Presenter: Gene Sullivan
Sun. April 8, 2:30 PM, Effinger Firehouse, Collierstown
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.