
DATE: Thursday, September 25, 1997          TAG: 9709261106

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY ERIKA REIF, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:  187 lines

GUINEA'S NEW GENERATION THESE GLOUCESTER WATERMEN HAVE MIGRATED FROM BIG ISLAND TO THE MAINLAND. BUTAT THIS WEEK'S GUINEA JUBILEE, THEY WILL BE REMINDED OF THEIR HERITAGE, WHICH DATES BACK TO COLONIAL TIMES.

MENTION GUINEA to those who've spent time in Gloucester County.

Eyes roll with a knowing look. There's a snicker or a laugh, followed by yet another crack about lineages resembling totem poles rather than family trees.

Even the Guineamen remember the days when everyone in their community was kin. But their isolation and introverted ways are breaking down.

Many that live in homes on the Guinea marshes - fed by rivers and creeks branching off the York River - grew up on secluded Big Island, about a mile offshore. A few abandoned homes still stand on the island's approximately 10 acres, with its oyster-shell paths, tall weeds, and pine, holly and ``honey berry'' trees.

But over the past several decades, the families have left. They've set up homes in the mainland marshes, leaving the now privately owned island to a few duck hunters and fishermen.

Like other coastal fishing villages such as Tangier Island and Smith Island, Md., Guinea is losing its identity.

At the same time, outsiders are growing more interested in places like rural Gloucester. Peninsula and even Southside residents cross the George P. Coleman Bridge and scope the Gloucester area for a quiet place to get away, or build that dream home.

Sometimes, without knowing it, they end up in Guinea, where traffic whizzes by on Route 216, known as Guinea Road. And in the corner stores, the accents of the ``come heres'' compete with the Guineamen's clipped cockney dialect.

For 18 years, Postmaster Faye J. Deal has run the post office in Bena, attached to the Bena Store, which adjoins her seasonal business, Deal's Tax Service. The number of cars she sees approaching the three-way Bena intersection reminds her how fast that life is changing.

She's not even sure where Guinea begins and ends. And Deal won't take the bait when asked if Bena is part of Guinea.

``That's about it down below,'' Deal moves her head eastward to indicate Guinea's location.

She leaves its official border for others to debate. Some researchers say Guinea's boundaries are based on kinship, and change as families move and regroup.

Deal's roots are surely Guinea, having been born and raised in the easternmost mainland area known as Maryus. Her father was a waterman, crabbing, clamming and dredging for oysters. In later years, he bought fresh fish to be cleaned and dressed then peddled from a cooler in his pickup truck.

Working the water is no longer profitable, Deal says. A slew of bad seasons have forced many watermen's sons to learn other trades and find jobs outside the community.

But family ties in the area remain strong.

``All your people, your family is here,'' Deal says about why she has stayed. ``You really don't think about moving about, of leaving your parents, and leaving your brothers and sisters. I guess it's just a way of life.''

Recently, Guinea has been getting the once-over. Newcomers are curious, sensing Guinea's historical and sociological significance.

The 19th annual Guinea Jubilee, to be held Friday and Saturday, is an example of how Guinea is finally being celebrated by the larger community. Last year, it attracted a record 15,000 visitors. A recent Heritage Day held at Union Baptist Church drew more than 200 people, and rounded up items such as an 1860 census, old catalog pages, iron knuckles and ladies' laced boots.

The irony is that the attention is coming as the numbers of Guineamen living the old ways dwindle. But before Guinea's culture changes and the old-timers die, the Guinea Heritage Association wants to put as much as it can on record.

Through a booth at the jubilee, the association's Historical Preservation Committee is gathering anything that is Guinea: photographs, memoirs, geneaologies, watermen's and farmer's tools, household artifacts, clothing.

Eventually, the items will become part of a planned Guinea Museum, says committee chairperson Jeanie Woo. An Old Dominion University history graduate, Woo says Guinea's heritage has been overlooked by local museums.

``They've really been shunned and looked down on by the rest of the county,'' Woo says. ``Some people that live here in Bena would never, ever identify themselves with Guinea.''

Woo moved to Bena from Norfolk 18 years ago. Her house overlooks the York River in an area where many so-called ``come-heres'' have settled, and where waterfront property values have more than doubled over the past decade.

She became fascinated by the tales of Guinea history she has coaxed from older folks.

About watermen taking the law - and shotguns - into their own hands when a Hampton businessman threatened their seed oyster beds during the 1928 Oyster War. About the 1933 ``August Storm'' that flooded the flat marshes, and the tidal wave that carried away cattle and hen houses.

``They really have a story to tell, and no one's really told their story,'' Woo says.

As Woo and others attempt to win the Guineamen's trust, and bring their ``colorful and deep-rooted history'' to the forefront, locals are seeing a change in perception.

As Postmaster Deal puts it, ``It seems like now it's a big thing to be from Guinea.''

Guineamen are starting to tell their stories. But it hasn't always been that way. Many settlers first came to the marshes because they didn't want to be found.

Guinea native William Hansford Rowe, 94, says the first Guineamen were a mix of British deserters, German mercenaries and legal residents who simply wanted comfortable homes and a place to care for their families. Rowe lives with his 90-year-old wife, Grace Lee, at Gloucester Point. But his roots go back to the Dobson family, one of the first families to get a land patent in the area in 1653.

Like many Guineamen, Rowe has done a little bit of everything: clerking at local stores, running a boarding house, working the water, farming, and running a ferry across the York River.

Glimpses of that life can still be found on the narrow roads that snake off the five-mile Guinea Circle, which loops the area beginning at Achilles.

The sideroads lead to brick homes with satellite dishes where cable TV doesn't reach. There are mobile homes, a lot of sheds, barns used as garages and, most frequently, a boat in the driveway. The roads all end at the water, where snoopers are greeted by ``no trespassing'' signs or the fences of marinas or seafood businesses.

Smoke often rises in the air. Some residents complain, saying they ought to call the sheriff about the fires that burn uncontrolled so wild asparagus can be harvested there next season. Near factories, there's the odor of seafood being processed. Here and there, the smell of swamp rises.

At the end of Maryus Road, James Walter West, 37, is wading knee-deep with his 13-year-old son, James ``Lee'' West. On the horizon are the trees of Big Island, which James left at age 15 with his parents and 12 siblings.

His family lives in a nearby trailer park, where about a dozen ``deer hounds'' scuffle in raised pens out back. His wife, Beth, often hoses down the three hogs, feeds the boxed-in rabbit, and cares for the handful of dogs underfoot and various pets in the trailer.

Life has been different on the mainland. Children can no longer skip school when the creek freezes. They can't play hooky by swimmming back home, hiding under the house, going hunting, or having a drink behind the barn.

In West's day, he went to school for only two days. Total. Some of his brothers went for three days, he said. Their real education was in boats on the water, where West has worked for 20 years, Beth said.

A native of North Carolina, Beth, 32, has lived in Guinea since age 15 and can remember hauling trees to clear paths on Big Island. She describes the strong dialect spoken by her husband as ``shorthand, but without the paper.''

A Gloucester High School dropout, Beth went back to school in 1996 and earned a GED. Her two sons are being taught the value of education, she says, even though they want to grow up to be watermen like their father.

During free time, Beth has painted designs on the family car and truck, with slogans ``How Guinea was won'' and ``Born to be a Guinea Bubba'' - a term formerly meant to insult.

One of her designs is tattooed on her arm - of a crab holding a wine glass and playing poker with cards and dice. Her people do some drinking and relaxing, just like other folks, she says. But the reputation of Guineamen as rowdy, clannish and ready for a brawl isn't quite fair, Beth says.

``We're just easygoing people - as long as we don't get hurt.''

Their niece, May Lynn West, 23, says the courts are biased against Guineamen.

``You're busted before you get there,'' May Lynn says. ``But we're still here.''

``Here'' ends where the rich folks' homes begin, she says. But a few say Guinea's capital is at C.B. ``Buck'' Rowe's store in Bena, where Guinea's ``unofficial mayor'' opens early to make sandwiches for watermen, and serves a well-known spicy barbecue sandwich.

Others, as always, say Guinea is farther down the road. Sometimes, it depends on who wants to know. ILLUSTRATION: BILL TIERNAN COLOR PHOTOS/The Virginian-Pilot

James W. and Beth West...

A small boat drifts in the marsh along Mobjack Bay...

Pongo, one of James W. and Beth West's dogs...

C.B. ``Buck'' Rowe Jr., 77, operates a small grocery...

Calvin West, 10, relaxes on the deck of his home...

Map

Graphics

GUINEA JUBILEE

When: Friday, noon to 9 p.m.; Saturday, 9 to 9 p.m. with 3K Crab

Walk and Shad Run registration beginning at 8 a.m. at Buck Rowe's

Store.

Where: At Abingdon Ruritan Club in Bena.