James Netherwood
Standing out - the statue of James Netherwood on top of a 13 foot granite column in Oakwood Cemetery. His wife Nancy has a more modest monument!
The inauguration of the Gen. Robert E Lee Monument in 1890. Netherwood used a faulty column as the pedestal for his own statue (see photo above).
Robert E Lee is removed from his graffiti covered monument in Richmond, Virginia, in Sept. 2021.
Following protests by the Black Lives Matter movement, the Governor of Virginia took the decision to dismantle the now graffiti covered monument to Confederate General Robert E Lee and place the statue in a museum. The work began in September 2021 and as demolition continued, the workers on the project searched for a time capsule that had been placed in the plinth during construction in 1890. In December they discovered a lead box, but were disappointed to find that it did not contain the items that they had been expecting. Instead it revealed a British silver coin, an 1875 almanac, three books, a letter and a photo of James Netherwood, the stone mason who had constructed the monument. This "time capsule" was described as his "vanity project" or a "bogus box". (The real official time capsule was found two weeks later). The discovery was reported by various press outlets in the UK, but none of them seemed to know that Mr Netherwood, the stone mason, was a Yorkshireman, who had spent all his formative years in Norland.
James Netherwood was born in Warley on 21st May 1834, but as an infant moved to Upper Sparkhouse in Norland. The family are recorded as living there in 1841, parents Joseph (41) and Judith (39) and children Mary (17), Sarah (13), Helen (11), John (7), James (6), Susan (4), Joseph (2) and baby Emmanuel. Ten years later, the three older girls have left home, Emmanuel has become Samuel (a case of inaccurate recording in 1841) and there are now two younger sisters, Mary Jane (8) and Judith Ann (3). Both James (16) and his brother John (17) are listed as stone masons. At this point, we have to jump ahead to the fairly long and detailed obituary that appeared in the Richmond (Virginia) Dispatch on 30th May 1899. Alongside a drawn portrait of James Netherwood (see photo), it records the death (on 28th May) of the "well-known stone contractor and popular citizen... a native of Sowerby Bridge (sic), Yorkshire, England...(who) in 1859, when just 25, came to this country and located in Richmond, securing contracts for the stonework in a number of culverts along the Virginia Central (now the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway)".
The first US census with information, shows that in 1860 James was living in Henrico County (the north-western part of the city of Richmond), with a wife called Ann, born in Virginia in 1830 (four years older than James). However, the census returns for 1870 and 1880 both show that James's wife was born in England, not VIrginia. She also goes by the name of Nancy, a familiar form of Ann. The obituary tells us that she was Miss Nancy Ramsley, but so far I have found no birth or marriage records that fit that name. However, while James was still in Norland, there was a certain Nancy Rawnsley living on Pickwood Scar. She could fit the bill - but she was six years older than James, not four, having been born in 1828.
Unexpectedly, the 1870 US census shows the couple ( James Netherwood (36, stone cutter, b England) and Nancy Netherwood (40, housekeeper, b England) living in Keokuk, Iowa some 900 miles from Richmond. This may have been a short term move for work purposes, but it gets no mention in the obituary. Another mystery is that the 1880 US census lists Alvin Netherwood (17) as the son of James and Nancy, who are now back in Richmond. The obituary, however, tells us that Alvin (or Albin, both spellings occur) is actually their nephew and that James and Nancy were childless. As far as I can ascertain, Alvin was the son of James's brother Samuel, the one who had been incorrectly listed as Emmanuel in 1841, but I have been unable to find out if he emigrated to the USA on his own or with his parents.
The obituary continues with the information that James was "a devoted Southerner" (ie he supported the Confederate side in the American Civil War), but as a British subject took no part in the war (1861-1865). After the war "...it was ere a short time before he took the first rank among the stone contractors of Richmond." He acquired large granite quarries in the city and was certainly kept very busy (and no doubt wealthy), judging by the list of civic building projects and railway tunnels that he worked on. He was also the contractor for several post civil war Confederate monuments in Richmond, including the Robert E Lee Monument, the Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument, the A P Hill Monument and the Howitzer Monument.
It was during the construction of the Robert E Lee Monument, that James Netherwood decided to recycle a faulty 13 feet high column of Maine granite that couldn't be used in the official monument. On a plot he had bought in the Oakwood Cemetery in Richmond, he constructed a plinth, added the column, and topped it with a statue of himself. The statue itself is 6 feet 4 inches tall (possibly life size, we don't know his height) and as a whole, his "gravestone" is more than 30 feet tall (9.25m). The imposing monument was built while James was still alive and was deserving of a lengthy article in the Richmond Dispatch of 24th May 1894: "...a monument to a living man. There is no shaft in the cemetery half so beautiful or imposing..... Mr Netherwood's eccentricity in errecting to himself such a shaft... is a matter of some public interest." Asked why, James Netherwood replied that it was frequently the custom in England (?) and that he wanted to encourage the same practice in the USA. The project had taken two and a half years and his statue had been carved by his workmen in down time, when they would have otherwise been idle. Anyway, he was confident: "I don't expect to go out there for thirty years."
Unfortunately, his confidence in his longevity was misplaced, for he was overtaken by ill health and died five years later in 1899. The obituary also records that he was an active freemason, a member of the Henrico Union Lodge, and that he "...was one of the most popular of men, and counted his friends by the thousand. He was always genial and warm-hearted and it may be said of him that he always had a kind word for everybody." In the few years before his death, his nephew, Mr Albin Netherwood, had conducted his affairs for him. We also learn from the obituary that he was survived not only by his wife, Nancy, and nephew, Albin, but also by "...four sisters, all of whom reside in England. He visited them about a year ago, and landed on his native heath on the anniversary of his birth. " The Netherwoods stayed in England for about six weeks, from 21st May 1898, until 2nd July, for there is a record of them setting sail on that date from Liverpool to New York on the "Campania". Despite James Netherwood's relative fame within his adopted city, as far as I can see his visit to England remained unnoticed by the press.
Nancy Netherwood survived her husband by 2 years and died on 30th January 1902 at her home at 2613 East Broad Street, with a brief obituary in the Richmond Daily Times the next day that confirmed her Yorkshire origins.
Albin (or Alvin) Netherwood, the nephew, was born in England in 1863, to Samuel and Emma Netherwood. He married Annie Abrams in 1889 and they had 5 children. In 1914 he visited Halifax as reported in The Times Dispatch, Richmond on 16th August: "Mr Alvin Netherwood and his daughter, Miss Mary Netherwood, have returned from England after a 2 months visit to his old home in Halifax."
