The Dabbler’s ex-pat American correspondent discovers a corner of the USA that is forever Elizabethan England…
When I spotted the couple across the room in a crowded Washington D.C. cocktail party I had the weird sensation of stepping back in time. They were arranged in a pose typical of classic portrait painting, she sitting in a high-backed chair, he leaning nonchalantly at her side. He could have stepped out of an Elizabethan miniature; a slim young man with dark curly hair and a neat pointed beard very like Nicholas Hillard’s 1577 self-portrait. His embroidered waistcoat added to the effect, a stark contrast with the dull business- casual uniform of the other male guests.
She seemed to come from a somewhat later period. Instead of stiff Elizabethan attire she wore a low-cut cotton dress voluminously gathered and draped in the style seen so often in seventeenth century English portraits. She had porcelain pale skin and the kind of heavy features also seen in those portraits, a characteristic English look that is handsome rather than pretty or beautiful. But in that assembly of women clad in the ubiquitous pant suits or little black dresses she glowed like an exotic beauty. You could not help your eyes being drawn to this extraordinary pair and, indeed, a crowd had gathered around them as though they were holding court.
I, too, was drawn into their orbit, curious to know where they were from. Surely they must be English, I speculated, though even in England their style would set them apart. Maybe they are visiting Shakespearean actors who didn’t have time to change out of costume before coming to the party? As I drifted close enough to overhear the conversation I congratulated myself on recognizing my fellow exiles. They definitely spoke with English accents, and I could clearly distinguish a West Country burr. As I listened further I became confident they were from Cornwall. So confident that when I was able to join in the conversation I didn’t ask them where they were from, but asked directly if they were from Cornwall. Smugly, I waited to be congratulated for my discerning ear. But “No” the young man replied, “We’re from Tangier Island in the Chesapeake Bay. You’re right in a way though, our ancestors came over from Cornwall.”
As I learned the fascinating history of Tangier Island, the unusual appearance and sound of the Cornish couple, as I thought of them, was explained. They really had stepped straight out of the seventeenth century, because the same few families who originally settled the island in the 1600’s had lived there intermarrying ever since. Almost everyone on the island has the surname Crockett, Pruitt, Thomas, Marshall, Charnock, Dise, or Parks. These seven families came to the New World from Cornwall, sailing from the port of Padstow in 1686. They were Cornish farmers and fisherman, occupations ideally suited to their new lives on an island in the Chesapeake Bay. The Tangier Islanders were so isolated for centuries that they preserved the pure genetic traits, speech, and mannerisms of seventeenth century England. The Tangier accent is known as Elizabethan English because linguistic scholars believe it is the closest to Shakespeare’s English that we can hear today.
Some years after this encounter I met my husband who, in this area of transients from all over the world, is the rare native Marylander. He comes from Crisfield, a small fishing town on the Chesapeake Bay where the ferryboats leave to visit Tangier Island. His family also goes back to the original English settlers, farmers on one side and watermen on the other. One day we took the ferry over to Tangier Island, traveling back in time to a Cornish fishing village. Elizabethan English was all around us, soft and blurred like the flat, grey horizon over the water. One lone teenager rode his bicycle round and round the island’s one road.
More and more young people are leaving as the Chesapeake oysters and crabs that sustained livelihoods for so long have declined. The young couple I met at the party had done what was unthinkable for so many generations before them; left Tangier Island for lives on the mainland. Perhaps now their children speak with ordinary American accents. How much longer will Elizabethan English be preserved?
great stuff Rita! – I was also under the impression that the proper ‘hick’ language of the appalacians is directly influenced by the cornish, who first settled there as miners
Fascinating post Rita – especially as I live in Penzance. The description of the couple you met sounds almost Amish. You say you visited Tangier Island some years after meeting the couple in DC. Did you sense that it was losing its unique identity?
This really is great stuff. Thanks for sharing. I was reading something about old English folk songs being preserved in the Appalachians long after they had been lost to the mother country. It’s funny how we think of the Americans as brash modern upstarts when they have communities like these.
Fascinating – I adore stories like this. There’s a good book on the regional British roots of the US called Albion’s Seed. A must read for anyone interested in America’s original cultural provenance.
Yes, Albion’s Seed is a great read and confirms the very English roots of so much that we think of as purely American.
If memory serves, Tangier Island also appears in The Story of English.
have just ordered Albion’s seed. THanks for the tip Gaw.