My grandfather, William Edward Norton, Sr., “Ed”, who grew up on the water in Deltaville, VA, attended the University of Virginia on a baseball scholarship and played on a farm team for the New York Yankees. When he returned to Deltaville, he met my grandmother, Cathleen, the daughter of a Lighthouse tender at Fort Mifflin on the Delaware River. During the summers, Cathleen came by steamboat to Jackson Creek in Deltaville to stay with her grandparents.
After they married, Ed’s artistic nature and steady eye gained him a position on the assembly line painting a stripe along the body of Model A Fords in Chester, PA. The brushes were very expensive and the striping had to be exact. However, the paint fumes were very hard on Ed’s lungs and he developed breathing problems. The doctors said he wasn’t going to survive if he continued painting at Ford, so the family moved back to Deltaville, where Ed rented a store with a small apartment above and opened the first gas station in Deltaville.
During this time Stove Point, on Fishing Bay in Deltaville, was being developed with second homes built by people out of Richmond who came for recreational boating. Some owned larger wooden power boats. Word had gotten around that Ed was a pretty darned good painter, and he was approached for some paint and varnish refinishing jobs. The boats were loaded onto trailers and hauled to Ed’s store where he would work on them in the evenings. He developed quite a following, and the seed for his marine business was planted.
Oysters were enjoying their “glory days,” and Ed’s entrepreneurial spirit went into overdrive. He took his Model A Ford and converted it into a pickup truck, minus the rumble seat. This extra space gave him room to transport gasoline to watermen on the river shore. Between the store, the gas exchange business, and painting boats, Ed and Cathleen were making a decent living. They purchased property on Broad Creek, and in 1948 Ed built a railway to haul boats out of the water to work on them. Ed built his marine business doing service work, custom paint boat refinishing, custom marine carpentry, and boat building, including skipjacks. Some of his boats are still in service today.
My father, Billy Norton, worked alongside his father, and in 1968 he purchased the business. After the sale, the pair continued to work together, with my grandfather focusing on building custom order sport fish hulls. My dad continued to use the railway, but recognized greater potential for more service work and bought a Travel Lift in 1969. Eventually my grandfather retired from the marine business and passed away at age 80 in 1985 from lung cancer, although he was not a smoker.
While my grandfather was quite a sailor and encouraged his grandchildren to learn to sail, my father was a “motor head.” Billy was an exceptional mechanic and skilled in all areas of boat repair from wood to fiberglass. Business was strong, and my dad wanted to get into the sailboat market. He was impressed by the new Hunters and the assembly process similar to what Ford had done in the automotive industry. In 1975 new Hunter sailboats began arriving for sale at Norton’s boatyard.
During the next 20 years, Billy modernized the marina, purchased more property, expanded the boatyard service capabilities, and grew the Hunter line on the Chesapeake Bay. He purchased a large tract of waterfront property on Stingray Point in Deltaville and built a 220-slip sailboat marina called Stingray Harbour Marina. My husband Ken and I joined my dad’s business in 1983 and worked for him in sales. Stingray Point Marina filled up in a short period of time, as we rented slips for all the new Hunters we were selling. Under my dad’s leadership, in addition to selling new Hunter sailboats and brokerage sail and powerboats, Norton Yachts expanded into the new powerboat territory, too.
Comfortable with Ken and me holding down the fort at Norton’s, my dad rekindled his passion for fast cars and joined a Nascar racing team out of Richmond, VA. For 35 weekends of the year he worked with Car #90, mostly as a spotter. In 1995 we purchased Norton’s from my dad and mother. This year, Ken and I celebrate our 20th year working as a team selling new and brokerage power and sailboats, running a full service boatyard, ASA sailing school, sailboat charter business, and marina. nortonyachts.com
