ARARAT VIRGINIA

ARARAT VIRGINIA

PATRICK COUNTY'S MOST HISTORIC COMMUNITY

On Saturday, October 26, 1728, William Byrd II finished a survey of the boundary line between North Carolina and Virginia along a stream in Prince George County, Virginia, 241 miles west from the Atlantic Ocean and 200 miles east from the Cumberland Gap. He returned to the area five years later calling it the “Land of Eden.” On this day in 1728, Byrd’s team left their blaze mark on several red oak trees marking the end of their journey. Byrd wrote, “In the afternoon we walk’t up a high hill north of our camp from whence we discovered an amphitheatre of mountains extending from the northeast to the southwest.” William Byrd viewed The Hollow (Ararat, Virginia); a valley area of several hundred square miles bounded on the east by Carter and Bull Mountains, on the northeast to southwest by the Blue Ridge Mountains and on the south by several mountain spurs including Slate, Hanging Rock, Saura Town and Pilot Mountains west to the Brushy Mountains. This land of red clay rich in iron averages forty-seven inches of rain a year with a six months growing season. The country Byrd knew contained bear, wolves, cougars and even bison. Today it is a land of deer, raccoons, opossums, rabbits, squirrels and wild turkeys.

Below Part Of The Jefferson-Fry Map Of The Ararat Area From Before The American Revolution.

In the summer of 1749 in present day Patrick County, Joshua Fry and Peter Jefferson of Virginia met a survey team from North Carolina on the banks of Peter’s Creek, the stream where William Byrd stopped his survey twenty-one years earlier. Their mission to extend the boundary line between the two colonies brought them to Ararat, Virginia. Joshua Fry was born in England in 1700, educated at Oxford and taught math at The College of William and Mary. He was living in Albemarle County serving in many capacities such as Magistrate, County Lieutenant of Militia and surveyor. In 1754, Fry became Commander-in-Chief of Virginia forces in the French and Indian War. Fry died on May 31 after his horse threw him leaving Lieutenant Colonel George Washington in command and beginning a military career the British would soon regret. Peter Jefferson, described as a strong and quiet man, married into the Randolph family. Jefferson named his home in Albemarle County, Shadwell, after the parish in England where his wife, Jane, received christening. Jefferson learned surveying from William Mayo, who accompanied Byrd on their survey twenty-one years earlier and is the namesake for the local river. Peter Jefferson became the County Surveyor and Lieutenant in Albemarle and a member of the House of Burgesses. Sadly, he died on August 17, 1757, leaving a wife and children among them a fourteen-year-old son who said, “his father’s mind was naturally strong, but that his education had been neglected.” Peter Jefferson made sure his oldest son was well educated by local teachers and at the College of William and Mary. The son inherited land that included a place he called the “Little Mountain” or Monticello. Thomas Jefferson only wrote one book in his life called Notes on the State of Virginia and within its pages is a map from his father's survey of Patrick County. Jefferson and Fry crossed the western section of today’s Patrick County and extended the boundary line ninety miles west to Steep Rock Creek in present day Washington County, Virginia. Unlike Byrd’s survey, no diaries or journals of the trip survive, but the “hardships” endured became something of legend in the Jefferson family. They surveyed near The Hollow, present day Ararat, crossing the Ararat River on a farm today called Laurel Hill, the birthplace of J. E. B. Stuart eighty-four years later.

Ararat Virginia Was The Birthplace To Three Of Our Region's Most Famous People

Reverend Bob Childress "The Man Who Moved A Mountain"

http://www.bobchildress.org/index.html

Aunt Orlean Puckett Midwife Made Famous On Blue Ridge Parkway

John and Orlean Hawks Puckett

Aunt Orlean Puckett

Seldom does one person have two sites commemorating their life. This is not the case for Orlean Hawks Puckett. The National Park Service of the United States Department of Interior denotes the life of the famous midwife at milepost 189.9 along the Blue Ridge Parkway. Several miles away at the foot of Groundhog Mountain, a cemetery with over twenty fieldstones marks the tragedy of her life. Raleigh and Shelby Inscore Puckett and other members of their family recently took up the task in preserving the family cemetery relating to their famous relative.

Karen Cecil Smith’s newly published book Orlean Puckett: The Life of Mountain Midwife tells the story of a woman who brought over a thousand babies into the world as a midwife while suffering the tragedy of losing 24 of her own children. The author believes one parent was Rh-negative and the other Rh-positive, which resulted in serious medical problems for their children. The book not only tells of the Pucketts, but of living in rural Patrick County dealing with the practice of midwifery and day-to-day life.

Orlean, the blonde, blue-eyed daughter of Hardin and Matilda Puckett Hawks, married John Puckett, the son of Jacob and Sarah Marshall Puckett in 1860. They moved to the foot of the mountain in The Hollow, present day Ararat. The next year Civil War erupted with John and many of his kinsmen and neighbors joining Jefferson T. Lawson’s Company K, 50th Virginia Infantry. This unit saw some of the fiercest fighting of the war from Fort Donelson in Tennessee, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg until most of those left were captured at Spotsylvania Court House, Virginia, on May 12, 1864,the day J. E. B. Stuart died in Richmond.

During the war the first child born to Orlean and John Puckett, Julia, died of diphtheria, part of an apparent epidemic in Patrick County during 1862 per the death register in the courthouse. While living at the foot of the mountain, Orlean had another eighteen pregnancies, but none of the children survived. Each child lies today in a small cemetery less than a mile south of their cabin at the foot of the mountain.

John and Orlean moved to the top of the mountain in 1875. It was a time of traditions and self-sufficiency when chestnut trees supplied food and beautiful wood before the blight took them. Girls slept under a new quilt hoping to dream of their future husband. Midwives delivered babies following traditions such as placing an axe under the bed to cut the pain or a pan of water under the bed to ease fever. Orlean delivered her first baby, McKinley Bowman in 1889. She would continue the practice until just before her death. Among those she delivered was the future Reverend Bob Childress “The Man Who Moved a Mountain.” Sadly, she lost five more children bringing the total to 24.

John Puckett died on March 30, 1912, after 52 years of marriage. Orlean persevered delivering babies and making the most of her life on Groundhog Mountain. As part of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal in 1935, the Blue Ridge Parkway began at the North Carolina/Virginia line. The next year work began on the 26 miles stretch in Carroll County. In 1939, as the Blue Ridge Parkway approached her front door, Orlean Puckett was given thirty days notice to vacate her cabin. At first, the National Park Service did not want her home and the family began moving the structure. When removing the siding revealed chestnut logs underneath officials reconsidered, but the family remembering how Aunt Orlean was treated, refused. Orlean Hawks Puckett died three weeks later on October 21, 1939, of what many believed to be a broken heart.

Shelby Inscore Puckett summed it best in the book saying, “a row of twenty unmarked field stones in an abandoned family cemetery stands as a reminder of the heartache suffered by this woman. But the Puckett Cabin stands as a very public monument to ‘Aunt’ Orleana Hawks Puckett’s strength and determination as she overcame her own adversity and devoted her life to helping other women achieve what she could not.”

In early 2003, Raleigh Puckett, Roger Puckett and Cordell Bowman cleaned the cemetery in located just off Doe Run Road about two miles from Ararat. Raleigh split over 100 rails and placed them around the fieldstones marking the graves of Orlean and John Puckett’s children. This effort in preserving a small part of the rich history of Patrick County gives all of us an example on respect for our ancestors and that preservation of family history begins at home. Most people consider history that deals with just dates and facts as boring, but history is seldom boring when it deals with people especially when they are part of our own family. Preserving history is a task we should all embark on sometime in our lives especially when it is our own family history.