Existing comment:
The Long Story of The Jones Point Ropewalk
1833-1850
In 1833, Josiah Davis constructed a narrow, 400-yard-long building where rope was manufactured for ship's rigging, a once-thriving maritime industry for the nearby port of Alexandria.
Archaeological Evidence:
Excavations at Jones Point revealed the remains of the ropewalk's foundations and a black stain down the middle -- probably from the tar applied to cordage to resist rotting from seawater.
"... every afternoon during the summer, it was the custom of the boys to go thither after school... to indulge in the luxury of a bath. They began to undress in the western part, and run naked through the long building...
At the entrance on the west there was a huge reel for rope, on which the boys used to stand and turn each other over, the rise and fall being probably twenty feet, and on occasion a boy threw out his back as he passed the second story window..."
-- Description of the abandoned Jones Point ropewalk, Academy Journal, June 3, 1873
The Jones Point ropewalk was a two-story building with larger wheels than are pictures here, but the process of making rope was the same. Walking backward between two reels, a spinning unwound lengths of hemp from around the waist and spun the fiber in each hand to create rope. A spinner could walk as much as 20 miles in a 10-hour workday. |