capital of Annapolis. And so, after a five-hour drive that began with a rush-hour slog around Washington, D.C.’s Capital Beltway, my wife and I completed our nearly two-hundred-mile trip to the island.

It was dark by the time we reached Chincoteague, and we could see the lights of the town twinkling ahead of us as we crossed the four-and-one-half mile-long series of causeways and bridges that both link it with the mainland and emphasize its sense of seclusion from the world at large. Indeed, Chincoteague has remained relatively isolated since its first white settlers arrived on the island April 1, 1671. From then until 1922—when the causeway that connects the island with the nearby Delmarva Peninsula was opened—it could be reached only by boat. It was largely a lawless place in its early years, with no government or police, and is rumored to have been a refuge for former convicts and other ruffians. Mail service to the island was not established until 1854, when its first post office was opened.

Chincoteague takes its name from the tribe of Gingo-Teague Indians who were dwelling on the seven-mile-long, two-mile-wide barrier island in the 17th century and who, appropriately, called it “Beautiful Land Across the Water.” Its first white settlers and many of their descendants alike have supported themselves by farming corn, potatoes, and strawberries for their own consumption, and harvesting clams, fish, oysters (including a succulent local variety, the “Chincoteague salty”), and salt from the sea both for themselves and trade with the mainland.

By the mid-1800s, the island had become too populous for its inhabitants to support themselves primarily through farming and, as trade became more important, the town itself began to grow. Around this time the steamboat Chincoteague was commissioned to carry passengers and freight to and from the island, departing Franklin City on the mainland and going back and forth to the island throughout the summer. Stores, hotels, and churches began to open along the streets of the quiet fishing village, and a new wave of settlers from the mainland traveled to it.

Among the people flocking to the boom town were two affluent young gentlemen, merchant Joseph Kenny and Dr. Nathaniel Smith, who established themselves as some of the community’s most prominent citizens. This prominence is evident in the grand home they cooperatively built on Main Street, about two-thirds of which have been incorporated into the 1848 Island Manor House.

Drawing on the Southern architectural tradition then prevalent throughout the mid-Atlantic region, Kenny and Smith constructed a grand residence in the form of a “Maryland ‘T’ House,” popular in that era, that incorporated Georgian and Federalist design elements. Both remained prominent citizens, with Kenny in particular going on to serve as the town’s elected postmaster when its sole post office was opened in 1854.

When Southern states began seceding from the United States in 1860, prior to the Civil War that broke out the following year, Chincoteague was exceptional in that it remained under Union control and its citizens faithful to the Stars and Stripes.

“That was because of our connection with the oyster and scallop and clam industry, which sold to Philadelphia, New York City, and Washington, D.C.,” Jerry says.

Along with war came some small fame for Chincoteague: After Union forces that included many men from the island won a significant battle, the native oysters were served to some four thousand people at a victory celebration, and Chincoteague thereafter became known for them. The Island Manor House served as a Union infirmary during the war, and Dr. Smith himself treated Union troops during the conflict.

Kenny and Smith must certainly have been some of Chincoteague’s most eligible bachelors in the postwar years, and both eventually married. First was the merchant, who married a young woman from Baltimore, Maryland, named Sarah. He was followed soon after by the doctor, who married another young woman from Baltimore named Juliet, who, perhaps not coincidentally, happened to be the sister of Sarah. Both couples dwelled under the roof of the home that had been so amicably shared by Kenny and Smith prior to their nuptials, but the sisters could not get along with each other, and the household was ultimately split in half—literally.

Workers built a new foundation next to the existing structure, and when it was complete the house was cut in two and one half was disconnected and painstakingly moved to the new location. The Kenny family remained in the original section, and the Smith family moved into the relocated one.

“If you look closely at the Island Manor House today you will see that one portion sits lower than the other since the new foundation was not built to the original height,” Jerry says. “These houses were used as separate residences for many decades.”

Construction on the causeway connecting Chincoteague with the mainland began in 1919. That was not soon enough, however, to be of use to the town in a great fire that broke out the following year, the same one in which the fledgling Volunteer Fire Department of Chincoteague was founded. Departments from the mainland were unable to assist in putting out the conflagration, and the town was nearly destroyed, with much of Main Street and many of the buildings along it succumbing to the flames.

Chincoteague survived but another major fire struck the town just four years later, in 1924. In response to this, some forty local women decided to form an auxiliary to the volunteer fire department and to hold an annual fundraiser to support the efforts of the firefighters.

The event that grew out of this resolution is today Chincoteague’s great claim to fame and has been related to millions of readers in the classic children’s tale Misty of Chincoteague, published by Marguerite Henry in 1946. Every year on the last Wednesday in July, a certain number of feral ponies are rounded up on nearby Assateague Island and swum across the channel separating it from Chincoteague. Pony Penning Day is celebrated the following day as the ponies are auctioned off at a carnival that includes bake sales and other means of raising money for the volunteer fire department. (Any of the ponies that do not sell are swum back to Assateague on Friday.)

Over the years, the annual festival increasingly began to attract people from around the country and to draw attention to the area’s great natural beauty, its beaches, its wildlife, its seafood, it history, and its seclusion. Now, hundreds of thousands of visitors come to the island every year, swelling the ranks of its 4,500 regular inhabitants and supporting the dense collection of inns, hotels, restaurants, boutiques, and bookstores that fill the small downtown.

With demand growing for places to accommodate those visitors, some prospective innkeepers purchased the historic Kenny and Smith residences in the 1980s—the latter from the descendants of its original inhabitant—and converted it into one of the island’s first bed-and-breakfasts, which they named the Little Traveler’s Inn. They decided to reconnect the two homes and built the long sunroom that now unifies the structure.

New owners acquired the inn in the early 1990s and changed the name to the one it currently bears as both a tribute to the year it was built and to gentrify its image a little. They expanded the scope of the establishment, increasing the number of guest rooms to the eight the property currently has and adding the red brick courtyard—complete with rosebushes and a three-tired fountain—that now lies between the two wings.

Then, in 2003, Jerry and his partner Andrew Dawson took over the 1848 Island Manor House.

“I decided to go into business for myself and started looking for a bed-and-breakfast,” says Jerry, who taught public school for six years in Kentucky and then went on to do corporate training in northern Virginia for four. “I had been to the eastern shore several times but had never been to Chincoteague until I actually came to look at property, and I loved Chincoteague and Assateague and [their] history.”

The things real estate disclosure laws require people to reveal about a property when they sell it, however, do not include the presence of ghosts, and Jerry soon began to experience some strange things. He eventually came to the conclusion that three ghosts dwell within the 1848 Island Manor House, and that they are a little girl, a woman dressed as a Civil War-era nurse, and a middle-aged man with the attire and demeanor of a butler.

Jerry says his favorite is probably the little girl, who appears to be between seven and ten years of age. “She’s our little prankster and enjoys playing chess. The reason I know that is when I’m here by myself and no one [else] has been here, I’ve actually seen [that] chess pieces have been moved, as if a game is in progress,” he says, referring to the chessboard in the sunroom.

Jerry is not alone in having experienced ghostly presences in the house, he says, and that many guests have as well. “Typically after breakfast on their last day here,” Jerry says, people who have experienced something out of the ordinary “will ask me if we have ghosts.”

In particular, Jerry says, during his time at the inn at least five or six couples have related having a similar experience in the Joseph Kenny room, the one in which my wife and I stayed. Typically, he says, the wife will wake up and hear someone walking around in the room, and assume it is her husband—until she notices he is still in bed with her. The husband, on the other hand, will dream about a woman dressed as a Civil War-era nurse who comes into the room, goes through it as if making her rounds, and then departs.

“And never before have we ever published this on our Web site [or] done any interviews or anything about it. So, it’s not like they’ve read it somewhere and brought those stories with them.” His interview for this book, Jerry says, is the first time he has discussed the hauntings at the 1848 Island Manor House for the record.

The third ghost, which appears to be that of a middle-aged servant, is the least obtrusive of the three, Jerry says, but has still been noticed by both him and a number of guests. Women in particular, he says, have heard a voice calling to them from the uppermost room at the front of the Kenny house, but have been unable to make out the words that are apparently being spoken to them.

Other local residents have also confirmed that they believe ghosts are present in the 1848 Island Manor House. Most notable is artist Katherine Kiss, owner of the nearby Guinevere’s boutique, who says she is sensitive to the presence of spirits and has also confirmed that the inn is home to at least three ghosts. (Katherine has also noticed ghosts in at least one other house in Chincoteague, and says that the town hosts a relatively high number of them by virtue of the fact that it is such an old community.)

Jerry says he has tried to research a connection between these ghosts and the properties that comprise the inn and has spoken with previous owners about it but has not been able to; the nurse is perhaps the most obvious and could certainly have been one of the women that tended wounded soldiers during the war. But why she and the others have remained in the house is by no means clear.

A mischievous little girl purportedly haunts the 1848 Island Manor House and has been credited with moving around the pieces of the chess board in this sunroom.

One theory is that they are happy at the inn and, while they may eventually resolve whatever issues have kept them upon the material plane and eventually move on or fade away, for the time being they are relatively content where they are.

And the fact that no connection can be proven between the ghosts and the history of the house is not necessarily significant, Katherine says. They might have been inadvertently brought in over the years by a visitor to the site and simply remained there because it felt right to them.

I did not experience any dreams of a Civil War nurse while at the inn (although I will admit that the active and melodic wind chimes in the courtyard outside my window did give my sleep a somewhat otherworldly quality). Nor did my wife and I experience anything indicative of a supernatural presence (despite her repeated and vocal assertions of hope that we would). If what Jerry says about the personalities of the ghosts living in his establishment is true, however, then encountering evidence of their presence would have only enhanced an already enjoyable visit.