Anyone who walks into Walter Scott Hunley’s den knows right away that the lifelong Mathews resident loves old guns. His collection of antique and reproduction guns is displayed on every wall of the den, along with various old gun accessories, knives and tools that he has collected over the years.
Hunley is particularly proud of two 1842 Springfield muskets that he said were carried by Mathews men during the Civil War, one by Charles Henry Winder, who once lived at Hookemfair, and the other by Arthur Bridges of Hallieford. He said both were privates in the Confederacy.
An 1860 Colt that Hunley owns was “dug up out of a stable in Middlesex,” he said, “and I know nothing else about it.” There’s an original German Jaeger, a .36 caliber Lancaster, and an unusual double barrel swivel breach. “You shoot one, turn over the barrel, and shoot the other one,” said Hunley. “They were expensive. They didn’t catch on.”
Then there are the guns that Hunley made himself: a 40-pound bench rifle that’s so accurate he’s won a lot of trophies with it, a Hawken-style rifle with a percussion lock he made for his son, a short version of a poor boy he made for one granddaughter, a .32 caliber for another, a flintlock rifle he made for himself when he got older because he could handle it better.
Hunley said he’s given away lots of the guns he’s made to family members, but the only one he ever sold—an Owens 37—he eventually bought back.
Revolutionary War in Mathews
When asked if he would loan a couple of his weapons to the cast of the last week’s production of Judy Ward’s musical “Crickets on a Hill,” Hunley agreed on condition that the guns were to be handled carefully and returned in good shape. The deal brought back memories for Hunley, who played Col. Gwynn in the first production of Crickets on a Hill in 1976. His wife Fleta played a washerwoman. The two recalled not only the performances in Mathews, but also subsequent performances in various parts of the state, including Richmond.
Beyond that, Hunley said he had an ancestor who was “involved in the fracas” that provided the underpinning for the musical. His great-grandmother was a Marchant, he said, and her grandparents, several generations removed, owned a house at Cricket Hill in the 1700s. The house was torn down to reinforce the embrasures for the cannons that were used to attack Royal Governor Lord Dunmore’s fleet of loyalists during the July 1776 battle for Gwynn’s Island, said Hunley, adding that there are records where the Marchants asked for compensation for the destruction of their home.
“Lewis was in a jam,” said Hunley. “They were looking for him to drive them off Gwynn’s Island, which had a lot of redcoats.”
More than a century later, Hunley said, his cousin Ruth Marchant recalled her father using a team of oxen to tear down some of the cannon emplacements along the shoreline of Milford Haven because they were interfering with his farming.
The Civil War in Mathews
Hunley’s grandmother, Sarah Elizabeth Marchant, was living with a family of Bohannons on Put-In Creek when a rowboat full of Yankees came up to the house. The group reached the shoreline, stood their oars up on end, got out of the boat, and went into the Bohannons’ house, said Hunley.
The men told Hunley’s grandmother that they had landed their ship at Williams Wharf and were investigating what was going in Mathews with John Yates Beall and the Confederate Coast Guard. Hunley explained that Beall and his raiders had done a lot of damage to Union shipping.
In another Civil War incident, said Hunley, “Yankees came into Pepper Creek on a ship and the Mathews Militia opened fire and killed two or three of them.”
The only war-related death of a Mathews man that occurred on Mathews soil during the Civil War was that of Sands Smith, said Hunley. Smith’s home on Horn Harbor was John Yates Beall’s base of operations, and when the Union troops went there in search of the man, they ended up dragging Smith from his home all the way to Haynes Farm near the current-day waste transfer station.
“They hanged him from a sycamore tree,” said Hunley. “Then they filled him full of holes and put a sign on him that said, ‘this is what happens to you if you mess with us.”
Long a member of the Sons of the Confederacy, Hunley is no longer active, but he cherishes the memory of his ancestors who bravely fought for the country he loves.