Historic Highway

Ferry Plantation House

By Kathleen Walls

Ferry Plantation

"I be not a witch." So said Grace Sherwood. It took three hundred years but finally, the powers that be believed her. On July 10, 2006, Meyera Oerdorf, Mayor of Virginia Beach read the letter from Virginia Governor Timothy M. Kaine officially exonerating Grace Sherwood of the charge of witchcraft imposed on her in the early 1706.

To find out more about "the Witch of Pungo" as Grace was called, I visited Ferry Plantation House. The present day farmhouse dates to the early 19th century. Before that it was the location of a tavern owned by Anthony Walke in 1770s and prior to that in 1735 it was the location of the Princess Anne County Courthouse where Grace was tried and ordered "witch-ducked" in the adjacent Lynnhaven River. It is also believed that she was imprisoned for seven years in a cellar where the present house now stands.

Belinda Nash in period dress as Grace would have dressed

Belinda Nash, probably the greatest fan of Grace Sherwood and the museum director at Ferry Plantation House and co-author of Ghosts, Witches and Weird Tales of Virginia Beach can give you the real scoop on Ferry Plantation House .

The house was built in 1830 by George and Elizabeth Walke MacIntosh from the old bricks of the original home to replace that earlier home of her ancestor, Anthony Walke, which burned in 1828. It is restored to its 1830 era condition.

During the years when the site housed the The Walke Tavern, it was also a convenient place for ship captains trying to avoid duty would slip in and unload their illegal cargo including human freight. Archeologists have found indications that there were once tunnels or perhaps shallow conduits where the cargo was hurried into the house and the unfortunate Africans captives were then chained in a dark basement room until they could be sold.

One of the more fortunate early residents of the house, General Thomas Hoones Williamson, was born at the plantation in 1813. He grew up as a member of the influential Walke family. He served in the Confederate army under Stonewall Jackson and was a professor of engineering at Virginia Military Institute and by avocation, an artist. He painted the watercolor of the original Walke home from his childhood memories. He died in 1888.

Legend says that Grace, and several other restless spirits still haunt the historic home. After all who has a better right to haunt the scene of her trial and imprisonment than the former "Witch of Pungo?'

For more info:

http://www.ferryplantation.org