Chincoteague

Trading & Early Life
From Lillian Mears Rew

(The text and photos included in these sections are from Lillian Mears Rew's book, Assateague & Chincoteague: As I Remember Them. The copyright belongs to Mrs. Rew's family, and the sections included here are reprinted by permission. Please note that the text and photos may not be reproduced in any form without prior written permission.)

The early settlers dressed very plainly; the women wore long calico dresses and bonnets which covered their faces almost completely. Nearly everything was made by hand. The socks and hose were knitted by hand also. The sheep were sheared and some wool was even picked a little at a time from briers and small pieces of bushes. The wool was washed and cleaned to be carded and spun by the loom. In order to have different colors, poke berries and other barks were used to dye the wool thread or cloth. The people who could afford it sent to Philadelphia and other cities for ready-made clothing in exchange for oysters and clams. These products were carried in large sailing vessels. Flour, sugar, and many other foods were brought back in exchange for clams and oysters, too. Many of the captains of these large vessels were from the Island.

The life of the people today bears testimony to the quality of these early settlers who laid well the foundation for the building for a great and still greater Chincoteague.

Another interesting legend which has been handed down tells how the first Whealtons came to be on the Island.

Over three hundred years have passed since four brothers from England by the name of Whealton were driven ashore by a storm on the coast of Maine. During their sojourn in Maine, one of the brothers married and settled there. The descendants of that brother constitute a large and prosperous family of eastern Maine to this day. The other brothers left Maine in a sailing vessel and during their voyage were driven to seek shelter from a northeastern gale in the waters of our Island, where they were welcomed, sheltered, and fed graciously by the Indians who were the sole inhabitants of the Island at that time.

The disposition on the part of the early Whealtons to leave the Island and cruise farther southward was in part dissipated by the Indians who had learned to love their paleface brothers. Although one of them could not be persuaded to remain, two of them did, and later were married to Indian women. Thus was the beginning of the Whealton family.

Industrious, energetic, quiet, honorable, clean and successful, from those days the descendants of those two brothers have been conspicuous in the achievements of the Island.

They have stood for the highest and best in business, in society, and in church until today the names of Joshua, Daniel, John Burt, and William Whealton are synonymous with dignity, intelligence, chastity, progress, and thrift. The two remaining brothers on the Island finally petitioned the British Crown and Parliament for equal grants of the Island. Accordingly England - then holding possession of Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and their coastal waters - granted their request and what is known today as Church Street running from east to west was the dividing line. The southern side of the Island was given to one brother and the north to the other.

The land on the corner of Church Street and North Main Street now occupied by the Shore Stop market was once the site of an impressive $27,000 mansion built in 1882 or 1883 by D. J. Whealton. It was representative of the success of prosperity that characterized the Whealton family. The house was later owned by Captain W. C. Bunting, Sr., and was torn down somewhere around 1950 to make way for a service station, which was demolished about 1980 so that the Shore Stop market could be built.

Through correspondence with friends in England those Whealtons were the instigators of causing three Bowden brothers accompanied by one Watson and a Jester to set sail to America. They lost no time in joining the Whealtons on the Island and, like them, they married wives among the Indians.