Norge Community Hall

In 1907, a group of young men in Norge who called themselves “Vikings” went on the hunt for a town hall which could resemble what their parents had known in Norway. They wanted a centrally-located building which could be used for dances, meetings, and parties. They purchased two lots on the corner of Richmond Road and Peninsula Street for $5.00 from J. B. and Anna M. Jenson and built “Viking Hall” with their own labor. The story goes that they only needed to purchase nails; the community donated everything else.

Many groups found the hall the ideal place for their entertainments. Viking Hall was noted for having the best dance floor in the area, perhaps because of the heart pine floorboards. The Vikings frequently held dances and parties. After Toano High School was built in the area, they held school functions at the hall. Other groups held dances as money-making affairs.

As the Vikings grew older, the building fell into disuse and was almost sold to a local farmer to be used for potato storage. The women of the community, however, came to the rescue. The Norge Home Demonstration Club purchased the building in 1920 for $950 and changed the name to Norge Community Hall. Once the Norge Home Demonstration Club (or the Mothers’ Club) purchased the building, they began holding their meetings at the hall and made it the center of their activity.

The stage that headed the hall made it the ideal venue for plays, recitals, and other entertainment. Skits and minstrels were popular in the 1920s, while “amateur hours” came into vogue during the ‘30s. The stage was also an excellent spot for fashion shows with models wearing clothes they had made themselves. Later, musical groups performed. Members of the Norge Community Club displayed handmade quilts at the hall before auctioning pieces off for charity.

Norge Hall was the first place in James City County to have an indoor basketball court. Players hung baskets at each end of the hall and installed bleachers in the gallery over the Richmond Road entrance because the building was too narrow for the fans to sit along the sidelines. Spectators also used the stage at the opposite end of the hall. Both boys’ and girls’ teams played here.

The club was sponsored by a university to conduct outreach to local women for home demonstrations and general support. In 1923, the hall was moved twenty-five feet back from Route 60 to accommodate the widening of the road. The club also dug a basement and installed a furnace. Sometime in the 1950s, the kitchen was moved from the front of the building to an add-on at the side of the building.

The club has been continuously active since its inception; managing and maintaining the building for community use. Currently, the hall holds Church meetings, Girl Scout meetings, dances, presentations, and private parties (i.e. birthdays, anniversaries, weddings).

The club now is named Norge Community Hall Association, a charitable non-profit. We are also transitioning to a Board of Directors who can manage the association formally. Norge Hall has fulfilled the Vikings’ vision; it has remained a community hall, helping to meet the needs of the entire community, for over a century. We hope we can look to our community for support when needed.

A speech given for the opening of the Norge Depot exhibit.

(Even though the speech is predominately about the Depot it speaks a great deal about what drew Norwegians to this area and how they gathered so closely together. That heritage and close settlement enabled the Norge Community Hall to be built to service the growing community.)

A respected local writer once said, “all great stories have two elements. They are about people, and they show how people resolve the conflict of life.” With the help of Norge native, M. Anderson “Andy” Bradshaw, I’m going to share a story of the community of Norge, Virginia. It is a story about people, and it is a story about how those people have resolved the opportunities and challenges of life. In telling it, I will often rely on Bradshaw’s lyrical prose, which is taken from copies of speeches he has given during his many years of public service.

Set in three places: Norway, the United States Midwestern frontier, and a rural area of James City County that is bisected by a rail line that connects the ports at Norfolk to the rest of the country, the story’s timeline unfolds over 150 years of American railroad history.

In this story you are going to get to know one of the most interesting characters in Virginia history, Carl M. Bergh, a Chesapeake and Ohio Railway land agent who promised, in his promotional literature about the area, fertile fields in the sunny south and thickly set forest of the finest quality. Through Bradshaw’s memories, you will also meet C.L. “Hop” Showalter, who was the Agent/Operator of the Norge Depot in the era of Bradshaw’s childhood. For this story, we are indebted to Bradshaw’s mother, Nancy Smith Bradshaw, and to her friend, Francis Huckstep Hamilton. These women created a pictorial history of Norge, Velkommen til Norge, and we have drawn from it extensively. Hamilton later made it her mission that the historic Norge Depot not be demolished, but instead restored and repurposed. And so, with the backdrop set, we begin, a story of Norge.

Sociologists, when they are discussing why people immigrate, talk about “push factors” and “pull factors.” That was the first question I put to Bradshaw when we began talking about the settlement of this part of Virginia by people from far away Scandinavia. What, in particular drew these Norwegians to this part of Virginia? The answer was found, at least in part, in a book that Bradshaw shared with me that was written in 1966 by Norwegian Mette Lovas. In the preface to his book, Lovas explains that while staying as an exchange student in Virginia, the family’s car had a flat time in Norge. As they waited for assistance, Lovas walked through the churchyard and was amazed to find names of Norwegian origin on the grave markers. That chance happening led to Lovas’s research.

The settlers who came to Norge were part of a re-migration of Norwegians who had first been drawn to the American Midwest. According to Lovas, the “push and pull” for Norwegian migration to the Upper Midwest was lead by a population explosion in Norway that is attributed to three factors that decreased infant mortality and brought greater longevity to the Norwegian population. These factors were: the introduction of the potato, smallpox vaccinations, and improved sanitary conditions. Impartible inheritance as well as a rigid social politics between landowners and cotters played an additional role in encouraging younger sons of landed farmers and farmhands to move out as a way to secure futures for their own children.

These people of farming background were “pulled” to the American Midwest by the 1862 Homestead Act that provided any American citizen and an immigrant, intending to become naturalized, with 160 acres of land if he was willing to live on and improve the land for at least five years. The transcontinental railroads actively sought buyers for land that bordered their tracks, and they were successful in attracting European immigration.

According to Bradshaw and Hamilton’s Velkommen til Norge, in 1881 that business model was used to attract buyers to this part of the South when the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad purchased land to build its spur from Richmond to Newport News. Pamphlets were distributed in several languages and half-fare tickets were offered potential settlers. Land in large lots could also be acquired from former slaveholders for prices ranging from $6 – $12 per acre.

Another “pull factor” for the Norwegian settlement of the area is noted in unpublished memoirs by Reverend Harold Maakestad and taken from Lovas’s thesis: It is questionable whether the upper part of James City County would have been settled by Norwegian Americans had not the railroad hired Norwegian-American Carl Martin Bergh as on of the agents. Bergh was born in Sondre Lands Parish in 1849, and his family moved to Wisconsin in 1850. He lived there in Minnesota, operating a masonry and plaster business, until he moved his wife and children to Kansas, where they operated a farm there until 1892. He then spent three years in Tennessee prior to moving his family to Norfolk, Virginia in the spring o 1895. According to a 1910 article, Bergh had read about Virginia’s Salubrious climate in some Richmond papers, and decided to move to the state after a tour of inspection. He was employed as a land and excursion agent for the C&O Railroad, and then in 1896 he purchased a farm in the vicinity of Toano.

Bergh was able to write in Norwegian, German and English, and he wrote passionately about the virtues of the land, climate, crops, career opportunities and wages, answering questions about soil depletion and emphasizing the Virginia timber and forests. Indeed, two successful “pull” factors were the climate and the ability of these hardworking farmers to realize a profit on their initial investments. After selling their improved land in the upper Midwest for $8 – $45 and acre, the Norwegians were able to reinvest in land in Virginia for $6 – $12 an acre. And so, they moved, bringing their modern farm equipment with them, and by7 1910 the census shows that there were living in Virginia, 240 Danes, 368 Swedes, and 311 Norwegians.

Bergh, who eventually operated a real estate office in Richmond and which he visited by train, encouraged the early re-migrants to settle close to each other and in proximity to his own estate, “It is a main point in a new place that all moves as near to each other as can be arranges, they can then better build schools, organize congregations and be of comfort to each other, helpful and in many times assist with advice and in death. In all it is necessary to be near each other for the sake of social life and neighborliness.“

In about 1904 the community received its current name, and following Bergh’s advice the village grew over few years to consist of the train depot, the Bergh hotel, family homes, saw mill, stave mill, carpenter shop,blacksmith shop, grist mill, hardware store with adjoining electrician’s hop, two general stores, a farmer’s co-operative and two churches. A community hall was also constructed, and we will discuss it later. All were in close proximity and located on streets that carry distinctly American names: Main, Pear and Peninsula.

Surrounding farms ranged from 600 to 40 acres. Orchards were prevalent and berries, especially strawberries, were grown. Dairy farming and raising poultry became central. Abundant timber created jobs in sawmills and for carpenters and cabinet makers. A Farmer’s Union was organized in 1911 and that made bulk purchasing possible. The Peninsula Dairymen’s Association was based in Norge.

The Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad ran the length of the peninsula and connected the shipyards in Hampton, Norfolk and Fort Monroe to Richmond, Washington D.C. and on to West Virginia, Kentucky and into Ohio’s Central Union Depot where there were connections with all the western railroads. The depot at Norge made it possible for the Norge farmers to send a dizzying variety of products including watermelons, strawberries, timber, milk, sheep, eggs and chickens to countless consumer markets. According to Burgh, Cordwood sold for $2.50 to $300 per cord delivered to the railroad siding and lumber for $10 to $12 per thousand board feet if rough and an extra $300 to have it planes.

A most beautiful description of Norge timber industry and the skill of this community’s early woodworkers comes from a speech by Andy Bradshaw which he gave on the occasion of the 100th Anniversary of the Norge Community Hall. Bradshaw wrote, “To those who know it best, the most cherished feature of this hall is it’s floor, and even though in my 4-H public speaking instruction, Miriam Puster and Mel Bryant told me to look at my audience, not at my feet, I can’t help but look down at it even now, and will not think it rude if you do the same. The floor is made of heart pine, undoubtedly from trees harvested locally, It would not be groundless speculation to suggest that they were from J.B. Jenson’s forest on the farm known as Foster’s. Without any doubt, it was milled at the Lars Rustad sawmill, for it was only a pine cone’s throw away, where Thekla Metcalf now resides, and two of the Rustad sons were among the dozen young men calling themselves Vikings who build the Hall.

The floor itself rests on full dimension 2 b7 10 joists, which in turn rest on 6 by 6 beams as straight and strong today as they were 100 years ago. One is no longer amazed that the building was moved twenty-five feet from the road without mishap, once you see the strength of its frame.

Resting on the floor joists is a sub-floor of wide pine planks of varying widths, but some more than 18 inches wide, attesting to the size of the trees that were milled to make the flooring.

I was puzzled by the narrow, but very regular three in floor boards that make up the finished floor, wondering why they, too, were not varying widths. The I realized they were the product of a sawmill techniques known as “blocking the heart.” A large log is run through the mill, first cutting off a slab of bark. Successive cuts yield boards of ever increasing widths as the sawyer nears the wide center log. When he gets to within 1 1/2 inches of the center of the log, the sawyer stops and ls the log 180 degrees and begins cutting from the other side, again stopping 1 1/2 inches from the center, leaving a block of wood, mostly heartwood, three inches wide. This block is placed on its side and perfectly regular three inch wide floor boards are cut from it. The outermost of characteristic flame pattern of plain sawn lumber. Those nearest the center, cut nearly perpendicular to the annual growth rings, have the characteristic narrow parallel lines of quarter sawn lumber.

But the Rustads were more than sawyer; they were cabinet makers as well and the floor is adorned at either end with a sunrise and sunset pattern which required exacting measurement of length and angle to produce the radiating effect. This floor is a “wonder to behold.“

Bradshaw goes on to explain, “Because it is full of minerals and resins, heartwood is harder, heavier, stronger and more durable than water carrying sapwood. When used for building, cabinetry and even for musical instruments, heartwood gives those characteristics to what is made. It also give resonance. Sapwood absorbs and dulls sound. Heartwood makes a sound ring out, even amplifies it. No wonder the Norge Hall was reputed to have the best dance floor around. Heartwood would ring out with both the sound of the dancing feet and the sound of the music to which they danced.“

The Community Hall and other buildings that were constructed by the original Norwegian settlers formed the backdrop for Bradshaw’s childhood memories. He and his six siblings joined other children from the neighborhood to wait on the steps of the Old Store for the school bus to Matthew Whaley Elementary School. For many years the first grade class at Matthew Whaley made the trip out to the Bradshaw’s Norge farm for an annual picnic. Bradshaw’s parents had a chicken farm and egg business, and they, as had Norge residents before them, relied on railroad – in their case for the rail delivery of chicken feed. It is with Bradshaw’s memories and hopes for the newly repurposed Norge Depot that this story will end.

The Norge Depot closed in 1969. In a speech given on the day the depot was moved from the rail siding to it’s new home across from the Regional Library at Croker, Bradshaw reminisced, “I was raised in a home behind your left shoulder, so I have many fond memories of the pulsing chug of the engines and rhythmic clack of the wheels that put me to sleep many thousands of nights. My siblings and I leaned to count into the hundred by tallying the number of coal cars that passed. We got our first notions of a world bigger than our own town as we saw rail cars move past covered in snow when our weather had been mild and clear for days.”

“My favorite memory though, was not what we saw, but who we knew because of the Norge Depot.” One of those people was the station master, Colin Lewis “Hop” Showalter. He was from Clifton Forge, we one of 12 children and all of the sons in his family worked for the C&O Railroad. An amputated leg have him a characteristic gait. He was admired by all the youth of Norge and was the youth group leader at the Olive Branch church.

Showalter was an accomplished telegrapher, a skill critical to the success of the railroad. For a period of time, railroads served the functions of public transportation, mail delivery and freight deliver, as did this one in Norge. For reasons of safety and commerce, timing, scheduling and hence, communication, were terribly important. Therefore, the C&O developed a communication system of its own well before there was a telephone system available to the public. The system used the telegraph, stringing wires on poles alongside the railroad tracks.

Hop Showalter had a railroad expression, a phrase that he would use on occasion, that is fitting as we celebrate the new Norge Depot today. He would refer to certain events as “happy milepost.” The railroad, as is the interstate highway today, is marked by numbered posts every mile. A “happy milepost,” and Norge Depot was one, was one at which warmth, comfort and friendship might be found for crew and passengers alike; one at which all ere welcomed; one at which you were made ready to go out again. A “happy milepost” is not the beginning or the end of the journey, but a pause along the way. A “happy milepost” was not a place you got to on your own, and many have worked hard to get us to this day. Of the newly repurposed Norge Depot, Hop Showalter would say, this is a “happy milepost,” a place where our community can celebrate how far we have come and prepare for the journey ahead.”