The Great Dismal Swamp Talk
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The Great Dismal Swamp Talk

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Just who discovered the Great Dismal and when is unknown. Colonel William Byrd II was a member of the commission that surveyed the North Carolina/Virginia state line through the Swamp in 1728 and provided the first extensive description of it. Colonel Byrd first suggested draining the swamp and digging a north-south canal through it to connect the waters of Chesapeake Bay in Virginia and Albemarle Sound in North Carolina. In May 1763, George Washington made his first visit to the Swamp and joined with several other prominent Virginians and North Carolinians to form two syndicates known as the Dismal Swamp Land Company and the Adventurers for Draining the Great Dismal Swamp. This group hoped to drain the Swamp, harvest the trees, and use the land for farming. The Dismal Swamp was a known route and destination for freedom seekers. This route was the most rugged and treacherous route where insects, snakes, and wild animals were abundant. It was to this inhospitable place many runaways came. William Grandy, a prominent slave owner in Camden County was Moses’s first slave master. Moses was hired out to Enoch Sawyer and George Furley to tend ferry along the Pasquotank River and haul lumber in the Dismal Swamp.
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