Battersea Foundation

The Progress Index reported...

PETERSBURG - The Battersea Foundation has won a prestigious grant for $150,000 that will be used for the upcoming second phase of restoration at the historic home. The $150,000 grant must be matched by the foundation and will help rebuild the 1768 estate's chimneys, among other things. "The Battersea Foundation was selected as one of two projects in Virginia for the Save America's Treasure's Grant," said Ronald White, a representative from Congressman J. Randy Forbes office. "The preservation of history is one of the most important things in this country." White praised the organization for continuing to grow - now with more than 130 members - and for its new Web site and the array of educational programs the foundation is offering. "We must protect and preserve our future, we are the guardians of history," White said.

The grant announcement was made on Oct. 20 during the Battersea Foundation's annual meeting on the lawn of the historic home. Barbara Moseley, president of the foundation's board of directors, said that Richard Wolbers, an associate professor and art conservator with the University of Delaware, had recently completed some paint reveals inside the house. The reveals will allow the restoration of the original color of paint inside the house and the careful removal of later paints that were added. Kathleen Kilpatrick, director of the Virginia Department of Historic Resources, said that Battersea represents a supreme resource that must be cared for. "Architecture is the only form of art where we expect the art object to serve a utilitarian purpose," Kilpatrick said. She added that the foundation must find a way to put the building to good use, but that proper planning must be a part of that. She commended the foundation for starting the process of a strategic plan. "Planning is not just a done and done proposition." The meeting concluded with the presentation of the first annual Vanguard award to the Elmwood Fund, which has made numerous contributions to the Battersea Foundation. Battersea is an important Colonial plantation house that was constructed near the banks of the Appomattox River in 1768 for John Banister, first mayor of Petersburg, a Revolutionary delegate, congressman and framer of the Articles of Confederation. The sectional massing of Battersea displays the neo-Palladian style as popularized in England in the 18th century and embraced in Colonial Virginia.

During the Revolutionary War, British troops occupied the house on more than one occasion.

F.M. Wiggins may be reached at 732-3456, ext. 3254 or fwiggins@progress-index.com.

Candlelight ceremony honors veterans

DINWIDDIE - Among the more than 6,100 graves in Poplar Grove National Cemetery is that of William Montgomery, a member of the 155th Pennsylvania who holds the regrettable distinction of being the last enlisted man killed in Virginia in the Civil War. Much more regrettably, he was far from being the last American to fall in the service of his country.

On Saturday night, National Park Service rangers, volunteers and area residents lit candles on Montgomery's final resting place and all the others at Poplar Grove in tribute to those soldiers and all the other men and women who have served in the nation's Armed Forces.

The fourth annual lighting of luminaries at Poplar Grove in commemoration of Veterans Day drew dozens of volunteers, including Boy Scout and Girl Scout troops, to place a white paper bag containing a candle on each grave marker at the 143-year-old cemetery off Vaughan Road.

As twilight fell, the soft glow of the candles emerged in long, neat, curving lines stretching across the grounds, in a solemn act of rekindling of memory and reawakening of gratitude for the nation's defenders.

The names of more than 4,000 of the soldiers interred at Poplar Grove are unknown, but visitors to the Petersburg National Battlefield visitor center recently were offered the opportunity to write names on the bags used for the ceremony, personal tributes to their ancestors or loved ones who served, or are serving, in the military.

As a result, there were reminders of every war America has fought, from "John Lumsden, Virginia Militia, Revolutionary War" to "Cpl. Ben Kopp, Army Ranger, died from wounds in Afghanistan, donated his organs so others could live, True American Hero."

And this testimony to new tragedy closer to home: "Pvt. Francheska Velez, Ft. Hood, TX, 5 Nov. 09. Love, Papo."

At William Montgomery's grave, Park Ranger Tyler Wilson stood in torchlight wearing the flamboyant Zouave uniform of the 155th Pennsylvania as he told visitors the details of Montgomery's death: Near Appomattox Court House, he "received a mortal wound from shrapnel from a Confederate battery that was retreating" on the very day Lee surrendered to Grant.

Other rangers explained how fallen soldiers' bodies were collected for interment during the Civil War, and why so many of those buried at Poplar Grave are unknown, and that among the graves there are more than 300 soldiers of the U.S. Colored Troops, the first African-Americans to serve officially in the nation's military.

Sutherland resident and admitted Civil War buff Robert Whiting and his wife, Nita, were among those who walked between the rows of softly burning lights and listened to the rangers' presentations. He said he had been to Poplar Grove before, in 2003 when three soldiers' bodies that had been discovered by relic hunters were reburied there with full military honors.

Poplar Grove was established as a resting place for the Union dead, and Whiting noted that he had ancestors or relatives who fought on both sides during the Civil War. "This is a very sacred place," he said.

- Michael Buettner may be reached at 722-5155 or mbuettner@progress-index.com.

In First Lady's roots, a Complex Path from Slavery

In First Lady's roots, a Complex Path from SlaveryBy Rachel L. Swarns and Jodi Cantor, NY Times, Oct. 7, 2009

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/08/us/politics/08genealogy.html?_r=2&hp=&adxnnl=1&pagewanted=all&adxnnlx=1255000392-NQao9IYjM4XzVHHKiCe0aQ

In 1850, the master of a South Carolina estate sold a 6-year-old slave girl named Melvinia for $475 and shipped her to a three-slave estate in Georgia. When she was a teenager, she had a child with a white man-an unremarkable event in the sad history of slavery, except that Melvinia and her child's father are the great-great-great-grandparents of Michelle Obama. The New York Times has uncovered this unknown portion of Michelle's family history. Melvinia's son, Dolphus, migrated to Birmingham, Alabama, in 1888 and co-founded the Trinity Baptist Church, which helped lead the civil-rights movement and still exists today. He died at the age of 91 in 1950, and his obituary appeared in the same issue of The Birmingham World as an article with the historic headline, "U.S. Court Bans Segregation in Diners and Higher Education."

Blog on Richmond History

Check out a "new" blog on Richmond history:

The Shockoe Examiner: Blogging the History of Richmond-in-Virginia:

http://theshockoeexaminer.blogspot.com/

Includes interesting essays and lots of images on all aspects of Richmond history. Visit the site and let me know what you think.

Hatton Ferry

Hatton Ferry apparently made the Today Show this morning! I didn't see it, but there's now a charming video clip up on MSNBC:

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/26184891/vp/33055797#33055797

We cannot let the icons of our past disappear like this, else we will have no past to bequeath to future generations.
For more information on the fate of the Hatton Ferry, contact:
Steven Meeks, President
Albemarle/Charlottesville Historical Society
(434) 296-1492
president@albemarlehistory.org

If you’d like to make a donation to save the Hatton Ferry, mail it to:
The Hatton Ferry Fund
c/o Old Dominion National Bank
P.O. Box 321
Scottsville, VA 24590

The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family

New York Law School Professor Wins $25,000 Frederick Douglass Book Prize
New Haven, Conn — Annette Gordon-Reed, Professor of Law at New York Law School, Professor of History at Rutgers University-Newark, and Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard University, has been selected as the winner of the 2009 Frederick Douglass Book Prize, awarded for the best book written in English on slavery or abolition. Gordon-Reed won for her book, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family (W.W. Norton and Company). The prize is awarded by Yale University's Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition, sponsored by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. In addition to Gordon-Reed, the other finalists for the prize were Thavolia Glymph for Out of the House of Bondage: The Transformation of the Plantation Household (Cambridge University Press) and Jacqueline Jones for Saving Savannah: The City and the Civil War (Alfred A. Knopf Publishers). The $25,000 annual award is the most generous history prize in the field. The prize will be presented to Gordon-Reed at a dinner in New York City in February 2010. This year's finalists were selected from a field of over fifty entries by a jury of scholars that included Robert Bonner (Dartmouth College), Rita Roberts (Scripps College), and Pier Larson (Johns Hopkins University). The winner was selected by a review committee of representatives from the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, and Yale University. "In Annette Gordon Reed's The Hemingses of Monticello, an enslaved Virginia family is delivered — but not disassociated — from Thomas Jefferson's well-known sexual liaison with Sally Hemings," says Bonner, the 2009 Douglass Prize Jury Chair and Associate Professor of History at Dartmouth College. "The book judiciously blends the best of recent slavery scholarship with shrewd commentary on the legal structure of Chesapeake society before and after the American Revolution. Its meticulous account of the mid-eighteenth century intertwining of the black Hemingses and white Wayles families sheds new light on Jefferson's subsequent conjoining with a young female slave who was already his kin by marriage. By exploring those dynamic commitments and evasions that shaped Monticello routines, the path-breaking book provides a testament to the complexity of human relationships within slave societies and to the haphazard possibilities for both intimacy and betrayal." The Frederick Douglass Book Prize was established in 1999 to stimulate scholarship in the field of slavery and abolition by honoring outstanding books. Previous winners were Ira Berlin and Philip D. Morgan in 1999; David Eltis, 2000; David Blight, 2001; Robert Harms and John Stauffer, 2002; James F. Brooks and Seymour Drescher, 2003; Jean Fagan Yellin, 2004; Laurent Dubois, 2005; Rebecca J. Scott, 2006; Christopher Leslie Brown, 2007; and Stephanie E. Smallwood, 2008. The award is named for Frederick Douglass (1818-1895), the slave who escaped bondage to emerge as one of the great American abolitionists, reformers, writers, and orators of the 19th century. The Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition, a part of The Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale University, was established in November 1998 through a generous donation by Richard Gilder and Lewis Lehrman and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. Its mission is to promote the study of all aspects of slavery, especially the chattel slave system and its destruction. The Center seeks to foster an improved understanding of the role of slavery, slave resistance, and abolition in the founding of the modern world by promoting interaction and exchange between scholars, teachers, and public historians through publications, educational outreach, and other programs and events. Founded in 1994, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History promotes the study and love of American history. The Institute serves teachers, students, scholars, and the general public. It helps create history-centered schools, organizes seminars and programs for educators, produces print and electronic publications and traveling exhibitions, sponsors lectures by eminent historians, and administers a History Teacher of the Year Award in every state through its partnership with Preserve America. The Institute also conducts awards including the Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, and George Washington Book Prizes, and offers fellowships for scholars to work in the Gilder Lehrman Collection. The Institute maintains two websites, www.gilderlehrman.org and the quarterly online journal www.historynow.org. For further information on Gilder Lehrman Center events and programming, contact the center by phone (203) 432-3339, fax (203) 432-6943, or e-mail gilder.lehrman.center@yale.edu.

Argall Towne

http://www.vagazette.com/articles/2009/09/16/news/doc4ab0384a03385778594361.txt

JAMES CITY — Local archaeologists have discovered Argall Towne, a short-lived village that was the first suburb of nearby Jamestown. The village was started in 1617 by Capt. Samuel Argall, then a colorful lieutenant governor of the colony. It thrived for three years, but his impetuous behavior led many of the settlers to move away to Martin’s Hundred near Carter’s Grove Plantation. Alain Outlaw of Williamsburg-based Archaeological & Cultural Solutions has been searching for the site since 1975. “It’s been a slow process,” said Outlaw, who is also an adjunct professor at Christopher Newport University. For two years, since he got access to the land, his students and volunteers have researched the site. Outlaw won’t pinpoint the locale for fear of relic hunters. The find is important because it represents the first major settlement in James City outside Jamestown, and it provides a key link to how settlers expanded outward from Jamestown. Argall Towne was built on strategically high land that was easily defended, and from that point small farmsteads spread inland. Posted on Friday, September 18, 2009

http://www.fmfada.com/pdf/FtAlger_Conf.pdf

From October 16 to 18, a celebration and conference commemorating the 400th anniversary of Anglo-America's first coastal fortification -- "Fort Algernoune, 1609: Colonial Virginia's Maritime Rim" -- will take place at Old Point Comfort, the national historic landmark site of present-day Fort Monroe. "Algernoune Fort" was constructed at what's now called Old Point Comfort to guard approaches to Jamestown colony and the Chesapeake Bay. The October event is said to be planned "to consider how the maritime rim of colonial Virginia developed an egalitarian and culturally diverse society different from its Jamestown neighbor." Participants include James Whittenburg, William R. Pullen Chair, Department of History, College of William & Mary; William M. Kelso, Director of Archaeology, Historic Jamestowne Rediscovery Archaeological Project, Preservation Virginia; Ivor Noël Hume, OBE , Research Associate (hon.) Smithsonian Institution; Camilla Townsend, Professor of History, Rutgers University; David Harris Sacks, Richard F. Scholz Professor of History, Reed College; James Horn, Vice President of Research and Historical Interpretation, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation; and Karen Ordahl Kupperman, Silver Professor of History, New York University. For more information, please see the links on the left side of the home page at the Web site of the Fort Monroe Authority (officially, that's the "Fort Monroe Federal Area Development Authority"), http://www.fmfada.com/.

Registration Form: http://www.fmfada.com/pdf/RegistrationForm.pdf