Patrick County’s Historical Highway Markers
Stuart's Birthplace, KG-2, Rte. 103, 4 miles south of Friends Mission
Original Marker Text: "A short distance west is the site of the home of Archibald Stuart, Jr., a statesman of a century ago. There was born, February 6, 1833, his son, James Ewell Brown Stuart, who became Major General commanding the cavalry of the Army of Northern Virginia and whose fame is a part of the history of that army. Stuart closed his career by falling in the defense of Richmond, May 11, 1864.
Located two miles south of Ararat, Virginia, on Virginia Route 773, the Ararat Highway.
New Marker Text: "A short distance to the west stood Laurel Hill (built about 1830) where Confederate Major General James Ewell Brown ‘Jeb’ Stuart was born on February 6, 1833 to Archibald Stuart, a lawyer and politician, and Elizabeth Letcher Pannill Stuart. The house burned in the winter of 1847-48. After graduation from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1854, Stuart served as a U. S. Army officer until May 1861 when he joined the Confederate army. In 1862, he became cavalry commander of the Army of Northern Virginia, and his fame is part of the history of that army. Wounded while defending Richmond on May 11 1864, Stuart died there the next day. He is buried at Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond." --Tom Perry, 2002.
Original Marker Text: "This park was developed by the National Park Service, Interior Department, through the Civilian Conservation Corps, in conjunction with the Virginia Conservation Commission. It covers 5,000 acres and was opened, June 15, 1936. It takes its name from the fairy, or lucky stones found everywhere in this area."
Located on Virginia Route 623, six miles south of the Franklin County line.
New Marker Text: "Roanoke newspaper publisher Junius B. Fishburn donated the land to create Fairy Stone State Park. It is named for the cross-shaped crystals found in the region, which according to legend were formed from the tears of fairies. The National Park Service and the Civilian Conservation Corps in conjunction with the Virginia Conservation Commission developed the park. Construction began in 1933 and the park was opened on 15 June 1936. It was one of the first six state parks opened in Virginia, covering close to 5,000 acres, and is one of the largest."
Click Here To Learn More About Fairy Stone State Park
Marker Text: "200 yards south is "Poplar Grove." Penn's old home and burial place. At age 21 he "won his spurs" leading a company under General Lewis at Point Pleasant. During 1780-81 he organized the first revolutionary troops from Henry and adjoining counties, and led his regiment to aid General Greene in the battles of Guilford Court House and Eutaw Springs. He helped organize Patrick County."
Marker Text: "The Blue Ridge Mission School was established by the Virginia Baptist General Convention in 1916 at a site just to the southeast. It provided general education and religious training on both the elementary and secondary level to day and boarding students. Its program was increasingly coordinated with, and in 1941 superseded by, that of the newly-developed public school system."
Marker Text: "About three miles north stood Fort Mayo, commanded by Captain Samuel Harris in 1758 and visited in that year by Washington.
This fort was the southernmost of the line of stockade forts built from the Potomac River to North Carolina as a frontier defense in the French and
Indian War."
George Washington Slept Here…Almost?
Two hundred and forty five years ago, George Washington, the future Father of our country, visited Halifax County or was it Patrick County or was it Henry County. Now, if you are confused keep reading.
In the summer of 1756, the British and their colonies in North America were at war with France and their Native-American allies in the so-called French and Indian War (worldwide it was the Seven Years War). Raids by the Indians on the western frontier of the colony of Virginia spurred the royal governor, Robert Dinwiddie, to write a twenty-four year old colonel in the Virginia militia headquartered in Winchester, named George Washington with instructions to finish construction on a series of forts.
Washington felt the "little paultry" forts were too expensive and thought it would be smarter to build a few good forts at strategic locations. He decided to make a tour of the forts and report back to Governor Dinwiddie. Leaving Winchester on September 29, 1756 traveling south or up the Shenandoah Valley to Staunton, Buchanan and on to Fort Vaux near present day Shawsville. Washington left Fort Vaux for Halifax. Just hours later Indians killed several men near the spot were the future first President of the United States just passed.
In 1756, Halifax County included the present day counties of Franklin, Pittsylvania, Henry and Patrick with three forts. The forts respectively named Fort Callaway along the Blackwater river in present day Franklin county, Fort Trial in present day Henry county along the Smith River and twelve miles away was Fort Mayo located on the North Fork of the Mayo River along the present day county line between Patrick and Henry.
Captain Samuel Harris commanded Fort Mayo. The garrison included twenty men, but was suppose to be manned with a Captain, Lieutenant, two sergeants, two corporals and forty men. Daily rations for the men included 1-½ pounds of beef or 1 pound of pork with one pound of bread. Captain Nathaniel Terry built Fort Mayo in 1756. It was small with a twenty feet high log stockade surrounding a blockhouse.
On October 10, 1756 Colonel Washington wrote that he was "within five miles of the Carolina line, as I was proceeding to the southern most fort in Halifax". He met Major Andrew Lewis on a return journey from the Cherokee Nation. After visiting Fort Mayo, Washington proceeded to Fort Trial and then to Rocky Mount lodging at the Widow Evans home. He returned to Winchester by October 22, 1756 via Staunton and reported to Governor Dinwiddie, who decided to abandon two of the forts in Halifax leaving only Fort Mayo open until 1761.
The actual location of Fort Mayo is still a topic of discussion. Hardin Hairston confused the location of the fort by naming his home Fort Mayo nearby. Hairston was the third son of Colonel George Hairston and Elizabeth Perkins Letcher Hairston, who along with her first husband, William Letcher, were the great-grandparents of J. E. B. Stuart.
The traditional site is on Route 628 or north of Route 810 near Stella in Patrick County. A history professor from California, Carol Wahl, using diaries, deeds and topographical maps believes the fort is located in present day Henry County near where The Great Wagon Road crossed the North Fork of the Mayo River near Spencer. No serious archaeological work has been done to prove the exact location of Fort Mayo. So for now George Washington slept in Patrick County...almost.
Marker Text: "Four miles to the north is Rock Spring Plantation. The boyhood home of industrialist R. J. Reynolds. The land was settled in 1814 by Abram Reynolds and his wife Mary Harbour. About 1843 their son Hardin William Reynolds built the present brick house for his bride Nancy Jane Cox. The couple had 16 children including Richard Joshua Reynolds, who founded R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company. In 1970 the house was restored by Hardin's granddaughter Nancy Susan Reynolds."
Click Here to Learn More About The Reynolds Homestead
Many times traveling from Stuart to Ararat I admired the view of the mountains on the new section of Highway 103 as it descends down towards Peter’s Creek, but I was not the first person to appreciate this vista of the Blue Ridge. In October, 1728 William Byrd II wrote History of the Dividing Line Betwixt Virginia and North Carolina "In the afternoon we walk’t up a high hill north of our camp from whence we discovered an amphitheatre of mountains."
Recently, I came across an article from August 1971 when the historic societies of Patrick and Stokes counties came together to commemorate the end of the survey led by William Byrd II of Westover in 1728 along Peter’s Creek. Driving down the Five Forks road I found the Virginia State Historical Marker and the stone marker placed by the county historic societies, which led to this article on an overlooked part of Patrick County’s history.
William Byrd II was born March 28, 1674, in Virginia. His father, William, was the first Byrd in America planted tobacco and traded with the mother country, where his father was a London goldsmith. The future surveyor went back to England in 1681 for his education. Fifteen years elapsed before he returned to Virginia after a business apprenticeship in the Netherlands, becoming a lawyer and a member of the Royal Society. After staying only one year, Byrd returned to England until 1704 when on the death of his father he returned to take control of his lands in Virginia and married Lucy Parke. Over the next twenty years he became involved with politics, feuding with Governor Spotswood, traveling back and forth to England, lost his first wife and married Maria Taylor.
In 1728, Virginia’s Royal Governor appointed Byrd commissioner to settle the boundary dispute between North Carolina and Virginia that went back to the Carolina Charter of 1663. There were seven commissioners, four surveyors, forty laborers and one chaplain. The party set out from Currituck Inlet on the Atlantic coast on March 5, 1728. In six weeks, they traveled seventy-three miles when they suspended the expedition until fall due to the enormous number of snakes.
The survey resumed on September 20, 1728, but on October 5 the commissioners from North Carolina announced they would not continue because they felt the survey had gone farther than people would ever live. Byrd’s party continued on seventy-five miles for a total of two hundred and forty-one miles. Upon arriving on a stream, we know as Peter’s Creek, Byrd wrote, "prudence got the better of curiosity" and with the approach of winter the party decided to return home with their job complete. Thomas Jefferson’s father Peter would extend the boundary line in the 1740’s.
William Byrd II kept a diary most of his life and experts consider his writings classics of the colonial period. They are blunt and honest about his daily life including his natural functions and especially his sex life. He had two diaries about his work on the dividing line. One known as the "Secret Diary" he doesn’t use the real names of the participants and he makes fun of those with him and the local people along the boundary of the two colonies. Among those with Byrd was William Mayo for whom the local river is named.
Byrd returned to the area in 1733 and he wrote about in his "Journey to Eden." For his services on the survey, Byrd received two hundred pounds and twenty thousand acres. In 1743, he would add six thousand more acres. He died on August 26, 1744. William Byrd II’s home Westover still stands south of Richmond on the north bank of the James River, but only the grounds are open to the public. Nearby the Harrison family home Berkeley is open to the public along with Shirley, the Carter family home and Sherwood Forest, home of President John Tyler.
Internet Links
http://www.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/chap2/byrd.html
http://docsouth.unc.edu/nc/byrd/byrd.html
http://www.victorianvilla.com/sims-mitchell/local/articles/phsp/014/
http://www.tncc.vccs.edu/faculty/longt/byrd/William_Byrd's_Life.htm
Jeb Stuart Didn't Sleep Here
The town known today as Stuart Virginia got that name in 1884 in the aftermath of the Civil War. While James Ewell Brown "Jeb" Stuart
never slept in the town that bears his name today or for that matter there is no evidence he ever sat foot in the place it is named for him.
Officially called Taylorsville, but more often referred to as Patrick Court House, at least by the Stuart Family, the town was named after
American Revolutionary War Hero George Taylor.
Other Links
Virginia Department of Historic Resources Historical Highway Marker Program
http://state.vipnet.org/dhr/hiway_markers/hwmarker_info.htm
Virginia Signs of History
http://www.signsofhistory.com/virginia/virginia.htm
Virginia's Literary Historic Highway Markers
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ma04/kane/thesis/home.htm
Other Links
http://www.historical-markers.org/
A Guidebook to Virginia's Historical Markers: Third Edition by Scott David Arnold
Available from the University of Virginia Press
http://www.upress.virginia.edu/books/arnold.HTM
Copyright 2006 Tom Perry. No material to be used without permission.
Contact Information: Tom Perry P. O. Box 50 Ararat VA 24053 freestateofpatrick@yahoo.com 276-692-5300