Sunray Agricultural Historic District is a national historic district located at Chesapeake, Virginia. The district encompasses 188 contributing buildings, 90 contributing sites, 2 contributing structures, and 1 contributing object in the early 20th-century immigrant farming community of Sunray. It includes early 20th century vernacularfarmhouses, agricultural buildings, Sunray School (1922), and St. Mary'sCatholic Church (1915-1916). The district also includes a tidalditch system, the abandoned Virginian Railway Tracks (1909), and agricultural fields laid out with the platting of 1908.[3]
The Southern Homestead Corporation, incorporated in Norfolk in 1907,[4] encouraged the immigrants to move to this farming community by platting the land to individual farm and house plots. The land was a swamp and the farmers purchasing the land had to clear trees and dig stumps out of the wetlands. They had to set up tidal drainage ditches to drain the wetland. The ditches would always have to be maintained for continued farming. The farms let them invest and grow their money from the factories into productive farms. Sophia Barnack's store was a place where community members could gather, it had beer and sodas at a table and Polish American Polka music along with Country music.[5] They continued to welcome Polish Americans through the 1950s.[6]