Rockbridge Historical Society

Category: Events

  • RHS 2026 Black History Month Series: Black WW2 Soldiers and Workers from Rockbridge

    RHS 2026 Black History Month Series: Black WW2 Soldiers and Workers from Rockbridge

    A poster for the 2026 Black History month events

    The Rockbridge Historical Society’s annual Black History Month series turns to World War II this year: honoring a range of local African American servicemen and women; broader national and global war efforts to win the Double V campaign against fascism abroad, and Jim Crow at home; and the continued push to integrate American women into wider military roles. 

    Learn more about the month-long series in The News-Gazette article.

    Revolutionary Films Screening

    February 10, 2026, 6pm

    Lexington Library

    Local Black Histories from WWII

    February 15, 2026, 3pm

    Lylburn Downing Middle School

     Eric Wilson, RHS Director: Slideshow Presentation + Community Roundtable & Open Mic: Sharing Family Histories

    Revolutionary Books Discussion

    February 25, 2026, 6pm

    Lexington Library

  • Rockbridge & The Vietnam War

    Rockbridge & The Vietnam War

    Partnering with the Virginia Museum of History & Culture, the Rockbridge Regional Library System, and local veterans’ organizations: RHS is commemorating the 50th anniversary of the end of The Vietnam War with a statewide traveling exhibition, Virginia & The Vietnam War (through Dec. 14); a community roundtable and open microphone to share personal witness from the warfront and home front alike (Dec. 7); a film screening of the 1968 episode of Ken Burns’ documentary series, The Vietnam War (Dec. 17).

    In January, a meeting of RHS’ Revolutionary Books, 1776-2026, will counterpoint Vietnam infantryman Tim O’Brien’s prizewinning memoir, The Things They Carried, with Beyond Vietnam, the 1967 speech by peace activist Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (Jan. 13, 6 PM, Lexington Library).  

    The following night (Jan. 14, 6 PM, Lexington Library), RHS’ companion film series Revolutionary Films, 1776-2026 continues with selected scenes and directors’ interviews with Vietnam-themed featured films such as We Were Soldiers Once, Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July, and Heaven & Earth. For more about both the book and film series, click HERE.

    Click HERE for links to the online readings, and film trailers.  Click HERE to read the News-Gazette Feature describing our commemorative series about the Vietnam War, and associated local histories.

  • The Appalachian Trail at 100 and America’s “Revolutionary Lands”

    The Appalachian Trail at 100 and America’s “Revolutionary Lands”

    Click HERE to read more about the series of five events RHS and its regional partners in historic and environmental presentation have organized to celebrate the Appalachian Trail Centennial, in a variety of interactive ways: our “Revolutionary Reading Group” (Oct. 28, Nov. 17); an illustrated slideshow presentation at Natural Bridge State Park’s Visitor Center (Nov. 1); and a pair of guided, interpreted “History Hikes,” for curious hikers, each with different vistas, challenges, and interpretive content shared along the A.T. itself!

  • VA250: American Revolutions

    VA250: American Revolutions

    To read more about RHS’ leadership with local commemorations of VA250: American Revolutions — and related plans and programming ahead in the coming months – click HERE for the LIFESTYLE Feature in Lexington’s News-Gazette.

  • America 250: Recording “Our American Story”

    Wednesday, September 17
    10AM-2PM: Lexington Visitor’s Center
    3PM-5PM: Natural Bridge State Park

    On Constitution Day, the national America250 Commission will bring its “Story-Mobile” to Lexington and Natural Bridge (one of only four localities chosen in Virginia) as part of its 50-state tour to record “the largest oral and visual collection in our country’s history.”

    Inside the traveling studio, or more passingly at the self-recording kiosk outside, “everyday Americans” are invited to reflect and share distinctive stories about their own personal experiences, felt meanings of historic events, and visions of what our country has achieved, what it hasn’t yet, and what we might, ahead. Accessible via YouTube, the yearlong project will score these chords together into a diverse “American Symphony” that can lastingly speak to our current moment in time and place, just as the 1976 bicentennial did for earlier generations, 50 years ago.

    Click here to read more about the project, opportunities to engage, or to contact RHS to record future stories for its own commemorative oral history archive, as we approach the 250th Anniversary of the birth of Lexington and Rockbridge County in 2028.

  • The 1976 Bikecentennial in Rockbridge

    The 1976 Bikecentennial in Rockbridge

    500+ Years of History along 50 miles of Route 76

    The Bikecentennial of Rockbridge poster

    National Ride-a-Bike Day
    Sunday, May 4, 2PM
    Lylburn Downing Middle School
    302 Diamond St., Lexington

    Come learn about the bicentennial dream and community initiative that created a sustainable Bicycle trail that still runs across the nation, with 50 miles of US Bike Route 76 running right through Rockbridge.  Virginia Tech Professor Tom Ewing has created a website and 30-episode podcast that tracks the route across Virginia, spotlighting local histories and distinctive cultural themes, including episodes on Natural Bridge, Irish Creek, and the Blue Ridge Parkway.  After the program, enjoy the chance to talk with fellow cyclists, and get a free bike tune-up in the parking lot: thanks to the W&L Outing Club, and Andy Dunlap (Lexington Bike Repair LLC).

    Read the full News-Gazette Bikecentennial feature HERE.

    Click HERE to take a bike-and-road-themed ‘History Quiz.’  Email answers to Director@RockbridgeHistory.org by May 15.  The top 10 responses get a free Rockbridge History Book!

  • Free Public Program: The Kerrs Creek Raids: Life & Death on the Rockbridge Frontier

    Free Public Program: The Kerrs Creek Raids: Life & Death on the Rockbridge Frontier

    Kerrs Creek Raids event poster

    The Rockbridge Historical Society will host a free public program titled “The Kerrs Creek Raids: Life & Death on the Rockbridge Frontier,” on Sunday, March 30, 2:00 PM, at New Monmouth Presbyterian Church. 

    A slideshow presentation will re-visit the deadly attacks of 1759 and 1763 in western Rockbridge County.  It provides new contexts for their relationship to shifting patterns of local colonial settlement, and the accelerating conflicts between European and indigenous empires, a decade and a half before Rockbridge was founded during the Revolutionary War.  The program concludes with an overview and tour of a neighboring cemetery, where some of those involved and their descendants were buried, now the site of a growing restoration project.  

    The News-Gazette feature on the program and histories is available online.

  • 250th Anniversary: Jefferson Buys the Natural Bridge

    250th Anniversary: Jefferson Buys the Natural Bridge

    Friday, July 5, 11 AM – 4 PM
    Natural Bridge State Park


    On Friday, July 5, join RHS at Natural Bridge State Park to celebrate a very special 250th Anniversary: commemorating Thomas Jefferson’s purchase of The Natural Bridge from King George III, that same day in 1774. 


    11:00 AM ceremonies under the Bridge spotlight local history, and the perspectives of leading state officials.  After a 4th-of-July-style cookout lunch by Cedar Creek, you can choose from an afternoon menu of related presentations on histories of Jefferson and Conservation; Artistic Depictions, and Tourism at the Bridge.

    For the day’s full program, click HERE. For the News-Gazette feature and related backstories, click HERE.

  • Rockbridge Women’s History Walk

    Rockbridge Women’s History Walk

    Saturday, March 23, 2-3:30 PM
    Begins: Lexington Library
    Ends: RHS Museum, with Closing Reception & Exhibits

    Celebrate Women’s History Month with leaders from the Rockbridge Historical Society, as they guide an illustrated and interactive community ‘Walk-and-Talk,’ spotlighting a wide sweep of distinctive if often little-known local histories.  Begins with a slideshow at the Lexington public library; continues with a history stroll down Main Street; wraps with a reception at the RHS Museum, and a final chance to see its exhibits on “Rockbridge Women’s Histories.”  Click HERE for more illustrations, profiles, and contexts.

    • Kasey Meredith ’22 – VMI Cadet First Captain and Regimental Commander
    • Jessie Benton Fremont
    • Lucy Diggs Slowe – To Live More Abundantly Cover
    • Red House and the McDowell Family
    • Sorghum Making – Margaret Hoyt – 1937 – RHS Collections
  • Miss Jane’s Journey: New DNA Discoveries

    Miss Jane’s Journey: New DNA Discoveries

    Sunday, March 10, 3-5 PM
    Lexington Community Center
    300 Diamond Street

    In 2008, a set of skeletal remains was found in downtown Lexington, determined to be those of a woman of African descent, who died young, sometime in the 19th-century.  In a civic ceremony in 2019, the bones of “Miss Jane,” were re-interred in Evergreen Cemetery.  In late 2023, new DNA analysis revealed some surprising genetic findings.  This data now spurs new questions about her heredity, the migration patterns and timetables that may have brought her to this area, and the broader ‘journeys’ of any descendant lines who may have remained here, or moved on.

           During Women’s History Month, join the City of Lexington, the Rockbridge Historical Society, Washington & Lee University Dept. of Anthropology, and the Paleogenomics Lab at the University of California, Santa Cruz to hear more about these findings, pose questions to both scientists and historians, and to seed community conversation, ahead.  Sunday, March 10, 3 PM; Lexington Community Center, 300 Diamond Street.  For more, see RHS Facebook @rockbridgehistory.  

    For the full news feature, click HERE.

    • Miss Jane Gravestone. Re-interred at Evergreen Cemetery May 19 2019.
    • Miss Jane laying out. (L-R) Ted DeLaney, Erin Schwartz, Maria Quillin.
    • Pallbearers carry Miss Jane’s coffin from the carriage to her Evergreen Cemetery gravesite May 19, 2019.
    • Flowers on Miss Jane’s coffin at her re-interment at Evergreen Cemetery May 19, 2019.