A croaker is a fish also known as a hardhead and sometimes referred to as a king belly. The fish are caught locally on hook-and-line and when caught and out of the water make a croaking sound — over and over again.
A little known meaning of “Croaker” was used during Civil War days to denote Union sympathizers who would come into communities encouraging enslaved people to run away to freedom and fight on the Union side.
Throughout the Civil War, Union sympathizers went from plantation to plantation encouraging the enslaved to leave the farms. This unnerved many who feared the consequences of Black soldiers fighting on the Union side.
During that time the croaker fish was personified by locals who began to refer to those Union sympathizers as “Croakers” — constantly sounding the same voice of freedom over and over again.
The discovery of this word use was found in letters from Southern troops written to their relatives back home. One such letter was from Confederate quartermaster William X. Smith to his father George Smith, who lived near Saluda in Middlesex County.
In William’s letter, dated May 8, 1862 from Ashland, he wrote “I am at Ashland yet with some quartermaster stores belonging to the regiment (55th Virginia Regiment)… I was in Richmond about a week ago with some clothes to make uniforms for our regiment.”
“I was introduced to the officers who went to Middlesex to arrest those Union Croakers (union sympathizers),” wrote Smith. “They wanted me to accompany them down but I had so much to attend to there, I could not leave.”
A primitive portrait of William X. Smith in his Confederate uniform hangs on the wall in the upstairs of the Middlesex County Historic Courthouse building. Smith was shot in the throat during the Battle of Chancellorsville on May 2, 1863 and died three days later on May 5, 1863. His father George Smith sent three of his trusted enslaved people to locate and bring home his body to the ancestral homeplace in King William County for burial.
It Happened Here in Rivah Country!
