Claude Duval Fitchett
1873 - 1969

Native Remembers When Area Had 500 People, 1 Grocery Store
by Jean Holt

        A Newport News with one block of narrow board sidewalk, a horse and buggy trail where Washington Ave. now is, a swamp full of black gums along the lower end of Huntington Ave. - these memories are still vivid for Claude D. Fitchett after a passage of some 80 years.

    "I don't remember the year we moved into Newport News exactly," he said, "but I do remember going into that swamp to climb the trees and break off branches that were all twined with mistletoe.

    "Sometimes you couldn't cross the streets without high rubber boots, and sometimes the mud was so thick it threatened to pull the boots off your feet.

    "Then there were times when the swamp dried up fairly well.  When that happened I used to snare rabbits there.  You know what boys are like - we had great fun."

    Fitchett's eyes sparkled mischievously at the recollection of past escapades in a boyhood very different from those of today, but which nevertheless provided plenty of diversion for imaginative youngsters with wide fields to explore.  There was an air of excitement, too, in an era of rapid change.

    The sprightly gentleman, who makes his home at 210 Harpersville Road, can claim to have actually been born in Newport News - although when he first saw the light of day 91 years ago on his father's farm on Mulberry Island there was not even a remote thought that the area would some day be within the city limits.

    He confidently claimed to be the oldest resident still living here who was here, but hastily added that Mrs. John T. Wright of 33rd St. came very close to equaling his record.  Mrs. Wright was born Fanny Jones on a neighboring farm on Mulberry Island just 27 days later.

    "We are among the very few local residents, other than military personnel, who have every been on the island." he said, as he noted that it had been reserved as a weapons testing area since World War I.

    Briefly sketching family history, he told of his father sending his mother and the two oldest children to Richmond when the Civil War broke out, and leaving his farm in what is now Hilton Village in the care of a Negro servant named Scott while he went to war.

    "Father didn't have to go - he had only one hand - but he was a true Southerner and fought for the full four years."

    When the father returned it was to find Scott still guarding a sadly depleted property - Union soldiers had set fire to the house and outbuildings, leveling them to the ground.  Nothing but the land was left.

    The land, however, appealed so much to a passerby that the sum of $4,000 was offered.  "It looked like a mint to my father, who had nothing but worthless Confederate money.  He did not hesitate to sell.

    "Then he went to Mulberry Island where "Old Treasurer Jimmie' Curtis and his brother Delt had land side by side.  Father offered $2,000 for 165 acres and the offer was accepted.  That is how we came to have Waterview Farm."

    Fitchett, the youngest in a family of 11, explained that he was not born until several years later, but heard the story of the family migration told and retold during his childhood.

    He recalled that there was school on Mulberry Island and a family governess was employed to educate the children.  Best of all, he seemed to recall Miss Hunter Jones who undertook the task when his older brothers and sisters were "great big children."

    Then came the day when the two older Fitchett sisters went to Hollins Institute, to graduate ad return to Mulberry Island to start a public school where they taught on alternate years.

    "I was the only member of the family to ever attend a public school," Fitchett remembered.  "My sisters taught some 15 children in that little one room school."

    Of his two older brothers, both of whom graduated from Virginia Military Institute, Fitchett seemed to have a special note of pride as he spoke of the oldest who became a civil engineer and finally became the city engineer of Newport News.  Exploits of that brother included surveying the site of the shipyard and the basin, surveying city streets and lots during the "land boom" and designing the first three over-passes to span the C&O railway tracks.

    It was when Fitchett was 10 or 11 years of age - "I can't remember the exact year" - that his father died and the older brothers, wanting to leave the farm, sold the land and divided the proceeds among the family.

    The boy Claude and a sister pooled their resources to buy a lot on 28th St. between West and Washington Ave.  The house they had build, now converted to offices, still stands on the original location.

    If Washington Ave. wasn't a mess!" exclaimed the old-timer, as he told of watching a great ditch being dug by sheer manpower as the first water lines were laid, and of the laborious walling necessary to get across a street whenever it rained.

    He told of the three story West House - a boarding house - occupying a site on Washington Ave. between 27th and 28th Sts. in solitary grandeur, of a vacant field "excepting for old stable row" stretching from the present site of the First National Bank to the Hotel Warwick, and a row of barrooms and saloons standing side by side from 26th St. to the railway tracks.

    There was one grocery store in Newport News, he remembered, and later one furniture store.  "I still have furniture I bought there."  There was a ... (some of article missing) of gate for safety.  A man was on guard day and night to open and close the gate whenever a train passed."

    Fitchett estimated that the total population of 80 years ago was 500 - but one of those citizens was a Dr. Charles who build a home near West Ave. and ranged far and wide on his practice, traveling daily of the rough trails into Hampton and to area farms with a horse hitched to a "jumper".

    And on 18th St. there was a building dedicated to culture - a big wooden structure known as the Opera House where traveling troupes performed.

    As a youth Fitchett saw the shipyards being laid out and the basin dredged, watched as the Baptists, Episcopalians and Methodists built their first little wooden churches and lived through the excitement of Newport News' land boom and afterward the gloom of the "bust".

    He remembered as many as a dozen trains arriving daily, bringing people with rosy dreams who eagerly invested from $200 to $300 in a small lot, only to have the values depreciate until two years later it was impossible to dispose of the land at any price.

    "A land boom is the worst thing on earth," he said with decision.  "And Newport News was ruined right then when little lots, 25 feet wide and 100 feet long, were surveyed and sold.  Streets were run through dense woods with trees from 30 to 40 feet high, all the way from Jefferson Ave. to Salters Creek.  Everyone went mad."

    He remembered, too, a Col. Braxton who had a beautiful brick house on 30th St. and a large dairy barn on the opposite side, where he used to go on Sundays as a boy to help milk the cows so his chum could come out to play.

    After attending private school for two years Fitchett returned to Newport News, asked for a job on the C&O and was promptly hired as a runner at $5.85 a week.

    He chuckled with appreciation as he recalled the day the superintendent asked him what he was earning and immediately raised his wages to $10 weekly - "A very large sum in those day."  Finally going into the auditing office, he remained with the railway for 15 years.

    In the meantime, at the age of 22, he had married.  When his father-in-law, owner of the biggest farm in Elizabeth City County, wanted to divide his land among his children, Mrs. Fitchett was allotted 100 acres with the provision a house was built on the land and the couple lived there.

    A nine room home was built, the railway job was relinquished and for the next 38 years Claude Fitchett operated a dairy farm with some 75 milking cows and a full line of mechanical aids.

    "One day, after World War II, as I was standing in my yard, a man came up and asked me if I wanted to sell.  I hadn't thought about it and mentioned a ridiculous price - about twice what I thought it was worth.  But he took me up on it and I couldn't go back on the bargain.  That man handed me every nickel in cash and I have him the deed to Harris Creek Farm.

    "I sold my cows and machinery - gave one tractor away - and know I had enough money to last me as long as I lived."

    The farm, he said, is now subdivided and the farm house deteriorated to the point that it will be no loss to anyone when it is pushed over as sewer lines are run right through the yard.

    "It was a pretty place, a good place.  The house was built 61 years ago."

    When Fitchett's wife died after 28 years of marriage, he remained single for 15 years before marrying the former Mrs. Charles Clark of Newport News.

    After the farm was sold the couple went to Florida where they operated the dining room of a large hotel in Tarpon Springs for six years before returning to Newport News when Mrs. Fitchett's 95 year old mother became ill and needed help.

    Today Fitchett is not only alert and healthy, but can boast that he has not needed to call a doctor or have medical aid of any kind for 47 years.

    He busies himself as custodian of Temple Baptist Church - "that isn't a very big job, it doesn't take up much of my time" - and work in the garden, which includes growing the family vegetables.  He enjoys recalling the past but does not live in the past; it is obvious that he also enjoys the present and looks to the future.