Mr. Melchoir concludes his study with some interesting observations on the legend as quoted below, pages 10-12.
Generally, the legend says that Willoughby Spit was formed in a severe hurricane overnight many years ago. Two relations of this legend merit further discussion here.
Several years ago, Louise Kyle (1954) wrote an article in a local newspaper on the effects of old hurricanes on Tidewater's shoreline. She credited the formations of Willoughby Spit to a severe hurricane in the Seventeenth Century. This was possibly the hurricane of 1667, which had been noted as severe. As Louisa Kyle related the story, Madam Willoughby, the wife of Thomas Willoughby, first noticed the spit. Supposedly, following a severe storm during the night, she looked from her window and saw a large sand spit where there was only water before. The Willoughby's then had to get a new royal land grant to cover this additional property.
Mrs. Kyle illustrated her article with an undated, unsigned sketch map. The author has since found that in reality, this was a road map of the area done, circa 1781, by British Army Engineers. Upon closer examination of this map, one will see that what is listed as Willoughby and considered by Louisa Kyle as Willoughby Spit is actually a crude drawing of Willoughby's Point and that no spit exists.
The legend that she presented cannot be totally discredited. The large sand spit reportedly observed by Madam Willoughby that morning could quite possibly have been what was later called Willoughby Point and not what is now called Willoughby Spit. Charts of the area during the 1600's are scarce. Tindall's chart of 1608 does not show Willoughby's Point. As earlier mentioned, the detail was not good, and he possibly neglected to include this sand point. This is not likely for a map maker, however. More likely, the point did not exist at that time. It could have formed possibly in the mid 1600's, according to Mrs. Kyle's legend. As observed from the chart by I. Senex of 1719 and from Tiddeman's chart of 1737, Willoughby's Point was well formed and named. This would indicate that the formation of Willoughby's Point occurred between 1608 and 1719. It is not inconceivable that this point formed in a violent storm just as Willoughby Spit did.
The second legend was related to the author by Mr. Herbert Lapetina, who is seventy-one years old. He has been a life long resident of Ocean View. His parents before him were also Ocean View residents. Mr. Lapetina remembered, as a very young boy, an old Negro man who used to sell herbs to the Ocean View women. At the time, this man was very old, his hair was white, and his body was bent with age. Mr. Lapetina said that his mother enjoyed talking with this old man and listening to his tales of the olden days. She, in turn, repeated them again and again to her children. It seems that this old man was a son of a slave and was himself a slave until the Civil War. He was born in the Ocean View area, but he did not know when. He did admit though that he was well over a hundred years old. While this is not usual, it certainly is possible.
According to the old man's story, as a young child he played with two Indian boys in the Willoughby Point area. He recalled two rocks along the water's edge to which the Indian boys could jump, but he could not as he was too small to reach them. The author has no way to tell what these rocks were or how large they were. They could have been anything from limonite concretions to large fluvial cobbles to dumped ship's ballast. to continue with the story, the old man recalled a violent storm. Upon returning to where he and the two Indians played, he found that the rocks had been completely covered with a large sand spit that extended way into the bay. If the old man was indeed over a hundred years old when Mr. Lapetina was a lad of three or four, then he would have been a young boy very close to the time that Willoughby Spit was formed. Perhaps the old man's story is considerably more accurate than at first it would appear.