User:Persisto

Please Note: WeRelate User Persisto is deceased.

A Person Page has been created for him here.

Craig Kilby, aka "Persisto" (1959-2016)

I live at a little-known cross roads in Lancaster County, Virginia called Litwalton. In its day, it was a notorious corner of commercial activity of varying degrees of legality. This depended on the season of the year. Oystering and crabbing were large enterprises that attracted mainly African-Americans from Maryland during harvest time. Money flowed freely and any time was party time. In off season, the native "sensible whites" and their "reasonable colored friends" returned to the more sedentary life-style of husbandry, carpentry and farming. Party time was over, and the locals gladly counted their money from the harvest season.

Litwalton still exists on modern Virginia road maps. The corner is now better known as the intersection of Marritico and River Roads. It is located in Virginia's Northern Neck-- that long peninsula of land between the Rappahannock and Potomac Rivers where the Rappahannock and Potomac Rivers slowly wend their way South and East to meet the Chesapeake Bay. I am a native of the St. Louis, Missouri area but have lived in Virginia off and on since 1997. To use an old Virginia term, "right many" of my ancestors hail from the Northern Neck.

I enjoy genealogy so much that I turned it from an avocation to a vocation. In addition to court house research in the local area, I am an avid volunteer at the Mary Ball Washington Museum & Library in Lancaster Court House. I spend a lot of time at the Library of Virginia in Richmond, and and a fair amount of time working in Culpeper and Madison counties. You can read more about me at my web site http://www.craigkilby.com

Published Articles:

"A Tree Falls at Litwalton" by Craig Kilby. The Northern Neck of Virginia Historical Society Magazine, Vol. 53, December 2008