Sunday, October 21, 2:30 PM
FREE RHS Program
Vesuvius Baptist Church (Rte 56)
Austin Store and N&W Locomotive, Vesuvius; late 1950s Photo by O. Winston Link; Credit: O.Winston Link Museum
Local Historian and former RHS Officer Dick Halseth will steam us ‘down the track’ through the historic developments of Vesuvius, on the northern edge of Rockbridge County. His illustrated slideshow will explore the area’s early industrial growth in the early 1800s, the impact of the vital rail line that ran through the town and County by the end of the century, and some of the community rhythms, and local curiosities, that have made this village a distinctive center for two centuries and counting.
A portion of the new “Healing Garden,” with captioned markers, developed by RAMGA for RHS’ Historic Gardens. Gardens and picnic tables are open to the public; interpretive brochure available online.
July 20, 2018
6:00 PM
RHS Garden
On Friday, July 20, 6:00 PM, the Rockbridge Area Master Gardeners Association and the Rockbridge Historical Society will partner for an educational, interactive demonstration of the new “Healing Garden,” behind RHS headquarters at 101 E. Washington Street. Along with its unique historical and horticultural content, this program on “Healing, Herbs, and History” also offers information for people interest in learning more about volunteer opportunities with RAMGA, or with RHS’ own Gardens Team.
Though some of these herbs go by different names today (not to mention their pharmaceutical adaptations), the domestic plot offers a few lively offerings:
Snakeroot, used for “hot flashes, tremors, inducing labor.” Common Foxglove: “regulates heart rhythm.” Bitter Buttons/ Tansy, for “migraines, rheumatism, parasites, gout.” Bedstraw, for “menopause, and kidney & liver disorders.” Beyond its aromatic and culinary benefits, Sage was also used to address “depression, memory loss, digestive disorders.”
Gardens and Greenhouse behind Campbell House and The Castle (early 20th cen). The large barn to the Left/South is where the current Rockbridge Courthouse stands. Stone terracing has been preserved, with the Healing Garden now replacing Hale Houston’s bygone Greenhouse.
Four years ago, the RAMGA team extended its educational mission beyond the rich, floral plots themselves, preparing a 4-page, full color interpretive brochure marking different types of flowers, as well as the 100+ history of the gardens themselves. That more comprehensive guide has now been complemented by an overview of the gardens’ newly cultivated “Healing Garden” (both brochures are available on the RHS website at RockbridgeHistory.org/Campbell-house-gardens for viewing at home, or on smartphone while visiting onsite).
[the following text is is re-printed from the July 13, 2018 issue of The News-Gazette].
As its brochure notes, the Healing Garden is designed to jointly identify the range of different medicinal and therapeutic uses of different herbs and plants, while also noting some of the ways in which these botanical resources have been used over time – some stretching back centuries, some still today. On the evening of July 20, RAMGA volunteer Linda Bytnar will discuss a number of these common herbs, including those noted above, each of which include their own signs noting common names, scientific species, and their variety of uses.
RHS Executive Director Eric Wilson adds that “the range of uses here demonstrates the ingenuity (as well as risk) that people showed in centuries in addressing their illnesses and maintaining health, at home here in Rockbridge and well beyond. There’s a mix of strangeness in seeing some of these applications, as well as marvel in how they ‘got it right,’ as we continue many of their uses today.”
He also notes a new application of this resource to one of RHS’ most successful classroom-based programs focused on Lewis and Clark, and their journeys from Virginia, through the Valley, and across the continent. “With only one death across the entire expedition, the success of the Corps of Discovery depended not just on Lewis’ crash course in medicine with Philadelphia’s eminent Dr. Benjamin Rush. In both general health and emergencies, they depended on their familiarity with many of these ‘homegrown remedies,’ as well as their willingness to experiment with native healing traditions, and the properties observed in new botanical specimens. We didn’t plan it this way, but among the dozen or so herbs and plants featured in this demonstration garden, no less than eight were either carried and used by the Corps, or brought back to Jefferson for scientific examination, agricultural cultivation, or everyday use.”
For many years now, teams of Master Gardeners from RAMGA have volunteered to re-design, maintain, and interpret the gardens that jointly lie behind RHS’ three historic properties: Campbell and Sloan Houses on E. Washington St. and The Castle, on S. Randolph St., the stone building that may be the oldest standing building in Lexington, after surviving the city’s catastrophic 1796 Fire. “Originally developed by RHS benefactor Hale Houston in the 1920s,” RAMGA’s new healing garden brochure notes, “the garden area arose from a dusty city lot described as ‘rough and unsightly’.” Today, RAMGA volunteers have crafted a coherent, well-cultivated space building around the variety of mature trees, and three distinct terraces marked by fieldstone walls (themselves revealing the historic crafts of Rockbridge stonemasonry techniques). The Healing Garden now sits where the greenhouse once stood, and
Both RAMGA and RHS plan to use this distinctive resource in their various educational outreach programs, for both schools and adult audiences. Wilson stresses that these gardens are not only fully and always open to the public, but are a unique and often overlooked asset contributing to Lexington’s historic charm. He says, “Thanks to the care and cultivation of RAMGA and RHS volunteers, this quiet, secluded haven offers one of the few publicly accessible greenspaces in downtown Lexington, right across from the Visitor’s Center, and one block from Main Street and the Courthouse. Our picnic tables have offered students a quiet place for university students to study, a welcoming pit-stop for families and tourists to eat, and a quiet getaway folks to take a break during the downtown workday. A donor recently allowed us to install a nicely backed bench honoring preservationist, educator, and former RHS President Pamela Hemenway Simpson. The historic character of our buildings, and RAMGA’s instructive signage add a fresh touch too.”
This coupling of historic and environmental perspectives extends RHS’ recent initiatives (responding to the interests of many Rockbridge residents and visitors) in coupling historic and environmental perspectives. Presentations and programs have recently pursued these connections through collaborations with the Blue Ridge Garden Club, Natural Bridge State Park, and the Rockbridge Area Conservation Council. A 100-side presentation on “Bridging History and Nature” has also been archived on the Events page of the RHS website.
Wilson and RHS Gardens Team Coordinator, Karla Wachenheim both note the need for a steady volunteer team. While formal RAMGA projects require a certain expertise in training and technique, Wachenheim notes that what’s chiefly needed at Campbell House are people willing to share “ ‘dirty knees’: one morning a month goes a long way in maintaining and freshening this special space.” Wilson echoes that “as with our volunteer corps in the Campbell House museum, enthusiasm for Rockbridge is well more important than prior experience.”
South River Lumber Company, Cornwall, operated 1916-1938.
June 17, 2:30 PM, Mt. View Elementary School FREE Rockbridge Historical Society Program
Join RHS on Father’s Day to explore some of Rockbridge’s “Lost Histories: South River from Marlbrook to Old Buena Vista.” RHS Programs Chair Reed Belden will share a slideshow presentation tracking four centuries of settlement, economic development, and social evolution in this often-overlooked area of our County.
For a fitting opening and overview, Belden will survey the 14 small schoolhouses that were eventually consolidated into Mt. View School itself. He’ll then turn back to the ‘first families’ of the mid-18th century who would settle the waterways, forests, and fields near the South River, the Maury, and Irish Creek: immigrating down the Great Wagon Road from Pennsylvania, as well as over the Blue Ridge from Amherst County.
Early agricultural foundations in this easterly sector of Rockbridge, would soon be complemented by investments in small scale grist and timber mills, iron extraction and furnaces. By the mid-19th century, the district boasted an evolving industrial corridor, with enterprises in lumber, mineral mining, iron production, and associated skilled crafts. These operational networks variously grew and declined, before and after the Civil War, some into the early 20th century, with a diverse labor force that depended on both entrepreneurial settlers and slavery, and evolved with the coming of emancipation, railroad networks, and large-scale mechanization.
“Iron Hand,” ca. 1860. RHS Collections. Found near old Buena Vista Furnace works (destroyed in 1864), thought to be cast from the hand of an enslaved or free black worker, based on labor patterns of the time. In 2019, RHS will loan the artifact to the American Civil War Museum in Richmond for its Grand Re-Opening exhibits: requested by their curatorial staff for its arresting visual form, and capacity to interpret industrial slavery.
More intimate faces from the area include the multiracial family in Irish Creek whose 1925 marriage petition successfully prevailed in the Rockbridge Circuit Court, to challenge Virginia’s new hard-line Racial Integrity Act. Challenging the 1924 law that had expanded the state’s restrictive category of “colored,” Atha Sorrells’ suit held important implications for a number of the ethnically mixed families of Native, European, and African descent who lived in the area.
Fifty years on, the impact of Hurricane Camille in 1969 is still poignantly and broadly felt here. Its floodwaters not only swept away the family of Silas and Francis Clark and their 6 children. The devastation also destroyed many of the family records, artifacts, business ledgers, and material foundations of home and industry that could have spoken to many more “Lost Histories,” of South River.
As always, families with local histories, artifacts, photographs and oral histories are especially welcome, and encouraged to contribute to the Q&A. Refreshments will follow, along with a chance to browse displays, and to purchase historic maps and RHS publications.
The first RHS Quarterly Program of 2018 will continue highlighting the small towns and villages that were so integral to Rockbridge County’s history. Presenter Gene Sullivan will direct attentions to Rapp’s Mill, a small village in southern Rockbridge that saw tremendous growth and became one of the focal points for community life during the mid-1800s.
The first colonial settlers in what would become southern Rockbridge County began purchasing plots of land to farm in the mid-18th century. By 1768, a church had already been established that would help anchor this growing neighborhood. After Mathias Rapp and his wife, Mary Saville, settled in the area, he established a mill in 1836 that proved to be the economic engine that both drove and diversified commercial and cultural life across the South Buffalo area. Business took off in the mid-1800’s when new mills, tanneries, blacksmiths and distilleries were established nearby.
Documents and historic photographs will more personally illuminate the Rapp’s Mill community’s role in the Civil War and World War I. Two case studies track the service of John Bowyer from Manassas to his wounding at Pickett’s Charge, his return, and capture into a POW camp just before Appomattox. 50 years later, the story of young Rapp’s Mill farmer Leo Manspile extends RHS’ joint efforts through programs and upcoming exhibits to interpret the complexities of the Civil War, with the lesser-known demands and aftermath of World War I (when nearly 4,000 Rockbridge men, both black and white, registered in the two summer draft drives in 1917 and 1918).
Most broadly, a number of charts and census figures will help the audience readily track changes in population, business, schools, post offices, even voting patterns across the arc of 150 years. Comparison of those rich statistics among the seven Districts in the County will allow audience members to integrate these most local and regional connections – and distinctions – reflecting on the habits and heritage of their own stretches of Rockbridge.
From the days of the neighborhood’s earliest growth, the Rapp family was both industrious and generous. Mathias, and his wife Mary, deeded land on which a church existed for “any Christian preacher to preach in.” Rapp also received a patent for his invention of a new turbine water wheel. In 1855, he founded a general store/post office and served as Rapp’s Mill’s first postmaster: quite an important position in those days, with a range of social functions. Finally, anecdotes from the recently deceased Dr. James Parsons (Rapp’s great grandson) will chronicle the 1932 fire that destroyed the old wooden mill and hastened the community’s slow decline. Although many of the businesses are gone, many descendants of the original settlers remain and thrive on farming and harvesting timber.
You can still drive to this hamlet, winding through the South Buffalo region, west of Natural Bridge. Near the crossroads of Routes 611/738, the Rapp’s Mill church is still open. According to Parsons, many of the tombstones in the adjoining cemetery (where Mathias was buried in 1880, on the land that he donated) are cut from stalactites formed at the mill.
Color photos newly taken by Sullivan provide comparative glimpses of how some of these historic structures look today. Their fading timbers and veils of overgrowth still invite curiosity into the habits of the past and – as always in these programs – a balance of new stories and nostalgia for neighbors and families who’ve lived there over the arc of time.
Gene Sullivan has lived in the Lexington area for the past 3½ years. During that time, he has developed a strong interest in the South Buffalo area and the people who live there. He is a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point and received a MBA from George Washington University. After service in the Army, Sullivan held executive positions with several Fortune 500 companies and completed his career as a member of the Federal Government’s Senior Executive Service. Since moving to Rockbridge, he has served in leadership roles in a number of our area’s historic organizations.
Click HERE to view the 100 presentation slides, or related documentary VIDEO
on Rockbridge Flags.
Flanked by the Blue Ridge and Alleghenies, and long traversed by the Great Valley Road, the natural and social histories of Rockbridge have evolved with its agricultural and cultural growth, and through its conflicts.An illustrated slideshow will survey the natural resources and social patterns that have shaped and signaled Rockbridge identities since the first immigrant farms and families established new roots here nearly 300 years ago. In final, timely reflection, a turn to the flags that have variously represented Rockbridge since 1739 will frame local residents’ self-representations over time, within a distinct “sense of place.”
Enjoy Free Admission to the Park after the Talk. The rest of the afternoon gives you a chance to explore the Monacan Indian Living History exhibit, along with the springtime growth, and geological marvels, of the Natural Bridge, itself.
The Rockbridge History Bee buzzes back into action, Saturday, February 10, 2018
The Rockbridge Historical Society welcomes our whole community to Buena Vista to follow along with the questions on local history, as area high school students compete to demonstrate their year’s study of Remarkable Rockbridge. The book is available in school and public libraries or for purchase HERE.
Saturday, February 10, 2018
Ramsey Center: Buena Vista, VA
With apologies to Jeff Foxworthy’s TV show pitting 5th graders against adults:
“Are You Smarter than a High Schooler??”
Join us at this busy “Hive of History” in Buena Vista, as students from Parry McCluer High School and Rockbridge County High School show what they’ve learned in their studies of Rockbridge History, competing for honors as the next generation of Rockbridge historians.
Although students take the prizes, this is a great opportunity for all community members to join the fun, and learn more about our County in the process. Announced rounds of multiple choice questions — all drawn from RHS’ Remarkable Rockbridge — allow audience members to follow along with progressively more difficult questions. Enjoy the chance to be jointly proud in your own knowledge, and in our students’ accomplishments (if silently so … the stakes are high, so no muttering the answers aloud!)
Sunday, November 5, 2017
2:00 Slideshow Lecture, Lee Chapel
3:30 Exhibit, Curators’ Talk, Reception, Leyburn Library
During the 100th anniversary of the United States’ entry into WW1, and week before Veterans’ Day/ Remembrance Day, the Rockbridge Historical Society and Washington and Lee’s Special Collections Library will turn attentions to the local and statewide impact of the Great War, and the range of memorial legacies it brought.
Dr. Lynn Rainville’s slideshow presentation draws on her research as one of the leading experts in this field. She will also be showing images from the groundbreaking website she’s developed: assembling maps of related WW1 memorials, statues and exhibits; correspondence to and from the Front; as well as histories of notable Virginia regiments and soldiers’ biographies.
http://www.lynnrainville.org/ww1-memorials
93,000 soldiers from the Commonwealth served overseas, with 3,700 men and women dying in the cause. But Virginia’s war efforts also included women stenographers, African American doctors, domestic gardeners, National Guard troops, Army chaplains and cooks, horse trainers and farriers. From Rockbridge, area residents were joined by students, faculty and alumni from both VMI, and W&L who variously served and led in the United States’ first full-scale military campaign since the Civil War.
The afternoon’s events are co-sponsored by W&L’s Special Collections Library, and the Lee Chapel talk will be immediately followed by a 3:30 PM reception in Leyburn Library, with curators’ guided remarks about its current exhibit on the “W&L Ambulance Corps.” This volunteer unit of 36 student, alumni, and faculty served with distinction while supporting the French Army on the Western Front of World War I (with several servicemen earning the elite French military honor, the Croix de Guerre). Running through November 5, the exhibit’s displays are located across from the Leyburn Circulation desk, and downstairs outside of the Special Collections Library.
Both events are free and open to the public, with students especially encouraged to attend.
On September 10, 2017 the Rockbridge Historical Society will sponsor another one of its popular programs in which the county’s smaller localities are researched, explored, and brought to life. In recent months, talks and slide shows on House Mountain, Denmark, Buena Natural Bridge Station and Collierstown have illuminated what these areas were like in their heyday. As we continue to explore other themes and patterns that mark Rockbridge history more broadly, we are glad to keep spotlighting the neighborhoods and local networks that have long dotted our county.
Next up: a look at our western-most portion of the Rockbridge: Goshen. At 2:30 PM, in the sanctuary of Goshen Baptist Church, Anne McClung will return to the RHS podium, after her packed-house presentation on Alone Mill last year. Her narrated slideshow on the history of Goshen will include both archival and drone photography. It is free and open to the public, with refreshments and fellowship to follow.
The Goshen Blade newspaper (published 1891-3) picturing the Allegheny Hotel, built in 1890’s by the Goshen Improvement Company and completely destroyed by fire in 1922.
Anne has particular stakes in the area, as a retired librarian from the Goshen Library. While there, one of her passions was local history. She organized, collected, and significantly expanded the Goshen local history collection. Because of Goshen’s intriguing, diversified, yet intertwined history of the railroad, resort hotels, and iron furnaces, the local history collection was and is well utilized by historians and researchers from all over the country. Anne says, “It is a privilege for me to give this presentation because Goshen and Goshen Pass has been an intricate and very special part of my entire life.”
Click HERE for the narrative texts and images featured in the program.
Fried Green Tomatoes? The Whistle Stop Café?? If you’re interested in a touch of that era, and that type of a small crossroads town, come explore “The Heyday of Natural Bridge Station”: the Rockbridge Historical Society’s first quarterly program of 2017.
RHS President Stephen D. Beck will share a slideshow presentation, built on over two years’ research and local ‘crowdsourcing’ that illuminates the vitality of Natural Bridge Station in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including some of its neighboring communities like Twin Cities and Sherwood. Over many years, many families in the southern part of the County helped build its foundations. Among others, the Barger, Braford, Burks, Cash, Chiles, Clark, Paxton, Stoner, and Tolley took advantage of the times to commit their efforts and financial resources to advancing the local economy.
Natural Bridge Station was fundamentally shaped by the James River, the Kanawha Canal, and the coming of two railroads, along with other significant investments and industrial initiatives in the mid to late 19th century that would spur development in this vital corridor for the County. A growing road system and area mills, forges, and factories would shape a more coherent region connecting Arnold’s Valley, Springfield, Glenwood, Balcony Falls, and Fancy Hill.
Attention to this area helps to spotlight the continuity of families, as well as the growth and decline of broader social and economic patterns in the region and nation at large nation. Like other small communities RHS programs have recently explored, such as House Mountain, Denmark, and Alone Mill, Natural Bridge Station is another site that brings to light some of Rockbridge’s rich if sometimes hidden histories. With many of its physical remnants still evident today, the legacies of this tight-knit community and bygone era are worth exploring in person.
Stephen D. Beck is President of the Rockbridge Historical Society, and a former Executive for CSX Railroads, who earned his BA in History from Hampden-Sydney College and an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. He notes: “I’m excited about this presentation for many reasons that touch our County history, but two personal stakes stand out in particular. I live nearby and am a member of the Glasgow Ruritan Club. In addition, my wife’s family, the Burks, have played a part in the development of Natural Bridge Station before and after its heyday. Investigation of that family and its connection to many others highlighted in the program has been a rewarding experience in its own right. And none this could have happened without the unstinting support of many local residents who have shared their genealogies, photographs, and family histories for us all to enjoy.”
RHS and First Baptist Church partner for Black History Month
Feb. 18, 2017
As part of Black History Month, the Rockbridge Historical Society presents a free, narrated walking tour on Sat. Feb.18, honoring a range of African-American residents who left their mark on local history over the course of the 18th-20th centuries.
Led by RHS Executive Director Eric Wilson, the hour’s tour welcomes all ages, including schoolchildren. Departing the public library at 4PM, the tour makes stops along the Main St. trail of historic street pavers to highlight some of the black lives that mattered to their contemporaries, and whose stories still resonate with the community today. Bring smartphones to further enjoy the digital resources at rrRockbridge.org.
Local African-Americans featured include: educational/religious leaders, Revs. Lylburn Downing & John Chavis; 18thc. free black settlers Edward Tarr & Patrick Henry; armless athlete/musician Lewis Watts; business/civic leaders Harry Lee & Eliza Walker. The “colored Sunday School” taught by Prof. T.J. “Stonewall” Jackson, and the fatal sacrifice by VMI valedictorian Jonathan Daniels, shed additional light on some of the historical footsteps through which Rockbridge residents both marked and crossed the color lines, from the Civil War to the Civil Rights era.
The walking tour ends at First Baptist Church for its 5PM program, “Voices of the Movement.” The event couples music from area choirs with excerpts from speeches by prominent Civil Rights leaders.
Local community leaders, pastors, students from WLU, SVU & DSLCC will read from the inspirational words of Dr. Martin Luther King & Coretta Scott King; Frederick Douglass & Rosa Parks; Fannie Lou Hamer & US Rep. Shirley Chisholm; late local pioneers such as Jonathan Daniels, Clifton Forge Mayor George Goode, and First Baptist’s own, Rev. LaVert Taylor.
The program will close with personal recollections of the groundbreaking female engineers and mathematicians recently brought to screen in ‘Hidden Figures.’
Natural Bridge Station was fundamentally shaped by the James River, the Kanawha Canal, and the coming of two railroads, along with other significant investments and industrial initiatives in the mid to late 19th century that would spur development in this vital corridor for the County. A growing road system and area mills, forges, and factories would shape a more coherent region connecting Arnold’s Valley, Springfield, Glenwood, Balcony Falls, and Fancy Hill.