Belle Isle

Sam, Ada and I went on a mini-jaunt to Belle Isle today to play in the James River. We needed to get Ada out of the house, and Sam definitely needed a break from his new job and from all of the busy work that still needs to be done around here. Belle Isle is a 54-acre island in the James River located here in Richmond. You can only really access it by a foot-bridge that takes you across the James River from the North-shore of the river to the island (and surprisingly gave me a bit of vertigo as we crossed high up over the river).

We had a wonderful time there and were taken back by the vast cross-section of people that came from all over the city to enjoy the sun and cool water like us. This is definitely the most diverse and urban city either one of us has ever lived in - what a learning experience this will be.

Sam informed me when we were walking the path to the river that the island was formerly a prison for Union soldiers during the Civil War. I was swiftly reminded that we now live in what once was (or what some might argue still is) Confederate country. Perking my interest, I had to read up a bit more on this piece of history, and learned that the island was home to approximately 30,000 prisoners of war; nearly 1,000 died. I found this quote on Wikipedia (who knows about the accuracy, but I'm not in the mood for serious research here, a just a little history lesson):

In 1864, Peter DeWitt, surgeon @ Jarvis hospital in Baltimore described the "great majority" of Belle Isle POW patients as being:

"in a semi-state of nudity...laboring under such disease as chronic diarrhoea, scurvy, frost bite, general debility, caused by starvation, neglect and exposure. Many of them had partially lost their reason, forgetting even the date of their capture, and everything connected with their antecedent history. They resembled, in many respects, patients laboring under cretinism. They were filthy in the extreme, covered in vermin...nearly all were extremely emaciated; so much so that they had to be cared for even like infants."

I'll shamefully admit it crossed my mind while we were walking the path that the island didn't seem too awful a place to have to be held captive. I stand corrected!

While there are so many beautiful places that we will get to explore while here, I cannot help but interest myself in the deep historical influences each place holds, so - I will promise to post pics of our adventures, but hope you'll put up with a little history lesson every now and then. One last thing for the history-buffs in the family - Belle Isle was also home to Old Dominion Iron and Nail Company. You can still see remnants of the iron plant, and reportedly of the prison as well, although we didn't explore it enough to see physical evidence of the prison.

We did have a wonderful Sunday afternoon as a family, and truly enjoyed watching Ada grab for guppies and sprawl out in the wonderfully cool water that holds so much history.