1950’s timeline

1950

  • 1952

Bombers for General Lee – January 15, 1950

Packed away today in a crate at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington is a model of a machine that might have turned the tide of the War Between the States.

It is an airplane model, designed by a Confederate engineer with the idea of providing a fleet of bombers for General Robert E. Lee. With control of the air, the South might have broken the North’s naval blockade and opened the road to Washington for the men of General Thomas J. (Stonewall) Jackson and the legions of Stuart, Longstreet and Early.



Newspaper article: The Floating Theater – September 10, 1950

Summer evenings bring to the older natives of the Chesapeake Bay country nostalgic memories of thrilling hours spent, many years ago, on board the James Adams Floating Theater. Long before Edna Ferber brought the showboat to the attention of the world, the people who lived along the bay and its various little and big tributaries were well acquainted with this form of entertainment.

Back in the days when the petite Beulah Adams, captioned as the “Mary Pickford of the Chesapeake,” wore long auburn curls, and Charles Hunter was the Prince Charming of every rustic lass, inhabitants of the Tidewater viewed these annual visits of the Floating Theater with a mixture of ecstacy and alarm. Some high-ranking church members looked upon it as a menace, even calling it a “hell-hole of iniquity,” while backsliders, riff-raff, colored folk, children and lovers of the drama were irresistibly fascinated.


Carter Jones Park – September 17, 1950

The 12-acre park is named for Carter Jones, the member of the City Council from Madison Ward who was the author of the resolution to take over the Fonticello Springs property from the Taylor estate and make a park of it. The resolution was approved by the Council May 16, 1924, and the petition for the acquisition was filed in Hustings Court, Part II, Oct. 27, 1924. Four years later the property was obtained by the city. The Taylor homestead, located in or near the present traffic circle, was pulled down in 1934.