Editor, Gazette-Journal:
I offer the following comments on the proposed Gwynn’s Island highway marker and your article of Oct. 24 Very simply, the state approved the marker based on hearsay and convenient inferences. I applaud the Mathews County Board of Supervisors for taking a stand against such.
Your article describes Allison Thomas’s research, but fails to mention her posting about her years of research that “No first-hand accounts existed …” Suggest you read her full statement.
Remarks, both by Ms. Thomas and others, referring to racial incidents in other locations are used to unjustly imply “well, if it happened elsewhere, it must have happened on Gwynn’s Island.”
The black population of Gwynn’s Island peaked in 1830 and decreased continuously for the next 100 years, with only one 3 percent increase (nine persons) from 1850 to 1860. Marker proponents ignore that long-term trend and wrongly primarily attribute the island exodus to a single incident. From 1910-1920, 97 white reside...