If you have driven down Witchduck Road in Virginia Beach, you have driven past the memory of a real woman whose story shaped a corner of Coastal Virginia in ways that still echo three hundred years later. Grace Sherwood, better known as the Witch of Pungo, is not folklore. She was a real farmer, midwife, and mother who lived in what was then Princess Anne County in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Her trial by water in 1706 is one of the most compelling stories in the history of Coastal Virginia, and the road that carries her name today runs right through the heart of the land where it all happened. This is her story.
Grace White was born around 1660 in the area we now call Pungo, a rural stretch of southern Virginia Beach. She married James Sherwood, and together they lived on a modest farm where Grace worked as a farmer, healer, and midwife. By the standards of her time, she was unusual. She was tall for a woman, physically strong, independent, and not particularly interested in conforming to the expectations placed on women in colonial Virginia. She dressed practically, sometimes in men's clothing when working in the fields. She was direct in her speech and confident in her healing skills. And in a small, tightly connected colonial community, being unusual was often dangerous.
Accusations of witchcraft began following Grace in the 1690s. Neighbors accused her of causing crop failures, killing livestock, blighting cotton, and shapeshifting into animals to move about at night. Some accusations came after ordinary disputes. Others seem to have come from women who resented her independence, or from families who blamed her for illnesses no one at the time could explain. Grace fought back. She sued her accusers for slander, an act of remarkable defiance for a woman of her era, though she rarely won. The accusations kept coming, and eventually the matter reached the highest court in the colony.
In July 1706, the Princess Anne County court ordered Grace Sherwood to undergo a trial by water. Her hands were tied to her feet, and she was thrown into the Lynnhaven River at a spot near what is now known as Witch Duck Point. The belief at the time was that a witch would float, having rejected the waters of baptism, while an innocent woman would sink. Grace floated. She was pulled from the water, examined for marks that supposedly indicated witchcraft, and sentenced to imprisonment. She spent close to eight years in jail before being released. She returned to her farm, lived out the rest of her life quietly, and died in 1740.
Her story could have ended there, but Coastal Virginia has never quite let it go. The road that leads to the site of her trial is still called Witchduck Road today. The area where the trial happened is Witch Duck Point. Ferry Plantation House, which now serves as a historic site, sits near the location of the courthouse where Grace was tried. A statue of Grace Sherwood stands near Sentara Bayside Hospital, showing her with a raccoon at her feet and holding herbs, honoring both her healing work and the accusations that followed her. In 2006, on the three hundredth anniversary of her conviction, Governor Tim Kaine issued an informal pardon on behalf of the Commonwealth of Virginia, formally recognizing that Grace Sherwood was wronged.
For anyone who lives in Coastal Virginia, especially in Virginia Beach, this story is worth knowing because it is genuinely ours. Grace Sherwood was not a myth or a legend. She was a real woman who lived on real land, whose life was shaped by a community that ultimately failed her, and whose memory is now literally paved into the streets we drive every day. Visiting Ferry Plantation House, walking the shoreline near Witch Duck Point, or driving Witchduck Road with fresh eyes gives you a different sense of the place we all call home. Coastal Virginia is layered with these stories, and the more we know them, the richer this place becomes.
Our Thrive Realty team lives and works in these neighborhoods every day, and we love being part of a community with this much history running through it. If you are new to Coastal Virginia and want to know more about the places you are exploring, or if you have lived here for years and want to see it with fresh eyes, we would love to be part of that journey. And keep an eye out for more local history spotlights coming, including the fascinating story of Ferry Plantation House itself.
