Peanut Road

Not so very long ago

on a crisp October day

we drove Virginia’s winding backroads

windows open

the last sun-warmed breezes

teasing my face with summer’s memory

Soft mounds of drying nuts lined fields, row after row

sending up dusky-earth fragrance

rich and sweet, oh so sweet

full of dust

and stories

the heritage of my long-ago Virginia ancestors

a haunting echo of a memory I didn’t even know I had

How can I not remember smelling peanuts being harvested before?

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For over six years now we have been on the search for my Barkley ancestors in Southampton, Isle of Wight, Suffolk, and Nansemond, Virginia plus Northampton County, North Carolina. The trail begins in the 1750s where the signature of my 4-great grandfather George on a deed proves his presence. Originally, my Barkley grandfathers and grandmothers were landowners, though that acreage was lost with the untimely (and evidently unexpected) death of my 2-great grandfather James. While we don’t know what those older Barkleys grew in the 1750s or the early 1800s, we have documents to show that in the late 1800s my great-grandfather Thaddeus grew “fodder” – peanuts – in Southampton, Virginia. I knew he was a tenant famer, but what he grew? I had no idea!

As a child, I heard my father and his sister talk of old family towns: Boykins, Courtland, Capron in Southeast Virginia. I know we visited there when I was very young. We also traveled occasionally to Smithfield – though I am really not sure now why exactly. Perhaps to buy one of their famous salt cured hams that daddy loved. But until this fall I don’t remember being there at harvest time to breathe in the essence of peanuts.

Even if we never find the suspected link that connects my family to the English Barkleys who arrived in earliest Virginia circa 1600, I will forever be grateful that this ancestry quest brought me to the aroma of peanuts basking in the sun on a splendid fall day. 

Original photo by Dorothy Barkley Bryson iPhone14 Pro, October 6, 2025

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