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From: Don Andrews <>
Subject: [LDR] Life in Rumbley in the 1860's?
Date: Sat, 10 Nov 2001 18:25:33 -0500


I recently traced my great grandparents, William H. Folling and Sarah
A Hudson, to having owned and lived on a 2 1/4 a. parcel in Rumbley
from about 1865 to 1869. After visiting the site I found that Rumbley
is on a marsh hummock separated from the mainland by about 2 miles of
salt marsh, and fronting on the Chesapeake Bay to the west. I had to
wonder how life functioned then in such a "frontier" area.

1. Given that the hummock Runbley sits upon is just a clayey, sandy
outcropping from the marsh, how did they obtain potable water? Today
Rumbley is provided with water by way of a pipe running from a well on
the mainland. Then, I would guess that they did not have deep well
technology and any shallow well would probably only provide salt
water. Would their water supply have been rain water supplemented by
whatever they could bring from the mainland?

2. An 1877 map shows a road of sorts (dashed lines & solid lines)
extending across the 2 miles of marsh to the mainland. I understand
that many old roads across marshes were "log roads" constructed from
logs laid crosswise to form a road surface. If so, a 2 mile log road
seems like an extremely ambitious undertaking for the 21 or so
families shown on the 1877 map, given that these logs would all come
from hand felled trees. Is this reasonable? Today there is no sign
of a connecting marsh hummock on which a road could have been
constructed and the road surface is only about a foot or so above
high tide level.

3. I have a certificate where this ancestor was a member of Union
Methodist Episcopal Church. This church, apparently, does not exist
today. Does anyone have any knowledge of where it was?

Would appreciate any insight any rooter might have on these puzzles.

Thanks,
Don Andrews


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