Between the Pines and the Pages

Chapter 1: The meeting

In my second week on the job, Brian van Eerden, Virginia Pinelands program director, sat down across from me at the conference table, a curious look on his face. “So, did Ann [my supervisor] mention college lands to you? Well, there’s a story idea I’ve toyed with for a while now. This map shows…”. I listened carefully as Brian’s voice grew with excitement. Here’s what he told me:

• Piney Grove Preserve is a 4,000-acre TNC preserve an hour south of Richmond, in Sussex County
• Some part of those 4,000 acres, probably, as evidenced in old records, overlaps with historic lands surveyed by the College of William and Mary, circa 1693
• We’re not sure how much (or where exactly) the acreage overlaps

Brian had learned about these college lands almost 8 years earlier when reading a book called Sussex County Virginia; A Heritage Recalled by the Land, written by the Sussex County Clerk of Circuit Court (since 1976), Gary M. Williams. Then, when TNC acquired Harrell’s Mill pond and surrounding land in 2020, edging even closer to the historic college lands, Brian’s interest was thoroughly piqued. He began taking a closer look at the configuration of the historic tracts alongside current TNC property lines, and Coppahaunk Swamp seemed to be where the two plots touched.

Chapter 2: A case of competing interests

I scoured William and Mary’s online database, as with the Library of Virginia’s digital archives. I tried to remember the Boolean search method, but “And” “Or” “Not” didn’t dramatically alter my findings; there was no mention of college lands below the Blackwater River, but for the original 1693 Royal Charter for the College of William and Mary. I had a visual on one of the best-preserved primary documents on this topic, I thought, but no clues to follow it. Often when I thought I’d made progress, I hit a wall. 

Chapter 3: In times of trouble

Brian explained to me that TNC’ s land acquisition is focused on lands with high biodiversity, a word I’d heard before but didn’t truly understand until I learned more about longleaf pine forests, one of the key habitats at Piney Grove Preserve.  Longleaf forests, which historically spread across over 90 million acres from southeast Virginia to east Texas at the time of pre-European settlement, was devastated by timber logging from the late 17^th century through the early 20^th century.  In Virginia, longleaf pine was harvested to near extinction. Remarkably, though the tree is quite rare, many plants and animal species associated with longleaf forests still survive throughout the South. The collective flora of longleaf forests is recognized as one of the most diverse in North America, with over 1,000 plant species found nowhere else in the world. TNC’s Piney Grove Preserve is home to a tremendous diversity of plant and animal life associated with longleaf forests, including one of Virginia’s rarest bird species, the red-cockaded woodpecker. While Piney Grove might not look like a very biodiverse environment, it is. Slowing down to look at the forest floor reveals species after species of wildflowers, grasses, and low shrubs.  At Piney Grove and across the South, TNC stewards and partners are managing forests to favor those groundcover plants and to gradually re-establish longleaf pine by planting seedlings.  

I was surprised to learn that extraordinary biodiversity has persisted in southeast Virginia, despite four centuries of changes to the original longleaf forest in the home state of America’s earliest colonial project—and a neglected corner of it, at that. Truthfully, extractive industry is not a story singular to Virginia’s history. It has played out across the nation, the continent, the globe, and it’s devastated entire ecosystems. Recognizing nature’s resilience despite this reality begs a look at humankind’s resilience, too. As Brian thoughtfully told me, “We carry forward the stewardship of the land. Native Americans did it first, they still do, and we honor that stewardship. When we zero in on the college lands, we come face to face with the consequential narrative of colonization, and we shouldn’t turn away from it.”

Pursuing answers about college lands was proving to be an exercise in scientific, historical, and personal inquiry. As Brian educated me on biodiversity and helped me better understand TNC’s emphasis on it, he also encouraged me that the process matters as much as the product. Therefore, the way we conserve and protect the lands and water upon which all life depends cannot be sacrificed at the altar of results. The same was true for my own investigative quest—methods mattered. Clearheaded about my angle but nervous to follow narrative threads of such complexity, I decided it was high time to give Buck Woodard a ring. 

Now that I had a better grasp on the value of the land, its diminishment over time, and the dispossession Nottoway and other tribes survived, I felt ready to tour the geography. A field day was in order, so Dan and I reconnected at the Piney Grove office and commenced on a journey into the swamp. We began at Coppahaunk Springs, formerly the site of a Nottoway Indian town. In the 1920’s it became a spring water bottling plant, my first reminder of the day that we were retracing steps on an altered landscape. From there, we parked at Harrell’s Mill pond (another human-engineered site) and weaved our way through the tree line towards Coppahaunk Swamp. The micro topographies of the landscape were astonishing to me. There behind the road, I was seeing things I’d never seen before, like tree roots coming out of the muck for oxygen, and dime-sized speckly frogs bounding underfoot. I walked behind Dan as we navigated to the interior of the swamp, asking him about ephemeral ponds and strange animal calls in chorus all around. 

Standing on the grounds where the college tract and Piney Grove presumably overlapped, we meditated on our surroundings. Would Coppahaunk springs have been coveted by the college? Without the historic damming of Harrell’s Mill Pond, could Coppahaunk swamp have been navigable by water? Would the college have wanted to float crops? Why from here? I hoped that our next stop might help us set the record straight. 

Gary led Dan and me to the next room over, where maps sprawled across a full table. The three of us took a seat and began looking through huge scrolls, identifying natural features and family names. Protractor in hand, old measurements on display, Gary had painstakingly redrawn the boundaries of all the original tracts granted to settlers in Sussex County by the Virginia colonial government. I asked Gary why, why commit so much of your life to this specific place? He responded like it was the simplest thing in the world, saying, “This is where I’m from. My family lineage might, in fact, go all the way back to Charles Briggs, the first one to receive a patent around here, 1701.” He added that the first time he visited a clerk’s office was when he was 9 or 10. In that moment, Gary felt he had to be a clerk, saying, “The past so different than my present. I was awed by how huge those record books were…’bout half as big as me back then!” 

For Gary, it was not a terrible paradox to propose a wide view of human history but spend a lifetime buried in those big books, devoted to fine print. My summer had looked much the same. While reckoning all along with the devastating impacts of colonization on Native Peoples, it was becoming clearer to me that securing the college lands had involved domino actions between the British Crown, the College of William and Mary, private individuals and interpreters, tribal members and tribal councils…so on and so forth.

There were so many nuances I didn’t want to miss, so many unanswered questions. But after our meeting with Gary, we had assurance that Piney Grove did, in fact, overlap with the second college tract, and had been, at one point, a coveted geographic area in the contest of colonial interests. Feeling both relief and hesitation, I made one final push towards unforeseen discoveries.

As I read through the abstracts, zeroing in on entries between 1650-1710, I came across a surprising mismatch. Some of the same men written in on Gary William’s maps were surveying huge amounts of acreage decades before Charles Briggs (or others) presumably received legalized patents in 1701 (which was before even the House of Burgesses lifted the Blackwater Boundary law in 1705). Remembering the language in the 1693 Royal Charter, I was disturbed by the discrepancy between the college’s proclamation about lands “not yet taken up or possessed” by its subjects, given this evidence. Not only had the land been possessed by native peoples, but settlers had been encroaching on those same lands for years. I was further grieved to remember that disease had a role in this story. Indigenous peoples had died in unfathomable numbers and were left to exercise autonomy on increasingly limited lands. Weakened communities had tightened and contracted, unable to protect the vast swathes of ancestral lands they’d always known.

This was not the wholesome mystery-solving moment I hoped for. But as I sat under the library desk light, as if Nancy Drew were unveiling a final clue, I considered again the resiliency of both nature and humanity. I silently closed the books, placing them back on the shelves, and walked through Capitol Square towards the office. What in the world do I do with all this information? 

Chapter 7: So the sleuthing continues

Nancy Drew had the audacity to pursue truth despite unknowns at every corner—and sometimes bad guys lurking around them. Though I hardly faced that kind of imminent danger, I did bump into some ugly parts of our collective history. As a Virginia transplant and a new intern at a global organization, I felt like I was swimming in foreign waters. And I was. But instead of turning away, I did what Brian had beckoned me to do. I waded through a murky history towards a more holistic conservation story—one where threatened landscapes now teem with diversity of life, where the marginalization and dispossession Native Americans experienced isn’t the final story, and where TNC conservationists thoughtfully participate in this work and so much more.

Though a narrative recounted in my voice, the other characters in this story, the mystery itself, the backdrop to all of it… those are the details that really capture our imaginations, the same ones that kept me awake through the night as an 8-year-old reading The Secret of the Old Clock. Like in those Nancy Drew novels, the main character is hardly the main point. Sleuthing the early history of Sussex County was the adventure of my internship, one that opened my eyes to the challenges of reconstructing generations of humans and their connections to land. My work was just the start of a pathway of learning about the history of the Virginia Pinelands, a pathway that I hope others will continue to explore.