Samuel Proctor Oral History Program College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Program Director: Dr. Paul Ortiz Office Manager: Tamarra Jenkins 241 Pugh Hall Digital Humanities Coordinator: Deborah Hendrix PO Box 115215 Gainesville, FL 32611 352-392-7168 352-846-1983 Fax The Samuel Proctor Oral History Program (SPOHP) was founded by Dr. Samuel Proctor at the University of Florida in 1967. Its original projects were collections centered around Florida history with the purpose of preserving eyewitness accounts of economic, social, political, religious and intellectual life in Florida and the South. In the 45 years since its inception, SPOHP has collected over 5,000 interviews in its archives. Transcribed interviews are available through SPOHP for use by research scholars, students, journalists, and other interested groups. Material is frequently used for theses, dissertations, articles, books, documentaries, museum displays, and a variety of other public uses. As standard oral history practice dictates, SPOHP recommends that researchers refer to both the transcript and audio of an interview when conducting their work. A selection of interviews are available online here through the UF Digital Collections and the UF Smathers Library system. Suggested corrections to transcripts will be reviewed and processed on a case- by-case basis. Oral history interview transcripts available on the UF Digital Collections may be in draft or final format. SPOHP transcribers create interview transcripts by listening to the original oral history interview recording and typing a verbatim document of it. The transcript is written with careful attention to reflect original grammar and word choice of each interviewee; subjective or editorial changes are not made to their speech. The draft transcript can also later undergo a final edit to ensure accuracy in spelling and format. Interviewees can also provide their own spelling corrections. SPOHP transcribers refer to the Merriam- Webster’s dictionary, Chicago Manual of Style, and program-specific transcribing style guide, accessible at SPOHP’s website. For more information about SPOHP, visit http://oral.history.ufl.edu or call the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program office at 352-392-7168. -May 2015 The Foundation for The Gator Nation An Equal Opportunity Institution TMP-051 Interviewee: Robert Montague Interviewer: Mariah Justice and Austyn Szempruch Date: October 23, 2014 J: I’m Mariah Justice. I’m here with Austyn Szempruch interviewing— M: Robert Montague. J: At Christ Church. It’s October 23, 2014 and if you could just state your name and when you were born? M: I’m Robert L. Montague III. I was born in Washington D.C. on September 18, 1935. J: Could you spell your last name for me, please? M: M-o-n-t-a-g-u-e. J: Okay, thank you. Is there anything you remember particular about your childhood, maybe when you moved to this area? Or how was growing up in D.C.? M: Well, my grandparents bought the home I live in in Urbanna the year before I was born, and I’ve been coming to Urbanna as a result of that fact ever since. But I’ve only lived there fulltime one year of my life, and that was in the seventh grade when I attended Christ Church School. But I’ve owned the home that I live in in Urbanna since 1978. And I have another home in Alexandria, so that’s why I don’t live here all the time. J: Okay. Can you tell me a little bit about your parents, maybe? What did they do? M: Yeah, certainly. My father, who I was named for, Robert Latney Montague, was born in 1897 and was the son of Andrew Jackson Montague and Elizabeth TMP-051; Montague; Page 2 Hoskins Montague. And he grew up during the time of the First World War, enlisted in Marine Corps during that war as a private, and was fighting in France in the Meuse-Argonne region and in the Battle of Landerville, a very small village in eastern France, where he won the Navy Cross and a battlefield commission for knocking out a German machine gun nest. And after the war was over, he returned to Virginia and finished his degree at the University of Virginia. And then, was offered a regular commission and decided to go back into the Marine Corps for a career and served through World War II, and rose to the rank of brigadier general, and was retired after the war because he was deafened in the Okinawa Campaign during the Pacific part of World War II. And he, subsequently, had two jobs. One, he went into business with his brother-in-law in Texarkana, Texas for two years, after the year I was here in the seventh grade. And then, he got an opportunity to become the first Resident Director of Gunston Hall, George Mason’s home, in Fairfax County. And we lived there for five years from [19]49 to [19]54 before he finally retired to Urbanna for good, and lived there for eighteen years, until he died in 1972. And my mother stayed on there until 1978. J: Did your mother ever have a job, or was she a homemaker? M: She was primarily a homemaker. She raised me and my younger brother, and she was a Gray Lady in the Red Cross. And she actually taught French for one year here at Christ Church School. But she did not work outside the home, except doing volunteer work of various kinds. TMP-051; Montague; Page 3 J: Awesome. You mentioned you had a brother. Are there any more siblings that you have? M: There were just me and my brother, and we’re thirteen years different in age. He was born in 1948. J: And what’s his name? M: Francis Breckenridge Montague. J: Awesome. How about your schooling as a kid, or growing up? M: Well, I grew up the son of a Marine officer. And so, first, we’re stationed at Quantico when I was born. Then we moved to Pensacola, Florida, where my father commanded the Marine detachment at the Pensacola Naval Air Station. And then he was assigned to the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island and we were there when the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941. And from there, he was on the faculty of the Naval War College. And from there, he was ordered overseas to the Pacific Theater and fought in the Marianas and Okinawa Campaigns during World War II. He fought on Saipan and Tinian. Tinian was the island on which we established the first land airfield close enough to bomb the Japanese home islands without having to use an aircraft carrier. So it was a turning point of the war in that sense. And Okinawa was the last major battle of World War II in the Pacific. He participated in all of that, and came home to retire as a brigadier general after the war was over. J: Awesome. TMP-051; Montague; Page 4 S: This is something I was actually excited to ask about, but did you have any special family sayings that your parents, maybe, often used or that maybe you yourself use? M: I’m not sure that I can remember anything of that nature. What I wanted to tell you about in particular was the origin of my family in this county. Are you ready for that? J: Oh, please. S: Oh, yes. Of course. M: Peter Montague was the immigrant Montague who came to Jamestown in 1621 at the age of eighteen, probably about close to your ages. He was born in a place called Boveney Lock on the Thames River in England, within sight of Windsor Castle. And he was from a family that had been relatively prosperous and had given land on which a church was built in that town. But, I think hard times may have come to the family, leading him to decide to immigrate to Virginia at a fairly young age. And he came over to Jamestown on the ship Charles, commanded by Sir Francis Wyatt, who was later to become one of the colonial governors of Virginia. And then after some time in Jamestown, he settled in Nansemond County, was elected to the Virginia House of Burgesses from that county, and then moved to what is today Middlesex and Lancaster Counties. In 1651, Lancaster County was formed, and at that time, it included all of the land that is present-day Middlesex County. And he was elected to the Virginia House of Burgesses as the first burgess to represent this county in 1651 or [165]2. And he TMP-051; Montague; Page 5 died in 1659. He is buried across the river in today’s Lancaster County near Lancaster Courthouse, and has a tombstone given to him as a three hundredth birthday present by his descendants that is still marking his grave. He also had a house near this gravesite, and the foundation ruin of that house is still visible. The upper structure is gone, but it’s a brick foundation and it still can be seen. And from it, you can tell the size of the house that he lived in. He owned land on both sides of the river, and Middlesex County was split off of Lancaster County in 1673. It became a separate county. But, for those twenty-one, twenty-two years, Middlesex was part of Lancaster, and he was the first elected legislative representative from what is today Middlesex County. And the reason I wanted to bring this up is because this set of facts was omitted from the recent history book that Larry Chowning about Middlesex County, which upset me a bit because I thought it was a pretty foundational set of circumstances that should have been included in any book of that nature that was attempting to do what he did do very well, in most respects.