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.
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.