Rockbridge Vignettes

Rockbridge Vignettes Interesting and entertaining small stories about Rockbridge County's people, places and things. We post new items most evenings around dinnertime.

Some days, we give you a rerun bonus item in early afternoon.

Lexington didn’t have a fire department in 1796, which is one reason the town was devastated by the great fire of 1798. ...
01/16/2025

Lexington didn’t have a fire department in 1796, which is one reason the town was devastated by the great fire of 1798. (The other reason is that almost every building was made of wood.) After being rebuilt almost entirely of brick, there were few fires, but the local newspapers kept publicizing horrific episodes in Baltimore, Cincinnati, Charleston and especially, in 1845 in Pittsburg. By 1825 the town levied a 3% tax to buy fire-fighting equipment, and in 1850 a fire department was organized. By 1870, the department had become reasonably effective, thanks to real-life experience, the expansion of a public water supply, and support from Washington College students and VMI cadets.

The old James McKee home, on Whistle Creek west of Lexington, was built about 1750, and tradition says that it had a cel...
01/16/2025

The old James McKee home, on Whistle Creek west of Lexington, was built about 1750, and tradition says that it had a cellar that doubled as a fortress to protect the inhabitants from Indian attacks. That house was destroyed by fire about 1875, however, and replaced by a two-story frame house.

In 1917 Rockbridge lagged behind the rest of Virginia in agitating for war, as it had before the Civil War, but (again) ...
01/15/2025

In 1917 Rockbridge lagged behind the rest of Virginia in agitating for war, as it had before the Civil War, but (again) when the U.S. actually declared war against Germany in April, Rockbridge became zealous in support. May 16 was declared Patriotic Day. A thousand men marched in Lexington that morning and after lunch there was a parade of a hundred automobiles. From Lexington and Buena Vista, “fair matrons and maidens met the gaze,” reported the County News. Both colleges had already been mobilized and 100 local men were already in Army training camps. Local residents bought more than $200,000 in Liberty Loans, and the Washington and Lee trustees invested $20,000 of the college’s endowment in war bonds.

James Brown, U.S. ambassador to France from 1823 to 1829, was born in northern Rockbridge when it was still part of Augu...
01/15/2025

James Brown, U.S. ambassador to France from 1823 to 1829, was born in northern Rockbridge when it was still part of Augusta, and attended Washington College. He got involved in politics in the emerging state of Kentucky and, after the Louisiana Purchase, moved to New Orleans, where he became attorney general of he territory. One of three drafters of the first Louisiana Civil Code (1808), he was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1812 and became chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. 40 years before Emancipation,. he supported a colony in Ontario of free American Blacks.
— Reprinted from "Rockbridge in 733 Vignettes," available at The Bookery and on Amazon

Custis Lee, elected to the presidency of Washington College by delirious acclaim after the death of his father, was almo...
01/14/2025

Custis Lee, elected to the presidency of Washington College by delirious acclaim after the death of his father, was almost paralytically introverted. The W&L historian Ollinger Crenshaw was circumspect but left no question: “A modern physician would undoubtedly discern the physical effects of mind and emotion in the unhappy experience of this reticent man.” Lee kept trying to resign and increasingly stayed away from the campus, begging that he was “ready and willing” to be replaced. The trustees kept refusing until 1896, when he described himself as “utterly useless here,” and the board stopped resisting. He retired to Ravensworth, the family home of his Grandmother Fitzhugh, in Fairfax County, where he died in 1913, maintaining cordial relations with the university to the end but having no official relationship with it.

There’s a myth that after the death of Robert E. Lee, the newly renamed Washington and Lee University thrived because of...
01/13/2025

There’s a myth that after the death of Robert E. Lee, the newly renamed Washington and Lee University thrived because of his legacy. Nothing could be further from the case. The college suffered even more dramatically than most of the post-war South, with decrepit buildings and a faculty that began fleeing because of low compensation. Student enrollment stayed steady but large numbers paid their tuition with IOUs. Academically, it seems to have spread itself too thin, offering too many courses. A fundraising campaign cost $18,000 and yielded $15,000. And the bald fact is that the new president, Lee’s son George W. Custis Lee, was unsuited for the job. More on that tomorrow.

Best Products was the roman candle of department store chains (in that it was rocketed to success that eventually fizzle...
01/12/2025

Best Products was the roman candle of department store chains (in that it was rocketed to success that eventually fizzled out). It was founded in 1957 by a 1940 Washington and Lee grad, Sydney Lewis, and his wife, Frances, who became (in the 1970s) W&L’s biggest-ever benefactors. (The law school is named for them.) At Best stores, you inspected at a sample of an item, then ordered it up from the storeroom (sort of like ordering liquor in Virginia in the old days). The Lewises were zealous about modern art, and they commissioned unconventional designs for their stores. This is the store they built in Houston.

The congregation of Glasgow Baptist Church dates to 1891, the height of the Rockbridge boom, but it didn’t last. In 1900...
01/11/2025

The congregation of Glasgow Baptist Church dates to 1891, the height of the Rockbridge boom, but it didn’t last. In 1900 it re-formed itself, with 35 members, and soon began building a church on Fitzlee Street. In 1971 it began a new building program and in 1973 held its first service in its new home.

The Kerr’s Creek Baptist Church was organized in 1868, and soon began holding services in the nearby Presbyterian Church...
01/11/2025

The Kerr’s Creek Baptist Church was organized in 1868, and soon began holding services in the nearby Presbyterian Church. But in 1909, the Presbyterians became upset over the Baptists’ habit of driving wagons across the lawn, and in 1911 a new Baptist church was completed on donated land in the hamlet of Denmark, just west of the Kerr’s Creek community. This amazing photo is from around 1950.
— From "Rockbridge in 733 Vignettes" (available at The Bookery)

We’re not sure quite what to make of this, but VMI had an acrobatics team in 1885, shown here in a Michael Miley photogr...
01/11/2025

We’re not sure quite what to make of this, but VMI had an acrobatics team in 1885, shown here in a Michael Miley photograph.

The Poague House on South Main Street dates from 1885. It’s an I-house with an extension on the back, giving it 10 rooms...
01/10/2025

The Poague House on South Main Street dates from 1885. It’s an I-house with an extension on the back, giving it 10 rooms in all — large for our Main Street. An I-house is generally two rooms or more wide, one room deep, and two stories tall. Fun fact, if you want to believe it: The I-house got its name not because the buildings are in the shape of an I, but because they were prevalent in mid-19th-century Iowa, Indiana and Illinois.

In the good old days, say 1773, a jug of whiskey was sometimes buried with a dead person. More genteelly, you might pour...
01/09/2025

In the good old days, say 1773, a jug of whiskey was sometimes buried with a dead person. More genteelly, you might pour some booze on someone’s grave (“pouring out" a “libation”). Oren Morton uncovered a petition dated March 15, 1773, from a “widow Allison” who lived near Kerrs Creek, submitted to the local vestry, asking reimbursement for a coffin and a gallon-and-a-half of liquor for the burial of one Joel Millican, “as I am not of great ability to be at so much expense and trouble.”

Once upon a time, long, long ago, Washington and Lee fraternities took good care of their houses without even being thre...
01/09/2025

Once upon a time, long, long ago, Washington and Lee fraternities took good care of their houses without even being threatened with punishment. Greek societies started taking hold at Washington College in General Lee’s day, but it wasn’t until after World War I that they began settling themselves into big, often stately houses in town. One fraternity, Lambda Chi Alpha, opened shop in 1922 in this house on South Main Street. (Not a beer can in sight.) The house, alas, was replaced in 1957 by an undistinguished mid-century ranch. Lambda Chi today is one of the few surviving fraternities from that era, and remains reasonably well behaved at its 1939 house on East Nelson Street, where Spotswood Drive turns off to go to the hospital.

Everyone knows the c. 1845 Campbell House at the corner of Randolph and Washington Streets, but do you know about its na...
01/08/2025

Everyone knows the c. 1845 Campbell House at the corner of Randolph and Washington Streets, but do you know about its namesake, Leslie Lyle Campbell? He was a native of Powhatan County, educated at Washington and Lee. Married to Catherine Estill Houston of Lexington, he taught and became head of the physics department at Simmons College. In 1932 he retired to Lexington., where he continued his experiments with magnetism, photography and sundials. Campbell was a founder of the Rockbridge Historical Society in 1939 and eventually he and Mrs. Campbell left their house, which had been in her family, to the RHS. It’s now the society’s headquarters and museum.

You know the name of Benjamin Borden, of course. You know that the land he owned in colonial days eventually became Rock...
01/08/2025

You know the name of Benjamin Borden, of course. You know that the land he owned in colonial days eventually became Rockbridge, and you know that there are things named after him. But do you know *about* him — such as where he lived? Answer: Not in Rockbridge. He was born in New Jersey but eventually moved to Wi******er, where he lived the rest of his days and was buried. He owned the land here not because he chose it as the best 100,000 acres in the world, although it is, but because King George II gave it to him for free, just a few strings attached. (Such as: Bring in a thousand settlers within wo years.) The picture shows the 285-year-old Borden Grant that awarded him the real estate where we lived today. (Photo courtesy of Washington and Lee University, which owns and restored the document.)

Everyone knows of Samuel Darst, partner of John Jordan, who in the 1820s built the handsome brick buildings that today g...
01/07/2025

Everyone knows of Samuel Darst, partner of John Jordan, who in the 1820s built the handsome brick buildings that today give Lexington its distinctive architectural character. But Samuel’s father, Benjamin, was just as noteworthy. He was a brickmaker and builder who, after the disastrous fire of 1796 destroyed Lexington’s wooden buildings, led the rebuilding movement, with his bricks as the basic material. By 1804 Lexington was a “handsome village,” and when his son and Jordan formed their partnership in 1815, he became their graybeard.

Ever wonder how Jump Mountain got its name? According to Oren Morton (“History of Rockbridge,” 1920), the legend has it ...
01/06/2025

Ever wonder how Jump Mountain got its name? According to Oren Morton (“History of Rockbridge,” 1920), the legend has it that once upon a time, there was a battle between Indian tribes at Walkers Creek, and a wife, who was watching from the mountain, saw her husband fall. She was so distraught that she flung herself off the mountain to her death. Morton, however, dismisses the legend, one of the few times he threw water on a romantic, fantastical story: “She must have had telescopic eyes to recognize her mate” because the distance is more than two miles.

Virginia Military Institute got its trademark Gothic Revival architectural personality from a prolific and influential N...
01/06/2025

Virginia Military Institute got its trademark Gothic Revival architectural personality from a prolific and influential New York architect named Alexander Jackson Davis, who was championed by the founding superintendent, Francis H. Smith, and board member (later board president) Philip St. George Cocke. Davis had mostly designed buildings for titans of Northern commerce (and the state capitols of North Carolina and Indiana). But today his imprint is seen in Lexington in the Barracks, the superintendent’s residence, and several faculty houses – and in the distinct appearance of every other building on post, whoever the nominal architect.

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