LoCoHistory

There has already been a lot of press and events surrounding the current exhibit at the Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society, but if you haven’t yet had a chance to visit, do so soon. The title of the exhibit is: Marking Time: Voyage to Vietnam. Guest curator Art Beltrone (a military artifact historian and former marine) began collecting graffiti from the Vietnam War in the late 1990s after assisting with the production of Terrence Malick’s film update of The Thin Red Line. During this project he visited the wreck of the General Nelson M Walker and noticed the graffiti that covered parts of the ship. Art, and his wife Lee, began a quest to recover and preserve this informal wartime art (created by veterans) and to collect the stories behind the art. A sample of their 150 canvases is on display at the Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society through February. Only one of the canvases mentions Charlottesville, but each canvas provides insight into the concerns of soldiers and aspects of their daily life while serving abroad. The exhibit features a cell phone tour that allows you to listen to interviews with veterans. A book and movie also accompany the exhibit. For more information and directions to the Historical Society please visit their website. Or read more about the exhibit from local news media coverage, C-ville or the Daily Progress. The exhibit is sponsored, in part, by the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities.

The Virginia Discovery Museum is hosting the exhibit “Beyond Jamestown” (curated by Karenne Wood, director of the Virginia Indian Heritage Program at the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities). The exhibit runs through May 11th and is well worth a visit for children of all ages. While kids and their adult guests read about the vibrant heritage of Indians in Virginia, children can learn how to plant the “three sisters” (corns, beans, and squash, a nutritional assemblage that provided essential amino acids) and fish from a traditional dugout canoe. It may be hard to see in the photos, but the fish and wooden crops have an ingenious velcro system so that kids can “catch” the fish in the net and “plant” the crops by attaching them to painted stalks. Don’t forget to cook the food before consuming it! A lifesized longhouse or wigwam (from the Woodland period) was constructed so that kids could bring their hunted and gathered (from agricultural fields) meal and sit in front of an educational film about native peoples in Virginia. The large exhibit room also contains a reconstruction of a segregated school house (based on historic photos of the Monacan School in Amherst), activities designed to teach kids (and adults) about the past and present of Virginia Indians, and a series of installations about traditional crafts and technologies. The exhibit contains lots of valuable information about everyday life and traditions. The children I observed had to be pulled away from their fields and canoe when it was time to go. A teacher’s guide accompanies the exhibition and highlights correlations between the exhibit themes and the SOLs. With generous sponsorship from the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and Rose and Robert Capon, the admission fee is only $4. And don’t miss the historic carousel outside the museum. The exhibition was developed by the Virginia Museum of Natural History in Martinsville. P.S. If you’re over 4 feet high, but the only thing you were taught about Indians involves “massacres,” “princesses and dramatic rescues,” or mascots for sports teams, this exhibit is well worth a visit.

To learn more about Virginia Indian families at the turn of the last century, visit the 3rd floor of Newcomb Hall (just east of UVa’s Emmett Street parking garage, on UVA grounds) to view a photographic exihibit (or click here for the website).

This Sunday the Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society (ACHS) hosts an open quarterly meeting, for members and the public. The event is scheduled for Veteran’s Day, November 11th, at 2pm in the Emmanuel Church in Greenwood. The meeting will include the ACHS Annual Report, elections of officers, and an illustrated talk on the tree industry by Tom Dierauf (formerly with the Virginia Department of Forestry). After the talk there will be a chance to tour two lumber companies: Yancey (the origin of the name Yancey Mills) and J.B. Barnes. For more information (and directions), visit the ACHS Website.

When settlers first arrived in Albemarle they spent a great deal of time clearing the then heavily forested Piedmont. Shortly there after, this lumber was used to build houses and fences. In the early 20th Century, W.W. King built a warehouse for storing timber products, shown here in an old photograph (the warehouse, not Reid’s Supermarket). This company went out of business during the depression, but many other industries flourished and continue into the present. Come join us this Sunday to learn more about this historic industry.

Visit the Albemarle County Historical Society for their newest exhibit titled: The Story of Albemarle’s Trees and her Forest Industries. Quoting from the historical society website: “Trees were an integral part of early settlers’ lives and work, and they fueled one of Albemarle’s most important industries–lumber. The story of the trees–use, overuse, and conservation–is the story of the growth of the County, both socially and economically.” This exhibit contains an array of material culture that pertains to forest products: from split-oak baskets to locally-made oak chairs, from wooden slats to forestry tools, from photographs to advertisements from area timber industries.

The exhibition was curated by Catherine Anne Daley, a University of Virginia summer intern through the Institute for Public History, with assistance from ACHS staff and volunteers. Click here to get more information about visiting the exhibition (on display through Fall 2007).

The Scottsville Museum is a hidden treasure….about 20 miles south of C-ville, but worth the trip. They have recently opened a new exhibit, titled “Small Town, Big War.” They have collected dozens of oral histories from Scottsville veterans who served in the war (conveniently transcribed and available in notebooks distributed throughout the exhibit). The photo shown here illustrates a reconstructed tent space of a U.S. Army communicator at a WWII command post. The exhibit is filled with interesting facts (like the microfilming of mail to US soldiers so that they could save valuable space on transport boats and planes, a.k.a. v-mail). Or a reconstructed Scottsville kitchen during WWII and the statistic that “victory gardens” provided 41% of the vegetables consumed by US citizens during the war (you can imagine what a miniscule amount of food today’s home gardens provide vs store-bought food). Pick a beautiful day and enjoy the scenic drive down to this well-designed exhibit. As an aside, this exhibit illustrates the importance of local county (loco) history for understanding larger cultural trends.

During the Revolutionary War, the Barracks (located west of the shopping center; today a horse stable) was a prison for British and German troops captured at The Battle of Saratoga in October 1777. They were originally imprisoned by Revolutionary forces in Massachusetts, but within the year they marched 628 miles to the more hospitable climate of Charlottesville, Virginia. The term “hessian” is a reference to the German mercenaries who fought for the British. Hence, the nearby housing development on Georgetown Road called “Hessian Hills.” Although no prisoner list survives, estimates suggest over 4,000 prisoners lived at the Barracks. By the spring of 1779, locals described the camp as a small town with a commissary store, a coffeehouse, and a theater. Despite these amenities, over 1,000 prisoners escaped between 1779 and 1780. Many of the German soldiers settled in the Shenandoah Valley and became American citizens.

The Barracks Road Shopping Center is one of the oldest in the country, dating to 1959. To view the rest of this great old photograph of Barracks Road, see Cville Dave’s Posting on the Barracks Road Shopping Center in the 1960s. In the photo you can see the newly built shopping center, mostly surrounded by woods, with large expanses of asphalt for the “acres of free parking” that was touted in the original advertisement. Built by an area developer, Rinehart, it displaced a famous tavern called Carroll’s Tea Room. Moore’s history of Charlottesville reports that although it often possessed neither tea nor room, it was “an oasis for thousands of thirsty university students.” If you look closely at the Barracks Road logo, found on signs along the edges of the retail center, you will notice a rider on a horse. This logo references the cavalry soldiers who manned the “Barracks.” The military barracks were constructed west of town near Ivy Farms during the Revolutionary War to house British and German prisoners-of-war.