Rockbridge Historical Society

Tag: cemeteries

  • 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.

  • 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.
  • THE VITAL DEAD: Making Meaning, Identity, and Community in Rockbridge Cemeteries

    THE VITAL DEAD: Making Meaning, Identity, and Community in Rockbridge Cemeteries

    Sunday, April 30
    3:00 PM
    Timber Ridge Presbyterian Church
    73 Sam Houston Way
    Guided Cemetery Walk to Follow

    On Sunday, April 30, 3:00 PM, W&L Anthropology Professor Alison Bell will present the Rockbridge Historical Society’s free Spring Program.  A wide-ranging slideshow presentation, based on her just-published book tracing those themes more broadly in the Shenandoah Valley, will be held in the historic sanctuary of Timber Ridge Presbyterian Church (est. 1746).  
    Join us to learn about four centuries of memorial traditions and commemorative themes in Rockbridge and the region.  These evolving ritual practices have long shaped communal identities, while also providing creative, singular witness to a diverse sweep of our still ‘Vital Dead.’  Following the talk, Bell will lead a guided cemetery tour of representative tombstones and burial sites spanning the 18th-21st centuries, in the two neighboring church graveyards right across the road.  
    For a continued run of relevant photographs, teasers, and tie-ins to the program and Professor Bell’s book, follow us on RHS Facebook and Instagram @rockbridgehistory.

    Click HERE for the full News-Gazette article describing Bell’s program.

    Presentation Slides from Prof. Bell, HERE

    Interpretive Guide and Map for Timber Ridge Cemeteries