THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, September 23, 1995 TAG: 9509210298
SECTION: REAL ESTATE WEEKLY PAGE: 3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MELANIE BEROTH, SPECIAL TO REAL ESTATE WEEKLY
LENGTH: Long : 141 lines
With no glass left on the attic windows, there is a clear view of the cloudy sky and surrounding marshlands. I'm not sure what happened to the window panes. Perhaps winds from a hurricane shattered the glass and left the deserted house exposed to the ploys of the weather.
Crumbled bricks cover the wooden floors, and white paint randomly peeling from the walls decorates the interior. Wasps - the tattered house's only residents - sleep soundly in their nests that dot the ceiling beams.
In the attic corner lies a yellowed newspaper, still soggy from the dew and brittle from years of soaking in the sun. The date on The Virginian-Pilot, however, is still clear: Oct. 17, 1926 - not long after the house was built.
Located in a soybean field off Drum Point Road, this house is one of many in Pungo built in the late 1800s and then left to deteriorate after World War II. In spite of the weather-beaten siding and shattered chimney, a bit of turn-of-the-century class remains with the white gingerbread trim on the rotting porch and the ivy weaving its way up the decaying exterior.
Pungo, in the rural south central section of Virginia Beach, is filled with turn-of-the-century house skeletons. Less than a mile off of Princess Anne Road, a broken dwelling once used for slave quarters is hidden in a cluster of trees.
Wooden beams that have collapsed from the ceiling cover the floor along with piles of old buckets and tree branches fallen from the limbs growing in the structure's jagged gaps. The wind rustling the leaves is the only sound made in the battered house.
After the Civil War, Pungo experienced an influx of residents and visitors. In 1898, the Munden Point Train, ``the Sportsmen Special,'' began bringing hunters and fishermen to the 60,000 acres of marshland and water that form Back Bay.
By 1924, the area was a prosperous agricultural center, boasting more than 100 residents. Lillian Craft's family was one of the many that moved to Pungo during the early 1900s growing streak. Her father, Ed White, ran one of the area's 50 hunting clubs.
``We moved to Pungo when I was 5 years old,'' recalls Mrs. Craft, who will be 95 in December. ``When I was born, however, my mother came to Pungo to visit with her mother, and Dr. Luxford brought me into the world.''
Dr. T.B. Luxford's grand home, which was built in the late 1880s, was renovated by its current owners. It stands near the intersection of Princess Anne Road and Indian River Road, and the schoolhouse that Mrs. Craft's husband Roy attended was relocated to its backyard. Dr. Luxford used the one-story wing on the right of the house as his office.
``I can remember him when I was growing up,'' Mrs. Craft says, ``He drove a horse and buggy, which everybody did then. The doctor was kind, and everybody liked him.
``One lady would always run out to the road whenever he drive by to go see his patients. She would say, `Doctor, who's sick now?' and he'd mumble, `A lot of people sick, a lot of people sick,' and drive on.''
When she married Roy Craft in 1924, Lilian Craft moved into her present home with her new husband and his mother.
``When Roy brought me home here, he stopped the car at the back door, and then he took my arm and walked me on up. His mother met me at the door and put her arms around me and kissed me. She said, `Now, you come right on in and make yourself right at home.' ''
The Craft residence has been Lillian's home for the last 72 years. She has seen many changes take place in the community, but her most memorable were the installation of indoor plumbing and electricity.
``When I first came here, we had a wood stove in the kitchen. Then later on we had a coal heater,'' she says. ``The next thing we got was an oil heater, and finally we got electricity.
``When I first came here, all we had was oil lamps. You'd light a lamp and make a fire in the stove, and we were as happy as could be.''
The rural farmhouses of the late 19th century in Pungo are predominantly two-story, three-bay houses with end chimneys. Both Mrs. Craft and her only sister, Annie Whitehurst, live in farmhouses with front porches and rear ells. Roy Craft screened in the porch of their home while Mrs. Whitehurst's porch is open.
Mrs. Whitehurst has lived in her farmhouse on Charity Neck Road for almost 70 years. While her family once grew a steady crop of sweet potatoes and corn on the farm, she now rents the land for others to cultivate. However much of the architecture on her land, including the farmhouse where she lives, dates from the mid-to-late 1800s.
The farm site contains a kitchen, corn crib, sweet potato house, outhouse, icehouse, three barns and five sheds. The red-painted buildings, which are all within close proximity to the two-story white farmhouse, are on brick pier foundations with metal gable roofs. Besides painting the buildings, the only-known alteration on the farm is with the main barn which has been covered with license plates, the oldest date being 1933.
Joe Burroughs' father renovated a house in Pungo in 1915. ``The house was built several years after the Civil War,'' Burroughs said. ``It was already rundown in 1915, because the owners hadn't taken good care of it.'' Burroughs was raised in the house near Pungo's crossroads - Princess Anne and Indian River roads - and now his daughter, Laurie, makes it her home.
During World War II, the Pungo Airfield was in full operation with approximately 300 permanent personnel, but the only military housing available was for bachelors. Burroughs' parents would take in soldiers and their wives for several months at a time so they could be together.
``I try to remember how we all got along in World War II with just one bathroom,'' he laughs. ``We sometimes had 8 or 10 people living in the house at one time.''
About six months ago Burroughs received a letter from one of the servicemen who had stayed at his home. Still appreciative of the Burroughs' benevolence, the man sent him several pictures of their home he had taken in 1942.
Burroughs' uncle, Eugene Burroughs, was well-known in the early 1900s for what Joe Burroughs called a ``psycho phenomenon.''
In 1898, 8-year-old Henry Stone, who had recently been blinded in a hunting accident, came to spend the night with Eugene Burroughs at his family's farmhouse near Pungo.
The mysterious story goes that the boys were asleep on a pallet on the parlor floor when Burroughs' pillow slid away from his head. The entire night, the boys said, chairs and other pieces of furniture paraded around the room.
For the next 40 years, whenever Stone and Burroughs got together, an invisible force inexplicably moved stoves, beds, pictures and even the rocks on a street in Norfolk. While Joe Burroughs was not among those who witnessed the phenomenon, he remembers his father talking about it. He said, ``My dad was leery of it, but he couldn't contradict what happened.''
Mrs. Craft, Mrs. Whitehurst and Burroughs have watched Pungo both expand in the early 1900s, and then watched their friends vacate the area after the railroad pulled up stakes in the late 1940s. The busy crossroads, which once showcased four large stores, now has just two smaller convenience stores to accommodate those who pass by on their way to Sandbridge or North Carolina.
Lillian Craft still has fond memories of the old Pungo families - the Flannigans, the Lanes, the Murdens and the Sneeds, whose homes remain intact. However, many of the stories of the old Pungo homes were lost forever when their owners deserted them and left them for decay. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo on cover by Jim Walker, Staff
Color photos by Jim Walker
Many old homes in Pungo have been abandoned, but this one at 1764
Princess Anne Road is occupied by Mabel Brocks.
Lillian Craft, soon to turn 95, moved to Pungo when she was just 5
years old.
Staff photo by Jim Walker
Lillian Craft's home on Princess Anne Road in Pungo. She moved here
in 1924 when she married Roy Craft.
by CNB