By Rob Hedelt
For 50 years, Ida Hall has earned a living in harmony with nature. She pulls crabs, fish and oysters from the waters near her family’s ancestral home on Bluff Point Neck near Kilmarnock in Northumberland County.
Though she’s seen many heart-stirring sunrises on Chesapeake Bay tributaries, the energetic William and Mary graduate doesn’t think that sight would have the same impact if she’d been born there.
“I’m sure that growing up in Danville, with neighbors all around and a busy downtown, made me truly appreciate the wide-open spaces,” she said, standing on the beach near her family homeplace. The waterman noted that when she was young, they would leave Danville, where her father Snowden Hall was a doctor, and make the long drive up to see relatives for holidays and on summer weekends.
“We’d leave the city and come to this place where there was no one around,” she said. “This place where my father and his brothers had grown up was so quiet and instead of trucks and vehicles and people making noise, we heard nature and saw wildlife all around. It was like you were going back in time.”
The small but scrappy Hall notes that the people she met and came to know seemed to reflect the peaceful, caring nature of this place: most of them self-reliant and independent, either fishing or raising crops and their own food. “My uncle Ben Hall, who lived where I do now, loved this land so much and didn’t want to see it commercialized.”
Because she and her two brothers—James and Snowden—feel the same way, the trio protected the 92-acre family farm and property through conservation easements. In 2005, it was one of the first easements established at Northern Neck Land Conservancy and is co-held with the Virginia Outdoors Foundation. The property along Jarvis Point Road and Monarch Shores Road contains shoreline on Jarvis Creek and on the Chesapeake Bay and contains both agricultural and forest land.
Hall’s first experience with a waterman’s routine was in the summer of 1964 when she went out with her cousin Hal to watch him fish pound nets during a visit that was supposed to last two weeks. That initial outing shifted her connection with nature into a career that’s still active. As she said in an article for William and Mary alumni, the sunrise trip was life changing.
“I was awestruck by the seemingly infinite, untainted, wild beauty of the Bay and surrounding undeveloped land, and amazed that people made a living working so close to nature. . . I knew it was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.”
Hall worried for a bit that she didn’t see many women out in fishing boats or crews on the water, unless they were the wives or children of fishermen. But that didn’t stop her, as she accompanied her cousin, brother and others out to fish the waters near where she was living with relatives.
She laughs remembering one of her first outings alone, using a borrowed boat and net. “I ran the net six feet out and wound it right around the propeller,” she says with a quick laugh, noting that relatives helped by giving her advice to avoid that sort of problem again.
“The first time I managed to set the net successfully; I got a load of rockfish. I caught enough in 30 minutes to get $54 for them,” she said. “I thought to myself, ‘How cool is this: being outdoors, on the water I love, and getting paid for what I catch.’”
A career was born, and she slowly but surely learned how to avoid problems by noting the currents, storms and winds that at times had water washing over her wooden skiff’s bow or gunwales, necessitating long bouts of baling. “It’s been hard at times – cold days when you couldn’t feel your fingers or times when your net was full of sea nettles,” she said, and more recently the problem of having parts of a creek she uses to access her crab pots silting over.
“But I’ve loved it, socializing with other watermen, seeing the beauty out there every day, and being able to work in such a natural setting. And then to make money while I’m out there, oh my God, how lucky have I been?”
It took Hall a while to believe she had a responsibility for preserving her family’s land.
“When I moved down here initially, I thought all the land would stay like this forever,” she said, pointing to a nearby stand of pines. That notion was challenged when she learned nearby land that had gone out of family ownership was going to be developed. When a savvy advisor noted that her family’s farmland was more likely to be developed because it was on higher, dryer ground, it underscored the vulnerability of a place that had seemed unchanging.
The waterman who’s seen prices and fishing practices change through five decades of working the water notes that the land itself changes, as well. The beach behind her home is now nearly 100 yards back from where it once was, and ponds on the property that once held oysters and braces of ducks now are all but gone.
“We had a little piece called Oyster Creek, with oysters in there that grew well,” she said, noting that channels would occasionally open from the nearby Bay shore, bringing in the saltier water that oysters thrive on.
When Hall and her two siblings inherited land that had been owned by their uncle and aunt, they eventually moved to protect it.
“We had to move forward to put it into [conservation] easement.” They were nudged along, said Hall, by the desire to avoid paying a huge estate tax. “The land was buildable, so the tax could have been in the millions. This way we could afford to hold on to it.”
She said avoiding that tax and financial benefits tied to the easement may have gotten the siblings moving, but deep down they were all motivated by wanting to save the land from being chopped up into two acre lots and changing forever.
“My brothers and I share a profound love of our family’s farm and special memories of spending time exploring the unspoiled beaches, fields, and woods; and fishing and hunting on the Bay and creeks with our granddaddy, great uncles, cousins, and father. These cherished memories live on today in our hearts and soul. My brother James preserves many of these rich memories in his eloquently written published stories and books. My brother Snowden captures the pristine beauty and tranquility of our farm in his paintings. I have tried to preserve a waterman’s way of life and family traditions that I learned decades ago.”
Accolades
Ida Hall, the consummate waterman, has been recognized by a host of associations and government entities. She’s served for years as an officer in the Virginia Waterman’s Association and was a member of the Virginia Blue Crab Industry Panel, an organization that works to sustain the population and harvesting of the species.
In 2007, she spoke out against the environmental risks of a 288-unit cluster development plan in the Bluff Point area which was eventually voted down by the Northumberland County Board of Supervisors. And between 2010 and 2013, she spearheaded efforts to educate the public about plans for another large development project in the county. Though it was approved, the developer subsequently decided not to go through with it, gifting a 37-acre parcel to James Madison University, and placing most of the remainder into a perpetual conservation easement.
In 2014, National Fisherman magazine, the country’s largest publication for commercial fishing, named Ida Hall as a Highliner Award winner, which recognizes commercial watermen who “display a passion for fishing and advocate for the sustainability of fish and fishermen.”
In 2019, The Northumberland Association for Progressive Stewardship awarded Hall the Northumberland Distinguished Citizen Award. It’s given to honor her for advancing their goals: improving the water quality of the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries; fostering and preserving the county’s rural atmosphere; promoting and monitoring land use policies; encouraging economic growth to promote jobs; and cooperating with others through educational programs to target these goals. Accepting the award, she shared the history of her family farm in the Bluff Point area of Northumberland County.
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